Americaii Reptiblic 
 
 wad...... 
 
 The Debs Insurrection 
 
 iiACRACO, 
 
THE 
 
 AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 AND 
 
 THE DEBS INSURRECTION 
 
 Z. Swift Holbrook, M. A. 
 
 OF CHICAGO 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 G. Frederick Wright, D. D., LL.D. 
 
 OF OBERLIN COLLEGE 
 
 OBERLIN, OHIO 
 
 BiBLIOTHECA SACRA CO. 
 
 1895 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 By the BIBLIOTHECA SACRA COMPANY. 
 
 -»/\ .4^^ Ao 
 
« 
 
 » « Ye shall know the truth, 
 
 a And the truth shall make you free. 
 
 «53 , —John viii. 32 
 
 G 
 
 o 
 
 *•- THE WAGE-EARNERS 
 
 **;. OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 '* WHO, SOONER OR LATER, MUST KNOW 
 
 THE WHOLE TRUTH 
 
 ('' AND WHOSE DELAY IN KNOWING AND ACCEPTING IT, 
 
 f- 
 
 tk. WHILE IT MAY CAUSE TEMPORARY AND 
 
 '^ OCCASIONAL ANNOYANCE TO THE PUBLIC, 
 
 ^ MUST BRING UPON THEMSELVES 
 
 .^ UNTOLD MISERY AND SUFFERING, 
 
 '^ THESE PLAIN TRUTHS ARE SPOKEN 
 
 IN THE HOPE THAT THEY MAY BRING 
 
 SOME LIGHT AND LIFE. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 TN seeking an associate to edit the new department of So- 
 -*- ciology in the BiBLlOTHECA Sacra, of which I had been 
 editor for several years, Mr. Holbrook was selected, not only 
 because I found that in the main his conclusions agreed with 
 my own, but largely because from long acquaintance I knew 
 him to be a man of exceptionally broad sympathies and wide 
 experience. His early youth was spent in the school of ad- 
 versity and stern self-denial, where he acquired those habits 
 of self-reliance Vv^hich carried him, by his own efforts, through 
 a five-years' course of study in Yale College, and secured for 
 him afterwards his marked business success. This experi- 
 ence, together with his literary ability, gives exceptional value 
 to his discussions of all sociological questions. 
 
 The present papers, republished from the BiBLlOTHECA 
 Sacra, seem fitted for a much wider circulation than can be 
 afforded to them in the pages of such a periodical. They 
 are therefore pointed in convenient form, and at a low price, 
 that all may have them within reach. 
 
 A few additional preliminary words may help the reader 
 to see the general bearing of the specific line of thought 
 pursued in Mr. Holbrook's contributions. I will, therefore, 
 give a brief statement of some of the fundamental facts and 
 principles which should ever be kept in view in our efforts to 
 promote the well-being of society. 
 
 1st. Truth does not permit us to overlook the fact that 
 Nature's gifts are neither so prodigal nor so evenly distrib- 
 
uted as many seem to assume. Civilization is the product only 
 of constant toil and self-denial. The capital necessary to at- 
 tain the ends of civilized society is neither easy to acquire 
 nor easy to keep. At no time is there on hand two-years' 
 supply of provisions for the world. Starvation is never far 
 from the door of society as a whole. Even the solid struct- 
 ures forming the most permanent investments of capital be- 
 come worthless if neglected for only a few years. 
 
 2d. An equal distribution of the world's goods would 
 scarcely raise at all the general level of comfort. If the 
 profits of our manufacturing industries were wholly distrib- 
 uted among their employes, it would add only about twelve 
 and a half cents to their daily income. According to the 
 last census, the total products of the industries of the United 
 States, if evenly distributed among the people, would amount 
 to less than fifty cents a day to each person. Out of this 
 narrow margin, provision is to be made both for the wants of 
 the present and for the enlarged plans of the future. If all 
 fortunes should be brought down to a common level, instead 
 of its making all rich, it would make all poor, and the condition 
 of things would tend to greater and greater depths of poverty. 
 
 3d. The safety and productiveness of capital essential 
 to the progress of society depend upon utilizing the sagac- 
 ity in investment, and the ability in organization and execu- 
 tion, which only a few possess. If a capitalist builds his 
 factory where rents are too high, or transportation too diffi- 
 cult, or the market too limited, or the cost of labor too great, 
 or the adjustment of laborers defective, the expenses will 
 soon eat up the capital , and there will be profit to nobody, and 
 
ultimate loss to all. The great problem is to secure mana- 
 gers of business possessing such knowledge of details, and 
 such executive ability, that they can reduce the waste both 
 of labor and material to a minimum. It is difficult to see 
 how this management is to be secured, except through the 
 free play of competition, which permits the wage-earner to 
 rise according to his proved ability. The working men of 
 the present must furnish the managers of the future. 
 
 4th. The true philanthropist keeps in view the welfare 
 of the entire population. Mis sympathies are not expended 
 chiefly upon the most clamorous; that would indicate great 
 narrowness of view. Sympathy is due to the most needy 
 and the most numerous according to their wants, and should 
 be broad enough to comprehend the whole circle of human 
 interests. It is not true philanthropy to give a man bread 
 without work when his whole Avelfare demands that he should 
 have bread zvith work. Moderate wages and stability of 
 business are better than high wages and instability. 
 
 5th. Organized capitalists and organized wage-earners 
 constitute but a small fraction of the people. The farming 
 population (constituting in itself more than half the nation), 
 together with those who are rendering personal service, and 
 the great company of small manufacturers, small tradesmen, 
 and common laborers, form the great bulk of the people, out- 
 numbering the others ten to one. These classes are su- 
 premely interested in the maintenance of stable government, 
 free competition, and the conditions favorable to the orderly 
 conduct of business. They must insist upon freedom of 
 commerce and transportation, and upon the freedom of the 
 
individual in securing employment. If there are quarrels be- 
 tween organized capitalists and organized wage-earners, they 
 must be settled without infringing upon the rights of the 
 great mass of the people. 
 
 6th. It is these unorganized masses of the people that 
 most need defence and protection. It is by no means an 
 unlikely contingency that, for example, the railroad man- 
 agers and the managers of the labor organizations may so 
 combine as to destroy the profits of railroad investments, 
 and raise the price of railroad transportation, by giving ex- 
 travagant salaries to the officers and more than market wages 
 to the men employed, and thus burden the whole country 
 beyond endurance, and produce a monopoly of the most 
 dangerous kind. 
 
 7th. It is for the interest of the wage-earners them- 
 selves that they be held to the same high standard of char- 
 acter and honor which is set up for men in general. The 
 ten commandments are for all. A wage-earner cannot af- 
 ford to have his contract held as less sacred than that of any 
 other man. Otherwise he is demoralized and dishonored at 
 the very outset, and cannot have the blessings which come 
 to the man who when he swears to his own hurt changes 
 not. One of the most alarming things in connection with 
 the strikes which from time to time paralyze the business of 
 the country, is the readiness with which the wage-earners 
 are led to disregard their contracts and to violate their word. 
 Since, as the laws are now so enacted, it is impossible to en- 
 force a contract against a poor man, there is all the greater 
 need that the sentiment of honor be strengthened in his mind. 
 
For a wage-earner solemnly to engage to do a piece of work 
 and then, without due notice, to break his contract at the beck 
 of a labor organization is as injurious to him as it is unjust 
 to the employer and cruel to the public. 
 
 8th. It is impossible to secure any successful social 
 conditions in the world except on the basis of noble charac- 
 ter. Mr. Holbrook is entirely right in insisting upon this 
 principle. Any theory of human society which does not 
 provide against the all-prevalent perversions of conduct con- 
 nected with human sinfulness must be disappointing and dis- 
 astrous. At every point we have to guard against the temp- 
 tations to negligence of opportunities and perversion of trusts 
 to which both ourselves and others are constantly subjected. 
 
 9th. While it is a hopeful view which we entertain of 
 the future, the hopefulness mainly rests upon our confidence 
 in the capacity of man's higher nature to lift him above his 
 environment and make him the master of circumstances, 
 rather than their creature. It is true that we are bound to 
 do all we can to secure a perfect environment for each indi- 
 vidual. But a perfect environment will be one which throws 
 great responsibility upon the individual. Nobody can be 
 made happy against his will, or be made noble without his 
 own exertions. On the contrary, men of high aspirations 
 can rise superior to almost any environment. The world is 
 lull of successful men who have by conquering difficulties 
 made themselves strong, and thereby acquired the power of 
 achieving success. 
 
 loth. Practically I have found it extremely difficult to 
 persuade young people to see the advantage of certain essen- 
 
tial forms of self-denial in the beginning of life. To abstain 
 from the use of tobacco and alcoholic beverages, and from 
 attendance upon cheap and demoralizing shows, and devote 
 the time and money thus spent, in improving the mind, or in 
 perfecting one's trade, would make the fortune of many a 
 boy who has no encouragement in these directions either 
 among his companions or at his home. To provide motives 
 which shall secure such a high standard of personal charac- 
 ter in the units of society is the most important service which 
 can be rendered to it. 
 
 I ith. If the time which is now spent in embittering the 
 children of the wage-earners by exaggerated representations 
 of the hardness of their lot, and in filling their minds with 
 perverted notions of the way to success, were spent in per- 
 suading them to appreciate the advantages they already have, 
 untold results would be witnessed in the improvement of so- 
 ciety and in the enrichment of individual and family life. 
 
 When free libraries are inviting all to revel in their inex- 
 haustible stores of varied entertainment and useful knowledge; 
 when, for the price of two cigars, one can purchase a copy of 
 Robinson Crusoe or two plays of Shakespeare; and when, for the 
 price of admittance to a cheap variety show, one can become the 
 owner of Macaulay's Essays, or of a standard history of Eng- 
 land; and, for a week's wages, can purchase a well-selected 
 library, it is idle to say that the road to true success is closed 
 to the masses. There is far more need of a revival of high 
 aspiration on the part of the young than there is of a revival 
 of business. Indeed this would be a revival of business. To 
 learn to appreciate and improve such advantages as are now 
 
within the reach of all is of more worth to the individual 
 than the acquisition of a fortune would be. 
 
 1 2th. But when all has been done that is possible to 
 increase the production of wealth and equalize its distribu- 
 tion, and to stimulate the highest ideals of conduct and 
 character, there will still be many disappointments, great 
 sorrow, and much suffering in the world. No one can cer- 
 tainly forecast the future. In our turn we shall all need the 
 sympathy of friends and the consolations of religion. The 
 riches of the capitalist will often take wings and fly away, 
 the efforts of the husbandman will occasionally fail, and the 
 labor market will be subject to fluctuations which cannot be 
 wholly provided against. But amid the natural relationships 
 of free society these shocks will be so relieved by the sym- 
 pathy of friends and the thoughtfulness of the followers of 
 Christ that the force of our disappointments will be greatly 
 broken. To the virtuous, wherever noble ideas are honored 
 and maintained, life will be full of gain. In such a society 
 even the selfish instincts of men will be made useful. 
 
 I feel sure that Mr. Holbrook's straightforward and 
 manly discussions of these themes are needed, and that they 
 will be most helfjful; while, at the same time, the criticisms 
 which his writings will probably provoke may be equally 
 useful in clearing the mists from the sociological sky. Only 
 by such frank discussion can the truth come to the light 
 and be made to prevail. 
 
 G. Frederick Wright. 
 
 Oberlin, Ohio, February i, 1895. 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC AND THE DEBS 
 INSURRECTION. 
 
 rUHE American Republic is the fruitage of a religious in- 
 j spiration. Our democratic institutions, our notions of 
 liberty and equality, had their origin with men who practised 
 every form of self-denial, that they might be free from hie- 
 rarchical authority and worship God according to the dic- 
 tates of conscience. They were not men, like the colony 
 that landed at Jamestown in 1607, moved by the spirit of 
 adventure or by the desire to acquire, — both worthy and 
 useful passions when subordinated to higher ends, — but they 
 came to an unknown land, braving the perils of the sea and 
 enduring the privations incident to such a perilous journey, 
 that they might have freedom to worship God. 
 
 To what extent these men had caught the inspiration 
 of Luther and had given it a new interpretation, need not 
 here be traced ; but the age was one of discovery, of hero- 
 ism, of adventure, of awalcened intellect, — giving the world 
 the revival of faith, hope, and learning. It was the Eliza- 
 bethan Age in literature. It was the period of the centuries 
 when, freed from the bonds of ecclesiastical authority, indi- 
 vidualism burst the barriers which had restrained it, and men 
 took on new conceptions of liberty and of individual worth. 
 
Man as an individual, a unit, free and independent in his re- 
 lations to the unseen, and bound by social compacts only 
 because thus his individualism found higher freedom and 
 fuller development, — this was the conception that inspired 
 the men who founded this Republic, and was enunciated by 
 those ablest minds and choicest spirits of the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 It was not a mere intellectual conception; it was a spir- 
 itual experience, involving the conscience, and having prac- 
 tical relations with life, liberty, property, and reputation. 
 For these very reasons it led the Pilgrims and the Puritans 
 across the sea. 
 
 When man has tasted the sweets of liberty, persecution 
 augments, but it cannot destroy, its growth. Wyclif caught 
 the idea one hundred and forty years before Luther, and 
 taught that the New Testament is a sufficient guide in church 
 government. The growth of that idea and its final perma- 
 nency in men's minds, before the assent of king and priest, 
 cost many lives and untold suffering. Henry VIII., Edward 
 VL, Bloody Mary, and Queen Elizabeth found people who, 
 with Peter, said, It is right to obey God rather than men. 
 That class sought to purify the church, — its clergy, its mem- 
 bership, its forms of worship, and its ordinances. They 
 were known as Puritans. It was a common thing for them 
 to resist unto the death any attempt of human authority to 
 take the place of Christ over the conscience. 
 
 While democratic and social equality were terms that 
 in 163 1 had no meaning, for no one could have a voice in 
 town affairs unless he had been elected a freeman by the 
 
3 
 
 Court, and, after May 31, 163 1, unless he was a church 
 member, yet Robert Browne, the founder of the first Congre- 
 g-ational church in Norwich, England, in 1580, 
 
 "clearly stated and defended the theory that every man had a right to 
 choose and practice such religion as his conscience approved; and that 
 the king, hierarchy or magistrate had no right to meddle in any way with 
 his liberty of conscience. . . . This defense of absolute toleration by 
 Browne is a whole generation before the writers whom the Baptist histo- 
 rians claim to be the originators and two generations before Roger 
 Williams."^ 
 
 No student of history in the historical development of 
 modern free thought can ignore the origin, growth, and de- 
 velopment of Congregationalism. 
 
 "New England was settled under this polity, and its influence was 
 dominant for two centuries in moulding New England institutions," ^ 
 
 As the individual was the unit of power in church and 
 state, it was essential that all the citizens should be edu- 
 cated; hence colleges and free schools were established at 
 the outset. 
 
 "This zeal for education prompted the people of Massachusetts to 
 found a college before they were yet free from the perils of starvation, 
 and to establish a complete system of free schools before the first gener- 
 ation born in their new home had passed the age of childhood."^ 
 
 Thus the Pilgrims of 1620 from Holland and the Pur- 
 itans from England (of whom some 22,000 came over 
 between 1630 and 1640) laid those solid foundation-stones 
 — religion, morality, knowledge — which have ever been the 
 basis of our institutions. It was a most felicitous and prov- 
 idential union, that — the Pilgrim a Separatist and the Puri- 
 1 William Frederick Poole, in Dial, August, 1880. 
 
tan an Independent; for it combined the intense religious 
 zeal and other-worldliness of the one, tuned to so high a 
 pitch, with the healthy regard for this world and the prac- 
 tical affairs of life so characteristic of the other. The Pil- 
 grim was earnest to secure a mansion in the skies; while the 
 Puritan, none the less zealous for that heavenly home, kept 
 his economic eye on a corner lot on earth. The Massachu- 
 setts Colony soon learned to know cod no less than religion; 
 and they mixed in delightful proportions a zeal for fishery 
 and whaling with that for religious discussions and pro- 
 tracted meetings; they compounded in an ingenious manner 
 a love for New England rum with a clear conscience toward 
 God; "pine-tree shillings and piety"; a love for heaven and 
 a perfect willingness to remain on earth. 
 
 But the Puritans, under Governor Winthrop, were moulded 
 in their religious and intellectual life by the Pilgrims. The 
 Puritans had attempted in England to purify and reform the 
 church through the State; but when on American soil they 
 soon saw that the 
 
 "best service the State can render to religion is to leave it free to live and 
 act according to its own nature, in obedience to its own laws, prompted 
 by its own impulses, guided by its own spirit and judgment." ^ 
 
 The Cambridge Platform of 1648 has been the authori- 
 tative manual of the church for two centuries, and a compar- 
 ison of it with the Declaration of the National Council of 1871 
 will reveal how clearly and uniformly Congregationalism has 
 moved along a definite -line of thought in its polity. 
 
 The compact in the Mayflower was a covenant binding 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, " Independent." 
 
the Pilgrims to all due submission and obedience unto such 
 just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offi- 
 cers from time to time as shall be thought most meet and 
 convenient for the general good of the community; and they 
 clearly stated that they combined into a civil body-politic for 
 their better ordering and preservation. And the motive as- 
 serted was the glory of God and the advancement of the 
 Christian faith. As De Tocqueville well says, 
 
 "A democracy more perfect than any which antiquity had dreamed 
 of started in full size and panoply from the midst of an ancient feudal so- 
 ciety."^ 
 
 The divine and natural order for the development of so- 
 ciety are all on the Mayflower in the germ. Religion seeking 
 divine assistance, and wisdom, with good-will toward one 
 another, which is its natural fruitage; or, in other words, mo- 
 rality; and evincing itself in the loftiest notions of liberty and 
 equality. This is the true historical and scientific develop- 
 ment; for, as De Tocqueville says, 
 
 " Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality with- 
 out faith." ^ 
 
 As has been said: " Here was the spirit of religion and 
 the spirit of liberty, which so often were in open conflict," 
 happily combined and united to accomplish a result. And 
 what was that result.'' Congregationalism in religious affairs 
 and democracy in civil affairs, for democracy implies equality, 
 — one being the same as another in law. 
 
 As to the notions of liberty which prevailed among the 
 Puritans who came over with Governor Winthrop in June, 
 1630, hear what he says: — 
 
 1 Democracy in America, p. 35. ^ Jbid., p. n. 
 
"Nor would I have you to mistake in the point of your own liberty. 
 There is a liberty of corrupt nature which is affected both by men and 
 beasts to do what they list; and this liberty is inconsistent with authority, 
 impatient of all restraint; by this liberty, ' sumiis o?tines deteriores' : 'tis 
 the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all the ordinances of God are 
 bent against it. But there is a civil, a moral, a federal liberty which is 
 the proper end and object of authority; it is a liberty for that only which 
 is just and good: for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your 
 very lives, and whatsoever crosses it, is not authority but a distemper 
 thereof. This liberty is maintained in a way of subjection to authority; and 
 the authority set over you will, in all administrations for your good, be 
 quietly submitted unto by all but such as have a disposition to shake off 
 the yoke and lose their true liberty, by their murmuring at the honour and 
 power of authority." ^ 
 
 This whole conception of liberty is biblical, and founded 
 on Christ's definition, that only truth (or law) can set free. 
 This idea of liberty became the sentiment of New England; 
 and Governor John Treadvvell, of Connecticut, wrote a letter 
 to Rev. Nathaniel Emmons, July ii, 1800, in which he says: 
 
 " Liberty I love; but it is that liberty which results from the most per- 
 fect subjugation of every soul to the empire of law, and not that which is 
 sought by illuminers and atheists." ^ 
 
 Weeden says: — 
 
 " In 1641 these legislators whether in their political or ecclesiastical 
 capacity never conceived any polity which should grant freedom of action 
 in the modern sense. They did not believe such a society to be possible 
 and they would not have considered it desirable. Freedom and liberty 
 meant the working out of a life soberly restrained according to the will of 
 the majority. This major will was directed divinely through the medium 
 of the Bible interpreted by pastors and elders. This was the mind of 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut." ^ 
 
 ^ De Tocqueville, Democracy, p. 42. 
 
 2 Biography of Emmons, by Edwards A. Park. 
 
 3 Economic and Social History of New England, Vol. i. p. 179. 
 
Josiah Quincy said, that liberty of conscience would have 
 produced anarchy in the seventeenth century. This concep- 
 tion of liberty and equality is the gift of Congregationalism 
 to the Republic, and its fruitage is seen in Mr. Lincoln's high 
 thought of obedience to law: — 
 
 " Let reverence for law be breathed by every mother to the lisping 
 babe that prattles In her lap; let it be taught in the schools, seminaries 
 and colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling-books and almanacs; 
 let it be preached from pulpits and proclaimed in legislative halls and en- 
 forced in courts of justice; in short let it become the political religion of 
 the nation." 
 
 The late Dr. William Frederick Poole wrote as follows: — 
 
 " The rise and growth of Congregationalism make an important chap- 
 ter in the historical development of modern free thought. It is in religion 
 what democracy is in the conduct of civil affairs. It inculcates the duty 
 and right of each individual to interpret the Scriptures for himself and 
 vests all ecclesiastical power in the brotherhood of each local church as 
 an independent body. Every other human authority in spiritual affairs, 
 whether it be council, hierarchy or synod, it rejects together with all anti- 
 quated symbols, rites, functionaries and other machinery which come be- 
 tween the individual soul and its Maker. It is the exaltation of the indi- 
 vidual, and the dethronement of all outside spiritual dictation. . . . It was 
 the polity under which New England was settled, and there it was the 
 dominant influence for two centuries in moulding its institutions. It is not 
 strange that a system so unlike that of England and the other nations of 
 Europe should have wrought out an independent and peculiar people. 
 As the individual was the unit of power in Church and State, it was essen- 
 tia] that all the citizens should be educated; and hence colleges and free 
 schools were established at the outset. Such a development of individ- 
 ualism was necessarily the occasion of many internal controversies and 
 disputes; but both State and Church withstood the strain, grew strong 
 under it, and enjoyed a material and social prosperity such as fell to the 
 lot of none of the other early American colonies." ^ 
 
 ^ Poole's review of Dexter's Congregationalism, in the Dial, 1880. 
 
On September 4, 1633, there arrived in Boston a man of 
 heroic faith and scholarly attainments, — the Rev. Thomas 
 Hooker. His coming was destined to have far-reaching re- 
 sults in its effect on the life and development of the colonies; 
 for he was the one who inspired the Connecticut Constitu- 
 tion, and first stated clearly, not only the right of the people 
 to elect their magistrates, but to limit them in their powers 
 by laws which they must follow. In other words, the abso- 
 lute sovereignty of the people, or democracy in its modern 
 sense. 
 
 Mr. Hooker had been a fellow of Emmanuel College, 
 Cambridge, England, and had been influenced profoundly by 
 the teachings of that most eminent divine, Thomas Cart- 
 wright. It is significant that Emmanuel College was regarded 
 as a Puritan institution, and the men it graduated were all of 
 a distinct and pronounced type. Such were Robert Browne, 
 Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich, Thomas Hooker, and John Cot- 
 ton. For his opinions, Mr. Hooker was persecuted, and cited 
 to appear before the High Commission Court in England, 
 July 10, 1630. He fled to Holland and then to America. His 
 ideas of liberty, equality, and democracy were dearly bought. 
 They were not intellectual discoveries; they were spiritual ex- 
 periences. Hear his words: — 
 
 " We (as it becometh Christians) stand upon the sufficiency of Christ's 
 institutions, for all kynde of worship; and that exclusively the word and 
 nothing but the word, in matters of Religious worship. . . . Christ we 
 ' know; and all that cometh from him we are ready to embrace. But 
 these human ceremonies in divine worship we know not, nor can have 
 anything to doe with them." ^ 
 
 1 Walker's Life of Hooker (Dodd, Mead & Co.), p. 58. 
 
Hooker was a giant in stature, in faith, and in intellect. 
 
 After remaining in Massachusetts a few years, he went to 
 
 Hartford, Conn., in 1636. It is well to remember that the 
 
 Massachusetts government was not, and was never intended 
 
 to be, democratic.^ Mr. Hookei^ was exceedingly jealous for 
 
 popular liberty, and his influence among his early associates 
 
 in the Massachusetts Colony is revealed by the statement, 
 
 made by an early chronicler, that, 
 
 "after Mr. Hooker's coming over, it was observed that many of the free- 
 men grew to be very jealous of their liberties." ^ 
 
 In the autumn of 1638, Governor Winthrop, who was 
 
 an aristocrat, and had never divested himself of aristocratic 
 
 notions, even in government, wrote a letter to Mr. Hooker^ 
 
 expostulating with him about — 
 
 " the unwarrantableness and unsafeness of referring matters of counsel 
 01 judicature to the body of the people, because the best part is always 
 the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser." 
 
 Mr. Hooker replied that the judges must simply enforce 
 the law, and the general counsel should be chosen by all; 
 and he even goes so far as to say that otherwise it would 
 lead to tyranny and so to confusion. He says, he would 
 choose neither to live nor to leave his property under such a 
 government. He quotes the Scriptures for his authority.* 
 The late historian of Connecticut, Alexander Johnston, says 
 that this letter to Winthrop might be made the foundation 
 of the claim that Mr. Hooker had supplied the spirit of the 
 Connecticut Constitution.^ 
 
 1 Walker's Hooker p. 119. ^ Hubbard's General History, p. 265. 
 3 Winthrop, ii. 428. * Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., i. 11, 12. 
 5 Johnston's Conn., p. 71. 
 
lO 
 
 In Massachusetts, the advice of the ministers of the 
 churches was sought and followed as the practice, and Mass- 
 achusetts was theocratic and aristocratic, for both John Cot- 
 ton and Governor Winthrop contended for this; but the first 
 written constitution in human history was that of Connect- 
 icut, adopted in 1639, and it was framed clearly on these 
 lines marked out by Mr. Hooker. There was an adjourned 
 session of the General Court in April, 1638. To this Court, 
 says Dr. Trumbull, was intrusted the formation of that Con- 
 stitution which was formally adopted in January, 1639. On 
 Thursday, May 31, 1638, Mr. Hooker preached a sermon 
 before the General Court, and he held: — 
 
 "Doctrine. I. That the choice of public magistrates belongs unto 
 the people by God's own allowance. 
 
 "II. The privilege of election, which belongs to the people, there- 
 fore must not be exercised according to their humors, but according to 
 the blessed will and law of God. 
 
 "III. They who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates, 
 it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power 
 and place unto which they call them. 
 
 "Reasons, i. Because the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in 
 the free consent of the people. 
 
 "2. Because, by a free choice, the hearts of the people will be 
 more inclined to the love of the persons [chosen] and more ready to yield 
 [obedience]. 
 
 "3. Because of that duty and engagement of the people."^ 
 
 Dr. Leonard Bacon said: — 
 
 " That sermon by Thomas Hooker, from the pulpit of the first church 
 in Hartford, is the earliest known suggestion of a fundamental law, en- 
 acted not by royal charter, nor by concession from any previously exist- 
 ing government, but by the people themselves, — a primary and supreme 
 
 1 Walker's Life of Hooker, p. 125. 
 
law by which the government is constituted, and which not only provides 
 for the free choice of magistrates by the people, but also sets the bounds 
 and hmitations of the power and place to which each magistrate is called." ^ 
 
 Professor Alexander Johnston says: — 
 
 "Here is the tirst practical assertion of the right of the people, not 
 only to choose but to limit the powers of their rulers, — an assertion which 
 lies at the foundation of the American system."'^ 
 
 John Fiske says: — 
 
 "The Connecticut Constitution was the iirst written Constitution 
 known to history that created a government, and it marked the begin- 
 nings of American democracy, of which Thomas Hooker deserves more 
 than any other man to be called the father. The government of the 
 United States to-day is in lineal descent more nearly related to that of 
 Connecticut than to that of any other of the thirteen colonies." ^ 
 
 In May, 1639, Mr. Hooker and Mr. Haynes went to 
 Massachusetts to renew negotiations about the Confedera- 
 tion which had been unsuccessfully begun two )'ears before. 
 Mr. Hooker preached a sermon of more than two hours in 
 length before the Governor, and we know that the result of 
 this visit was an agreement of the Commissioners of the 
 various Colonies in twelve articles, which constituted in. ef- 
 fect, for certain matters of common interest, a federal gov- 
 ernment under the title of the " United Colonies of New 
 England."* This Federal Constitution prepared the way 
 for that of 1787. 
 
 We now turn to another step in the development of our 
 national political life, and again we find the moving spirit 
 was a Congregational clergyman. We refer to the famous 
 
 1 Centennial Conf. Address, pp. 152, 153. 2 Conn., p. 72. 
 
 s Beginnings of New England, pp. 127, 128. * Winthrop, ii. 121, 127. 
 
"Body of Liberties," which Massachusetts Bay adopted in 
 1641, and which was mainly the work of the Rev. Nathaniel 
 Ward, of Ipswich, who graduated at Emmanuel College in 
 1603, one year before Thomas Hooker entered. This "Body 
 of Liberties" formed the basis of the law and civil government 
 of the Massachusetts Colony. 
 
 " In one hundred sections it lays down the substantial principles se- 
 curing life, liberty, property, etc., and the methods of civil administration 
 adapted to the time. It was fully studied and amended in the towns, and 
 was adopted in the most deliberate way." ^ 
 
 Nathaniel Ward had studied law in England, and he was 
 of course most intimate with Thomas Hooker; for, not only 
 as graduates of the same college, but in their weekly minis- 
 ters' meetings, they must have met often and compared views. 
 This is significant, for both Nathan Dane and Rev. Manasseh 
 Cutler, who wrote the Ordinance of 1787, came from the same 
 town as Ward, — Ipswich.^ The laws and customs of New 
 England were enforced by the magistrates in the spirit of a 
 "sacred trust," for they were not accustomed to use office for 
 personal ends. 
 
 We now pass to the most important of all legislative en- 
 actments that Congress ever passed with regard to the pub- 
 lic domain, — the Ordinance of 1787. 
 
 Mr. Shosuke Sato,^ after reviewing carefully the claims 
 
 1 Weeden, Vol. i. p. 'j']. 
 
 2 So far as we know, the significant fact has not heretofore been no- 
 ticed that, whoever wrote the Ordinance of 1787, whether Nathan Dane, 
 as stated by Daniel Webster, or Dr. Manasseh Cutler, as stated by Dr. 
 Poole, it emanated from Ipswich, Mass., the home of Nathaniel Ward, 
 the author of the Body of Liberties. 
 
 3 Land Question in the United States. 
 
13 
 
 of different men to the authorship of the Ordinance, says: — 
 " Mr. Poole's article remains the masterpiece on the subject of the 
 Ordinance of 1787." 
 
 This article of Dr. Poole ^ says: — 
 
 "On the 13th of July, 1787, the Congress of the old Confederation, 
 sitting in New York, passed an 'Ordinance for the Government of the 
 Territory Northwest of the River Ohio,' which has passed into history as 
 the 'Ordinance of 1787.' 
 
 "The territory embraced what is now the States of Ohio, Indiana, 
 Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Its provisions have since been applied 
 to all the Territories of the United States lying north of latitude 36° 40', 
 which now comprises the States of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Ore- 
 gon. August 7, 1789, the Constitution of the United States, having then 
 been adopted. Congress among its earliest acts passed one recognizing 
 the binding force of the Ordinance of 1787, and adapting its provisions to 
 the Federal Constitution. 
 
 "The Ordinance, in the breadth of its conceptions, its details, and its 
 results, has been perhaps the most notable instance of legislation that was 
 ever enacted by the representatives of the American people. It fixed 
 forever the character of the immigration, and of the social, political, and 
 educational institutions of the people who were to inhabit this imperial 
 territory, — then a wilderness, but now covered by five great States, and 
 teeming with more than ten million persons, or one-fourth of the entire 
 population of the United States. It forever prohibited slavery and invol- 
 untary servitude, — that pestilent element of discord and tyranny in our 
 American system, which then existed in all the States except Massachu- 
 setts, where it had come to an end by a decision of its Supreme Court 
 only four years before. It declared that 'religion, morality, and knowl- 
 edge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, 
 schools and the means of education shall always be encouraged.' It pro- 
 hibited the feudal law of primogeniture, and provided that the property 
 of a parent dying intestate should be divided equally among his children 
 or next of kin; that no person demeaning himself in a peaceable and or- 
 derly manner shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship 
 or religious sentiments; that the inhabitants shall always be entitled to 
 
 1 North American Review, April, 1876. 
 
the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, of trial by jury, of a propor- 
 tional representation in the legislature, and of judicial proceedings ac- 
 cording to the course of the common law; that all persons shall be bail- 
 able unless for capital offences, when the proof shall be evident, or the 
 presumption great; that all fines shall be moderate, and no cruel and un- 
 usual punishment shall be inflicted; that no man shall be deprived of his 
 liberty or property but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the 
 land; and should the public exigencies make it necessary to take any 
 man's property, or to demand his particular services, full compensation 
 shall be made for the same; and in the just preservation of his rights and 
 property, it is understood and declared that no law ought ever to be made 
 or have force in sajd territory that shall in any manner whatever interfere 
 with or affect private contracts or engagements bona fide and without 
 fraud previously made. 
 
 "This was the first embodiment in written constitutional law of a pro- 
 vision maintaining the obligation of contracts. Six weeks later it was, on 
 motion of Mr. King, of Massachusetts, incorporated in the draft of the 
 Constitution of the United States." 
 
 " . . . . Every square mile of territory that was covered by the Or- 
 dinance of 1787 was patriotic, and gave its men and its means for the sup- 
 port of the Union." 
 
 " Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of Ipswich, Mass., arrived July 5th. 
 
 " In April, 1788, the Ohio Company made the first English settlement 
 of the Northwest Territory at Marietta, Ohio, at the mouth of the Mus- 
 kingum, on the land which Dr. Cutler had bought on this occasion. Gen- 
 eral Washington,^ writing from Mount Vernon, two months later, said: 
 ' No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as 
 that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. Information, prop- 
 erty, and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers 
 personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the 
 welfare of such a community. If I were a young man, just preparing to 
 begin the world, or, if advanced in life and had a family to make pro- 
 vision for, I know of no country where I should rather fix my habitation 
 than in some part of that region.' 
 
 "Massachusetts had in 1780 abolished slavery, established public 
 schools for general education, and framed the most advanced code of laws 
 
 ^ Sparks' edition of Washington's Writings, Vol. ix. p. 385. 
 
15 
 
 concerning the liberties and natural rights of man, civil jurisprudence, 
 and public polity, which the world had then seen. 
 
 "The Ordinance of 1787 is a condensed abstract of the Massachusetts 
 Constitution of 1780. Every principle contained in the former, either in 
 a germinal or developed form, except that relating to the obligation of 
 contracts, and some temporary provisions relating to the organization of 
 the territorial government, is found in the latter, and often in the same 
 phraseology." 
 
 In 1830 Daniel Webster, in his answer to Hayne, as- 
 cribed the authorship to Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts. 
 Mr. Benton, of Missouri, said it was not the work of Nathan 
 Dane, but of Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia. Hon. Edward 
 Coles, Governor of Illinois (1822-26), in January, 1856, 
 claimed the honor for Jefferson. Dr. Poole clearly proved 
 that it could not have been the work of Jefferson. 
 
 Of the Ordinance, Daniel Webster said: — 
 
 "We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of antiquity; we help to 
 perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one 
 single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of 
 more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787, 
 We see its consequences at this moment, and we shall never cease to see 
 them perhaps while the Ohio shall flow." ^ 
 
 Judge Stor}^ said: — 
 
 " The Ordinance is remarkable for the brevity and exactness of its 
 text and for its masterly display of the fundamental principles of civil 
 arid religious liberty." ^ 
 
 Judge Timothy Walker said: — 
 
 "Upon the surpassing excellence of the Ordinance no language of 
 panegyric would be extravagant. The Romans would have imagined 
 some divine Egeria for its author. It approaches as nearly to absolute 
 perfection as anything to be found in the legislation of mankind; for 
 
 1 Daniel Webster, Work, iii, 263. 
 
 2 Story's Commentaries, iii. 187. 
 
i6 
 
 after the experience of fifty years it would perhaps be impossible to alter 
 a word without marring it. In short, it is one of those matchless speci- 
 mens of sagacious forecast which even the reckless spirit of innovation 
 would not venture to assail." ^ 
 
 Dr. Poole clearly showed that this Ordinance was the 
 work of the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, of Ipswich. He admits 
 that it was in the handwriting of Dane, whom Webster cred- 
 ited with being its author, but both Dane and Cutler came 
 from Ipswich, — Dane being the member from the Essex dis- 
 trict. Ipswich was the home of Nathaniel Ward, the author 
 of the "Body of Liberties," and he was the great friend of 
 Thomas Hooker. It must be that Congregationalism in 
 Ipswich was thoroughly imbued with sound piety and polit- 
 ical sagacity, and we imagine we know its origin. It was 
 Rev. Nathaniel Ward, who was trained to the law and prac- 
 tised it in England. 
 
 Let us examine one more political document, famous as 
 a title-deed to liberty, — the Emancipation Proclamation. 
 
 In the early part of the century a Congregational home 
 missionary settled upon this Western Reserv^e, at Tallmadge, 
 Ohio, and afterward moved to Detroit, Mich., when a son 
 was born to him. This boy became one of the heroic, dis- 
 tinguished, and useful men in the denomination. His name 
 was Leonard Bacon. He wrote a tract on Slavery which 
 fell into the hands of another Western boy, — Abraham 
 Lincoln. When the Emancipation Proclamation became 
 famous, and was recognized as worthy to be ranked with the 
 Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence, as one 
 1 Quoted by Poole, No. Am. Rev., April, 1876. 
 
17 
 
 of the world's three title-deeds to liberty, Lincoln was 
 asked as to the source of his inspiration, and he gave full 
 credit to that tract of Dr. Bacon's for its influence upon him 
 in his earlier years. ^ 
 
 It makes little difference, therefore, at what point we 
 analyze the waters of that stream called "American History." 
 The simple elements are ever the same. The Congrega- 
 tional idea is clearly revealed. At whatever point of vision 
 we view the past four centuries, the same rugged truths stand 
 out in bold relief against the sky. They are the basal ideas 
 of Congregationalism on their religious side, and American 
 democracy on their civil side. They are religion, morality, 
 knowledge; liberty, equality, democracy. Individualism and 
 true socialism; egoism and Christian altruism; liberty by 
 bondage to truth. We find these truths in the Connecticut 
 Constitution of 1639, in the Body of Liberties of 1641, the 
 Federal Compact of 1643, the Declaration of Independence, 
 the Ordinance of 1787, the Constitution of 1789, and the 
 Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The Thirteenth 
 Amendment, prohibiting slavery, is identical with the sixth 
 clause in the Ordinance of 1787. All of these documents 
 are the result largely of the influence and teaching of Con- 
 gregational clergymen at periods in the nation's history most 
 pivotal and critical. As a spiritual force and polity the 
 Congregational idea has been a powerful magnet, giving 
 direction to all the religious, civil, and political forces in 
 America. Thus the founders of this nation were men of 
 
 1 Lincoln's Declaration to Dr. Jos. P. Thompson, Century Magazine, 
 Vol. XXV. p.658. 
 
faith and wisdom. They went upon the mountain, and 
 Christ was transfigured before them. They worshipped him. 
 When they came down they built three tabernacles, — one to 
 religion, one to morality, and one to knowledge. 
 
 It has been said they were narrow. So is electricity, but 
 it is concentrated. Sometimes it is narrow; sometimes it is 
 broad. Strange such narrow men should have been such 
 powerful metaphysicians and theologians as Edwards, Taylor, 
 Emmons, Hopkins, Stuart, Finney; and should be succeeded 
 by such men of breadth as Mark Hopkins, Noah Porter, 
 Hickok, and President Fairchild. True, they were Calvinists, 
 and split hairs into sixteenths over such subjects as the 
 freedom of the will, the state of the mind a minute before 
 conversion; the doctrine of election, of foreordination. But 
 they had a sense of the immanence and sovereignty of God, 
 and of man's accountability to him, that would put the amia- 
 ble doctrines of this age to shame. Where are the men to- 
 day preaching the doctrine of sin and the persistence of 
 force in character.? Where is the heroic truth that has moral 
 fibre and tissue; that has will for the basis of character in- 
 stead of sentimentalism or emotion.? And yet these fathers, 
 while so severe with themselves, were tender and beautiful 
 in their lives, gentle in manner, and lovely in character. This 
 age needs to learn that love is made of sterner stuff than 
 sentiment; that it seeks the good of all, and is not culti- 
 vated for subjective purposes. It can shoot Indians, throw 
 tea overboard, and make quick work with disturbers of the 
 public peace. They had virtue, moral dignity, moral char- 
 acter, because they had freedom which, as they had learned 
 
^9 
 
 from Christ, came from bondage to truth or law. The)- de- 
 fined all of life in terms of faith and dut}-, and not in terms 
 of expediency or sentiment. 
 
 Strange, is it not, that where Scotch piety prevails in its 
 sternest type, Scotch bankers are the most reliable; where 
 parents are most honored, that nation has outlived all others; 
 and where stern sense of duty prevailed, the most beneficent 
 economic conditions flourished. 
 
 The founders of America went to the heart of things, and 
 psychology, no less than moral philosophy, as it is taught in 
 our universities to-day, is the gift of Congregational clergy- 
 men to this age. But some say they had no religious tolera- 
 tion except in theory. This is the charge of the youngest 
 scion of the Adams family against his own ancestors and the 
 founders of the Massachusetts Colony. Neither had our fa- 
 thers Winchester rifles to shoot Indians with; nor could Paul 
 Revere telephone the news of the arrival of the British; nor 
 did they come over the ocean on the White Star Line, or 
 bring stem-winding watches with them. These, all, were the 
 fruit of a later age. So was religious toleration. One age must 
 not judge another by its own standards. Brooks Adams has 
 judged by the standards of to-day the men who founded Har- 
 vard College, and, as Dr. Poole well says in his review of the 
 book,^ it bears evidences throughout of the work of a callow 
 dude. 
 
 But the Puritans sang psalm tunes through their noses; 
 they wore wigs and enjoyed long sermons; they went to bed 
 early to save candles. Do we not wish that our slums could 
 1 Emancipation of Man. 
 
be induced to do the same? They suffered slavery to exist. 
 Emmons, Edwards, Hopkins, were hostile to involuntary ser- 
 vitude, and all preached against it. Emmons did so when it 
 was sanctioned by his own State. Kidd says: — 
 
 "The two doctrines which contributed most to producing the extinc- 
 tion of slavery were the doctrine of salvation and the doctrine of the 
 equality of all men before the Deity." ^ 
 
 These two doctrines are the key-notes of Congregationalism. 
 Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1780 in her Constitution. 
 Pennsylvania and Connecticut made a partial abolition in 
 1 784. De Tocqueville prophesied that slavery could not long 
 exist in America in contact with American thought, and it did 
 not. Judge Samuel Sewall, in 1700, printed a tract against 
 slavery. He said: — 
 
 " These Ethiopians, as black as they are, seeing that they are the 
 sons and daughters of the first Adam, the brethren and sisters of the last 
 Adam, and the offspring of God, they ought to be treated with a respect 
 agreeable." 
 
 The family which did the most in America towards cre- 
 ating public opinion against slavery was the Beecher family, 
 — Congregationalists. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," one of the 
 greatest novels of history, was on every tongue, and Plymouth 
 pulpit was protected by the police. Phillips Brooks was asked 
 to name the three greatest Americans, and he said: Daniel 
 Webster, Henry Ward Beecher, and Abraham Lincoln. They 
 were all great and famous, because they were wedded to 
 those Congregational ideas, liberty and equality. Dean Stan- 
 ley and Canon Farrar both admitted that the church polity 
 which the apostles acted upon was the Congregational. 
 1 Social Evolution, p, 168. 
 
The founders of American institutions believed in that 
 orderly development of national life, evolution and not revo- 
 lution, except as the latter was necessary to right wrongs 
 which could be righted in no other way. First the blade, then 
 the ear, then the full corn in the ear. First the individual, 
 then the family, then the church, then the state, and finall)' a 
 nation. The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people thus 
 unfolded. It was nurtured in the township, it then took 
 possession of the state, and finally of the nation. They never 
 dreamed of a democratic Republic as being free, desirable, or 
 safe except as it was founded on religion, morality, and edu- 
 cation; and except as the right of franchise was in the hands 
 of integral units who were themselves lovers of God and man. 
 Person and property were to them safe so far as they were 
 held to be sacred. 
 
 And when it came to the individual, they had scientific 
 notions of his orderly development. They believed that re- 
 ligion strengthened the will, clarified the intellect, and soft- 
 ened the sensibilities. It was not simply the " sweetness and 
 light" of an aesthetic dreamer nor an emotion; but it was 
 ^vill renewed, strengthened, and healed from the impotency 
 caused by sin; it was conscience awakened, educated, and 
 ever operative, giving the only true conception of good-will; 
 it was thought, broad in 'its sweep and comprehensive in its 
 grasp, but none the less synthetic and analytic. It gave gen- 
 eralizations from an absolute knowledge of detail. 
 
 As Dr. Poole said: — 
 "From that prolific stock has sprung a race of men and women, who, 
 
22 
 
 by character, energy, and ideas, have largely controlled the tier of 
 Northern States from the Atlantic to the Pacific." ^ 
 
 Since these men landed on American shores, great ad- 
 vancement has been made in notions of relicrious toleration, 
 of democracy, and of political liberty; but a loftier faith and 
 heroism; a greater fortitude and self-denial; a keener insight 
 into principles giving wisdom and political sagacity will never 
 be found in the American people than that which character- 
 ized the Founders of this Republic. 
 
 But the times have changed. That tree planted by the 
 rivers of water, that brought forth its fruit in due season, 
 whose leaf did not wither, and whatsoever it did prospered, 
 is now bearing sour fruit. Those branches may be, for the 
 most part, the engrafted ones, but they are none the less a 
 part of the tree. It may not have been wise to engraft so 
 many, but it has been done, and it is our duty faithfully and 
 with confidence in God, to treat them as a part of the tree, 
 for whose fruit, be it good or bad, we are responsible. Let 
 us examine the tree and its fruits. 
 
 And the first thing we notice is the swarms of parasites 
 that are living upon it and eating into its very life. The 
 ideas which were once considered an inspiration are being 
 superseded, though we believe only temporarily. They are 
 like the pulpit behind which once officiated an eminent New 
 England divine, whom Judges and Governors delighted to 
 honor, but which is now stored away under the hay in the 
 loft of an old barn. And when it is the fashion to copy the 
 old New England homestead, — its colonial architecture, so 
 1 Dial, Jan. 1891. 
 
23 
 
 severe and simple; its low ceilings, small windows; its open 
 fireplace, with the crane, the spit, the kettles, the bellows, 
 and even the andirons and tongs, — who knows but it may 
 yet be the fashion, and our clergymen will yet esteem it an 
 honor, to preach behind those old pulpits, and again exalt 
 the sovereignty of God and the exceeding sinfulness of sin 
 with its sure reward. Who knows but the great mass of 
 common people may yet learn, by bitter experience in the 
 wilderness, that the way to the promised land is the same 
 yesterday, to-day, and forever; not by materialism and ra- 
 tionalism, which give expediency in the place of faith for a 
 rule of conduct, but by following religion, morality, and 
 knowledge as leaders, instead of politics and economics. 
 
 But that tree under whose branches the fowls of the air 
 have found lodgment and shelter; which poet and scholar in 
 every age have praised, from Coleridge to our own Whittier 
 and Holmes; from DeTocqueville to Bryce and Von Hoist, is 
 now passing through a new experience. Cut it down, shrieks 
 the anarchist; Replant it, cries the socialist; Shower it with 
 acid, says the economist; Let me manage it, says the dema- 
 gogue. But the true husbandman has it under his own care. 
 He planted it, he digged about for it, he trimmed it, cared 
 for it when it was a sapling, and now he is simply pruning 
 it that it may bring forth m.ore fruit. 
 
 We cannot agree with President Eliot, that the Mor- 
 mons resemble, in any particular, the founders of this re- 
 public; nor are we attracted by the intimation of doubt in 
 his latest inquiry as to whether this country can endure.^ 
 1 Forum, Oct. 1894. 
 
24 
 
 T. P. O'Connor, member of Parliament, has even gone so far 
 as to revile our Constitution. He said: — 
 
 "The Constitution of the United States is, in my judgment, one of 
 the most unjustly eulogized instruments of political history. ... It is a 
 machine, which to a large extent means not the regulation, but the paral- 
 ysis of government." ^ 
 
 Von Hoist pertinently asks if the United States Senate 
 ought to be abolished.^ 
 
 That scavenger, the sparrow, imported in an evil hour, 
 is making war on our native birds of plumage and of song 
 that have delighted the eye with their beauty, and have 
 filled our trees with their melody. As Senator Edmunds 
 said before the Squantum Club, "We are suffering from an 
 overdose of Europe." Howells called upon Hawthorne forty 
 years ago, and Hawthorne said he 'would like to see some part 
 of the country on which the shadow of Europe had not 
 fallen.'^ In 1840 William Ellery Channing wrote: — 
 
 "Sooner than that our laboring classes should become a European 
 populace, a good man would almost wish that perpetual hurricanes driv- 
 ing every ship from the ocean, should sever wholly the two hemispheres 
 from each other. . . . Anything, everything, should be done to save us 
 from the social evils which deform the old world."* 
 
 Washington urged the American people to remain so 
 far as possible isolated from Europe. President Woolsey 
 showed that the question of "Equilibrium," which occasions 
 so much solicitude and diplomacy in foreign nations, could 
 never disturb us, owing to our isolation. But the equilib- 
 
 1 Chicago Tribune, Sept. 14, 1894. 
 
 2 Monist, October, 1894. 
 
 3 Harper's Magazine, August, 1894, p. 444. 
 * Channing's Works, p. 65. 
 
25 
 
 rium of forces within our nation is a far more serious ques- 
 tion and an inviting field for thought. And this question 
 arises because of the rapid development of our manufactur- 
 ing industries paying much larger wages than in Europe, 
 and our untilled lands offering hope of reward. The conse- 
 quent result is an enormous influx of foreigners, and espe- 
 cially of the dependent, deficient, and delinquent classes. 
 
 We cannot here give all the statistics of immigration. 
 They are alarming. Dr. Strong estimates the foreign popu- 
 lation from the Tenth Census to be 15,000,000, and in 1900 
 estimates it will be 43, 000,000, -^ He says: — 
 
 "During the past four years we have suffered a peaceful invasion by 
 an army more than twice as vast as the estimated number of Goths and 
 Vandals that swept over Southern Europe and overwhelmed Rome."- 
 
 And what does life in the slums show.^ The Hon. Car- 
 roll D. Wright, in his seventh special report to the President, 
 reports that liquor saloons and illiteracy flourish in the slums 
 and among foreign born nearly as two to one, compared with 
 native born. The foreign-born voters are as follows: Balti- 
 more, 20.13 per cent; Chicago, 50.62 per cent; New York, 
 49.93 per cent; Philadelphia, 29.94 per cent. Vice, disease, 
 and crime follow these statistics intimately. Venality in 
 voting is increasing rapidly, for politics is not slow to trade 
 on the miseries of the poor. Demagogism is rampant, and 
 the thought which once held men seems no longer able to 
 control them. As Kidd says, "The fact of our time which 
 overshadows all others is the arrival of Democracy." 
 
 We agree with him, but it is not that Demos whom our 
 
 1 Our Country, p. 40. - Ibid., p. 30. 
 
26 
 
 fathers knew who has been honored and respected in this 
 country as a familiar figure for two and a half centuries. It 
 is a foreign Demos who frequents the saloon; sells his vote, 
 which the American people have so generously bestowed 
 upon him; who shouts for Coxe}' and Debs. It is not the 
 Demos who was a friend to Thomas Hooker in 1639. It is 
 a foreign Demos who has had good cause to find fault abroad 
 with the laws of primogeniture, entailment, landed aristocracy 
 and titled nobility. Such an environment as European na- 
 tions furnish, makes Demos a divine missionary there, but he 
 cannot frame the same indictment against American institu- 
 tions that he would against monarchies and have it hold. 
 
 The great friend and ally of Demos is Politics. Some 
 evil spirit has led Politics upon an high mountain, and showed 
 him all the kingdoms of the world, and said unto him, "All 
 these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and wor- 
 ship me." Of course Politics says: "Is thy servant a dog 
 that he should do this thing.^" And, as Dr. Bacon said, 
 "the dog did 'it." We know there is one flaw in that prom- 
 ise of that evil spirit to Politics: he cannot deliver the goods. 
 But politics has no faith, — it is selfish, materialistic, ration- 
 alistic, full of expedients and of demagogism. 
 
 The influence of politics upon thought is most marked. 
 Economics has already begun to bow the knee and worship 
 at the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and 
 dulcimer; but there are three, like Shadrach, Meshach, and 
 Abednego, who will never bow the knee to the golden image. 
 They are Religion, Morality, and Knowledge. They are pass- 
 
27 
 
 ing through the fiery furnace cf experience, and for centuries 
 have been tried. 
 
 There is a deal of misapprehension in this day on the 
 wage question. There are man}^ industries in which the toil- 
 ers are underpaid; and many, in which the women and chil- 
 dren compete, that are positively wicked and shameful. But 
 these are forgotten in the scramble of well-paid men for more, 
 and are used largel}^ as texts merely to show up the miseries 
 of the poor and oftener as pretexts, or a justification of vio- 
 lence. The great body of intelligent workmen employed in 
 the manufacturing industries in the United States are well 
 paid, considering the qualifications required; for it is ever true 
 that the more mind that is mixed with muscle, the greater 
 the reward. That is all that distinguishes "skilled" work- 
 men. Few millionaires, comparatively, have made their for- 
 tunes in manufacturing, and the few that have so acquired it 
 were, for the most part, protected by patents, which is a tes- 
 timony to brain, and not to brawn. 
 
 The American people are sympathetic, they love fair 
 play; hence, the}' are easily misled by demagogues of the press 
 and platform upon the subject of the relation of capital to 
 labor. The truth is that both capital and labor are drugs in 
 the market to-da}-, and what is needed, is men of executive 
 ability and brains to bring them together to their mutual ad- 
 vantage. Brains are never a drug in the market. It costs 
 more to sell a piano than to make it. The laborers imagine 
 that when an article is created it is sold. They seem to think 
 it sells itself. They find no use for executive ability, and very 
 little for capital. The everlasting proposition of economics, 
 
overlooked by many, is this: Every vianiifactured article is 
 the prodiict of brains, capital, and braivn. The laborers say: 
 "We move the world because you cannot do without us"; 
 but capital and executive force have an equal right to make 
 the same claim. It is a tripartite agreement, and no one of 
 the three partners can claim the entire honor or credit for the 
 result. Interest for capital, salaries for the brain-worker, and 
 wages for the manual toiler. Capital is the heart; brains the 
 head; and labor the hands. One cannot do without the others; 
 but, taken together, they produce results. Capital and ability 
 are under the same obligations to share with labor their part 
 of the product that a woman is to divide her wardrobe with 
 the cook; or, a clergyman on a good salary to share his earn- 
 ings with the sexton; or, the lawyer to pay the office student 
 for the first year's work in his office. It is a matter of Chris- 
 tian duty, and not of legalit}'; it is a question of Christian 
 stewardship, and not of law. When labor organizations, there- 
 fore, demand, as a legal or moral right, what is theirs only by 
 the higher laws of the spiritual kingdom, and then only as the 
 free gift of the steward, they are making their necessities the 
 ground for legal action. This is precisely what the anarchist 
 does. Just here is where so many clergymen find themselves 
 on the same platform with violators of law. Poverty, from 
 whatever cause, becomes not simply a misfortune, and de- 
 serving of help, but the ground for an indictment against so- 
 ciety; and, therefore, a legal demand. 
 
 This distinction is important, and must be kept clearly in 
 
 mind; for the demands of labor to-day are not based upon 
 
 'grounds of brotherhood, good-will, and Christian steward- 
 
29 
 
 ship, for that is benevolence, but upon grounds of legal jus- 
 tice and natural rights. Hence Commons' new book^ says 
 that a right to employment is a natural right of man, — a 
 most dangerous and absurd proposition to teach the }^oung, 
 but it is being taught in our schools. The Chicago Jo7ii-nal 
 of Political Economy says the book is a disguised attempt at 
 socialism. 
 
 The attack which is made on our industries by labor or- 
 ganizations in the form of demands for wages that are out of 
 all proportion to those paid in other countries, is doing more 
 to crush them than foreign competition or free trade. The 
 protection which American industries need to-day is a deeper 
 feeling of loyalty to invested capital, which must have its 
 just reward or it will seek new fields for activity; and to ex- 
 ecutive abilit}', which is always the wise captain that leads to 
 victory. These deserve protection no less than the manual 
 toiler. The London Times, in commenting on the Debs strike, 
 said editorially: — 
 
 "The questions of currency, depreciation, silver, etc., sink into insig- 
 nificance compared with the immense reduction in the returns on capital 
 due to a continual rise in wages." 
 
 The Wall Street Daily News gives a list of three hun- 
 dred million dollars of income bonds, not made of water, which 
 have, — Avith the exception of eleven million dollars, — never 
 paid a cent of income, and the eleven millions very little. 
 Where can money be invested in manufacturing industries that 
 are safe 1 The condition of our railroads — their earnings, and 
 the number in the hands of receivers, — will reveal the undis- 
 1 Distribution of Wealth. 
 
puted fact that the wage-earners on raih-oads are receiving 
 their full share of the product or receipts. 
 
 The Massachusetts "Report on Statistics of Labor" of 
 1890 will prove interesting reading. On "Net Profits" it 
 says: — 
 
 " The year selected was a normal one. Returns from 137 cotton goods 
 establishments show that allowing five per cent for capital and ten per 
 cent for depreciation and selling expenses there was no net profit but 
 actual loss. Allowing two per cent for depreciation and one per cent 
 for selling expenses the profit left was 2.23 per cent to reward capital for 
 its part of the product." 
 
 The truth is, that monopolies and trusts began largely 
 as economic necessities owing to the increased demands of 
 labor. Trusts have thus increased and grown until now they 
 menace the state. Capital is moved by the law of self-pres- 
 ervation, no less than other forms of life. Combinations of 
 capital have arisen for the purpose of diminishing the cost 
 of production, because organized labor has taken the lion's 
 share of the product in many industries, not protected by 
 patents or by a high tariff. The professors in our colleges 
 arid universities have far greater justification for organizing, 
 and going on strikes, than the workmen in nineteen cases 
 out of twenty; for our professors have a large capital invest- 
 ment in the form of an education. Imagine the professors 
 of a college, as the chapel bell strikes for recitation, going 
 out in a body, picketing the campus to keep out competition, 
 and watching the railroad trains to inquire of every stranger 
 who has unusual space above the eyes, if he is coming to 
 supplant the poor, over-worked, down-trodden, and despised 
 professors. 
 
31 
 
 Seventy-one per cent of the nation's wealth is in the 
 hands of nine per cent of the population, it is said. If so, 
 it were a grievous fault, and grievously hath Caesar answered 
 it. The truer proportion, considering foreign born, depend- 
 ents, delinquents, and deficients, is that fifty per cent of our 
 wealth is in the hands of twenty per cent of the people. 
 
 Let us not be interpreted as saying a word against 
 ameliorating the condition of the poor. This is a duty 
 pressing upon the American people, not because, in the 
 main, the lower classes have been exploited or robbed or de- 
 prived of any rights, — though the exceptions to this general 
 rule are many and distressing, and deserving of legal redress 
 in the form of s^tatutory regulation; but because the great 
 laws of brotherhood and good-will enforced by the spirit and 
 precepts of Christianity make humanity one. This takes on 
 the form of friendship and fellowship no less than of charity; 
 and of justice in the way of legal enactments regulating 
 hours of labor, child labor, sweat shops, and any forms of 
 injustice where man's greed overlooks the laws of humanity. 
 Justice, also, can punish for violations of respect for person 
 and property, whether on the part of the poor or the wealthy. 
 
 We are not arguing against the rights of the poor, nor 
 restricting the full force of the laws of Christian brother- 
 hood as taught and exemplified by Christ. We simply ob- 
 ject to well paid organized labor, like the Indian, dodging 
 behind innocent women and children, whenever it is likely to 
 be punished for its misdeeds. 
 
 Politics is demanding not only that economics shall bow 
 the knee and worship, but it is dictating terms to our courts 
 
32 
 
 and to the powers that enforce the laws. It cracks the whip 
 over the heads of our Executive and of our Judiciary. It 
 demands a new ruling on what constitutes contempt of court; 
 it seeks favorable decisions on the rights of conspiracy, and 
 strikes accompanied by violence; and it would, if it could, 
 compel arbitration against constitutional rights whenever 
 demagogues and wage-earners put their heads together and 
 need more funds for campaign purposes. It protects gam- 
 bling, prostitution. Sabbath breaking, and the saloon. Eco- 
 nomics has awakened to find itself famous. It feels flat- 
 tered by the attention it is receiving. It is beginning to bow 
 the knee. We refer not entirely to the economics of the 
 schools; but that of the common people believed in and 
 acted upon by the allies of politics. May not standard 
 thinkers be replaced by the popular writers in course of 
 time .-* 
 
 Kidd says: — 
 
 "Socialism seems to many minds to have been born again, and to 
 be entering on the positive and practical stage." ^ 
 
 But the theories of the newer school, simply enlarging 
 the limits of economics to include all the wants of man, 
 must not be confounded with the popular economics which 
 we may call "demagogical economics or the economics of 
 the street and of the slums." The latter Avould have the 
 equal distribution of the product artificial, and not natural; 
 material, and not spiritual. It would have the common peo- 
 ple believe they can be made happy by Act of Congress; by 
 environment and externals; and no longer by homely hon- 
 1 Social Evolution, p. 8. 
 
33 
 
 esty, vulgar industry, and plebeian thrift; not by reformation 
 from within. Wealth comes by inspiration, not by perspira- 
 tion, they think. Politics, therefore, in company with a vag- 
 abond economics, clothed in the garb of saviours, are in the 
 van; while religion, morality, and knowledge, the fruitage of 
 faith that once controlled men, have gone to the rear. 
 
 But a new school of Christian economics has arisen, 
 endeavoring to meet the demand of the times and the wants 
 of men. 
 
 "It is no longer the school of Hobbes, and Locke, of Hume, Adam 
 Smith, Bentham, Ricardo, and Mill." ^ 
 
 The influence of Ruskin and Carlyle, who never imag- 
 ined themselves economists, and whose principal efforts were 
 stray snarls or isolated indictments of the English environ- 
 ment, have found a fruitage calling for new writers like 
 Jevons and Cliffe Leslie. 
 
 Professor Alfred Marshall has widened out the science 
 into an attempt to explain all our social phenomena, so that 
 Mr. Leslie Stephens' scientific principle comes nearer a stand- 
 ard by which to judge: — 
 
 " A genuine scientific theory implies a true estimate of the great forces 
 which mould institutions and, therefore, a true appreciation of the limits 
 within which they might be modified by any proposed change." 
 
 To meet these enlarged views of economics a comparatively 
 new science has arisen which we call Sociology. If we ex- 
 pand economics to include a study of all the related phenom- 
 ena of the science of life in its social aspects we shall have 
 sociology. And this Professor Simon N. Patten is endeavor- 
 1 See Kidd, p. 23. 
 
34 
 
 ing to accomplish. Man as a bread-winner is giving away to 
 man in his efforts to satisfy all his wants. In other words 
 economics is usurping the place of religion and ethics. 
 
 The remarkable fact of to-day is the prominence given to 
 social themes, therefore, and this is the result largely of the 
 arrival of Demos. Economics and politics are leading the 
 people. Karl Marx has been the Bible of the lower classes 
 in England, and he was a materialist.^ 
 
 " The development which Marx contemplated is, it may be observed, 
 thoroughly materialistic; it takes no account of those prime evolutionary 
 forces which lie behind the whole process of our social development. 
 The phenomenon which has been called the exploitation of labor is in no 
 way new or special to our time." ^ " Social forces, new, strange, and alto- 
 gether immeasurable have been released among us." "The one abso- 
 lutely new and special feature which distinguishes the relations of the 
 workers to the state and to the capitalist class as compared with all past 
 periods is that the exploited classes, as the result of an evolution long in 
 progress . . . have been admitted to the exercise of political power on a 
 footing which tends more and more to be one of actual equality with those 
 who have hitherto held them in subjection." 
 
 Kidd's generalization will hold in the American environ- 
 ment only as to the novelty of the spectacle. And Ruskin's 
 definition of religion applies abroad, and not here: — 
 
 "Our national religion is the performance of Church ceremonies and 
 preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work 
 while we amuse ourselves." 
 
 It is thus seen that Kidd's English Demos is not only differ- 
 ent from our American Demos, as he has been known here for 
 nearly three centuries, but he resembles very strongly our 
 
 1 See Introd. to Das Kapital, Kidd, p. 217. ^ /^/^^ p 318. 
 
35 
 
 American politics. He is materialistic, rationalistic, and knows 
 no morals but that of expediency. 
 
 This rationalism and materialism which results from fol- 
 lowing politics and economics as leaders will usher in a French 
 Revolution, unless economics and politics are soundly con- 
 verted and bring forth fruits meet for repentance. As well 
 might one hope for fruit in due season from a tree planted 
 with its branches in the ground and its roots in the air, as to 
 displace religion, morality, and knowledge with politics or 
 economics, and expect good fruit. The result will be ration- 
 alism in the place of faith, expediency in the place of moral- 
 ity, and error in the place of truth. Politics and economics 
 cannot pull the beam out of their own eye; how can they see 
 clearly to pull out the mote that is in their brother's eye! 
 We are realizing the words of Macaulay, that there is no 
 tyranny like the tyranny of a democracy. Utilitarianism, ma- 
 terialism, rationalism, exalted by the vote of a majority, — in 
 other words, resulting from the spread of the spirit of de- 
 mocracy among the ignorant and vicious, — marks one of the 
 earlier stages in the line of development through which a free 
 democratic republic must pass. If the children in the public 
 schools could elect their teachers by popular vote, we need 
 not be surprised to find a menagerie at the head of the school 
 in the place of wisdom, iintil they learn by experience that 
 wild animals are ignorant and vicious. 
 
 Majorities cannot change the nature of things. The town 
 pump cannot furnish milk by vote of the people; sixteen 
 parts of silver to one of gold cannot be made a true ratio by 
 Act of Congress, unless all nations agree to call it so for pur- 
 
36 
 
 poses of convenience; the principles of Euclid are not changed 
 by time or by majorities. A nation must be true to the na- 
 ture of things, and then it will be true to itself. Politics and 
 economics have not, never did have, and never will have the 
 qualities of leadership. They were present when Mary broke 
 the alabaster box of ointment, and exclaimed: "Why was 
 not this sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor .^ " 
 But religion, like the sweet perfume that filled the house with 
 its fragrance, has never put a money value on affection or 
 spiritual forces. It is politics that is trying to reward patriot- 
 ism with pay; while religion and morality would provide for 
 the invalid from motives of gratitude and not as assumed 
 equivalents. 
 
 The influence of politics is seen again in the demands of 
 socialism, that the state shall assume charge of production 
 both in the natural monopolies and in the competitive indus- 
 tries. Kidd seems to be misled at this point when he says: — 
 
 "Socialism seems to many minds to have been born again and to be 
 entering on the positive and practical stage."! 
 
 Socialism is simply joining hands with politics to defeat the 
 old conception of the duties and functions of the state: that 
 state is the best which gives the largest individual freedom 
 compatible with the common welfare. 
 
 Rev. Philip S. Moxom, who is a scientific socialist and 
 makes the amusing claim that it is identical with Christian 
 socialism, says: — 
 
 "England furnishes, perhaps, the most notable example of the pres- 
 1 Social Evolution, p. 8. 
 
37 
 
 ent rapid progress towards socialism as evinced by its actual municipal 
 and national collectivism." ^ 
 
 Mr. Moxom, it seems to us, simply confounds the nat- 
 ural heat of an excited body with that which comes from a 
 high fever. The natural monopolies, which he cites as 
 being- assumed by the government, are not evidences of the 
 growth of socialism. When a government assumes exclu- 
 sive control of the competitive and private industries, and 
 begins to make soap and matches and shoes for the people, 
 that will be socialism. England, Germany, France, America, 
 have as yet taken no practical steps in this direction. Mr. 
 Moxom attributes the struggle for bread to selfishness. He 
 confounds selfishness with self-interest, — a most common 
 and fatal blunder of emotional economists.^ 
 
 When questions like the equitable distribution of the 
 product are referred to Sunday pulpits for solution, would 
 not Christ say: "Man, who made me a judge and divider 
 over thee.''" Economic falsehood does not become truth by 
 pulpit indorsement. The economic instincts of men must 
 not be violated by passionate and prejudiced judgments on 
 such broad themes as distribution of property. The churches 
 that imagine they have espoused the cause of wage-earners, 
 and prejudge their case, will be the last to gain the confi- 
 dence of these same wage-earners when the naked truth in 
 its heroic aspects is demanded by all. Economics must be 
 defined in terms of intellect and not of emotion. The 
 wage-earners' indictment of society is just here, and it cer- 
 
 1 New Eng. Mag., March, 1894, p. 24. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 28. 
 
38 
 
 tainly demands the most careful inquiry, for it can be con- 
 ceived that John might say to nine out of ten, "Be content 
 with your wages." Christ might say: "Take that thine is 
 and go thy way. Can I not do what I will with mine own?" 
 "Did'st not thou agree with me for a penny.?" This reply 
 came in answer to a demand for artificial distribution. As 
 R. T. Ely truly says:— 
 
 "There is no possibility of escape from toil and suffering. ... It is 
 the duty of all those who have the ear of the masses to tell them this 
 plain truth, even if it be not altogether palatable." ^ 
 
 And that genuine economic scholar, Arthur T. Hadley, 
 
 says: — 
 
 "A nation must let intellect rule over emotion whetheV it likes intel- 
 lect or not. The alternative is political and industrial suicide." ^ 
 
 In a country so conceived and developed, with such en- 
 lightened principles for its foundation; amid forces so com- 
 plex and perplexing, the Debs insurrection came.^ 
 
 1 Forum, Oct. 1894, p. 183. '^Ibid., p. 190. 
 
 3 The question as to whether it was an insurrection has not yet been 
 decided. Judge Grosscup said in his charge to the Federal Grand Jury 
 that indicted Debs: "Insurrection is a rising against civil or political au- 
 thority; an open and active opposition of a number of persons to the 
 execution. of laws in a city or state. Now the laws of the United States 
 forbid under penalty any person from obstructing or retarding the pass- 
 age of the mails and make it the duty of the officer to arrest such of- 
 fenders and bring them before the court. If, therefore, it shall appear 
 to you that any person or persons have wilfully obstructed or retarded 
 the mails, and that their attempted arrest for such offense has been op- 
 posed by such a number of persons as would constitute a general upris- 
 ing in that particular locality, and as threatens, for the time being, the 
 civil and political authority, then the fact of an insurrection within the 
 meaning of the law has been established." The definition adopted by 
 the court is from Webster's Dictionary. Anderson's Dictionary of Law 
 
39 
 
 The forces which gave it birth had been developed by- 
 well-known causes, and are so plain that a wayfaring man, 
 though a fool, need not err therein. They were hatred of 
 capital by labor; the rise and growth of organized labor unions 
 which look to politics for salvation ; the growing disrespect of 
 these unions for law, and their vicious practices in contrast 
 with their honied theories; the increase of demagogism and of 
 its friend and ally, the saloon; the natural envy and hatred of 
 the unsuccessful and the unfortunate for the successful and 
 well-to-do; false political economy of the slums as to the or- 
 igin of value and the causes of poverty; emotional sympathy 
 on the part of many for those who are reaping the results of 
 violated law, — not distinguishing between the Lord's poor 
 and the devil's poor; amiable answers to socialism, and sweet- 
 ened rose-water for criminals; the pardon of the anarchists, 
 and reviling of the courts by a demagogue Governor; mo- 
 nopolies and trusts that threaten to destroy the State; in- 
 difference of the educated classes to politics; wrong notions 
 of liberty, equality, and the rights of property among the 
 voting majority; and, finally, the inflammable material in the 
 form of ignorant foreignism that welcomes any change as one 
 for the better, that follows the beck and nod of demagogues, 
 and, that, in our congested cities, creates our judiciary. Pull- 
 man's treatment of his employes, while it was apparently ut- 
 terly selfish, was not the cause of the Debs insurrection. It 
 
 defines insurrection to be: "A rising against civil or political authority; 
 the open and active opposition of a number of persons to the execution 
 of the law in the city or state." It cites Allegheny County vs. Gibson, 
 90 Pa., 417 (1879). The jury found a true bill against Debs on this 
 ground, judging from the evidence. 
 
40 
 
 was, at *the most, merely the occasion of it, and need not 
 again be mentioned. It was the best text that could be 
 found to serve as a pretext for violence; but Debs' genuine 
 regard for the Pullman emplo3^es finds as little convincing 
 proof as the proposition that Pullman built fine houses to im- 
 prove the character of his men through their environment 
 rather than to make a fine appearing town which should bear 
 his name and be profitable and creditable to him. Pullman's 
 evident attempt to pose as a philanthropist and as the gen- 
 uine friend of his wage-earners will not bear investigation. 
 As such, he was, howev^er, better than Debs. 
 
 But who was Debs.^ Was he to the manor born and 
 in sympathy with our institutions, a lover of law and order.? 
 Did he go forth to battle in behalf of the down-trodden and 
 oppressed, inspired by a deep sense of their wrongs; jeopar- 
 dizing his own life and liberty by espousing conscientiously 
 the cause of labor .'' Was he a John Brown or a Nathan Hale, 
 who forgot self in his devotion to his notions of dut}^.'' Not 
 at all. He was a graduate of an institution for the cure of 
 drunkards. He lived extravagantly on poor men's money at 
 the best hotel, smoked fine Havanas and sent wordy tele- 
 grams to his wife at the expense of the laboring men. He 
 was probably sober while the battle was on, but was intoxi- 
 cated with notions of his own importance and of his power 
 and influence, — having just waged a successful battle with 
 the Northern Pacific. He was desperate in his determina- 
 tion to show his power as a leader of organized labor, and 
 was willing to paralyze the industries of a nation in order to 
 do it. If he thought to increase the wages of the Pullman 
 
41 
 
 employes by ordering a boycott on all Pullman cars, and then 
 on all railroads that sympathize with those roads that hauled 
 the Pullman cars, he was simply beside himself. Debs knew 
 well the import and result of his orders. On July 15th he 
 said:— 
 
 "This is not a strike. This is an evolutionary revolution." 
 To the Railway Managers he wrote: — 
 
 "The strike, small and comparatively unimportant in its inception, 
 has extended in every direction, until now it involves or threatens not 
 only every public interest, but the peace, security, and prosperity of our 
 common country. The contest has waged fiercely. It has extended far 
 beyond the limits of interests originally involved and has laid hold of a 
 vast number of industries and enterprises in no wise responsible for the 
 differences and disagreements that led to the trouble. Factory, mill, 
 mine, and shop have been silenced. Widespread demoralization has 
 sway. The interests of multiplied thousands of innocent people are 
 suffering. The common welfare is seriously menaced. The public 
 peace and tranquillity are in peril. Grave apprehension of the future 
 prevails." 
 
 It thus appears that Debs knew well that he was virtually 
 inciting to riot and insurrection. The telegrams which he sub- 
 sequently signed with his own hand, and all of which he de- 
 nied in his defence, were, by reason of this knowledge, crim- 
 inal and insurrectionary. And he did sign them himself, for 
 the Grand Jury that indicted him took pains to select such 
 telegrams, out of several- thousand, as bore his own hand- 
 writing, knowing that he would probably deny all others.^ 
 And what did the Mayor of Chicago do ? He took from 
 this Dictator the permit to remove some dead animals for the 
 sake of the public health. Who shall say that politics has 
 1 The writer of this article was a member of the Grand Jury. 
 
42 
 
 not usurped the place of morality in the leadership of the 
 common people? What is treason? 
 
 Article III. Section 3 of the Constitution says: — 
 
 " Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war 
 against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and com- 
 fort." 
 
 Did Debs give aid and comfort to the enemies of this govern- 
 ment, or are the enemies of a nation only hostile foreigners 
 M^ho would destroy it? 
 
 Article V. Amendment of the Constitution says: — 
 
 "Nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty, or property with- 
 out due process of law." 
 
 The Debs insurrection cost nearly a hundred lives and as 
 
 many millions of dollars. Was this constitutional? 
 
 Article VIII. says: — 
 
 " Cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted." 
 
 Debs said: — 
 
 "The public need not come to us with supplications, for we shall not 
 hear them" (July 13th). 
 
 And what say the leaders of the labor organizations of this 
 insurrection ? Not one has condemned it, nor have the unions 
 done so by any resolutions. Mr. Robert Bandlow, of Cleve- 
 land, Ohio, takes exceptions to this statement, and says that 
 Mr. Sovereign's order to strike was not obeyed, and that Mr. 
 Gompers' opinions must not be confounded with those of the 
 individuals who compose the unions. Mr. Arthur's refusal 
 to join the Debs strike and to order out the Brotherhood of 
 Locomotive Engineers is also cited. The writer refers to pub- 
 
43 
 
 lie utterances of labor unions, not on the folly of the strike, 
 but on its wickedness. They condemned President Cleveland 
 for interfering to protect the lives and property of innocent 
 citizens who had looked in vain to a sycophant Mayor and a 
 demagogue Governor for protection. The representatives of 
 three hundred and fifty labor unions sent word to Governor 
 Altgeld : — 
 
 "We insist that your excellency take legal steps to compel the with- 
 drawal of said army forces at once." 
 
 On July 13th, the American Federation of Labor passed the 
 following resolution: — 
 
 "The heart of labor everywhere throbs responsive to the manly pur- 
 poses and sturdy struggle of the American Railway Union in its heroic 
 endeavor to redress the wrongs of the Pullman employes." 
 
 But they deemed a sympathy strike at that time inexpedient! 
 At the head of this organization is the man who usually pre- 
 faces his public addresses with the statement that labor pro- 
 duces all value ^; that the laborers are the exploited classes, 
 and that capital is a parasite of labor. This is Karl Marx 
 pure and simple. It may be asserted, without fear of contra- 
 diction, that the wage-earners in the main hold the following 
 to be self-evident truths: — 
 
 1. Value is created by labor alone. 
 
 2. Capital may be the^ruit of yesterday's toil, but it takes an unjust 
 part of the product. 
 
 3. Executive ability plays little or no part in production. 
 
 4. Poverty is largely the result of unjust distribution. 
 
 5. The church is the friend of intrenched capital, and not of labor. 
 
 1 See Gompers' address in Boston at the time of the Homestead riots, 
 and in Chicago on the Lake Front in 1893. 
 
44 
 
 6. The hope of wage-earners (who are " slaves ") is m artificial, and 
 not in natural, distribution, which must come by law through the friend- 
 ship of politics. 
 
 7. The true friends of labor are, therefore, not religion or morality, 
 but politics and economics, 
 
 8. Christ was poor and a day laborer, a "walking delegate"; hence 
 he is the wage-earner's friend, but the churches neither know him nor 
 have seen him. Hence we cheer for Christ, and hiss the churches. 
 
 The Woman's Federal Labor Union has resolved that 
 it — 
 
 "Takes its stand with the laborers and against the parasites who fat- 
 ten upon them, for humanity andagainst inhumanity, for man and against 
 mammon, and with our feeble strength we join in the fight to prevent this 
 republic from being destroyed by a plutocratic despotism." 
 
 Was it a chance that the Debs insurrection occurred in 
 a city like Chicago, the new centre of manufacturing indus- 
 tries, whose population is so largely foreign; where the an- 
 archists were hung, and where the most daring projects, bad 
 as well as good, are carried out, — a city distinguished for its 
 ambition, enterprise, heroism, philanthropy, and faith no less 
 than for its crimes, pauperism, and dirt. Was it a chance 
 that it came in a city whose Mayor is a demagogue; in a 
 State whose Governor is ineligible to the office of President of 
 the United States because he was born in Prussia.^ Where 
 was the spirit of the Revolution when that insurrection came; 
 where were the ideas of law and order so essential to the per- 
 manency and safety of a self-governed people.'' 
 
 Von Hoist says^ the highest type of commonwealth con- 
 
 ^ A foreign citizen is one who remains alien to the spirit of our insti- 
 tutions and ignorant of American ideas of liberty and law. He may be 
 born abroad or in America. 
 
 2 Journal of Political Economy for September. 
 
45 
 
 ceivable to the human mind is that in which the rule of men 
 is wholly supplanted by the government of law in the sense: 
 (i) that no authority is possessed by the rulers except as or- 
 gans of the law; (2) that all the members of the common- 
 wealth are equaljy and absolutely subject to the law. This 
 is precisely the conception of Thomas Hooker in 1639. 
 Must these conceptions be laid aside at the behest of labor or- 
 ganizations that war on our Republic no less than on capital 
 for the sake of a little more gain? 
 
 A scientific formula for producing insurrection and riot 
 that will destroy a free democratic republic may here be 
 given : — 
 
 1. Adopt a high protective tariff, thus increasing wages. Thus 
 close the gates to foreign goods. 
 
 2. Open the gates wide to the toilers who make the goods. Put no 
 restriction on immigration. 
 
 3. Make the price of an ocean passage ten dollars. 
 
 4. Adopt these foreigners into our national family as citizens with 
 the right of franchise without pi'operty or character qualifications. 
 
 5. Elect the executive and judiciary by popular vote. 
 
 6. Make the cities attractive by taxing the property owners for 
 parks, boulevards, free concerts and amusements. 
 
 7. In such congested centres where wealth and luxury are side by 
 side with squalor and filth let the demagogue incite to hatred and pas- 
 sion by false teaching as to the causes of poverty. 
 
 8. Elect these demagogues guardians of the peace; let them make, 
 interpret, and enforce the laws. 
 
 9. Organize the wage-earners into unions and then confederate these 
 unions. Elect leaders whose commands are authoritative. 
 
 10. Warn them against religion, morality, and knowledge as allies 
 of capital; exalt politics and economics as their friends. 
 
 11. Put a drunkard, an atheist, an alien at the head of all for abso- 
 lute dictator, and then await the result. 
 
46 
 
 The result may be riots, mobs, insurrection, revolution, 
 anything that is lawless and destructive. 
 
 And this was the environment: churches for the wealthy, 
 jails for the poor; hungry children trying to support Avid- 
 owed mothers by selling papers on the street for a cent apiece 
 while they stare through the windows at children with hun- 
 dred-dollar dolls and fifty-dollar poodle-dogs; the common 
 people, hungry and hollow-eyed, like sheep without a shep- 
 herd, rushing after every new ism like anarchism, communism, 
 socialism, Georgeism, Bellamyism; or after every false Christ 
 like politics or economics, only to be deceived and used, and 
 then to become discouraged, hardened, desperate. Then come 
 suffering, want, degradation, starvation. Then organized char- 
 ities giving us alms-giving and consequent pauperism. Is it 
 a wonder that Debs paralyzed the industries of the country .-^ 
 But unless law is upheld, and Debs I. is punished for his 
 crimes. Debs II. or Debs III. will overturn the government.-^ 
 
 Debs is now trying to form a new secret organization with 
 the same hatred for law and order; with even greater confi- 
 dence in politics and false economics for breastworks. From 
 their new vantage-ground such men will again try their hand 
 when a President is in power who does not wear a number 19 
 collar; when a more desperate set of demagogues dare defy 
 the United States to call out troops in defence of person and 
 property. Their ranks will be filled with the hungry, the 
 criminals, the haters of mankind. That most despicable 
 and dangeroHS class, who trade on the miseries of the poor 
 — the cheap newspaper — will encourage and applaud their 
 1 Von Hoist. 
 
47 
 
 rioting, and endeavor to make public opinion to justify their 
 action. 
 
 Surely the times have changed. To many they seem 
 to have changed for the worse; but a step in the line of de- 
 velopment, even if it be downward, must not be interpreted 
 as retrogression. Society sometimes seems, like a huge 
 wave, to go downward, before rising with renewed momen- 
 tum to a greater height. There are greater hopes awakened 
 among the world's weary toilers than history has heretofore 
 Avitnessed, and it is an omen for good, though attended with 
 temporary frictions. We should not interpret society's 
 growth in the spirit of pessimism, or have a thought of 
 doubt as to God's evident plans for the raising of humanity 
 to a higher level than the world has yet dreamed of But 
 the mistakes of humanity which retard and postpone the 
 fulfilment are the real enemies of the people; and the mis- 
 taken and misled are easily enrolled in the ranks of anarchy 
 and disorder. 
 
 The emancipation of the masses must surely come. 
 Those who have been bound, lo these many years, will be 
 set free. But it must come from him who was anointed to 
 preach the gospel to the poor; who came to heal the broken- 
 hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, the recover- 
 ing of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised. In other words, — religion, morality, education, 
 must be the divine forerunners of politics and economics, in 
 a free democratic republic. The wage-earners will be won 
 not by emotion, but by heroic truth and genuine good-will. 
 But what will this liberty be.-* Will it be freedom from effort, 
 
48 
 
 from industry, from economy, from the need of thrift, from 
 the inexorable laws of the economic world which are as per- 
 manent and universal as the laws of gravitation? As well 
 might we look for the sun to rise in the west, or for all the 
 angles of a triangle to equal three right angles. As well 
 might we ask that the laws of the universe be suspended or 
 abrogated for our selfish benefit. But it will come by charac- 
 ter revolution, no less than from environment, giving a love of 
 toil, a desire to overcome and succeed by self denial and thrift; 
 by careful observance and obedience to law. But every form 
 of oppression must cease and good-will must reign. The 
 wage-earners, whom the world needs, must always be, and 
 the reward for physical labor can never be, great. It must, 
 however, be a living wage, and the wage-earners must be 
 helped and respected as the children of God and our brethren. 
 We are all the children of a common Father. A nation 
 can never be civilized with its masses brutalized. It is the 
 one opportunity of the ages to win the world by genuine 
 friendship, earnest devotion to truth, sincere loyalty to the 
 eternal principles of the gospel of Christ, the Alpha and 
 Omega of which is heroic love. 
 
HD , 
 
a