Editorials
BY THOMAS E. WATSON
THE People’s Party does not attempt the impossible, or seek the unattainable.
Our young men do not dream dreams; our old men do not see visions. We are wedded to practical reforms which have been tried in civilized communities, and which have vindicated themselves by results.
We do not propose to re-create society, subvert law and order, confiscate property, or substitute a new system of government for the old.
We do not want to tear down the house in order to repair it.
We do not hope to build a perfect state with imperfect human hands, but we do intend to make the government as nearly perfect as possible, to the end that it shall represent that conception of justice which deals with all men alike, and allows to every child of Adam a fair chance in the world which God created as a home for the human race.
We believe that the government should be clothed with all the attributes of sovereignty; thatthe government should govern, and shouldnot delegate to private citizens or corporationsany part of its sovereign power.
The creation of a national currency has always been an attribute of sovereignty—of royalty.
In a system where the people rule the people succeed to the power of the king; and that attribute of sovereignty which the king exercised and did not delegate should be exercised by the people and should not be delegated.
Therefore, the Populists, successors to the old Greenbackers, have always clung to it as an article of faith that the Federal Government should exercise its constitutional right to create a currency, and should not delegate that power to national banks or to private citizens or corporations.
The government should supply the country with a sufficient amount of national money, every dollar of which should be equal to any other; every dollar of which should be a full legal tender for all claims, public and private, andno dollar of which should be made redeemable in any other dollar.
We believe that those things which are essentially public in their nature and their use should belong to the public, and should be equally enjoyed by all.
Just as the navigable rivers are public to the beggar and the millionaire alike, just as the Bay and the Gulf and the Harbor and the navigable Lakes are the common property of the rich and the poor, the high and low, the black and white, so we believe that the roads should be common ground upon which every citizen should be free to pass upon terms of equality, and that the iron highways of today, which were taken from the people by the exercise of the right of Eminent Domain, should be restored to the public by the same law of Eminent Domain, a fair compensation having been paid, and the property operated hereafter for the benefit of all the people.
So with the Telegraph and the Telephone and Express Companies.
In every city and town we believe that the municipality, which is a part of the state’s sovereignty, should take over to itself those public utilities which in their very nature are monopolies, and, just compensation having been paid, that these utilities should be used for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong.
We believe that the government should be supported by a system of taxation in which each citizen will pay taxesin proportion to his ability to pay.
We believe in a Tax on the Franchises enjoyed by private corporations.
We believe that the Income Tax would be the fairest of all taxes, because it would take for the support of the government, not the property of the citizen, but a portion of the income which the citizen derives from that property, or from his individual exertions, and the tax would be proportioned to the income.
That property or that salary could not be enjoyed without the protection and the advantages which flow from government, and it is eminently fair, where the government has protected me, or where it affords me such opportunities, that I can receive a large income from any source whatever, I should pay to the government, in return for its protection and its advantages, a fair share of that which I could not have made without that protection and those advantages.
Under our present system a man like John D. Rockefeller pays no more Tariff tax when he buys a hat than a doctor or lawyer or preacher pays when he buys a hat. So with the shoes, the clothes, the crockery on the table, the furniture in the house. Many a citizen whose income does not amount to ten thousand dollars per year pays fully as much Tariff tax in the purchasing of necessary articles of clothing, furniture and food as John D. Rockefeller pays, whose income is counted monthly by the millions of dollars.
The same thing is true of Carnegie, Morgan, Hill, Harriman, Gould, Cassatt, Vanderbilt. Many a farmer whose income from his farm may not do more than give his family an actual support, after the operating expenses are paid, contributes annually a greater sum in Tariff tax to the Federal Government than is paid by the fabulously wealthy beneficiaries of class legislation.
It has been said that the People’s Party dodges the Tariff issue. This is not true.
One of our earliest platforms, which has been repeatedly reindorsed, declares:
“We demand the removal of the Tariff tax from the necessaries of life which the poor must have to live.”
This is precisely the principle announced by Thomas Jefferson, who declared that the taxes should be so laid that the luxuries of life would bear the burden of government, and that his ideal was a system in which the poor would be entirely relieved from the crushing weight of taxation.
Furthermore, we have said that legislation should not be so framed as to build up one business at the expense of another.
If the People’s Party platform were enacted into law,there could be no such thing as a Trust in the United States.
In order that the people should become the victims of such tyranny as that exercised by the Trusts two things are necessary:Foreign relief must be made impossible, and domestic relief made impracticable.
The Tariff wall keeps the foreigner from interfering; the railroads and the national banks supporting the Trusts make it impossible for domestic dissatisfaction to assert itself effectively.
If the people should put upon the free list those articles which are made the subject of the Trusts, the foreigner could at once invade the market, and destroy the monopoly upon which the Trust is based.
If the Populist principles of financeand of transportation should be carried into effect, the Government abolishing national banks and private ownership of transportation lines,the rebate would be impossible, discriminations would cease, equality would prevail, and there would be no collusion between the national banks and the railroads by which Trusts are made invincible as they are now invincible.
We believe in direct Legislation—putting the power of making laws and choosing rulers back into the hands of those to whom it belongs—and the election of all officers by the people.
The people should not be made to await the pleasure of the Legislature or of Congress. They should not be kept in ignorance of what the law is until legislative acts become known through the newspapers. There should be in every case the right to initiate those laws which they want, and to veto, through the Referendum, any law which they do not like.
When an officer whom they have elected shows by any vote or act that he is not the man they took him to be, they should not have to wait till the expiration of his term to get a better man. They should have the right to recall the officer the moment he betrays his trust.
We believe in the eight-hour day for labor in Government works, in factories, workshops and mines.
We believe in the regulation of child labor in factories, workshops and mines, to the end that children of tender age shall not be made to slave out their lives in order that corporations shall have cheap labor and large dividends.
Saturn, the old fable tells us, devoured his own children: Christian civilization does the same thing.
As long as we permit children of ten and twelve years to labor from eight to fourteen hours per day in our mills and workshops modern civilization is another Saturn.We are devouring our own children.
We believe that the land, the common heritage of all the people, should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, or by alien ownership, but that legislation should be so shaped as to encourage to its full extent the right of every man born into this world to till the soil and make a living out of it.
And one of the principal reasons why we favor a graduated income tax, which increases by geometrical progression as the income increases, is that it automatically keeps the wealth of the country in a constant sort of redistribution, and acts as a check upon that excessive accumulation which is recognized by all intelligent thinkers as one of the most serious perils and intolerable evils of our present era of class legislation.
These are the most important articles of our faith. It is for these principles that we have struggled ever since 1891—with never a doubt that they were sound, that they would constantly gain converts,that they would ultimately win.
When I founded thePeople’s Party Paperin Atlanta, Ga., in 1891 (which paper lived and toiled for these principles until the fusion movement of 1896 killed it, as it killed twelve hundred other Populist papers), I announced the same purpose which I announced in the prospectus of this magazine.
My faith was as firm in 1891 as it is today, and I had as little doubt then as I have now that Populism is just as sure to triumph as the sun is to continue to warm the world.
The reforms will be effectedbecause the country needs them. It cannot stand much more of the present system. It will not accept Socialism. Occupying the middle ground of radical, but practical reform, Populism is inevitable.
There is a saying that the difference between a wise man and a fool is that the wise man never makes the samemistake twice, while the fool continues to make it without limit.
It is of supreme importance that those who will act as political leaders during the next four years should think clearly in order that they may act wisely.
We have not, as yet, discovered any brighter lamp with which to guide our footsteps than that which Patrick Henry named the Lamp of Experience.
If I felt that our national leaders were about to repeat a disastrous mistake and adopt a policy which seems the continuance of the reign of class legislation and special privilege, I should be false to my own sense of duty if I did not at this early day point out that error and warn the Jeffersonians against it.
I say Jeffersonians because, after all is said and done, there are but two great differences of political thought in the United States—never have been but two; never will be but two.
On the one hand are those who believe that legislation should be dictated by the interest of the few; that the powers and the benefits of good government should be monopolized by the few; that the blessings and the opportunities of life should be the heritage of the few; that wealth and privilege and national initiative should perpetually be the legacy of the few.
On the other hand is the Jeffersonian idea that the human family are all alike the children of God; that the earth and all it contains was created for the benefit of this human family, and that any system of law and government which gathers into the hands of the few an unjust proportion of the common estate, to the exclusion of the vast majority, is an infamous invasion of the natural rights of man.
Now, what is it that endangers the cause of the Jeffersonians?
What is it that seems to me to be so certain to insure the continuance of the rule of the few over the many?
It is the continued existence of the political alignment of the great mass of the people in two political parties, each of which, in its heart of hearts, is wedded to the rule of the few.
Neither one of these parties wants any material change in our present system of legislation or of administration.
Both of them are absolutely dominated by the same interests.
In the ranks of each of these parties are found the powerful railroad kings, the irresistible trusts, the indispensable national banks, the vastly influential insurance companies.
As a matter of fact, nearly every board of management of every predatory corporation against which the people are rising in revolt is made up half and half of Democrats and Republicans, in order that, no matter which party wins at the polls, the corporation will have influence at court.
It is so clear to me that the only possible hope for the people is to drive these two parties together while the people unite under another standard.
In vain does Judge Parker talk about the difference between his Democracy and the Republicanism of Mr. Roosevelt. During the campaign he was unable to state any difference, and there is, in fact, no difference.
Between Belmont’s ideas of government and those of Mark Hanna there is not the slightest difference.
Between the Democratic corporation and the Republican corporation it is absurd to claim that there is any difference.
Between Democratic manufacturers and Republican manufacturers no human being of intelligence will expect any difference or find any.
In other words, the millionaire beneficiaries of class legislation control both of the old parties, and the battle which they wage year after year, decade after decade, is a mere sham battle. The strategy of the corporations consists in keeping the people divided in order that the corporations may rule.
Believing this to be true, I am painfully impressed with the fact that Mr. Bryan is making a huge mistake.
The pity of it is, he has already made that mistake twice, and is now making it for the third time.
What is the mistake?
It consists of the effort to get radical reform out of a party which has always been dominated and always will be dominated by conservatives. When the currency was contracted just after the Civil War and ruin brought upon so many thousands of people in this country, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.
When the revenue taxes were taken off railroads, manufactures, insurance companies, bank checks and express companies, soon after the close of the Civil War, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.
When the Income Tax was lifted from the burdened shoulders of the rich, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.
When Silver was struck down and the Gold Standard forced upon us, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.
When our National Bank System was enthroned, and that terribly unjust system was chartered to prey upon the people, it required the joint action of both the old parties to do it.
When Congress, over the protest of Thaddeus Stevens and others, obeyed the command of the Rothschilds (delivered at Washington personally by August Belmont, the father of the present Boss of the Democratic Party), and declared by legislative enactment that the banks should be paid in gold while the soldier at the front should be paid in greenbacks, it required the joint action of both the old parties to do it.
There has never been a necessary act of Congress—necessary to the rule of the few, necessary to carry out the Hamiltonian ideal—that did not rest for support one foot on the Republican Party and the other on the Democratic Party.
The man who does not know this to be true is unfamiliar with official records.
The time has been when Mr. Bryan held the same opinions which I am expressing now. The time has been when he declared, in speech and writing, that there was no hope for reform in the Democratic Party.
In 1896 Mr. Bryan, in the OmahaWorld-Herald, editorially asked:
“Can a National Convention harmonize the discordant elements of the Democratic Party? Impossible.
“Suppose the advocates of bimetallism control the National Convention and nominate a Free Silver Democrat upon a free coinage platform, will Cleveland, Carlisle, Olney, Morton,et al.support the ticket? Of course not. They say that the free coinage of silver means individual dishonesty, commercial disaster and national dishonor, and if they believe what they say they ought not to support the ticket, because their duty to their country is higher than their duty to their party organization. If, on the other hand, the convention nominates a Gold Standard Democrat on a platform indorsing the gold standard, gold bonds and national bank currency, should the nominee be supported by those who believe the gold standard to be a conspiracy of the capitalistic classes against the producers of wealth—a crime against mankind? Who says they should?
“If to continue Mr. Cleveland’s financial policy is to declare war against the common people, what friend of the common people would be willing to enlist in such a warfare, even at the command of his party?
“The Democratic Party cannot serve God and Mammon; it cannot serve plutocracy and at the same time defend the rights of the masses.
“If it yields to the plutocracy it ought to lose, and it will lose, the support of the masses; if it espouses the cause of the people, it cannot expect either votes or contributions from the capitalistic classes and from the great corporations.”
In pursuance of this very correct line of reasoning, Mr. Bryan resolutely declared that if the Democratic Party adopted the gold standard, “I promise you that I will go out and serve my country and my God under some other name, even if I must go alone.”
Again Mr. Bryan said, in his book called “The First Battle,” Chapter III, page 124, “In that speech I took the position which I have announced since on several occasions, namely, that I would not support for the Presidency an advocate of the gold standard.”
Again Mr. Bryan said: “Does the individual member of a party at all times reserve the right to vote against the nominee of a party, and to abandon his party entirely whenever in his judgment his duty to his country requires it? He may abandon the party temporarily, as, for instance, when an unfit candidate is nominated, or the voter may abandon his party permanently, either when he himself changes his opinion upon a paramount public question or when his party changes its position.”
Now let the reader compare the present attitude of Mr. Bryan with the political ethics expounded by him in his book.
He was then the idol of the radicals; he was then the Tribune of the People.
He was the strong and stalwart foe of every plutocrat, every Wall Street interest, every beneficiary of class legislation.
The people hailed him with an enthusiasm which had not been known since the days of Henry Clay. So great was their faith in him that he swept into his movement in 1896 the Free Silver organization and the great bulk of the Populist Party.
Who is it that cannot see how loftily he held his flag in those days? Who is it that does not realize how sadly it droops today?
From the noble stand of 1893 and 1896, what a falling off is there! Boldly he declared that he would never support for the Presidency an advocate of the gold standard. Yet, when Judge Parker slapped his face in public with the Gold Telegram of 1904, the dauntless Bryan turned the other cheek, like a very meek Christian indeed.
He had said that a Democrat might bolt his partytemporarilyupon the nomination of an unfit candidate; he had said that Judge Parker was an unfit candidate, but he did not bolt the nomination, eventemporarily.
He had said that the voter might abandon his partypermanentlywhen that party changed its position upon a paramount public question; yet when the Democratic Party, with extraordinary suddenness, changed its position upon more than one paramount question in 1904, Mr. Bryan did not bolt his partypermanently.
He had said that if the Democrats took up the Republican financial policy, which meant the slavery of the debtors of this country and the impoverishment of the people, he would go out and serve his country and his God under some other name, even if he had to go alone. Yet when his party did come over to the Republican financial policy, and came by telegraph at that,Mr. Bryan did not go out to serve either his country or his God under some other name.
He had said to his brother Democrats: “If you are ready to go down on your knees and apologize for what you have said” (abuse of the Republicans and the gold standard), “you will go without me.”
Yet when the Democratic Party, at the St. Louis Convention in 1904, went down on its knees, in effect, to apologize for the abuse which they had heaped upon the Republicans for eight years, they did not go without Mr. Bryan. The knees of Mr. Bryan hit the floor in timely cadence with the knees of all the others, and when he filed out of the convention hall the dust was there to show it just as it was there to show it on the knees of all the others.
Bryan himself asked the question in 1896: “Can a National Convention harmonize the discordant elements of the Democratic Party?” He answered his own question in the comprehensive word, “Impossible.”
The event of the campaign of 1896 showed that he was right, for the Cleveland-Carlisle-Belmont element knifed him.
In the campaign of 1900 they knifedhim again. In the campaign of 1904, when the convention nominated a gold standard Democrat on a platform indorsing the gold standard, gold bonds and the gold bank currency, the people refused to support the sell-out of the National Democratic Party to Wall Street, just as Mr. Bryan, in 1896, prophesied that they would, in spite of the fact that the prophet of 1896 had become the gold standard nominee’s most earnest advocate in the campaign of 1904.
In other words, the people had become so inoculated with the true gospel of Bryan, the Tribune of 1893 and 1896, that they refused to follow the change of heart and the change of conduct which came over Bryan, the Parkerite of 1904.
Will not Mr. Bryan reflect upon this and draw a lesson from it? He himself has declared that he is attempting the impossible in trying to harmonize the discordant elements of the Democratic Party.
What is the real statesmanship demanded at this time?
That those who believe in Jeffersonian ideals, whether they are now in the Republican, Democratic, Populist or Socialist parties, should come together without prejudice for party names, and should unite in the common cause of driving from power the beneficiaries of class legislation, no matter whether those beneficiaries are called Democrats or Republicans.
Let the Belmonts and Morgans get together in the same party so that we can fight them both at the same time.
As long as we cling to party differences and party names our efforts will come to naught, as they did in 1896, 1900 and 1904.
Mr. Bryan wants the reform movement to stop and wait for him, while for four years he struggles to get the better of the plutocratic element of his own party. If they were able to wrest control from him when he had so much more advantage than he has now, how can we expect him to take that control from their strong hands?
But, suppose he does succeed in defeating the Belmont-Cleveland element in the convention of 1908, does he not know that they will fulfil his prediction again and knife him as they have done twice already?
On the other hand, suppose they conquer him in 1908 as they did in 1904, will he not submit tamely to kiss the hand that smote him as he did in the last convention? Most assuredly he will.
He lost his opportunity to fly the flag of revolt when he failed to resent the Gold Telegram of 1904. That opportunity passed, never to return.
Absolutely the only hope of radical reform lies in a straight-out, aggressive and fearlessfight upon both the old parties, which in turn have had control of the Government, and which have played into each other’s hands in forging the chains of class legislation which now bind and burden the Common People.
Have they found the body of John Paul Jones?
The experts say that they have.
To the legal mind, the fact thatexpertshad to be called in to pass upon the question of identity is sufficient to arouse suspicion and provoke investigation.
As stated in a former number, I was certain they would find Paul Jones—in their minds—for that was what they were looking for.
Whenever, for instance, the medical expert starts out to find arsenic in the human stomach, arsenic generally shows up all right enough.
In like manner French experts were called in to identify a certain corpse as that of Paul Jones, and, after the most elaborate and beautifully regular formalities, they solemnly pronounced the verdict which they knew was expected and which they were predisposed to find.
“This is Paul Jones, isn’t it?” asks General Porter, most suavely, not to say persuasively.
How could the politest experts of the politest people on earth say nay?
The case was pitiful.
The search for Paul Jones’s body had reached a crisis. Only four leaden coffins had been found in the old graveyard, and one of thesehadto be Paul Jones, because he had been buried in such a coffin, and the other three bore name-plates which showed they could not be his.
The fourth bore no name-plate; therefore itmustbe Jones’s coffin.
The necessity of the situation required it.
Consequently, polite French experts measure, compare, incubate, decide and bring in the verdict desired.
Looking at the matter as a lawyer, I should say that there is not sufficient legal evidence offered, as yet, to establish the identity of the dead body.
The cemetery in which Commodore Paul Jones was buried was closed by law in 1793.
A canal was afterward cut through it.
The great sea-fighter was buried, as Napoleon was, in uniform.
In the Life of him—“Great Commanders’ Series”—by Cyrus Townsend Brady, the statement is made thatPaul Jones was buried in the American uniform, and thata sword and other articles were placed in the coffin.
The body which General Porter has found wasnotclad in uniform.
There was no sword, or other article, found in the coffin.
Commodore Jones died of dropsy, which had swollen his body to such an extent that he could not button his waistcoat.
Yet the French experts declare that all the measurements tally exactly with those of the living Jones.
Should They Do So?
Awful changes take place after death, and they are greater with some than with others.
Should the measurements of a corpse which had been entombed more than a hundred years correspondexactlywith those of the same body when alive?
Most biographers put theheightof Admiral Jones at “about five feet and eight inches.”
Won’t you find a greater number of men—in France especially—whose height is “about five feet eight inches” than you’ll find at any other figure?
And will you not find morecorpsesof about that length?
Yet in these measurements consists the whole of the testimony which has been offered to the American people to convince them that the body of Paul Jones is at last to come home.
Unless the matter of the uniform and the sword be cleared up, it is impossible to accept the conclusion arrived at by the experts.
This corpse may be, as already stated, a good enough Jones for that $35,000, but it has not yet been shown to be John Paul Jones, the naval hero of our War of Independence.
With statistics one can prove many things—the conclusion arrived at depending, in all cases, considerably upon the man behind the figures.
This time the man behind the figures is Doctor Booker Washington—may his shadow never grow less!
In the course of a recent lecture, the learned Doctor laid down the proposition that the black man is superior to the white, and he proved it—proved it by statistics.
He said that there is 85 per cent. of illiteracy among the Spaniards, while there is only 54 per cent. of illiteracy among the negroes; therefore the negroes are clearly more advanced in civilization than the Spaniards.
Poor old Spain!
The learned Doctor further demonstrated that there is 65 per cent. of illiteracy among the Italians; therefore the negroes are far ahead of Italy. Russian illiteracy being 70 per cent. the black man takes precedence of the land of Peter the Great, Skobelef, Gorky, Turgenef and Tolstoy. SouthAmerica, having an illiteracy of 80 per cent., falls far to the rear of the negro—and Castro must add this additional kick to the many he has already received from North America.
Proud of his statistics, Doctor Booker Washington exclaims: “The negro race has developed more rapidly in the thirty years of its freedom than the Latin race has in one thousand years of freedom.”
That’s a bold statement, Doctor.
To say nothing of its accuracy, may it not have been an unwise thing for you to claim that the black man has risen during thirty years more rapidly in the scale of civilization than the whites have risen in a thousand?
True, you confine yourself to the Italians, the Spaniards, the Russians and the South Americans, but when you say the darkest of all the colored races is superior to that great section of the white race named by you, does it not occur to you that you may create a feeling of resentment amongallthe whites?
You have thousands of true friends throughout the entire country—white men who have most generously helped you in your work, helped you with money, with moral support and with a certain amount of social recognition. Your admirers refer to you as a great man. They allude to your work as a great work. The South helps you with appropriations, just as the North helps you with donations. We want to see you succeed in building up your race.
But have you a single white friend who will indorse your statement that the black race is so superior to the whites that it can do in one generation what it required the whites a thousand years to do?
Do you imagine that your friends, President Roosevelt, Mr. Carnegie, Dr. Hart, Bishop Potter, and others, will like you better when they hear you putting forth a claim to race superiority? Doctor, you have overshot the mark.
Whenever the North wakes up to the fact that you are teaching the blacks that they are superior to the whites, you are going to feel the east wind.
What do you mean by racial development, Doctor?
Apparently your standard of measurement is illiteracy. That is to say, if a greater number of negroes than of Spaniards can read, then the negro has achieved a higher plane in civilization.
Is that your idea? Does the ability to read constitute race development?
According to that, a million negro children attend school twelve months and become “civilized” because they have learned to spell “Baker” and to read “Mary had a little lamb.”
Does it not strike you, Doctor, that such a measure might be delusive?
In making up your tables of illiteracy, why didn’t you includeall the negroes, as you includedallthe Italians,allthe Spaniards,allthe Russians?
Why leave out your home folks in Africa, Doctor?
Why omit Santo Domingo and Haiti?
If you will numberallthe negroes, Doctor, your percentage of illiteracyamong the blacksmay run up among the nineties, and knock your calculation into a cocked hat.
In the West Indies God poured His blessings with lavish hand upon the island of Haiti. The French went there and built up a civilization. The Revolution of 1789 freed the negroes who were held in slavery by the whites, and civil war soon followed.
The blacks outnumbered the whites and the climate was their ally. Yellow fever did for them what frost did for the Russians when Napoleon struck at their liberties. They achieved freedom, and they have had it, not for thirty years, but for a hundred years.
What have your people done with their freedom in Santo Domingo, Doctor?Back, back into barbarism, voodooism, human sacrifice, social and political anarchy they have plunged; and their history is one long blood-stained record of backsliding from the standard which the French had already established.Even now your black brethren in Santo Domingo are beseeching the white man of the United States to do that which they are unable to do—administer national affairs. In self-defense this Government may have to treat Santo Domingo as Great Britain treats Jamaica, both governments acting upon the demonstrated fact that the blacks,left to themselves, are incapable of self-government and race development.
But before entering into a comparison of racial progress, Doctor, it is in order to note the fact that you accredit the negro with only thirty years of freedom. Why, Doctor,the negro race, as a race, has enjoyed just as long a period of freedom as the Celts, the Latins, the Anglo-Saxons and the Slavs.
The black race in Africa was as free as the Indian race in North America.
During the thousand years in which the whites were painfully creating the civilization whichyounow enjoy,yourrace, in its native home, was doing pretty much the same things which the red race was doing in North America. Your people were running about in the woods, naked, eating raw meat, eternally at war—tribe with tribe—steeped in ignorance, vice and superstition, with an occasional lapse into human sacrifice and cannibalism.
Your race, as a race, is free now in Africa, as it has been since the dawn of history:—where is the civilization which it worked out for itself?It does not exist; it never did exist.
The negro has been absolutely unable to develop as a race when left to himself. Nowhere, at any time, has he developed a system of agriculture, or commerce, or manufactures, made headway in mining or engineering, or conceived a system of finance. Never has he produced a system of laws, institutions of state, religious organization, or worked out a political ideal. Never has he created a literature, or developed original capacity for the fine arts. His foot has never even crossed the threshold of the world of creative painting, sculpture, music, architecture Into the realms of science, in the domain of original thought, in the higher reaches of mental power where the human mind grapples with vast problems, material and spiritual, the problems of time and eternity, the negro has never entered. No word has ever fallen from his lips that was not the echo of what some white man had already said. He has sometimesput his foot in the white man’s track, but that is the best he has ever done.
Compare this imitative race with the great Latin stock—a stock from which sprang Rienzi and Garibaldi, Cavour and Napoleon, Da Vinci and Galileo, Savonarola and Leo the Tenth, Titian and Bellini, Raphael and Michelangelo.
The Latin race, whether in Spain, Italy or South America, has developed systems of agriculture, finance, commerce, manufactures, education, religion, government—has created literature, laws and institutions of state, has evidenced capacity in science and art.
The negroes superior to the Latins?
Heavens above!
During the thousand years which Doctor Washington says that the Latins have done less than the negroes have done in thirty, Spain rose into world-power, dominated the European Continent, shook England’s throne to its base, broke the Turkish scimiter in the great sea-fight of Lepanto, evolved a splendid literature, reached the highest development in the Fine Arts, launched Columbus upon his voyage into unknown seas to test the suggestion of another Latin—Toscanelli—and thus took the first daring step in that marvelous chapter of Discovery whose sober facts are grander and stranger than Romance.
Has the learned Doctor ever studied the history of Mexico—the Latin country south of us?
Since a foreign yoke was thrown off and Mexico “found herself,” what country has made nobler progress?
The negro in Santo Domingo has had a hundred years of freedom; Mexicoscarce half so many;yet compare the Mexico of today with the Santo Domingo of today.Left to themselves, the Latins of Mexico have built up a magnificent civilization.
Left to themselves, the negroes of Santo Domingo have destroyed what the French had already built.
In Mexico conditions get better, year after year.
In Santo Domingo conditions grow worse, year after year.
If the learned Doctor wants to make a study in contrasts, let him first read “Where Black Rules White,” by Hesketh Prichard, and then read “The Awakening of a Nation,” by Charles F. Lummis, and I venture to say that some of his cocky self-complacency as to the superiority of the negroes over the whites will ooze out of him.
As to Italy—can it be that Italy has done less in a thousand years than the negroes have done in thirty?
The greatest man that ever lived was of Italian extraction. Taine says that Napoleon was a true Italian in character and intellect. If that be true, thenthe two greatest men the world ever sawwere Latins. Wherever the civilized man lives today his environment, his thoughts, his ideals, his achievements are more or less influenced by the life and work of Cæsar and Napoleon.
If any two men may be said to have created the material modern world those two Latins did it.
If modern Europe is any one man, it is Napoleon. His laws, schools—social, political, financial, educational institutions—have wrung from rulers ever since the homage of imitation.
In literature how illustrious is Italy?
It was Petrarch who was “the Columbus of a new spiritual atmosphere, the discoverer of modern culture.”
It was he who broke away from monkish medievalism, created the humanistic impulse, treated “man as a rational being apart from theological determination,” modernizing literature.
The “short story” writers of fiction—Edgar Poe, Guy de Maupassant and Kipling—had their teacher in Boccaccio and hisnovella.
Modern history traces its methods, its spirit and its form to Villani, Guicciardini, and that wonderful type of Latin genius, Machiavelli.
The whole world goes to school to the Latins!
No painter hopes to excel Correggio, Paul Veronese, Antonio Allegro, Tintoretto, Velasquez, Murillo. No sculptor expects to eclipse Niccola Pisano, Orvieto, Orcagna or Luca della Robbia.
No worker in gold, silver and bronze believes he can surpass Ghiberti, Cellini and Donatello.
Architects the world over despair of rivaling Alberti, Bramante, Giulo Romano, Palladio.
These masters were masters to their own generation, four and five hundred years ago; they have been masters ever since; they are masters still.
Wherever civilization extends its frontiers these deathless Latins are in the van—teaching what Truth and Beauty are, refining the thoughts, elevating the ideals, improving the methods, inspiring the efforts of man.
The negroes have done more than this, and in thirty years?
You had forgotten the Renaissance, hadn’t you, Doctor?
Asia was decaying, Africa was in its normal state of savagery, Europe lay torpid under the weight of ignorance and superstition. Where learning existed at all its spirit was dull, its form heavy, its progress fettered by ancient canons and cumbrous vestments.
Suddenly the Angel of Light—her face a radiance, her presence an inspiration—puts a silver trumpet to her lips and blows, blows, till all the world of white men hears the thrilling notes.
And lo! there is a resurrection! What was best in the learning of the past becomes young again, and ministers to the minds of men.
Literature springs to life, throws off antiquated dress, and takes its graceful modern form. The fine arts flourish as never before; the canvas, the marble, the precious metal, feel the subtletouch of the eager artist, and give birth to beauty which is immortal. The heavy prison-castle of the Frank, the Goth, the Norman, the Anglo-Saxon, retires abashed before the elegant, airy, poetic palace of the Renaissance.
Nor does the revival of learning limit itself to literature, architecture, painting, sculpture. It extends to law, to commerce, to agriculture, to religion, to education.
Whence came the Renaissance, Doctor Washington? Whence came that mighty revival of intellectual splendor which still influences the world? From the Latin race, which you affect to despise. From these Italians whom you say are so inferior in development to the negro.
Italy led the modern world in almost everything which we call civilization—she is today one of the world’s most inspiring teachers, nor will her power for good be gone till the Christian religion is repudiated, the voice of music hushed, the wand of literature broken, the force of law defied, the witchery of art lost to the minds, the hearts and the souls of men.
And yet Doctor Washington asserts, to one audience after another, that those glorious achievements of the Latins, the Italians, these imperishable and ever potent achievements of a thousand years, are exceeded by what the negroes have done in thirty years!
From the Latin England took her religious organization, as Germany and Austria and France had done. Through the Latin the classic literature of Greece and earlier Rome came into the modern world—an eternal debt which we owe mainly to Petrarch.
The Bourbon kings imported from Italy the architects, painters, sculptors, landscape gardeners, who laid upon uncouth feudal France the rich mantle of Italian beauty.
It was the Latin who taught modern Europe how to farm, how to irrigate, how to engrave, how to make paper from rags, how to bridge the rivers, how to pave the streets, how to make canals.
Some of Shakespeare’s plays are elaborations and dramatizations of Italiannovellas. Chaucer, the father of English poetry, frankly copied from the Italian model.
Milton had Dante for pioneer, Spenser had Ariosto, and Byron’s best work is in the Italian form.
I presume, Doctor, that at this season of the year you are copying the style of the white man, and that you are wearing a straw hat.
Well, the Latins taught us how to make straw hats.
I presume that you recognize the value ofglass—one of whose hundreds of uses is to show you how you look.
Well, the Latin taught us how to make glass.
I presume you realize how much the modern world, during the last thousand years, has been indebted to the modern ship.
Well, the Latin taught the Anglo-Saxon how to build modern ships.
I presume you appreciate good rice, Doctor.
Well, the seed of the heavy upland rice which we have in this country was brought out of Italy in the pockets of Thomas Jefferson—gentleman-smuggler in that instance.
I presume you will wear pink silk undergarments this season as usual, won’t you, Doctor?
Well, the Latin taught modern Europe how to make and use silk.
And remember that the Latin took the clumsy musical instruments of the ancient world and fashioned them into the perfect forms of the present time; and that the Italians, whom you despise, had created the violin while your race was “rattling the bones” and gradually climbing toward the “cakewalk.”
What has the negro in these United States been doing for the last thirty years, Doctor?
Copying the white man.That’s all.
He has simply been imitating, as best he could, the dress, the talk, the manners, the methods, the work of the whites.
The Latin whitesoriginateda civilization; the negroes arecopyingone. Is there no difference between the higher genius which conceives and the lower talent which copies?
It required the genius of Raphael to conceive and paint “The Transfiguration.” Any ordinary artist can make a fair copy of it. But does anyone compare the copyist with the original artist? It required the genius of Sangallo and Michelangelo to rear St. Peter’s at Rome: any well-educated architect of today might rear its duplicate. But would that make the modern architect equal to the two Italian masters?
Ten thousand negro men and women may be able to sit down at the piano and render Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” but does that entitle the negroes to class themselves with the Italian composer?
My thought is this—the negro, assisted in every possible way by the whites, is copying the ways and learning the arts of the white man;but the fact that he can learn to read the white man’s book does not make him the equal of the white race which produced the book.The fact that he may learn from us how to practice law or medicine does not make him equal to the white race whichcreatedthe code of laws and the science of medicine. It may have required a thousand yearsfor us to learnthat which we canteach him in one year, but the point is that the negro, in his native home, had just as much time and opportunity to evolve a civilization as we had,and he did not do it.
Let me repeat to you, Doctor, the unvarnished truth—for it may do you good:
The advance made by your race in America isthe reflectionof the white man’s civilization. Just that and nothing more. The negro lives in the light of the white man’s civilization andreflects a part of that light.
He imitates an example kept before his eyes; copies models never out of his sight; echoes the words the white man utters; patterns after the manners and the methods of the whites around him, and thusreflectsour civilization.
He has originated nothing, and if the copy, the pattern, the example were taken away he would fall back as he did in Haiti.
He has never either evolved nor sustained a civilization of his own.
Fortunately for theAfro-American, he finds himself better situated than his brethren elsewhere. In Africa and Haititheyhave to scufflefor themselves. Result—barbarism.
In Americaheswells the ranks of civilization’s advancing army, and hehasto go forward. We not only support him with aid of all sorts, we not only give him daily precept and example, but wecompelhim to live a better life than he would live in Africa and Haiti. This compulsion is of two kinds, the fear of punishment and the hope of reward—thus enlisting two of the most powerful passions of the human being.
It should be significant to Doctor Washington that the only portion of his race which has ever made any development is that which has the vast advantage of being sustained, encouraged, taught, led andcoercedby the whites among whom they live.
Not long ago a negro preacher whose self-appreciation was as great as that of Doctor Washington went out to Liberia to subdue the heathen, in the home of the negro race.
The heathen were not subdued, but the preacher was. He threw off his store clothes, gave a whoop, gathered up an armful of wives and broke for the woods; the “Call of the Wild” was too much for his newly soldered civilization.
Now, I don’t mean to say that Doctor Washington would relapse, under similar circumstances; but when I hear him call his new raceAfro-Americansand listen while he soberly tells them thatthey are superior to the whites, I beg that he will remember his kin across the sea, his brethren in Santo Domingo, the decadents of Liberia, and the tens of thousands of his race here in this country who devoutly believe in witch doctors, in ghosts, in the conjure bag,and in the power of one negro to undo another by the mysterious but invincible “Trick.”
Remember this, Doctor, education is a good thing, butit never did, and never will, alter the essential character of a man or a race.
Of course, Doctor, if you think your race the equal of ours, you have the right to say it. It’s a free country, you know.
But, really, you ought not to “crowd the monkey” by putting in a claim for superiority.
Such a claim does your race no good.
Itmaydo them harm. It may cultivate a spirit of truculent self-assertion which even your warmest admirers, North and South, might find it hard to tolerate.
In the “History of Civilization,” Buckle says:
“Above all this, there is a far higher movement; and as the tide rolls on, now advancing, now receding, there is, amid its endless fluctuations, one thing, and one alone, which endures forever. The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralized by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movement of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal, they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggle of rival creeds and witness the decay of successive religions. Allthesehave their different measures and their different standards; one set of opinions for one age, another set for another.Theypass away like a dream; they are as a fabric of a vision, which leaves not a rack behind.The discoveries of genius alone remain: it is tothemwe owe all that we now have,theyare for all ages and for all times; never young, and never old,theybear the seeds of their own life, they flow on in a perennial and undying stream;theyare essentially cumulative, and giving birth to the additions which they subsequently receive,they thus influence the most distant posterity, and after the lapse of centuries produce more effect than they were able to do even at the moment of their promulgation.”
Noble lines!
And amid these “discoveries of genius” to which “we owe all that we now have,” bearing the seeds of intellectual life and improvement to “the most distant posterity” what treasures are richer than those which the Latin brings?
Architecture, Agriculture, Manufactures, Commerce, Civil Engineering, Finance, Legislation, Religious Organization, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Literature, Science, the wedding of the Fine Arts to Religion—in each and every one of these fieldshisgenius has been creative and masterful.
Upon our civilization the Latin has imposed, as an everlasting blessing, an imperishable Public Debt.
What does civilization owe to the negro?
Nothing!
Nothing!!
Nothing!!!
I am not one of those who believe that the Constitution of the United States is a flawless piece of workmanship.
It was not so considered by those who made it nor by those who adopted it. It never would have been ratified had it not been that amendments were promised and misrepresentation made as to the character of the instrument.
There has been a great deal of discussion recently about making a new Constitution or amending the old.
When the Constitution was adopteda government was createdof which the Constitution is the supreme law, andthis cannot be changed except in the manner prescribed in the instrument itself.
If two-thirds of the states composing the Union, acting through their legislatures, shall apply to Congress for “a Constitutional convention for proposingamendments,” and these amendments should be ratified by three-fourths of the states, then a practically new Constitution might be framed; but in no other legal way could the people alter the fundamental law.
Congress can take the initiative by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses, and can propose amendments which, if adopted by three-fourths of the states, would become a part of the Constitution; but it must occur to all that this method of effecting reform is slow and cumbrous to the last degree.
The framers of the Constitution meant that it should be so.
In a very able article in the last number of this magazine Mr. Frederick Upham Adams discusses the necessity for amendments to the Constitution.
He cites four changes that should be made.
First.—The election of President and Vice-President should not be decided by a majority of the states, but by a majority of the people.
Second.—United States Senators should not be elected by legislatures, but by direct vote of the people of the states.
Third.—The states should be represented in the Senate according to population.
Fourth.—The powers and functions of the Federal Judiciary should be enumerated and limited.
I heartily concur with Mr. Adams in his view of the Federal Judiciary. It has usurped functions and powers unprecedented in the history of judicial tribunals.
In order to change the character of the government at Athens from an aristocracy to a democracy Solon gave the people control of the courts, whichexercised the supreme power over laws and men. Aristotle says that by this method the people established a democracy where there had previously been an aristocracy. The aristocrat controlled the lawmaking power, but as the people controlled the judiciary a pure democracy resulted.
Alexander Hamilton used the same devicefor the opposite purpose. He took away from the people and put into the hands of the aristocracythe supreme control over our laws and rulers, and our judiciary, thus controlled, has changed the United States, which under the old Confederation was a democracy, into an aristocracy.
It will require a Constitutional amendment to drive the usurpers from the high place in which they are entrenched, but such an amendment cannot possibly be passed through theUpper House of Congressand through theUpper Houses of three-fourths of the statesuntil a tremendous revolution shall have taken place in public sentiment.
If we should attempt to curtail the powers of the Federal Judges by Constitutional amendment we should surely find “Jordan a hard road to travel.” Most of us would be dead and forgotten before the purpose could be reached by that route.
What, then, can be done?
The swiftest remedy for the evil lies in the election of a President who willassert his Executive Authority.
The very essence of our system of government is theBalance of Power. The Legislative function should not encroach upon the Judicial; the Executive should not invade the Legislative, and the Judicial should not usurp prerogatives belonging to the other two.
Inherent in each of these three departments of government lies the power of self-defense.
Just as the Government, as a whole, has the inherent, inalienable right of self-preservation against external or internal attack, so each of the three separate departments of the Government has the inherent right of self-preservation as against an attack from either one or both of the other two.
When John Marshall made the attempt to encroach upon the Executive, during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, the President treated the Court with contempt, and the Court was powerless to go forward. Whenthe same partisan Judge made a decision against the state of Georgia, which President Andrew Jackson considered unjust, the Executive refused to support the Judiciary, and the decision came to naught.
When Chief-Justice Taney, during President Lincoln’s administration, encroached, as the President thought, upon the Executive, the Judiciary again came to grief.
Had Mr. Cleveland been at heart in favor of the Income tax of 1893, the Supreme Court would never have dared to pronounce against it.
That law was based upon a principle which the Supreme Court had indorsed for a hundred years, and the first deliverance of the Judges upon the act of 1893 was favorable to it.
That act was the outcome of the work of the Legislative department acting within the scope of its authority. The Executive department had sanctioned the act, and it had become LAW.
Had Cleveland boldly announced his purpose toexecute that law, by virtue of his inherent power as Chief Executive, the Supreme Court would never have made the second decision, which was a national scandal.
By that decision the accumulated wealth of the millionaires is exempted from taxation—relieved of the duty of contributing to the support of the Government by whose unjust laws those millions were accumulated.
But let the people really get in power; let them really elect a President; let them place in authority another Andrew Jackson, who isn’t afraid to show his friendship for the common man and his animosity to the greedy corporation—thenyou will see the Supreme Court draw in its horns.
Federal Judges are human like the rest of us, and they know with considerable accuracy which side their bread is buttered on.
Get the right sort of man in the Executive Chair, get the right sort of men in Congress, create the right sort of public opinion, and I venture the prediction that the Federal Judiciary will not attempt the role of Dame Partington without meeting with the same luck.
I agree with Mr. Adams also that Senators should be elected by the direct vote of the people in each state, but he is perhaps in error when he says that the system of electing Senators by state legislatures is “the fountain head of the corruption of American politics.”
On the contrary, there never could have been a corrupt Senate until there was a corrupt Legislature. When New Jersey sent to the Senate a man like Jim Smith the Legislature of New Jersey had already become corrupt. When Pennsylvania sent to the Senate a man like Quay the Legislature of Pennsylvania had already become corrupt. Standard Oil had to buy the Ohio Legislature before Henry B. Payne became United States Senator.
In other words, the corrupt Senator is simply the fruit of the tree of legislative corruption, and the corrupt Legislature has been too often the result of corrupt elections.
We might as well tell the truth, and the whole truth, while we are discussing the question.Every one of us knows that elections of almost every sort, from the highest to the lowest—town, county, state and national—have been influenced by money and whisky, fraudulent practices of all sorts, the stuffed ballot-box, the doctored returns, and the God’s truth about the matter is that the people themselves are, to a large extent, responsible for the kind of men who get into the Legislature, into the House of Representatives and into the Senate.
Too many of our honest men have shirked election duty, as they have shirked jury duty; and just as ignorant or corrupt juries too often decide questions in the court house, so the ignorant or corrupt voters—pliant tools in the hands of unscrupulous politicians—decide questions of legislation which require the best thought and the best energies of our most intelligent and upright citizens.
If direct legislation and the Recall should be put in practice, there couldnot be such things as corrupt legislatures, and therefore there would be no such thing as corrupt senatorial elections.
The fountain having been purified, the stream would be pure. At present the fountain itself is too often impure, and therefore the stream which flows from it cannot be pure.
On the other two points made by Mr. Adams there will be greater difference of opinion. His objections proceed upon the assumption that the United States is a nation with a government national in all particulars. Here he is at fault.
Our Government is only partially national. It is Federal, also, in part. It is not altogether the one nor altogether the other.
Ours is a peculiar system. To the foreign world we present the aspect of a sovereign nation. Among ourselves we are a collection of sovereign states which, for purposes stated in the preamble of the Constitution, have delegated to the central Government a portion of those powers which once belonged entirely to those sovereign states.
The state government existed before the Federal Government came into being. If the Federal Government were abolished tomorrow, each one of the states would still remain a sovereign state capable of conducting government.
The state of Connecticut, for instance, was an independent republic when there was no such thing as the United States.
Would Connecticut ever have gone into an “indissoluble union” if she had not been assured that this union was to be composed of “indestructible states”? The two propositions are linked together in Constitutional law.
Among sovereigns all are, in law, equal, and each one of these states was sovereign at the time the union of states was formed.
Would either of those independent sovereign states have accepted a place of inferiority in the Government? Assuredly not.
Then how is the indestructibility of the states guaranteed in the Constitution? By giving the state, as a state, its full power in the United States Senate, and, in a smaller degree, in the election of Chief Magistrate.
The Constitution itself was modeled by delegates chosen, not by citizens of the United States,acting as individuals composing the entire nation, but by voters acting ascitizens composing distinct and independent states to which they respectively belonged. When the completed Constitution was referred back to the people for adoption, it was not acted upon by them as citizens of the entire nation, but it was ratified by each state, acting as a state, separate and distinct from every other state.Therefore the Constitution itself is the result, not of a national, but of a Federal act.
Mr. Madison himself took this ground inThe Federalist. The facts all prove it.
In the exercise of its legislative powers the Federal Government is both national and Federal. The House of Representatives is a national body, because it is composed of members chosen according to population. The Senate is a Federal body, because it is chosen by the states, acting as states.
The executive department of our Government also combines in itself both the national and the Federal features.
The Electoral College is composed of two messengers from each state, and also of messengers equal in number to the members which the state has in the House of Representatives.
The two messengers first mentioned correspond with the two Senators, and therefore represent the state in its Federal capacity. The other messengers correspond with the Representatives of the state in the Lower House, and as the Lower House is national, so those messengers are national.
If the people fail to elect a President, and the election is thrown into the House of Representatives,this House, which in its organization as a legislative body is national, at once becomes Federal,because each state has one vote, and the voice of Ohio or Pennsylvania is not more potent than that of Rhode Island or Delaware.
It is only when our Government comes to put its laws into operation that it is purely national.
It is not strictly correct, politically or legally, to say that the United States is a nation, for a nation does not properly exist when the Government is one of limited power. That our Government is one of limited power, absolute only within the sphere of action granted to it by the states, cannot be denied. While secession has been forever decided as not being among the reserved rights of the states, there are very many other reserved rights which still belong to the states, and which always should be retained.
As the WashingtonPostremarked some time since: “The United States has not a single voter, and does not hold elections for any office.All elections are state elections.”
Already there has been too much concentration of power in the central Government. To take away from the states their power of selecting Senators would be nothing short of revolution, and would lead to such a consolidation of power as would entirely change the form and spirit of our Government.