The Arena. Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891

Still further, the nation is an organic being. The scattered atoms of a sand-heap are as perfect as before they were dislodged; not so an amputated arm. When the nation is disunited, the detached segment becomes a different kind of body. “The man without a country” begins to be another sort of man. The nation is not a mass of independent individuals, but of related individuals, who, moreover, are so closely related that they make together an indivisible organism; this organism develops according to orderly laws; this organism has perpetuity, never disjoining itself either from its past or future; and this organism has also self-consciousness and moral personality. This is the nation in which we live, and move, and have our being.

When we look this high conception of the nation squarely in the eye, much of the talk about governmentalism seems at once irrelevant. For government in America must ever mean the nation directing itself. Here are no hereditary governing machines; no bureaucracies created by a power apart from the people. In Europe, government is fastened on the people. But in America, if government is not of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is their own fault. The worst abuses of power in a government actually emanating from the people, do not put it beyond their reach. It is still the nation governing itself. It will one day become conscious of its strength, and will direct its efforts more wisely. But so long as it is the living, organic nation governing itself, no mere multiplication of functions, no straightforward increase of powers, are a discrowning of the people.

Socialists believe in the fearless extension of government because they have a clear and high idea of the nation as an organic relationship, apart from which the individual cannot realize himself. As the nation becomes more self-conscious, it perceives more clearly its own responsibility for the development of each individual. The self-governing nation extends its governmental powers solely to give a better chance for development to the largest number of individuals. “All individualism,” says Mr. Flower, “would be surrendered to that mysterious thing called government.” But there is nothing mysterious in the expression the nation makes of its own will; and it is hard to discover what individualism is surrendered, except bumptiousness, when the rounded development of the greatest number of individuals is the nation’s motive for extending its governmental functions.

There is also another kind of reason for being undismayed at the threat of governmentalism. Nationalism is but the very distant consummation of local socialism.

I suppose it is not strange that the hostile critics occupy themselves almost entirely with this keystone of the arch, since that has given the name to the whole tendency. They delight to picture the superb riot of corruption if nationalists could have their way at once. They will never listen, they will never remember, while nationalists declare they would not have their way at once if they could. A catastrophe by which nationalistic socialism might be precipitated would be a deplorable disaster to human progress.

Socialism properly begins with the municipality; or more properly still, with the town-meeting. The Hon. Joseph Chamberlain is a practical State socialist; and he outlines in the North American Review for May how English cities are laying the foundation of more general socialism. The popular representative government of the municipality, he says, “unlike the imperial legislature, is very near to the poor, and can deal with details, and with special conditions. It is subject to the criticism and direct control both of those who find the money, and of those who are chiefly interested in its expenditure. In England, at any rate,” he continues, “it has been free from the suspicion of personal corruption, and has always been able to secure the services of the ablest and most disinterested members of the community.” The practical socialism of Birmingham, and other cities of Great Britain, enthusiastically supported by multitudes of citizens who do not call themselves socialists, is an example of the first numbers on the socialistic programme. The intellectual leaders of socialism are in no hurry. They have all the time there is. It may take years to persuade American cities that they are business corporations themselves, whose aim is the well-being of all the members. The extension of municipal control over all natural monopolies may be decades off. No matter; there is no use in being hot-headed because hearts are hot at the miseries of the poor. Municipalization ought to precede nationalization. The members of the community must learn to trust each other before the East and the West will trust one another. It must be proved in American cities, as it has been already in English cities, that the extension of municipal powers is itself a force to drive out corruption and purify politics, before the nation as a whole will deem it safe to make great enlargements of the civil service.

As that day approaches, it will be found that nationalism is a much simpler thing than it now seems. Nationalism does not begin in a paper constitution and work downwards. During the upheavals of the French Revolution Abbè Siéges is always coming forward with a new constitution. But in America institutions are rather an evolution. The last numbers on the social programme may safely be left blank. Nationalism is neither a city let down, of a sudden, four-square from heaven, nor are its working plans yet to be found in any architect’s office on earth. We certainly want no nationalism which is not an orderly development. We may agree with Mr. Spencer that the course of political evolution is full of surprises. It is quite possible that the nationalism which seems so full of menace as a military despotism may turn out to be but a simple federation of industrial and commercial interests which find they require a single head.

In other words, it seems to me, nationalism is only a prophecy. It is too distant to be certainly detailed. Present day accounts of it will one day be, as Horace Greeley said of something else, “mighty interesting reading.” We may be inspired by it as the end towards which present movements are tending. But each age solves its own problems; and the passage into that promised land is the issue for another generation. A nearer view alone can determine where the passage is, and whether the land is truly desirable. We may justly put some faith in the common sense, as well as in the political ingenuity of those who come after us. If military socialism, whatever it is, should ever be the issue, this American people can be trusted to vote against it if it is undesirable. Meantime, what our people must vote upon in the present year of grace, is whether great private corporations shall control legislatures and city councils, and charge their own unquestioned prices for such public necessities of life as light and transit. There is an issue between tyranny and liberty which is to the point. The future is in the hands of evolution.

Another opprobrious epithet is “paternalism.” This is the most familiar of the titles of reproach. It suggests an idea of government made pestiferous by old abuse. The most atrocious despotisms both of king and church have planted themselves in loco parentis. The welfare of the people has been the hoary excuse for the cruelest outrages of history. Mr. Flower goes a step further and avers that, with the good of the people for a pretext, tyranny has always been in exact proportion to power and authority.

Without stopping to query as to this last rather sweeping statement, it will be enough to check ourselves while the editor leaps to his induction; namely, that because the monarchical and ecclesiastical governments have tyrannized in proportion to their power, nothing less is to be expected if our Republic becomes affected with a greater sense of governmental responsibility for the welfare of her citizens. If our nation, it is claimed, allows this specious excuse to commit it to the doctrine of State interference, we are drifted into the despotic paternalisms of the old world.

But a paternalism must have a parent, a royal sire, or a priestly grandmother. In the antique paternalisms there is invariably this parental personality at the top; down beneath it are the puppet children. “My soldiers are my children,” says Napoleon; and he orders a charge for their benefit; an hour afterwards the dying address him as Sire as he walks over the field. “The German people are my children,” says Emperor William; and he issues the edict for the compulsory life-insurance of workingmen; an undoubted blessing. Both are instances of paternalism; and the principle in one case is as obnoxious as in the other. The principle of paternalism is an irresponsible authority above the people, mastering the people, with their welfare as a pretext.

But this essential of paternalism must be lacking in the republic. Whatever powers democracy may assume, it recognizes no authority outside itself. Democratic government, however socialistic it may become, is nothing but democracy expressing its own will. If the individual is led to surrender certain of his freedoms for the good of all, he surrenders to a paternalism of all the people. That were better called, once for all, a fraternalism.

It is not enough, however, to show that the title is in our case a grave misnomer. The editor adduces several recent instances which he considers exhibitions of the increasing tyranny of all the people. He believes the tyranny of all the people, if they are as selfish as they are now, would be more hopeless than the despotism of an individual; for the single tyrant is after all amenable to revolution, while the whole nation as a tyrant is accountable to nothing. To his view, indeed, the occurrences I am about to repeat prove the new tyrant is already created. They exhibit a “tyranny which shows that persecutions are only limited by the power vested in the State.”

Let us examine the data for this astonishing conclusion. My limits will not allow more than a bare reference to the incidents which are fully described in the May editorial.

Case I. is the incarceration in Tennessee of a Seventh-day Adventist for working on Sunday. Of this it may be remarked that had it happened two centuries ago it would have been symptomatic; to-day it is a curiosity.

Case II. is the arrest of a Christian Scientist in Iowa for practising contrary to the rules of the State. I presume this cannot be fairly disposed of by suggesting that there has been some aggravated occasion for such stringency. But it is certainly true that the State has the right to prevent malpractice—a right none of us would wish renounced. And as soon as there are sufficient data to convince an intelligent public opinion that the theory, with its perilous repudiation of all medical skill, is not fatal to human life, it will receive an ungrudged status.

Case III. is the arrest of a minister, of pure life and unquestioned standing, for sending obscene literature through the mail. The sole charge was the publication of an earnest and chastely worded article on marital purity; but the real cause was supposed to be his severe criticism of the Society for the Prevention of Vice nearly a year afterward. If these facts are verifiable this is a monstrous outrage. But unhappily it is not the first instance where revenge has been taken on the innocent by due process of law. Without doubt the people ought to be more aroused by it than they are. Yet such a sporadic instance of miscarried justice is scarcely a reason why the State should cease its efforts to check by law the present alarming increase of lascivious printing.

Case IV. is an election bill in California which prohibits independent nominations except upon petition of five per cent. of the voters, and thus disfranchises four per cent. of the voting population. If this mad device proves anything, it proves that the leaders of the old parties are in such consternation at the uneasiness of the people that they have lost their heads. It proves no more than the denial of the right of petition in Congress during anti-slavery days; and it proves as much as that attempt to ignore the voice of reform. Earthquakes are not far off when such things happen.

Case V. is the suit for damages which one Powell brings against Pennsylvania. Under a statute authorizing the manufacture of oleomargarine, he had undertaken the business, to find himself ruined by a later legislature making its manufacture a misdemeanor. This is very noteworthy, for it proves too much. It shows a vested money interest controlling legislature and voting a rival business into outlawry. This is a kind of instance socialists like to get hold of.

Yet these instances are used to illustrate “a growing spirit of intolerance” in our country; they are said to exhibit a State tyranny which is already blossoming under paternalistic legislation; they emphasize, it is claimed, the fact,—“That all the majority wishes is the sanction of law to make its crimes against the minority assume a show of respectability. All that retards persecution is the limit of the sanction of law; and I submit that, in the light of history, and in the face of the wrongs of the present, all increase in governmental power menaces the liberty, the happiness, and the growth of the individual.”

This is a pretty large indictment to hang on such debatable evidence. Its audaciousness fairly takes one’s breath away. Our heaviest battery is turned against ourselves. Every cherished dream of the good time coming goes up at a blast. Instead of freedom at last to do that for which we are made, and to fit into the niche where we belong, we are shown a State’s-prison. Instead of an age of joy and of elastic step, we are pointed to an iron rule of repression and cheerlessness. Instead of leisure to ripen, of a full summing of our powers, of the exhilaration of new truth, we have disclosed to us a stunted individuality treading a dull and monotonous round of existence. And all this, because if the people are trusted with more power they will tyrannize life down to this paralyzing reaction.

The logic of this bold pessimism is:—Human nature is tyrannical; the majority have always tyrannized in proportion to their power; increase their power and they will increase their tyranny. This is the syllogism which has dignified the foregoing collection of occurrences into grave symptoms of an increase of popular despotism.

It might be fair to meet dogmatic pessimism with dogmatic optimism. Or, it would be legitimate to follow the logic to its end in a general abandoning of all the powers of government which, it seems, has only hurt when it tried to help humanity; to go back honestly to Jefferson, and beyond him, to

The very best government of all,
That which governs not at all.

This is the pandemonium of anarchy. Mr. Flower believes that there is not enough of the golden rule in society to-day to make socialism tolerable. But we have only to imagine our present society, with its current quantity of golden rule, thrown into the chaos where government has ceased to govern, where the political majority has lost all its power, but where the majority of brute strength awakes to find itself with no laws to molest or make it afraid.

But this doctrine of the inevitable despotism of the political majority lies so at the bottom of the whole impeachment, that it ought to be carefully examined in itself.

In the first place, both premises are without support. Human nature, even in irresponsible multitudes, is not essentially tyrannical. Let us admit frankly all the degraded sweeps of intolerance in the past; yet has not human nature during recent generations been growing in the tolerant spirit? Look straight at the intelligent society around us; look within ourselves most of all, and let us ask if we see any such intolerance of spirit as would bloom into tyranny if we only had the chance. A man may prove to me by inductive data, reaching uninterruptedly over ten thousand years, that my own nature is intolerant; he may even corroborate his proof by pointing to my occasional acts of thoughtless disregard for another’s opinion, yet all this array does not overwhelm me, for I know I am not intolerant. Our society to-day, as a whole, knows it is not intolerant;—even though it be proved as conclusively as ever Puritan divine proved God’s hatred for man, and man’s incapacity for a single good act. The logic works well; only there are some omitted factors. Human nature has made some progress. Hospitality to new ideas, and patience with divergent ones, are two of the surest fruits of later civilization.

Again, the majority have not always tyrannized in proportion to their power. They did not, in the Dutch Republic, when William of Orange followed the hideous persecutions of Phillip II. with the establishment of religious liberty. The Church of England was in the majority when it abandoned its acts of tyranny. Congregationalism was still in the ascendancy when it ceased to banish Baptists and to whip Quakers. The Rhode Island Baptists had plenty of majority when they pioneered the empire of religious freedom in America. And the Maryland Roman Catholics had things their own way, when in an age of persecution they resolved to be hospitable to other beliefs. Indeed, in our American life especially, the generosity and long-suffering of majorities are among the most notable features. On the other hand it may with truth be said that the worst tyrannies have been on the part of minorities. In the old world the oppressive minorities have usually been hereditary or ecclesiastical interests. In our country the ruling minorities have been determined, and self-assertive classes who would not brook the wisdom or the sense of justice of the majority. It was the regnant minority which rushed the South into secession. It was that same minority which had for half a century before over-ridden the whole nation. It was the Tammany minority which ruled the Democracy. It is the minority of syndicates, corporations, and vested interests which crowned itself in our Billion Congress, and is spreading itself in our legislatures. Are the very occurrences, of which so much has been made exhibitions, of the tyranny of all the people; or, are they not rather, with one exception, instances where a graceless minority has resolved either slyly or boldly to ignore the people? In short, the charge in the phrase “tyranny of the majority” has but the least justification in the course of government. There has been in history no power which has tyrannized less than the political majority. In modern times, at least, the most violent acts of despotic outrage have been the attempts to ride down the will of the political majority. “In the light of history, and in the face of the wrongs of the present,” to use the editor’s words, it might be well to consider some means for the protection of majorities.

For after all, in spite of the English sneers at government by count of noses, from Carlyle and Sir Henry Maine to the latest utterances, there is nothing so safe for humanity’s interests as the political majority. It is perfectly true that “the vanguard of human progress must ever be in the minority.” But the hope of this minority lies in one day becoming the majority. As Disraeli said, that is the minority’s business. The minorities of hereditary privilege, of priesthood, of monied classes, can perpetuate themselves and their power. But the majority of voters is always changing and always losing its power. The minority of radicals is always becoming the majority of conservatives,—the steadfast power to which progress has tied itself.

Is socialism necessary to the progress of the race? Will not a perfected fraternalism make the strong hand of socialism needless? Both questions are to be answered, yes. The perfect state is undoubtedly pictured in Rousseau’s ideal, where every man remains perfectly free, so that when he obeys the State he obeys only himself. This is the deep and eternal truth of the law of brotherhood, which is also the law of liberty. Love is the fulfilling of all law; no laws will be needed when love is the protection of the weak. Belief in that coming government of Love is the real religion.

But the practical politics of the present deal with a society where a strong arm is needed to protect the weak from the tyranny of the giants. To talk about the principles of brotherhood fully prevailing in our present conditions, is to treat the laws of Christ with flippancy. Nine-tenths of the maxims of our modern business system contradict the law of love. In our present environment it is impossible for business people or working people to obey the Sermon on the Mount and not starve. Perhaps a few sacrifices of this kind are needed to teach us how abhorrent the present selfish system is to the Christianity of Christ. “I suppose I ought to be thankful to get the work at all, for they told other women they had no work left for them,” said a woman to me who was making men’s pantaloons for two dollars a dozen. She was part of the system; she was competing with other less fortunate women as truly as her employer with other firms; she drank her tea at the expense of her less lucky sister, who had no work and no tea. What chance does this system afford for perfect fraternalism, or even for decent fraternalism, among those who have to compete?

Socialism aims to produce an environment where not only the Golden Rule but the Law of Love will have a living chance. As such an agent it has its proper political place in the development of mankind.

REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES AND NEGLECTED CRIMES

PART II

BY PROF. JOSEPH RODES BUCHANAN

If we agree that all men are born free and equal, with certain inalienable rights,—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,—let us legislate to enforce our belief. All men are not born equal, if one is born with power to live without toil; power to control the movements of a hundred thousand of his unequal fellow-citizens; power to bribe legislatures; power to hire a pretorian guard of laborers, writers, editors, clergymen, and even soldiers or police to do his bidding and to sing his praise, and to threaten those who wish to establish a real republic. It was thought we had abolished hereditary inequality; but in a land where our democratic lords can each hire fifty thousand men and equip an army if need be,—where a democratic American lord can buy a dozen of the puny lords of Europe,—the social equality dreamed of in ‘76 does not exist. We have abolished the useless title but not the lord.

We should not object to that inequality which is natural—to the superior ability and superior virtue which place one man far above his fellows; but we should object to an immense inequality, which is not natural, and which sometimes places the superior man at the mercy and in the service of one who has no ability whatever,—who is simply born to rule by means of hereditary wealth. This is just as great a social inequality as that which Jefferson saw in Europe, and which he thought was to be excluded from America.

It is a condition that is demoralizing in a hundred ways, and is fraught with peril to the republic, peril to society, and peril to all the interests of humanity; and therefore as I would assert,—and who would deny the supreme right and power of the people to protect the republic from any impending calamity by any just means, but not by any unjust means—I would claim that it is our right and duty to say that this grand hereditary inequality shall not be perpetual, and that the past shall not rule the present—the graveyard shall not contain our legislature,—but that each generation shall be a law unto itself, and shall establish the conditions of justice and safety without regard to the follies of the dead and the ancient laws of inheritance when they conflict with justice.

Justice and safety to the republic demand that men shall not be born as rulers, nor born as serfs. The serf is the person who is born in poverty, with no right to a standing place, and whom society has left to the education of the street or of the coal mine, growing up without knowledge, without industrial skill—knowing nothing but to sell unskilled labor in a market crowded by a million others like himself or herself, and thus forced into that wretched life seen in all the great cities of America and Europe, the description of which is enough to make us cry out in despair, How long, O Lord, how long? Wherein does this white slavery differ from African slavery, except that the master cares nothing for the slave, is not bound by self-interest to take care of him, and cannot flog him though he can punish him in other ways, and on shipboard he can flog him also, and the horrors of nautical brutality have not even produced a society for its abolition?

Such is the serf, which our democracy allows its citizens to become,—men to whom the right of suffrage sometimes seems a worthless rag which they would gladly sell,—men on whose weak shoulders the republic cannot stand.

To abolish that class, every boy and girl should be guaranteed a solid intellectual and industrial education, making a permanent guarantee against pauperism and serfdom, a permanent guarantee that women shall not be enslaved by lust, but shall be enabled to rear an offspring of manly citizens. These are the most important things that a true nationalism should accomplish at present, and mainly by the gospel of industrial education, which the writer has long been urging with all his power.

Public sentiment has advanced so far on this question, that there will be very little opposition to abolishing the serf by industrial education; out with all our industrial education, our disorganized competition makes employment terribly uncertain, and impoverishes the industrious by enforced idleness, because there is no science, no social system to regulate the demand and supply of labor in different pursuits.

Hence, until we can do better, there must be at all times a vast number of idle men walking about in search of work, losing all their savings in times of enforced idleness, their days of gloom and despair.

They are our brothers, and we cannot say with Cain, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” We are our brothers’ keepers, for they are partners in this republic, and brothers in the family of God, and they help to make the social atmosphere in which we live, and they help the republic to sink or swim. We simply cannot afford to deny our brotherhood, and if we do we are the devil’s own fools.

Action on this matter is demanded now as it never was before, for we are advancing blindly to a crisis which our political economists and statesmen have not foreseen, and do not yet recognize. The genius that increases by invention the productive power of labor ought to increase the rewards of labor, but it does not. Labor is demanded only to supply what is consumed; and if at present a million laborers are employed to produce the food, clothing, fuel, furniture, and houses required, but in a few years invention enables half a million to produce the same, what is to become of the half million no longer needed? Will wages advance so that the million may still be employed, working for half a day instead of a day. That would be just, but instead, it produces a glut in the labor market, which by competition puts down wages, and starts a fierce contest between laborers and employers, and among laborers themselves. The fall in prices produced by competition in a crowded market makes the employer unwilling to advance wages, and an angry contest is inevitable. The multitude dislodged by invention is increased by the inevitable multitude arising from irregular demand and supply in fluctuating markets, and thus families by the hundred thousand are driven to the verge of immediate starvation, and this becomes our chronic condition, which must be rectified,—a chronic condition which bears most heavily on woman, and through her debases future generations.

We are bound to see that every honest citizen, male or female, has a fair chance in the battle of life, has a fair preparation at the start, and a fair field. To insure this,—to insure that the productive power of the nation is not wasted,—is a larger question than our statesmen have ever yet considered. It requires that the government shall have a Department of Productive Labor, in which honest men and women, when jostled out of their industrial positions, may enlist.[2 - Thousands of the women toiling in the cities on starving wages, might be given in the Southern States pleasant employment in fruit culture, and other light agricultural labors.] This department should be managed by the ablest and most benevolent business men of the Peter Cooper class, who understand all productive industries, and who, seeing what is permanently and largely needed for human consumption and not abundantly supplied, or what new industries can be started which will benefit the nation, what new productions can be acclimatized, shall take charge of all the laborers who wish to enlist in governmental employ for eight hours a day, with such pay and rations as will be satisfactory and fair; and if rightly managed, not only will their labor pay all costs of the department, but it may be made to teach the country great industrial lessons in agriculture and manufactures, by improvements which scientific combined labor on a large scale may introduce; and if we are anxious to make our country independent in all things, and superior in manufactures, this is the very method in which it can be done, by the instruction in the national establishments, which may be the means of starting all manufactures that we need, far better than the protective tariff which forces an unnatural growth at an enormous cost to the people.

There will then be no tramps, no paupers, no women compelled to sell their persons; and as poverty, gloom, and hardship are the chief sources of intemperance, we may anticipate, as another consequence, an immense diminution of the liquor traffic, when the Department of Productive Labor shall have gotten into full operation. Moral gloom and the bad passions impel men to intemperance, and when they acquire the happy and gentle temperament of woman they will also acquire her temperance.

Mr. Bellamy’s idea of the nation as the employer may not be practicable, but the Department of Productive Labor is an obvious method of initiating the principle of national co-operation, which an urgent necessity has compelled the British government to initiate in Ireland. But we cannot safely wait, like England, until famine is threatening.

The pauperization of labor depends on the monopoly of land combined with the monopoly of machinery. It cannot occur in a new country, but must develop when all the land is monopolized and worth a hundred dollars an acre. The independence of the laborer owing to cheap vacant land is more than restored by a Department of Productive Labor which establishes a minimum of wages below which they cannot be forced, and gives a standing ground on which exaction can be resisted permanently by the laborer.

The Department of Productive Labor may be made a charming feature of the government, on which philanthropists may expend their skill; and its beautiful plantations, especially in the highlands of the Carolinas and Georgia, and in California, may be looked to as a haven of repose by all who are disappointed in life, who may find in these rural homes something more attractive than the co-operative societies to which some are rushing now. The voice of the red flag anarchist will be quieted, and the agitators who endeavor to stir up dissension will find most of their grievances redressed when the laborer has an assured home.