THE COST OF 
 SOMETHING FOR NOTHING 
 
 jU^_ f. ^2..^^^^^<_
 
 I
 
 UBRAKf 
 OF THE
 
 THE 
 
 COST OF SOMETHING 
 
 FOR NOTHING 
 
 By 
 
 John P. Altgeld 
 
 Ex-Governor of Illinois 
 
 Author of 
 "Oratory" and "live Questions" 
 
 Chicago 
 
 xrae rlammersinark Publisnmg Co. 
 MCMIV
 
 
 ^t'l 
 
 Copyright June, 1904 
 
 by 
 
 The Hammersmark Publishing Company 
 
 Chicago, HI. 
 
 >4e 
 
 From the Press of The Campbell Company 
 Chicago
 
 
 c 
 
 NOTE 
 
 This little volume was written just before Governor 
 Altgeld's death, and is now published for the first time. 
 
 It was given to me for examination by Mrs. Altgeld, 
 and on reading it I was convinced that it should be 
 published just as it was left by him. 
 
 Few men in this generation have been more per- 
 sistently misunderstood than Governor Altgeld. This 
 came from his fearless and relentless attacks upon 
 injustice and wrong in places of influence and power. 
 Since his death much of the personal bitterness has 
 passed away, and an ever-growing number of his 
 fellow-men are coming to recognize him as one of the 
 most sincere and devoted friends of humanity that 
 this country has produced. 
 
 Governor Altgeld devoted his life to the cause of 
 justice and died while defending the weak against the 
 oppressors. This little volume reaching the public a 
 year after this great man's death, cannot fail to interest 
 and encourage all men and women who are hoping 
 and wishing for justice on the earth. 
 
 At this time, when everyone is intent on getting 
 
 something for nothing, these words of a statesman 
 
 and a philosopher should not pass unheeded. Every 
 
 thoughtful person who reads this book must realize 
 
 that nothing can be had without cost, and that the 
 
 accounts of the universe are adjusted and balanced so 
 
 that in some way everyone must, sooner or later, pay 
 
 for what he gets. 
 
 CLARENCE S. DARROW. 
 
 1 924i)7
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This book does not pretend to deal with re- 
 Hgion. Its contents are devoted entirely to 
 conditions in this world. 
 
 The author does not wish to appear in the 
 light of a critic or scold. He emphatically dis- 
 claims being better than his fellows. But, be- 
 lieving that much wrong-doing has its begin- 
 ning in thoughtlessness and inexperience, 
 these pages have been written with the hope 
 that, by calling attention to certain inexorable 
 laws, the thoughtless may be led to think, 
 and the inexperienced may profit by the ex- 
 perience of those who have had more experi- 
 ence than profit.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Reactionary Effect of Human Conduct . . 13 
 
 Crime Regions 21 
 
 The Murderer and Marauder .... 23 
 
 The Swindler and the Sneak Thief ... 25 
 
 Lying and Trickery 27 
 
 Railway Magnates 29 
 
 Local Monopolies 33 
 
 Certain Great Americans 37 
 
 Standard Oil Company 43 
 
 The Liquor Traffic 45 
 
 Newspapers 49 
 
 Manufacturers 55 
 
 Wages 59 
 
 Bankers 61 
 
 Lawyers 65 
 
 Do Judges Stagnate 73 
 
 Professional Militarism 75 
 
 Fighting for Liberty and Country ... 79 
 
 West Point 83 
 
 Currents of Destiny 93 
 
 "A Good Fellow" 99 
 
 9
 
 Table of Contents Continued 
 
 Politics 103 
 
 Government 107 
 
 Wrong Done to Women log 
 
 Prayer 113 
 
 Gratification 117 
 
 Ministers of the Gospel 119 
 
 Parasites 125 
 
 Exploitation 127 
 
 The Potency of Ideas 129 
 
 Conclusion ..«.•... 131 
 
 10
 
 THE 
 
 COST OF SOMETHING 
 
 FOR NOTHING
 
 REACTIONARY EFFECT OF 
 HUMAN CONDUCT 
 
 Slowly, and at fearful cost, mankind is 
 learning that the taking of something for 
 nothing is suicidal, and that the commandment, 
 "Love thy neighbor as thyself," is a law of 
 self-preservation. 
 
 The Scriptural injunction, "Do unto others 
 as you would have them do unto you," if prac- 
 ticed, would create a condition of existence which 
 no man should disregard on his own account. 
 
 We will not discuss a hereafter, or future 
 rewards or punishments. We will confine our 
 comments to life as it is found in this world. 
 
 After all that humanity has seen and has 
 suffered, through we know not how many 
 centuries, man does not yet fully understand 
 the importance of the subjective or reaction- 
 ary effect of human conduct, and yet this reac- 
 tionary effect destroys men, dissolves fortunes, 
 and rots down families. 
 
 13
 
 "The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 For centuries men have read the Scriptural 
 declaration that *'God will visit the iniquity 
 of the fathers upon the children, even unto 
 the third and fourth generation," without 
 making a personal application of it. To each 
 reader it has seemed something far away — a 
 * warning for others to heed. But if we stop 
 to look around us, we can see men decaying, 
 mentally, morally, and physically. We see 
 fortunes disappear and children going to pre- 
 mature graves, all because of the sins of the 
 father reacting upon himself and his children. 
 
 Too little importance is attached to the effect 
 of an act upon the person acting. Few people 
 stop to consider the fact that a man cannot 
 indulge in a mean trick, be it ever so small, 
 without lowering his moral status. 
 
 The writer recently heard a young man 
 laughingly tell of his outwitting a car con- 
 ductor, and succeeding in riding into the city 
 without paying the usual fare. He told the 
 
 14
 
 'The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 story in great glee, thinking it, no doubt, an 
 evidence of his astuteness and cleverness. This 
 seems a trivial thing, and yet that little dis- 
 honest trick may be the beginning of that 
 young man's ruin. He is cultivating a desire 
 to get something for nothing. 
 
 After decades of groping, man is learning 
 to understand the laws governing the human 
 body; and he who deliberately violates them 
 is termed a fool. Man has learned that as a 
 consequence of a violation of these laws a 
 cellular change takes place in that part of 
 the body affected, and a process of dissolution 
 sets in, which, if not arrested, causes death. 
 
 It is not a case of applied punishment from 
 without. An offended Deity will not at some 
 time in the future inflict a punishment. It is 
 the process of dissolution from within that is 
 felt. In some cases, where proper remedies 
 are administered, nature will renew the affected 
 parts; others are incapable of being restored. 
 
 15
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 The body of anyone thus afflicted is defective. 
 It is diseased, and the disease may be trans- 
 mitted to the offspring, — sometimes through 
 several generations. When the physical or- 
 ganization is normal and radiant with health, 
 there is happiness and pleasure in living; but 
 if the laws of health have been violated, the 
 defective and suffering organization wears 
 away in a slow death. 
 
 Vaguely, and with imperfect vision and halt- 
 ing step, civilized mankind is beginning to un- 
 derstand that man has a moral organization, 
 delicate and sensitive, and governed by eternal 
 laws, just as is the case with the physical or- 
 ganization. If any of these laws are violated, 
 a change takes place in the individual affected ; 
 a process of dissolution follows, and the suffer- 
 ing that ensues is not a punishment inflicted 
 by a God, but the natural pain of a diseased 
 and dying soul. 
 
 In some cases a reformation takes place ; the 
 
 16
 
 ^be Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 diseased part of the soul is cured, and the 
 patient recovers his normal condition. In 
 other cases there is no cure, no re-growth, but 
 there is permanent deformity. Continued or 
 repeated violations in time entirely destroy the 
 moral nature and leave the individual incapable 
 of pure and lofty sentiment, — capable only of 
 enjoying pleasures that appeal to a depraved 
 mind. 
 
 When the moral organization is normal and 
 consequently healthy, there is moral felicity, 
 peace and joy, and every duty in life is a 
 pleasure. 
 
 The physical and moral organizations merge 
 into and influence each other to a greater or 
 less extent; injury to the physical affects the 
 moral, and vice versa. The secrets of the 
 heart leave their impress upon the body, and, 
 as a rule, crimes write their history upon the 
 faces of the perpetrators, and the mean and 
 cringing form too plainly pictures the craven 
 
 17
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 soul within; while, on the other hand, the 
 upright carriage, the frank, open countenance, 
 and eyes that show no guile, proclaim their 
 owner's probity. 
 
 There are exceptions to this rule, as there 
 are to all rules; but he who can read human 
 nature correctly will declare them few. 
 
 It is true that the evil that men think and 
 do may mar their countenance and debase them 
 morally; and the consequence of doing vio- 
 lence to the moral nature is not limited to the 
 thinker and the doer, but puts a blight upon 
 his progeny, so that innocent children have 
 to pay the penalty for the evil thoughts and 
 deeds of their parents. 
 
 There are poisons which, when they first 
 enter the system, act as a stimulant. They 
 make the blood circulate faster, and the eyes 
 brighter, and give the cheeks color. This is 
 the flush of the poison; it soon subsides, and 
 then the process of decay, dissolution and death 
 
 18
 
 'The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 sets in, and the deadly work goes on, sometimes 
 slowly, sometimes quickly, until the patient is 
 destroyed. 
 
 So there are moral poisons that first give 
 the victim the flush of prosperity; this over, 
 the process of moral dissolution begins. 
 
 19
 
 i
 
 CRIME REGIONS 
 
 In the physical world there are regions 
 where malarial poisons prevail. They fill the 
 air, and while not visible they are ever present. 
 In time, the inhabitants unconsciously get these 
 poisons into their systems. Their vitality is 
 destroyed, and they suffer from various form.s 
 of disease. In one person the disease takes one 
 form, in another it may take a different form ; 
 while in some cases the direct connection be- 
 tween the disease and the poisons of the 
 locality cannot be traced, yet the connection 
 exists, and suffering and slow disintegration 
 is the natural result. 
 
 So there are crime regions where the moral 
 atmosphere is charged with the poisons of 
 vice, greed, hatred, and dissipation. By de- 
 grees the people who frequent these regions 
 and breathe this atmosphere get these poisons 
 into their mental and moral systems; their 
 character or moral force is thus undermined, 
 
 21
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 and sooner or later they become not simply 
 witnesses of crime, but have guilt on their 
 own hands; and whether or not they escape 
 the penitentiary and gallows, the usefulness 
 of their lives is destroyed. They reap the 
 fruit of the crime regions. Their morals dis- 
 integrate, and misery and annihilation follow. 
 
 22
 
 THE MURDERER AND 
 MARAUDER 
 
 Money that is the fruit of murder is a ter- 
 rible heritage. Although the children might 
 be innocent of the means by which their father 
 came by it, it would still carry with it a curse 
 that would blight their lives and destroy them, 
 unless there was some powerful counteracting 
 force at work to save them. Why should 
 blood-money prove a curse? Because the 
 bacilli of crime enter not only the soul of him 
 who commits it, but seem to envelop the whole 
 family, and often pursue them for generations. 
 
 The highwayman and the burglar both get 
 something for nothing; and even if they are 
 never brought before a court of justice, but 
 are permitted to retain the fruits of their 
 crimes, they will eventually go down to de- 
 struction. They may flourish for a time, and 
 even live in luxury; but then the descent 
 begins. They may live through many years 
 
 23
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 of slowly increasing wretchedness, dragging 
 their families with them; but the penalty of 
 their deeds must be paid. The bacteria of 
 moral leprosy has entered their souls, and they 
 pollute and destroy everything that draws life 
 from them. "The wages of sin is death." 
 
 24
 
 THE SWINDLER AND THE 
 SNEAK-THIEF 
 
 The swindler who preys on the simple and 
 confiding may be shrewd and successful in 
 getting other people's property without giving 
 fair value for it, and thus gather a fortune. 
 He miay escape the penitentiary, and some- 
 times lives in luxury, but the end is inevitable. 
 His own generation will probably see him a 
 financial, a physical, and a moral bankrupt. 
 Why? Because he has violated the eternal 
 law of equivalents, the law of balances, which 
 governs alike the heavenly bodies and the lives 
 of men. Under this law, when more is taken 
 than is given, destruction follows. 
 
 The sneak-thief may be successful in his 
 early career, and for a time gather much plun- 
 der; but he gets something for nothing, and 
 in a few years he may be seen "out at the toes 
 and out at the elbows," a mental, moral, and 
 physical wreck. He reaches the end quicker 
 
 25
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 than the murderer or the highwayman, because 
 he has less force and less strength of character 
 to begin with. Dissolution comes early; the 
 microbes of wrong-doing pull him to pieces ; 
 he grows weaker with the years, and his end 
 is pitiable indeed. 
 
 26
 
 LYING AND TRICKERY 
 
 The man given to lying, to trickery and de- 
 ception, dwindles as time passes. He seems 
 to be in the process of slow annihilation. He 
 goes down not only morally, but mentally, 
 physically, and financially. The reactionary 
 effect of his own conduct destroys him. The liar 
 is destroyed by his own lies, and the trickster is 
 destroyed by his own tricks, — not in the way of 
 punishment administered by an offended God, 
 but as a result of the disintegrating and de- 
 structive influence of his own conduct. 
 
 In the cases of the murderer, the highway- 
 man, the swindler, and the sneak-thief, if there 
 are no counteracting or life-giving elements, 
 or no redeeming virtues, we see the operation 
 of Nature's law. We see how the bacilli of 
 injustice proceed with their work of dissolu- 
 tion and destruction. We see here a law that 
 is universal, a principle that is eternal, — the 
 principle of equilibrium, running through 
 
 27
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 nature and the affairs of men. In morals this 
 is called justice, equity. Getting something 
 for nothing is a violation of this principle, and 
 sets in motion the forces of dissolution. 
 
 The above are the extreme cases. They 
 show us the law, they demonstrate the prin- 
 ciple. However, in the great bulk of human 
 affairs there are redeeming qualities which, 
 while they do not entirely arrest the operation 
 of this law, may yet retard its progress to such 
 an extent that the disastrous end is not visible 
 to every mind, and therefore the truth of these 
 assertions will be denied by many. 
 
 Now, let us trace the operation of this law 
 in different fields, keeping in mind always that 
 the basic principle is everywhere the same, 
 whether seen in large or small matters, in the 
 affairs of an hour or of a lifetime. Taking 
 something for nothing, or wronging a fellow- 
 being in any other way, will recoil on the actor 
 with deadly results. 
 
 28
 
 RAILWAY MAGNATES 
 
 This century has produced in America a 
 class of men called, in general parlance, rail- 
 way magnates. As a rule they have been men 
 of great intelligence, sound judgment, and tre- 
 mendous activity; and they have amassed 
 enormous fortunes. Their posterity should 
 have lived for generations ; but already we 
 see many signs of decay. In som.e cases this 
 dissolution begins in the life of the father, 
 and in nearly all cases it completes its work 
 before the end of the second generation. 
 
 What is the reason? Many special ex- 
 planations may be made, but at the bottom of 
 it all is the reactionary effect of human con- 
 duct. A moral leprosy pulls them to pieces. 
 
 These railway men, when they started out, 
 may not have really meant to do wrong. They 
 went with what seemed to be the currents of 
 the times. They considered it legitimate to 
 get all they possibly could from the public, 
 
 29
 
 "The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 and give as little as possible in return. This 
 rule of conduct is enough to destroy any man ; 
 but it is in harmony with the prevailing notion 
 of "business." To get and to keep, no matter 
 how, is the mark of the shrewd business man. 
 Thus these men soon learned to get something 
 for nothing. 
 
 At this point the poison first entered their 
 lives. Having once succeeded by the easy 
 path, naturally it was tried again ; they were 
 drawn on farther and farther, until it became 
 the beaten path. Their projects involved not 
 only unjust dealing, extortion, and oppression, 
 but in time the bribing of legislatures and city 
 councils, the debauching of officials, the unjust 
 control of courts, and the defeat of justice. 
 Gradually came lowering of standards and 
 sneering at morals. It was the temporary 
 success of might, of cunning, of fraud, and of 
 wrong. But the microbes of death entered at 
 every pore. 
 
 30
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 These railway officials formed all sorts of 
 wheels within wheels, to rob their own corpora- 
 tions by means of favored freight companies, 
 and other private schemes. They entered all 
 sorts of combines and conspiracies to boom 
 stocks dishonestly and rob the public, and to 
 depress stocks dishonestly, and thus rob their 
 own stockholders for whom they were acting 
 as trustees. 
 
 The first flush of this poison produced a 
 false prosperity. These men built great houses, 
 they owned fine yachts and fast horses, and 
 they lived in regal style. But this fever period 
 soon subsided, and then the death-dealing 
 work of the poison began and the slime of 
 injustice destroyed them. 
 
 Viewed from the standpoint of a moral and 
 happy life, the lives of these men were failures. 
 Even in the high tide of their prosperity, they 
 could not have been truly happy. Their pleas- 
 ures became more and more sensual, with a 
 
 31
 
 ^be Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 constant tendency toward the brute level. 
 Some of them, in the beginning of their 
 careers, no doubt had a finer side to their 
 natures, and were capable of higher enjoy- 
 ments ; but gradually their natures changed 
 until they ceased to be either loving or lovable, 
 and by degrees all that makes life worth the 
 living was lost to them. The reactionary 
 effect of their ill conduct deadened all that was 
 noble in their natures. The table gourmand 
 is coarse and vulgar, and repulsive to refined 
 people; so the property gourmand becomes 
 coarse, hard, vulgar, and attaches to himself 
 the obsequious, the flunkies, and the hangers- 
 on. He cannot attract noble manhood or 
 womanhood.
 
 LOCAL MONOPOLIES 
 
 As our American cities grew, and needed 
 certain utilities, — such as water, gas, street- 
 railway service, etc., — bright and enterprising 
 men came forward and furnished them. The 
 subject being new, the people had not yet dis- 
 covered the fact that inasmuch as the happi- 
 ness, and even the lives, of the citizens would 
 in time depend on these utilities, they should 
 be owned by the people themselves, and not left 
 in the hands of a few private individuals for 
 their own gain. 
 
 City councils granted franchises to corpora- 
 tions; and these corporations were run for 
 profit, and aimed to get as much out of the 
 public as possible, and to give back as little 
 as possible. 
 
 Here the element of getting something for 
 nothing entered into the transaction. The 
 poison attached to all who participated in the 
 profits. Greed grows in proportion as it is fed. 
 
 83
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 As time passed, these corporations tried to 
 get more and more out of the pubhc. In order 
 to get valuable concessions, they began to de- 
 bauch public officials. They bribed legisla- 
 tures, they bought city councils, and they sub- 
 sidized executive officers. By these corrupt 
 means they were enabled to extort millions of 
 dollars from the public. It was legalized rob- 
 bery. Great fortunes were thus made in a 
 short time. 
 
 But every dollar of this ill-gotten wealth, for 
 which so little was given in return, was tainted 
 with the poison of wrong-doing. The families 
 using this wealth became inoculated, and the 
 poison entered their blood and destroyed them. 
 The first symptom was the flush of prosperity. 
 There were fine houses, fine carriages, fine 
 clothes, and social extravagance. Then came 
 slow dissolution, the wasting of fortune, scan- 
 dal, dissipation, the gutter maybe, — but at any 
 rate a sad end. 
 
 84
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 Many of these men possessed great ability 
 and strong character, and in the beginning of 
 their career had high ideals and noble traits 
 and aspirations ; but they followed what seemed 
 to be the easy path, the short road to fortune, 
 and almost unconsciously they slipped into the 
 valley of corruption and of moral death. 
 
 It is true, too, that many of these men would 
 not stoop to hand out a bribe themselves ; they 
 left that to their agent. The agent perhaps 
 employed another agent, and the sub-agent 
 was the instrument that debauched the public 
 official. 
 
 But while the rich man may thus escape the 
 penitentiary and the disgrace of open bribery, he 
 cannot escape nature's laws. His money does 
 the bribing, and he pockets the fruits of the 
 bribe, and thus fastens upon himself forever 
 the reactionary effect of his wrong-doing. 
 Stealthily the poison enters his soul, and infects 
 all who are attached to him. 
 
 35
 
 CERTAIN GREAT AMERICANS 
 
 America is a continent with a most fertile 
 soil and a salubrious climate. It is peopled by 
 an intelligent, industrious, and enterprising 
 people, — the best fibre of all nations. The pro- 
 ductions of this marvelous people, with the ad- 
 vantage of modern invention and machinery, 
 have been almost without limit; and their 
 needs and capacity to buy and enjoy are like- 
 wise almost without limit. 
 
 These conditions made, of necessity, great 
 centres of trade ; and certain men who caught 
 the currents of this mighty trade soon waxed 
 rich and powerful. 
 
 They did not make the land, or the climate, 
 or the people, or the progress; but all these 
 things combined made them. In consequence 
 of these conditions, these men were developed, 
 and became famous in the commercial, the rail- 
 way, and the industrial worlds. 
 
 They were noted for their intelligence, good 
 
 37
 
 'The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 judgment, industry and enterprise. As the 
 world goes, they were considered men of char- 
 acter. In a way, they were liberal, charitable, 
 and to some extent public-spirited. We will 
 assume that they had at times humane and 
 noble impulses. Let us examine their methods 
 of gaining wealth, and see if, when viewed 
 from a high moral standpoint, their lives were 
 a success, and should be emulated by the 
 young. 
 
 One of the great industries in the United 
 States is the manufacture of oleomargarine — a 
 substitute for butter. While the manufactur- 
 ers did not sell it for butter, they were opposed 
 to any legislation which would make it impos- 
 sible for small dealers to sell it for butter, be- 
 cause this would reduce the demand and cut 
 down their profits. In order to prevent such 
 legislation, the combination of manufacturers 
 bribed some members of almost every legisla- 
 ture in America; and when Congress under- 
 
 38
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 took to regulate the traffic, they influenced 
 enough Congressmen to get the bill emascu- 
 lated and made comparatively harmless. 
 
 Certain men wished to control the meat 
 trade throughout the country, and to accom- 
 plish this they forced out of business nearly 
 every small butcher who refused to buy his 
 meat of them. In this way they could con- 
 trol the price of meat on the one hand, and on 
 the other hand they — by acting in concert, as 
 they generally do — could control the price of 
 cattle. They thus had the public and the farm- 
 ers at their mercy. 
 
 At the same time they made criminal ar- 
 rangements with the railroads to secure rebates 
 and illegal discrimination in freight rates, by 
 which they themselves were enriched and their 
 smaller competitors were crushed. 
 
 Many other things of like nature could be 
 pointed out; but we have given enough to 
 show that the aim of these men was to get 
 
 39
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 something for nothing, by means of oppression 
 and injustice. 
 
 Another of these men has the reputation of 
 being exact and honorable in his business meth- 
 ods. He would disdain to swindle a man in a 
 simple commercial transaction. But he is a 
 stockholder in a large number of corpora- 
 tions, — such as gas, street railway, electric 
 light, and telephone companies. These corpo- 
 rations have been notorious for plundering the 
 public and corrupting public officials. They 
 have bribed legislators, bought city aldermen, 
 and subsidized city officials. While this man 
 did not himself bribe anybody, he was not 
 above pocketing part of the proceeds of the 
 bribery, and thus made a fortune by dishonest 
 means, — a fortune for which he had not paid 
 an equivalent : something for nothing. 
 
 One of these men was at the head of a com- 
 pany which has a monopoly of certain rail- 
 road business, and which maintains the exorbi- 
 
 40
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 tant charges substantially in force thirty years 
 ago. Other railroad charges have been greatly 
 reduced. In most States the legislatures have 
 fixed minimum rates by law. In order to pre- 
 vent similar action against their road by the 
 different legislatures, this company spends 
 large sums as corruption funds at almost every 
 State capital on this continent. Through 
 bribery of legislature and other officials, it has 
 been able to practice a criminal extortion on 
 the one hand and on the other has escaped pay- 
 ing its just taxes. 
 
 The fortunes these men have made have cer- 
 tain things in common — moral corruption, and 
 the getting of something for nothing ; and the 
 forces of disintegration are here also bringing 
 about their natural result. 
 
 If the reader cares to make the investigation, 
 he will find that many of the very rich of our 
 country are supported by dollars that are 
 tainted by injustice, and they are slowly but 
 
 41
 
 *The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 surely destroying the people who have them. 
 They are a heritage of death. Instead of envy- 
 ing them, or trying to emulate them, the young 
 man starting in life may well thank God if he 
 has no tainted dollars to blight his career. 
 
 42
 
 STANDARD OIL COMPANY 
 
 No other industry in America has amassed 
 such gigantic wealth and wielded such power 
 for evil as the Standard Oil Company. 
 
 Mr. Henry D. Lloyd, in his masterful work 
 "Wealth vs. Commonwealth," has given a 
 startling exposure of the methods of this com- 
 pany. From trustworthy evidence it appears 
 that this company was born of crime. It seems 
 that it grew out of a criminal conspiracy with 
 railroad officials, not only to discriminate in 
 rates in favor of this company, but to rob other 
 operators, and give the proceeds to the men 
 controlling this company. In this way it was 
 enabled to crush out competition. Then there 
 followed a career of crime, involving the pack- 
 ing of juries, the corrupting of courts, the brib- 
 ing of legislatures and public officials, the 
 bribing of the employes of competitors, and the 
 destruction of property, including at least one 
 case of the ruining of a competitive oil-works 
 
 43
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 by the use of dynamite. By such means, a few 
 men got control of the oil business of the conti- 
 nent, and amassed millions that almost par- 
 alyze the figures of arithmetic to compute. 
 
 And now the question to be solved is, are 
 fortunes tainted with bribery, extortion, and 
 blood, desirable inheritances ? Which should a 
 young man starting in life prefer: to be able 
 to stand erect in God's sunlight, and take his 
 chances, free from the burden of tainted dollars 
 and inherited wrong-doing, or a fortune of 
 ill-gotten wealth, with the deformity of soul, 
 the destruction of noble manhood, the blight of 
 dissipation, and the physical disintegration 
 that too often accompany such an inheritance? 
 
 44
 
 THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 
 
 In America, the liquor traffic has yielded 
 great profits, both in manufacturing and in re- 
 tailing ; and men engaged in this business show, 
 for a time, evidence of prosperity. Some of the 
 most palatial homes in this country belong to 
 brewers and distillers; their equipages are of 
 the best, and their manner of living is sump- 
 tuous. 
 
 One generation of brewers and distillers in 
 America has passed away, and we can study 
 their lives and pass judgment on their work. 
 The most impressive thing that strikes the ob- 
 server of these men is the universality of their 
 moral ruin. 
 
 Personally, many of the men engaged in 
 this business are not only men of ability, 
 shrewdness, and enterprise, but they are men 
 of kindly impulses and inclined by nature to 
 be generous ; and some of them possess a con- 
 siderable culture. 
 
 45
 
 J'he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 Why should a bHght hang over them ? It is 
 the moral taint in their business that comes 
 home to them, with its trail of death. 
 
 Why say moral taint ? Because the effect of 
 the whole business, as now conducted, is to 
 cater to the weaknesses, to destroy the charac- 
 ter and lower the social status of men and of 
 communities; and this demoralization and 
 ruin reaches back to the source from which it 
 sprang. 
 
 Vibrations in the atmosphere move in a 
 circle in all directions from the point of dis- 
 turbance, and all that come within that circle 
 feel more or less of the shock. In the traffic 
 in liquor, both the hand that delivers and 
 the hand that receives the liquor become 
 palsied. 
 
 If liquors were made and sold as drugs and 
 groceries are sold, the effect would be different. 
 If men took them as they take drugs and food, 
 a small per cent would be used, and the demor- 
 
 46
 
 ^be Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 alization following would be comparatively 
 small. 
 
 But the manufacturers of liquors want to 
 make money, and they endeavor to swell their 
 sales. For this purpose they encourage the 
 opening of saloons. 
 
 These saloons become lounging-places, 
 where characters and habits of industry are 
 destroyed, where habits of drinking and ca- 
 rousing are formed that pull down not only the 
 individual but his family; and every time the 
 drunkard and his family sink a notch lower, 
 the moral effect tends to blight the family of 
 the saloon-keeper, the brewer, and the distiller, 
 who created the conditions from which this 
 ruin proceeds. It is the reactionary effect of 
 human conduct. The microbe of moral degra- 
 dation works backward as well as forward. 
 
 47
 
 NEWSPAPERS 
 
 A century ago, the publishing of a newspaper 
 tended to develop great men. A number of 
 men famous in the history of our country be- 
 gan life as newspaper men. 
 
 We refer not only to Greeley, to Bennett, 
 and that large list of men who published news- 
 papers until they died, and who wielded a tre- 
 mendous influence in shaping the thought, the 
 sentiment, and the destiny of this country, but 
 we refer also to that galaxy of men who began 
 by publishing newspapers and afterwards be- 
 came distinguished as orators and statesmen. 
 
 As originally conducted, there was some- 
 thing about newspaper work that tended to 
 develop strength of character as well as 
 strength of intellect. The newspaper man not 
 only kept himself informed as to current 
 events, in the discussion of which his mind re- 
 ceived a constant drill, but he felt morally 
 responsible to the public for what was pub- 
 
 49
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 lished in his paper. The estabhshment being 
 small, everybody knew who was the author of 
 every article published. A consciousness of 
 this fact developed strength. If a newspaper 
 man attacked private character, he generally 
 had to meet his victim and look him in the face, 
 knowing that he knew what he had said of him. 
 In time, such an experience would make strong 
 characters. It developed men unacquainted 
 with fear, men who could grapple with any 
 problem or confront any situation. 
 
 But as the newspaper establishment was en- 
 larged, the sense of a personal responsibility 
 ceased to exist. By degrees the paper became 
 a machine, a great entity that had an existence, 
 a voice and an influence separate and apart 
 from the men who made it. By degrees it 
 swallowed the men who fed it. 
 
 From that moment it began to destroy char- 
 acter. It was the newspaper that talked, not 
 the man. Instead of developing strong, open- 
 so
 
 T^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 faced men, it tended to develop sneaks. Every- 
 thing was anonymous. The writer of an arti- 
 cle felt no personal or moral responsibility. 
 All the world despises the writer of an anony- 
 mous letter. No honorable man would think of 
 writing one ; yet, so far as the writers are con- 
 cerned, the great newspapers of to-day are 
 mostly a collection of anonymous letters, and 
 the writers are reduced to the low level of 
 anonymity. 
 
 In the vegetable kingdom, nothing large or 
 wholesome ever grows in the dark. It takes 
 sunlight to develop the healthy plant and ripen 
 the luscious fruit. The same is true of the 
 human plant. The man who lives in darkness 
 and covers up his deeds is doomed. 
 
 If we examine the subject, we find that few 
 men have grown great on the large newspapers 
 during the last generation. Many men of ex- 
 cellent ability, fine education, and noble aspira- 
 tions, have entered the field. They become for 
 
 51
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 a time more acute and better able to serve 
 their masters; but they degenerate in char- 
 acter. 
 
 No man can hide behind a hedge and throw 
 missiles at the people traveling on life's high- 
 way, without deteriorating. He will lose what 
 manhood he may have had at the beginning of 
 his career. He will partake more and more of 
 the nature of the reptile hiding in the grass. 
 The reactionary effect of human conduct will 
 destroy him. 
 
 This tells the sad story of a great army of 
 bright men whose careers have been spoiled 
 or destroyed by anonymous work on great 
 newspapers. In smaller cities there are yet to 
 be found newspapers of the old-time character, 
 where the editors grow to be strong men. This 
 is also true of some weekly papers published in 
 large cities. The editors and writers stand out 
 in the sunlight, and look mankind in the face. 
 But the great dailies lay the blight of their con- 
 
 62
 
 "The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 duct upon all who are connected with them. 
 
 The newspaper proprietor may wield power 
 for a time, and be sought after by cringing 
 men seeking public favors ; but, with rare ex- 
 ceptions, the same dragon of wrong conduct 
 that swallows up the smaller men in his employ 
 will destroy him also. 
 
 The man who is wronged by an anonymous 
 article in a newspaper sustains far less injury 
 than the writer of the article or the proprietor 
 of the paper. If the victim will pursue the 
 even tenor of his way, facing the stars, the foul 
 odor of the attack will not cling to him, but it 
 will settle back into the garments of those who 
 made it, and its character will be chiseled upon 
 their faces. 
 
 53
 
 MANUFACTURERS 
 
 Great fortunes have been made in America 
 and in England by manufacturing. Advancing 
 civilization served to furnish a market for all 
 that could be produced. Large establishments 
 were built, and they were generally controlled 
 by men of ability and energy. These great 
 manufacturing houses seemed to have a simi- 
 lar experience; for a time they prospered and 
 grew great, and then a process of decay would 
 set in. 
 
 Looking more closely, we see that while they 
 seemed to be honest in the conduct of their 
 business, the customs of the times had devel- 
 oped systems of industry that were tainted 
 with injustice and oppression. Children of 
 tender years were employed, because they could 
 be had cheap; and while they should have 
 been in school, or at play, they worked long 
 hours in the poisonous atmosphere of factory 
 rooms. They grew into men and women with 
 
 66
 
 'The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 stunted minds and bodies ; their lives were 
 blighted, and the deadly shadow of reactionary- 
 effect settled down upon the proprietor and his 
 family. 
 
 In the matter of wages, the manufacturer 
 could fix his own wage scale, and, as a rule, 
 employes had to accept. What could they do ? 
 The location of the factory had been the cause 
 of their coming together from different parts of 
 the country, where the alluring promise of 
 steady work and good wages had reached 
 them. Once there, they were helpless; for 
 they had spent everything they had in the 
 world to get there. They had to accept what 
 was offered. 
 
 Naturally, the scale of wages was fixed so as 
 to make as large a profit as possible for the pro- 
 prietor; and when there was any economy to 
 be practiced, if he, in competition in the mar- 
 ket, had to cut the price of his goods, wages 
 were cut, and the employes were at his mercy. 
 
 56
 
 ^be Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 As a rule, the wages barely furnished sub- 
 sistence; so that after years of toil, with their 
 vitality, which was their only capital, gone, 
 they were in an impoverished condition. 
 
 But in the moral economy of the universe 
 the vibrations run in all directions from the 
 point of action. Every time there was a cut in 
 wages, or an oppressive order given to the em- 
 ployes, the vibration not only lowered the 
 status of the men, the women, and the children 
 who toiled, but it poisoned the atmosphere for 
 the proprietor and his family as well. The 
 taint of injustice fastened itself on all, and 
 gradually turned their feet toward the path 
 that leads downward. 
 
 In all large industries, accidents happen. 
 Laborers get crippled, crushed, killed. This 
 means widows, orphans, poverty, and wretched- 
 ness. Justice requires that accidents should be 
 charged up to the business, that those who are 
 maimed should be cared for by those for whom 
 
 57
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 they toiled. But no, — the burden is generally 
 loaded upon the unfortunate. 
 
 The child, getting but a pittance for its long 
 hours of toil, becomes weary and benumbed, 
 and is caught in a machine and has its arm 
 crushed. Does the proprietor pension it and 
 provide for its future? No; he would send it 
 home and put another child in its place. If he 
 was a very humane man, he would perhaps pay 
 the doctor's bill. He would argue that his em- 
 ployes were free agents ; they came to his mill 
 of their own free will, and they must take their 
 chances. He does not think of how they are 
 helping him to build up an enormous fortune 
 without receiving a fair compensation in re- 
 turn, and that he is getting something for 
 which no equivalent is given.
 
 WAGES 
 
 Can we accept the services of another for 
 less than they are worth to us, other things be- 
 ing equal ? We are all prone to employ the man 
 who will do our work for the least monev. If 
 one man demands a dollar and a half for cer- 
 tain work, and another man offers to do it for a 
 dollar, we give him the job. We say wages 
 are fixed by supply and demand. 
 
 They are regulated by competition. But 
 competition is determined by the necessities of 
 the competitors. In competition, the weak are 
 driven to the wall, and are obliged to underbid. 
 Thus are they forced to a lower and lower 
 status. 
 
 If we take advantage of these necessities, 
 and pay them less than their labor is worth to 
 us because it is in our power to do so, we are 
 helping to push them down. We are helping 
 to lower the status of their children, and to in^ 
 crease the vice and wretchedness of the future. 
 
 69
 
 *Tbe Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 Can we expect our children to be happy, and 
 free from inherited bHght, if we give them the 
 money we have made from underpaying the 
 labor that helped us amass a fortune? 
 
 If we keep that which, under the eternal 
 equities, was earned by another, the poison of 
 injustice will enter our households. This law 
 of equivalents must be respected, or we must 
 pay the penalty. 
 
 The fact that we could have got an indefinite 
 number of other men to do the same work for 
 the same money, does not make a good plea at 
 the bar of conscience. The equities are not 
 changed by the fact that we have many men 
 at our mercy. 
 
 60
 
 BANKERS 
 
 Bankers are usually men of superior intelli- 
 gence, and they possess an industry and a 
 strength of character that should make their 
 posterity strong and prominent for centuries. 
 But the majority of the families of great bank- 
 ers have not enough vitality or character to 
 make an impress on the next generation. 
 
 Why is this so? Why should not the de- 
 scendants of bankers be great men and women 
 for generations? Let us examine their busi- 
 ness methods, and see how they make their for- 
 tunes. A friend of the bankers would say they 
 make them by "severe business methods." 
 There certainly can be no objection to exact 
 business methods, and the taking care of money 
 is a legitimate business. 
 
 A banker, to be successful, must be cold and 
 severe, repressing all generous and humane 
 emotions. This severity shrivels up the finer 
 and nobler sentiments. Gradually the man's 
 
 61
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 character is changed, and in time he becomes a 
 cold, shrewd, fierce money-getter. Greed en- 
 ters every pore of his being, and he ceases to be 
 anything but a financial hyena. To get some- 
 thing, not to he something, is his motto. The 
 atmosphere of his household is such that in it 
 no great thought can take root, no great soul 
 can grow, no great character can be formed. 
 
 Sometime ago the writer had a conversation 
 with one of Chicago's most successful men, a 
 man of wide experience and the soul of honor. 
 He was Scotch by birth, but he had spent the 
 most of his life in this country, and he had by 
 his own efforts accumulated a comfortable for- 
 tune. He had been in the banking business, 
 but had given it up. The writer asked him why 
 he quit banking; was he not making money? 
 "Oh, yes," he replied, *T was making money, 
 but it seemed to me that to be a successful 
 banker would in time destroy all a man's finer 
 nature, and would make him as hard as the 
 
 62
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 money he handled ; and I did not care to trade 
 myself off for money." 
 
 To make money fast, the banker must take 
 advantage of the necessities of others. He 
 drives severe bargains. He gets usurious in- 
 terest. He secures excessive discounts, and 
 sometimes helps to engineer schemes by which 
 other men are driven to the wall, much to his 
 profit. When the property of a debtor is 
 slaughtered, he buys it. Wherever he puts his 
 hand, he draws blood. Crops may fail and 
 panics may destroy the value of the debtor's 
 .property, but the banker must have his per 
 cent at any cost. 
 
 But, you will say, this is all legitimate; the 
 law allows it, customs and business methods 
 permit it. And so they do; but that does not 
 help the matter. Who made the laws, the cus- 
 toms, and the rules of business? In many 
 cases, perhaps most, they were made by the 
 bankers themselves, or at their dictation. They 
 
 63
 
 l^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 are always made by the strong, never by the 
 weak or unfortunate; and the cold truth re- 
 mains that every time a banker drives a sharp 
 bargain, every time he takes advantage of 
 another's necessities, he gets something for 
 which he has not paid full value, and here the 
 first seed of moral death is sown. From the 
 moment he gets something for nothing, the 
 microbe of injustice enters his soul and begins 
 its deadly work. 
 
 64
 
 LAWYERS 
 
 No class of men wield more influence in 
 American affairs than lawyers. Their expe- 
 rience gives them a familiarity with all 
 branches of business, and a knowledge of all 
 classes of men. Their work is of such a nature 
 as to make them alert. Their faculties are kept 
 reasonably active, so that they are more avail- 
 able for public or semi-public work than any 
 other class of men ; hence they become not only 
 the advisers who direct affairs, but the actual 
 leaders of movements. 
 
 They have almost monopolized the legisla- 
 tive and judicial branches of our government, 
 and have been very prominent in the executive 
 branch. Even when not seeking positions them- 
 selves, they are, by reason of their readiness 
 and experience, employed by selfish interests to 
 manipulate conventions and control nomina- 
 tions. It is in some sense true that the American 
 Government has been a lawyer's government. 
 
 66
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 With such a field before him, it is manifest 
 that a lawyer, above all other men, should be 
 a man of character. The more purely profes- 
 sional part of his work is of such a nature that 
 it should elevate his mind and develop all his 
 faculties. This work involves wide reading, 
 the possession of accurate knowledge, and dis- 
 crimination and reasoning. It involves also 
 the accurate use of language, spoken and 
 written. 
 
 In the nature of things, the lawyer should be 
 not only learned, but he should develop into a 
 man of broad culture. Having to deal with 
 great principles of justice, he should be above 
 the very thought of trickery and mean things. 
 Theoretically, the lawyer is not employed to 
 win cases, but to see that the law is properly 
 applied to his client's case. He is an officer of 
 the court, and is supposed to assist the court 
 in the administration of justice. 
 
 It is difficult to conceive of a profession that 
 
 r 
 
 66
 
 T^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 should develop a more beautiful and well- 
 rounded character than the profession of the 
 law. Occasionally we meet such a man at the 
 bar, and instinctively we pay him homage. He 
 may not win so many cases, he may not be em- 
 ployed by great criminals or by great corpora- 
 tions, and he may not boast of getting big fees ; 
 but there is something lofty and supreme in his 
 character, and dignified in his demeanor. 
 
 If we have sometimes been too eager to win, 
 and have forgotten we were officers of justice^ 
 and have stooped to become mere beasts of 
 prey, how vulgar it all seems when we come 
 into the presence of such a character ! We feel 
 that our very success is degrading and our re- 
 ward tainted. Even though he be poor, he is 
 far above anything that money can buy. 
 
 It is a sad comment on human nature, that 
 while the profession of law should produce 
 great characters, the harvest in that regard has 
 been meager. 
 
 67
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 Even before commercialism degraded the 
 profession, there was a tendency to become 
 narrow and petty. This was due to the fact 
 that the courts in their practice had made the 
 law a mesh of technicalities. Instead of get- 
 ting at the merits of a controversy at once, and 
 deciding it, there was a persistent effort to find 
 out how not to do it. This turned the eye of 
 the profession to little things, so that many men 
 have entered the law, possessing splendid abil- 
 ity, fine education, and high aspirations, who 
 after twenty years of practice became mental 
 and moral mummies. It requires great strength 
 of character to rise above the environment. 
 
 In so far as the courts or the lawyers indulge 
 in quibble and refinement, the profession of the 
 law has a belittling and a degrading tendency. 
 In just so far it paralyzes the intellect and 
 shrivels the soul. No quibbler ever becomes 
 great. He is like a hen scratching in a barn- 
 yard, — he never looks out over the barn-yard 
 
 68
 
 'The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 fence. He holds his eyes so close to the ground 
 seeking his daily food, that he never gets a 
 view of the vast fertile landscape just outside. 
 
 The advancing intelligence of the world 
 gradually made the practice of law more rea- 
 sonable; and then came a degrading commer- 
 cialism which used the profession as a con- 
 venience. 
 
 Instead of viewing everything from the lofty 
 standpoint of an honorable profession, there 
 was a constant tendency in lawyers to sink to 
 the level of trained conveniences, to the level 
 of hired men, shrewd and able and in the mar- 
 ket, ready to take anybody's money and to try 
 to win his case for him, whether right or 
 wrong. And that fatal fallacy began to take 
 possession of the legal mind, that a man may do 
 things as a lawyer that he could not do as an 
 honorable citizen. This absurd sophistry has 
 ruined more lawyers than has any other one 
 thing. Once inoculated with this idea, a lawyer 
 
 69
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 is lost. The effect is perceptible almost immedi- 
 ately. He sinks to the level of a trickster. The 
 cellular structure of his brain changes ; the ex- 
 pression of his eyes changes; and although a 
 temporary success may attend his course, there 
 can be but one ending to his career. Nothing 
 more true was ever written than that "tricks 
 destroy the trickster." 
 
 The writer has had reasonable opportunities, 
 at the bar, the bench, and in public life, to no- 
 tice the career of all classes of lawyers, and he 
 has seen no exception to the rule that tricks 
 will destroy the trickster. After each success- 
 ful trick the man is weaker, and instead of 
 growing he deteriorates. A moral, mental, 
 spiritual and physical atrophy destroys him. 
 
 A lawyer may get a reputation because he 
 has won cases, even if he won them by ques- 
 tionable methods; and a reputation for win- 
 ning will bring him business, and for a time he 
 may flourish. If he is a man of strong 
 
 70
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 physique and mentality, he may seemingly 
 escape paying the just penalty of his acts ; and 
 then the whole burden of expiation falls upon 
 his children. And yet, mental suffering is not 
 often paraded before the world ; and a lawyer 
 who has suborned witnesses and packed juries, 
 who has bribed officials and falsified records, 
 and thus balked justice, must be hardened in- 
 deed if he has no pangs of conscience, no bitter 
 regrets that he has allowed himself, because of 
 his greed, to become one of the worst enemies 
 of mankind. 
 
 If the young lawyer, with a fair education 
 and the determination to be a man of integrity, 
 will but strive for the best there is in his pro- 
 fession, and above all else be true to all that is 
 best in himself, he will, by degrees, get the con- 
 fidence of the people of his communityj and he 
 cannot fail tb become a strong character. Cor- 
 porations may not hire him, but he will have 
 the good opinion of his fellow-men and his own 
 
 71
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 self-respect. He may not get rich in money, 
 but he will be rich in the things money cannot 
 buy. Such a man is much more to be envied 
 than the man who amasses a fortune by ques- 
 tionable means. 
 
 12
 
 DO JUDGES STAGNATE? 
 
 The question is frequently asked : "Why does 
 a man cease to grow after he goes on the 
 bench?" 
 
 As a rule, men elected to the bench have es- 
 tablished a reputation of being men of strong 
 character and growing intelligence, and if they 
 had remained off the bench they would have 
 continued developing. But as soon as a man is 
 elected to the office of judge, all growth seems 
 to cease; and after years of experience on the 
 bench, he not only has not grown but he has 
 deteriorated. 
 
 There are several reasons for this. In the 
 first place, his active life ceases. He literally 
 and figuratively sits down. Growth, strength 
 and greatness come from contest. The judge 
 being relieved of contest, of life's fierce 
 struggle, naturally becomes phlegmatic, and 
 development is impossible. And then he 
 ceases to create, to shape and to originate. It 
 
 78
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 is his business to discover and apply what 
 others have said. 
 
 A large portion of his thought is taken up 
 with the consideration of little things — draw- 
 ing learned distinctions between tweedle-dee 
 and tweedle-dum. The effect of this is be- 
 littling. 
 
 Instead of the independence which comes 
 from fighting life's battles, which develops 
 greatness, the judge too often, unintentionally 
 and unconsciously, becomes merely the expres- 
 sion of what is for the time the dominant in- 
 fluence of the land. This dominant influence 
 is like the pressure of the atmosphere; it 
 envelops him, and is almost irresistible. It 
 requires tremendous strength of character to 
 rise above it and be guided solely by the 
 pole-star of justice. Yet the judge who gives 
 way to the pressure, and allows his high office 
 to be used for purposes of oppression and of 
 wrong, is a curse to his country. 
 
 74
 
 PROFESSIONAL MILITARISM 
 
 Viewed from any standpoint, the business 
 of killing men is a brutal and degrading pro- 
 fession, which must brutalize those who engage 
 in it, to a greater or less degree, depending 
 somewhat upon the character of the man in 
 the beginning. Except where men strike for 
 life, liberty, or country, the moment he reddens 
 his hands with the blood of his fellows, the 
 microbe of the £end begins to circulate in his 
 veins, and a slow but certain disintegration 
 settles down upon him and all connected with 
 him. 
 
 If he possessed great virtues and strength 
 of character to start with, the process of dis- 
 solution may be lengthened to the second gen- 
 eration; but the end is the same. There is 
 something abhorrent about the taking of life, 
 and Nature will have her revenge. Even the 
 man who delights in killing the lower animals 
 gradually changes. He becomes coarse, his 
 
 75
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 finer and nobler feelings are blunted, and 
 he finally partakes somewhat of the nature 
 of the fierce brutes whose conduct he imi- 
 tates. From the standpoint of fair play, 
 he sinks even below the average level of 
 the brute; because the element of unfair 
 advantage by reason of firearms, etc., must 
 be considered. 
 
 The business of the professional soldier is 
 to kill, to destroy. He creates nothing. All 
 his thoughts run in the direction of destruc- 
 tion. He is a stranger to the elevating, 
 strengthening, and ennobling influence that 
 comes from creating something, from adding 
 to the world's comfort or happiness. In spirit 
 and aim he belongs to the barbaric ages. His 
 environment in itself is enough to destroy 
 even the strongest and noblest manhood. He 
 is isolated from both the affairs and the society 
 of the great body of citizens. He is a stranger 
 to their aims and their aspirations. His as- 
 
 76
 
 T^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 sociation with women is generally confined to 
 the worst of the sex. 
 
 The powerful and selfish interests of the 
 world use him as a club to beat the toiling 
 masses into subjection while they are being 
 robbed of the fruits of their toil. He thus 
 becomes the unintentional foe of liberty, free- 
 dom, and justice. He is made an instrument 
 of injustice, and this in itself is degrading. He 
 must obey orders, and therefore he is excusa- 
 ble before the law; but it does not change 
 the nature of his act, nor relieve him from the 
 reactionary effect of his conduct. In the 
 world's armies, there is everywhere this tend- 
 ency of the professional soldier to degenerate, 
 because of his mental, moral, and physical 
 environment. 
 
 The private soldiers in many cases are 
 treated like dogs. What is more natural than 
 that they should sink to the level of dogs in 
 their conduct? The officers strut in fine uni- 
 
 77
 
 '^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 forms, and form a class by themselves. They 
 are exclusive, and cultivate a spirit of snob- 
 bery. This spirit of exclusion, this "I am 
 better than thoii" attitude, is in itself belittling. 
 No snob ever grew into a great man. 
 
 Nature draws no distinction between officer 
 and private, and the death-dealing influence 
 of a wrong destroys all who come within the 
 circle of vibration which every wrong sets in 
 motion. A fine uniform may conceal a scrofu- 
 lous body ; but no screen has yet been devised 
 that will veil the windows of a putrid soul, or 
 erase from the countenance the scars of a dead 
 conscience. 
 
 78
 
 FIGHTING FOR LIBERTY 
 AND COUNTRY 
 
 While professional militarism fights with 
 almost equal readiness under any flag, and is 
 to-day the principal prop and support of estab- 
 lished wrong throughout the world, there is 
 no nobler spectacle than that of the great body 
 of citizens of a country taking up arms in 
 defense of liberty. 
 
 To establish liberty for mankind is the high- 
 est mission on earth. 
 
 It is a most significant and eloquent fact 
 that wherever liberty has been established in 
 this world it was done, not by professional 
 soldiers, but by the common citizens. These 
 are the occasions that give to the world its 
 heroes. Mere daring is often vulgar, but 
 daring and sacrifice coupled with a mighty 
 moral cause bring immortality. 
 
 It is sometimes urged that a country must 
 have professional military men in order to be 
 
 79
 
 T^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 prepared for emergencies. But what does 
 history teach us ? 
 
 The French armies which overthrew all 
 Europe were made up mostly of citizen sol- 
 diers. The great German armies which Na- 
 poleon routed were of professional soldiers, 
 and they went down in utter ignominy. Many 
 years later, the French had become professional 
 soldiers, and the Germans raised an army of 
 citizens, and this army proved invincible, and 
 redeemed the fatherland. King George's 
 troops were professional soldiers. They tried 
 to subjugate our forefathers, but the citizen 
 soldier and patriot was too much for them. 
 
 The American heroes consisted of citizens 
 who triumphed and established our inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 In the Civil War, the Union armies were 
 composed almost entirely of citizens ; and they 
 fought to a finish, and triumphed in one of 
 the greatest wars ever waged. 
 
 80
 
 'The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 It has been remarked of our recent war in 
 Cuba, that the citizen or volunteer soldiers did 
 the fighting, and the professional soldiers did 
 the blundering. 
 
 In South Africa, a few thousand citizen sol- 
 diers almost held their own against a quarter of 
 a million professional soldiers for several years. 
 The fact is, that every new war differs from 
 all preceding wars, and both sides have to 
 learn how to fight. And the intelligent citizen 
 fighting from high motives — fighting for home 
 and country — makes a much more ready and 
 invincible soldier than the professional, who 
 stands on a lower plane. 
 
 Instead of a standing army being a pre- 
 server of peace, it is a constant provocation 
 to war and a continual menace to the liberties 
 of a country. 
 
 Tyranny must rely on brute force ; but Re- 
 publics must look to the affections of the 
 people for protection. 
 
 81
 
 WEST POINT 
 
 Early in our history, the Government estab- 
 lished a Military Academy at West Point, New- 
 York, which is still maintained. One cadet 
 is admitted from each Congressional District 
 of the country, and in addition some are ap- 
 pointed from the country at large by the Presi- 
 dent. These cadets are to serve at least eight 
 years — four years as student cadets and four 
 in active service, beginning as second lieu- 
 tenants; but in practice, all who wish to do 
 so may remain in the service of the Govern- 
 ment for life. 
 
 Including the year 1897, 7,928 cadets had 
 entered this Academy, and 4,067 had gradu- 
 ated before July i, 1901. The present number 
 of students is about five hundred, and it costs 
 the government some eight thousand dollars 
 to educate each student. All applicants for 
 admission must be over seventeen and under 
 twenty-two years of age. They are thoroughly
 
 I^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 examined as to physical and moral condition 
 and mental attainments and capacity. In con- 
 sequence of this, only the most capable and 
 promising young men can be admitted. 
 
 The discipline is understood to be rigorous 
 and the course of instruction thorough. Nearly 
 all branches of a complete English education 
 are covered, and the management seems to be 
 in the hands of capable officers. 
 
 The curriculum, the regulations, and the 
 instructions are designed to develop endurance, 
 industry, and scholarship. Considering the 
 fact that the young men are the pick of the 
 land, one would expect the Academy to turn 
 out hosts of great men. But in this respect 
 the record is disappointing. 
 
 During the century of the existence of the 
 West Point Academy, nearly eight thousand 
 of the choice young men of the United States 
 had entered its doors as students, and over 
 four thousand had graduated; yet very few 
 
 84
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 became famous in the history of our country, 
 and nearly all of the few who became great 
 had left the military service for years and had 
 been following the pursuits of civil life, thus 
 keeping in touch with their fellow-country- 
 men, and profiting by the expansion of mind 
 and breadth of view which comes from trying 
 to create something, and the strength and 
 independence of character derived from shift- 
 ing for one's self. Self-reliance is one of the 
 progenitors of greatness; but it is something 
 the professional soldier can seldom learn, be- 
 cause of his environment. 
 
 General Grant had left the army, and had 
 been living the life of a civilian for a number 
 of years, when the Rebellion called him back 
 to his profession. General William T. Sher- 
 man had spent eight years in civil life, engaged 
 in various pursuits, just before the Civil War. 
 General Burnside had been in civil life about 
 nine years before he re-entered the army again. 
 
 85
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 General Joseph Hooker had resigned from the 
 army and had been in civil life for eight years 
 prior to the summer of 1861. General Meade 
 did not at any time sever his connection with 
 the government after graduating at West 
 Point, but for many years he was engaged 
 in detached service of such varied character 
 that he had much experience of civil life. 
 
 The history of the Civil War shows that 
 nearly all the officers who became conspicuous 
 during the Rebellion were men who had a 
 wide experience of life outside of the army. 
 
 There are reasons for the fact that so few 
 West Pointers have become really great men. 
 
 The first is, that our military system, bor- 
 rowed from the aristocratic and monarchical 
 countries of Europe the mediaeval and snobbish 
 system of maintaining a wide gulf between 
 the commissioned officers and the privates, and 
 of making it impossible for a common soldier, 
 no matter how deserving, to become a com- 
 
 86
 
 I^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 missioned officer without special appointment 
 by the President. 
 
 This system, and the ideas underlying it, 
 create in the mind of the cadet a false estimate 
 of affairs in this world. The effect tends to 
 make him vain and superficial. It is true that 
 the cadets may in the first place be selected 
 by democratic methods. But the moment they 
 enter the Academy they begin to breathe an 
 atmosphere hostile to the very principle of 
 democracy. The whole tendency of their en- 
 vironment thereafter is to make them a class 
 separate and apart from other people. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that the parasite 
 always claims to be superior to those who 
 support him. But in the economy of the uni- 
 verse every truly great thing rests on a foun- 
 dation of justice. This fact makes it impos- 
 sible for a parasite to become great. 
 
 The young officer leaves the Academy with 
 false ideas of life and honor. To be a gentle- 
 
 87
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 man means, as he sees it, to observe certain 
 rules of deportment in so-called polite society; 
 and too often his thoughts are given up to 
 dancing, flirting, posing, and in many cases to 
 gambling and dissipation. To shine in the draw- 
 ing-room, act the gallant to frivolous women, 
 to draw their salary and wait for some superior 
 to die in order to get promotion, constitute the 
 life of many of the young officers. 
 
 It is needless to say that nothing great can 
 come from such a life. On the contrary, it 
 would deaden all noble impulses and aspira- 
 tions. Twenty years of such a life must leave 
 a man shrunken and barren, and incapable of 
 the higher emotions. The discharge of his 
 official duties becomes a dull routine, and he 
 is a parasite maintained in comparative idle- 
 ness by a great people, to whom he renders 
 back little service of real value. One bridge- 
 builder, risking his life in the construction of 
 a passage-way across some turbulent water, 
 
 88
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 displays more courage, and is worth more to 
 his country than a whole regiment of strutting 
 and posing army officials. 
 
 The disclosures during the Dreyfus case 
 showed what an utterly calloused, degenerated 
 and infamous condition existed among the 
 officers of the French Army. The world 
 looked on in amazement and disgust. A 
 healthy mind must instinctively feel that men 
 who could stoop to such infamy were incapa- 
 ble of rendering their country any valuable 
 service; and an army under the control of 
 such men must be a menace rather than a pro- 
 tection. 
 
 However, the Dreyfus case was but the nat- 
 ural fruit of the ideas and the spirit that prevail 
 in professional military circles; and the same 
 conditions are found in a greater or less degree 
 in all military establishments. 
 
 Men whose business in life is to pose and 
 dance and flirt, while they wait for someone 
 
 89
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 to die that they may be promoted, cannot be 
 expected to know anything about the heart- 
 beats of a great and industrious people. They 
 get their notions of society from the poisoned 
 atmosphere and superficial twaddle of the 
 drawing-room. The French officers who won 
 the execrations of mankind no doubt began life 
 with an honorable ambition, but they were 
 ruined by their environment, by the ideas they 
 imbibed, and they became the victims of false 
 standards. 
 
 What has been said about the army applies 
 with equal or greater force to the navy. It 
 seems that the spirit of the cad and the snob 
 prevails among the officers of the navy to a 
 greater extent even than in the army. When the 
 promotion of an intelligent and meritorious 
 man in the ranks, who had won his promotion 
 by brave conduct, is openly opposed by an 
 admiral of the United States Navy, as lately 
 happened, on the ground that the young man 
 
 90
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 might not be able to shine at social functions 
 on shore, thcjn we have struck bottom in the 
 pit of the contemptible. 
 
 No matter how great the capacity or how 
 noble the aspirations of a young man when 
 he enters the navy as an officer, if he is inocu- 
 lated with this spirit of snobbishness there is 
 no great career possible for him. He will 
 become a polished parasite, and will be a bill 
 of expense to his country. 
 
 91
 
 CURRENTS OF DESTINY 
 
 There are currents of destiny which we may 
 enter or not, as we choose ; but if we do, they 
 will carry us irresistibly on to an end that is in 
 harmony with their nature. 
 
 If it is a current of high ideals, it leads to 
 a condition of happiness ; while a current of 
 evil runs to a haven of unrest and bitter disap- 
 pointment. Like produces like. The forces 
 of Nature act impartially, and either build 
 up or tear down all who come within the range 
 of their influence. 
 
 Happiness does not necessarily demand a 
 mansion and a well-filled pocket-book; nor 
 are a high social status and the plaudits of 
 admirers essential. But he who has deep down 
 in his soul the knowledge that he has always 
 fought for the right, and that he never know- 
 ingly has wronged another, could not be un- 
 happy though the whole world were arrayed 
 against him.
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 Brute force destroys alike the victim and the 
 executioner. Slavery cursed alike the slave 
 and the master. Oppression pulls down the 
 oppressor as well as the oppressed. 
 
 Generally, retribution is slow, and its work 
 is not seen until after decades have passed; 
 but sometimes it is swift, and the hand of fate 
 is seen at noonday. 
 
 Let us take the Boer war as an illustration 
 of swift retribution. 
 
 When Gladstone made peace with the South 
 African Republics, the aristocrats who live 
 upon the labor of others, and monopolize the 
 official positions in the army of England, vio- 
 lently denounced him. They demanded the 
 conquest of that country on account of its 
 gold-fields. The Tories then came into power ; 
 and although Mr. Chamberlain had at different 
 times stated that the South African Republics 
 were independent, and that England had no 
 
 right to interfere with their internal affairs, he 
 
 d4
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 now appeared to join hands with Cecil Rhodes, 
 the arch-plotter of South Africa, to wipe out 
 two free republics. Jamieson was employed 
 to make his raid, which failed ; and then there 
 was a clamor for war, and they got it. 
 
 Never before has England lost so many offi- 
 cers as in this war, and the aristocratic families 
 who demanded the overthrow of the two re- 
 publics are now lamenting the loss of their 
 sons. 
 
 On our side of the Atlantic, a high govern- 
 ment official assured England of our moral 
 support in all that she might do, so that morally 
 we became a party to her brutality. Our atti- 
 tude, thus boldly announced to the world, pre- 
 vented other nations from interfering on behalf 
 of the Boers. Never in its history has our 
 Republic been placed in such a false light. 
 Had we been true to the principles of Ameri- 
 can government, the history of South Africa 
 would be different. Some of those responsible 
 
 95
 
 '^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 for South African crimes have had swift retri- 
 bution. What may our country have to pay 
 for its share in the crimes perpetrated in those 
 two sister Republics? Or is it possible that 
 the tears and the denunciations of the many 
 Americans whose sympathies went out to that 
 brave people, fighting for their rights, will 
 avert the punishment ? God grant that it may 
 be so. The doctrine that might gives right 
 has covered the earth with misery for thou- 
 sands of years, and has never benefited any- 
 body or any country. While it crushes the 
 weak, it also destroys the strong. The begin- 
 ning of conquest marks the end of growth. 
 The fruits of conquest are laden with death, 
 and no conqueror ever yet escaped their poison. 
 Both men and nations develop so long as they 
 practice virtue and maintain equal justice, and 
 both begin to decay the moment they assert 
 their superior force and take advantage of the 
 weakness or ignorance of others. 
 
 96
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 The slaveholder begins to reap a harvest 
 of damnation before the welt has healed on the 
 back of his slave. While the lash first falls on 
 the back of the weak, its stroke reacts on the 
 strong and blights a whole generation. 
 
 97
 
 \ 
 
 \
 
 "A GOOD FELLOW" 
 
 When a young man of respectable parentage, 
 fair education, good character, and honorable 
 ambition, comes to the legislature of his State 
 to represent a constituency, and begins a pub- 
 lic career which he hopes will make him fa- 
 mous and bring glory to his family, he is at 
 once sought by the lobbyists and the older 
 members who are schooled in corruption, and 
 is made to understand that if he would succeed 
 in politics he must be "a good iellow." On 
 all sides he is flattered, directly and indirectly, 
 and in most cases he yields to these seductive 
 blandishments of his newly-found friends, and 
 they take him under their protection and pro- 
 ceed to have a good time. He is invited to 
 little dinners, to play cards, and to various 
 other diversions; wine is free and cigars are 
 plentiful. When he loses at the gaming-table 
 he is given a loan of fifty dollars, and another, 
 and another, until he is deeply in debt; but 
 
 99
 
 l^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 he is told not to worry about that. There are 
 easy ways of making money with which to 
 recoup himself. From that moment the young 
 man is doomed. He is in the power of the cor- 
 ruptionists, and must vote as they direct. In a 
 short time he is a full-fledged boodler, hungry 
 for money and ready for any iniquity. 
 
 In other cases, when it is found that a man 
 cannot be enticed along a line of dissipation, 
 he is approached in a different way. He is 
 told that there is a great future for a man of 
 his ability and acquirements, and that he can 
 wield a powerful influence and earn large fees 
 if he will but be tactful and not make himself 
 obnoxious to the ruling faction of the legisla- 
 ture. He is promised the chairmanship of 
 committees, is assured of future political pro- 
 motion, is offered an interest in various 
 schemes, and all that is asked in return is that 
 he be "a good fellow." Too often the young 
 man yields. He accepts the flattery as being 
 
 100
 
 ^be Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 simply the appreciation due to a superior man. 
 He becomes inflated with a sense of his own 
 importance. He grabs at the promised promo- 
 tion, and is seized with a hunger for money; 
 and then he is lost. He may last longer than 
 the man who indulges in physical dissipation, 
 but the moral dissipation is the same in both 
 cases. Self-respect, noble aspirations, honor 
 and manhood die, and only the wreck of a 
 blighted life remains. 
 
 These two examples illustrate conditions 
 that are only too common in American politics. 
 
 We all like the pleasant and agreeable good 
 fellow, but the "good fellow" in politics is a 
 different specimen of humanity. 
 
 in
 
 POLITICS 
 
 Participation in the conduct of public affairs 
 should tend to make strength of character. 
 Properly conducted, it involves investigation, 
 discussion, and honorable contest; and, there- 
 fore, it should develop ability, industry, and 
 ambition. 
 
 Earlier in the history of our country, active 
 interest in politics did make strong and even 
 great men. Office-holding should be a mark 
 of distinction, a badge indicative of public 
 confidence and of high character. And so it 
 has been in the past. The people, needing 
 someone to look after their interests, cast about 
 for a man of ability and character, and com- 
 missioned him to serve them. Being thus se- 
 lected, he enjoyed the confidence and esteem 
 of the public; and he came to the discharge 
 of his duties with a high sense of honor. Char- 
 acter, with him, stood above everything else. 
 Moving along this line, he became strong and 
 
 103
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 sometimes great. He was in fact the servant 
 of the people. But the sad truth is that poHtics 
 have degenerated ; and there has developed a 
 condition that is prone to sap the manhood of 
 those who come within its atmosphere. With 
 many politicians, the question is not how to 
 get an honest expression of public sentiment, 
 but how to avoid it, or how to trick the people 
 and win in spite of them. They investigate, 
 indeed, and they stud^ industriously; but not 
 along the line that makes great men. Their 
 energies are spent in efforts at deception, 
 trickery, and fraud. Such a line of conduct 
 must have an evil effect upon those who prac- 
 tice it; and when we look at the man who is 
 in politics solely for selfish purposes, we are 
 convinced that the life he leads has written 
 its infamy upon his countenance. 
 
 It would be difficult to find a class of men 
 who possess less honor, less manhood, or less 
 character, than the professional politician who 
 
 104
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 has long manipulated local politics in large 
 cities. Instead of the office seeking the man, 
 the man pursues the office. Instead of being 
 the choice of his fellow-citizens, the office- 
 holder often simply fastens himself upon them 
 and proceeds to eat their substance. 
 
 He is never guided by a principle, but is led 
 by an appetite. He becomes smooth but hun- 
 gry, and is constantly on the lookout for per- 
 sonal advantage. He is forever watching the 
 weather-vanes, and shifting his position with 
 their every move. He is all things to all men, 
 an elusive and deceptive quantity, that grows 
 smaller and weaker with every shift. 
 
 There was a time when the men in office led 
 public sentiment, and the contest was intellec- 
 tual and moral. With every contest they 
 grow stronger. But the commercial interests 
 began to control government for private ends. 
 For this purpose, they sought to shape public 
 sentiment, and they used commercial methods ; 
 
 105
 
 J'he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 and the office-holders no longer led the public, 
 nor were they simply followers, but they were 
 side-door conveniences for commercial inter- 
 ests. They posed and strutted, it is true, as 
 Congressmen, as Senators, as Governors, aye, 
 as Judges; but they breathed the atmosphere 
 of servitude. They bent to the winds of com- 
 mercialism, which was laden with the poison 
 of injustice. 
 
 For a third of a century there has been a 
 dearth of great characters in American public 
 life. In the various walks of private life there 
 came to the front a race of giants, men who 
 grew great because they were sincere. Today, 
 the successful private individual is the great 
 American, and both his front and his rear 
 stairways are crowded with politicians and 
 office-holders seeking his favors. 
 
 106
 
 GOVERNMENT 
 
 A prominent and intelligent Englishman re- 
 cently wrote to a friend in America: 'The 
 more I see of the governance of human affairs, 
 the less the governors attract me." Many in- 
 telligent people on this side of the Atlantic 
 express a like opinion. Government is not 
 only a necessary institution, but it should be 
 a noble institution. To protect the weak, to 
 restrain the vicious, to see that justice is done, 
 to perform economic and industrial functions 
 for the benefit of all, to labor for the elevation 
 of all, — these are the duties incumbent upon 
 anyone undertaking to fill the place of gov- 
 ernor, whether in a large or small field. Could 
 there be a nobler calling? 
 
 A good government official is indeed a serv- 
 ant, and he is good only in proportion to his 
 conception of the nobility of serving others. 
 The good government official is never puffed 
 up. He recognizes the humblest citizen as 
 
 107
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 being his equal. An official that embodies 
 the above requirements is one of God's noblest 
 creatures. He has true greatness of intellect 
 and soul, and wins the love and admiration 
 of mankind. Such men become beacon-lights 
 in the long upward march of the human race, 
 and the world canonizes their memory. Their 
 contemporaries may be slow to recognize their 
 worth, but at least they will have posthumous 
 fame. 
 
 Alas! this ideal official is the exception. 
 The majority of the governments of the world 
 are born of force and maintained by parasitic 
 and intolerable self-conceit — a self-conceit al- 
 ways indicative of intellectual weakness and 
 narrowness of soul. Offices, boards, and jobs 
 of every kind, are created at the instance, not 
 of the people who must support them, but of 
 the men who want to profit by them, — men who 
 want to gain an advantage, who are striving to 
 get something for nothing. 
 
 108
 
 WRONG DONE TO WOMEN 
 
 The conditions necessary to reach the highest 
 development in this world, for either man or 
 woman, are independence and absolute equality 
 of rights. This is the essence of justice, and 
 the highest civilization is impossible where these 
 conditions do not exist. Neither man nor 
 woman can become really great while the other 
 is kept subordinate. And the different peoples 
 of the earth rank on the scale of progress ac- 
 cording to the treatment their women receive. 
 
 Their condition is the lowest among the 
 savages and barbarians, where they are com- 
 pelled to do all the drudgery and to wait on 
 their lords and masters as slaves ; and it is 
 the highest in the United States of America, 
 where they possess the greatest degree of inde- 
 pendence and equality of rights ever accorded 
 women. 
 
 Men are gradually discovering that they 
 cannot deprive women of equal rights without 
 
 109
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 suffering themselves. They pay the penalty 
 of occupying a lower grade of civilization. The 
 man who treats a woman as an inferior, and 
 refuses to accord her justice, cannot attain 
 the highest estate in this life. He stands on 
 too low a plane. 
 
 There is no man living who holds a commis- 
 sion which authorizes him to sit in judgment 
 on the rights of women. 
 
 Woman has precisely the same title and 
 right to independence and equality before the 
 law that man has. Both hold title from the 
 same source. She has just as much* right to 
 sit in judgment on man, and limit his sphere 
 and his actions, as he has to limit hers. There- 
 fore any attempt by man to deny woman inde- 
 pendence or equality of rights is simply the 
 assertion of brute force. 
 
 Brute force degrades those who successfully 
 use it. Every time it is resorted to, there is 
 a reaction toward the brute creation. 
 
 uo
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 The story of the wrongs done to woman is 
 as old as time, and the blight and curse of it 
 has followed man through the centuries. 
 
 There is no more pitiable object than the 
 weak, confiding creature, betrayed and aban- 
 doned, and a social outcast. No condition in 
 life can be more hopeless. The path of degra- 
 dation, vice, and misery, seems all that is left 
 for her. 
 
 When we hear of a man thus abandoning a 
 woman, we instinctively feel that there must 
 be a hell, — else how shall such miscreants meet 
 their just reward? But if we look deeper we 
 find that Nature has fully covered the case, 
 and she never yet has let a guilty one escape, 
 unless he has made ample restitution. The 
 man who ruthlessly abandons a woman who 
 has believed and confided in him, destroys him- 
 self; and though he flies to the ends of the 
 earth, the curse will follow him. He may 
 have genius, and may seem to prosper; but 
 
 111
 
 ~( 
 
 ^be Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 sooner or later the dark shadow of wrong will 
 turn his face from the sun, and lead him into 
 the currents of destiny that will carry him to 
 his just punishment. 
 
 112
 
 PRAYER 
 
 Prayer is the earnest upward reaching of 
 the soul, the surrender of all other thoughts 
 and desires, and the concentration of all long- 
 ing into one petition. Only the sincere and 
 contrite heart can pray. A man must be 
 honest with himself, and in attune with his 
 Maker and the universe, in order to pray. 
 
 "O God, be merciful unto me a sinner," has 
 come down to us through thousands of years 
 as one of the greatest prayers ever uttered, 
 because it came from an earnest soul. The 
 follower of Christ was told to go to his closet 
 and pray in secret. He was told that his 
 prayer was a mockery if it was not sincere; 
 but if it was the honest expression of a peni- 
 tent heart, his Father who heard in secret 
 would reward him openly. 
 
 Taking the Scriptural requirements for the 
 efficacy of prayer, and assuming that there 
 is a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God, 
 
 113
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 it is manifest that the mere mumbling of words, 
 the ostentatious appeal to Heaven while the 
 mind is occupied with the things of this world, 
 the bowing and kneeling and sanctimonious 
 expression, are the acts of a Pharisee, and 
 blasphemous in character. 
 
 Every repetition of such an exercise would 
 debase the petitioner, and tend to make him 
 a hypocrite, and in time would destroy every- 
 thing noble in his nature. 
 
 On the other hand, assuming that there is 
 no personal God to hear or answer prayer, and 
 that all creation is governed by immutable 
 laws that cannot be changed or arrested by 
 any number of prayers, it is still true that the 
 genuine, earnest prayer, the concentration of 
 thought upon that which is God-like, and the 
 bending of all desires into one fervent petition 
 and bringing one's nature into harmony with 
 that petition, has an uplifting and inspiring 
 effect upon him who prays. 
 
 114
 
 ^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 Nature is honest with those who are honest 
 with her. As physical exercise strengthens and 
 upbuilds the body, so this psychic exercise ele- 
 vates and ennobles the soul. 
 
 115
 
 GRATIFICATION 
 
 Gratification moulds the character and 
 gradually prints its nature in living letters on 
 the countenance. The thoughts of a man write 
 his history. Unconsciously we partake of the 
 nature of the thoughts that are feeding us. 
 If our thoughts are noble, we are exalted; if 
 sordid or sensual, we degenerate. Continuous 
 gratification gradually transforms a man into 
 a different being, with a nature resembling the 
 thing that gives him pleasure. 
 
 When greed for money is fed, the desire in- 
 creases; and with every gratification the man 
 undergoes a change. His soul shrivels; his 
 nature hardens. The trend of his thoughts is 
 downward and not upward, his nobler and 
 higher impulses die, and he moves toward the 
 material and sensual. 
 
 If the indulgence consists of feeding the ap- 
 petite to excess with viands, or liquors, or both, 
 the individual becomes coarse and blear-eyed. 
 
 117
 
 "The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 If this free indulgence is sensual, he becomes 
 vulgar in mind and thought, and his eyes and 
 his countenance tell the story to the whole 
 world. 
 
 The hunger for fashion and dilettanteism, 
 when gratified to excess, makes a life that is 
 as superficial and as empty as the twaddle of 
 the average drawing-room. It means a life 
 wasted and an opportunity thrown away. 
 
 But if the gratification is of an intellectual 
 or spiritual order, if it comes from studying 
 Nature and listening to the birds sing, from 
 contemplating the stars and gazing at the sun, 
 from seeking the welfare of man and helping 
 the weak, from doing duty and being just, and 
 striving for all that is noble and uplifting, 
 then will the countenance radiate with the glow 
 of immortality. 
 
 118
 
 MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 The ministry of the Gospel, practiced as it 
 was taught and practiced by Christ, brings 
 serenity and happiness of soul to him who 
 sincerely gives himself up to the service. To 
 comfort the sick, to help the poor, to guide the 
 unfortunate, to point the way to purity and 
 righteousness, will bring to him who ministers 
 a "peace that passeth all understanding," and 
 it never fails. We all know how the doing 
 of a good deed will bring a glow to the heart, 
 and this is the strongest proof we have of the 
 power of "goodness." We all know, — and 
 there is no question in our minds about it, — 
 that to him who gives himself up to a life of 
 true righteousness there will come this reward 
 of peace. 
 
 It is fortunate for the world that there are 
 true exponents of Christ's teachings, and they 
 are to be found among all creeds and sects. 
 They are found along the walks of the lowly, 
 
 U9
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 but they are not abashed by the pretensions 
 of power. Their hearts go out to the wretched 
 and forsaken, but their souls dwell on the 
 heights, and their faces are turned toward the 
 morning. Their presence is a benediction and 
 their lives light the way to the eternities. 
 
 There is a second class of men called min- 
 isters who are not very bad nor yet very good. 
 They want to do their duty, but they want 
 to be paid for it, and they have an eye to the 
 main chance. They like comfortable living, 
 and therefore they want paying congregations. 
 They are rarely great, but the average is fair. 
 They have a taste for the material things, yet 
 they are serious and mean to be in earnest. 
 
 They tell the truth as they see it, and they 
 do some good in the world by preaching severe 
 morals, which helps mankind upward. But 
 their thoughts mould their characters; and 
 to the extent that they are narrow and greedy, 
 and fall short of the true spirit, do their lives 
 
 120
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 end on the barren plains of disappointment and 
 bitterness. 
 
 There is a third class of ministers, who glory 
 in the title of Reverend Doctor. Usually they 
 are men of average ability and expensive edu- 
 cation. They rarely do anything great or 
 original. They are eminently respectable and 
 thoroughly conventional. Respectability is 
 their stock in trade, and conventionality is their 
 protection. They cater to the rich, and they 
 love luxury. They seek large salaries and 
 fashionable and rich congregations. They de- 
 light to pose, and are great in the drawing- 
 room and popular with the ladies. 
 
 They walk down the avenues where reside 
 the wealthy, and thank God for having guided 
 their feet into pleasant paths. The hovels of 
 the poor shock their refined tastes, and the 
 cries of distress grate too harshly on their 
 delicate nerves; so they avoid both, and the 
 cry of the oppressed does not reach them. 
 
 121
 
 'The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 They turn their backs toward misery and shut 
 their eyes to injustice. On pubHc questions 
 they are to be found on the side of the rich 
 and powerful. 
 
 Their sermons are sometimes learned, and 
 their prayers always unctuous and well- 
 rounded; but the former lack sympathy, and 
 the latter lack soul. 
 
 Their service suggests a beautiful mockery. 
 They do not conduct religious worship, — they 
 give a fashionable and artistic entertainment. 
 Their congregations are more like fashionable 
 clubs than members of Christian churches. 
 
 The men who preside over and guide these 
 clubs may be useful to the world, — not as min- 
 isters of the lowly Saviour, but as social guides. 
 They are useful in perhaps even a higher sense 
 than is the dancing master and the instructor 
 in deportment; but, unfortunately, the ele- 
 ments of cant and hypocrisy enter into the case 
 of the Reverend Doctor, and in time they 
 
 122
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 change his nature, candor dies, and conven- 
 tional conduct takes its place. Such a man is 
 constantly deteriorating. He drifts away from 
 the fountains of pure life, and parts company 
 with Nature. His soul becomes bankrupt, and 
 he carries with him the visage of the Pharisee 
 and the smile of the parasite.
 
 PARASITES 
 
 To live habitually at the expense of another, 
 makes a parasite, whether in the vegetable, the 
 animal, or the human world. 
 
 Scientists tell us that there are parasites 
 which have in the beginning a number of or- 
 gans that if used would develop, but which 
 gradually become dormant and often disappear 
 entirely for want of use, so that in the end 
 this parasite becomes simply a sack with a 
 food-sucking mouth. 
 
 Among human kind there are two classes of * 
 parasites. There is the "hanging on" class, 
 from the beggar to the well-dressed flunky 
 and cad, who act the part of servility to secure 
 favors ; and, second, the insidious parasite 
 whom conditions or institutions have placed 
 in a position where he can suck the substance 
 of other people's toil. 
 
 The effect of parasitism is to weaken and 
 destroy all that is of worth in the parasite, 
 
 125
 
 "The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 This comes, not as a punishment inflicted by an 
 extraneous power, but as a natural consequence 
 of inaction. The principle of life in this uni- 
 verse depends entirely on action, — constant, 
 ceaseless action. Inaction stops growth and 
 development, and decay sets in. 
 
 The man who eats bread that is earned by 
 others is a parasite; in the social economy he 
 is but a sack with a sucking mouth. Not being 
 
 compelled to exert his other organs or faculties, 
 they cease to grow. Astonishing as it may 
 
 seem, there is an almost universal desire among 
 
 men to become a parasite ; that is, a desire to 
 
 get into a position where they can gratify their 
 
 appetites and tastes without labor, a desire to 
 
 take things rather than to make things, — a 
 
 desire to get something for nothing. 
 
 126
 
 EXPLOITATION 
 
 He who commits murder is a fool; for 
 though he may escape the law, Nature at once 
 lays her hands upon him, and his punishment 
 begins. And the man who exploits the public, 
 or deceives and robs the unsuspecting, is a 
 fool ; for though he may never be found out 
 and punished by his victims, he will know no 
 peace, — the restlessness of the criminal will at 
 once begin to torture him. It does not matter 
 how the exploitation is practiced — whether by 
 extortion, by selling worthless securities, by 
 robbing in the name of a corporation, by de- 
 bauching public officials, by betraying a trust, 
 by prostituting an office, or by any other 
 method whereby more is taken than is given. 
 Robbing on the highway requires the redeem- 
 ing element of courage. Exploitation has not 
 a single redeeming feature. 
 
 Man may not ask how we came by our 
 money, but Nature keeps an exact record of it. 
 
 127
 
 T^he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 Man may fawn on us if we have money; but 
 if we violate her moral laws, Nature will strike 
 us down and leave us a wreck by the wayside. 
 
 128
 
 THE POTENCY OF IDEAS 
 
 Ideas mould the destiny of nations and 
 write their characters on the countenance of 
 man* 
 
 He who gives the world ideas, helps to make 
 its history; and the thoughts that occupy the 
 mind of the individual shape its career. 
 Wealth, power and office are all the product 
 of ideas. 
 
 The emancipation of the colored race and 
 the consequent elevation of manhood was the 
 harvest grown from preaching liberty during 
 the last century. 
 
 The fierce commercialism that is now ripen- 
 ing, and seeking to re-enthrone brute force, 
 is the product of the ideas that were sown 
 some fifty years ago, when little else was talked 
 of but the developing of the country and the 
 making of money. 
 
 This commercialism is pulling down great 
 mottoes and sneering at all high standards. 
 
 129
 
 T'he Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 Having no lofty sentiment, it is the enemy of 
 liberty. It is turning our faces from the sun 
 and erecting altars to Mammon. 
 
 The men who are following this false light 
 will become hard and cold and sordid in their 
 mad struggle for wealth. No matter how 
 great the measure of their success, they will 
 have nothing worth having if they get all. 
 
 But while commercialism is running riot at 
 the top, a new order of thought is growing up 
 at the bottom. Both Europe and America are 
 producing a higher order of ideas that breathe 
 the spirit of human brotherhood and promise 
 a nobler civilization for man. 
 
 A new literature, that is the harbinger of a 
 better time, is fast enveloping the earth; and 
 the men who imbibe this spirit, and labor to 
 elevate the race, will be the great men of the 
 future. 
 
 130
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 The writer has tried to point out the fact 
 that the getting of something for nothing has 
 in it the germs of dissolution ; that to receive 
 more from our fellow-men than we give in 
 return will brand us as criminals, and put a 
 blight upon our children ; that the excuse that 
 our fellow-man consented to the bargain will 
 not answer, for it is not only a question of 
 wronging him, but it is also a question of vio- 
 lating the eternal law of equivalents, the uni- 
 versal law of balances. 
 
 We have tried to show that fortune, posses- 
 sions, office and honors, cannot arrest internal 
 decay; that pomp and display are Dead Sea 
 apples, exciting the ignorant but disgusting the 
 wise ; that the same laws apply to the rich and 
 the poor alike, — governing the drudge of the 
 household and the lady of the drawing-room, 
 the slave in the field as well as the master on 
 the hill, the tramp on the highway and the 
 
 131
 
 The Cost of Something for Nothing 
 
 king on his throne; that every deception, 
 every cruelty, every grasp of greed, every 
 wrong, reaches back sooner or later and curses 
 its author ; that justice is moral health, bring- 
 ing happiness, and wrong is moral disease, 
 bringing moral death; that when the final 
 judgment comes to be entered, when the sum 
 and the total are told, it will be written that he 
 who takes more than he gives courts death 
 and invites destruction. 
 
 [the end.] 
 
 132
 
 By Clarence S. Darrow 
 
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