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 Socio-Economic Mythes 
 
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 AND 
 
 Mythe-Makers 
 
 BY 
 
 YOURS TRULY 
 
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 BOSTON 
 
 ARENA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 COPLEY SQUARE
 
 Copyrighted, 1896, 
 SY 
 
 ARENA PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 Arena Press.
 
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 K5lo 3 s 
 
 5oeio-E<;oQomie (T\ytf?es 
 
 aijd 
 
 /T\ytl?e-/T\a^ers.
 
 To mould the general thought, to direct the social aim, 
 within the breast of man to waken mother-feeling ; dear 
 reader, may this be yours and mine. 
 
 1Rev>erentiall£ H>efcfcate& 
 
 TO THE 
 
 Cause of the Gods of Society. 
 
 Of vicious class legislation we have overmuch. But 
 more, give us more of equality's pure white wine. Into the 
 Golden Goblet pour, pour. Stop not. Equality-legislation 
 ne'er can overflow. Each shall quaff, and all shall be happy.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 .1. Mythes and Mythe-Makers, - - 7 
 
 II. Mythes and Mythe-Makers (Cont.), - 44 
 
 III. Society's Movements Outlined, - 77 
 
 IV. Socio-Economic Facts, - - - 96 
 
 V. Confusion of Socio-Economic Facts. 
 Political Economy an Imaginary 
 
 Calculus, 107 
 
 VI. Confusion of Socio-Econonic Facts. 
 Political Economy an Imaginary 
 
 Calculus (Continued), - - - 138 
 
 VII. Social Law the Economic Law, - 201
 
 E- 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MYTHES AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 
 
 THE growth of the race soul, like the growth 
 of the individual soul, keeps pace with a 
 rational exercise of the reasoning power ; there- 
 fore that which hinders rational exercise, hin- 
 ders the unf oldment of the God within us (reason), 
 hinders our moral and spiritual growth ; and 
 this is done by imprisoning mind within the 
 sphere of ignorant thought. Minds unconscious 
 of the universality of reasonable relation, do, in 
 their gropings after knowledge, pass through an 
 era of savage thought, the era's length and 
 depth of savagery being in direct ratio to pov- 
 erty in perception of reasonable relation's cer- 
 tain law. Etymological authority defines mythes 
 to be fabulous or imaginary statements convey-
 
 8 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 ing an important truth, the mythcs themselves 
 implying a claim to supernatural power ; respect 
 for actual facts should have led to the substitu- 
 tion of the term concealing for the word convey- 
 ing. 
 
 Mankind, by reason of its birth into a larger 
 field of conscious reasoning, is ever seeking the 
 "why" of its environment, and though the field 
 in which we query be much expanded, yet the 
 tendency to question is not limited ; for the 
 inquiring disposition is in essence just the same, 
 be it exercised by savage or by sage. And this 
 propensity, is it not one of twin essential factors 
 in all progress, being an internal motor, speed- 
 ing race and individual along the evolutionary 
 highway of planetary life ? 
 
 It is to be expected that mythes. will follow 
 in the trail of phenomena, as they are the out- 
 come of mutually acting modes of existences ; 
 mind, and things outside of mind, compelling 
 its attention. Love of the marvellous, joined to 
 blind conservatism which clings alike to truth 
 and error, does, in an era of looking at, not
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 9 
 
 looking into, things, naturally breed mythes, 
 therefore whole regiments of chaotic theories 
 invade fields which rational explanation, given 
 the chance, clears of knotty stumps ; and 
 mythic stumps, are they not, on the fair land of 
 intelligent reasoning, unsightly excrescences like 
 Pinkertonism, that blot upon our Republic's 
 national existence ? 
 
 Accepted as sound interpretations of the real, 
 mythes are to knowledge formidable barriers, 
 acting like a hedge across a highway to a foot- 
 sore traveller, leaving him no alternative but 
 waste of energy, climbing over contrivance use- 
 less, wicked, or cessation of his further onward 
 movement. "Mythes live and fatten by the 
 credence given by acceptance of them as final, 
 as real truths. Consequently, along all lines of 
 travel barricaded by these illusionary giants 
 intellectual progress is repressed, and, by pre- 
 venting social conduct from becoming human, 
 we are robbed of an earthly heaven, and the 
 soul's growth is stunted by an utterly unsolvable 
 problem, by a mythe. For how can men, with
 
 IO SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 natures which unfit them for the art of making 
 heaven here, be admitted into one in the here- 
 after, and there in heavenly soil take immediate 
 root ? The thing is unnatural ; the very 
 thought is unthinkable. 
 
 Nowhere throughout the kingdom of relation 
 does the principle of heredity unimpeached hold 
 sovereign sway, save in the fact that savage action 
 has its birth in savage thought, and both stand 
 outside the domain of human morality. 
 
 Twofold is our source of knowledge : experi- 
 ence of things outside of self, experience of 
 things within the self ; but their value as intel- 
 ligence depends upon the amount of rational 
 discrimination used. 
 
 Mythes are vapors escaped from misty mental 
 space. To deform the language is baby's pre- 
 rogative, else how can it utter infant thoughts ? 
 Expression cannot rise above the level of its in- 
 tellectual power ; no one questions baby's right. 
 
 Equally unquestionable is the natural right of 
 savages to build and hold unto their mythes. 
 Only the fool expects that for which neither
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I I 
 
 power nor opportunity exists, but only the fool 
 rests content with shortage, when for the greater 
 " which " both power and opportunity exist. It 
 is he of weak sight who turns from the brilliancy 
 of electric illumination, preferring the help of 
 feeble candlelight. The sun wakens to busy 
 life its Eastern peoples, the while tarrying in its 
 call to Western folk. Were it possible for an 
 accountant to procure at a given hour the results 
 of the toil of mortals, could true judgment be 
 passed without taking into account the fact that 
 sunlight comes to different parts of the earth at 
 different hours ? Is it then unreasonable to 
 expect some extra legitimate claim upon the 
 advanced races and of them some special expec- 
 tation in the calculations of evolutionary time ? 
 Therefore, when science and scientific art, 
 the intellectual weather-vanes, point to a longer 
 stretch of race life, indicate a sooner sunrise in 
 evolutionary time, and yet there is found among 
 such people mythe-making, polished and refined, 
 serving as a lucrative class trade, with such an- 
 achronism, I ask, what can a body do but denounce
 
 12 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 it as ? As the ocean is to a drop of its 
 
 watery contents, so is the present unfoldment 
 of industrial power contrasted with the early 
 days of economic production; and yet, simul- 
 taneous with improvements in industrial methods, 
 simultaneous with easy production, goes a less- 
 ening of chance to enjoy the comforts produced ; 
 and the laboring class — upon whom society 
 depends for its existence, upon whom social 
 jugglery fixes the doing of real work — finds its 
 individual members in a state of continually 
 increasing economic insecurity through the 
 geometric increase of their spoliation. 
 
 Not a few savants, politico-economic (real 
 sharpshooters they), aim at the solution of this 
 socio-industrial problem, but, missing the mark, 
 their powder soils the skies, while over the social 
 gladiatorial ring this social (?) fact in herculean 
 might is master still, is unhit by their senseless 
 verbiage. From the kingdom of being why 
 learn we not a lesson ? Among inferior animals, 
 the individual members as well as the species go 
 the length of their spiritual tether. The very
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 3 
 
 trees obey a natural law of growth, while superior 
 animals act as if privileged to interfere with 
 natural principles and laws of dealing with each 
 other. True modes of settling what is right, 
 modes natural to real humans, are disregarded ; 
 and so is trampled upon, and trampled out, the 
 individual's and the species' opportunity to rapid 
 increase in intellectual, in moral perception. 
 Borne in space upon the bosom of his mother 
 earth, each mortal has freedom to life-giving air. 
 To the intelligent social observer, the biolo- 
 gical as well as the physical fact of position dem- 
 onstrates the divine dictum — equal natural right 
 of each individual with every other to grow, to 
 unfold, and to adjust itself in the spacial con- 
 ditions of that race's social environment into 
 which such individual is born ; the adjustment 
 to be not by artificial means (money's vile de- 
 cree), but through laws of God, laws of natural 
 adaptation. And why should not the force 
 beckoning each to his, to her, socio-economic 
 position, fixing size and extent of its space, be 
 a natural attraction, a law of atomic social gravr
 
 14 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 tation, which is nothing more nor less than the 
 capacity to enjoy, the ability, the willingness, to 
 do some socially useful thing. 
 
 Behold the celestial world, where through the 
 universal and impartial operation of great nature's 
 law, each atom in space seeks and finds its right 
 abiding place ; so might each human atom, by 
 the natural inherent force of its own soul's evo- 
 lution, unerringly find its true spot in social 
 
 space but for Now, were society unarrested 
 
 in its possible onward motion, were its speed not 
 broken, its wheels not clogged, then would all, 
 then would each, go forward rapidly on evolu- 
 tion's progressive track, a moving equilibrium 
 like the solar system, which grandly pierces 
 space ; a unified, diversified whole. To the 
 cheek of every honest social thinker, if intelligent, 
 is brought the blush of shame when beholding 
 the unhuman exhibit of division into classes, 
 those who produce, and those who pillage, albeit 
 by " legal " means. Nevertheless this social 
 solecism, bastard of human intelligence, this rape 
 upon divine law (the mathematic test of right to
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 5 
 
 possession), engages in its defensive warfare the 
 intellectual efforts and the useful fortifications of 
 economic mythe-making. 
 
 Accepting in the main Herbert Spencer's 
 statement, that there is a soul of truth in things 
 erroneous, I am yet constrained to say that, 
 in the case of economic mythes, this soul is so 
 attenuated that its truth reaches us in about 
 the same period of time it takes light to travel to 
 the earth from the farthermost conceivable fixed 
 star. Mythe-makers are they who account for 
 the existence and order of things in a fanciful 
 manner. As the zoologist builds up intelligence 
 by unwinding the thread of biological continuity, 
 tracing the relation in time of existing species 
 to their progenitors of the dim and misty past, 
 so likewise the social paleontologist, by light of 
 evolutionary truths, is able logically and histori- 
 cally to trace through past variations and 
 modifications our present mythe-making species 
 to its primal protoplasmic form. 
 
 Turning from the phantasies of an occasion- 
 al writer, which leave small doubt that in his
 
 1 6 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 judgment our race was at creation poised on 
 topmost peak of intellect's high cliff, we find 
 that psychological as well as historical facts 
 warrant the belief in a savage period for our 
 race. Literary dissection, if conducted in obe- 
 dience to legitimate principles of search and 
 research, strips the object in hand of its delud- 
 ing appearances, standing it forth clothed only 
 in the garb of naked truth. Of the modes of 
 demonstration, I leave to a later chapter the 
 practical verification, by direct investigation of 
 the mythes themselves. If a general view be 
 an intelligent and logical presentation of the sub- 
 ject-matter, to the reflecting mind is brought 
 home a few cogent conclusions, and it is per- 
 ceived that like causes produce like effects ; that 
 differences in method and differences in degree 
 constitute no difference in kind. 
 
 At society's dawn it is probable that individ- 
 uals were on a par in the then rude art of 
 mythe-making. The principle of differentiation 
 was and is ever moving ; none disputes its 
 noiseless, certain tread, albeit much distorted in
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS, I 7 
 
 its travel, being hampered in its individualizing 
 work. Still, in spite of epileptic seizures, on it 
 goes in helpful company. Principle of heredity, 
 hers no mean jog-trot ; surely she has the right 
 of way to do, when demanded of her, a most 
 heinous work. In the lower zoological kind, 
 social instincts (divine marvel) did seed and 
 bud, but in human folk they blossomed out. 
 Human language, subtle, meaningful symbol, 
 may be used to hem ideas in ; therefore it is 
 likely that ability to manipulate the language 
 was no small factor in the social differentiation 
 in the creation of the mythe-making class ; but 
 for their perpetuation, heredity and other potent 
 causes have sufficed. 
 
 In early times, as now, desire to excel made 
 the explanations of the more fanciful few beyond 
 the comprehension of themselves and others, 
 consequently acceptable to all. So much for 
 their origin. But in causes of perpetuation we 
 have on hand a something manifold in nature, 
 causes inside, causes outside ; and many-shaped 
 is this conglomeration of matter. We can
 
 I 8 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 trace a large share to a sense of subordination 
 which comes from mistaking the astral of su- 
 periority for superiority's real self. Trifling is 
 the blunder, yet it makes us wade in the wake 
 after phantasie's delusive sail. The curb-bit in 
 the mouth, the bridle on the head, we know 
 the feeblest rider may retain control of a noble 
 steed ; but let that horse once feel his own 
 self-power, what is the situation ? Rider 
 sprawling. . So long befooled, the many have 
 become mentally inert, seem not to realize that 
 they can look behind, on either side, ahead ; are 
 hindered ; wearing old blinders yet, have come 
 to think them their actual flesh and bone. 
 
 In the affair of mythe-perpetuation there are 
 fine ingredients, among them self-conceit, some- 
 times taking form like this : What I or mine 
 have held must indeed be right ; to instance 
 which I quote responses to an oft-put query : 
 " Why are you a Republican or why a Demo- 
 crat ? " " Well, really now, I don't quite know ; 
 can't think of any reason for my party princi- 
 ples, my political belief, except it be — well,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 9 
 
 you see, my father, he was one." There is a 
 reason for mythe-perpetuation which is most 
 unworthy. It arises from mismating our con- 
 sciousness of the relation between wrong deeds 
 and intellectual mistakes, with creation-creed. 
 From this wedded, disunited pair, come forth 
 queer notions as to the whence and the where 
 should fall future suffering. Mistakes, want of 
 knowing, breed suffering. This the dullest 
 feels and therefore knows. Maybe he has ex- 
 perienced disappointment, having taken to a 
 May-day picnic a wrong direction. Ah ! did he 
 but note that suffering ceased when the error 
 in direction was corrected by Jiimself. 
 
 In order to make plain the reason to which 
 I here allude, I must emphasize the feeling, our 
 consciousness of the mortal source of suffering ; 
 for this certitude, coupled to our misbeliefs, in- 
 duces the great majority to continue letting 
 others think for them. The intellect not doing 
 rightly its rightful work, its uncleared vision sets 
 the limit of the individual's, as of the social 
 horizon. If with chains one should load the feet,
 
 20 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 could they move ? Neither can the shackled in- 
 tellect. Sensed is the relation between cause 
 and effect. Upon the existence of suffering we 
 agree. The " divide " is : who is to bear it, you 
 or I ? Ignoble followers of a lead hold it should 
 be, not those who receive intellectual errors, but 
 those who give them. Too confused to keep 
 distinct and separate in our thought that which 
 is divine from that which is simply legal, we, the 
 great majority, think them synonyms, and act 
 accordingly, believing that not for us is heaven's 
 avenging decree ; for have we not been obedient ? 
 have we not shut our eyes ? The sun is a fickle 
 monster, is not steady in welldoing, acts errat- 
 ically, of his smiles we are not certain, turns his 
 back on earth, leaves us freezing ; then, too, by 
 his fiery flames we are scorched. From the incon- 
 stant way in which the sun does act, I conclude 
 it is "obsessed " ; there is a man in it. 
 
 Tracing wrongs and disasters to Father Sol, 
 we, the great majority, by savage metaphysics 
 swayed, connect woes yet to be attained with an 
 edict from the skies. But to help themselves
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 2 1 
 
 out of prospective mire the believers deem it 
 natural that future punishment should fall upon 
 the heads of those who intellectual errors breed ; 
 and I have a secret to declare which shows mat- 
 ters down fine : by their flocks shepherds are 
 consigned to an avenging deity who, it is as- 
 sumed, is now lying in wait with divine intent, 
 vengeance. 
 
 Now, were we real believers in that process 
 (evolution) which we see, we should know that in 
 the domain of natural decree there is no room 
 for mythes. One may suffer with but never for 
 another. 
 
 We should further know, that each one hav- 
 ing powers makes progress only by their unfold- 
 ment. Let us hearken to the cry of reason; set 
 her free. She will work a brilliant, bloodless 
 revolution by great discoveries from the plain- 
 est, simplest facts. One boy gives unto another 
 apples, sour, unripe ; is there room for query to 
 which falls the suffering gratuity, which enjoys 
 the stomach-ache, him that gives, or him that 
 takes? Wherefore is there breach between us and
 
 22 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 the Father-Mother God ? Can it be, I wonder, 
 that the ditch is digged by them that are in it ? 
 And now I think upon it, how strange that 
 those nearest to Supreme Wisdom deal in intel- 
 lectual rubbish ? Oh pshaw ! after all, I guess 
 that the institution of legalized "preach " is not 
 divine, but simply human. Pious Fathers of the 
 near past, prompted by a mythe of individual 
 right divine to do the work of fiend (when backed 
 by church and state), did perpetrate hideous social 
 blunders, tied to faggot and to stake wicked dis- 
 senting brothers. These God-loving Fathers 
 knew right well that, faggots lighted, neither pray- 
 ers nor imprecations availed to stay consumption 
 of their helpless prisoner. Pious Fathers had 
 " knowledge " of relations. All manifestations 
 may in classification be simplified down to things 
 and to relations. Things by the senses are per- 
 ceived, but relations by effects are felt ; pleas- 
 antly when human, painfully when there is sin- 
 ful misplacement. Fire is not man's natural 
 element ; to be in it is to sin, is to suffer. Facts 
 stand firm. Continual experience demonstrates
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 23 
 
 that all sins are forgiven save one. " Sin against 
 the Holy Ghost," sin against right relations, is 
 not, cannot be, forgiven while persisted in. 
 
 Prompted by the jural instinct, and with the 
 hope that I may something more than amuse, I in- 
 tend to give of the mythic art instances culled from 
 records curious of our race's early past, of those 
 days when human deeds differed so from ours, 
 deeds at which you will be shocked. Still we 
 are charitable and just, allowance making for the 
 conduct of those early men, for then the species 
 all were savage and none were Christianized. 
 
 I beg that you'll bear in mind that to obtain 
 the matter I shall present required laborious toil, 
 much archeological work. Now, were I giving 
 a graphical description of later ways of doing, dif- 
 ferent would have been the character of my ef- 
 fort. For books abound, descriptive, narrative ; 
 the literary warehouse is crowded, is overflowing 
 with expositions and with travels ; in it a "sensi- 
 tive " feels uncomfortable, feels attacked by a 
 whole menagerie, untutored, wild. 
 
 To picture a social past it is essential to have
 
 24 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 a clear perception of contact or relations. This 
 gives to one a view of "probabilities", and the 
 mode of their application to the "say-sos" to 
 determine which of them is true. Thus equipped 
 it is safe to venture, but without these mental 
 stilts one is sure to be " snowed under " by the 
 chaos and confusion in the books. If so pre- 
 pared, entrance within the literary enclosure is 
 no hazard, being qualified to reconnoitre contra- 
 dictions, brilliant guesses, mistakes, and even 
 downright lies. 
 
 You will be surprised, I wager, to see how 
 many of the statements (big bullies) kill each 
 other ; but with these of course you have noth- 
 ing to do except look calmly on and see the 
 murder ; lots of fun it is, too. With others 
 there is work to do, chopping, overhauling, fit- 
 ting angles ; and maybe there 's chance for 
 pruning and grafting. With some assertions I 
 have found occasion for tender care, they con- 
 taining way clown deep, quite smothered out of 
 sight, the faintest spark of intellectual light. 
 Still, when they arc sometimes something in
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 25 
 
 themselves, because of their interpretation, or 
 because of their false position, the majority of 
 social affirmations are found to be ridiculous, 
 fit only to be flung out of truth's sweet heaven. 
 Yet do not despair, do honest, straightforward 
 work, and you will get something true, there- 
 fore something presentable. 
 
 To give word-picture of the ways and doings 
 of our ancient past did indeed call for much glean- 
 ing ; still in that search, if I found less literary 
 hay, I also found less literary stubble. If facts 
 precipitated by pen or picture do reflect the 
 state of mind, then in early time the people all 
 believed in and practiced necromancy ; acted as 
 though they thought the constitution of an act 
 could be altered by simply changing the position 
 and direction of its original initiative motion ; 
 as if black, starting from the north or east, 
 could on its line of travel white become ; but 
 should the blackness turn and come from south 
 or west, why, then there would be no such 
 marvel. 
 
 To help the matter out there were forms and
 
 26 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTIIES 
 
 ceremonies which all allowed could set aside — 
 not only one, but all divine decrees. Whether 
 the rites, having social bent, were performed on 
 open square or within four walls, the pictures 
 failed to disclose, but this thing was apparent : 
 one of their number, master of the ceremonies, 
 I suppose, appeared to act as judge, and sat, or 
 rather squat, from the rest apart, on something 
 like a pedestal ; quite gotten up was he, though 
 not with cap and gown ; his riggings were mere 
 toggery. 
 
 I'm asked the picture story ? Well, truly, to 
 me it seemed to say, these men had scarcely 
 been awakened from the sleeping spiritual state 
 which held them bound when they were akin to 
 monkeys and engaged in plays arboreal. The 
 men conducting the proceedings, which, not 
 knowing their true nature, I am forced to dub 
 judicial, appeared to be divided into opposing 
 sets, and their fierce grimaces gave to the whole 
 affair a look of strife unholy ; a show, if not 
 gladiatorial in name, at least in nature. When 
 I have told you all I learned, you will agree with
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 2J 
 
 me that though disjointed is the hieroglyphic 
 form of narrative, yet by a picture's silent 
 speech much is made known. 
 
 But before I further go in this direction, I 
 must atone for an omission by giving explan- 
 ation of the purpose of those judicial ( ? ) pro- 
 ceedings I found pictured ; later on I intend to 
 deal with their style and character. If in a fit 
 of passion or for any reason known to savage 
 mind, one man did kill his fellow, then upon 
 this slayer, wretched victim of forces within and 
 forces without, pounced society's male' thought 
 and action, and, by some means and in some 
 manner, butchered the poor wretch, who, unlike 
 itself, had killed without deliberation, killed 
 without calm reasoning's guidance, killed with- 
 out acquainting intellect. When adjudged 
 guilty of foul murder, the helpless creature had 
 no hope, stood no kind of show ; for how could 
 he, with revengeful brothers bent upon his 
 slaughter, each one in his own soul a murderer 
 of some degree, made so by thoughts black in 
 their character ?
 
 28 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 And now vve have reached a peak, a social 
 act, from which to get good view of intellectual 
 ravines and social chasms. From the practical 
 necromancy of these ancients we infer their be- 
 lief in the magic art, belief in its power, through 
 forms, to cleanse from bloodstains, provided the 
 heinous act be collective in its registration. 
 That the Lord should have his own, these sav- 
 ages were anxious ; therefore, when the murder 
 was of the unsocialized kind, after engaging in 
 certain purifying rites facetiously styled " forms 
 of justice," there would be deliverance of this 
 monstrosity : " our fellow-sinner we find unfit 
 for earth, we find him to be fit for heaven." 
 
 I know I'm giving crass absurdities, and I 
 fear you'll think me chaffing ; not so, I'm gravely 
 in earnest, and do protest that this horror was 
 all too often perpetrated. But these things by 
 men are done only while they are savages. 
 Those untamed men, ferocious wretches, thought 
 themselves savants, and knew right well the ins 
 and outs of what they were about ; out of un- 
 skillful hands they boldly took the God-appointed
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 29 
 
 hour of death, took it by sending heavenward a 
 brother. Now this, to say the least, was ill- 
 mannered on the part of society ; it was bad 
 breeding to force into the unseen mansion a 
 guest unbidden. Had those low-bred creatures 
 known aught of etiquette, then, prior to such 
 proceedings, they would through reason have 
 consulted the rulers of the divinely ordered home ; 
 learned " if it were agreeable " and in conformity 
 with mighty wishes. This done, how different 
 had been their action ! Society had found salva- 
 tion from, not through, a bloody deed. Incredible 
 that creatures of our species used their brains so 
 little, imagined that by any kind of means or 
 monkeying they could reverse nature's stern de- 
 crees of what is right, of what is humanly natural. 
 
 In their description of a plant, an edible, I 
 should expect to find the fungus at its root pic- 
 tured as its luscious fruit. 
 
 Connected with their wicked, foolish ways 
 were beliefs, lack of thought, almost funny ; their 
 religion decried " mere morality," taught that 
 salvation came through miraculous transforma-
 
 30 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 tion, the result of a blind acceptance of a creed ; 
 but, equal to the occasion,\vith forethought it was 
 affirmed that, while on earth believers did so- 
 journ, over their blackness mere belief was im- 
 piously inactive. 
 
 The promised revolution, whiteness of the 
 creed-accepted character, was to come, however, 
 after death. About this miracle they seemed 
 certain, because beyond the range of mortal 
 touch and vision the time and place for its ful- 
 filment were affixed " out of sight." For all alike, 
 acceptance of a particular creed was deemed safe 
 ferriage to heaven. And yet minds were blank, 
 society's great arms were still, when to make the 
 solitary slayer fit on earth to live, skilful motions 
 were most needed. What poverty of thought 
 was theirs ! Nowhere found I it recorded of 
 their individual murderer : " I refuse to accept 
 the benefits of society's magic purge." For in- 
 consistencies reason is not at fault ; she is at her 
 post, is no deserter. Had those gross mortals 
 hearkened unto nature's logic, caught deep mean- 
 ings, felt the law's great edict through the
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 3 I 
 
 oneness of all motion ; had they watched the 
 driftings of the air, the floatings of the vapor, 
 they had known that man, released from gross 
 flesh, etherealized, can come and go with 
 ease, can travel somewhat as he pleases ; had 
 known it was reasonable to expect that one badly 
 treated before birth, and after too, should, through 
 attraction's lawful force impelling, choose to 
 mingle with familiar scenes, choose to haunt un- 
 seen his executioner — society, unhuman and 
 bloody. 
 
 Upon the style and character of early judicial 
 proceedings, upon customs connected with the 
 office and its function, and upon the manners of 
 the judge and jury as well as him they called 
 prosecuting attorney, let us now proceed to hold 
 our promised conversation. 
 
 First, however, before we start the talk, our 
 minds should be refreshed by certain facts. The 
 people were not socially united, were politically 
 divided into groups, and of these it may with 
 truth be said, that in their points of contact, in 
 their corners on each other, of the angles made,
 
 32 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 not one was "right." Empires, monarchies 
 there were, and a something which the men with 
 their crooked ideas called a republic. A mongrel 
 thing, truly, and so out of sorts with the name 
 it bore that to have pictured it correctly, sym- 
 bolically, would be as an ugly and deceptive 
 cur. 
 
 Sometimes the high officials were elected by 
 the men, who, with ultra-barbarous thought, 
 styled themselved "the people." "La Cou- 
 vade."* Great method! By it men capture 
 babies, get possessions unnaturally. So well 
 equipped for heroic work, we should scarce ex- 
 pect men to balk at the appropriation of a word, 
 which, though little, yet for one-sex wearing is a 
 full size too big. Sometimes offices were filled 
 by appointment ; but after all it mattered not 
 which way the tree was bent, this side or that, 
 for its trunk was girdled. The difference for 
 the people was not in the corruption, nor in the 
 amount, nor yet in the way venality was man- 
 
 * A mode by which a savage father appropriated the new-born child ; after 
 the birth he assumed invalidism, the mother going about as usual. See 
 " Researches into the Early History of Mankind," by E. B. Tylor, p. 288.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 33 
 
 aged, but which political party manned society's 
 piratical cruiser. 
 
 Under such conditions we agree that justice 
 never once brought forth a living son; invariably 
 miscarried. Nor is this surprising, when in 
 each human ( ? ) breast were striving good and 
 evil, God and the devil ; and from the conduct of 
 those men no doubt exists as to the mastery — 
 as to which, in that struggle of spiritual her- 
 maphroditism, was the one to come off victor. 
 
 How different now ! The law's administration 
 is lawful ; and different too are the laws. Equality 
 reigns supreme. No longer penal,the thought 
 is human. The purpose of law administration 
 is both philosophicial and righteous; and of this 
 be assured, the methods are scientifically hu- 
 mane, the object being to discover and to un- 
 fold the God within. 
 
 How came the change about ? By this ques- 
 tion I perceive we have in you a stranger ; from 
 the Orient, I presume. The causes of our social 
 revolution are no secret, and later on, when com- 
 pelled, I will tell. Blest are we ; no longer compe-
 
 34 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTIIES 
 
 tition, the heinous thing, but fraternal socialism, 
 with its humanizing godly creed, evolution. 
 Those benighted folks had an awful belief in 
 supremacy of evil, supremacy of the devil ; had 
 in God no humanizing hope. They really 
 thought competition could not be helped, that it 
 was right and to humans natural. At this I'm 
 not surprised, for they were swayed by a creed 
 whose undercurreut made not for the good in 
 them, but for the evil. 
 
 In their books on moral rescue you will find 
 the point I raise made evident, for at all times 
 upon salvation of an individual only were they 
 bent. No carry-all was their deliverance boat ; 
 it fulfilled aristocratic notions, was too narrow 
 for a wholesale work, the direction of its sail al- 
 ways being a " him" to be taken from his bad com- 
 panions. Now, wherefore did the thought not 
 occur to do no bungling surgery, but skillful 
 work, by taking bad companions too, thus mak- 
 ing a good job complete. The reason for their 
 myopic thought was a belief in which the devil, a 
 philosophic necessity, posed a permanent fixture.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 35 
 
 Among their customs I found courts of 
 equity and courts of law separate ; equity was 
 specialized, which must be admitted as relevant 
 evidence of stupidity or rascality, or both. Ex- 
 perience teaches us that when the work of 
 courts is application of the " common law, " 
 then they are neither more nor less than courts 
 of equity. Unaccustomed to a separation so 
 unnatural, I was much disturbed by this strange 
 one, was overwhelmed, but I rallied quickly and 
 by patient careful search I unearthed and 
 got the reason why ; 'twas no Holy Grail I 
 sought. 
 
 To make evident the cause for separation I 
 must revert to movements which logically pre- 
 cede statutory law administration. To a few 
 of their number those rude men consigned the 
 basic part of society's general housework. I 
 must not neglect to mention that during my 
 investigation into the political aspect of early 
 nations, not once was trace of a democracy 
 found ; and their ideas of a republic are positively 
 amusing, reminding one of a scene at mesmeric
 
 36 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 show, of a man with a broomstick lovingly 
 thinking it a baby. 
 
 I'm quite alive with the thought of what in- 
 teresting work in practical psychology it would 
 be to explore their mental structure, arrive, if 
 possible, at an intelligent explanation of such 
 self-hypnotization, by locating its objective 
 cause. Aphasia, you know, is traceable to a 
 cerebral lesion. Now, I hope you will not mis- 
 construe my words by thinking that I have 
 mistaken their trouble for a form of that dis- 
 tressing malady. I am aware that their disorder 
 was different in its kind, still I presume you 
 don't deny it has with aphasia a point of con- 
 tact in their defective intellection, as evinced by 
 the persistent misuse of the word republic. 
 Had their bodies been embalmed, possibly we 
 might have been supplied with material for our 
 scientific purpose ; still, from what I know of 
 biology and the home of thought, it is safe to say 
 that under dissection their brains would after all 
 turn out merely cancellated tissue. 
 
 In that particular century, the numbering of
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 7>7 
 
 which it suits me to forget, that odd political 
 group thought it had the actual baby, but their 
 individual actions towards each other show that 
 republican reality went down not much deeper 
 than the name. 
 
 The means of ordainment for the mighty social 
 function, and the mode of differentiation of those 
 basic few ? This your inquiry ? Now indeed 
 you have struck bottom, and I beg you will a 
 word of warning take, unless you wish to mire. 
 Waive this question or amend it, lay it on the 
 table. Won't ? So persistent ? Have it then, 
 a narration of what is unseemly, and on your 
 head falls a retribution. 
 
 The means and measures for the ordainment, 
 for the differentiation into the nation's legisla- 
 tors were, to say the least, unmatched, unique ; 
 not because of merit, not because of special 
 unction for the work, did they reach the pin- 
 nacle of the nation's high estate. Furthermore, 
 "I am permitted to tell " that various varied, 
 queer elements entered into the selection, nomi- 
 nation, and election of the candidates. It was
 
 38 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 the habit of the chosen few to meet regularly 
 upon a consecrated spot, celebrated for doings 
 not at all times the most moral, and while there 
 engage in a sort of work which figuratively may 
 be called the game of legislative battledoor and 
 shuttlecock. True, themselves allowed it was 
 framing resolutions, passing laws, under condi- 
 tions orderly, and with manner circumspect. 
 
 As I reflect on what I read, and upon the 
 variegated incidents connected with the main 
 events, to my help comes simile's kind aid. 
 Men in squads along a line made up of election 
 points ; in time each squad, by a sort of rotary 
 measure, turned the well-oiled wheel of con- 
 gressional factory. No accident recorded ; I 
 found these operatives were protected from 
 danger while manufacturing law-products, com- 
 modities, which turned out to be the people's 
 opportunities worked up into bags for pluto- 
 cratic uses. 
 
 The logic of events, however, has shown that 
 the work of those skilful operatives was not 
 durable, not lasting, for if the warp was true
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 39 
 
 and good, the filling-in was sure to be rotten 
 raw material, gotten through by help of knock- 
 down argument. In political economy, their 
 great science, I found, in explanation of this in- 
 stability of legislative product, no mention made 
 of capitalistic caprice, capitalistic will, which 
 was the more surprising, as for all eccen- 
 tricities of socio-economic production, this was 
 their invariable mode of accounting ; therefore 
 about the matter I am still agog. 
 
 Their annals said, to one who read between 
 the lines, that during legislative labor strenuous 
 efforts were made to work stealthily and to 
 make no noise. Kindly that intention was, 
 benevolent and modest too ; wished not to 
 annoy outsiders, sought not to attract attention. 
 But the time of great noise came, the bursting 
 of these bags. 
 
 It occurred in this wise. The packing had 
 been skillful, crowding in and in ; machinery 
 was used — banking. Congestion is a danger- 
 ous thing ; means too much of the circulating 
 fluid in one place ; means superflous flesh with
 
 40 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 an enfeebled heart action. To the individual 
 the result is apoplexy and a journey to the skies. 
 Society came out of its attack ; hers was no in- 
 dividual concern. The pathology was different 
 too ; the place of her vitality was not at all con- 
 gested ; its condition, the reverse of that, was 
 anemic. Within the social body matters had 
 solidified, interfering with its healthful circula- 
 tion, with its hearty action. Life, for the use- 
 ful organs, was made one continuous, needless 
 struggle by conditions foreign to the social 
 working powers. Conditions had to die ; and but 
 for barbarity interfering with what was natural 
 by maintaining fossiliferous social structures 
 that should have been cremated long before, 
 individuals had no need to. Society is living ; 
 hers no resurrection, nor yet a reincarnation 
 affair, but a veritable new birth was fraternal 
 socialism. 
 
 To return in thought to days of social com- 
 petition. Of them I barely wish to note an up- 
 rising like bubbles on the surface of water in 
 commotion. The people sensed their true rela-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 4 1 
 
 tion, called these social geysers " Law and (no) 
 Order Societies." Dirty, tyrannous, their 
 doings. 
 
 Do you doubt that there was ample and suf- 
 ficient cause for equity's distinguishment ? Was 
 it not honored in the breach, in its separation 
 from courts administering the statutory laws ? 
 
 In our discursive journey we have reached a 
 junction point, another stage, into which, thanks 
 to invention's aid, we slip without alighting, and 
 proceed to render polite attention to matters 
 connected with the law administration of those 
 early folks. The jury system was their boast; 
 they said that " matters by it got way down, even 
 to the people." Doubtless, when new, this state- 
 ment of the institution's powers and possibilities 
 was entirely true, but in the era whose doings I 
 am recounting, it had become, through abuse 
 and trickery, simply the toy ideal of an imagined 
 democracy. 
 
 At that time the jury was composed of men 
 only. You say truly such monopoly in social 
 matters was wilful violation of division's true
 
 42 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 principle, division's guiding rule ; but anon, in 
 the requirement made, you will discover ade- 
 quate reason for male appropriation of the office 
 and the functions of a juryman. For in con- 
 nection with the selection there was this phe- 
 nomenal demand : no ideas on the subject-matter 
 held in hand for their solution. With these 
 terms each candidate was expected to comply 
 without skulking, was expected to bring abso- 
 lute vacuity. Now, women have ideas. In the 
 act of their special creation, that " rib "* was 
 not anesthetized, but underwent such transform- 
 ation that with the essentials of a jury examin- 
 ation women could not contend. Unto men, 
 however, nature had been kinder ; to high de- 
 mands they were fully equal ; therefore came 
 it naturally about that they alone "filled the 
 bill." 
 
 That exclusive privileges are unnatural, by 
 intuition is at once perceived, by reason is dis- 
 
 * So possessed are our men with the idea that to take advantage of 
 each other is wise, that Omnipotence, Omniscience, God, is by them repre- 
 sented as first causing Adam to sleep (this avoided resistance to the invasion 
 of natural rights) and then appropriating an organic part of the Adamic 
 property ; God doing .... that good may come thereby.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 43 
 
 cerned ; but, being womanly, intuition was in 
 bad repute ; those men had no use for intuition, 
 and upon reason made small requisition. If in 
 the course of rigid examination for the jury of- 
 fice, the selected betrayed a thought, were that 
 thought as hazy as the milky way, it was all- 
 sufficient to secure him a peremptory rejection ; 
 the examiners surmising, feeling certain, that 
 beneath it, in disguise, lurked a woman. 
 
 From tiny anthill to towering mountain, from 
 gentle rivulet's little ripple to angry ocean's 
 mighty dashing wave, things great and small 
 have their causes outside as well as inside them- 
 selves. Knowing this, in thought have I 
 wrestled, have inductive effort made, to dis- 
 cover not alone the character, but substance, 
 underlying that phenomenal demand. Do you 
 wish to see how in scientific analysis I succeed, 
 each step testing ? I'm working for no prize, 
 nor with thought of any kind of corner ; my sole 
 reward lies in satisfaction.
 
 44 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MYTHES AND MYTHE-MAKERS 
 
 (Continued). 
 
 CONTINUING the subject, I now invite 
 the public to come and weigh results of 
 my most careful labor, which it will find in the 
 explanation given of that no-idea requisition 
 made by men upon men in centuries past and 
 gone. The law-hewers (so called), at the time 
 of which we are speaking, ignorant of simple an- 
 atomical, simple psychological facts, unvisited 
 by thoughts of unity, thoughts of right relation, 
 to the truths of evolution being strangers, formed 
 their judgments from the outside of things ; 
 therefore from their minds was projected this 
 pure creation. Some craniums were empty res- 
 ervoirs ; such made able jurymen. Easily the 
 anomaly was explained, — special creation, miracle 
 for judicial delectation. On this hypothesis 
 (sound foundation) secure they builded, by argu-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 45 
 
 ing in this wise : it must be so, else no room 
 within the cranium for us to pour in wisdom, 
 knowledge. Are you not overflowing with ad- 
 miration for their sagacity, their power, displayed 
 in bending stubborn facts, realities, to fit judicial 
 needs ? 
 
 Here in this connection many things are 
 pressing for attention, to one of which, bygone 
 courtly manners, it is time to pay respectful 
 homage. Were I gifted with lawyer-like re- 
 sources I might promise you amusement, but 
 I'm only a plain body, with intellectual powers 
 just equal to a wrestle with matter of fact in its 
 simplicity ; accordingly your entertainment will 
 lack in variety the richness of a pantomime. To 
 be frank with you, my intention is simply an at- 
 tack upon the mind, requiring no side show, no 
 device to call the laughing muscles into active 
 play. In presenting an explanation, this inten- 
 tion leads me to draw inferences that are natu- 
 ral, warranted by the actual condition of things. 
 
 Given, their assumption that empty skulls 
 make able jurymen ; given, too, this fact, that
 
 46 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 certain truths are by us intuitively perceived, 
 in this connection we find ample cause for the 
 uncouth deportment, the abominable clownish 
 manners displayed, especially by him they called 
 prosecuting attorney ; behavior that transformed 
 their halls of justice into something akin to a 
 zoological cage. Those judicial toilers realized 
 that to do effective work strong impressions must 
 be made upon the men legally installed as lis- 
 teners. In the query, how to do it, how to make 
 impressive stamp on what they had sworn in as 
 actual vacancy, they were at sea. 
 
 Timely aid, however, came in instinct's helpful 
 promptings. True, they argued somewhat in 
 the fashion adopted by us regulars of the medical 
 profession, when administering one of our " shot- 
 gun " multiplicity prescriptions, for they allowed 
 that, of a big noise, a show, some of it must, 
 through ears, through eyes, get in ; some of it 
 must somewhere stick ; therefore, can one count 
 it strange that they figured in contortions, and 
 made hideous grimaces wonderful to see ? I 
 think not. But with reverence bow your heads
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 47 
 
 while I whisper this to you : the case was one 
 of voluntary martyrdom. Their heroic sacrifice 
 of the human way of acting had for its end and 
 aim the cause of justice ; it was to advance the 
 claims of right. Well-meaning misguided folk, 
 their good intentions naught availed, but their 
 generalship did mischievous work. Madame 
 Justice by it was made sick, was, in fact, dis- 
 figured. Extant pictures, kept as curiosities in 
 our judicial museums, show that ever after, her 
 nervous system being shattered, she went, dur- 
 ing the judicial orgies, protected, went blind- 
 folded, which reveals to whomsoever wills to 
 dig, a mine rich in rare kind of ore : truth. 
 
 Another factor in the cause of that no-idea- 
 qualification demand was a desire, indeed to be 
 exact one should say a necessity, for matching a 
 pre-existing stupidity, that of the judge. A fine 
 appreciation of high art existed, therefore the 
 people felt that a match between judicial intel- 
 lects, a match of judge and jury, should not be 
 a failure, but one marriage true. 
 
 This I take to be the real reason for examina-
 
 48 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 tions so severe, for the watchful rigid care, lest 
 by stealth a woman took the jury chair, and, by 
 this mischance, within their hollow oaks ideas 
 began to sprout. 
 
 In their official decrees it was not the custom 
 of those judges to expose domestic goods. 
 Though having in existing facts abundant ma- 
 terial on which to base decisions, they yet pre- 
 ferred to import their judicial wares from the 
 grave ; and thinking that whatever was is right, 
 they travelled backward over social hill and dale to 
 find a something that had long been buried and 
 was petrified or rotting. Undaunted, the sac- 
 rilegious wretches an untimely resurrection 
 wrought, a brand new air giving to their grave 
 affair by christening it "judicial precedent." 
 Such transaction meant nothing less, if nothing 
 more, than a union between a living case and a 
 dead moral proceeding. Being tied by judicial 
 fancy, one may be sure the nuptial knot was not 
 "gordian." To him who is unguided by reason 
 all things are possible, therefore grandfather may 
 be made to don his baby clothes. Ah ! but
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 49 
 
 wasn't it befitting for those judges to wear head- 
 gear, and by it drape the home of courtly 
 sagacity. 
 
 Detecting in their use of " precedent " the 
 real purpose — to save from thinking — then was 
 disclosed to my perception the meaning of that 
 squat position in the picture to which I have re- 
 ferred, and I serenely thought, surely an artistic 
 nature may feel actual, even innocent pleasure 
 in something, though it be akin to the hideous, 
 if that something makes apparent the law of 
 symmetrical relationship between the state of 
 body and the creature's state of mind. If one 
 of the legal fraternity during resuscitation of the 
 mummy should plead for disinfectant, protesting 
 that he discovered a disagreeable odor, forthwith 
 he was dubbed violator of their ethical code, and 
 without further parley was ejected from their 
 order as an anarchistic disturber of their healthy 
 peace. Things are changed ; when women ac- 
 cepted the judicial chair, among the rubbish 
 cleared out went the pestiferous judicial prece- 
 dent.
 
 50 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Babies holding fast to nurses' fingers make 
 attempts to walk. To perform the walking feat 
 they need help. Babies are most wise. The 
 male mind, being fanciful, requires ? ? ? ? ? 
 Being orthodox, it believed in the resurrection 
 of the carnal. With keen perception, woman 
 knows that, in the backward travel, dead-idea- 
 "snatchers" have no real stopping place until 
 logical surmising reaches the earliest evidence 
 in time of an expressed social relation. Our 
 women judges look not behind ; they know that 
 the beckoning hand of progress is before. The 
 construction of the joints causes the body's 
 movement to be forward, and the eyes are 
 placed in front to aid progressive motion. 
 
 Looking backward has its place ; not to nar- 
 row down ideas, not to shrink up deeds. From 
 its perspective view we may a lesson take, may 
 know the fact of self-existent powers, internal 
 possibilities. This knowledge ours, from its 
 possession flows expansion in ideas and decrees. 
 
 Our women judges look before. The mother- 
 thought sweeps the entire social circle, stops at
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 5 I 
 
 the horizon. Women judges have no need to 
 hunt up faded patterns, can construct their own 
 decisions ; but then women take tuition from 
 within, women use their reason. 
 
 Indeed you are a little "tot" to ask such big 
 questions as, what is intuition ? what is reason ? 
 You say that you are. . Quite old enough, I am 
 sure, to digest some portions of mystery's facts. 
 No harm to my little listener shall come from the 
 insoluble character of the mental food I offer her. 
 Well then, little woman in search of knowledge, 
 we must first make ourselves sure of certain gen- 
 eral truths. This gives to the understanding a 
 firm footing. Will you deem it all unnecessary 
 if I call attention to the fact that in space there 
 is just yourself and things outside of you ? 
 Shortly, in a general way, we shall see that this 
 environment consists of objects and of relations. 
 
 Standing out upon the lawn, raising eyes, we 
 look as far as we can ; still not great the visual 
 travel ; soon shut off is sight by the kissing of 
 the earth and sky — by the horizon. Physics 
 tells us why. When at Washington last spring,
 
 52 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 do you recollect that I called your attention to 
 the difference between our range of sight from 
 the dome of the capitol and the top of Washing- 
 ton monument? When older grown, and you 
 have gone abroad, from Eiffel tower the visual 
 distance will be great compared with these. The 
 difference in extent of vision, and in amount of 
 things perceived, you find, depends upon the 
 height of the pinnacle reached. From this 
 Romola can learn a lesson if she choose ; but 
 at present I wish to impress upon her mind the 
 fact, that, although existences are divided into 
 the seen and the unseen, yet when diligently 
 pursued, much of the latter yields itself up to 
 sight. 
 
 Did this little girl grow eagle wings, many 
 things now veiled by distance might by her 
 bright eyes be seen ; but she must not forget 
 that behind and within all things that may be 
 known are hidden the Powers. By doings only 
 docs the absolute reveal itself; all attempts to 
 strip it of natural clothing are a waste of time 
 and energy, for it is no "nude"; but yet to
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 53 
 
 personify the absolute is the work of savage 
 philosophy. Now, my little delver, true daughter 
 of inductive, of scientific Mother Eve, acquaint 
 me, please, with your ideas as to the meaning of 
 the knowledge-fact. In truth I am surprised ; 
 your sense of it gives forth no uncertain glim- 
 mer ; but let us deeper go, and to your present 
 state of knowledge something add. 
 
 Were this chair and table taken from the 
 room, the part of your mind by them occupied 
 would not, because of the removal, become a 
 blank, for having knowledge of them and their 
 uses, you call them into mind just by thinking 
 how they looked. Knowledge, then, consists of 
 mental pictures. 
 
 And now the little sage is asking how knowl- 
 edge is obtained, how the " love-knot " is tied. 
 Not alone by the spiritual entities, intuition, 
 reason, unseen forms of master workman, per- 
 ceptive power, is knowledge gained, for nature 
 has the mortal well equipped. There are the 
 senses. And yet, Romola, our knowledge of 
 realities is small. To make profitable this pur-
 
 54 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 suit in which we are engaged, it is essential to 
 have clear ideas on a cardinal point, that of 
 direction, for when perception goes not straight, 
 but on the bias — But never mind, by and by this 
 little girl will find that this is what's the matter 
 with the practical. Always present, powerful in 
 its silent workings is direction. What is the 
 meaning of the weather-vane ? 
 
 Nationalism having eliminated money profits 
 from the object of production, seldom is there 
 need to darn ; but by this interesting recreation 
 you've learned that weaving threads in and out, 
 crosswise of those placed in length, you have a 
 fabric made. I will build on this experience no 
 cob-house, but a sound comparison, calling per- 
 ception of things and of relations the warp and 
 woof of knowledge, just reminding you that while 
 the weaving process gives substance, it also gives 
 to mental product the texture of its character ; 
 therefore, to know realities one must look for 
 facts in two directions. And now, by way of 
 lesson, try to think of something standing by it- 
 self, alone.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 55 
 
 To be sure you cannot do it, for now look, 
 your feet are on the floor, the floor is made se- 
 cure by foundation to the house placed on the 
 ground. The house is safe ; your, feet, the floor, 
 foundation, earth, and house are tilings, while 
 the connection they bear to one another is a re- 
 lation. To make things plainer, let us take this 
 string of different beads. Don't you see that 
 not a bead stands alone ; the string runs through 
 them, holding them together. Still, do not ig- 
 nore the fact that as a means of illustration we 
 have used this string simply to objectivize that 
 which is unseen : a relation. Though relation is 
 not seen, yet its consequences are both seen and fcft. 
 
 In order that a future great philosopher may 
 not limitations make in her thought of the extent 
 and location of relation, I now invite this little 
 girl to a visual feast of the starry skies. This 
 evening let us fill our eyes, get perception of the 
 vastness of the universe, and the littleness of 
 the earth. Gazing upward this is what we see : 
 the moon grandly piercing clouds, always coming 
 our from shadows, beautiful and glorious. In
 
 56 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 fullness steadily she moves, faithful to the earth. 
 There's a woman in the moon, not a man. Of 
 the relation between our earth and the sun you 
 have heard, how our planet moves around that 
 great orb, though not to circumvent ; the cause 
 of their motional relation is a true parental con- 
 nection. The sun gives to the earth light and 
 heat ; one great reason why a little one I love 
 both lives and grows. 
 
 (Ah ! nearer to the Infinite, to the source 
 divine, is the soul of little child.) 
 
 You have touched upon a marvel never to be 
 solved by mortal mind ; but of this my Romola 
 may be assured, there is a Power, a social work- 
 ing principle, that holds the starry space in peace 
 and order. Do not grow impatient ; to your 
 question I am coming. 
 
 Now, my little Miss, see here ; when in haste 
 your food is eaten, does not your stomach aching 
 protest against the rude intrusion ? To be sure 
 it does. Equally true is it of the mind, that 
 there is need of proper care in the mode of its 
 ingestion.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 57 
 
 Have you forgotten that truce of ours to be 
 constantly on the lookout for lessons to be 
 learned from relations ? Were you going to 
 Europe would it be enough to know the pier 
 from which you'd start, enough to know the 
 direction you were going ? I think not. That 
 your voyage might be comfortable and profitable, 
 it would be necessary to give heed to your 
 equipment. Using reason, dear child, makes 
 you sensible of the truth I would convey by 
 means of simile. By the senses things external 
 are perceived, but relations are discovered by 
 the mind through the operations of intuition 
 and of reason. Touch this book, now you know 
 of something near ; sensational disclosure, you 
 felt it. Look upon yon mountain, and how 
 know you it is there ? Seeing is sensation, 
 feeling. 
 
 In this search for knowledge I hope you'll 
 not complain if asked to make yourself a martyr 
 to the scientific method of its gain. Oh ! with 
 horror would your soul be filled did you know 
 infinitely less than quarter of the fiendish things
 
 58 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 done to the victimized by those whose want of 
 knowledge leads to the use of criminal means. 
 It is sweetmeats that I offer ; later on, if ill I 
 beg you not to murmur ; be solaced by recol- 
 lection of the present agreeable sensation — 
 feeling. Listen with me to sweet sounds ; the 
 air is in vibration, in harmonious motion ; by 
 pleasant feelings we know it. 
 
 In great -grandpa's yard stands a stately tree, 
 a grand old oak ; around it we have frolicked. 
 Its parts, you know, are roots and trunk, 
 branches and leaves ; now, do you really think 
 that the substance of the tree is different in the 
 different parts ? You are mistaken ; the elements 
 or particles of matter which, entering into, make 
 up the body of its being, are, regardless of 
 position for the several parts, identically the 
 same ; the difference so apparent is the handi- 
 work of nature, adept in the art of moulding. 
 
 In like manner the senses are connected with 
 each other, the sense of touch to the rest play- 
 ing the part of trunk. We are cabled to from 
 the outside. The difference in the noise of
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 59 
 
 travel is due to difference in the sense port from 
 which intelligence starts. Conjointly arises the 
 distinctive quality of port, variation in the 
 nervous wires and unlikeness in the character 
 of story to be told, unlikeness of substance in 
 the code transmitted, size and shape, or form, 
 the beauty of diversified color. These are tales 
 having no occasion to make emotional noise ; 
 but messages which tell of hardness in the 
 nature of a thing, of resistance, reach the under- 
 standing only through a clamor. All dis- 
 closures made by the family of senses are sen- 
 sational, the difference in refinement being 
 caused by influence of external environment. 
 On the ocean of the knowable, in our equipment 
 for the voyage, enthroned within are intuition 
 and its lever, reason ; they are the intellectual 
 senses, telling of the unseen. 
 
 And now your childish face lights up, and 
 calling for the " previous question " your eyes 
 brightly beam. Pitiful the thought, instructors, 
 stultified by memorizing, for ages were un- 
 able to perceive the children's mental need,
 
 60 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 their hunger for real knowledge. A different 
 system now prevails ; instruction is educational. 
 The gods be praised. 
 
 Having seen the function of the senses, we 
 further learn of their reciprocal use as efficient 
 means of testing doubtful messages. If in the 
 judgments of the mind the facts that they por- 
 tend were admitted as relevant witnesses, then 
 would the philosophic nursery be cleared of 
 " bugaboos " now flourishing in it. 
 
 Having your attention, we will proceed to 
 talk first about the difference between intuition 
 and reason, and then later on we will attempt 
 to explain their relation. 
 
 In this room hangs the picture of a great 
 philanthropist, Elizabeth Fry. Raise your eyes, 
 and perception of it, like a flash, is immediate. 
 Now, were the portrait in the adjoining room, to 
 perceive it movements of relationship must in- 
 tervene. Intuition's perceptive work is as the 
 lightning flash, but reason is a cautious mover. 
 By its steady light, which ne'er goes out, but 
 burns with brighter flame, it socializes. Reason
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 6 1 
 
 discovers truths and facts by means of classifi- 
 cation, and harmonizes by getting into line those 
 things which naturally belong together. 
 
 Let us suppose, as through the wood you 
 stroll upon a summer morn, from the ground 
 you take a plant, you pluck a flower. The little 
 messenger of light and beauty is, we will think, 
 to you quite new ; but if on knowledge bent, and 
 no wise serpent near, pray tell me what would 
 our Romola do ? That is quite right as far as 
 it goes. By examination of the plant's essen- 
 tial organs, by the facts of structure and of form 
 (truths of morphology), you would learn where 
 the plant and flower belong, would come to 
 know the little stranger. 
 
 But as I 'm in want of a verdict, let us " play " 
 that you are a juryman ; one of the ideal kind, 
 I mean. Here, Crier, call the Court to order. 
 Now, Miss Foreman, do you twelve, all good and 
 true, agree that the scientific labor necessary to 
 find out a truth is always flashlike, the work of 
 a moment ? 
 
 Upon the individual person, the mortal self,
 
 62 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 the effect of the work of intuition and of reason 
 is to build up emotion's mountain, the spiritual 
 self, which is not done alone by a perception of 
 the relation of things external to one's self, but 
 also by thoughts begotten by recognition of 
 substance, that in itself is simply a relation, and 
 thus to the individual soul is added a finer 
 matter, mother-feeling. 
 
 Women have emotions, and the spirit moveth 
 me to say that they display the mountain's alpine 
 peak. Great Jove be thanked ! Now men's 
 emotions, sad to state, are panoramic views 
 mainly of the mountain's baser portion, its grov- 
 elling part. 
 
 Romola, I beg you'll not be critical with my 
 wanderings in talk ; I am stung to it by a recol- 
 lection of words from stupid tongues. 
 
 But now let us seek the relationship of intu- 
 ition and reason. When upon a wintry morn to 
 school you go, little tracks in the soft white 
 snow are left behind, side by side, two and two. 
 Examined, do they differ ? Not a bit. Though 
 found in different positions, yet in size and shape
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 63 
 
 the impressions, in their form, are alike, each 
 pair matching all its mates. Come, tell me why 
 this is so ? What, you hesitate ? But now re- 
 flect, how could the tracks be otherwise than ex- 
 actly alike, when by identically the same two 
 little feet all were made ? Thus it is in the 
 process we call reasoning ; every step in it 
 is taken by the understanding, by the soul of 
 reason, for with primal intuition (starting point 
 of individual soul) are impressions taken and 
 disclosures made. 
 
 Now, little student, shall we not profit by in- 
 dustrial example, and by dividing the work of 
 teaching have co-operation ? I offer a problem 
 to be solved, wondering the while will the an- 
 swer come from Romola's intuition. Here are a 
 man and woman, farmers ; forty acres of land 
 have they worked ; nature, rewarding their toil, 
 yielded vegetables, grain, and live-stock. Now, 
 child, unto whom do these things really belong ? 
 Reader, it is too good to keep ; quick as a flash 
 her answer came : " Why, to the folks who did 
 the work." Well and truly spoken, by unerring 
 intuition. 

 
 64 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Romola sensed a right relation, has seen a 
 "Holy Ghost," no glimpse of which was ever 
 caught by political economists, great ones of our 
 late unsocial past. Very nearly did our Romola 
 open her little eyes in a time to have seen the 
 fiery blood-red sunrise of real socialism. Did 
 we but seek tuition only from within, from the 
 higher, the intellectual self, then with hope of 
 success might I bespeak for my grand-niece, as 
 from sphere to sphere on the voyage of life she 
 goes, perpetual harmony, eternal melody. If I 
 bestrode a literary steed, a real Pegasus, I would 
 not seek like Bellerophon to mount unto the 
 skies, leaving behind the work I had but just 
 begun. As the base of a triangle has its sides, 
 and a point from which these, lines are drawn, 
 so likewise an effect has its exposition point, 
 where meet, if they be truly taken, the two 
 main lines of an explanation. 
 
 To show connection between cause and its 
 effect, can one do better than example take from 
 mechanics' royal realm ? There is a fact in 
 physics, and upon it is based weighty matter,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 65 
 
 speculative and practical, for immersed in a re- 
 sisting medium, matter, if set in motion, tends, 
 because of inertia, to revert to its original state. 
 The other line of explanation takes its illustration 
 from the kingdom of dynamics, where the vital 
 forces operate. Yourselves the point of appli- 
 cation may make. 
 
 In zoologic travel, an amphibian gets home- 
 sick on the land, objects to its varied wonders, 
 blinking, shuts out all he can ; but to build up 
 mind, things push against him. He longs for 
 repose, for the sameness of the water, where it 
 was easy going with his fins and fishy tail. 
 Nature compromises ; while he is a baby, the 
 kind mother lets him, as a tadpole, have his 
 " precedent." To sever arms from body may 
 be an act that is good, or may be fiendish ; 
 which, depends upon the working cause behind it. 
 
 To kill, has for its inspiration but one kind of 
 motive, therefore, if it be admitted that an act 
 remains the same, it then becomes the business 
 of accounting to explain the antipodal character 
 of esteem in which it is held. Take color ; red (if
 
 66 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 it be red) must red continue, however much, 
 through cunning art, its shade be changed. 
 Hence, to murder has, in moral chemistry, for its 
 initiative, always the self-same elemental impulse 
 — hatred, revenge. Yet folks have thought 
 that, on occasions, the act of murder was provi- 
 dentially provided with a purifying purge — 
 authority. In the late unsocial past, men ex- 
 ercised their muscles, trained their souls, by a 
 wholesale slaughter of each other, and yet in 
 their books is found expressed much horror of 
 that remoter past when men offered up each 
 other as a sacrifice to their devilish God. To 
 moral myopics, by no flight of fancy can con- 
 sistency of thought be charged. Their ghastly 
 works they called the " Art of War," and vainly 
 thought by that their bloody deeds were en- 
 dowed with dignity. Murder's hideous face was 
 veiled by forms and ceremonies, social sanction's 
 finery, through a belief that the biggest monster 
 in the gory struggle was rendered a hero, a social 
 saint. 
 
 The cause of their wars I illustrate by what,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 6j 
 
 according to sensation, the thermometer would 
 register — one captain of the social cargo burning 
 up with fever, his rival shaking in an ague chill. 
 Such differences have furnished fuel to light 
 the fires of human battle when nations, Jonah- 
 like, by royal sharks were swallowed up. May 
 not one be pardoned for a sympathetic thought 
 with any kind of monster whose unnatural state 
 should have caused writhings with at least the 
 
 ache ? It is all but impossible to account 
 
 for their un-Jonah-like conduct, huddled in the 
 belly of a shark, and yet so quiet. 
 
 I am venturing the remark that it is not sur- 
 prising if under those circumstances the pluto- 
 crats found themselves redundant. The people, 
 I presume, were semi-paralyzed, could not make 
 out how it came about ; and no doubt trained 
 scouts were sent from time to time to disclose 
 the mode of its occurence, and by declaring the 
 " special-providence " act, helped the dilemma 
 out. From the abdomen to the head is a tre- 
 mendous long journey, means a tedious and 
 blood-stained tramp. This it is which keeps the
 
 68 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 fearful ones back from rising to the throat of 
 every kind of shark. The citizens of those rival 
 sharks were filled with wild imaginings, wonder- 
 ing if quinia, given to the royal invalids alike, 
 was an omnipotent specific, and would score a 
 double restorative effect. 
 
 Nor was their anxiety unnatural, since, in this 
 illustrative case, death to one meant multiplicity 
 of expirations. Grim forebodings moved the 
 cool-headed and reasonable of the abdominal 
 community (the men) to their usual mode of ar- 
 bitration, and they fell to fighting. Over the 
 predicament those M. D.'s were in, I'm literally 
 consumed with curiosity. What could have been 
 their management of doses ? But for this in- 
 teresting query I should have here given them 
 the " dead cut ;" to notice quack practitioners is 
 so unseemly. It was possible by Caesarian sec- 
 tion to have saved a host of lives by the sacrifice 
 of one. What to do for the hemmed-in creatures 
 must have put those medical professors in a 
 hopeless quandary. Now, wouldn't I like to 
 peer into their mental state. . . . Oh ! I have
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 69 
 
 it : thinking those poor folks housed and fed by 
 the monstrous good will of their patient auto- 
 crat, they dubbed them paupers, legitimate "ma- 
 terial " for inquisitorial experiment by doctors. 
 In trade rivalry those savages found frequent 
 occasions for belligerency, for the Promethean 
 intellect, being bound, was scared- by a shadow 
 — "balance of trade." 
 
 Were it in my power, had I a camera, some 
 scenes I would picture, but having none, descrip- 
 tion must continue to suffice. One big country 
 among those nations was politically a psuedo- 
 republic ; its inhabitants, a massive conglomera- 
 tion, styled themselves the American race ; and 
 yet not with blankets or with tatooed face were 
 they figured out. It is really true that, by their 
 dispossessors, the real natives were left in sole 
 possession of some few barbarities. To the Dog- 
 berry attitude of mind the citizens of that coun- 
 try were in no wise inclined ; to write themselves 
 up beautifully was the custom, leaving the sav- 
 ing confessional of sins to deeds. About every 
 atrocity under the sun was in that great country
 
 JO SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 perpetrated by individuals, who were, if backed 
 by money, sometimes sustained by a " tortion " 
 movement of their laws. Could I versify reflec- 
 tion, the refrain would in substance be : had 
 those people but sensed the deep purport of the 
 flag, of the " totem " by them chosen, listened to 
 their silent meanings silently outspoken, then in 
 that great nation each person with eagle vision 
 had seen the rights of every other being to be 
 just as big as were his own ; then from the point 
 of equal doing what is right, that nation's motion 
 as a social star had been true and straight. 
 But, alas ! it is with regret I state that the ex- 
 ample set by those United States was far less 
 glorious than was needed. Nevertheless, this 
 much can with truth be said : in the treasures 
 of its general thought, equal rights and freedom, 
 a real Pompeii were those United States com- 
 pared with a socio-political atmosphere laden 
 with the bacteria of feudalism. 
 
 Across a river, famous for its sovereign tor- 
 rent fall, was a little handful of big-feeling folk. 
 My ! but they were savage quite. From blurred
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 7 1 
 
 letters I barely made out the name " Canuck." 
 Politically it was no pseudo-republic, nor yet was 
 it true monarchy ; guess it might with truth be 
 called a hobbledehoy. Now those poor folks 
 paid large sums of money to a man converted 
 into Governor-general by royal pranks. True, 
 they owed him much for arduous and useful toil, 
 his destruction of their pens and ink, his marking 
 with a foreign seal their unlaundried political 
 linen. Situate in "Canuck" was Tarungto, a 
 beautiful city, but wicked and unmoral. One 
 might think in reading of its doings that, mush- 
 room-like, it had sprung from the backwoods, but 
 such surmise is a mistake ; it had age, for abun- 
 dant evidence exists of progressive women living 
 there. If I wished to have the nightmare I 
 would give loose rein to fancy, thinking what 
 must by those liberal women have been endured ; 
 quite awful, I am sure, and so I don't care by 
 experience to go further into the matter. The 
 plain truth is, that city was scourged by a plague 
 worse than Job's boils — pious consistency. 
 'Twas no harm, they argued, to take on the
 
 72 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 sacred morn milk and cream, provided that at 
 back doors the thing be done ; but to have Sun- 
 day street-cars was, to the morally feeble, the 
 piously strong, an offence, a heinous crime. On 
 the road of intelligence belated were those folk, 
 which accounts for weakness of moral vision, ob- 
 scuring what to the clear-sighted is so plain, that 
 the poor have the right to an opportunity to use 
 Sunday, their only day for an outing, as each 
 chooses, as conscience dictates, and as health 
 requires. With customary regard for accuracy 
 those "remonstrants " to what is right styled 
 themselves Protestants. In solemn conclave 
 met that city's worldly fortunate, and after 
 prayer unanimously agreed that in one's own 
 carriage to ride on the Sabbath was quite the 
 thing, for such an outing smelled not of vulgar 
 sin. But as the sapling conscience demands 
 that something real be done, though just a little 
 will suffice, this is why, to restrain their beasts 
 to a solemn walk or at most a guarded trot was 
 by amendment provided ; and that coachman 
 failing to put on a mask, serious expression, was 
 to be fined.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 73 
 
 Of one progressive woman's energetic ef- 
 forts the records of Tarungto bear trace. 
 Though mammoth the footprints of her social 
 work, yet unlike those of the Eozoon Canadense, 
 they are certain, and of the real human are leg- 
 ible marks. Her sex's pioneer in the medical 
 profession of Canuck, Dr. Emily H. Stowe 
 sought along more lines than one to direct the 
 moral sense, but prejudice and bigotry pre- 
 vent the wholesome expansion of ideas and of 
 deeds, so about equal rights the well-to-do 
 persisted in caring not a "continental," persist- 
 ed in flaunting the righteous rag. 
 
 Stupid things sometimes show up funny ; 
 gossips were those pictures. In a conversation 
 between a gentleman and a lady this amusing 
 incident occurred : An earnest look upon the 
 pictured face and yet he said : "Is it possible, 
 Mrs. Barbalow, you are not aware that in Can- 
 uck the people are far more moral than yours ?" 
 Her's was a smiling face. I quote verbatim the 
 reply she made, deeming it a "stunner," for it 
 shows how a man's words and acts belie each
 
 74 SOCIO-FXONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 other : "Do I mistake, or have you not said that 
 having left Canuck for good you have come to 
 the States with us to reside ?." 
 
 Monsieur, were you asked to name the points 
 of difference between tweedledum and tweedlc- 
 dee, what answer would you make ? As I 
 expected, you say that the distinction lies in 
 their orthography. "You lie," vociferates so- 
 ciety ; "between the tweedle of the dum and 
 the tweedle of the dee behold a chasm deep 
 and wide, dug by us in our high-priest capa- 
 city." Indeed, monsieur, it is your turn a 
 question to propose. What's that ? Can a 
 leopard change his spots ? Yea, verily, I an- 
 swer. Is the thing not done by Mr. Leop- 
 ard as in time he learns to shoulder a gun ? 
 Humans, having knowledge of constructive art, 
 have repaired a damage that in zoologic travel 
 they en route sustained, but upon that piece of 
 soil, the soul, the tax has been, I own, so heavy 
 as to nearly bring about its reversion to a 
 primal state. 
 
 Now, I for one desire to get conclusions
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 75 
 
 straight, and so in all sincerity this question 
 put : What is "male intellect " for anyway, if it 
 be not to make good man's loss of wild-boar tusks 
 and tiger claws ? Woman's part in the concern 
 of war is so involved in horror, that I feel to 
 speak of it with bated breath ; kindly draw your 
 chair nearer. Taught by men that to breed sons 
 for battle was an heroic service, nay, their pious 
 duty, whose fulfilment was sure by divinity to 
 be rewarded sometime, somewhere, " out of 
 sight," when from battle no portion of the dar- 
 ling boy came home, then to solace the an- 
 guished mother was prepared this sweet mor- 
 sel : to give a bitter lesson the auspicious 
 occasion had by a " Heavenly Father " been 
 improved ; her heart's love must from her son 
 be brought home to her God. " For I, the Lord 
 thy God, am a jealous God," men said. 
 
 Of woman's relation to divinity I have certi- 
 tude, I feel that it is proved. Men have 
 "brought her up by hand," have tried, disre- 
 garding "the signs," to wean her from the 
 good, but to the mother-thought in God she is
 
 j6 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 moored. An eastern star has risen. In medi- 
 cine, we descendants of an ancient wizard line, 
 "regulars" in the art of curing patients, shake 
 no sacred rattle ; therefore is there hope in all 
 directions for completion of the unfinished busi- 
 ness of our prehistoric past. War and murder, 
 individual and social crimes, are estranged, widely 
 different ; plain is this to men. 
 
 And yet this little girl, Romola, persists in 
 saying that she "don't see it." Over some- 
 thing have I pondered long. Hither come, 
 grandniece, and learn the results of my much 
 cogitation ; hear the judgment of my mind. 
 In the mystery of being, individualization has 
 its ultimate objective aim, which to me, no 
 longer occult, seems quite plain. From 
 relevant, from weighty evidence, I conclude that 
 the purpose of earth life, with its bother, is to 
 make a "grant " unto a needy class, is to relieve 
 a poverty. With human intellect our men imist 
 be endowed.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 77 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 society's movements outlined. 
 
 FRATERNAL socialism is the destiny of 
 society. This conclusion verified by in- 
 terpretation of its progress, by the light of the 
 facts of motion. 
 
 Voyaging through space is our solar system, 
 the sun, planets, and their boon companions ; 
 naught interferes with the majesty of their 
 movements, and naught interrupts their onward 
 equal motion. 
 
 Society, when its beginning ? Where its 
 early morning ? We have an exhibition of co- 
 operation among the ants and bees, little folks, 
 beings in the kingdom of invertebrata. A sort 
 of instinctive freak, I do suppose, but yet it 
 shows us, who are evolution's fine productive work, 
 what are our social possibilites did we but use 
 our intellects. As species multiplied, and diver-
 
 78 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 sified forms came on with rapid stride, there 
 was interruption of this co-operation's line of 
 march, consciousness of self becoming the om- 
 nipresent, all-powerful feeling ; and so associa- 
 tion, blest work of power co-operative, of princi- 
 ple social, though not wholly discarded, at least 
 met with the cold shoulder, socialism being 
 "quite too sentimental " for denizens of bigger 
 fleshly homes. Although the pasture is poor, 
 association browses on, ne'er quits the living 
 field ; conscious of her guiding spirit, eternal 
 principle, she is scientific, and knows with keen 
 prevision that some day her soul shall have a 
 beautiful complete expression, albeit the process 
 is piecemeal. 
 
 In the mammalia her debut was attended 
 with supernal glory, for against the possibility 
 of calamitous mishap the social principle came 
 guarded, protected by maternal emotions, came 
 fixed in mother love. Oh ! wise provision. 
 The zoological argument prevents the assump- 
 tion of a completely individualistic period for 
 man, at the same time logical thought bars the
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 79 
 
 supposition that social progress, shown to be 
 evolving, could have been severed in its evo- 
 lution course by man, the superior animal. 
 Why, the thing is unthinkable, the humanizing 
 principle put out of humans' great primary. 
 Why, those men were not afraid of being "senti- 
 mental," therefore for the human species, from 
 their very first, we must postulate the social 
 state, not indeed fraternal, but one disjointed, 
 mangled in its form, filial love for which keeps 
 male intellects upon the rack, busy devising 
 ways and means to retain a burden, a prehis- 
 toric mummy. There is comfort. Final disap- 
 pointment awaits all efforts out of time, out of 
 tune; and paternal socialism, dear fetich, is al- 
 ready doomed, soon will find its true abiding 
 place in musty annals of the social past. Fra- 
 ternal socialism, long overdue (ways most sinis- 
 ter delay the birth), must wait till a social 
 whirlwind, sweeping, rends asunder the barri- 
 ers. Among the truths demonstrated by 
 philosophical science is the fact of universal 
 motion. Substance, ever changing its posi-
 
 80 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 tion, obeys the continuous call of a tireless 
 taskmaster — "principle of activity." There- 
 fore may we not conclude that as soul and 
 matter are tied up in one, they together cease- 
 lessly are on the equal move ? 
 
 What is the meaning in the cosmic drama of 
 the part played by direction, meaning of the 
 power to become ? On this particular head not 
 much is often or intelligently said, except in 
 scientific art where the importance of direction 
 is made plain ; for in the mechanical realm men 
 recognize that a chance for error breeds disas- 
 trous results, so there is patient, careful obser- 
 vation and no trifling with its " how ;" and of 
 course ways and means result from honest an- 
 alytical work. Therefore it is proven beyond 
 doubt, that, impulsion granted, the direction of 
 a moving body is the resultant of the forces 
 acting on it from without. Furthermore it is 
 shown that cessation of all motion is an affair of 
 appearance only, and that when arrested in its 
 progress a body transfers mass motion to its 
 molecular or individual parts. A weighty body,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 8 I 
 
 great momentum, obstructed in its course, fric- 
 tion of the individual particles, ignition, flame, 
 destruction of the mass. 
 
 Yourself may make the social application. 
 Journeying upon life's highway are beings, ex- 
 hibitions of its wonders, and when, to powers 
 attained, new energies are called out from life- 
 power's mystic space, such display is stars 
 plucked from skies and made one's own. 
 Whence comes it, and what is it that interferes 
 with the race's majesty of movement ? What 
 interrupts the equal onward motion of its indi- 
 vidual parts ? A mass of molecules is society ; 
 their movements summarized are motions from 
 point to point in the state of association, parti- 
 cles, combination, masses. To stop here one 
 might truly say that the process on its surface 
 differs not from the formation of a stone. 
 
 But while recognizing points of contact 
 through the facts of motion, let us not be hasty 
 in conclusions. There are differences to note. 
 Like and unlike is an omnipresent fact. Were 
 it otherwise, where would be the work for Rea- 
 son ? She would be idle ; a heinous thing.
 
 82 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Prior to intelligent discussion this must be 
 recognized : in the depths of the sea of know- 
 ledge are certain bottom facts, and worthless is 
 that literary image that pictures them afloat. 
 According to position, and order in time, causes 
 must be grouped, classified, otherwise the no- 
 tice received is not comformable to the force of 
 their active work, and by that kind of literary 
 effort just nothing is bespoke. Fruitless is the 
 reasoning when an essential fact, like the prin. 
 ciple of true division, is maltreated, cast upon 
 its back. Which of us cannot recall instances 
 of dire confusion when primary causes, those 
 first in time, soonest at the work, met with 
 scant polite attention. It is gleeful, while 
 the learned " are giving higher utility to ink," 
 to watch the vulgar scramble into which first 
 causes are forced with their secondaries, those 
 which are born effects, but, by reason of rela- 
 tion, don the kingly purple and exercise control. 
 
 I own it is painful to find internal and exter- 
 nal causes, a staid worthy couple, maintaining 
 throughout their sober walk down time the cir-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 83 
 
 cumspect position, each keeping from the other 
 a respectful distance ; painful to find them 
 through queer reasoning's whirl joined in a 
 merry frolic, which, to say the least, is incon- 
 sistent with the stately measure of their natural 
 tread. Internal and External Cause, estim- 
 able pair, have you a grievance ? Are you mis- 
 mated ? True, I do perceive a difference, but is 
 it matter for despair if, within her bosom, Inter- 
 nal bears the vital spark ? Contented be, 
 External ; thine the art to call it forth, a heav- 
 enly flame. 
 
 The motion that we predicate of stick or 
 stone has its initiative in the mortal will, takes 
 its first leap from mortal throw ; but this as- 
 sumption for the primal internal cause of social 
 impulse would indeed be vain. Principle of 
 self, smooth down that ruffled plumage ; with 
 you I have no quarrel ; do I not know that your 
 birth was in immortal will, your leap was by 
 divine throe ? Yet, sir, I have a quarrel with 
 the persistent stupidity of your ways of doing 
 social things. Sweet principle of sympathy,
 
 84 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 latest come to earth from heaven, not yet thy 
 golden head canst rear aloft, not yet in thine 
 own true sphere canst walk erect ; there is an 
 enemy in ambuscade — stupidity. 
 
 Science declares that were it possible to elim- 
 inate all external resistance to onward motion, 
 then a body would continue forever in a 
 straight line moving in the direction given it by 
 original impulse. Now, if this assumption be 
 logical of motions, mortal in their origin, is its 
 application, I ask, less logical, certain, or less 
 true, to motions (beings) having for their initia- 
 tive the divine, the God impact ? Wherefore, 
 then, within a race ( the great social body ) is 
 there such halting, limping, bobbing up and 
 down, in short, the sin of uselesss, unnatural com- 
 motion. In the beginning all were uncivilized ; 
 now, explain why our social body, an intellec- 
 tual mosaic, is not also a social plane ; such is 
 the domestic family. 
 
 The reason I will try to make plain, for 
 everything has its "why." Causes are within, 
 say you ? Agreed, within the individual and
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 85 
 
 zvitJiin society. We both are satisfied as to the 
 "where" to look for causes and occasions, pri- 
 mary and secondary ; yet I would not have you 
 think me one of those of conditions so 
 peculiar that I hesitate to call them folks 
 (lest it be a misnomer), who, by a process 
 of invagination, have parted company with 
 senses for the external, have become all iti- 
 side, which accounts for irrational idealists 
 denying the working mode of God, subject and 
 object in relation. 
 
 And now, before we further talk, grant me this 
 favor : load me not with literary gewgaws, ex- 
 planations, tinselled jewelry, " glittering gener- 
 alities ;" deal with facts, be explicit, and, in short, 
 " come down to dots ;" tell us the whole " why " 
 of society's dark sun spots. We must bear in 
 mind that the Powers are in themselves equally 
 and at all times good, regardless of the uses to 
 which by man they are too often put. To make 
 matters plain, I am compelled to add something 
 in the nature of a revelation. Not in the Powers 
 themselves, but in the DIRECTION, in the
 
 86 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MVTHES 
 
 harmful using, is it that the mortal has a creation 
 made, has a something into "good for nothing " 
 wrought, made the Devil. 
 
 Causes are within, I think you said, and I 
 grant it. Who is so silly as to say there is no 
 mind, that all is matter ? Who is so wise as to 
 deny that mind a silent partner is, and being 
 spiritual, works in secret, in the dark, visible 
 only in its objective double ? 
 
 In social matters all must own the mind's 
 embodiment is a dense materialization. Speed- 
 ing on its linear way, improvement in productive 
 methods fixes social points. Socio-economic 
 association, the " come by chance " child of in- 
 dustrial planning, has a course of constant tack- 
 ing, constant tramping. Still, we may reckon 
 on the day of its willingly sought recognition, 
 reaction's blessed work ; and then, O heaven- 
 kissed earth, enlightened self-interest coincides 
 with other self in the economic point. Resist- 
 ance removed, bodies projected by the mortal 
 will continue onward moving in the line of their 
 direction forever. Bodies projected by the Im-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 87 
 
 mortal Will overcome resistance of the mortal, 
 will continue onward, moving in the direction of 
 unfoldment, forever and forever. 
 
 In this attempt at social outlining, I must of 
 course start from the point named human, from 
 which motions may be generalized as progres- 
 sion along two great lines. As object-lessons 
 help to show a meaning, let us avail ourselves of 
 an instructive recreation. I make a point, and 
 pardon, friend, if I call it human ; out from this 
 point I draw a line, not crooked, as you see, but 
 straight ; and, as one fiction does beget another 
 (the lesson that we daily learn), so I, bowing to 
 the inevitable, call this straight line the path of 
 the human's intellect. But now I am struck 
 with fear lest you charge me with attempt to 
 perform a Jesuitical manoeuvre. Not so ; at 
 present I'm the sincere follower of majestic, 
 awful example ; for are not crooked things made 
 to look straight, and straight things to look 
 crooked, by legislative expediency ? 
 
 Aside from pleasantry, reasoning, as we are 
 aware, permits latitude, sometimes misleading ;
 
 88 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 yet vvc concede that the general notion of society 
 admits of precise geometric expression. I am 
 not seeking to deceive ; such a picture does not 
 represent the actual social fact. Human dots 
 are in an awful tangle, at unnatural points are 
 pressed too close, at natural points of contact 
 do not closely adhere, and until there is a 
 straightening out it is impossible of them to 
 make a circle, of their doings, impossible to 
 make a square. All things in space by scientific 
 philosophy are reduced to motions. What, you 
 demur ? My advice is read Spencer's " First 
 Principles," " go into the silence," on its meaning 
 think and apply. Time and Space, what are 
 they? On this subject the most that can be 
 has been said : " two modes of the unknowable." 
 Without doubt it has been proven that things, 
 be they seen or not, are susceptible of mechan- 
 ical interpretation and of mathematical relation- 
 ing to the sublime fact, motion. 
 
 Time bends to neither side, moves in a 
 straight line, is before us, is behind, for appear- 
 ance gives no band.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 89 
 
 Space in all directions is, neither comes nor 
 goes, wholly steady, omnipresent, always ready. 
 
 To get the ear of Time one lies within its 
 arms ; but Space, majestic stoic, is unmoved, 
 cannot be decreased, cannot be enlarged ; 'tis 
 the circle divine, the fold of Deity. Time is the 
 line divine ; on it we mortals climb to higher 
 views. Point in front of point, spiritual is the 
 motion of the intellect, taking place in time, 
 and yet unseen except by her who reads between 
 the lines. 
 
 Returning to our object-lesson, our human 
 dots, patient forbearing things, their rights have 
 been neglected. Well, there were obstacles to 
 be surmounted, but now with willing minds we 
 will bend ourselves unto the work of right 
 positioning. You perceive that, disturbing ele- 
 ments admitted, it is, as I have said, impossible 
 to make of human dots lines straight, lines 
 parallel (geometries of melody and harmony) ; 
 impossible, at least, until we've done with social 
 "gerrymandering." By our object-lesson we 
 have learned of two great lines of motion : the
 
 90 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 mental, and the line of social march. Divine 
 intent would have them straight, and at right 
 angles to each other, but such is not the mortal 
 thought. Still, through an overruling Provi- 
 dence, upon the tramp of intellect socialism has 
 at all times its little, its sure corner. What's 
 the business of the intellect ? Well, she's an 
 "agitator," a regular "walking delegate;" into 
 the organism gathers images of things, moulds 
 them into shape to fit the body's needs, and so 
 helps on the spiritual. The method of arriving 
 at conclusions true, after the historic ship has 
 disappeared from view, is spiritual ; and if the 
 logic proves not a cystic tumor, but tissue firm 
 and true, with pedigree unassailable, based on 
 general experiences, such conclusions should 
 occupy in literary space, if not a corner lot, at 
 least a favored spot with actual knowledge. 
 
 In the earliest, or hunting, stage of society, 
 people roamed in herds, and by preying on their 
 fello\v animals clothed themselves and found 
 their food. To this general statement I should 
 perhaps exception make : the gentle, those
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 9 1 
 
 springing from herbivora, must have been in- 
 clined to seek subsistence from the bark and 
 fruit of trees. 
 
 In the chain of social progress, could we count 
 the links forged on the line of travel from the 
 hunting to the pastoral state, truthful witnesses 
 would they be found of man's evolution out of a 
 brutal condition. Peaceful dwelling with God's 
 other creatures, thought for them, and kind 
 caretaking must have taught man much, and 
 in fancy I can see him listen to their silent 
 voices, hearken with his soul. Still those pas- 
 tors preyed upon the bodies of their flocks. 
 
 Blest with powers of observation, blest with 
 powers of divination, early folk noted nature, 
 from her took their lesson, for, at divers times 
 and places, from mere scattered seeds they be- 
 held the magic birth of forests — plants and 
 trees. Uncivilized, without legally established 
 authority, the voice of nature was to them both 
 priest and oracle. Prehistoric man, blest folk, 
 free to act, free to think, your mental ear was 
 not clogged with intellectual rust nor parasitic
 
 92 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 smut ; in your social drama there was no Henry 
 Wood to bear the burden of an important part, 
 to hinder progress by his unmitigated "fool 
 talk."* 
 
 And so the gentle of those early human kind 
 followed the God lead, broke the solid ranks of 
 ultra-savagery, crossed the Rubicon, and without 
 pomp and ceremony (vain externals, hiding 
 tyranny) took possession of the agricultural es- 
 tate. Oh ! the grandeur of that occasion who 
 can paint ? Evolution into humans then and 
 there made possible ; people have no need for 
 preying ; up and harmless doing is the human 
 note. Why so lowly centered, mortal self ? 
 Must each step of thy eastward tramp be 
 through hard external knocks ? 
 
 Become introspective, hearken to the 
 "still small voice." Reason leads to social 
 ways of doing, leads unto a social haven. 
 
 *In "The Political Economy of Natural Law," Henry Wood says it is a 
 question of Realisam versus Idealism, shall the worst or the best be made of 
 existing conditions ? Ideal political economy consists in holding up the true 
 potentiality or fullness of what already is. Socialism would smother arbi- 
 tration, liberty, and discourage progress; consumption would overtake and 
 soon pass production as its practical result.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 93 
 
 Dimmed the thoughtful vision which, for ex- 
 isting socio-economic classes, finds by reason- 
 ing from the acts of men now living no 
 causative explanation. The earliest conserva- 
 tives, those loyal to the carnivorous instinct, 
 seeing the peace and happiness of farming folk, 
 seeing their apparent plenty, felt the greed of 
 avarice and envy, and being illumined deemed 
 their " poverty a mere belief," " an error of the 
 mind;" unsentimental, enlightened, "the at- 
 tractive force of fear" was by them quickly put 
 behind. The sequel, need I it relate ? The 
 peaceful farming folk, they who had chosen 
 God, became goods and chattels, and to the un- 
 employed have ever since paid tent. Thus was 
 brought about an interruption big with social 
 havoc. 
 
 The natural spread of private property was 
 hindered, hindered was its humanizing work ; 
 and unnatural accumulations, unnatural control 
 by the few, have since grown and thriven. 
 Among the many changes that party revulsion 
 brought about was the overthrow of the gen-
 
 94 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 eral family plan, the mother's kindly rule, that 
 social habit of the gens, and, in its stead, politi- 
 cally was instituted the paternal regime and 
 social havoc. Within the organism, plant and 
 animal as well as social, " relics " are found 
 which should have gone with their companions, 
 but they remain to do a freakish, a fatal work. 
 
 Everything — thought, event, and state — 
 has its internal and external causes, has its 
 genealogy. There exists in the polite, high- 
 bred society what, from preference, you may 
 call an aberrant variety ; but myself, after care- 
 ful consideration, after profitable reading of 
 learned essays on heredity* by him so fond of 
 the antique, am 'bound in conscience to declare 
 the anomaly to be a spontaneous overflow of 
 " germ plasm," descending from the hunting 
 state with continuity as yet unbroken by the 
 civilizer, honest human work. And so it hap- 
 pens that, booted, spurred, armored, these 
 children of wild blood, male and female Don 
 Quixotes, gallop after tiny fox, which from its 
 
 * " Theory of Heredity," by Dr. August Weissmami.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 95 
 
 box, by loosening, they have awfully scared. 
 Beautiful their filial piety ; picturesque too. 
 Forests and monsters gone and yet equipped 
 and out on view, this atavic variety presents 
 the semblance of dreadful dangers by them to 
 be incurred in a rendezvous with Sir Reynard, 
 or, in lieu of him, an encounter with one bellig- 
 erent sand bag.
 
 g6 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTI1ES 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTS. 
 
 THE bond which cannot be broken, try how 
 we may, by means obscure and sinister ; 
 the knot which none can sever ; the one in- 
 vulnerable spot, is parentage, relation of effect 
 to cause. To God, the centre of all beings' 
 circle, by whose activities produced, offspring- 
 ing we stand in close relation ; yet, from our es- 
 tate evicted, from natural relation distrained, 
 and by adoption become children of the devil- 
 "La Couvade." Great method ! 
 
 A fact is that which is. The supreme 
 fact, including every other fact, is that we indi- 
 viduals are here upon earth in the equal posses- 
 sion of powers peculiar to our species, and by 
 wants resulting from racial unfoldment we are 
 stirred ; therefore we are equally the possessors 
 of the natural right to satisfy our wants, to ex-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 97 
 
 ercise our human powers ; and anon, when soci- 
 ety shall have become human, will come the 
 equal opportunity. 
 
 Between equal possession of powers and de- 
 sires, and possession of equal powers and desires, 
 be pleased to note distinctions. 
 
 The "whence" of our primal powers is 
 " the Unknowable," but to the domain of the 
 knowable belongs their " whither." That 
 you and I are on a part of the earth, are in a 
 given social circle, is evidence de facto that we 
 belong to the geographical and social portion 
 where we find ourselves to be. 
 
 This proposition admitted, then, by a parity 
 of reasoning the geographical and social portion 
 is theirs equally who at a given time are on it 
 and are in it. Accordingly, when in individual 
 instances the socio-economic conditions are 
 less than the broadest possibilities by race 
 progress warranted, then is the inequality 
 due, not to the working of eternal principles 
 which bring us hither, but to social sins that 
 arise from our want of civilization (individual-
 
 98 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 ism overcome). Wealth is external nature's 
 gifts moulded to fit human wants by human la- 
 bor motions. For descriptions of its infancy to 
 the pages of orthodox political economy you are 
 referred, little narratives which take high rank as 
 occasions when moved were those authors by a 
 spirit philosophic. Not suited with its quarters, 
 the spirit fled, leaving their great science unin- 
 telligible. 
 
 From the individualistic to the social method 
 of production there has been an interesting, 
 one might say an episodal, journey. The fam- 
 ily at first was the producing unit, and 
 consumed what itself supplied. The excep- 
 tions to be noted are those cases of descent 
 with brutal force applied, evictions and dis- 
 traint. Simply put, my meaning is, that of 
 wealth-objects there was no exchange. But 
 with stately measure "division of labor " 
 strode on and in time was mated with ex- 
 change. The homely mode was barter. 
 Early men discovered that they could trust 
 each other ; friendly intercourse was opened
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 99 
 
 up by the act of exchange, and, things being 
 natural, to the exchanging parties there ac- 
 crued an equal advantage ; each had clone 
 the thing to which he was adapted ; prevented 
 was the waste of time and energy. Individual 
 ways were changing as intelligence of things 
 was growing ; growing too were desires ; and 
 thus early folks were led to pregnant changes. 
 Of a heinous crime I know that I am guilty, 
 am in short worthy of the faggot or the stake, 
 and were this the sixteenth century, blessed 
 with close communion of Church and State, 
 to heaven in a flaming chariot I might be sent 
 for daring to differ from that economic author- 
 ity which imputes " to man's propensity to 
 truck and barter " the grand social fact " divi- 
 sion of labor." It is a slight mistake and no 
 great matter when toying little Freddy gets the 
 cart before the horse, but indeed a grave error 
 in Professor Philosophic seeking to mould the 
 general thought. Division of labor and ex- 
 change, twin-born social facts, implying prog- 
 ress in race methods, progress in race wants,
 
 IOO SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 do as they have always done — work unseen on 
 social structure their revolutionizing mission. 
 
 By act of exchange mutual benefit is derived, 
 be the process simple barter. But we are civil- 
 ized ; we have money. From a remark which 
 I have somewhere seen a perception may be 
 gained of the present man's attitude on the 
 meaning of exchange : " And these savages use 
 no money, but make presents to each other." 
 Where did I procure this gem ? Well, it may 
 have been, though of this I am not sure, from 
 volumes massive, big with learned lore, dotted 
 o'er and o'er with the dullness of great bril- 
 liants ; to the Encyclopaedia Britannica I refer. 
 Our men, with industrial monstrosities, prog- 
 eny of mercantile antics, bourgeois economics, 
 are travailing (self-exiled) from repose. 
 
 By that remark I am reminded that for social 
 guidance and direction one needs to simply note 
 the act of exchange, and heed its implied mean- 
 ing ; then individuals would attain an economic 
 equilibrium, repose with peace and plenty. 
 
 Ah ! but listen, madam e of the moon. With
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 10 1 
 
 your men the thought is vastly different ; to do 
 a thing so human as to look beneath the surface 
 for a social meaning, why ours, by act so unhe- 
 roic, would deem themselves unsexed. When 
 individual connections through widening varia- 
 tions broadened social integration, then necessity, 
 the ruler, decreed a link between wealth-objects 
 which should be a common measure and a medium 
 of common exchange. In discursive ventures, 
 narrative in nature, one is forced to give conclu- 
 sions founded upon implied contents of the facts 
 which by them are viewed. 
 
 What was the intellectual capacity of primitive 
 men in matters of adjustment, means to ends? 
 Was the application of intelligence ever direct ? 
 or was the art of an adaptation the invariable 
 result of an instinctive response to external 
 blind forces pressing upon them ? To assert 
 that prehistoric men deliberated and took con- 
 scious initiative, is an asseveration faced with 
 scornful look. 
 
 This philosophic tyro is groping, feels the 
 need of caution ; severe upon men of historic
 
 102 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 times is its implied criticism ; times in which, 
 oftener than otherwise, the birth of great changes 
 comes as the result of a slip, an accident, and, 
 lo ! upon the social scene something of full time 
 arrives. But at least this much, without bad 
 taste and without offence, may be accorded : 
 the beginnings of industrial directions, the laying 
 of its general mains, was the work of our remote 
 ancestors, those men and women workers of the 
 stone age. And yet " laborers are without in- 
 telligence" and they "have no head," says plu- 
 tocratic authority. 
 
 In all periods of time things, and means for 
 their close association, form the substance of 
 society's particular aim. The differences which 
 appear along the line of industrial sequence are 
 in variety and amount, in method and character. 
 The mental transportation undergone must be 
 reckoned among the changes wrought in time. 
 Altered is the attitude of mind. With awe- 
 struck admiration, with terrorized timidity, savage 
 man encountered nature and with her made 
 friends. But civilized man to Dame Nature is
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. IO3 
 
 impertinent. Facing works of " the Great I 
 Am " early man felt terror, admiration ; but, later, 
 men by fearful reverence are stirred only in the 
 presence of their own constructions. Accordr 
 ingly, untouched by warning notes from the high 
 pitch of industrial methods, bright and scintil- 
 lating efforts, intellectual and moral, continuously 
 are made to maintain our social maladjustment. 
 In spite of sore corns, the shrivelled, shrunken 
 boot must be worn upon the growing foot ; 
 would you have the physical understanding out 
 of joint with its mental counterpart ? 
 
 The consideration of all classes of phenomena 
 involves that which may be seen and that which 
 must be seen. The natural onward movement 
 of production called for a helpmeet, for a medium 
 of exchange, possessing, as essential feature, 
 communistic power ; consequently into the social 
 drama money came with intent to play a friendly 
 part. Left to herself, no prompter near, the 
 acting would be natural ; but interfered with, 
 jerked and jammed about, social tragedy is not 
 unnatural.
 
 104 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Reflecting upon the silent work of common 
 units — weights and measures — the mind is 
 dazed by the magnitude of their service, for by 
 their use not social order only, but all knowledge 
 is made possible. A unique particular is money, 
 offering to philosophic thought an interesting 
 point ; for without cavil it is admitted to be a 
 form arising from a pre-existing, a known func- 
 tion ; and yet, after all, at its work it is throttled 
 by the wise, the " practical." 
 
 In the existing state of industrial co-ordination, 
 speaking from a general point of view, the money 
 thing is an affair of small importance. Bulky 
 things, gold and silver, would in the end but 
 clog the onward social movement. Is it wise, 
 friends, to prop a house condemned ? Glad to 
 get the answer "no;" but from out the mass 
 such timbers may be taken as will useful prove 
 in that reconstruction which wisdom urges us 
 to set about. Mercantile or individual money 
 exists, though in point of fact it is more "in the 
 mind " than out of it. Token or social money 
 is that form whose intrinsic value is unseen ; its
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 105 
 
 use is based on social confidence, and oh ! the 
 game that is played with it. Bankers could a 
 plot disclose, did they choose to startle us by 
 divulging weighty secrets, all the costliness of 
 their paper notes. But born romancers, they 
 prefer to deal in fiction. Could an eagle, how- 
 ever great its power to fly, if tethered to a tree, 
 if controlled by an individual thing, sail aloft 
 and pierce the airy vault of sky ? Money is a 
 communistic creature, and from bondage must 
 be freed. 
 
 We are yearning for great knowledge. Earth- 
 ward incline and tell us womenkind, where in 
 nature, true to its guide, you men have found 
 the source of an appearance, the location of an 
 organ out of joint with its official position, and 
 at war with the character of its functional work ; 
 why, the thing is monstrous and absurd. Just 
 imagine oxygen, air's life-giving element, frozen, 
 pent up, north or south, and our supply de- 
 pendent upon the slow gyrations of those poles. 
 "Om" be thanked, our mother nature perpe- 
 trates no heinous joke. The people must rise
 
 106 SOCIO-FXONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 up and snap asunder chains which bind the bird 
 of an industrial growth, the phoenix of an econ- 
 omic past ; and indifferent to incidents immediate 
 and unpleasing, they, with their parents of the 
 immortal revolution, must from their oppressors 
 demand liberty, each standing firm, expecting in 
 the game of chance his freedom through the 
 gate of death. 
 
 Treason thus to talk, you say ? Well, what 
 of it ? Brightly shines upon the road of treason 
 to man's superstitions the star of progress. 
 What about our Declaration of Independence 
 and our revolution ? To freely wing the social 
 circle, money must take its source, not at the 
 north or in the south, but at its centre. And 
 now, what says the devil ? " Give the gods of 
 society (our laborers) a grand chance to possess 
 the offspring of their toil, the product of their 
 labor motions ? Not if I know it"
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 107 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONFUSION OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTS. POLITI- 
 CAL ECONOMY AN IMAGINARY CALCULUS. 
 
 A PAIR of social steeds ; upon them riders 
 sit, who reach their destination with no 
 exertion other than to goad — rent, capitalism. 
 By the orderly arrangement of society these two 
 racers travel neck and neck ; they are beautiful 
 to look upon, they are of high breed, have the 
 same spiritual father. 
 
 Rent first in social time God's external gift, 
 bequests to all mankind, did corner ; not to be 
 outdone by an elder brother, capitalism plants 
 the flag of individualism on quarters none the 
 less divine. Upon the wants, upon the desires, 
 upon the life-blood of the people, this pair of 
 social monsters gorge and fatten. Terse may 
 be an explanation ; still the necessities of expo- 
 sition it must fulfil, else it wants the stamp of
 
 IOS SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 utility. To give this stately impress one must 
 dig into the matter to be explained, and must 
 bring into view its internal and external causes ; 
 nor until causes themselves have been examined 
 and with mathematic nicety positioned as primary 
 and secondary, is the work done ; but then, like 
 unto the solar spectrum, the band of expository 
 colors admits of being gathered into a ray of 
 white explanatory light. The nose upon a face 
 sets all askew ; a portrait makes appearances 
 straight and orderly ; may be that's artistic, but 
 is the portrait true ? 
 
 Society is made up of men, women, and our 
 little folks, the children ; but measured by the 
 human standard are their relations straight and 
 true ? Separation of the inseparable, joinment 
 of that which is forever sundered, is the polit- 
 ico-economic art. How is it done ? By wan- 
 tion abuse of helpless words. Political economy, 
 to these symbols, is a huge abattoir. Its style 
 of putting words together may be helpfully sug- 
 gested by bits of colored tinsel paper carelessly 
 confused ; a prism made, turned, and twirled.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. IOQ 
 
 It was fine fun when a child to watch refraction 
 of the light. Unfamiliar with their meanings 
 orthodox political economists unhome economic 
 terms, transport them to foreign shores, re- 
 quiring them to fulfil impossible conditions, to 
 make crooked things look straight. 
 
 For the delusions of this peculiar race there 
 are reasons pathological. By recent explora- 
 tion the origin is traced to a vile little fellow 
 which microscopists call the microbe sycophan- 
 cia, but social sanitation is gaining fleet foot. 
 "Labor unions," " single tax," and "national- 
 ism all are working towards the same grand 
 end — socialism. By and by this pesky little 
 wretch, if not dead, will at least be hampered. 
 
 An exponent of our socio-industrial creed, an 
 upholder of plutocratic casuistry, defender of 
 economic popery, is " Principles of Political 
 Economy," by John Stuart Mill, himself a here- 
 tic. His great soul commands our friendship, 
 but yourself can judge of his mental poise 
 when, as word painter, he attempts the literary 
 picture of our social bog. Wealth, says Mr.
 
 IIO SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Mill, is not the indulgences for which you have 
 a taste, but it is the sum of money with which 
 you purchase them. After this he tells us that 
 money satisfies no want, that there cannot be in 
 the economy of society a more intrinsically insig- 
 nificant thing than money, except as a contrivance 
 for sparing time and labor; and with truth 
 might he not have added, the most significant 
 and valuable contrivance with which to coerce 
 the laborer into sparing his comforts and his 
 rights ? 
 
 At last, after leviathan turns and twists, Mr. 
 Mill lands a real definition when he says wealth 
 may be defined as useful and agreeable things 
 possessing exchange value, and upon which la- 
 bor has been expended. Capital, says this au- 
 thor, is supposed, by persons wholly unused to 
 reflection upon the subject, to be synonymous 
 with money, but money is no more synony- 
 mous with capital than it is with wealth. 
 Money cannot itself perform any part of the 
 office of capital, since it can afford no assistance 
 to production.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I I I 
 
 If reflection plays a logician such a scurvy- 
 trick, ought we not for conscience' sake to start 
 in opposition to Christian Scientists ? Ought 
 we not to affirm there is no mind ? 
 
 Labor, says " Principles of Political Econ- 
 omy," is either bodily or mental, muscular or 
 nervolis ; and we are assured that it is essen- 
 tial to the idea to include those feelings of a 
 disagreeable kind which are connected with the 
 employment of one's thoughts or muscles, or 
 both, in a particular occupation. Though Mr. 
 Mill admits that there are times when muscles 
 and nerves harmoniously combine to perform 
 the body's function, still by implication the 
 marrow of this definition is that nervous matter 
 abides only in the dome of the body palace. 
 
 At a time rife with real knowledge, how 
 strange to find a man thinking that muscles 
 moved unbidden by their owner's thought, moved 
 unvivified by life's electric nervous current ! 
 Outside the "dismal science," John Stuart 
 Mill is scarcely the man to be accused of 
 knowing only that which is learned from appear-
 
 I I 2 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MVTHES 
 
 ances most superficial, so for that strange matter 
 reason can be found, and I think I have it : he 
 was kindly in his nature, his great soul revol- 
 ted from a social horror — child labor ; were 
 their muscles without nerves they could not 
 suffer ; thus he stilled his heart's great throb. 
 Oh ! the little arms, and the little legs, of little 
 toilers ; never do they tire or ache ; neither do 
 the arms and legs of grown-up laboring folks. 
 
 Have you a kitten ? Give a ball of yarn 
 to the little creature, watch him turn and 
 turn, tangled up in the frolic ; no occasion for 
 alarm, a straight cut through the mess, so, and 
 pussy is out unharmed ; but oh ! that yarn. Po- 
 litical economy solemnly affirms that though 
 labor may be productive of something, yet may 
 it also be productive of nothing, which nothing, 
 these authors, before the chapter ends, trans- 
 form into something. By the skilful use of 
 their magic wand, and with swearing hand 
 uplifted, they solemly aver that labor is not 
 the creator of objects, but of utilities? 
 
 Labor creates not matter, its service to us
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I I 3 
 
 is trifling, merely puts things into right pos- 
 itions. Mother Nature is the worker, politi- 
 cal economy affirms. What luck ! All my 
 life have I nursed a mistake, have gloried in an 
 error, the thought that I knew of at least one 
 dame who upon male men had the "cinch " all 
 the time. Ah ! Dame Nature, what can ease 
 my sore heart ? Political economy dives deep 
 into things, scales dizzy heights, and, when oc- 
 casion offers, penetrates man's nature ; but up 
 and off with more than locomotive speed it 
 breaks the circumference of the living circle. 
 Unmindful that the generic term " man " can 
 be rightly used in argument only to support 
 some general fact, such as a universal desire, a 
 universal want, they, by a tortion movement of 
 being's circle, form a spiral and aid the climb of 
 individual selfishness, of plutocratic spoil. 
 
 What is matter ? Nothing less than a ma- 
 terializing medium to force, giving it oppor- 
 tunity to demonstrate its almighty might. 
 With spirit, therefore, matter is one and in- 
 separable ; it is the same in source. And
 
 114 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 yet by the thoughtless and the hypocrite how 
 matter is abused. Doubtless on the line of 
 travel it has descended from an ethereal to a 
 solid state. Gas becomes ice, but is not ice 
 preservative, useful ? Ask the feverish dying 
 man. Be it so; gross matter then is heaven's 
 ticket of leave ; think you that by those celesti- 
 als such is e'er forgotten ? To us gross mat- 
 ter is — well, what'is it not? It is an opportunity 
 for individualization, the means for an earthly 
 pilgrimage, our donkey ride. 
 
 Following the lead of authority to the other 
 half of the socio-economic sphere, let us turn to 
 the department of distribution of social wealth, 
 and here in this sacrosanct realm let us make 
 strenous effort to grasp validity of character in 
 men's interpretation of "the word" to the hew- 
 man. Friends, this have I done ; I own with 
 humiliation that here upon this mount of super- 
 stition, ignorance, and blind folly, erupted by 
 male stupidity, — here reverence for the truth 
 wrings from my faltering pen this admission : 
 that verily there is a spot in space, a niche in
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I I 5 
 
 time, where persistent labor is productive of no- 
 thing, absolutely nothing but mental vacuity. 
 
 Rent, says political economy (excluding from 
 the definition the disturbing etymological ele- 
 ment), is that part of the product of labor paid 
 to him who by the orderly arrangements of 
 society has exclusive (that is unnatural) control 
 over natural agents (opportunities). Let us 
 suppose (this phrase is borrowed from the 
 classics of political economy) — let us suppose 
 this " him " to be unsentimental, in squatter 
 sovereignty standing firm, unwilling to yield a 
 jot of land for folks to live upon, to till. Ah ! 
 but payment of rent is the one love charm 
 which ne'er has failed ; works a miracle, trans- 
 forms exclusive owners, makes them sentimen- 
 tal. As I am interested to know what one so 
 mild and gentle as yourself would, under cer- 
 tain circumstances, do, let us suppose that a 
 board was brought, not by a pocket monkey, 
 cute little fellow, but by a big dangerous dou- 
 ble-headed gorilla, who, taking advantage, 
 dropped it upon you unawares, and then down
 
 Il6 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 upon it sat. That flashing eye reveals your 
 soul, and I am answered : not the time for gen- 
 tle persuasion, but for motions called forth by 
 the cruel and wicked act, for movements pre- 
 servative of natural rights, the opportunity to 
 walk free and erect. To dislodge a burden that 
 ought not, need not,be borne is wise and right. 
 God has willed it. 
 
 But, friends, I beg you to remember, that 
 which is lawful, that which is just and right to 
 preserve the body free, upright, if done in be- 
 half of the moral self, is not only wicked, but is 
 positively criminal, says male law. 
 
 Again, let us suppose that one desirous to 
 perpetuate Herr Gorilla's individualism, an eco- 
 nomic casuist, comes and assumes direction 
 of your feelings and your acts, addresses you 
 in this wise : 
 
 " Being a common, ignorant fellow, I am come 
 to bring you socio-economic truths and to give 
 you guidance. This position, my good friend, 
 is the result of your own misdeeds, is not 
 caused by another ; shiftlessness and laziness
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I I 7 
 
 bring their just reward. Had you looked out 
 through the back of your head this gentleman 
 could have taken no advantage ; that he sits up- 
 on your back you have yourself to thank ; you 
 refused to use visual agility. No sentimental- 
 ist am I, so call to mind your lost chance to 
 climb this powerful monster's back. Does a 
 realist urge you to make known your woes, 
 to make a noise, then is such a one an agitator, 
 seeking to subvert natural social order by 
 stimulating envy, by fomenting .dissensions, 
 planting antagonism between yourself and 
 your best friends. By the operation of psy- 
 chological law, bringing your condition into no- 
 tice will have but one effect, harden Lord Go- 
 rilla, petrify his instruments, the middlemen, turn 
 them into stone. To reach their hearts and 
 soften them by your woes I advise the ideal- 
 istic plan : keep shady, dark, never let your 
 sufferings and your wrongs be known. Only 
 such should approach you as are equal to the 
 recognition of real causes, Myself. Upon your 
 feet allowed, there is possibility of treading
 
 I I 8 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 more on the heels than upon your toes and then 
 let us suppose the earth should quake. Now 
 the superior position of this creature creates an 
 office ; under social covenant he is trustee, and 
 a double function fulfils ; you are kept from 
 crime, and society is protected from an awful 
 break. To say otherwise betrays hostility to 
 accumulation, to private property, and is an 
 invitation for barbarism to return. See it ? 
 What, you don't ? 
 
 " The business men, brainy part of society, 
 express themselves well pleased with the style 
 of these remarks, therefore your disapproval 
 I conclude is a personal matter and arises from 
 a desire to arbitrate. I must try another line 
 of argument. With submissive service fulfil 
 thy life mission, my brother ; to toss Gorilla 
 from thy back, upon individual rights thou 
 would'st be trampling. Dost seek coercive leg- 
 islative interference ? Why, impious man, that 
 aim is no better. Endeavor to adorn the posi- 
 tion whereunto it hath pleased God to merci- 
 fully call such as thou. Be useful, timeserv-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. II9 
 
 ing ; peaceably wear this double-headed mon- 
 ster's galling yoke ; yourself may yet be free. 
 Through natural law this creature's soul by and 
 by with charitable thought may overflow ; pos- 
 sibly his benevolent heart may burst. Per- 
 chance the precious nectar trickles down this 
 way by thee. Meantime, reflect that thou art 
 dust, and that it mattereth not, at least to us, 
 when thou returnest to the whence from which 
 wert taken." 
 
 Reflection with some folks cannot rise superior 
 to the angle of external incident. The occur- 
 rence which I have to relate is an episode 
 instructive and amusing. 
 
 I was student in the university extension 
 course, that motion which was started by some 
 English women who hungered for collegiate 
 learning. Response to their invitation to come 
 and feed them was by wise men put into form, 
 and there resulted the university extension 
 course, a movement which entertains the 
 would-be student, which diverts the public 
 thought, thereby warding off the expiring groans
 
 120 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 of those grand institutions of no knowledge but 
 much learning. To the Oxford tutor who 
 through the evening had discoursed upon 
 socialism, had just held us all entranced, this 
 question was proposed by a disturbing element : 
 "Will you kindly tell us, professor, what is the 
 function of the landlord?" Forward I leaned ; 
 I held my breath, lest perchance mine ear missed 
 sweet vibrations, knowledge. With calm and 
 dignified composure, with sweet serenity upon a 
 smiling face, the lips were parted and with voice 
 devoid of an emotional quaver the air was pierced 
 (and so were we) with "Why, to furnish land, 
 sir." What need of more to tell ? Upon that 
 Philadelphia audience fell a holy chill, for then 
 it knew in what presence it had sat, how near 
 to awful majesties it came ; the mediumistic 
 realized that an Oxford tutor, Mr. S., "don of 
 great wit," upon ambrosia had fed, had supped 
 with gods. 
 
 You are a tramp. Pardon, monsieur, no of- 
 fence. I do not mean one of society's best 
 abused, but such man's opposite. Let me see :
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 121 
 
 as you are inclined to philosophize, and are prac- 
 tical too, I will assume that you are a lover and 
 and a collector of rare delf ; are in Japan. The 
 catalogues of various pottery shops to you are 
 brought ; here is one representing rare china, 
 exquisite in design, unsurpassed. Hastily you 
 rise, will go at once and feast your eyes, for, if 
 reality be not outdone by an "ad," your soul 
 shall entertain delightful guests, pleasant emo- 
 tions ; but, concluding that it will be wise to 
 make yourself familiar with the location and 
 character of the precious earthenware, you turn 
 again to the catalogue, well pleased with the 
 evidence which it gives of the orderly arrange- 
 ment of the shop. But this time what do you 
 find ? One raving bull set down as ornament. 
 
 With spectacles on and with eyes unaided, I 
 have searched a mound rich in fossil treasure, 
 political economy ; and here is its explanation 
 of rent. The individuals of society are, by the 
 social phenomenon, rent, divided into two har- 
 monious factions, having a mutual interest in 
 each other. Rent is the effect of a monopoly, but
 
 122 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 a monopoly which is natural and cannot be pre- 
 vented from existing. It may be regulated, 
 however, and act as a trust for the community 
 generally. God has given to some more intel- 
 lect than he has vouchsafed to others, conse- 
 quently the land is appropriated and held as a 
 sacred inviolable trust for less favored brethren. 
 
 It is not known how in society the system 
 of renting was first established. Rent is the 
 spontaneous offering of nature, or an accident. 
 By an accidental occurrence society is divided 
 into landlord and tenant. By this orderly 
 arrangement its individuals are separately classi- 
 fied into controllers of, and beggars for, oppor- 
 tunities to work and live ; and by this means 
 the highest possible social functioning power is 
 obtained. 
 
 Furthermore, life is shown to be the result 
 of complex organization. Special joints having 
 grown upon the site of the social fracture, society 
 and its atomic parts are enabled to travel eco- 
 nomic grounds with a rapid limping gait ; and 
 sustained is the analogy between the living body
 
 AND MVTHE-MAKERS. I 23 
 
 and the social organism, as it is used by political 
 economists. 
 
 The land being limited in amount, it is known 
 that a persevering athlete starting from a given 
 point, let us suppose the Brooklyn bridge, and 
 going due west, can, without reversing his 
 direction, if he survive the healthful exercise of 
 walking and wading, return to the exact spot 
 from which he started ; therefore are there 
 consequences. 
 
 Furthermore, by an artistic use of deductive 
 reasoning (this art no monopoly), it is found that 
 as the spots of land which make up afield differ 
 in their position, therefore must there be an 
 absolute difference in their fertility ; therefore, 
 more consequences. It is discovered by actual 
 experiment that unlike the laboring atom, the 
 little factory child, one molecule of earth-soil 
 cannot be made to do the work of a whole field, 
 of a regiment of atoms. Hence on this earth 
 consequences of no mean order have arisen, 
 which have given a shock to the plans of Omnip- 
 otence, and, but for the law of gravitation pre-
 
 124 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 venting, they might reach out and destroy the 
 sublime order of celestial space, namely, the 
 necessity to limit population, and the necessity 
 to pay rent. Well-matched, beautiful pair, in 
 you natural selection has done graceful work. 
 
 Explanations of rent admit of being arranged 
 in opposite sets, each starting from opposed 
 mythical conceptions, due to the fact that politi- 
 cal economists, in their evolution, had reached 
 that point where begin attempts to philosophize. 
 
 One set starts the economic Adam from the 
 very topmost peak of best farming land, and as 
 the race has climbed time's ladder downward 
 to more inferior soil, always downward goes the 
 farming man. Like their Maker, ignorant of 
 " the law of population," the. unenlightened 
 economic pair, with superior ground just enough 
 for two, brought forth the family brood. Natur- 
 ally each one wanted that superior point of land, 
 and so began the crowding and the pushing of 
 brother man by brother man. 
 
 This wretched economic mythe, descent of agri- 
 cultural man, what wickedness has it not be-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 25 
 
 gotten ? Unmoral thought and act, and social 
 progress impeded. Across the water look. 
 Primogeniture and entail. The family nest 
 legally big enough for only one, and that one a 
 son. The lessons given to Him by men God is 
 slow in learning ; other children come, and in the 
 family home by sufferance only are endured. 
 
 Somewhere have I seen it stated (I think it 
 was in their parliamentary reports) that the 
 rational, cool-headed Englishman ascribed to the 
 increasing cultivation of inferior soil the rise in 
 price of corn, likewise the elevation of his rent. 
 Then he became mad, not at God, but at his 
 poor mediums, the laboring folk, for taking to 
 their arms the little children sent. Ridiculous, 
 absurd, he argued, and the ocean near provi- 
 dentially provided on either side in which to 
 drown ! Fearing beggary from the use of 
 too much land, this orator seriously proposed 
 arrest of the linear extension of land cultiva- 
 tion ; no more new farms. In stentorian 
 tones he cried, To benevolence must be impu- 
 ted the alacrity of those English " land trus-
 
 126 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 tees " who enclosed, appropriated the British 
 commons. 
 
 To expend thought continuously in one di- 
 rection is exhaustive ; the gray matter of the 
 brain will not stand it ; the mind must have a 
 change; so, when occasion demanded, this Eng- 
 lish orator has been known to declare that, to 
 keep the mercantile value of food up, some- 
 thing must at once be done ; stirred by altruis- 
 tic impulse he shouted, down, down onto infer- 
 ior soils ; stop not ; dip in, even unto earth's 
 fiery molten lava ; anything, great gods, any- 
 thing to make hard work, and keep the price of 
 breadstuffs up. 
 
 In other directions also the Englishman has 
 strange delusions, relations in the family. Yet 
 I am loth to pronounce him wholly lunatic. 
 However, this is neither the time nor the place 
 to divulge a disgraceful secret. 
 
 I have something to suggest before overtaking 
 the theory proposed by good old father Carey. 
 This pious man was certain that capitalism was 
 divinely elected, foreordained ; was the pre-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 27 
 
 destinated plan ; and as he had to own that things 
 were not exactly straight and square, he under- 
 took " to vindicate the ways of God to man," 
 undertook to help Almighty God out of a capi- 
 talistic fix. 
 
 I speak to Anarchists, they who attack our 
 "Holy Bible." My suggestion is that the next 
 time ye demolish an existing scriptural order, 
 upon God's written word lay destroying 
 hands, ye revise that narrative of our first 
 parent pair and wholesome reversion make. It 
 would have a moral effect to represent the 
 beginning of human travel as an evolution 
 climb, Eden, the earthly paradise, not left be- 
 hind, but to be attained by man striving to 
 help, not to hinder, his other selves ; attained 
 through deeds arising from the recognition of 
 equal rights, deeds that are human. 
 
 To justify capitalism, to demonstrate the 
 Tightness of rent, a tax upon the many im- 
 posed by the few, Henry C. Carey starts his 
 economic man from the very worst point of 
 farming land ; knowledge of its whereabouts, nil.
 
 128 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Upon the side of a sleep hill, this author says, 
 spots of soil were found so thin that high-bred 
 wild trees disdained to make use of them. 
 Here the Careyian economic Crusoe pitches 
 tent and plants grain, taking care about the 
 depth of the hole ; exactly two inches and no 
 more, lest perchance through the earth-sphere 
 that grain worked, coming up and out on the 
 opposite side, all to the benefit of the " cursed 
 foreigner." 
 
 I do commiserate thy hard fate, economic 
 Crusoe, for the antiquarian states that without 
 axe or spade thou didst work. From this, re- 
 specting Mrs. Crusoe, we infer Was 
 
 she a gay and frivolous creature, and when not 
 at work upon piano board, were her taper 
 fingers occupied in training bangs, in frizzing 
 her front hair ? 
 
 Of the necessities of romance our author has 
 an intuition. The success of Crusoe calls up 
 happy emotions ; still I admit that the spirit 
 of envy at the same time is evoked by the 
 greatness of Mr. Crusoe's work. That barren
 
 AND MVTHE-MAKERS. 1 29 
 
 soil yielded plentiful return to meagre planting. 
 Crusoe took the grain, pounded it, and bread 
 obtained. 
 
 My head is in a whirl ; air, give me air, and let 
 me try to think. Merely from pounding seed, 
 bread kneaded, moulded, and freshly baked 
 came upon the table ready to be eaten. 
 Here, my erring sisters, is occasion for con- 
 trition, repentance, for a sin of omission ; had 
 men been allowed to do the housework, had 
 they been wisely left alone, we should not now 
 have one chance to mourn a "lost art." 
 
 The next picture from the Carey collection is 
 an exact representation of the origin of rent. 
 
 I pause to request the reader to bear con- 
 stantly in mind something peculiar. Political 
 economists know of but a single use to 
 which land is put, that of farming. Indeed, 
 so far behind the spirit and the doings of the 
 time is this peculiar race, that in their presence 
 I for one would not dare to broach the subject 
 of town lots, would expect to scare them off the 
 planet. The beauties and the glories of a pic-
 
 I30 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 ture may be great, out to obtain emotional 
 benefit each for-herself must recognize the sub- 
 lime. 
 
 To help us realize the artistic in Mr. Carey's 
 word painting of those ancient industrial do- 
 ings, whose effect is the undoubted cause of 
 rent, I advise a silent petition to our mental 
 fairy, imagination, to come and help us com- 
 prehend his hidden meaning. No longer 
 marshy forests into which, warned by the latest 
 on bacteriology, economic Crusoe dare not 
 enter, but instead an immense tract of equally 
 fertile land. A few families only, holding no 
 converse and having no exchange. In three 
 years, without axes or spades, their unaided 
 fingers and toes raised two hundred bushels 
 of grain, or produced a farm, says historian 
 Carey. 
 
 Population was not stationary. God is in it. 
 An overflow of young people ; spades were 
 smuggled to them ; mermaids (?) did it. 
 AiiotJier two hundred bushels of grain were 
 raised, or what is tantamount to it, more farms
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 13! 
 
 were produced. As population increased, more 
 young people, more overflows, more spades, 
 more farms. Natural order at last was inter- 
 rupted by a man (of such "fool thing " woman 
 is not guilty) appearing upon the scene from 
 ****** No, I will not ; please don't urge 
 me ; in polite print the word looks ugly******. 
 This man, in the midst of an immense body 
 of equally fertile lands, insists upon having 
 the property of that first batch of farmers, and 
 to induce the sacrifice offers them a subsidy 
 and calls it rent ; and the record further states 
 that they left to him the whole of their im- 
 provements. 
 
 Time rolls on, the good work of farm pro- 
 duction keeping pace ; into use come new and 
 newer implements ; anon those landlords are 
 compelled to make concessions unto him who 
 brought occasion for social disorder, brought 
 a cause of moral disease, rent. But woman's 
 be the glory, the renown, of opening prison 
 doors ; by bringing death unto the body, she 
 brought freedom to the soul. In the opera-
 
 132 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 tion of farm production, by the use of spades 
 labor-time was saved ; in this lies the nucleus 
 of a great wrong perpetrated, it is affirmed, upon 
 our sacrificing landlords. 
 
 To estimate the mercantile value of land, to 
 measure labor-time, to weigh the difficulty of all 
 subsequent agricultural effort, Henry C. Carey 
 exercised his infallible clairvoyant powers upon 
 unaided man's first production of two hundred 
 bushels of grain. Thus Mr. Carey sowed, and 
 thus the politico-economic student reaps a har- 
 vest of delusions. From that social epoch un- 
 til 1878 or 1879, we are assured that all the 
 landlord secures is but his just reward, albeit 
 received vicariously for landlordism's sacrificial 
 deed. There is admission that his share of labor 
 products as an absolute amount continuously in- 
 creases, but there are protestations that as ^pro- 
 portional affair landlords are constantly defraud- 
 ed, are, in short, robbed of figures. Political 
 economists are ready reckoners, they are mathe- 
 matical adepts, therefore the two ends of rent's 
 sliding scale are shown to us beginning with 25
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I33 
 
 per cent of the results of his farming toil, the 
 amount joyfully tendered by that first renter. 
 From then until the time when ended the Ca- 
 reyian reconnoitre, decrease had done disastrous 
 work, wretched landlords being left with about 
 1-200,000,000,000 as their share of figures, a 
 beggarly pittance truly. 
 
 Mr. Carey accuses society of base ingratitude 
 to men who manufactured under difficulties, 
 when, as he says, it was hard. The debt we 
 owe them, he makes out to be incalculably 
 great ; does it through a form of reckoning at a 
 compound-interest rate. To their abstinence 
 from eating that two hundred bushels of grain 
 do we owe not only our landlords, but likewise 
 our farms. 
 
 Reader, kindly abstain from holding me re- 
 sponsible for the contradiction, for the queer- 
 ness of this piece of information ; remember, I 
 am not the author, but only his word interpre- 
 ter. 
 
 Now this political economist thinks that soci- 
 ety should know its blessings, should be honest
 
 134 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 and not repudiate a debt to legitimate posterity, 
 to lineal descendants in a direct line. I confess 
 that I don't see it as he does, but a thought 
 takes me : that Theosophic theory, reincarna- 
 tion — perhaps here is an instance for its proper 
 application. Shades of the mighty past, can 
 it be the "egos" of those axeless, spadeless 
 men, creatures called into being by more than 
 Aladdin powers, — can it be that they are with 
 us, are in our very midst, as plutocrats. 
 
 I am wondering if Mr. Carey, with Dr. 
 Weissmann, author of " Continuity of Germ 
 Plasm," that theory of heredity which has 
 supplied the possessors of the titles F. R. S., 
 M. A., B. S., and M. D. with food for seri- 
 ous thought, with solid matter, — am won- 
 dering could it be that they were " masters " 
 disguised, and had left a distant star to 
 bring to us ignorant mortals transcendental 
 knowledge ? Realizing that the uninspired 
 with inspiration make sad work, I refer my 
 reader to the Carey books, where harmony of 
 interest between the capitalist and the laborer
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 35 
 
 is positively affirmed, not through a point of eco- 
 nomic sameness, equality, but through a point 
 of difference. Take note, harmony is produced 
 through a cause for dispute. Those zvickcd fig- 
 ures ! While the capitalist and the laborer both 
 get a continuously increasing share of the things 
 which are by labor produced, the laborer, this 
 author avers, gets the best of it in figures ; and 
 he allows that this additional advantage should 
 make the laborer contented and happy. But 
 somehow it doesn't. 
 
 Stop a bit ; I find that I have been too hasty ; 
 this page has anew "goody." To make that 
 which Henry C. Carey has declared exists, to 
 make harmony of interest manifest itself and 
 work, invoked is the strong arm of the law. 
 Political protection, adequate and certain, must 
 prevent the consumer from moving from the 
 actual spot where his breadstuff he obtained ; this 
 our author is sure and certain will make things 
 straight and square, at least with the ground. 
 
 "All things come to those who wait." I 
 was on the eve of discouragement, thinking my-
 
 1 36 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 self ill-used by a long and fruitless search ; at 
 last I was made happy, had a surprise ; at last 
 I detected a political economist with a con- 
 ception of reciprocity, a perception of equality 
 in mutual relations, and all alive with useful 
 ideas of how to make society's work natural. 
 I was exuberant, felt that now I could claim 
 the honor of making an addition to the store 
 of philosophic, to the store of zoiilogic know- 
 ledge ; for had I not discovered the law of 
 natural selection in the very act of supen- 
 sion ? had I not found in this politico-economic 
 author a variation from and in his particular 
 species ? But the thing that puzzled me was 
 what did it ; not the environment, for acquired 
 characters are not transmitted.* 
 
 Henry C. Carey called upon the legislature 
 to interfere and by protection prevent a wrong. 
 The consumer must not become a tourist, a 
 criminal, this pious writer said ; no plot of 
 ground should be defrauded of its natural 
 manure, that refuse which resulted from con- 
 
 * See Dr. Weissmann's " Theory of Heredity."
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 37 
 
 sumption of the particular grain which the plot 
 itself had afforded. This economic " Toddie " 
 •'wanted to shee the wheels go wound."
 
 I38 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONFUSION OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTS. POLITI- 
 CAL ECONOMY AN IMAGINARY CALCULUS. 
 (Continued.) 
 
 COME with me into that nation which ab- 
 hors shopkeepers, is itself a shop — into 
 England. This little country has clone fine 
 things, but, like our own, has perpetrated acts 
 which put to blush the moral self. Their social 
 earthquakes have laid some of the different forms 
 of tyranny low, but, foolhardy, their rebuilding 
 was upon the crater, and so in that regeneration 
 which awaits society they will have more to burn 
 than we. This nation has by means fair and by 
 means foul reached out in all directions, has even 
 stretched upwards, given birth to saints, one of 
 whom was real, the Earl of Shaftesbury. 
 
 This slight tribute paid to one so truly good, 
 so truly great, I proceed to the substance of this 
 chapter, begin a panegyric.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 39 
 
 This land boasts of kings and bloody saints, 
 of literary patrons, and of late possesses a real 
 wonder, public schools. More than a century 
 ago it gave birth unto an intellectual giant, a 
 Hercules, who in time became the prince of 
 bomb-throwers ; and this is how the murderous 
 attempt was brought about. There had been 
 revelations of entrepreneur atrocities, and the 
 mother-thought of this most Christian nation 
 was stirred. Their blue books tell ; in them 
 one finds enough to turn the blackest of black ink 
 into red. Awakened by such disclosures, the 
 moral thought began to work, and this alarmed 
 British law and order. 
 
 To quell the rioters one came from out that 
 class who ordain each other by the laying on of 
 their own clean hands ; this prepares them for 
 the gospel work, enables them to keep an ear in 
 heaven. By circumstantial evidence, by relevant 
 testimony, by inferences from his words and 
 acts, this minister is convicted of hatred for the 
 oppressed and of love for the oppressor. His 
 brutal soul had no chord responsive to the woes
 
 I4O SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 of toiling little children. The heart of the Rev. 
 T. R. Malthus was full of the plutocratic "coo;" 
 but on the Sabbath, Christ's love was upon his 
 lips. 
 
 Om, almighty power, to me incline ; I would 
 be filled with holy fire ; then to my soul's scorn 
 of stupendous iniquity I might give sound, might 
 utterance give to my disdain for Malthusianism ; 
 and then I could express proper contempt foi 
 the intelligence of its acceptors. 
 
 The reverend gentleman threw upon the 
 spreading social thought his bomb, which proved 
 destructive because the people believed, did not 
 discover that it was merely the empty astral 
 shell of ////thought. By the word " law " they 
 were asphyxiated. 
 
 Now less respect for that term, and earnest 
 search beneath it to see if a moral right is un- 
 folded or a legal wrong covered, would be wise 
 and at least do society no harm. Narcotization 
 enfeebles ; which accounts for the few sledge- 
 hammer blows that fell upon that booby thing 
 which the blundering call the " law of popula- 
 tion."
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 141 
 
 Stripped of its gauzy covering, interpreted, 
 this is its nakedness : population exists as the 
 result of people dying by foul godly means, but 
 if the business of foul destruction be taken out 
 of divine hands, be supplanted by moral means 
 (preventives), then population would exist as a 
 result of people never being born. Such is the 
 Malthusian theory; "only this and nothing 
 more." Records which are going down, down, 
 down to inferior posterity, show that the incred- 
 ible occurred. 
 
 The practical, the thinking Englishman was 
 scared out of his wits by just a clergymen's 
 bogey, in his mascot lost confidence, expected 
 population to rise with tidal celerity and press 
 upon his subsistence ; in anticipation he was 
 hungry, he was starved. 
 
 The wage-fund doctrine (nothing in it, no sub- 
 stance, is "without form and void") works hard 
 for, supports, is a fulcrum to, the Malthusian 
 theory. To political economy the wage-fund 
 doctrine is both bone and marrow. This is it : 
 every day in the year there is an exact amount
 
 142 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 of an unknown quantity of the social funds which 
 His Majesty, the Capitalistic Will, devotes to 
 the purposes of production ; observe, the wishes 
 and the wants of the people are not immediately 
 "in it." 
 
 Because the Capitalistic Will is coy, given to 
 coquetry, readily converted from a stable into an 
 unstable quantity, political economists affirm that 
 it is quite impossible to obtain dimensions of 
 that wage fund. Reasoning thus : to know the 
 number of capitalists in a country is impossible, 
 and lucre the number known, in matters of pro- 
 duction nothing certain could be based upon it, 
 for, owing to circumstances which nothing can 
 control, the Capitalistic Will is ignorant of itself 
 in industrial affairs. Political economy is dere- 
 lict ; it fails to make mention of the one point 
 upon which this Will is illumined, viz : the 
 direction, through its aid, distribution takes. 
 
 The case is plain : knowledge of the wage fund 
 is a blank ; such is the only possible verdict ; 
 but by their method of deductive reasoning 
 political economists are permitted to rest upon
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 43 
 
 their want of intelligence the widest and most 
 far-reaching conclusions. What would be the 
 probable result did mechanics pursue a similar 
 course ? We are saved ; the laborer is unintel- 
 ligent, heaven be thanked. 
 
 Malthusianism protests that, at any one period 
 of time there is not, of the products of labor, 
 a sufficient amount in existence to supply the 
 actual wants of the people or to satisfy their 
 legitimate desires ; therefore a law of population 
 is at the helm to wreck a portion of the human 
 crew. Apparently one holy man was unac- 
 quainted with productive processes, about the 
 human method to obtain subsistence, food, had 
 no thought ; seems to have deemed it a case of 
 manna and of grab. Thus equipped, the Rev. 
 T. R. Malthus valiantly sprang to the aid of the 
 defenseless, to the help of the aristocrat, and 
 poured out vollies, not of grape or canister, but 
 words taking damnable shape. His the holy 
 mission to minister unto the highborn, to sustain 
 their fainting hearts, and to uphold their falling 
 arms.
 
 144 SOCIOECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Unto the laborer, therefore, thus he spake : 
 In your interests I have travelled far and wide, 
 have been to Ireland, crossed the Channel, and 
 through the grace of God am back in England, 
 am home safe. 1 have been, I have seen, and 
 I am conquered, am here to speak in your be- 
 half. I find that your class, mainly through 
 perversity, prefer huddling together, and are 
 ignorant of the land's limited capacity to hold 
 numbers. When open fields are all around, 
 when there is the broad country, why betake 
 yourselves to close quarters ? With the sea on 
 either side such a course is reprehensible. I 
 advise you to work nights, be industrious, plant 
 piles, become ocean-dwellers. Furthermore it 
 is laid upon me to rebuke the style of your 
 manners ; they are coarse, set at naught noble 
 example, the culture and refinement of a mano- 
 rial lord. Now, why don't you keep yourselves 
 like gentlemen ? Unto me has been revealed 
 the cause of your biting poverty, of your galling 
 want ; and as an obedient servant of the Lord 
 the source I must make known — solely your
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 45 
 
 own fault. Too many in Christ's vineyard, re- 
 dundancy, excess of numbers. Though the Lord 
 hath given you powers, yet their use offends my 
 lord. Your children's hunger presses upon sub- 
 sistence, prevents the kennels of my lord from 
 increasing. My lord would have his own, his 
 heart is sore ; obey the mandates of the Lord, 
 submissively take up the yoke ; it is easy, and 
 the burden, let us pray that you may find it 
 light. Cut down your numbers until they are 
 an exact fit of the wage fund. What that is, 
 and how to be reached, lies, I am aware, in a 
 London fog. Precise knowledge is not the forte 
 of my set. The wage fund docs exist, you know. 
 In successful efforts to find out about it lies 
 the scheme of your class' social salvation. The 
 English laborer is not a "blooming idiot," does 
 not expect through the works of another to 
 attain unto an earthly heaven. Besides, in an- 
 other direction lie the labors of your betters ; 
 they are working to bring about for you the 
 opposite social state. Your numbers diminished, 
 and the size of the wage fund remaining just
 
 I46 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 the same, it is plain that each, existing laborer 
 must through the natural movement of economic 
 funds receive his pro rata share of that surplus 
 called into existence by his abstinence. What 
 that share would be depends upon division. 
 There are times when knowledge of mathematics 
 would be well, but as a rule it would not help 
 the laboring class meekly to fulfil the station 
 whereunto it hath pleased God to call them. 
 Care has been taken not to blunder, not to sin 
 against ourselves by permitting them to have 
 good schools ; they would spoil our servants, 
 make them restless and to us unprofitable. 
 Who says that we are Bushmen ? We are Eng- 
 lishmen of the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. I bid laborers hearken unto God ; the 
 voice is heard, but needs an interpreter, and I 
 am at your service. 
 
 Uncover heads. Thus saith the Lord God : 
 It hath repented me the giving unto the laborer 
 powers of reproduction equal to those bestowed 
 upon the aristocrat. In relationing your kind 
 unto the earth, Omniscience committed a mathe-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 47 
 
 matical blunder, to correct which, from heavenly 
 quarters scourges are sent upon you — war, crime, 
 famine, evictions, pestilence, licentiousness, vice, 
 misery, and disease. These, I, the Rev. T. R. 
 Malthus, have named the positive checks to pop^ 
 ulation. Now credit me, if you please, with 
 the great discovery of the Christian era, God's 
 mode of dealing with the recreant class who ex- 
 ercise the powers Himself hath given. Indeed 
 I am not done ; I would incite you to a filial 
 deed : head off your Heavenly Father by moral 
 means, by preventives ; do not marry ; children 
 then cannot be born. Socialists proclaim that 
 men are free and equal, born so ; sheer nonsense, 
 you know. Such doctrine is subversive of law 
 and order. The phrase is pretty, to be sure, 
 and upon occasions useful ; acts as fuel to keep 
 the party warm in a campaign attack. In a 
 country's constitution it looks well, and from the 
 pulpit it is full of meaning. Still it is mere 
 fancy ; nothing practical in it. " Hinds," peas- 
 ants, the equal of myself or my lord of the manor ? 
 Not a "bloody bit of it." Socialists are
 
 I48 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 "blooming idiots." By natural right the prod- 
 ucts of your toil your own ? Another monstrous 
 theory ; stirs up strife and envy, turns you 
 from the narrow path, and by preventing humility 
 hinders your upward movement. Take away 
 submission unto wrong and tyranny, what is to 
 call out pure white thoughts ? what is to uplift 
 the laborer's soul ? Samson-like, socialists 
 would pull down the bulwarks of the temple — 
 of society — and would keep you laborers out of 
 heaven ; heed them not ; turn to us ; believe and 
 live. If there is a thing that makes me furious, 
 fills my soul with righteous wrath, it is to find 
 the laboring class claiming their own. To want 
 natural rights is unaltruistic, is selfishness — in 
 the proletariat. 
 
 Unregenerate, would you falsify your Lord, 
 evade the curse pronounced in Eden ? Listen : 
 by the sweat of your brow, by the toil of your 
 hands, others all the days of your life shall live 
 and eat. Still ye doubt, are not converted to 
 the truth, but are wavering in the belief that 
 ye press upon subsistence, that ye make times
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 49 
 
 hard, and are the means of raising rent. 
 O stiff-necked, perverse race, why so obdu- 
 rate ? The intelligent, thinking class were 
 convinced before the words of wisdom were 
 fairly out of my mouth. An object-lesson 
 will serve to make plain the injurious ef- 
 fects upon society of an increase in your num- 
 bers. Bring me chips ; while I hold this one, 
 place beneath it each of the others in succession. 
 There, by such arrangement two obscure 
 events are made plain, the downward move- 
 ment of land cultivation, and the rise in rent. 
 Increase of rent arises, you perceive, from an 
 elevation of the Adamic farm, fresh strips of 
 cultivation being slipped beneath, naturally it 
 moves upward, and along with it goes rent, 
 "you know." Science makes the duty of the 
 dependent (?) class plain ; curb your passions, your 
 desire for social joys stifle, for together this twain 
 must go down and out. Thus saith my lord : 
 Not for you are babies' smiles and babies' love, 
 the child's help to climb ; these are for your 
 betters ; they must exercise their powers, and
 
 I 50 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MVTHES 
 
 the world, " you know," must be peopled. 
 Upon the sacrificial altar bind yourselves. 
 The Lord loveth a cheerful giver, delights in 
 slaughtered lambs ; believe and live. God so 
 loved the world that he gave His only be- 
 gotten Son that men might not perish, but 
 have ample opportunity in which to hate and 
 rend each other, have, in short, life ever- 
 lasting. Stop a bit ; I may be hasty ; to com- 
 promise is possible ; man is not ungenerous 
 by nature. As an agent for the plutocrat I 
 offer you easy terms. You must not allow 
 your little ones to grow up, and British laws 
 shall be made holding you responsible for 
 dereliction in your wives, should they, during 
 the three score years and ten, fail to provide 
 them with breast milk. These conditions, 
 while affording your class ample opportunity 
 for domestic joys, will protect the subsistence 
 of my lord from objectionable slaughter. You 
 reject the terms, proposing to trump my part- 
 ner's ace, beat us at our game ? It shall 
 not be ; I protest ; God intends "hinds " humbly
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 5 I 
 
 to follow lead. I will besiege the throne of 
 grace, enlist the Universal Father in our pluto- 
 cratic cause, 
 
 O Thou, Maker of the heavens and of the 
 earths, our Father, from thy distant abode draw 
 near, vouchsafe divine aid to a conspiracy ; we 
 want social order, our peace ; want to be freed 
 from this talk of equal individual, talk of in- 
 born natural, rights ; wilt save us from social 
 heresy? O thou Omnipotent, Omniscient One, 
 in whom dwelleth not the possibility of error, 
 neither the shadow of a wavering turn, have I 
 thine ear in which to modestly unfold a scheme ? 
 Unto the laboring class, winged by the light- 
 ning of Omnipotent desire, do thou send 
 thoughts of humble obedience, convict them 
 of their duties unto us. Seemeth it well to 
 foster within their minds the hope of an equal- 
 ity in heaven ? Then mayest Thou do it ; 
 but, Lord, grant my righteous request ; help us 
 to keep this class our profitable servants for- 
 ever and forever. To secure this, our hearts' 
 desire, is there sure way known to Thee ? Why,
 
 152 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 then, send Thine emissary unto me ; I would 
 be prepared for the work, and unto Thy name 
 shall be the glory. 
 
 With an unctuous "Amen," Holy Tommy's 
 prayer was ended. 
 
 On Creation's rosy morn, oh ! why was I not 
 there to stay the arm of God, bid Him for 
 guidance wait for Malthus, the overwise di- 
 vine ? Let us assume that there are institu- 
 tions which, by religious antics, fill young 
 men with piety, warranted, for a price, to 
 overflow ; and now let us suppose that from 
 such a manufactory, which, from want of know- 
 ing better, I call a theological seminary, a pro- 
 fessor comes and informs us that in celestial 
 regions there is war, Satanic majesty leads a 
 riot, has thrown the Author of being over the 
 "battlements of heaven," and now claims the 
 works of God as his very own. 
 
 A pamphlet lies before me ; its author, a con- 
 vert to the Malthusian creed, is a woman. Her 
 intel 1 " \t was awry, but her soul with moral 
 Vis fired. Defying social prejudice,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 53 
 
 bigotry, braving personal danger, openly she 
 brought knowledge of " moral preventives " 
 unto the married poor. Such an act was no- 
 ble, heroic, and of a true cause was worthy. 
 By helping them to keep down their num- 
 bers, she thought to better the workingmen's 
 hard lot. Could they but secure better quar- 
 ters, could they but pay higher rent, why 
 then in England a land revolution might be 
 avoided. To society this woman's heart is an 
 ornament, but her head — well, of that, ample 
 explanation has been made by able critics ; 
 they have said, Annie Besa'nt has a male intel- 
 lect. 
 
 This is the place for a disclosure, that Brit- 
 ish secret. Have I your permission to make a 
 few explanatory remarks ? Prompted by self- 
 consciousness our early Christian Fathers 
 showed tender consideration to certain impul- 
 ses : their benevolence, however, was not a uni- 
 versal manifestation, for they lacked the Christ- 
 thought, the communistic feeling. Upon lo- 
 cation in the living field depended the color of
 
 I 54 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTIIES 
 
 the impulse, was it black or was it merely sun- 
 burnt. Accordingly, what in men was natural 
 and to be expected, and by anticipation provided 
 for, was in women undivine and on occasions 
 loathsome and horrible. The pagan move- 
 ment to equalize the sexual relation and secure 
 the establishment of that much social right, 
 was by this pious discrimination arrested, for 
 Christians had a higher aim. This obstruction 
 to the progress of the right is accounted for by 
 a change in the mouthpiece of religious oracles. 
 Among the unillumined, among pagans, oracu- 
 lar instruction was often the vocation of women ; 
 but among the Christians this performance was 
 purely by pure men. My English brother like- 
 wise is self-conscious; he is a Christian, is just 
 as good as good can be to an important weak 
 personage, himself ; but then his moral " I " 
 is sore, is weak of sight, sees differences where 
 none exist. 
 
 To illustrate : A London court room. The 
 presiding judge is not a Hottentot, is an English- 
 man. The case ? Ah, well, I am compelled to
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 5 5 
 
 own that upon occasion the wicked patience of 
 long-apprenticed, well-trained English wives 
 does give out, and then unto the common law 
 they turn, to find it a mythe. Plaintiff is a 
 woman, a wife. Defendant, her husband, not 
 defiant, but happy and complacent, for he 
 knows. Unto the lady the judge turns and 
 with surprised tones inquires the nature of her 
 charge. Thinking his ear had belied he re- 
 peats : "Adultery?" She bowed her head. 
 Confused, the judge asked a superfluous ques- 
 tion : Did he deny it ? The answer was a 
 stifled sob and an outraged look. Well, really, 
 madam, in the manners of a high-bred English 
 gentleman am I wanting if I venture to inquire 
 what at the hands of our common law you seek ? 
 Divorce ? Incredible ; that decree in favor of a 
 woman, and the charge merely adultery, would 
 reflect upon the justice of past sex administra- 
 tion, would establish a far-reaching and a 
 moral precedent. This court is not profane ; 
 will not by such decision set at naught the 
 teaching of the Church, commands of Christ.
 
 I56 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 He suffered not a woman to usurp authority, to 
 tell her husband he should not commit Eng- 
 lish adultery. Can it be that English wives 
 have lost their piety, turned jesters, gone mad, 
 and, because of wounded feelings, would tram- 
 ple upon their marriage vows " for better or for 
 worse," would, to gratify mere pique, cast out 
 a loving husband, separate a father from his 
 children, and rend the family circle ? Why, 
 the thing is positively absurd. The judge's 
 charge is to the woman : Such resentment, 
 madam, is, to say the least, unwomanly. 
 Have you read Gladstone ? It would be 
 well to make this occasion a means of grace. 
 To invite oppression is becoming in an Eng- 
 lish wife ; meek submission unto wrong is wom- 
 anly ; nice is the symmetrical relation between 
 tryannous oppression, uncomplaining endurance, 
 and beautiful uplifted thoughts and feelings. 
 The pious spirit is glad of any chance to reach 
 upward unto heaven, even though it be through 
 her husband going downward unto * * * *. 
 Case dismissed ; nothing in it but a worn-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAK.ERS. I 57 
 
 an's whim. Monstrous ! Why, the husband 
 was not guilty of cruelty. Next. 
 
 And again before that judge stood man and 
 woman ; positions were reversed. And the 
 lady was veiled. The charge against your wife ? 
 Adultery ? Did she deny it ? Indeed, your 
 honor, that she did, but I have undoubted proof. 
 Crossing himself, after a mumbled prayer, the 
 judge commands the sergeant to light the in- 
 cense, to bring him holy water, and thus en- 
 sured against the contagion of a moral leper, he 
 addressed the man : Wronged husband, whose 
 purity is fouly besmirched, take from the com- 
 mon law redress, an unlimited divorce. Upon 
 men the marriage vow is not a pressing bond ; 
 his the right to rend the family circle. Take 
 the children. 
 
 Who denies that nature, on the ownership of 
 child, her will declares by a sovereign fact, gives 
 us the holographic testament, but by La C< in- 
 vade we contest the will, declare nature to be of 
 unsound mind. Nothing is absurd if men so 
 decide. The court would have English wives
 
 I 5 vS SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 to know they arc not living in times or places of 
 gross immorality, where the laws recognize a 
 woman's equal right to commit an equal sexual 
 wrong. Then with sympathetic mien the court 
 turns unto the demoralized husband, and in hurt 
 tones speaks thus : We men by the injury you 
 have sustained suffer loss of dignity, for when 
 an English wife commits adultery she criminally 
 invades the man's domain, encroaches upon the 
 English-man's prerogative ; therefore, unto you, 
 our damaged brother, the court cheerfully offers, 
 in addition to divorce and child, the friendly 
 balm of sympathy. 
 
 Hm ! why is it that the quality of English 
 male adultery is so superfine that British law 
 stamps it as the English wife's perquisite ? 
 For a magician, not to far-off India need we go. 
 The Englishman's thought can potentize a vile 
 thing, can change it from gross matter to pure 
 essence, spirit. What a pity that the operation 
 of this power of magic transformation is limited 
 to just the English man's own bestial acts. But 
 this purity is found to be a bother, because to
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 59 
 
 match in bulk and weight the coarse product 
 of civilized countries, British mercantile sense 
 compels something more to be added — a bloody- 
 nose or two black eyes — English cruelty. 
 Measured by the principle of equal natural rights, 
 the adulterous law of the most Christian nation 
 is found to be incestuous, befouls its parents, 
 and is a breeder of vice. I do so love to get at 
 causes, knowing that they are always present as 
 external and internal. 
 
 Hm ! what can be the reason for such adulter- 
 ous difference ? Can it be wholly metaphysical — 
 the "big head" ? But this explanation brings 
 knowledge only one step nearer ; the puffed 
 head is now to be accounted for ; its external 
 and internal causes are to be searched after. 
 Beginning with the cause we know the most about, 
 our first search is for the external reason of the 
 Englishman's metaphysical condition, and its 
 resulting sex-thought. Schools ? Well, hardly ; 
 too recent is this opportunity for the great 
 English majority whose chance for an education 
 depended formerly upon the workhouse and
 
 l6o SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 God's vicegerents, the clergy. No, the cause, 
 whatever it may be, arose not from an education. 
 The Church ? What ! that institution which 
 exhibits divinity, which embodies and expresses 
 in its works the Christ principle ? 
 
 Why, before I can go further this must be 
 looked into. As it is my habit to reduce every- 
 thing as far as possible, make of it an object- 
 lesson, in order that my mind may be by the 
 help of eyes or ears aided, you will, I am sure, 
 excuse if I proceed along my customary lines, 
 write the statements out in full and then com- 
 pare. 
 
 According to the Christian Church, Jesus 
 said, I suffer not a woman to teach. I — suffer 
 — not — a woman — to — teach. That's astonish- 
 ing ! Now, did Christ want His freedom ham- 
 pered ? I can't believe it. According to the 
 Bible Jesus said, Do ye unto others as ye would 
 that they should do to you. This has the true 
 ring. But these two statements I cannot cor- 
 relate. The Christ principle and its opposite do 
 not meet in fraternal embrace ; water pure flows
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 01 
 
 from the skies, not water muddy. Besides, I 
 something know of the Christ principle, and am 
 sure that to impertinent interference with equal 
 rights it does not prompt a body. 
 
 The Bible may help me out of the difficulty 
 which the Christian Church begets. As I 
 thought, not Jesus, but a man, one Saint Paul, 
 did that tyrant-talk, calling himself the true 
 apostle of the Lord. To have grasp upon gen- 
 eral principles, to feel their meaning, is indeed 
 joyful, gives unto one a certitude of truth, pre- 
 vents being driven off by just a puff of wind. 
 But tell me how it happened that the Church 
 got so befuddled, confusing the teachings of 
 Saint Paul with those of Jesus Christ ; instead 
 of standing up erect it prefers to grovel, to go 
 upon all fours. 
 
 The matter is beyond my ken. My intellect 
 is woman's ; now, had I— But, no, I'll not re- 
 pine, not long for a brain of that kind ; for my 
 use it is too heavy. Of one thing, though, I am 
 sure, comparative sociology shows that men have 
 in sex matters made grand progress, have evolved
 
 1 62 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 in brutal doings, have the male of our four- 
 footed friends outdone, put to shame their mus- 
 cular intellects. In all Christian lands women 
 teach, the schools are full of them, and yet Saint 
 Paul forbade it ; but necessity is impious ; and 
 then, too, women by Christian men are gotten 
 to do big work for very little money. 
 
 Saint Paul tells us, When I was a child, I 
 spake, understood, and thought as a child, but 
 when I became a man I put away childish 
 things. In proof of this I further quote : Judge 
 in yourselves, is it comely that a woman pray 
 unto God with head uncovered ? Now, my 
 Christian sister, have you heeded this injunction ? 
 Came the spirit upon you unaware, ere lifting 
 heart in silent prayer, — say, did you run and get 
 a bonnet ? With awful fear my lips are sealed ; 
 I have sinned against the Holy Ghost. " Braided 
 hair !" But, then, braided hair in hot weather 
 is comfortable. To go with heads uncovered 
 the men by Saint Paul are commanded, in order 
 that the image and the glory of God may be seen. 
 
 Shutting; our ears to the utterances of the
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 63 
 
 Church, closing the lids of the Holy Bible, let 
 us turn to the " profane " works of the Almighty. 
 There we find the glorious sun and stars ; 
 there our souls drink in the moon's serene 
 beauty ; and there we behold walking miracles, 
 women and men accompanied by near kins-people, 
 dumb hair-clothed creatures. Indeed, I am con- 
 vinced of the relationship of all. Still, in some 
 we find persistent evidence of a close tie — -hair 
 upon the human face. Is not that indicative of 
 the character of our descent ? Our brothers 
 betray the species' highborn ancestry ; they 
 bear the family crest. 
 
 Women, come, let us atone for past neglect ; 
 in every park, in every home, unto Saint Paul 
 let us rear an altar. Listen ! Aged women are 
 to teach young matrons to be sober, to love 
 their husbands, to love their babies, to be obe- 
 dient unto a man, and to keep house. Now, I 
 appeal to your sense of gratitude, can any- 
 thing less paltry than an Eiffel tower bespeak 
 our thanks for that, our "header." The thing 
 that pleases me is to be told that which I al-
 
 164 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 ready know ; as now to get food into my stomach 
 by putting it into my mouth, or if I would look 
 upon the sky, outward and upward is the veiw. 
 To Saint Paul men ought to be more than 
 thankful, for if in themselves they are incap- 
 able of calling out the friendly feeling, the 
 wife's loving thought, then our affection they 
 all owe to that dictation. 
 
 And the little children, what must have 
 been their lot before this true apostle rose ? 
 Nature unto the cow was kind ; instinctively 
 this mother cares for her young. No need for 
 a Saint Paul to come to her guidance. 
 
 Much that seems obscure I comprehend, but 
 I own to being " beat " by this particular 
 note of his instruction : teach the young women 
 to be sober. The fact is, I gauge the probable 
 conduct of girls by that of my habitual as- 
 sociates. 
 
 Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands 
 as it is fit in the Lord. Now, as my sex have 
 ideas which in individual instances differ as to 
 what is meet and fit, Paul in the performance
 
 AND MYT HE-MAKERS. 1 65 
 
 of his duty was remiss ; with this gospel legisla- 
 tion a recipe was needed. As it is, we women, 
 for all time, are by him left without exact 
 knowledge. You see, he knew that in Eve 
 we had a real mental start, for he said that if 
 women will learn, let them ask of their husbands 
 at home. If a courageous wife willingly faces 
 the almost certain danger of a disappointment, 
 attempts the heroic by obeying this mandate, 
 now, don't we know the result ? 
 
 Paul's field of work appears to have been 
 among women, and with the instinct of a 
 politico-economic writer, he tried to eliminate 
 disturbing elements from his calculations. I 
 wonder why he was divinely called to the mis- 
 sion. Those Eastern women, I expect, bothered 
 poor Paul, belittled him by their questioning. 
 Naturally enough this exact pattern of Him who 
 taught divinely, taught equality, got mad, and to 
 get square with those women sat down upon the 
 whole sex. Pathologists profanely assert that 
 Paul was an epileptic, and so account for his vi- 
 sions ; but this does not explain the delusion of
 
 1 66 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 the people who take the apostle at his own es- 
 timated value, and who confuse his teachings 
 with those of Jesus Christ. Be ye followers 
 of me, he said, even as /also am of Christ ; and to 
 the very letter Saint Paul is obeyed by the men. 
 Were those epistles anywhere except in the 
 Bible, had I met them in political economy, I 
 should account for their apparent disorder on 
 the ground of the author's want of perceptive 
 power, his inability to examine into the nature 
 and constitution of the ideas he was putting 
 forth ; this, together with unsurmounted diffi- 
 culties of the English language, would, I think, 
 make the matter plain. As it is I confess my 
 total inability to grasp the Christ drift of his 
 inspired logic : Do ye unto others as ye would 
 not that they should do to you. Modesty is 
 comely. Am I wrong when I say that the 
 gentle Jesus practiced, sanctioned it ? But 
 did delicate, refined emotions stir the soul of 
 that pious anarchist, Saint Paul, who sought 
 to destroy for all time the freedom of my sex, 
 sought to obstruct the expression of the Christ 
 principle, natural equal rights ?
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 67 
 
 Admitted, that neither in the existence of 
 schools, nor yet in the teachings of the Chris- 
 tian Church, has the external reason for delu- 
 sions, for the Englishman's weak sight, been 
 found, then further search I realize is futile, 
 and turning, pay respectful court to external 
 cause's mate. Let — me — see; to give the 
 internal cause for the series of phenomena 
 which results in British law stamping English 
 male adultery as a thing of fine quality, I find 
 to be impossible until I shall have had a season 
 of communion with my higher, my intellectual 
 self.*** From biological facts, from the work- 
 ings of life power, I draw data for the inferen- 
 ces I now place before you. 
 
 Living matter at first contained within its 
 circle both of the sex principles — sexless, if 
 you choose to call it so — and the method of 
 reproduction was by division of the mass, or 
 by the throwing out from itself buds. Later 
 on came the sexual revolution, divorce was 
 granted, and the separation took place. To 
 serve a special reproductive purpose, the male
 
 1 68 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 principle was put out from the general proto- 
 plasmic mass. Now we know that an im- 
 pression may be too indelible for the waters of 
 all time to efface. Filled with a sense of that 
 first impulsion, my English brother feels the 
 origin and the function of his sex. 
 
 Reader, I am in the mood to soliloquize ; 
 would you avoid a shock, quickly close the 
 book, otherwise 
 
 Speaking from a general standpoint, is soci- 
 ety the better or the worse for the moral 
 teachings of the Church, for the ////moral doings 
 of our ministers ? For, to keep women down 
 to church drudgery, to keep them out from an 
 equal share in the awful doings of majestic syn- 
 ods, is there a wire too dirty or too rusty to be by 
 " God's servants " pulled ? I think not. Minis- 
 ters lack knowledge of the simplest intuitive 
 truths. To a whole they do not know the 
 position, the relation, of its two halves. Oh, 
 pshaw ! that ear they keep in heaven is stone 
 deaf. 
 
 Once there was a time when by the word
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 69 
 
 "minister" my thoughts were led astray; I 
 believed it meant a man divine ; but by facts my 
 mind has been corrected. 
 
 But where is it, I wonder, that just one little 
 word does sometimes with a woman's life make 
 sad havoc ? There are many stars in the po- 
 litico-economic sky ; some are so fixed in asi- 
 ninity's way as to be beyond the reach of my 
 critical telescope. Reader, you may possess a 
 better instrument ; try its powers upon phi- 
 losophy of wealth and its near kinsfolk. Eco- 
 nomic journals are plentiful, and the glittering 
 rot abounds. Is your leisure small, and the wish 
 to conserve time great ? Then I advise selec- 
 tion of an economic essay by a university pro- 
 fessor ; at once you are admitted to a full view 
 of the grotesque and clownish show. The 
 authoritative books upon political economy have 
 been written by men who were under the im- 
 pression that the object of professorial effort 
 was to divert, amuse, and entertain college boys 
 while their mothers were at work. Such are 
 the pets of the university. It makes a body 
 think of poodles and of doting dowagers.
 
 I/O SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 " Postulates of Political Economy " soars 
 high ; sees no natural tie between an image and 
 its reality. Its major premise is an assertion 
 which the author himself assures us is empty, 
 but under it he places minor propositions, social 
 facts, and his own wise conclusions, and of 
 course he makes them fit. To blow bubbles, 
 little sonny would at least put soap into the 
 water. 
 
 Then there is that distinguished thinker, a 
 mathematical lunatic, whom the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica accredits with sagacity and ingenuity, 
 fixes him in literary space as the possessor of a 
 bold and scientific imagination. By referring 
 you to Prof. Jevons' books, I perform my whole 
 duty, but instinctive humanity prompts me to 
 caution you against a shock. His mathematical 
 prodigies are all of them monstrosities. The 
 labor which brought them forth was instru- 
 mental. 
 
 " Plutology," a wonderful mess of words ! 
 Sometimes in a name there is much misleading. 
 I thought I had found something new, but no ; it
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 7 1 
 
 proved to be the same old story of the regulars. 
 Statements are moved about, some are brought 
 to the front, while others are placed in the back- 
 ground ; as a housekeeper, by rearranging her 
 furniture, might give to the room a new appear- 
 ance. From the conglomerate, where the author 
 talks intelligently about the poor, their crimes, 
 the way in which they are ill-treated, their 
 wretchedness, their sufferings, their squalor, 
 and their helplessness, society's neglect, volun- 
 tary idleness and inability to get work, their woes 
 and their wrongs, I selected this very funny 
 thing, which looks to me as if it were intended 
 for a covert or half attack upon the good old 
 Queen. The argument was that when she gave 
 her wealthy children bread she ought to be 
 allowed to give something to her needy offspring. 
 Rambling in the woods, when a little girl, I got 
 lost, turned completely round, and started for 
 home in the wrong direction. Do, please, wont 
 some one fit out an expedition and rescue that 
 man Hearn ? " Let us assume" that he is not 
 a learned professor, only an empty LL.D.
 
 172 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 As to the book of M. Bastiat, his work from 
 beginning unto end is one prolonged hysterical 
 yell : My property, right or wrong ! my 
 property ! 
 
 Before directing my telescope to the luminous 
 body I have now in mental view, I must, as a 
 careful physician, request that you will, by veils 
 or bits of colored glass, protect the sight. 
 William Senior, of Oxford University, was much 
 hampered by the paucity of the English language, 
 bitterly complained of political economy's de- 
 fective nomenclature, while giving to his readers 
 ample opportunity to deplore his defective use 
 of the same ; words, words, words. This pro- 
 fessor was full to the brim of them — word 
 obesity. His case is about the worst unre- 
 corded. Had I been called to him, I should have 
 put that mouth in plaster, should have reduced 
 him to the practice of mere gesture, and think 
 I might have worked a partial cure. The Eng- 
 lish peasant, it is said, commands a regiment of 
 only about five hundred words ; had he taken 
 the science of political economy out of the mouths
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 73 
 
 of university professors, what needless word- 
 slaughter had been saved ! 
 
 Prof. Senior, in dealing with productive and 
 unproductive consumption, makes things plain ; 
 informs us that the third footman to an English 
 carriage may or may not be, on the part of the 
 owner of the equipage, a piece of unproductive 
 consumption. Which it is depends upon some- 
 thing of which Prof. Senior is not sure ; but he 
 was certain that what the footman consumed 
 was not bread and butter, but was his wages. 
 Aged folks, this learned man found, from the 
 standpoint of his great science, to be permanently 
 unproductive, but of the infant's future useful- 
 ness he had permanent hopes. By careful 
 searching this political economist discovered this 
 alarming fact, that the number of absolutely 
 productive consumers was decreasing, as de- 
 creased the social black spot, chattel slavery. 
 Prof. Senior thought it probable that in time 
 the sole cause for consumption of food will be 
 hunger and the body's demands, and that no one 
 will eat just on purpose to satisfy the commands 
 of a legal owner.
 
 174 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Profoundly impressed is this erudite by the 
 real defect in a sale, say, of an English mansion. 
 Long past pleasurable emotions of an owner 
 do not accompany, do not make a part of the 
 transfer. But suppose the seller a melancholic, 
 would the buyer be the gainer or the loser 
 by this ethereal defect in the transfer ? His 
 keen perceptives enabled him to readily grasp 
 long past situations ; he avers that at first there 
 were only rent and wages ; later on, with civiliza- 
 tion, came profits. The fairy which worked a 
 miracle, transformed a little star, twinkling in 
 the darkness of a far-off institution, into a lumi- 
 nous body, was the theory of abstinence. 
 
 This theory, like much that political econo- 
 mists cast off, may be set down as due to the 
 whirl of two fiery opposing mental currents. 
 Society being divided into controllers of and 
 beggars for opportunity to work and live, 
 profits take the wrong direction, do not get 
 home. But an economic prestidigitator writes 
 a treatise and by assertion proves that right is 
 wrong, and wrong is right, and as a result socio- 
 economic blackness is turned white.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 75 
 
 As wages are the due reward of labor, so 
 profits, which the plutocrat receives, are 
 merely proportionate to sufferings entailed by 
 abstinence, says Prof. Senior. Now, where is 
 the fancy that can paint the terrific soul leaps, 
 agonizing pains, horrible sensations, which make 
 good the title of our entrepreneurs and our 
 bankers to all that in the form of profits they 
 get. As with revelation I fear to "monkey," 
 I think it best to take up bodily and transfer 
 this author's own words. Abstinence is real- 
 ized instantly in the conduct of a man who 
 allows a tree to grow or a domestic animal to 
 come to maturity. Dear, clear, what a pity! 
 Had he added, " and permits his wife to stand 
 up straight," the world would have had a finished 
 picture of Professor Senior's complete asininity. 
 
 I own to seeing much of the animal in men, 
 but " 'pon my soul " I have yet lengths to run 
 if I catch up with William Senior's slander. 
 Among the men I have friends ; man is not a 
 mad bull ; I deny it. Still, I own that he is the 
 child of his adopted father. Especially realiz-
 
 176 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 ing exactness of nomenclature and strict accu- 
 racy in deduction, his new term "abstinence," 
 though useful, was not appropriate; his treatise 
 is of a high order. So says the jargon of that 
 article on political economy in the Encyclopae- 
 dia Britannica. 
 
 I have an incident to relate before proceed- 
 ing to the classification of political economists. 
 One evening in Philadelphia, at the close of a 
 discourse, questions to the donor of the intel- 
 lectual manna were proposed ; this was usual in 
 the university extension course. It had been 
 claimed that what was wanted to smoothe the 
 social waters, make our crafts skim along easily, 
 was simply intelligence in the laborer. Dis- 
 turbing elements abound ; need I remind you 
 that anarchists, socialists, and single-taxers 
 are on hand wanting to get at truth, wishing 
 to see things righted, popping up on occa- 
 sions when not wanted. This time it was a 
 socialist. As a babe longs for milk, so longed 
 she for knowledge ; therefore to that professor 
 she meekly put this question :
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 77 
 
 " With a definition of intelligence will you 
 oblige us, please ?" 
 
 "Intelligence, intelligence," he said, and 
 there were signs of wildness in his manner, 
 — "why, madam, intelligence is intelligence." 
 
 But, unsatisfied, she persisted in question- 
 ing, insisting on his going into the matter 
 deeper. (Professors should use caution against 
 the bombs of bloody socialists, be protected, 
 armored by the power to answer simple ques- 
 tions put.) An awful retribution came nigh 
 being hers, that of sending forth a spirit unpre- 
 pared. I was present, saw the question's toxic 
 effect, and knew the imminent danger. With 
 Christian Science methods at once I came to 
 the rescue. " There is no death, there is no 
 death, there is no death," with fearful energy 
 mentally I shouted, and was rewarded by see- 
 ing slow return into that face a look, which, 
 through the paucity to which I have referred, 
 I am compelled to call intelligence ; and he 
 survived. 
 
 I have waited, and have looked for the
 
 178 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 notice of a university raffle, but no, the Qua- 
 ker City is still illumined. Now, were my 
 opinion asked as to his natural location, from 
 recent revelations I should without hesitation 
 say, the University of Chicago. What a tan- 
 dem team that institution would possess ! 
 Prof. Batting does not know what intelligence 
 is, and Prof. Harper does not know that intelli- 
 gence is to be tiscd. 
 
 To possess diamonds or pearls some one must 
 dig or dive ; motions to discover, to own the 
 truth are similar. In form and figure mythe- 
 
 makers are men, but in mind they are 
 
 However, yourself can judge. The earth ; upon 
 it a mass of protoplasm. The time, ah, well ! 
 I do not know it. Would that I were clairvoy- 
 ant. And now begins life's journey upon this 
 planet. Encircled within that living mass lies 
 Om, the life power. Alive and beckoning are 
 possibilities, but sleeping are the powers ; they 
 by external forces must be awakened, called 
 forth into the tree of manifested life, whose 
 parts are sub-human, human, and divine.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 79 
 
 Bear in mind that the topmost bough, the 
 uttermost leaf, are, through the trunk and 
 root, connected with all the rest. Vast is the 
 wealth of this rich matter ; the poverty of my 
 perception is to be made plain. 
 
 To philosophize, conceivable data must be 
 assumed. Scientists hypothesize an ether. In 
 thought let us try to picture the fact of an 
 unknowable, undifferentiated mass, a universal 
 sea of consciousness (feeling) ; the Omnipotent, 
 all one thing, everywhere waiting to be built 
 up into mental states ; and to the general con- 
 sciousness we must trace the relationing by 
 the mental principle of its coexistent sum, the 
 environment. The evolution of protoplasm 
 and the maintenance of forms depend upon the 
 reciprocal action of two sets of motion whose 
 points of initiation are opposite in direction, are 
 without and within. 
 
 I am not considering the term direction as 
 for convenience used, but am dealing with di- 
 rection in its connection with the unfoldment of 
 a mass of living matter, which to this earth is 
 relationed.
 
 I SO SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTIIES 
 
 Thus considered, motions initiated by the 
 environment have for their field of operation the 
 inside of that living mass ; but motions initiated 
 by the powers within the living substance, take, 
 through reaction's course, an opposite direction, 
 proceeding to the outside. 
 
 Rear in mind that, at present, I am con- 
 sidering protoplasm in its early progress of 
 unfoldment, have not come to where the road 
 forked, where evolution was aided by thought 
 consciously initiated. 
 
 The northward movement is a motion of 
 the protoplasmic self, its upliftment into forms, 
 which was a result of the harmonious combina- 
 tion of these two sets of motion, whose initia- 
 tive points, though opposite in direction, are 
 interdependent. That mass of protoplasm 
 knew at first but a solitary feeling, hunger; 
 other feelings, knowledge, came through an ac- 
 quaintance with the environment ; pressure gave 
 the introduction ; a pebble or some tiny thing 
 dealt idiotic individualism its first blow. 
 
 In the perception of something outside of self
 
 AND MYTIIE-MAKERS. I S I 
 
 the mind had its gray dawn, had the nucleus of 
 its germinal beginning ; and as mental states grew 
 in number, in substance, and in form, into exist- 
 ence there came new and newer forms of mani- 
 festation. Now, where is the power that can 
 magnify the results of co-operation, of friendly 
 relations ? Until a creation had been wrought, 
 protoplasm could not move except as it was acted 
 upon by something outside of itself. Basely 
 born, educed by gross matter, that mental state, 
 the first on earth, stood within the living mass 
 alone. To move protoplasm it was helpless, for 
 it was but a half. Everything in nature has its 
 unseen counterpart, its spiritual portion. The 
 cry for help was heard, and on the wings of 
 echo, from out of general consciousness, came 
 its mate ; and by an immaculate conception that 
 first mental state was made whole ; by a miracle 
 was started the living individual soul, the home 
 of all emotions, all impulses. The environment 
 being large, great was the need of education ; 
 trained assistants came — the senses — brought 
 by repetitive effort.
 
 I 82 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Nature knows no mistakes, admits no failures. 
 In time all motions, experiences, take some 
 ultimate good form. Within the mental aggre- 
 gate the will is born, a mental entity, and itself 
 becomes an individual part, helping to make up 
 the body of the mind. As an existence the will 
 is freed from dependency upon the immediate 
 action of external forces upon sentient matter 
 to call it up. It is in this sense that the will is 
 free. But for opportunity to move the machinery 
 of its operations, the body, the will, though self- 
 existent, is still dependent upon the environ- 
 ment. Chain a dog, and for what movements 
 are its legs free ? Freedom's lever has two 
 ends ; opportunities must be unchained. That 
 mass of protoplasm which had strayed from out 
 of space, landing on the earth, held, with will 
 in its possession, an earnest of its homeward 
 motion. 
 
 But the mental embryo, though viable, was 
 not yet ready to be born an infant mind. The 
 nucleus of something more was needed, the germ 
 of the moral self. Behold the mother thought
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 83 
 
 and friendship true in our friends, the quadru- 
 peds. The principle of sympathy works sub- 
 limely ; by its help base-born mental states 
 become the substance of the soul. 
 
 I ne'er dispute that man images his gross 
 maker, but most emphatically I do deny that 
 we have yet attained unto the image of our 
 Divine Creator. To become this, man himself 
 has work to do. 
 
 The meaning of life-work ? Well, I take it to 
 be this : nothing other than the building up of 
 feelings out of knowledge, out of perceptions of 
 motions that are started by what is within and 
 by what is without. The meaning of life-work 
 — is it less sublime than this : the precipitation 
 of states of feeling, of emotions, into individual 
 soul and body ? 
 
 The vibrations of etymology tell the story ; 
 they help to make it plain. Language had its 
 mound-builders, and their instinctive realization 
 of the true relation between ideas and their 
 verbal forms is just amazing. 
 
 The power within, which co-operates with
 
 184 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 external forces to mould protoplasm into dif- 
 ferent forms, is the mental principle. And what 
 a worker ! Immediate perception of like points, 
 of things, of their meanings and relations, con- 
 clusions come by a process of spontaneous 
 generation. Judgments of the mind take form. 
 Into the mental country immigrants are con- 
 stantly coming ; some hail from the realm of 
 thought, are refined ; others are gross, they 
 image sensations. Still, there is no discrimina- 
 tion against them as to the rights of citizen- 
 ship in the mental country. All are admitted 
 on equal terms. The principle of the mind is, 
 as you know, not a brute. 
 
 Threefold is the general work of the mental 
 community, for not alone new entities are added, 
 but the process of destruction is carried on. An 
 anarchistic duty is constantly, quietly, performed 
 through evolution's work ; old conditions are 
 broken up and old states are transformed, are 
 adapted to new forces ; hence there are peace 
 and harmony in that complex society which we 
 call the mind.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 85 
 
 Note the limitations. This affirmation is 
 only true of the mind as an existence, a whole 
 composed of differentiated, of individual parts ; 
 it is not applicable to the mind's mortal mani- 
 festation. Here confusion and disorder may and 
 do arise. When traced, invariably is it found 
 to be due to interference with the rights of, to 
 wrongs perpetrated upon, the mind's materializ- 
 ing medium, the brain. Of the body's parts, 
 nerve substance is the nearest to life power. 
 Look in upon the medium, something you may 
 learn of the greatness of the unseen work ; 
 though not much, I own, for nature in her gen- 
 erative work is silent, is secret. Would you 
 really learn, then, the harmonious relations of 
 the brain mass must not be broken by rude, 
 impertinent intrusion, by coarse acts ; deathly 
 quiet should invite the looker-in. 
 
 To compare cerebral masses is instructive, and 
 so, beside the brain of an Aryan woman place 
 that of an elephant. The soul's sense of sub- 
 limity is awakened by the differences perceived ; 
 condensation of the mass, smaller size, superior
 
 I 86 SOCIOECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 quality. That refinement was effected through 
 intellectual thought's transformatory power. 
 While nature had on hand this work, to build 
 up a brain, an animal, prior to the job's com- 
 pletion, might lawfully claim that larger size, 
 greater brain weight, were evidence, de facto, 
 of his superiority. But the finished product 
 upon life's market, then the all-important work 
 of transformation begins, then the main business 
 is to give to that brain a good character. 
 
 The movement in textile manufacture exem- 
 plifies this fact. Though by stupendous effort 
 the first woven fabric was produced, yet since 
 that marriage of intelligence to art, what has 
 been the direction of the manufacturing march ? 
 Why, from bulk and coarseness to smaller size 
 and fineness. It is a question of quality ; note 
 the delicacy of gossamer. 
 
 Brutal muscles call for bulky brains ; natural 
 selection is at work, and great brain weight 
 responds to brutal thought. To review, first, 
 the perception of things, then the perception of 
 the relation of things to self — what as to pain-
 
 AND MYTHEtMAKERS. 1 87 
 
 inflicting was to be avoided, and what as food 
 was to be sought. Later comes the perception 
 of relation between things ; reasoning power 
 begins its work. Still the intellect is animal. 
 To dig up causes by the root, their separate 
 force to discover by their separate position, 
 primary and secondary, and by discrimination 
 to relation them to effects, is man's prerogative, 
 is his moral duty. Man's is the work to search 
 for meanings, the "why" and the "wherefore," 
 and by noble discontent moved, rest not satis- 
 fied until the knowable is found and expressed. 
 Is a mind's work less than this, then is that 
 mind sub-human. Animals know much, have 
 learned it by experience, still they take things 
 for granted, and they judge from appearances ; 
 the animal mind cannot do otherwise. 
 
 Political economists perceive socio-economic 
 institutions, but do not trace their origin to real 
 first causes ; they judge from appearances and 
 treat landlordism, capitalism, as natural to human 
 society. 
 
 In my classification of political economists I
 
 1 88 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 am not alone ; I can quote authority. See 
 " The Industrial Revolution," by the late Arnold 
 Toynbee ; note his separation of them from 
 human folks — " the bitter argument between 
 economists and human beings has ended," etc. 
 
 Variously may causes be classified : those in 
 space into internal and external ; those in time 
 into primary and secondary. But according to 
 their character causes are classified into general 
 and particular. While the general cause for 
 this peculiar race is to be found in the confusion 
 of our socio-economic state, the particular cause 
 is chargeable to universities, our intellectual 
 junk shops. 
 
 Therefore I call upon the women of all lands 
 to come forward and do a great work. By argu- 
 ments which must take the dullest brains, im- 
 portune the government to take possession of 
 these institutions by the right of eminent domain, 
 and under the superintendence of an energetic 
 woman, one well versed in kindergarten methods, 
 conduct their future work. By this means a 
 needed revolution will be peaceably secured ;
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 89 
 
 less professors, less fool talk. Spare no effort, 
 see to it the work is thorough ; but women, " for 
 God's sake " teach those learned men the mean- 
 ing of the simplest words. 
 
 What ho ! ye discontented laborers, gods of 
 society, what is it at our hands ye ask ? Mine 
 ears do hear "the jargon, natural rights," equal 
 opportunity to possess, to enjoy the things your- 
 selves produce. Spake I unto you as unto 
 laborers, this would I say : Know you not that 
 selfishness is shocking ? From example take a 
 lesson, live at the expense of others, be pluto- 
 crats. But interpreting our socio-economic 
 state, I speak to you as unto gods of society. 
 I am not a scoffer ; we are optimistic, in the 
 fullness of your powers have confidence. We 
 are lovers of consistency, and would, in all things, 
 as becometh deities have you to act ; live upon 
 nothing, enjoy nothing, but for your dependent, 
 society, create everything. One thing alone you 
 lack, character ; take heed, build up character. 
 Hearken to capitalistic warning : Go to ; the 
 right of conspiracy belongs to us and not to you.
 
 I9O SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Myself thinks that even gods have rights, 
 therefore it is with reluctance I own that grave 
 charges against you are preferred, a few of 
 which, just to make myself solid with your adver- 
 sary, I will name. You are arraigned by the 
 great, by the greatest of great folks, by political 
 economists. The misdemeanor charged, you 
 create no matter, but instead you prostitute 
 your powers, and you spend our time in the pro- 
 duction of mere trifles, utility and form. I desire 
 in all things to keep steady, to retain firm grasp 
 upon "the straight line," but this unexpected, 
 this astounding disclosure, wa"s for my nerves 
 too much ; from centre to circumference my 
 mind by it was shook. 
 
 Would you cause a fellow-creature's disinte- 
 gration, cause my return to nebulosity, then 
 continue on in this blunder, continue this 
 omission. 
 
 Against your class the list is very, very long ; 
 and life, you know, is short — but three score 
 years and ten. Did I attempt to give it all, I 
 should at last be found unprepared to meet
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 191 
 
 death's call. I will be wise, I will curtail, from 
 scientific art take a lesson. 
 
 The charge selected is, of all the rest, a com- 
 posite ; in it the Christ-like feature of your rev- 
 erend friend is recognizable. He differed from 
 Ricardo ; declared that capital could become 
 redundant. With this reverend sir, to open 
 mouth and to prove statements was a simul- 
 taneous and a wonderful performance. "The 
 distinguished thinker," as heretofore, makes 
 good, by the plausiblest reasons, his new claim. 
 The walk of capital, he urges, is steady, and 
 steady its increase. The social waters are, by 
 him, admitted to move ; we are told of an occa- 
 sional ripple, of a fresh call for new laborers, 
 and, alack ! the labor market being under supplied, 
 sixteen or eighteen years elapse before the cap- 
 italistic call is answered, before the plutocratic 
 demand is fulfilled. Capital all this time is in- 
 creasing ; having no vent it is dammed up. 
 Meantime, until the demand for fresh human 
 hands is overtaken, accomodating witches manu- 
 facture goods and chattels, they produce the
 
 192 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 redundant capital. Sixteen or eighteen years 
 before the scarcity of the labor market is cor- 
 rected, and all this time, upon the "ragged 
 edge " of suspensive wait, capitalists are kept by 
 the tardiness of a class convicted of redundant 
 reproductive powers. 
 
 The case against you " pans out " bad ; I own 
 it, and as a friend of the gods I should not like 
 to see this matter fall into the hands of "able 
 lawyers;" consequences unprecedented would 
 arise. Malleability is a property of " cases," 
 and judicial patience is a magnitude. Through 
 tiers of courts it would be took, but without a 
 "precedent," without an anchor, judicial labor 
 would in the end prove itself dimensionless 
 space. 
 
 The Rev. T. R. Malthus included in the 
 lapse of time between response and the capital- 
 istic call (bring on fresh human " hinds ") 
 the period of their gestation. I am sure he 
 did ; still on so grave a matter I am loth to 
 have the reader think I may have erred. 
 Malthusian gospel is economic authority, " and
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 93 
 
 so it please you " look it up, get at the awful 
 truth. Gods slighted money's call, were years 
 in bringing angels into the labor market. In 
 the affairs of laboring men "there is a tide, 
 which, taken at the flood," etc., etc., ad infini- 
 tum. In its special application it doth appear 
 to me that the mind of our economic expert, 
 " vicegerent " Malthus, was by divinity poten- 
 tized until was reached that point in high atten- 
 uation's process where supervenes etherealiza- 
 tion, hence Malthusian thought went careering 
 up and down, shot in all directions at one and 
 the same time ; and hence an exhibit of unified 
 disorder in his ideas. 
 
 I more than half suspect that the string 
 which, for a time, tethered that spiritual be- 
 ing to our coarse earth, was his ministerial 
 mission, was his special adaptation for the 
 work of saving souls. As already hinted, the 
 demand by you laborers for opportunities is 
 deemed by us unworthy your high vocation. 
 Examine great society's seal, see the stamp 
 it makes. In the social adjustment affair 
 hew-man's head does not work.
 
 194 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MVTHES 
 
 To move the human heart your claim is an 
 insufficient cause. Furthermore, to your god- 
 like jealousy we humans take exception. To 
 aid comprehension of the present state of so- 
 cio-economic affairs, be pleased to note the 
 wholly materialistic character of the Christian 
 conception. God resides not within the self, 
 but outside; is it wonder then that King 
 Money's men strive for themselves to corner 
 the spot where their divinity abides ? And 
 furthermore, I would have you note that 
 God Himself has to seize the opportunity, 
 has to hew His way. 
 
 Our time on earth being limited, we attend 
 not to frivolous affairs ; business presses ; the 
 claims of God's mortal adversary must, you 
 know, be allowed. Accordingly society's gods 
 have their wrongs, and were they compiled, put 
 into historic form, the stench would burst a vel- 
 lum cover. In union there is strength. Look 
 upon the living body, see equality in opportu- 
 nity ; in the co-relation of its different parts be- 
 hold omniscience, each for all, and all for each.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 95 
 
 Friends, kinsfolk, society : by permission of 
 the principle of right I come to speak ; at your 
 feet I come to lay not Caesar's wounded corse, 
 but a living, bleeding cause. The "noble" 
 capitalist tells you that the laborer is redundant ; 
 it is a "grievous fault ; " but methinks the la- 
 borer is society's true and faithful friend. Has 
 judgment "fled to brutish beasts?" Has so- 
 ciety lost its wits ? " Bear with me, my heart 
 is in the" cause. I would not do the "noble " 
 capitalist a wrong ; he is an " honorable man." 
 Better, far better, to wrong a righteous 
 cause, myself, and you, society, than to wrong 
 the " honorable " poacher of his brethren's op- 
 portunities. With proper reverence for the 
 gods of society were your hearts and minds 
 disposed, then against dishonorable social con- 
 ditions there would be universal rage and 
 mutiny, and you would do the millionaire- 
 opportunity a wrong. 
 
 Better would it be to let the cause of right 
 suffer. The " noble " capitalist hath told you 
 that to the laborer he acts as better half, as
 
 196 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 guardian angel, spiritual wife. Come, judge of 
 heart-throbs for his beloved ; listen to the capi- 
 talistic refrain: "Whene'er I take my walks 
 aboad," how many poor I see ; " what shall I ren- 
 der to " my MoNEY-god for all its "gifts to me ? " 
 And now watch the exhibition of capitalistic love. 
 A wolf and a sheep in close proximity together 
 stand. Of individuals there are at present two ; 
 but the wolf loves the sheep, would him enfold, 
 would him shelter, would, in short, with him 
 make but one. Moved by this paternal feeling, 
 forward with open jaws upon the helpless sheep 
 he leaps, simply performs the common socialis- 
 tic feat ; and now of individuals there is but 
 one. 
 
 Friends, kinsfolk, society, hearken not to the 
 wisdomless science, political economy ; by its 
 folly have your heads been turned. Its fathers, 
 seized by a sub-human spirit, prophecied that to 
 increase wages were of no avail ; laborers would 
 not hoard, but would squander the golden gift, 
 like as not upon more tables and chairs. In la- 
 boring folks this is a heinous sin. But then,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 1 97 
 
 society, reflect, be merciful ; it is barely possi- 
 ble that a laborer stood in need of an extra ta- 
 ble, and mayhap one more chair ; maybe he had 
 a guest ; maybe he entertained an angel un- 
 aware. The gentlemanly capitalist doth tell 
 thee, O society, that the laborer is coarse, ill- 
 bred, is unrefined ; and relevant testimony is 
 overwhelmning ; verdict is found. The work- 
 ingman cuts not aesthetic capers ; he is con- 
 victed. But stay, withhold thy judgment, O 
 society ; the power to move thy stony heart may 
 yet be mine. Reflect : from out the inferior 
 ranks the aesthetic star has not yet risen. Con- 
 sider : for phosphorescent light the laborer is 
 doomed to dependence upon the shooting of a 
 comet across his firmament ; doomed to depend- 
 ence upon a wandering apostle from out of ours, 
 the superior ranks. 
 
 Friends, kinsfolk, society, "lend me your 
 ears." Behold the laborer's holographic testa- 
 ment, his will and willingness to do for his de- 
 pendent, You ; and then behold his hampered 
 opportunities. Methinks it is as if the rar-
 
 I98 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 est jewel, the diamond's brilliant, sparkling hue, 
 round about were set with pitchy blackness. 
 What does the laborer do for society ? Every- 
 thing ; all. And, I ask, can aught be more des- 
 picable than taking favors, and for them making 
 no return ? I trow not. What can society do 
 for the laborer ? Much. Unclasp the exploit- 
 ing hand. It is upon his throat. Abolish the 
 economic tenet, Your necessity is my opportu- 
 nity. Of vain pretensions I am a scoffer. Has 
 society an intellect ? Use it ; despise the need- 
 less. Look, perceive the truth of socio-economic 
 truths. Society, for enforced helplessness I 
 thee arraign. From out God-space the infant 
 comes upon this earth, comes to unfold princi- 
 ples and powers, comes to set knowledge in mo- 
 tion. I demand to know why, if born without 
 the golden ticket-of-leave, one heavenly waif 
 should, by thee, be left to starve, left to 
 freeze. And the aged helpless, they who have 
 borne the brunt of battle in past days, and with 
 tottering steps approach the river's brink, I de- 
 mand to know by what ratio, by what rule of
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. I 99 
 
 three, thou, society, dost justify the cause of 
 their needless tortures. Socio-economic con- 
 ditions ? This thy plea ? For sub-humans 
 such would do, but where there is head and 
 heart, for thee, O society, it is inadequate, it 
 cannot bail thee out. 
 
 The youth through whose childish day- 
 dreams flitted fairy thoughts of future possi- 
 bilities of future doings, wonders ; upon the 
 threshold of manhood's morning see him all 
 alive with glad courage, with great hope. Why, 
 his very soul feels too big for his mortal body ; 
 pitiful the thought, he finds not a thing to do 
 that suits. Pursued, opportunities flee like 
 the mirage, and he is tripped, finds himself 
 ensnared. Society, hast thou a heart of steel ? 
 Even then feel this tragedy of transformation. 
 The buoyant youth developed into a disap- 
 pointed, discouraged, heartbroken man, with- 
 out hope ; mechanically he toils on ; wife and 
 babes from worser fate must be saved, if 
 possible. Opportunities are tied up. 
 
 Society, earth's omnipotent one, untie the
 
 200 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Gordian knot, prevent the cut, arrest the fall- 
 ing sword. Wicked society, deaf to the cry 
 of thy helpless children, repent, turn from 
 thy paramour, man-thought ; break from its con- 
 trol. To the principle of right flee, and to 
 the principle of sympathy be wedded.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 201 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SOCIAL LAW THE ECONOMIC LAW. 
 
 LYING within the arms of time, the 
 mental principle moves, forward ; its un- 
 foldment is onward in a straight line. In 
 space things are positioned to it transversely ; 
 theirs is an outward, is a broadening motion, 
 and if progressive evolution be obeyed, then at 
 the point where meets the mental and the line 
 of social transposition, a right angle is made ; 
 but does obtuseness interfere, reaction then 
 must work, must make that angle a right 
 one. 
 
 That first protoplasm at first moves only 
 as it is moved by wind and wave ; later, when 
 internal forces have been wakened, see that 
 creeping thing a worm ; conscious of environ- 
 ment it moves intelligently, and we find, later 
 on, time's motion symbolized by a spine, and
 
 202 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 stability is given to that protoplasm. Fishes, 
 with one exception, have a head and heart ; the 
 lancelet has neither. 
 
 Note the combination, my plutocratic broth- 
 er ; head and heart, you see, belong to- 
 gether. 
 
 Leaving that great class of beings, some 
 of whom move gently in their environment, 
 while others, through seeking to bend the 
 mighty eventful current to their wills, lash the 
 sea into a foaming fury, and still following the 
 evolutionary movement of that protoplasm, 
 we find it a vertebrate and upon the land. It 
 must learn to walk ; internal forces must have 
 a better opportunity for unfoldment, it must 
 have a larger scope, more and more of the 
 environment ; no longer easy movement, 
 carried by the ocean current ; that proto- 
 plasm feels itself abused, pulled down from a 
 high estate all its own, and disappointed, it 
 croaks. 
 
 Nature, weary with dull plodding, for her 
 own encouragement created the birds. And,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 203 
 
 oh ! the eagle, up, up, her feet freed from 
 the dirt of earth, in space away, away, of sub- 
 limity and grandeur what must her soul not 
 feel. Once more we find that mass of proto- 
 plasm fastened to the earth, but, oh ! the earth 
 is grand and good, is willing to be helpful, 
 to aid in the progress of the body and the 
 soul. 
 
 Once it starts in individual motion nothing 
 can arrest life-force. The principle of activity 
 knows no cessation. Differentiation, variation, 
 are the natural accompaniments of its tune- 
 ful course. Movements along all lines would, 
 from the primal starting point, be progressive 
 but for hinderments begotten by the mortal, 
 the devilish mind. 
 
 By ape the marvel was foreshadowed, and 
 the bud blossomed out, and that protoplasm 
 stands erect, is man. Look within ; there is a 
 skeleton. 
 
 While the evolution of being is from the pri- 
 mal starting point a progressive motion, and 
 while the general movement of society is ever on-
 
 204 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 ward, whether in particular instances the social 
 motion be one of progress forward or not, just 
 depends. There is a state of communism, and, 
 willy nilly, all are " in it ; " substance and spirit, 
 or protoplasm and force, in the environment. 
 
 To live, all animated things must breathe, 
 must drink and eat ; and a prerequisite to prog- 
 ress is freedom of movement. You perceive 
 that, to begin with, there is an essential uni- 
 formity : but be not exercised, my individualis- 
 tic brother; variation, by the very condition 
 which so alarms you, is secured. Omnipotence 
 is at the helm ; trust it. There is no occasion 
 for an economic Saint Paul. 
 
 The environment does its part ; there are 
 opportunities, there are supplies. To provide 
 the body with organic means of adjustment, 
 with sense organs, is the duty of internal force. 
 Differentiation, variation, with ghostlike tread 
 follow the main lines of motion, and so within 
 the body there are organs distinct but not sep- 
 arate, co-related by the fact that for the organ- 
 ism each does a useful work ; co-related by
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 205 
 
 their mutual equal dependence upon a common 
 environment, the blood supply ; and co-related 
 by that environment's impartial, equal distribu- 
 tion. 
 
 Each organ just helps itself to what the gen- 
 eral fund contains, and itself decides zvhat is for 
 it; be there interference, overloading or con- 
 gestion of some part, then disease and death 
 result. Soundness of mind, health of body, ab- 
 solutely depend upon the exercise of equal 
 freedom by all the body's parts, depend upon 
 the preservation of natural rights, of equality. 
 Shocking communism, but which of us is willing 
 to declare it off ? Social law is the condition of 
 good management. Would you scale the moun- 
 tain's side, then to your aid the plane is inclined. 
 Blessed uniformity, were thy smiling, peaceful 
 face oftener seen, welcomed by society, great 
 conservation of energy and great progress would 
 be made. 
 
 " Let us assume " that there comes unto our 
 new-born man, from out celestial space, an avatar ; 
 tells him that through struggling against the
 
 206 SOCIOECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 needless ignorance, and through work, there 
 will in course of time come a manifestation of 
 great advancement by the human folks ; tells 
 him that where dense forests rule supreme, 
 where he, a naked savage, stands, cities shall 
 spring up, that folks shall dwell in houses, pro- 
 tected from the wind and rain, and, though unac- 
 quainted, shall live together in peace and in 
 harmony ; that people shall go dressed, and in 
 that future men and women shall travel, not on 
 foot, great distances ; shall skim the mighty 
 waters, not on icebergs, but in houses propelled 
 by imprisoned steam ; that food to be eaten shall 
 be cooked, and that about its condition folks 
 will evince some little nicety, some cleanliness. 
 
 Look quick ! That savage leaps into the 
 jungle, and hark to that shriek : U-TO-PI-AN. 
 
 The gentle god within that savage soul had 
 not her wings unfurled ; unconscious of the 
 " still small voice," but conscious of the brutal 
 wish, his answer was but natural. Construction 
 results from the relationing of parts according 
 to their natural condition of adjustment ; be this
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 207 
 
 rule despised, conceive yourselves, is it possible 
 to have a house or a bed ? That alone is natu- 
 ral which bears the stamp of Om, which springs 
 from the inherent constitution of a thing, from 
 its essence, spirit ; conceive yourselves, is it 
 possible to convert pine into cherry wood ? 
 Biological records silently say that inconceivable 
 ages passed before the mind became an entity 
 with force sufficient to the construction of the 
 human form, but since the occurrence of this 
 formation in structural life, inconceivably great 
 (along some lines) has been the mind's ad- 
 vancement. 
 
 This progress has been occasioned by the per- 
 petual onward motion of perception, how to re- 
 lation parts, how to build ; continual overtaking 
 of the processes of construction is what we mean 
 by knowledge. To discover like points is the 
 function of primary intuition ; as a result of this 
 act differences are secondarily disclosed. Uni- 
 formity is what we should seek. The condition 
 of association is the condition of good manage- 
 ment. Social law is the economic law. When
 
 208 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 economic utilities were made with tools, oppor- 
 tunities were freer and the laborer had a chance 
 to breathe ; he was then upon the general public 
 directly dependent, and for him there was social 
 hope, that is, were he from godly control of 
 kings and vicegerents indemnified by being in a 
 country akin to what ours was for a time after 
 the Revolution. 
 
 Wasn't t/iata. glorious strike against tyranny ? 
 Stirred by an overmastering sense of the sacred- 
 ness of their natural rights, stung into perception 
 of their duty to the individual self, our people 
 with dignity rose up, united ; the men and women 
 became strikers, would no longer brook "oppres- 
 sion's heel." Read their Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, and its grand soul you will feel. In 
 the army and navy was the tyrant's hope. Our 
 people stood united. God be thanked for strikes 
 and strikers ! 
 
 At the patience of the poor I marvel. By 
 the vast use of vast machinery production is 
 effected. Division of labor is multiform and 
 varied. Our socio-industrial methods may be
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 2(X) 
 
 likened to the sun, upon whose rays, for a chance 
 to live, each being is directly dependent. Now 
 let us assume the doings of that mighty orb de- 
 communized, brought under the individual con- 
 trol of our coal barons, they who produce an 
 artificial scarcity of fuel, who fill their pockets 
 by freezing their fellows, freezing some of them 
 to death. But then our country's manufacturers 
 must be protected, and against the dangers of a 
 comfortable fire the laborer secured by a repre- 
 sentative government. Association is not the 
 condition of good management, and the social 
 law is not the economic law. Do away with the 
 use of machinery, return to individual methods 
 of production ? What absurdity ! I trust I 
 hear the evolution-sound better. There is a pig 
 to be roasted ; to accomplish the feat I leave to 
 men the practical logic of burning the house 
 down. Onward, ever onward, is my motto ; 
 give loose rein unto the intellect ; more machinery 
 and better, fine and finer work ; but that which 
 is unnatural (individual control) I would wipe 
 out.
 
 2IO SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Imagine the two halves of a sphere out of 
 relation, not adjusted to each other. Econo- 
 mics is a sphere. Production implies distribu- 
 tion. The methods of production are co-opera- 
 tive, are socialistic. The state of distribution 
 is anarchistic. Are beauty and the beast a 
 well-matched pair ? Increased use of machin- 
 ery marks the evolution of the race. By indi- 
 vidual control the greatest blessing is converted 
 into a social Juggernaut, into a curse. " O fool- 
 ish men, what hath bewitched you " that ye see 
 not the simplest truths of relation ? The two 
 halves of a sphere must be mated, their posi- 
 tions must match. 
 
 That which is unnatural is pre-doomed. On 
 track of consistency our men are not keen-scen- 
 ted hounds. By the money mirage and the word 
 "earn" do not longer be befooled; open 
 your eyes and look beneath the surface ; it will 
 do you good to strain your intellectual vision ; 
 remember there's reward ; the senses came 
 through tensive effort. Economic utilities 
 should, by the laws of motion, by reaction, move
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 211 
 
 backward to their source, to the laborer. Pos- 
 session by appropriation has quite another 
 source. With constructive labor be pleased to 
 correlate the motions of the entrepreneur. 
 Profits unsocialized, it is to the money interest 
 of the controller of production to make things 
 scarce and dear. The principle of capitalis- 
 tic production is, the least possible supply to 
 the consumer consistent with the greatest 
 possible gain to myself ; accordingly social anom- 
 alies. Machines are in existence that, were 
 they operated in the interest of all, would re- 
 lieve everyone from drudgery, and would make 
 nobody one whit the worse off ; and yet for 
 general use such machines are inaccessible, 
 are in fact converted by the few into a means 
 by which they cudgel the many. 
 
 I have seen machines which ironed hundreds 
 of shirts in a day, and yet their feet were not 
 tired, and their backs did not ache. Now, 
 think of women perspiring over flatirons. 
 Bah ! the thing is sickening. Why, so easy is 
 it to produce, that capitalism, if left to itself,
 
 212 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 would fade away into the dim and misty 
 space of nowhere ; but bolstered up by vicious 
 under-legislation it stays with us, assists in 
 the intellectual and moral progress of society. 
 Capitalism, " red in tooth and claw," violates 
 the sanctity of home life, drags wives and 
 mothers to its foul embrace. Unsatisfied, it 
 stops not ; there are the children ; aye, the 
 monster would clutch from the cradle un- 
 weaned babes could their tiny fingers hold a 
 bobbin. How men do respect the home and 
 the women when they have a lust to be grat- 
 ified ! An economic philanthropist, a million- 
 aire, briefly precipitated capitalism's whole mat- 
 ter when he said, "The public be damned." 
 
 Knowing something of the facts of motion 
 and of the facts of form, I know where to 
 relation actions that are stamped illegal, such 
 as counterfeiting, stealing, and burglary. Never 
 do I look at a prison Jiomc(?), never do I 
 think of one, but my soul is filled with hor- 
 ror for the iniquity, not of those who are inside. 
 Every impure thought, every grasping desire,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 21 3 
 
 finds a lodgment somewhere in that picture- 
 gallery, the mind. Political society is not a pat- 
 tern housekeeper, he is not clean ; conditions 
 are filthy and breed moral vermin. Is there 
 prostitution ? Why, then it comes in answer 
 to the demand of our men. While women by 
 conditions are made economically dependent, 
 some of them have no choice, no other means 
 by which to get a living. Economic commu- 
 nism, socialism, would indeed be a disastrous 
 thing, would interfere with male legislation on 
 the "age of consent." As long as the ballot 
 expresses brutal feelings and does not repre- 
 sent ideas, society will have a moral stench. 
 Men, unlike the vestal virgins, prepare them- 
 selves for the sacrifice by no purifying rites. 
 
 Now, is it not just a trifle officious in author- 
 ity to tell us that men are in the image of their 
 Maker ? Watch their conduct ; a holy exhibit, 
 isn't it ? While society is political, while there 
 is violation of the moral law, illegal acts are 
 merely responses to the political liturgy ; but 
 when an atrocity is committed the difference to
 
 214 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 the offender is great, is dependent upon which 
 side of the fence he was on at the time he dealt 
 morality the blow. Our other selves, illegal of- 
 fenders against the moral law, "with the jus- 
 tice of your cause few are concerned." 
 
 In the West a star has arisen ; there an ad- 
 ministrator avers that in the case of an employ- 
 ee's dereliction, it is just and it is wise to take 
 into consideration the example set him by the 
 employing corporation. God be thanked for 
 Altgeld, governor of Illinois. This attitude 
 saves from pure rottenness the administration 
 of our socio-industrial Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 
 Motions, according to their character, are 
 classified into constructive and destructive. 
 To plant your field with wheat, stumps must 
 be removed ; could the stumps speak they 
 would say — anarchist. The operations of the 
 mind reveal that builder and anarchist travel 
 together ; evolution, holding the rein, guides ; 
 philosophic anarchism accompanies reason's 
 work, but is reason chained, then anarchism has 
 no choice, has to work by its other method.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 21 5 
 
 A mind gives to the world its ideas ; is that 
 mind's enjoyment of its own thereby lessened ? 
 Not a whit ; its enjoyment is enhanced by 
 sharing. 
 
 Myself with others ; communism is the 
 socio-psychological rule and to it there is no 
 exception. Blundering Om. Look, that idea 
 takes on gross material form, and among the 
 means of production it is placed. And now 
 note the character of the procedure : myself 
 with others is the exception ; myself against 
 others, myself without others, is invariably the 
 rule. Men are loth to break, by an occasional 
 godlike blunder, the monotony of perfection 
 that attends their socio-industrial work. To 
 vary uniformity is sometimes well ; their case 
 would by such complication seem, at least to me, 
 more hopeful. 
 
 Man's practical reasoning says, I am no 
 marauder ; look, I have gewgaws, am stamped, 
 am, you see, under orders ; mine is the holy 
 crusade, legal indulgence to murder folks out- 
 right, or, stopping short of that, to produce at
 
 2l6 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 least a lingering death by robbing them of 
 their opportunities. Still I am human ; who 
 can challenge the fact ? Is not such absurdity, 
 I ask, enough to convulse the very fiends in 
 hell with uproarious laughter ? Heaven was 
 not reached by that tower in Babel ; yet listen 
 to the verdict of our men. Competition is 
 great, is our motor impulse ; through its oper- 
 ations all socio-industrial progress is made. 
 Improvements in machinery are wrought, and a 
 cheapening of fabrics is the result of competi- 
 tion ; discoveries have been made because of it. 
 Competition produces wealth, gives us cheap 
 oil. And the Standard Oil Company ? I que- 
 ried. Well, not exactly ; consolidation, union, 
 was the cause of that. There are occasions 
 when competition is in abeyance and goes to 
 the wall. Still, you will allow that competi- 
 tion is just wonderful ; to the delectation of 
 its plutocratic rider it heads in opposite di- 
 rections at the same time. I reckon that 
 you are without the experiences furnished by 
 our gas companies ; why, if it were not for
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 217 
 
 competition they'd eat us up, leave nothing 
 for food and clothes and our poor landlords. 
 At all events, from time to time the city council 
 by logic is convinced, new franchises are bestow- 
 ed, streets torn up, and dirt, dirt. No matter ; 
 that makes work, and work is the thing we 
 want. 
 
 Now, did women manage their domestic affairs 
 on the political plan, where, oh where, would 
 society land ? Happily they don't, their imita- 
 tion of the politico-economic ways of men goes 
 no further than the production of crazy quilts. 
 But then women are not creators, are limited 
 to fancy. 
 
 The men exercise imagination, and while I 
 don't deny that in their doings they always 
 have in vie wan objective end, still at all times 
 the all-important business on their hands is to 
 create an appearance, a bustle. In medicine 
 persistent confusion is attributed to vertigo, to 
 lightness of the head. What competition does 
 is to loosen the grasp of an individual appro- 
 priation. Competition produces nothing ; why,
 
 2l8 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 how can it ? Yet the men don't see it. I 
 wonder are they arrant liars, or is theirs a case 
 of uncomplicated 
 
 And now, my sisters, a word to you. Be not 
 disturbed, nor by trifles overwrought. Should 
 I say the sun shone not, would the fact be al- 
 tered by a say-so ? About that challenge of 
 our title to " curves," lines of beauty, what did 
 it matter ? There is, however, one undoubted 
 fact : no chance for a contest over which sex 
 has the corner on curves in the mind, cor- 
 ner on curves in the morals. Again, I urge, be 
 not officious ; Mother Nature needeth not your 
 help, she is equal to the work, has all eternity 
 in which to do a stupendous job, endow om 
 Schopenhauers with brains. 
 
 Socialism (I will trouble you to consult a 
 a dictionary) — socialism, like woman, has a 
 character, and at present, unlike woman's, it 
 is bad. The cause, germs in the thought-atmo- 
 sphere, and of course heredity. To discover the 
 origin of these germs we must travel backward 
 to our long-past ancestry. By the bull's fierce
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 219 
 
 ravings the herd deemed itself protected ; did 
 not know that those ravings really invited battle. 
 The international thought had not taken root ; 
 doings were prompted, not by the social feeling, 
 but by the political thought. Such is the origin 
 of the paternal or political socialism which among 
 humans is extant. 
 
 One must go deeper for the cause of its per- 
 petuation. As we have seen, the male was bio- 
 logically started on an everlasting tour, with his 
 actual possessions in the form of potentialities ; 
 by experience of what is in the external he has 
 built up solidity. Still he moves forward only 
 as he is moved by hard knocks. Man sees 
 things on the bias, does not see them on the 
 straight ; consequently we have paternal or po- 
 litical socialism. 
 
 I am asked my opinion of Henry Wood and 
 his book. Here it is ; take it. I feel pity for 
 the urchin who fumbles in the gutter, who col- 
 lects and piles up the stumps of dirty cigars, 
 but his vocation — ugh ! — I despise. When I 
 read upon the title page of a book, " The Politi-
 
 220 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 cal Economy of Natural Law," words which, if 
 they mean anything, mean the party manage- 
 ment of natural conditions, and then observe 
 how widely separated are the contents of said 
 book and its title, I want to be a sister to that 
 author, advise him for his good, advise him to 
 get a pocket dictionary. But then to the busi- 
 ness world Henry Wood claims that his books 
 are acceptable. Need more be said ? 
 
 "Wealth and Progress," by George Gunton. 
 Build up the wants of the poor ? Ah ! some- 
 where I have seen it stated that an eminent 
 lawyer, when summing up his case in few but 
 fitting words, briefly disposed of a witness whose 
 perjury was made apparent by frantic efforts to 
 debauch the jury-mind : And I. now come, gentle- 
 men of the jury, to the testimony of John Van 
 Zandt, may God have mercy on his soul. 
 "Peace, peace, and there is no peace." 
 
 Professor Bemis, with an eye half open, utters 
 a mild protest against the violent infraction of 
 moral law and order by trusts and monopolies, 
 but he is not for this thrown out of the Chicago
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 221 
 
 University ; a subsidized institution does not act 
 in that way. It is not an anarchist. This 
 is how it does it. Note the difference in 
 method, and note the difference to Prof. Bemis 
 in the resulting end. The president, Christ's 
 apostle upon the earth, a representative of His, 
 gives the sinner warning that criticizing money- 
 mongers is unchrist-like and objectionable to 
 " my lord;" then, merely as a matter of emphasis, 
 to objectivize the disapprobation of wrongdoing, 
 the president, either in a direct or a roundabout 
 way, calls for Prof. B's voluntary resignation, 
 which despite an alternative is tendered. That 
 is all there is to it. Now, are you the person, 
 in the face of purifying ceremonies, forms, to 
 persist in misplacing the word anarchist ? 
 Chicago's capitalistic waters were troubled, were 
 roiled, but oil was at hand. Uprose the sleek, 
 smooth Harper, his lamp was full and trimmed, 
 himself was ready to obey the behests of KING 
 MONEY. Lumped, his actions and his words 
 amount to just this : By the facts of structure, 
 by the modes of motion, zoologists may classify
 
 222 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 the animals with which they deal ; that such is 
 the scientific method of arrangement I don't 
 deny, but I follow no such stupid example, am 
 not bound down, hampered, by principles of law 
 and order. For an anarchist am I to be mis- 
 taken ? My education in the arts has been 
 better. Trust me, I, the Lord's anointed, hear 
 the still small voice and know how to treat my 
 master brute. 
 
 Natural selection has produced a variety of 
 socio-economic talkers, whose differences are 
 found in their pin feathers and not in their 
 plumage, and so Professor Laughlin protests 
 that there is no such thing as a labor problem ; 
 the whole matter in sum and substance amounts 
 to simply this : idleness, viciousness, crime. 
 True, professor dear, but art sure that you are 
 equal to locating that category ? Cornell mourns, 
 has lost a professorial curiosity, one whose powers 
 of logical thought are not entirely " out of sight," 
 not beyond the reach of woodchuck and of mole. 
 Prof. Laughlin is an explorer, is of an inductive 
 turn of mind, has a discovery made, unearthed
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 223 
 
 a brilliant : what the plutocrat receives is merely 
 wages for his skill in managing. Management 
 of what ? Management for what ? Why so 
 chary of thy knowledge? "Marry, sirrah, I'd 
 have thee beaten " for KING MONEY'S jester. 
 
 Strange, is it not, that folks persist in confus- 
 ing labor with laborer, capital with capitalist, 
 and cap the climax by using interchangeably the 
 terms laborer and commodity, the thing the 
 laborer produces. Among educated persons 
 there exists a lamentable want of penetration 
 into the contents of words ; it is shown even by 
 Mr. Stead, he who is distressed lest, slighting 
 good London, Christ should come to wicked 
 Chicago. Unacquainted with Chicago's coterie 
 of earnest socialistic women, he is hard upon the 
 windy city. Even he does not know the mean- 
 ing and the application of the little word 
 "expose." 
 
 One portion of the variety of talkers to which 
 I have referred avers that things are really wrong 
 and do need straightening, that economic changes 
 of necessity must come, and then there will be 

 
 224 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTIIES 
 
 a marked, a great improvement. They protest, 
 however, that we are not ready for improve- 
 ment ; to straighten is positively dangerous ; 
 might snap the social spine, might break society's 
 broad back. These who so affirm are our vin- 
 dicated, timid, our loving little fearful Elyites. 
 
 You are hungry ; the hour is noon ; by hunger 
 nature gets you ready for a reception, dinner. 
 When it is due, the laborer wants his week's pay ; 
 a demagogue strives through legislation to se- 
 cure the workingman this great favor. The 
 affrighted banker shrieks "over-legislation." 
 Queer, isn't it ? 
 
 A book is in my hand, its title "Justice;" a 
 misnomer. Its author, indeed I am ashamed to 
 tell it, is Herbert Spencer, he who wrote " First 
 Principles." "How are the mighty fallen!" 
 The mountain which on high ejected substance, 
 fire and lava, now belches forth just dirty smoke, 
 bedraggled ideas. " Can a man enter his 
 mother's womb and be born again ?" I should 
 say it would at least be well to take a fresh start. 
 
 In other days it was the custom to entertain,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 225 
 
 to amuse, by the method of telling stories. For 
 the dramatis persona is my audience ready ? I 
 must advise, however, that, taken together, their 
 strains prove no symphony, pitched to different 
 keys as you will at once perceive ; yet from the 
 overtones each one of you may gather the music 
 of knowledge. The one first upon my list is no 
 stranger ; the principles he embodies are in fact 
 the co-respondent to our almost every thought. 
 Principle of sympathy is not, as you know, in 
 our social drama, cast to an intelligent part. 
 
 Mr. Individualist : " Ladies and gentlemen, 
 I shall not occupy at length your valuable time, 
 nor do I apprehend that upon this occasion it is 
 necessary. I advocate principles which have 
 not to build up new mental states, nor make 
 additions to the soul. I am not a socialist. 
 Always has it been my luck to find a chord 
 vibrating responsive to my touch. I wish this 
 morning to call attention to the characteristic 
 greatness of the age in which we live, surrounded 
 as we are by the works of art and artizan ; and 
 permit me to arrest for a few brief moments the
 
 226 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 diffusiveness of your thought, by nailing it to a 
 point — the reason of our greatness. To what 
 do we owe advancement — the distance between 
 us and savages ? I expect the soulful response, 
 amen, to come from every person present when 
 I shall have named the grand cause — individual 
 freedom and competition. To shackle the limbs 
 of man is a tyrant's work, and he who does it 
 is the violator of the ' formula of justice ; ' every 
 man is free to do that which he wills, provided 
 he infringes not the equal freedom of any other 
 man. 
 
 " But, my friends, though man has a right to 
 unshackled limbs, and a right to physical integ- 
 rity, and though of some of the 'natural media' 
 he has the right of use, yet Almighty wisdom 
 has seen fit through man, His image, to draw 
 the line upon equal individual freedom, and to 
 arrest it at the land point. The principle of in- 
 equality must by my lambs be maintained, saith 
 the Lord. The inconceivable advantages accru- 
 ing from this arrest have, by 'a distinguished 
 thinker,' the Rev. T. R. Malthus, been exposed ;
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 227 
 
 his keen intellect probed this matter to the very 
 core. Accordingly we know that by land mo- 
 nopoly wealth has been spontaneously created ; 
 by this device nature, mean, niggardly mother 
 nature, is compelled to give her destitute chil- 
 dren a bounty — rent. 
 
 " Nor is this benefit all ; the great science has 
 discovered that increase in the amount of culti- 
 vation is in direct ratio to decrease in the num- 
 ber of persons having an opportunity to work 
 the land. Man, ladies and gentlemen, is a many- 
 sided being, but when considering him in an in- 
 dustrial aspect, disturbing elements must be elim- 
 inated. With the economic conception simpli- 
 fied, man, ladies and gentlemen, stands forth a 
 creature moved by but a single impulse, gain ; 
 actuated by but one desire, greed. Over moun- 
 tain steeps, through gorges and ravines, he 
 climbs, he wades, he dives, for his oivn gain. 
 Shall we hamper the heroic spirit ? Laisscz faire 
 is the word. I ask, is society equal to the ' con- 
 ception of a harmonious life,' equal to the estab- 
 lishment of conditions calculated to call out the
 
 228 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 better side of man's nature ? Suppose the ridic- 
 ulous proposition is admitted, then I ask, have 
 you the conscience to encourage sin, over-legis- 
 lation, interference with individual freedom, 
 change the conception of what is required in 
 economic man ? To public schools I say, get 
 thee behind me, Satan ; myself would put them 
 down by the law's strong arm. In that Utopia, 
 ' Looking Backward ', socio-economic equality is 
 pictured, everybody is put on a level. The 
 thing is unnatural ; brains must tell ; can't bring 
 a millionaire down to the position of a pauper. 
 Shouldn't a man have what he earns ? " 
 
 (Voice from the audience : " Which man ? ") 
 " To assume that men either can or will live 
 harmoniously in the socio-economic state, my- 
 self with others their inspiring thought, is, to 
 say the least, trifling, and to assume that com- 
 petition can be tamely directed along the line 
 of equal effort to do honest, good work, is, ladies 
 and gentlemen, in my humble opinion an agita- 
 ting thought, is in short an anarchistic move, 
 and I am not an anarchist. "
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 229 
 
 (Voice : " Then you disapprove of the Ameri- 
 can Revolution ? ") 
 
 " By the principles and methods advocated in 
 the Utopia to which I have referred, ' the intel- 
 lectually and physically feeble are to be quite as 
 well off as others. ' Now, I have a question to 
 ask of this intelligent audience, which will, I 
 think, settle this whole matter right here and 
 for all time : Which of you would like to have 
 your poor old father, your aged, decrepit mother, 
 an invalid sister, or, it may be, a feeble-minded 
 brother, economically independent, provided 
 with all comforts, conditions which are desired 
 by your own strong self ? Why, the thing is 
 anarchistic, economically impious, denies the 
 principle of inequality, exalts the principle of in- 
 telligent sympathy ; it ought not, cannot, shall 
 not be. See ' formula of justice.' Competition, 
 ladies and gentlemen, is so closely connected 
 with freedom that one can scarcely say which 
 is Minerva and which is Jove. Amidst the buf- 
 fetings which on every hand beset individual 
 freedom, let us offer a paean of praise, for com- 
 petition is free. Hallelujah ! "
 
 23O SOCIOECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Before introducing the next speaker, as presid- 
 ing officer of this meeting I wish to say that 
 the desire is to preserve as large an amount of 
 individual freedom as is consistent with social 
 decorum, therefore questions and remarks are 
 in order after the speaker has sat down. Will 
 Mr. Individualist show us how his use of the ge- 
 neric term, man, how his general explanation of 
 man's nature, either accounts for or justifies the 
 socio-economic atrocity of society's division into 
 those who produce and those who pillage the pro- 
 ducer? I confess that I for one do not perceive 
 the point of application. 
 
 " Really, madam, the point which you have 
 raised requires hours for its elucidation ; there 
 are other speakers, and time is pressing ; pray 
 excuse me if I decline to attempt important 
 matter requiring more time than, at present, is 
 at our disposal." 
 
 The chair asks the favor of making a few re- 
 marks. From the expressions of our honored 
 speaker I have inferred that he deems fraternal 
 socialism a state unnatural to people, to us
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 23 I 
 
 humans. Sir, is my inference right, or do I 
 stand corrected ? Is it not a fact that things, 
 according to the position they occupy in time 
 and space, are either natural or unnatural ? If 
 this be so, does the principle which determines 
 naturalness or unnaturalness cease to work as 
 we cease to deal with the apparently objective 
 things of time and space ? I think not ; its ap- 
 plication to the phenomena in Beings-space, in 
 Species- time, is no less valid. And again I ask, 
 is it not a fact, that of living beings each species 
 has its peculiar, its differentiating principle, 
 which informs and animates its social motions, 
 and that conduct, to be natural to a species, 
 must be dictated by, and in line with, that spe- 
 cies' informing principle ? Things are right and 
 natural only when particulars fit into generals. 
 Upon the fact of progress I think we all agree. 
 Now, if the human principle in its general social 
 workings is so little different from that which 
 animates the herbivora, why, I, for one, propose 
 that we throw off hypocrisy, do the creditable — 
 go upon all fours.
 
 232 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Guided by the "legal merits of the case" 
 society tolerates invasion of equal, of natural, 
 rights to opportunities, tolerates moral lawless- 
 ness. 
 
 He who is next upon my list is the product 
 of the capitalistic regime, political or paternal 
 socialism. Ladies and gentlemen, I now intro- 
 duce the Tramp ; upon him observe the naevus- 
 paternus. 
 
 Tramp: "Tell my story? It's not uncom- 
 mon ; ' millions in it.' Well, when I was young 
 we kept our heads above water, had comforts, 
 though father was inclined to drink. Vested 
 interests must be supported ; they are the im- 
 portant thing, are after profits, and so the li- 
 quor poison is itself poisoned. Father died. 
 I, the eldest born, was fifteen, hated liquor, 
 would not drink, left school, and went to work. 
 The family should be kept from sinking into 
 deeper poverty, and out working my mother 
 should never go ; so I planned and so I hoped. 
 Forget that morning, the one when I, a child, 
 put my shoulder to the wheel, started life as
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 233 
 
 a man, went out, sought work ? No, by Joe ! 
 With joy my heart beat high. Glad and proud 
 was I to feel myself a great, strong boy. You 
 see, it never entered my head that opportuni- 
 ties wouldn't meet me half way. Oh ! the dis- 
 appointment and the shame. Yes, I got the job 
 and I got the pay, $1.50 for a whole week's 
 work. My boss wasn't that Fall River over- 
 seer who boasts of pulling his company out of 
 insolvency by fining and docking its employees, 
 but still you can bet he was no angel. Weren't 
 the Christian Fathers too saving of their good 
 capital when they allowed there was only one 
 devil ? There are legions ; wherever there is a 
 chance to boss, they swarm. Why, every hos- 
 pital, every public home, throughout this or 
 any other land, has its tyrants, has its petty 
 czars. You see, I have been in some of them, 
 have had experiences. Have been arrested for 
 vagrancy too ; but without a home to go to, 
 what, does one expect a cove to do? I can't 
 live on thin air, and from off the earth I can't 
 take my feet. My spirit is willing sometimes
 
 234 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 but pretty generally the flesh is weak. God 
 Almighty didn't intend the stomach to be filled 
 with air, meant that for the lungs ; and from 
 the signs I reckon that He's gitting things 
 ready for a startling revelation of His will about 
 feet and the earth. 
 
 " I was a steady boy and stayed years in my 
 first place. I liked machinery, used to think I 
 heard it talk. All the time my mind was run- 
 ning on invention ; at last I did turn out an im- 
 provement ; that's the time I was happy. But, 
 say, folks, do I look like as if by using my 
 brains I had been benefited any ? And yet they 
 say brains tell. Now, I've got a sense of hu- 
 mor, and miserable as I am, I couldn't keep from 
 laughing over Mr. Individualist's .talk. Them 
 kind of lies don't bother me now, but they used 
 to. You see, ladies and gentlemen, the last 
 few years I have been a tourist, a gentleman of 
 leisure ; been too old to compete with the young- 
 er brood. You see, God failed to provide for 
 this emergency, and so I have been thinking, 
 and I have been reasoning quite a good deal,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 235 
 
 and upon more things than one ; sometimes 
 have been almost happy, not because of my 
 wretched affairs, but in spite of 'em. 
 
 " But now about these Mr. Individualists : 
 well, I conclude it's a pity Balaam's ass started 
 perpetual motion, left these fellows without 
 time to think. A different state of affairs 
 would interfere with individual freedom, would 
 it ? Rob inventors of their lawful gains, damp 
 the heroic spirit ? Holy Moses ! to make 
 things worse, at least for some of us, a differ- 
 ent state of affairs would have to climb 
 something more substantial than a Jacob's lad- 
 der. I haven't lived fifty years, haven't been 
 knocked around from pillar to post, for noth- 
 ing ; I've got my eyes open, had 'em open 
 from first to last ; just had to, or would have 
 been wiped off the earth. The law of self-pres- 
 ervation with the tramp is uppermost, exactly 
 as it is with you folks, and don't you forget it. 
 I could tell you this morning of present do- 
 ings, and of doings to come. With a warn- 
 ing the very air is heavy, Don't you feel it ?
 
 236 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Naw, you don't ; if you did, souls that are 'way 
 down out of sight would creep up and through, 
 would show on the outside, and then the clouds 
 would be lifted, drift away, away, leave things 
 bright and sunshiny, not for you alone, but for 
 me too. But, pshaw ! it's no use to talk ; I 
 don't stand here for to herald a Johnstown 
 flood ; sleep on ; the poor old tramp may help, 
 but he cannot hinder the inevitable. 
 
 " While economic conditions are such that 
 the devil operates men, society wouldn't be bet- 
 ter off could food be created up in the air ; 
 when it floated to the earth 'twould all be cor- 
 nered, and some of us would still be homeless 
 tramps. ' The foxes have holes, and the birds 
 of the air have nests,' but the son of the capi- 
 talistic system has not where to lay his head. 
 The burning question of the hour is not the la- 
 bor problem, but it is, What don t our plutocrats 
 want ? 
 
 " Where was I in my story ? Guess I've 
 rambled, the habit of the tramp ; — let me see: 
 oh, yes, my invention. I couldn't take out a
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 237 
 
 patent, had no money. Company offered me a 
 royalty. I agreed. Typhoid fever took me ; 
 plumbing in our dwelling bad : we were poor 
 folks ; see ? The corporation allowed me half 
 pay ; at the time I thought that was just too 
 good, have seen through it since. When I 
 was getting well — convalescing, the doctor called 
 it — the overseer came, said they had about con- 
 cluded my invention wasn't worth a patent, still, 
 as they had used it, and at the same time had 
 great sympathy for me, they had thought the 
 matter over, and had decided that, if I would 
 sign away my rights, they would give me one 
 hundred dollars. The overseer said I should be 
 grateful for this, look upon it as an out and out 
 present. It went agin the grain, but mother was 
 tired, needed rest, couldn't just then go out to 
 day's work ; so I succumbed ; besides, my situa- 
 tion was at stake if I refused. It seems to 
 me that one, has he a pennyweight of brains, 
 must allow that things are wrong when a willing 
 man has to beg of his fellow-men a chance to 
 work. Things are wrong when revenge, because
 
 238 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 an imposition is resented, when personal pique 
 throws a poor man out of a chance to get a liv- 
 ing, steals his opportunity to express his human 
 powers. 
 
 " Now, I could understand these things were 
 some men monsters like them mammoths I have 
 seen in picture books. To live, to get a chance 
 to work, some men must play the sycophant, 
 must cringe ; I wasn't built that way, if I am 
 poor. To steal, I sometimes think, is just as 
 honorable and more consistent with a body's 
 sense of dignity. Why, by stealing, the tramp 
 may get a shelter in some prison home, but by 
 cringing — ugh ! And this is the alternative 
 society forces upon its most impoverished folks. 
 Heigh-ho ! what it is to feel your hand against 
 everyone, and everyone's hand against you. 
 But I didn't begin it, though. The shoe that 
 society throws after me has a leg in it. Whew ! 
 I, a nobody, am moralizing. Now, don't I 
 know a tramp's thoughts and feelings is not 
 counted in ? He is lazy, because he don't like 
 the work you, my good gentlemen or lady, thinks 
 fit to set him. Awful, ain't it ?
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 239 
 
 "And so individual freedom would be wrecked 
 were the industrial plant run in the interest of 
 everybody, were the people mutually equally 
 dependent, mutually equally independent of each 
 other ? But then wouldn't this gripless tourist 
 be out of his present lucrative job? Why, I 
 feel demoralized by the very thought. I've a 
 venturesome spirit, though, and would like to 
 try that kind of socialism. And now I come to 
 think on it, with a square chance possibly I 
 might come out natural, might come straight up, 
 like a bird whose clipped wings have at last a 
 longed-for chance to grow. As I look around 
 upon nature, it strikes me God's ways of working 
 is to keep things that are alike together ; guess 
 that's why He started the human race as a family. 
 But it's me that's found man's way of doing 
 business is to scatter ; wonder who is man's 
 prompter. 
 
 "Ladies and gentlemen, that corporation 
 changed its mind about my invention ; using it 
 yet. Health returned and with it hope. I was 
 young, twenty-four, determined not to be beat
 
 24O SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 down, but to invent something more, and this 
 time / was to be the one who should reap ; at 
 least that is the way I settled it. But, by 
 gracious ! they got the best of me again, this 
 time by taking the matter into court. It was 
 a technical point on which I was worsted ; at least 
 that's what the wranglers said. I s'pose they 
 thought I was comforted, but that's the time I 
 shut down shop, hated folks, discouraged, took 
 sick, brain fever. Wouldn't go back to the 
 factory ; afraid I'd kill somebody. 
 
 " Now, when I started life I was happy, towards 
 everybody felt friendly ; what think you brought 
 about the change ? Too much ' free will,' maybe ; 
 but it wasn't mine. Yes, I've gone to the bad, 
 but then I'm not badly scared; reckon an im- 
 partial Judge, one not bought up with corporation 
 money, one not influenced by the thought of 
 votes, will know about how far to hold a fellow 
 responsible for his feelings and his acts when 
 things outside of him are goading, just eating 
 right into his flesh and bone. And I want right 
 here to tell you, folks, that I've had a blamed
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 24 1 
 
 hard fight with conditions, and you'll allow that 
 I've had nothing whatever to do with the making 
 of our industrial arrangements. Say, look here, 
 am I represented in Congress ? And yet they 
 call this a free country. One thing is certain, 
 the poor in this callithumpian republic are free 
 to be robbed of their rights, and are free to 
 starve. I'm let beautifully into this open secret. 
 " When I got up from the brain fever I took 
 a position on the street cars, was conductor, 
 worked seventeen hours per diem. Oh, no, that 
 wasn't regular pay time. You see, the company 
 is smart, contrives to rub extras in on a fellow. 
 Now don't you fall into an error and think the 
 men who do the work are the ones to be bene- 
 fited. I allow, that would be the natural thing, 
 but society ain't built that way ; the harvest of 
 gain is reaped by figureheads. You can just 
 bet that the denomination on the workingman's 
 note shows up mighty small ; it's the loafers, 
 them's the fellers that draws the great pay. 
 Doing night work my fingers and toes froze, and ' 
 I lost my right foot, was in the hospital, laid up
 
 242 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 for months. That was the last straw. Poor 
 mother took sick, lost heart, died ; and I, and I, 
 maybe I wasn't desperate, took to drink, didn't 
 care if I went to the bad. Hadn't I been wil- 
 ling to work ? And to think the children were 
 scattered, were out of school, were in the 
 factory. 
 
 " Before things got so bad I was ambitious to 
 be somebody, read a good deal, wanted to keep 
 up with the times, be posted on things in gen- 
 eral ; used to buy newspapers ; some of them are 
 more than half on the side of the working people. 
 And then, too, I belonged to a club, went to 
 lectures. Why, once some university professors 
 was invited to address us on protection and 
 economics. Protection, ha! ha! that subject I 
 gave the ' go-by ' to. Why, a man with a spark 
 of mother-wit sees its meaning ; plutocratic, 
 plutocratic through and through. But I wanted 
 to know something of economics, so I went to 
 hear that professor. Jiminy ! them's the fellers, 
 regular agitators, the worst in the market. 
 Why, I just had to hold on to my coat-collar to
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 243 
 
 keep from jumping at that one's throat. You 
 see, his fool talk maddened me and I wanted to 
 choke it off. Why, if you'll believe it, that 
 blasted idiot stood up before us workin' people 
 and said the reason why so many men were out 
 of employment was because they wasn't skilful, 
 didn't do good work. The capitalists, he said, 
 weren't to blame ; they couldn't help it, Now, 
 for a cheerful liar, what do you think of that ? 
 My fingers just itched to wring his neck. I'd 
 like to know when / refused a suit of broadcloth 
 clothes just because they weren't of the finest 
 quality. Just now my wardrobe needs repairing 
 and additions. Suppose some of you try an ex- 
 periment and find out for yourselves how near 
 that university feller hit the mark. Come, I'd 
 like to help you find the truth in this matter. 
 His talk on demand and supply was a sickener 
 too, was the sheerest tomfoolery ; he said that, 
 to raise the price of a commodity, to make a 
 thing dear, shut off the demand ; folks didn't 
 want it then. And if I don't disremember, it 
 was somewhere here that he wrung the word
 
 244 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 'effective' in, and by the use of that particler 
 word he allowed he'd just got things down fine ; 
 had got production and distribution adjusted, 
 relationed, as he called it. I want to be charita- 
 ble to my f eller-creeters that are not overstocked, 
 be as kind as some of the Red Indians that I 
 have read about. If that professor lacked gump- 
 tion — Still, I don't know about that. 
 
 " All the time he was talking to us men he 
 did so put me in mind of a reciter I once saw at 
 the time that man was doing Uriah Heap— one 
 of Dickens' characters, you know. Dickens was 
 a great writer, wasn't he ? His books did lots 
 of good. After all, I believe that professor from 
 the University of Penn was up to devilish tricks. 
 We workingmen could have let him into a thing 
 or two ; his pizen got no chance to work in our 
 minds. You see, labor, honest fulfilment of the 
 divine decree, lets men into truth. Talking lies 
 is a vested interest, just as much as selling 
 liquor ; both of 'em are direct taxes on an in- 
 dividual. The one aims direct for the brain, the 
 other direct for the soul.
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 245 
 
 " Now, don't I want a house, want a home, in- 
 stead of traipsing the streets nights ? Thank 
 goodness, my turn at the Salvation Army's 
 home has come ; I sleep there to-night. Them's 
 good folks and Christians too, as far as they can 
 get a chance to go. Walking the streets cold 
 nights I stand and look at the churches, and I 
 wonder why the doors don't fly open ; seems as 
 if they must, and let me inside, let me from the 
 wind and rain be sheltered. Why, by mere de- 
 vice the Saviour is denied, by bolts and bars is 
 hindered from succoring a forlorn and helpless 
 creature, ME. Why, to be happy one must have 
 # his wants supplied HERE and in the hereafter 
 too, must have comforts. In the eyes of the All- 
 wise can the future be more important than the 
 NOW ? Why, how can it be ? I conclude 
 something's wrong ; our religious affairs are out 
 of gear. Had I been among the first to dig be- 
 neath the crust, make this discovery, I calkilate 
 I wouldn't be left to freeze, neither would I have 
 been consulted about the amount of fire neces- 
 sary to my comfort. The pious were awfully
 
 246 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 attentive to the helpless, had special preparation 
 for the work. Prompted by the Christian spirit, 
 the burning question was their particular forte. 
 Inside God's house on Sundays there's no end 
 of talk, real ' soft sodder ' ; why, some men are 
 trained to it and earn their living in that way. 
 Maybe it's honest, and maybe it ain't ; at any 
 rate, it don't make things better, don't help the 
 tramp's cause. 
 
 "What's the good of preachers anyway ? 'Taint 
 apparent to me. They're pretty generally on 
 the wrong side. They were for the slaveowner 
 down South ; worked with all their might and 
 main to keep the colored folks from thinkin' 
 and actin'. You allow 'twas dreadful for the 
 chosen of the Lord to labor hard just to keep 
 those poor black creeturs down. They fulfilled 
 divine decree ; they earned their bread by the 
 sweat of their brow, didn't they ? Why, they 
 actilly desecrated the Lord's day, broke the 
 Sabbath by preach in' that slavery was right and 
 pious, that it was lawful to hold a colored broth- 
 er, and as like as not one's own black child,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 247 
 
 as personal property, and claimed to prove it by 
 the Bible. When there's an injustice,an iniquity, 
 to be sustained, don't it really seem that gospel 
 ministers, accootred with the Bible, are right 
 on hand anxious for the job ? And, by Jingo ! 
 their's is the magical work, the wonderfullest 
 tricks you ever saw; got the bulge on God's 
 laws, and to the cross-eyed soul religious experts 
 make black look white. Look this matter up 
 for yourselves ; go in deep, don't skim the sur- 
 face ; see if you don't find that, as a class, minis- 
 ters of the gospel are as a rule agin the oppressed 
 and on the side of the oppressor ; are afraid 
 of the grand bounce, I suppose ; leastways, it 
 appears mainly to be a matter of filthy lucre, 
 and not mainly a matter of following AN EX- 
 AMPLE. 
 
 " Whew ! I must stop this ; thinkin' on so 
 much wickedness is demoralizing to a feller ; 
 I'll shift my thoughts to something better, 
 
 " But, see here : don't you make a mistake 
 and accuse this poor old tramp of not believing in 
 futurity existence, in the hereafter. Why, have-
 
 248 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 n't I listened to the voice of machinery, haven't 
 I looked upon the heavens, felt the starry whis- 
 pers ? This tramp knozvs there is everlasting 
 life, gets his knowledge of it from the 'Source.' 
 For truth I don't go to poll-parrots. All I want 
 in this world is a chance to get my living with- 
 out offering up prayers to any partic'lar person, 
 or giving special thanks for the favor ; I want a 
 meal of victuals, and I don't want to saw a cord 
 of wood — sawin' wood ain't my forte — and so 
 when I can I get the victuals, and then I skip. 
 Shocked, are you, my benefactor ? S'pose you 
 put your thinkin' cap on and see if two hasn't 
 a right to play at the game of gouge. Fringe 
 upon society, are tramps ? Now, are they ? 
 Look here, how does it happen that fringe 
 adorns a shawl ? Don't know? Well, I'll help 
 you out of the quandary ; part of the shawl 
 has been ravelled out, that 's all; see ? When I 
 was a little feller I had a playmate who would 
 step on my toes, kept right on after I had asked 
 him not to and told him that it hurt ; that made 
 me mad, and I thought, My mister, I'll fix you ;
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 249 
 
 so to get square I stamped back. I allow 'twasn't 
 right, but all the same 'twas natural and acted 
 like a charm. 
 
 " If the labor unions took up our cause, but 
 they don't ; seems as if they ought to have a 
 fellow-feelin' for us, give us hope and not the cold 
 shoulder. Society stamps on me, makes me feel 
 as if I were a fiend from hell, shoves me- out a 
 tramp. Say, good folks, when at night you shut 
 your doors, seek your bed and blankets, do you 
 ever think of the homeless ones ? Consoled, 
 aren't you, by the thought, ' Well, they're a 
 bad lot ' ? Guess you never done a sum in vulgar 
 fractions, or you'd 'a' seen cancellation 's work. 
 Why, the figures above the line, them that's on 
 top, just 'knock the spots' out of the feller 
 underneath. 
 
 Think fur 'nuff, make a social application, 
 find out how it stands between the individooal 
 acts of the upper and the lower classes. S 'pose 
 you put your intellects to work, imagine what it 
 is never to be sure of a bed, sure of a good square 
 meal, what it is to be always certain of cold and
 
 25O SOCIOECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 hunger. Humor this tramp's whim just for fun, 
 and then examine your feelin's,take account of the 
 stock you have on hand. I'm thinkin' you'll be 
 smitten with knowledge, and I'm bettin' right 
 here that if some of you go over your tea or to- 
 bacco time there's no livin' with you. Your feel- 
 in's are on parade ; that's all right ; but when 
 my feelin's make the show the case is different. 
 Dissected, wouldn't it turn out that tramps 
 have nerves, that tramps have hearts no furder 
 in than yours ? Placed in our conditions, no 
 comforts and no HOME, wouldn't you feel 
 desperate, and, feeling desperate, wouldn't you 
 act so? God Almighty made us men ; social 
 conditions made us tramps, and don't you 
 forget it. Jumped on from every quarter, 
 given at useful steady work not the ghost 
 of a chance, wont somebody get right up and 
 tell me what a man is to do with his strength 
 and his courage ? ' Brains tell.' I will put 
 mine to work ; I'll go to counterfeiting, help 
 disturb the circulation, aid the bankers. Mr. 
 Individualist says I've a right to voluntary mo-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 25 I 
 
 tion ; so don't you interfere. Adieu ; I am off, 
 and I am onto society." 
 
 With a mirthless laugh he went ; and Greek 
 meets Greek. Friends, judge in yourselves, is 
 it seemly for a man to be a multi-millionaire ? 
 
 I must ask the audience, would they hear the 
 baby's wail, to keep very quiet. Accustomed 
 to the sounds, with your permission I will them 
 interpret. " I am cold and hungry, have no 
 warm clothes, am barefoot, winter and no fire ; 
 want my mamma, she's out washing, begged me 
 to be good and quiet, tied up in this chair ; said 
 she'd bring me food ; can't wait, I'm hungry." 
 But, baby, see ; thy little toes should have dug a 
 way up Lord Gorilla's back, then thou would'st 
 not be in want ; born without the money-caul, 
 civilized society has in thee no vested interest, 
 owes thee nothing. Why amongst us Christians 
 did'st thou come ? Thou should'st have gone 
 unto those savages whose system of exchange 
 is unnatural, " they who make presents to each 
 other;" there, baby dear, thy social lot had been 
 different ; we are Christians, and out of each
 
 252 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 other must make profits. The Chinese father 
 counts his babes redundant, puts them in con- 
 ditions where he knows that they will perish, 
 sees they die. Parental monster ! Christian 
 society's political father manages, it is true, 
 somewhat differently. His redundant babes 
 perish in conditions himself hath made ; still the 
 political father is well bred, is gentlemanly, turns 
 aside, does not watch them die. Christian civi- 
 lized society is bigger than a Chinese father ; 
 ought it not to have a bigger human heart ? 
 
 " Not more than others I deserve, yet God hath given 
 me more, 
 For I have food while others starve, and beg from 
 door to door." 
 
 The gentleman and lady whom I now present 
 to you are engaged in charitable work. Ladies 
 and gentlemen, the Reverend Mr. Underdone 
 and Miss Seethroughit. 
 
 Rev. Mr. Underdone (speaking drawingly) : 
 " Friends, it is with a feeling of humility that I 
 open my lips this morning. Having for years 
 labored in the charitable field, I am by experi-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 253 
 
 ence able to testify that, instead of the poor being 
 elevated by my efforts, they are sinking deeper 
 into poverty ; their numbers increase with alarm- 
 ing rapidity. I am baffled, am humbled in the 
 sight of the Lord. Deep dejection fills my soul, 
 ladies and gentlemen. Food and clothes are 
 perishable, and the poor will eat. Feed them, 
 and they don't stay fed ; in a few hours they are 
 again clamoring for food. Then, too, their 
 clothes wear out, and walking is hard upon their 
 shoes. Oh ! oh ! [sighs] I have, ladies and 
 gentlemen, about concluded that it is useless to 
 do anything for the poor. Woe is me, the way 
 is dark ; and yet a glimmer of light I see in the 
 hope of a discovery how to keep the poor from 
 getting hungry, how to walk and not wear out 
 their shoes. In the meantime it might be well 
 if good, charitable persons would go down to the 
 poor and teach them how to help themselves ; 
 their case would be hopeful if they could be 
 gotten to imitate the example of our millionaires, 
 gotten to practice the virtue of abstinence, self- 
 denial. Lacking the divine spark, they are or>
 
 254 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 durate. I am, ladies and gentlemen, on my way 
 this morning to consult Mr. Moneybags, a pillar 
 in my church, on the expediency of appointing 
 an hour of prayer to lay my suggestions before 
 the Lord." 
 
 Miss SectJirongliit (speaking earnestly) : " I 
 went to the college settlement with the inten- 
 tion of teaching the poor how to be economical 
 and saving, knowledge which at that time I 
 thought they lacked. My eyes are opened. I 
 have concluded that to intrude upon them is 
 impertinence. It is we, the would-be instructors, 
 who have learned useful lessons. A great social 
 wrong exists when conditions cause the extremes 
 of luxury and poverty. I see the rich getting 
 richer, and the poor getting poorer, and I un- 
 hesitatingly affirm that the education needed by 
 the poor is that which helps them to come into 
 a knowledge of their social rights, that which 
 helps them to the knowledge that they have a 
 right to exercise their human powers. Things 
 cannot go on in this way much longer ; famili- 
 arity with the principles of chemistry leads me
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 255 
 
 to declare that the final result of such combi- 
 nation is social explosion " (speaking very ear- 
 nestly). " Since leaving the college settlement 
 I have been occupied with that class of persons 
 whom society is pleased to call fallen women, 
 and, ladies and gentlemen, you may believe me 
 when I tell you, that my ideas on this social 
 matter have undergone regeneration, have in 
 fact been born anew. With the whole subject 
 I am so full of thought that were I this morning 
 to open the floodgates of my soul, 'twould drown 
 you out. The difference between fallen men 
 and women is superficial, is a matter of social 
 position, a matter of mere appearance. Reality 
 lies deeper ; of the two, fallen women have more 
 of the human, and I want this morning to pro- 
 pose that we women found a home for fallen 
 men, the management of which should be philo- 
 sophic, should be high art. To call up a reali- 
 zation of the beauty of the good, every effort 
 must be tried. My ! if we could only make their 
 entrance into it compulsory, lots of families 
 would, I know, be robbed of their male members ;
 
 256 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 but then the compensation ! They would get 
 their men folks back changed in thought ; think 
 of that." 
 
 Indeed I am nonplussed, I hardly know by 
 what cognomen to introduce the personage 
 next upon my list ; nomenclature fails me. 
 Ah ! for that timely suggestion I thank you. 
 
 Society s Quack Doctor: " Here you are, la- 
 dies and gentlemen, walk right up, secure a 
 recipe ; don't be backward ; a large assortment, 
 all first class, that I offer, all alive and kicking ; 
 warranted to cure the ailments of society ; 
 warranted to chase a monstrous brood out of 
 our good old lady, all the evils she inherits, 
 all the evils she acquires. About the causes 
 of her aches and her pains don't you bother ; 
 the ' why ' of the obstruction in her bowels of 
 mercy is not of consequence to us. Besides, to 
 be meddlesome is ill-bred. Our concern is to 
 catch the effects ; we are intelligent, we shun 
 knowlege of causes. These recipes are sure 
 cure, regardless of the location of society's 
 disease, be it situate anywhere, in any part of
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 257 
 
 the body, from the tip of her great toe to her 
 superior fontanel. They are up and doing, get 
 right on to the difficulty ; all that these pre- 
 scriptions require is to have the disease acute, 
 actively working in the carcass of our good old 
 dame, society. Ladies and gentlemen, could we 
 but catch the original flea that bit the human race, 
 I wouldn't be here this morning at quackery ; 
 but we can't ; trying is no use, neither can we 
 arrest the biting procession. Guided by the 
 'legal merits of the case,' society travels on her 
 uppers, has no soul. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen, I can recommend 
 my first recipe ; it has been tried and failed, 
 its virtues therefore are known : increased feu- 
 dalism. The employer is to love the employe 
 as he does his own son. Going to Chicago, 
 mister? Want the quickest route? 'Jump 
 over the moon.' Surprised at my way of do- 
 ing, aren't you ? That's queer. I'll explain. 
 Either as a tool or head officer, middleman or 
 proprietor, I served the plutocratic cause nigh 
 on to twenty year. Pah ! vibratoriness has 

 
 258 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 been known to bring on dizziness, a lasting ver- 
 tigo ; so it is more than likely from the vender's 
 usual way I may be swayed, and to make my 
 doings fit I calculate you will be forced to exer- 
 cise your own imagination. 
 
 " Once upon a time, good folks, the problem 
 was how, dwelling in the midst of moral mias- 
 ma, to withstand its malarial tendency. The 
 solution has been found. Have littTe society- 
 scavengers, — mosquitoes, flies ; their remedial 
 bites act upon the social whole as a moral qui- 
 nia. The recipe which I hold in my hand was 
 loaned me by the Ethical Culture Society. 
 Its compounder is lecturing on ethics, how to 
 become moral ; is at present stationed in Eng- 
 land. My ! but that's an unfortunate country. 
 
 " You are anxious to test this prescription's 
 virtues ? Well, have at it. To give the children 
 food and clothes, to make the family wheels run 
 smooth, without noise, one thing alone is need- 
 ed, this : let the employer hold back a portion 
 of the workingman's weekly wages and give 
 that portion to the laborer's wife. See stars ?
 
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 259 
 
 The American version of the Bible says that 
 for idle words one shall be held to strict ac- 
 count ; guess that's why our able instructor 
 skipped and went to London. The desert of 
 Sahara might have been a better place to think 
 in. 
 
 " Theosophical Society ; what a ticket ! 
 I've looked into that. Humph! The 'theo- 
 softs ' claim that a nucleus of universal brother- 
 hood floats in their nebula. Don't you believe 
 it. Why, that nucleus is dead, hasn't a spark 
 of vitality. Their nucleus, however, is the 
 smallest part of the society's property ; a mo- 
 nopoly is theirs, a corner in mahatmas. Seen 
 their signboard? 'Inquire within.' To judge 
 from the character of the ' chela's ' writings, a 
 mathematical primer, I should say, would be a 
 most useful present to their Koot-Hoomi. 
 Some of their doings have been grotesque 
 enough ; of occult forgery a leader was ac- 
 cused ; fixed for an investigation was the time 
 and place. To London from America, from 
 India, flocked the officially faithful, but after 

 
 2GO SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 all the quasi-judicial affair flattened out into 
 a mere burlesque. The lawyer-leader was too 
 cute for minds bent on discovering the unappar- 
 ent, not by the use of true methods, but through 
 the ipse dixit of authority. The plaintiff in 
 this "strange case" through occultism was 
 worsted, and this is how her defeat was brought 
 about. The chela-defendant occupied a dou- 
 ble position in that society, vice-president and 
 something else, which I at present do not re- 
 member. To find a verdict against Mr. Hyde 
 would naught avail, when in the twinkling of an 
 eye before his peers stood Dr. Jekyll. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen, I now hold in my 
 hand a recipe, labelled mammoth nonsense. To 
 cure without the aid of surgery society's gan- 
 grenous foot, educate the poor, teach them to be 
 skilful workmen." 
 
 {Voice: "Skip that chestnut.") 
 
 " My friend, I thank you. This recipe is 
 tied up with a white ribbon ; that augers well ; 
 attractive, isn't it ? Who wagers that, folded 
 inside, a Christ-like sentiment is hid clear out
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 26 1 
 
 of sight. The Women's Christain Temperance 
 Union strongly urges upon that virtuous, self- 
 sacrificing class, upon employers, the Chris 
 tian duty of discharging, of rejecting, any la- 
 boring man who gets drunk, who takes a glass. 
 Whew ! what are they ' giving us ' anyway ? 
 Does legal robbery, living by profits, does ap- 
 propriation of the laborer's gain make of the 
 employing class total abstainers ? I say, la- 
 dies, ' come off the perch ' ; stealing the dev- 
 il's livery to serve the Lord in is, to say the 
 least, a shameful thing ; by such means you 
 can't raise pariahs. Permit me to remind you 
 that civilization's disinfecting drug is honest 
 equality. 
 
 "Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a recipe 
 with something new in it : go down to the 
 poor and teach them how to make the most 
 of the little entrusted to them by the Lord. 
 Hold on just one minute till I fix things up ; 
 between poverty and its cause the missing link 
 must be supplied, the word 'gorilla' must be 
 added. Charity works wonders, and this is its
 
 262 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 how. From the receiver's side, charity sup- 
 plies all the poor with all necessaries, makes 
 them sure of comforts ; by dependence upon 
 charity the impoverished become wise, philo- 
 sophic, adepts in the art of adaptation, learn how 
 to become all things to all men, that something 
 may be gained thereby. Charity is a soul- 
 architect, is a designer, makes sycophants. 
 From the giver's side, charity makes the do- 
 nor feel good ; to the sense of justice is a gag, 
 to vanity is a bonus. From the standpoint of 
 classes, charity's real meaning is, ' Here, take 
 this pittance, we give you back a paltry portion 
 of that which under money's mask we have sto- 
 len.' For society's ailments charity a cure-all ? 
 Ugh ! silly fools prate of charity. 
 
 " Eureka ! at last I've got a real novelty, a 
 new phrase : advice to women. Trying to peek 
 at the curiosity ? You don't get the chance ; 
 I'm in charge, and this rare intoxicating beverage 
 must be taken 'straight.' Teach mothers their 
 responsibility, urge upon them their duty, their 
 ability to produce a brand of sons who shall be
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 263 
 
 independent of environment, who shall inherit 
 none of the father's idiosyncrasies ; do you hear 
 that ? To think that women have remained 
 ignorant of their powers, of their possibilities ! 
 Why, their ignorance must be wilful, for in the 
 matter of advising, of instructing, that sex, we 
 men are never off picket duty ; don't know what 
 it is to take a needed rest ; morning, noon, and 
 night we are up and at it ; in our sleep, even, 
 we don't relinquish the job. The fact is, I 
 sometimes think that by the sum and substance 
 of our talk a monopoly of the somnambulic state 
 is shown to be ours. 
 
 " Don't let your interest flag, ladies and gen- 
 tlemen ; don't think me a bore ; remember the 
 greatness of the occasion, remember society 
 must be cured. In the grab-bag only a few pre- 
 scriptions are left. Here is one that is isopathic : 
 To destroy effects, increase their cause ; if the 
 shoe pinches your toes, be sane, and tighten the 
 boot so as to have greater pressure. Unrepre- 
 sented, under paternal government, without 
 chance of Jioncst arbitration, the economically
 
 264 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 oppressed, hearing the still small voiee of human 
 wants and human powers, feel themselves out- 
 raged, and throw sticks and stones, burn street 
 cars ; guided by animal instinct, they vindicate 
 their cause as best they can. To cure the effects 
 of tyranny, forcible repression of the wronged, 
 pile up tyranny. We live in a republic. KING 
 MONEY orders out the militia : sticks and 
 stones are not its missiles. The militia does 
 not burn street cars. KING MONEY has them 
 trained ; their work is destructive, their aim is 
 true ; God's travelling cars are their targets, 
 and anarchist meets anarchist. Whatever is 
 legal is right ; corollary, the isness of the is 
 must be maintained ; capitalism, Lord Gorilla, 
 must be sustained. 
 
 " And now, good patient folks, positively this 
 is the last appearing recipe. Its superscription 
 is Don't. It combines the virtue of phlebotomy 
 with those of counter-irritant. My good gentle- 
 man, on capitalism's Babylonish peak do you 
 securely stand ? in the industrial whirl to the 
 wheel have you put your shoulder, not as man,
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 265 
 
 but as child ? If so, you will relish this 'don't.' 
 Don't teach the laboring class that they have 
 natural rights ; the truth makes them turbulent, 
 makes them undesirable citizens of our re- 
 public." 
 
 The morning is far from being spent, shall 
 we not take advantage of our good doctor's ver- 
 satility ? The audience will be pleased to learn 
 that he has consented to tarry and give us a 
 treat, a recitation. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen, the medley I pro- 
 pose to give is a combination of business acts 
 and of soliloquy. Recital is my part, to discover 
 where the laugh comes in is yours. Mr. Nib- 
 bles, a grocery man on Avenue A, is seated at 
 his desk. Hi, there, Jim, I say, have you 
 sugared that sand ? Well then, put this label 
 on : ' Light grade of New Orleans sugar ; 
 PURE.' And mind, when the women come in 
 to buy that sweet commodity, tell them the fol- 
 lowing story, for women have curiosity, and pry 
 into the reason : tell them that unexpectedly I 
 came upon a chance to purchase a large quan-
 
 266 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 tity, and that is why I am selling it out cheap ; 
 and don't you forget to say that, after all, I only 
 just manage to clear myself, to save a loss. 
 These are ticklish times for a business man, and 
 the women know it. And, Jim, here's a bonus 
 to their feelings : make this remark, accidentally- 
 like, that Mr. Nibbles is an exceptional man, 
 likes to share a good thing, wants to give his 
 customers a benefit ; eh, Jim, and if this venture 
 turns out as I have planned, I'll do a little 
 profit-sharing with you. In the meantime you 
 are learning business methods ; don't forget that. 
 Yes, sah. Exit Jim. 
 
 "And now Mr. Nibbles thinks aloud. 'I 
 haven't been years in business without learn- 
 ing some few things. I have discovered that 
 women have small sense of honor ; in little 
 things are liars ; and then too they are mean 
 and stingy. Why, to save a dime some of 
 them would talk the arm off you ; why is it ? 
 Can't be because women haven't money. I 
 never leave my wife without a quarter. She 
 couldn't get along without money ; the thing
 
 AND MYTIIE-MAKERS. 267 
 
 is impossible ; and don't we know that ? Men 
 weren't born yesterday. Children have to be 
 fed and clothed, and if sick, why, there's the 
 drugs ; and the girl — servants' wages must be 
 paid. And occasionally I will have some little 
 delicacy. I own it ; I believe in a man being 
 honest, owning up to the corn. Sometimes I 
 need something appetizing. My wife always 
 has money ; I take care of that. And so, what- 
 ever may be the cause of a woman's stinginess, 
 it certainly is not the want of money. I'd like 
 to know what is the matter with women any- 
 way ; must be that their heads are light, top 
 story unfurnished, eh ? By Jove, I have hit it ; 
 they run mad after fashions, and that's a sign 
 of vacancy, isn't it ? Haven't I heard them rave 
 over a color, call it aesthetic ? Bah ! the silly 
 things. 
 
 " ' Yes, that's my name ; what can I do for 
 you ? Pay this bill ? Well, let me see it. Fif- 
 ty dollars for cutting off my horse's tail ? 
 Whew ! you've gone up on surgery. Case of 
 demand and supply, want to adjust the market
 
 268 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 to your pocket ; I see through it. To cut off 
 Dobbin's tail I paid only twenty-five dollars. 
 I call this raise unfair; it's taking advantage of 
 a man's necessities ; you veterinaries must be 
 getting rich, kept steady at such jobs. The 
 men who own horses have just gone mad on this 
 fashion. But, I say, can't you reduce this bill a 
 little, scale it on the score of casualties ? Why, 
 the horse isn't well, and may die yet ; the spine, 
 by that operation, has received a shock, and, 
 robbed of nature's means of self-defence, the pes- 
 ky flies have full swing, torment the poor fellow 
 almost to death, irritate him beyond measure. 
 I'm not a fool ; of course I know that a mutila- 
 ted horse is less valuable than a sound one ; don't 
 deny the thing is a piece of tomfoolery ; but then, 
 what's a man who wants to be in style, wants with 
 his horse to cut a figure, to do ? Might as well 
 be out of the world as out of fashion, is an old and 
 true proverb. Here's your money, just receipt 
 the bill. Good-morning, sir. 
 
 " ' Could we but catch the original robber 
 of the horse race, the man who first began
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 269 
 
 the brutal business, why, then it could be 
 stopped; but we can't, and so, "guided by the 
 merits of the case," by fashion, there is nothing 
 for us but to go on, and on, and on, forever 
 and forever, cutting off poor horses' tails. 
 Heigh-ho ! I'm glad it's over ; it's a mean piece 
 of business, but then it is heroic. My wife 
 musn't see this bill ; lucky it didn't go to the 
 house. Wasn't she opposed, said 'twas cruel, 
 fiendish. But then she calls eating meat, feed- 
 ing on the corpses of our coexistent ancestry. 
 Women do have queer streaks. 
 
 " ' I am worried ; my bank account is getting 
 low, the money till is about empty. That last 
 bet of mine now, had I only won it. Gracious 
 me, but things are lackadaisical. Why is it we 
 men don't get along better ? I am sure we try 
 hard enough to keep from going under, try to 
 keep erect and on our economic feet ; and I 
 know for a fact that business is conducted 
 on a grand scale ; men have brains. Not 
 an honest thing in the market ; adulteration 
 is kept jumping, busy in every direction, and
 
 27O SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 yet, after all, in money matters it is the few 
 who have easy minds. My good mother used 
 to say that nothing went without hands, so 
 somebody's extravagance must be to blame for 
 the difficulties of business men. Wouldn't I 
 like to ferret the folly out, whatever it may be. 
 Guess I'll think a minute.**** Great Scott ! I 
 have it : our women chew gum. Let me see : 
 "where was I at ?" I'm frustrated by that dis- 
 covery, that addition to inductive science. I 
 think I was going to make a remark about 
 women. Yes, that's it. I am disappointed in the 
 women, for, what with their limited capacity 
 and the educational advantages they now pos- 
 sess, they ought to make progress, ought to 
 acquire more knowledge of business methods, 
 ought to be, in short, more businesslike. 
 Men try hard, always have tried, to stimulate 
 the women to greatness by encouraging 
 them ; morning, noon, and night, they have 
 rubbed their inferiority in on them. Now, my 
 wife in answer declares that talk is vapory, that 
 a tree is known by its fruits ; protests that
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKEKS. 2 J I 
 
 she is a realist, demands an exhibition of 
 men's superiority ; at the same time she says 
 she begs the favor of a " rest " from their 
 boast. What is a man to do under such cir- 
 cumstances, with only the raw material, the 
 power to become, and no finished product on 
 hand ? This is the way I get out of the difficulty : 
 I cling to talk. Oak-like, isn't it ? I get mad 
 and insist that she's got our exhibition of su- 
 periority. Mary Jane retorts by pointing to 
 what she calls sex-precedent, meaning this : a 
 rejoicing rooster on a refuse heap flaps his 
 wings and crows ; a hen laid the egg. Mary 
 Jane to me at times is awfully impertinent. 
 
 "'Business is dull this morning, customers 
 don't flock in ; tfiat's the fault of the women, 
 they are too saving, try to make a little go a 
 long ways ; times with business men would be 
 better if the women were inclined to be extrava- 
 gant. 
 
 " ' Well, haven't I had a loud reverie. Can't 
 help it. Man has an active brain, and that is 
 why he is so superior to all the rest of crea- 
 tion. Heigh-ho ! I may as well keep at it.
 
 272 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 " ' Educational opportunities, why are they 
 closed to women ? The hand of Providence 
 must certainly be in it, for ministers fight wom- 
 an's progress inch by inch every step of the 
 way. My wife accounts for the mystery by 
 what she calls an occult reason ; says that, un- 
 consciously conscious of their deficient start, 
 men, to lessen the gulf between them and 
 the favored sex, the one which had a bet- 
 ter God-impulsion, have cornered educational 
 opportunities. Of late years I am not both- 
 ered to help the church, either by my presence 
 or with my money. How I did begrudge 
 that last gift, my haul from a lucky bet ! 
 All went to fix up a fine altar and to buy 
 for the church an expensive Bible. Mary 
 Jane says she has shed her milk teeth, and is 
 now working to uplift humanity. My wife is 
 a socialist. I don't often come right out 
 with this ; it would hurt my business, would in- 
 jure me with my political party, and so I keep 
 shady ; but now I am alone and have nobody to 
 fear ; besides, talking aloud makes an imagina- 
 tive man fancy he is an orator.
 
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 273 
 
 " ' I take it she wants the brotherly condition 
 brought about. That's too good, ha ! ha ! ha ! 
 As though there would ever come a time when 
 men wont do each other up if there is a 
 chance. My wife wants the state to adopt 
 the family plan ; fool notion ; shows a woman's 
 ignorance of a man, the image of his Maker. 
 How can women know about the Lord when 
 they make such mistakes ? That rib isn't 
 straightened out yet ; I reckon it isn't working 
 natural. I would like to have some proof of 
 that Bible story ; I must ask the college dem- 
 onstrator of anatomy if he finds men's ribs un- 
 even, more on one side than the other. I more 
 than half believe that sometime that bony ex- 
 planation will turn out to be a wrong transla- 
 tion, just a crow rigged up to scare the men 
 folks into subjection. But what am I saying? 
 This way of accounting for it wont do ; there 
 is a superlative objection : the women had no 
 hand in getting up the Bible, and when found 
 sick, it is divinity that doctors our Holy Book. 
 Let me think : now, if men were started on
 
 274 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 the race-track physically imperfect, minus a rib, 
 why, then, of course the women folks would 
 come out physically ahead ; I'm willing to 
 stake on that. And yet it is the men who vote. 
 Well, I don't understand, unless the knee-pan, 
 at the beginning, was the site of more intelli- 
 gence than the rib ; unless civilization's select- 
 ive power led to nice sex discriminations, knew 
 exactly where to strike a deathblow. Acquired 
 deficiencies must be more damaging than 
 those deficiencies with which one starts, than 
 natural imperfections are. Is that reasonable, 
 though ? Men are not ashamed of ribbal in- 
 sufficiency, boast of it ; men have made the 
 Bible. I am in a muddle ; that comes of follow- 
 ing suggestion's lead. Well, I am precious 
 sure of one thing : if physical deformity is natu- 
 ral to men, and civilizalion hasn't helped us out, 
 we are in a pretty box. Woman's day is at 
 hand, and, by George ! the revisers better hus- 
 tle, jump onto that crooked story, make it 
 straight, make it fit in natural with things that 
 are actual. 

 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 275 
 
 " 'To remonstrants, my wife suggests that they 
 investigate socialism in a rational spirit ; the very 
 existence of society implies socialism in some 
 form or other, so she says ; and the present form 
 is bad, is destructive to that friendliness which 
 it has taken ages to build up ; she protests that 
 our present socio-economic condition leads to 
 prostitution of the human feeling. She meets 
 one objection by reminding me that I do not eat 
 with all the folks whom I meet in the street 
 cars ; declares that fraternal socialism does not 
 entail loving the uncongenial ; that to respect, 
 to love, the principle of right dealing, equality 
 would, in a way natural to humans, bring that 
 state about. When in the course of her argu- 
 ment she turns and with pathos asks, Why leave 
 the well uncovered, knowing that, though George 
 and Mary may escape, John and Bessie must 
 fall in, must drown ? — when into her socialistic 
 talk she brings the children — I own, through fear 
 for their future, I am more than half convinced. 
 You see, it's about other people's children that 
 we men don't care a darn. So limited, Mary
 
 276 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Jane says, the character of our motive is not dif- 
 ferent from that of the brute mother who pro- 
 vides, fights for, and loves her own children. 
 
 " ' Once we came near to quarreling. The 
 morning paper told of motherless children shipped 
 to their father who was laboring in the West ; 
 went there to get a job. Not being properly 
 notified of the time of their arrival, the poor 
 children had to hang about that Western station. 
 Well, after they had had twenty-four hours of 
 it, hungry and disappointed, all of them broke 
 down and cried. Jerusalem! the folks flew, took 
 them pies and cakes, fixed them up with warm 
 clothes, and found their father for them. It 
 thrilled me through, and I allow 'twas charitable, 
 'twas grand ; but my wife wouldn't see it, said 
 she was disgusted that in a civilized country the 
 social state permitted children to travel alone, 
 permitted children to be neglected ; said the only 
 way to get attention, to get one's natural rights, 
 was to make a big noise. 
 
 " ' Mrs. Nibbles assures me that fraternal so- 
 cialism will come anyway, and she asks me if 

 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 277 
 
 the business men care whether the servant girl 
 gets her letters or not. I have to own up that of 
 course they do not, but that the means which 
 ensures us an orderly reception of our letters, 
 ensures poor Gretchen hers. I accuse Mrs. 
 Nibbles of being an anarchist, and she admits 
 it ; says she wants to destroy everything that is 
 not natural to our industrial methods, everything 
 that is not natural to us as human beings. She 
 accuses those who inveigh against socialism of 
 absurdity, of shutting their eyes to facts, of not 
 seeing that paternal socialism's irritating control 
 trickles through all social layers ; says that to 
 please some employers shop girls must wear 
 black ; and then she goes off into a merry laugh 
 over male ideas of a free country. Starting with 
 the capitalists, who are the first controllers, she 
 travels on down, shows that between the grocery- 
 man and the butcher the hour for meals is varied, 
 no two of them consecutively are alike, and then 
 she pins me down by asking, Can fraternal social- 
 ism do more than to decide what shall and what 
 shall not be produced, and how much of what
 
 278 SOCIOECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 is in the market one shall have ? Can fraternal 
 socialism do more than to interfere with your 
 personal arrangements, interfere with your pri- 
 vate affairs? Annoyances from servants ? Well, 
 upon this topic my wife don't talk ; she thinks 
 that as a class they are abused, and in their de- 
 fence I have heard her say that the persons she 
 has found most destitute of the moral sense are 
 not in the servant girl ranks. 
 
 " ' Steam heat ? Ah ! that is a sore point with 
 me. I have had experience, have felt the double 
 bite, frost and burn. Now, I don't like a busi- 
 ness joke played on me. One don't want in his 
 home to experience the extremes of temperature, 
 winter and summer, in a single day. Offices are 
 heated by steam ; there the square thing is done ; 
 but in dwellings ? Can it be that they think 
 that, if women and children are mainly the ones 
 to suffer, it don't matter ? Well, anyway I have 
 concluded that obtaining tenants under false 
 pretences ought, like obtaining goods, to be 
 actionable. Mary Jane, when I broach the sub- 
 ject, takes in her flag, insists that of course
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 279 
 
 landlords want to turn an honest penny ; that 
 it is unreasonable to expect them to make ten- 
 ants a present of heat. She says that when the 
 sun is shining in Florida, or in the southeast 
 apartment, if the occupants of the northeast flat 
 expect comfort, warmth, they are anarchists. 
 She says that beggars shouldn't be choosers, and 
 avers that one ought to be more than satisfied, 
 having both certainty and surprises combined in 
 a steam-heated apartment, the certainty of un- 
 certainty, and the joyful surprise when warm air 
 does come radiating up. But I don't like it ; it 
 don't suit me to be frozen one hour and roasted 
 the next, and so I have decided upon a set of 
 questions to be categorically put to landlords 
 and their tools (beg pardon, agents) the next 
 time I rent a steam-heated apartment. This 
 lack of balance in the management of steam heat 
 my wife accounts for by the fact of its male con- 
 trol, the engineer thinking that to give the regu- 
 lation amount, the quantity KING MONEY'S 
 perquisite allows, is all that is necessary ; no 
 cause to growl about the time or the evenness 
 of its coming up.
 
 280 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 " 'For the people's awful comfort, the principle 
 of inequality, the economic gospel is responsible, 
 Mary Jane says, and I believe that she is about 
 right. Not that I always approve of my wife's 
 views, and I don't often encourage her socialis- 
 tic talk ; it would not do. She is altogether too 
 intellectual, takes after her mother's side of the 
 house. Why, for generations the women of her 
 family have a record of being smart. Now, I 
 know what I am talking about, have investigated 
 this matter, know that Mary Jane has a power- 
 ful brain, thinks too much, and that is why I 
 act as moderator. I am a pretty liberal man ; 
 my wife says so. That reminds me : I have a 
 friend who says he never believes anything a 
 woman says about her husband, that is, if it hap- 
 pens to be good ; says it's natural for a wife to 
 want to make folks believe that her hubby is just 
 too good and smart, and that she will try to do 
 it every time unless she's dead beat out by the 
 man. It is a fact that women are fabricators even 
 over trifles, seems somehow to be their nature, 
 seems to be in grain. But then that's not my
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 28 I 
 
 wife, what sJic says can be depended upon every 
 time ; the higher mathematics ain't more truth- 
 ful ; and my wife says I am a pretty liberal man. 
 Still, I wouldn't like to see our women in public 
 affairs ; they are too possessed with the idea of 
 uniformity, would congeal things, would obstruct 
 progress. Now, were school affairs under the 
 management of the women, schools in this great 
 city, New York, would for all the children be 
 provided ; thousands of little folks on education 
 bent would not be turned away on the plea of 
 no room inside, be bidden to go roam the streets. 
 That's the way it is now. I am compelled to 
 own that the Political Fathers' method of pre- 
 paring children to become respectable citizens 
 is disgraceful to an enlightened republic, but the 
 principal of inequality would be denied were 
 every child given schooling opportunity ; it 
 would be imprisoned, confined to its lawful 
 quarters, and then things would be congealed. 
 Medical authority claims that civilization has 
 made changes in woman's knee-pan, unfitted her 
 to vote. Physical deficiency interferes with
 
 282 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 woman's use of the ballot, but leaves the men- 
 tally bow-legged free to exercise the franchise. 
 By Jupiter! I allow that's queer.' Ladies and 
 gentlemen, I bid you good morning." 
 
 I am sure that I voice the feelings of this 
 audience when I say that we are grateful to so- 
 ciety's quack doctor, and to his double, the re- 
 citer, for the lively entertainment they have fur- 
 nished us this morning ; but, Herr Doctor, may 
 I be allowed to make one correction ? I think 
 that you called society a dame ; now, to that I 
 take exception. Rectify that error in the fu- 
 ture ; kindly bear in mind that, though unmanly, 
 political society is every inch a man. 
 
 Friends, let us suppose that one of us falls 
 ill, sends for a doctor, the case by her is diag- 
 nosticated pneumonia. Is she pessimistic ? 
 Which of us, if sane, holds that physician re- 
 sponsible for the suffering and the pain, our im- 
 minent danger ? Ladies and gentlemen, I have 
 great pleasure in introducing the Socialist, who, 
 though last, is by no means the least. 
 
 SOCIALIST : " You have sat long, you must
 
 AND MVTHE-MAKERS. 283 
 
 be weary ; I shall endeavor to be brief. Upon 
 society's actual exhibition I shall lightly touch, 
 but upon what society, by implication, is, were 
 there time, I would say much. Humor a lover's 
 fancy ; I would personify society as my other 
 self, my better half. I love my wife and I would 
 have her womanly, would have her well. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen, need I remind you 
 that not an individual thing stands by itself 
 alone ? Relations exist and can be found. Thus 
 the unknowable is reached, and thus all things 
 are unified. Particulars into generals must fit. 
 Humor a lover's fancy ; come with me upon 
 abstract conception's track. Let us imagine a 
 something having vitality, a something that is 
 plastic ; true, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, as 
 commonly positioned, are not its elements. The 
 constituents of social-protoplasm are Principles 
 and Powers, the Unknowable on its subjective 
 side. Sifted, you are aware that everything is 
 motion ; in perpetual manifestation are the Prin- 
 ciples and Powers, actors in the omnipotence- 
 drama. This granted, you will allow that, given
 
 284 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 Om's impulsion, my wife's motion must be ever 
 onward ; unto perfection she approaches through 
 lesser forms ; by and by she will be human, and 
 eventually reach the divine. From resistance 
 to the UP and the ON comes the wayward mo- 
 tion ; into the plans of God such hath not en- 
 tered ; my Lord Evolution drives Om's stately 
 van. Tossed to and fro are the surface waters, 
 but look into the river's deep, look below ; there 
 the current ever onward moves to the ocean, to 
 the sublime. 
 
 " By analogy may we not interpret the mean- 
 ing of the destiny of social-protoplasm, may we 
 not gather lessons from the result of motions 
 by life's physical basis ? I think so. Traveling 
 through beings-space, ere protoplasm reached 
 the human form, the detours were many that 
 it made ; collected, boiled down, separated from 
 the froth and the scum, what is the substance 
 of their deep purport ? Why, this : a body 
 with a backbone, a head, and a perfectly 
 formed heart, 
 
 " Now, wherefore a backbone ? Why, to pre-
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 285 
 
 serve equality in opportunity, and, by preserva- 
 tion of equal natural rights, to co-ordinate the 
 different individual parts into a living organism, 
 into a unified whole, the palace car of OM. Up- 
 on the spine a blow, traumatic injury, and, lo ! 
 there arises a nervous disorder, disclosed by the 
 uncertain, the wabbling gait. Upon the social 
 spine falls the blow of the Lord Gorilla. So- 
 ciety's walk is reeling ; she is not drunken, is 
 diseased ; society has locomotor-ataxia. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen, you know our claims, 
 our socialistic prophecy. Society must become 
 human. Why ? Because in social-protoplasm 
 there is the active woman element, the principle 
 of sympathy ; it is persistent, and it will be ex- 
 pressed intelligently. How will this be brought 
 about ? and how account for the character of 
 the mode of this coming introduction ? Good 
 friends, I leave with you this double conundrum ; 
 put head and heart to work, and it is readily 
 seen through. 
 
 "Briefly I call attention to some facts which 
 show us by exemplification what we have a right
 
 286 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 to expect. Church supremacy, in the minds of 
 the people as a whole, has received its death- 
 blow ; a twin fetich, divine right of kings, keeps 
 the supreme corpse company. Merely as social 
 institutions the church and monarchy are strug- 
 gling now to maintain position. The divine 
 right of money holds the fort of supremacy ; 
 its feet are getting cold ; socialism is at work, 
 the death gurgle comes in time, and then hark : 
 the king is dead, long live King Humanity. 
 
 " First, the horde, for subsistence, all did the 
 same thing ; new-born humanity was unacquaint- 
 ed with its powers. Differentiation came, and 
 into the clan were introduced the political thought 
 and bad social adjustment. Chattel slavery, 
 long a prevalent mode of service, has gone ; in 
 the game of social euchre must wage slavery 
 not follow suit ? By the relation of divided parts, 
 by the facts of division and of form — But 
 kindly look upon this demonstration ; it will 
 save time and show the sure prophecy of social 
 adjustment's final state, Fraternity, to those at
 
 ±ND MYTHE-MAKERS. 
 
 287 
 
 least who sense the meaning of progressive 
 motion : 
 
 5OCIETV 
 
 " With the spoils system gone, and Fraternity 
 at home, conduct has no economic chance to be 
 less than human, less than straight and square.
 
 288 
 
 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 " Will the audience kindly tarry for a mo- 
 ment ? I hear a voice ; from spirit-land a 
 form is coming. Wearied with the hardships 
 of his lot a laboring child of twelve, a little 
 factory boy down East, lost courage with us 
 to live, but believing in a Heavenly Father 
 he found the courage to depart — suicide by 
 drowning. Hush-sh-sh ! he speaks : 
 
 " ' I wanted to be like other boys, go to school 
 and have playtime, but from morning until 
 night with me was work or starve. I wasn't 
 strong, my legs ached ; at last there came a 
 happy thought — run away ; but then where 
 to ? I didn't know anyone that would take me 
 in, be kind and let me play, and I didn't know
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 289 
 
 what to do, which way to turn, until I thought 
 of heaven and God. It was noon, the sun was 
 shining bright, and seemed to say, " Come 
 right up here, little boy; there's lots of room." 
 I felt encouraged, took my way down to the 
 river's brink ; guess a kind spirit helped me, 
 though, and gave me strength. Splash ! *** 
 When I woke up an angel had me in her arms. 
 Spirits knew that I was tired. Things up here 
 are good and lovely, and oh ! I am so happy 
 and so glad. Good-bye.' " 
 
 (The audience is gone and I am anxious to 
 inquire if my wife, for her effort to do good, to 
 sow socialistic seed, feels repaid ; am anxious 
 to express the hope that she is happy.) 
 
 To give perceptive power is the work of 
 deity ; but our duty is to help each other unto 
 opportunities to unfold. The soil, I know, was 
 good, and I do indeed feel sure that socialis- 
 tic seed has taken root. Oh ! would that I 
 possessed the magic power to, on the instant, 
 call it up a blossoming tree, another instant, 
 change the blossoms into the perfect fruit.
 
 29O SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 (Remember all things come to those who 
 wait ; I would my wife were a more patient 
 person. Well, business presses, and I for 
 my engagements am already late. Good-morn- 
 ing ; I shall be home at six.) 
 
 " All things come to those who wait." 
 Kindly meant, but by just such phrases folks are 
 gagged ; without some one's effort and some 
 one's work, nothing comes. Of comforts and 
 luxuries I am possessed, and if I, when think- 
 ing upon the wants, upon the galling poverty, of 
 others, feel as I do, what must their sensation 
 be, upon whom the tiger has fixed his tooth and 
 claw ? And then to know that it is needless ; 
 " aye, there's the rub "; to know that it is be- 
 cause rights and opportunities are pillaged. 
 
 No sentiment in business, I have heard it 
 said. Egregious blunder ! In sentiment, the 
 sentiment of self, is business soaked. "The 
 struggle for existence " is a phrase that fitted 
 the living fact before productive power grew tall 
 enough to look into the eyes to read the soul of 
 man's environment. The struggle for existence
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 29 1 
 
 means now class carnage. Were my children 
 crying for bread and I none to give, were my 
 babes pinched by the cold and I powerless to 
 help, I, their mother, to get square with the 
 social monster would feel an eternity too short ; 
 and if within my breast the sleeping lion by 
 sympathy is aroused, what wonder if actual 
 sufferers turn demons ? I know that, in the 
 future, folks shall live as humans, and by the 
 thought my soul is buoyed up. 
 
 The grand social change, how, oh ! how shall 
 it be brought about, be ushered in ? Shall it be 
 by intelligence directly applied to that end ? 
 My house of hope rests not on rock of sand. 
 My expectation on desire's high sea in princi- 
 ples and in REACTION'S power is anchored. 
 Pour into a full vessel and it overflows, clothes 
 are soiled, and the unwise get wet. The ful- 
 ness of oppression's cup is rising to the brim. 
 Wisdom sought not Adam ; could not reach his 
 intellect but through his love of self, through 
 appetite. Wisdom in the guise of serpent went 
 unto the woman.
 
 292 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 In my conclusions have I erred ? Be chari- 
 table, my brothers ; excuse, I pray you, on the 
 ground of woman's faulty logic. 
 
 The greatest good to the greatest number ? 
 Political gag, dead and gone. The greatest 
 good to each, the greatest good to all, mother 
 thought, radiating, alive ; fraternal socialism, 
 our socio-economic state centered on the family 
 plan. Nobody pulled down, everybody lifted up, 
 and that social class who from the mathematic 
 point of view morally are robbers, reclaimed, 
 and by sanitary social conditions cured of 
 their disposition to do violent deeds. Excelsi- 
 or ! Not in the possession of happiness, but 
 in the method of its gainment, at the expense 
 of others, selfishness lies. Do not unto others 
 that which ye would not they should do unto 
 you. " Give me a fulcrum, and I will lift the 
 world," says Archimedes. Here brother, take 
 it : You and me. 
 
 Through the operation of NATURAL at- 
 traction, associations formed ; in the socio- 
 economic millennium, commingling of the
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 293 
 
 congenial, friendships, every human feeling 
 not trampled upon by KING MONEY. 
 
 Did I hear the question asked, What under 
 fraternal socialism must be done with our guard- 
 ian angels, keepers of reformatory homes for 
 moral monsters, indigent, forlorn, our helpless 
 girls and boys, children for whom Christ did 
 not live and agonize ?***** N 0) I will not 
 second the motion to send those keepers to 
 * * * *. Why, I have friends there ; besides, 
 the invalids in that winter resort ought at least 
 to have a chance to * * * * * And since my 
 medical opinion has been asked, I prescribe for 
 these protectors of the spiritual, these evolvers 
 of the good, these hatchers of the moral self, 
 the heavenliest, purest atmosphere. A milder 
 form of bliss I think might work a full effect 
 upon their ministerial defenders. 
 
 Fraternal socialism, by the law of opposites, 
 in one of two ways must come. By philosophic 
 anarchism shall its advent be ? Well, that de- 
 pends. The earthquake's roar was sudden, 
 likewise the earthquake's appearance, but for a
 
 294 SOCIO-ECONOMIC MYTHES 
 
 long time the forces had been gathering. The 
 earth's crust was inelastic, would not yield. 
 Examine forts, fill them with ammunition, store 
 your bombs ; intimidation is your game. Get 
 ready for an uprising of the people. Tools of 
 KING MONEY slaughter the unrepresented ; 
 this is a republic. With the blood of victims 
 natural rights must be bought ; this is a repub- 
 lic. With money, with powder and with shot, 
 privileges are purchased. Guided by " the 
 merits of the case " anarchists sustain Lord 
 Gorilla's cause in this republic. 
 
 Think to prevent fraternal socialism ? Can 
 the accoucheur prevent the birth ? Economic 
 methods contain within themselves the " sacred 
 fire." " What can be avoided whose end is 
 purposed by the mighty gods ?" Down with vi- 
 cious legislation. Christians of the millennium, 
 be not afraid ; opportunity to fight will still 
 continue ; look within, subjugate that monster. 
 Peace, peace ; the world wants peace. But 
 the industrial massacre goes on. And the cry 
 goes up, and the cry goes up ; shall it never
 
 AND MYTHE-MAKERS. 295 
 
 come down ? What say the facts of motion ? 
 Yea, verily ! Plutocrats, be aware ! The ball 
 which decends to earth with great momentum 
 received its force from an impelling hand. RE- 
 ACTION is EQUAL to ACTION and in the 
 contrary direction. Is society a band of robber- 
 ruffians, bound together by the bond of mutual 
 murder ? Come, let us be human. 
 
 And Jesus said, I come no.t to bring peace 
 [TO SINFUL CONDITIONS], but a sword. 
 
 THE END.
 
 From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 A Stirring Drama of T3Uar-ITime$. 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 nary I 
 Holland Lee j MARGARET SALISBURY. 
 
 The setting of the story is vivid and picturesque, bridg- 
 ing the period of our Civil war, and its touches upon New 
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 phraseology and dramatic power. The tale opens with a 
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 Mrs. Lee strikes the note of heredity firmly, and the most 
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 the sad struggles of the great Rebellion are incidentally 
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 " Margaret Salisbury " is the brave and loyal heroine of a 
 stirring drama of the Civil War. Her love story is a sad one 
 and long in telling, but it affords the author opportunity to intro- 
 duce pictures of Southern life in anti-bellum days and some 
 startling episodes of army times. The sympathetic interest of 
 the reader will be aroused by a succession of unusual incidents. 
 — Public Opinion, Washington, D. C. 
 
 North and South, their people and principles, are the text of 
 the book. The slavery question is treated from an unprejudiced 
 standpoint. The Negro, Yankee and Southern characters are 
 lifelike under skilful moulding. As a love story it is pure, sim- 
 ple, strong and pathetic. — The American Newsman, New York 
 City. 
 
 " Margaret Salisbury " is a story of the war, and is charm- 
 ingly told. Its heroes are of the real kind who believe what 
 they profess because they were born to believe so. The story is 
 enlivened by a vein of rather exquisite humor and toned up by 
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 entertaining tale of heroic times. — Kansas City Journal. 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass.
 
 A Bundle of New Books. 
 
 & ]Neui Booh of Social thought. Just Published. 
 
 B.O. Flower 
 
 The Social 
 Factors at Work 
 in the Ascent of 
 Man 
 
 Rev. 
 
 Minot J. 
 
 Savage 
 
 A New World, a 
 New God, a New 
 Humanity 
 
 The New Relig- 
 ious Thinking 
 deals only with 
 Verities 
 
 Price, paper, 25 cents] cloth, $1.00. 
 
 The New Time : A Plea for the Union of 
 the floral Forces for Practical Progress. 
 
 This new work, by the author of " Civilization's In- 
 ferno," deals with practical, methods for the reform of 
 specific social evils. The writer does not bind together a 
 mere bundle of social speculations, that would seem to 
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 rectly home to every man's bosom and business — follow- 
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 It is published especially to meet the wants of those 
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 comprised in the platform of the National Union for Prac- 
 tical Progress ; but, from its wide sweep of all the factors 
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 readers to a general consideration of the newer social 
 thinking. 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1 .00. 
 
 The Irrepressible Conflict between 
 Two World=Theories. 
 
 Five lectures dealing with Christianity and evolutionary 
 thought, to which is added " The Inevitable Surrender of 
 Orthodoxy." By the famous Unitarian divine, advanced 
 thinker and author of "Psychics: Facts and Theories." 
 Mr. Savage stands in the van of the progress of moral, 
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 nothing less than a new universe, a new God, a new man, 
 a new destiny. 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass.
 
 From the press of the Arena Publishing Company . 
 
 Fiction : Social, Economic an6 Reformative. 
 
 Charles S. 
 Daniel 
 
 A Story of the 
 ■Transformation 
 of the Slums 
 
 E. Stillman 
 Doubleday 
 
 A story of the 
 Struggles of 
 Honest Industry 
 under Present 
 Day Conditions. 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.25. 
 JU5T PLAIN FOLKS. 
 
 A novel for the industrial millions, illustrating two stu- 
 pendous facts : — 
 
 1 . The bounty and goodness of nature. 
 
 2. The misery resulting from unjust social conditions 
 which enable the acquirer of wealth to degenerate in 
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 conditions of honest industry and society-made vice, 
 should read this admirable story. 
 
 AI 
 
 Price, paper, 50 -.ents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 A Social Vision. 
 
 One of the most ingenious, unique and thought-provoking 
 stories of the present generation. It is a social vision, and in 
 many respects the most noteworthy of the many remarkable 
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 The brotherhood of man and various sociological and philan- 
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 the topics discussed in " Ai," a novel by Charles Daniel, wh< 
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 the intellectual freshness reminds one constantly of Edward 
 Everett Hale's stories, with which "Ai" has much in common. 
 This is a clever book, and, what is much more important, one 
 whose influence is for good. — Public Ledger.
 
 From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 A Sequel to "Looking Bachuuar&." 
 
 Rabbi 
 Solomon 
 Schindler 
 
 YOUNG WEST. 
 
 Frier, cloth, $1.25 ; paper, 50 cents. 
 
 Civilization 
 under National- 
 ism in the 
 Twenty-Second 
 Century 
 
 The author of " Looking Backward 1 ' and others did a 
 good work in introducing to the general reader many ideas 
 which had been discussed for a long time by the best 
 scientific writers of our day, but which were and are un- 
 fortunately removed from popular sympathy through the 
 strictly scientific character of the literary vehicles in which 
 they appeared. But the author of " Looking Backward," 
 probably on account of the limited compass of his book, 
 has not given in detail a description of all the social con- 
 ditions of the brighter future which is to witness the tri- 
 umph of altruism. He has merely whetted the appetite of 
 the reader, but he has not satified his hunger. " Young 
 West " (the son of Julian West) will indirectly answer all 
 these questions. Describing his own eventful career from 
 his first awakening to consciousness to his age of three- 
 score and ten, the hero of the book will picture life in its 
 various phases, as it will be acted out by a citizen of the 
 United States of America in the twenty-second century. 
 
 The book is intended primarily to answer the many 
 questions which are asked about the practical workings of 
 nationalism and socialism. 
 
 A Stirring Story of the T#ar. 
 
 Helen H. 
 Gardener 
 
 Price, cloth, $1.25 ; paper, 50 cents. 
 
 AN UNOFFICIAL PATRIOT. 
 
 This is a story of the Civil War, but it is the first story 
 of its kind that has appeared in our literature. It deals 
 J with a phase of the war entirely new in fiction. It is a 
 departure from all Helen Gardener's previous stories, and 
 is perhaps the strongest piece of work she has produced. 
 The Boston Home Journal says: "Is in many ways the 
 most remarkable historical novel of the Civil War which 
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 Gardener has produced a book that will take very high 
 rank in the historical literature of the War of the Rebellion ; 
 for although presented in the form of a novel, its historical 
 value cannot be questioned." 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 
 
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