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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Revolution and Other Essays, by Jack London
+(#110 in our series by Jack London)
+
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+Title: Revolution and Other Essays
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4953]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 3, 2002]
+[Most recently updated: April 3, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, REVOLUTION AND OTHER ESSAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1910 Mills and Boon edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk.
+
+
+
+
+REVOLUTION AND OTHER ESSAYS
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+   Revolution
+   The Somnambulists
+   The Dignity of Dollars
+   Goliah
+   The Golden Poppy
+   The Shrinkage of the Planet
+   The House Beautiful
+   The Gold Hunters of the North
+   Foma Gordyeeff
+   These Bones shall Rise Again
+   The Other Animals
+   The Yellow Peril
+   What Life Means to Me
+
+
+
+
+REVOLUTION
+
+
+
+"The present is enough for common souls,
+Who, never looking forward, are indeed
+Mere clay, wherein the footprints of their age
+Are petrified for ever."
+
+I received a letter the other day.  It was from a man in Arizona.  It
+began, "Dear Comrade."  It ended, "Yours for the Revolution."  I
+replied to the letter, and my letter began, "Dear Comrade."  It
+ended, "Yours for the Revolution."  In the United States there are
+400,000 men, of men and women nearly 1,000,000, who begin their
+letters "Dear Comrade," and end them "Yours for the Revolution."  In
+Germany there are 3,000,000 men who begin their letters "Dear
+Comrade" and end them "Yours for the Revolution"; in France,
+1,000,000 men; in Austria, 800,000 men; in Belgium, 300,000 men; in
+Italy, 250,000 men; in England, 100,000 men; in Switzerland, 100,000
+men; in Denmark, 55,000 men; in Sweden, 50,000 men; in Holland,
+40,000 men; in Spain, 30,000 men--comrades all, and revolutionists.
+
+These are numbers which dwarf the grand armies of Napoleon and
+Xerxes.  But they are numbers not of conquest and maintenance of the
+established order, but of conquest and revolution.  They compose,
+when the roll is called, an army of 7,000,000 men, who, in accordance
+with the conditions of to-day, are fighting with all their might for
+the conquest of the wealth of the world and for the complete
+overthrow of existing society.
+
+There has never been anything like this revolution in the history of
+the world.  There is nothing analogous between it and the American
+Revolution or the French Revolution.  It is unique, colossal.  Other
+revolutions compare with it as asteroids compare with the sun.  It is
+alone of its kind, the first world-revolution in a world whose
+history is replete with revolutions.  And not only this, for it is
+the first organized movement of men to become a world movement,
+limited only by the limits of the planet.
+
+This revolution is unlike all other revolutions in many respects.  It
+is not sporadic.  It is not a flame of popular discontent, arising in
+a day and dying down in a day.  It is older than the present
+generation.  It has a history and traditions, and a martyr-roll only
+less extensive possibly than the martyr-roll of Christianity.  It has
+also a literature a myriad times more imposing, scientific, and
+scholarly than the literature of any previous revolution.
+
+They call themselves "comrades," these men, comrades in the socialist
+revolution.  Nor is the word empty and meaningless, coined of mere
+lip service.  It knits men together as brothers, as men should be
+knit together who stand shoulder to shoulder under the red banner of
+revolt.  This red banner, by the way, symbolizes the brotherhood of
+man, and does not symbolize the incendiarism that instantly connects
+itself with the red banner in the affrighted bourgeois mind.  The
+comradeship of the revolutionists is alive and warm.  It passes over
+geographical lines, transcends race prejudice, and has even proved
+itself mightier than the Fourth of July, spread-eagle Americanism of
+our forefathers.  The French socialist working-men and the German
+socialist working-men forget Alsace and Lorraine, and, when war
+threatens, pass resolutions declaring that as working-men and
+comrades they have no quarrel with each other.  Only the other day,
+when Japan and Russia sprang at each other's throats, the
+revolutionists of Japan addressed the following message to the
+revolutionists of Russia:  "Dear Comrades--Your government and ours
+have recently plunged into war to carry out their imperialistic
+tendencies, but for us socialists there are no boundaries, race,
+country, or nationality.  We are comrades, brothers, and sisters, and
+have no reason to fight.  Your enemies are not the Japanese people,
+but our militarism and so-called patriotism.  Patriotism and
+militarism are our mutual enemies."
+
+In January 1905, throughout the United States the socialists held
+mass-meetings to express their sympathy for their struggling
+comrades, the revolutionists of Russia, and, more to the point, to
+furnish the sinews of war by collecting money and cabling it to the
+Russian leaders.  The fact of this call for money, and the ready
+response, and the very wording of the call, make a striking and
+practical demonstration of the international solidarity of this
+world-revolution:
+
+"Whatever may be the immediate results of the present revolt in
+Russia, the socialist propaganda in that country has received from it
+an impetus unparalleled in the history of modern class wars.  The
+heroic battle for freedom is being fought almost exclusively by the
+Russian working-class under the intellectual leadership of Russian
+socialists, thus once more demonstrating the fact that the class-
+conscious working-men have become the vanguard of all liberating
+movements of modern times."
+
+Here are 7,000,000 comrades in an organized, international, world-
+wide, revolutionary movement.  Here is a tremendous human force.  It
+must be reckoned with.  Here is power.  And here is romance--romance
+so colossal that it seems to be beyond the ken of ordinary mortals.
+These revolutionists are swayed by great passion.  They have a keen
+sense of personal right, much of reverence for humanity, but little
+reverence, if any at all, for the rule of the dead.  They refuse to
+be ruled by the dead.  To the bourgeois mind their unbelief in the
+dominant conventions of the established order is startling.  They
+laugh to scorn the sweet ideals and dear moralities of bourgeois
+society.  They intend to destroy bourgeois society with most of its
+sweet ideals and dear moralities, and chiefest among these are those
+that group themselves under such heads as private ownership of
+capital, survival of the fittest, and patriotism--even patriotism.
+
+Such an army of revolution, 7,000,000 strong, is a thing to make
+rulers and ruling classes pause and consider.  The cry of this army
+is, "No quarter!  We want all that you possess.  We will be content
+with nothing less than all that you possess.  We want in our hands
+the reins of power and the destiny of mankind.  Here are our hands.
+They are strong hands.  We are going to take your governments, your
+palaces, and all your purpled ease away from you, and in that day you
+shall work for your bread even as the peasant in the field or the
+starved and runty clerk in your metropolises.  Here are our hands.
+They are strong hands."
+
+Well may rulers and ruling classes pause and consider.  This is
+revolution.  And, further, these 7,000,000 men are not an army on
+paper.  Their fighting strength in the field is 7,000,000.  To-day
+they cast 7,000,000 votes in the civilized countries of the world.
+
+Yesterday they were not so strong.  Tomorrow they will be still
+stronger.  And they are fighters.  They love peace.  They are
+unafraid of war.  They intend nothing less than to destroy existing
+capitalist society and to take possession of the whole world.  If the
+law of the land permits, they fight for this end peaceably, at the
+ballot-box.  If the law of the land does not permit, and if they have
+force meted out to them, they resort to force themselves.  They meet
+violence with violence.  Their hands are strong and they are
+unafraid.  In Russia, for instance, there is no suffrage.  The
+government executes the revolutionists.  The revolutionists kill the
+officers of the government.  The revolutionists meet legal murder
+with assassination.
+
+Now here arises a particularly significant phase which it would be
+well for the rulers to consider.  Let me make it concrete.  I am a
+revolutionist.  Yet I am a fairly sane and normal individual.  I
+speak, and I THINK, of these assassins in Russia as "my comrades."
+So do all the comrades in America, and all the 7,000,000 comrades in
+the world.  Of what worth an organized, international, revolutionary
+movement if our comrades are not backed up the world over!  The worth
+is shown by the fact that we do back up the assassinations by our
+comrades in Russia.  They are not disciples of Tolstoy, nor are we.
+We are revolutionists.
+
+Our comrades in Russia have formed what they call "The Fighting
+Organization."  This Fighting Organization accused, tried, found
+guilty, and condemned to death, one Sipiaguin, Minister of Interior.
+On April 2 he was shot and killed in the Maryinsky Palace.  Two years
+later the Fighting Organization condemned to death and executed
+another Minister of Interior, Von Plehve.  Having done so, it issued
+a document, dated July 29, 1904, setting forth the counts of its
+indictment of Von Plehve and its responsibility for the
+assassination.  Now, and to the point, this document was sent out to
+the socialists of the world, and by them was published everywhere in
+the magazines and newspapers.  The point is, not that the socialists
+of the world were unafraid to do it, not that they dared to do it,
+but that they did it as a matter of routine, giving publication to
+what may be called an official document of the international
+revolutionary movement.
+
+These are high lights upon the revolution--granted, but they are also
+facts.  And they are given to the rulers and the ruling classes, not
+in bravado, not to frighten them, but for them to consider more
+deeply the spirit and nature of this world-revolution.  The time has
+come for the revolution to demand consideration.  It has fastened
+upon every civilized country in the world.  As fast as a country
+becomes civilized, the revolution fastens upon it.  With the
+introduction of the machine into Japan, socialism was introduced.
+Socialism marched into the Philippines shoulder to shoulder with the
+American soldiers.  The echoes of the last gun had scarcely died away
+when socialist locals were forming in Cuba and Porto Rico.  Vastly
+more significant is the fact that of all the countries the revolution
+has fastened upon, on not one has it relaxed its grip.  On the
+contrary, on every country its grip closes tighter year by year.  As
+an active movement it began obscurely over a generation ago.  In
+1867, its voting strength in the world was 30,000.  By 1871 its vote
+had increased to 1,000,000.  Not till 1884 did it pass the half-
+million point.  By 1889 it had passed the million point, it had then
+gained momentum.  In 1892 the socialist vote of the world was
+1,798,391; in 1893, 2,585,898; in 1895, 3,033,718; in 1898,
+4,515,591; in 1902, 5,253,054; in 1903, 6,285,374; and in the year of
+our Lord 1905 it passed the seven-million mark.
+
+Nor has this flame of revolution left the United States untouched.
+In 1888 there were only 2,068 socialist votes.  In 1902 there were
+127,713 socialist votes.  And in 1904 435,040 socialist votes were
+cast.  What fanned this flame?  Not hard times.  The first four years
+of the twentieth century were considered prosperous years, yet in
+that time more than 300,000 men added themselves to the ranks of the
+revolutionists, flinging their defiance in the teeth of bourgeois
+society and taking their stand under the blood-red banner.  In the
+state of the writer, California, one man in twelve is an avowed and
+registered revolutionist.
+
+One thing must be clearly understood.  This is no spontaneous and
+vague uprising of a large mass of discontented and miserable people--
+a blind and instinctive recoil from hurt.  On the contrary, the
+propaganda is intellectual; the movement is based upon economic
+necessity and is in line with social evolution; while the miserable
+people have not yet revolted.  The revolutionist is no starved and
+diseased slave in the shambles at the bottom of the social pit, but
+is, in the main, a hearty, well-fed working-man, who sees the
+shambles waiting for him and his children and recoils from the
+descent.  The very miserable people are too helpless to help
+themselves.  But they are being helped, and the day is not far
+distant when their numbers will go to swell the ranks of the
+revolutionists.
+
+Another thing must be clearly understood.  In spite of the fact that
+middle-class men and professional men are interested in the movement,
+it is nevertheless a distinctly working-class revolt.  The world
+over, it is a working-class revolt.  The workers of the world, as a
+class, are fighting the capitalists of the world, as a class.  The
+so-called great middle class is a growing anomaly in the social
+struggle.  It is a perishing class (wily statisticians to the
+contrary), and its historic mission of buffer between the capitalist
+and working-classes has just about been fulfilled.  Little remains
+for it but to wail as it passes into oblivion, as it has already
+begun to wail in accents Populistic and Jeffersonian-Democratic.  The
+fight is on.  The revolution is here now, and it is the world's
+workers that are in revolt.
+
+Naturally the question arises:  Why is this so?  No mere whim of the
+spirit can give rise to a world-revolution.  Whim does not conduce to
+unanimity.  There must be a deep-seated cause to make 7,000,000 men
+of the one mind, to make them cast off allegiance to the bourgeois
+gods and lose faith in so fine a thing as patriotism.  There are many
+counts of the indictment which the revolutionists bring against the
+capitalist class, but for present use only one need be stated, and it
+is a count to which capital has never replied and can never reply.
+
+The capitalist class has managed society, and its management has
+failed.  And not only has it failed in its management, but it has
+failed deplorably, ignobly, horribly.  The capitalist class had an
+opportunity such as was vouchsafed no previous ruling class in the
+history of the world.  It broke away from the rule of the old feudal
+aristocracy and made modern society.  It mastered matter, organized
+the machinery of life, and made possible a wonderful era for mankind,
+wherein no creature should cry aloud because it had not enough to
+eat, and wherein for every child there would be opportunity for
+education, for intellectual and spiritual uplift.  Matter being
+mastered, and the machinery of life organized, all this was possible.
+Here was the chance, God-given, and the capitalist class failed.  It
+was blind and greedy.  It prattled sweet ideals and dear moralities,
+rubbed its eyes not once, nor ceased one whit in its greediness, and
+smashed down in a failure as tremendous only as was the opportunity
+it had ignored.
+
+But all this is like so much cobwebs to the bourgeois mind.  As it
+was blind in the past, it is blind now and cannot see nor understand.
+Well, then, let the indictment be stated more definitely, in terms
+sharp and unmistakable.  In the first place, consider the caveman.
+He was a very simple creature.  His head slanted back like an orang-
+outang's, and he had but little more intelligence.  He lived in a
+hostile environment, the prey of all manner of fierce life.  He had
+no inventions nor artifices.  His natural efficiency for food-getting
+was, say, 1.  He did not even till the soil.  With his natural
+efficiency of 1, he fought off his carnivorous enemies and got
+himself food and shelter.  He must have done all this, else he would
+not have multiplied and spread over the earth and sent his progeny
+down, generation by generation, to become even you and me.
+
+The caveman, with his natural efficiency of 1, got enough to eat most
+of the time, and no caveman went hungry all the time.  Also, he lived
+a healthy, open-air life, loafed and rested himself, and found plenty
+of time in which to exercise his imagination and invent gods.  That
+is to say, he did not have to work all his waking moments in order to
+get enough to eat.  The child of the caveman (and this is true of the
+children of all savage peoples) had a childhood, and by that is meant
+a happy childhood of play and development.
+
+And now, how fares modern man?  Consider the United States, the most
+prosperous and most enlightened country of the world.  In the United
+States there are 10,000,000 people living in poverty.  By poverty is
+meant that condition in life in which, through lack of food and
+adequate shelter, the mere standard of working efficiency cannot be
+maintained.  In the United States there are 10,000,000 people who
+have not enough to eat.  In the United States, because they have not
+enough to eat, there are 10,000,000 people who cannot keep the
+ordinary 1 measure of strength in their bodies.  This means that
+these 10,000,000 people are perishing, are dying, body and soul,
+slowly, because they have not enough to eat.  All over this broad,
+prosperous, enlightened land, are men, women, and children who are
+living miserably.  In all the great cities, where they are segregated
+in slum ghettos by hundreds of thousands and by millions, their
+misery becomes beastliness.  No caveman ever starved as chronically
+as they starve, ever slept as vilely as they sleep, ever festered
+with rottenness and disease as they fester, nor ever toiled as hard
+and for as long hours as they toil.
+
+In Chicago there is a woman who toiled sixty hours per week.  She was
+a garment worker.  She sewed buttons on clothes.  Among the Italian
+garment workers of Chicago, the average weekly wage of the
+dressmakers is 90 cents, but they work every week in the year.  The
+average weekly wage of the pants finishers is $1.31, and the average
+number of weeks employed in the year is 27.85.  The average yearly
+earnings of the dressmakers is $37; of the pants finishers, $42.4l.
+Such wages means no childhood for the children, beastliness of
+living, and starvation for all.
+
+Unlike the caveman, modern man cannot get food and shelter whenever
+he feels like working for it.  Modern man has first to find the work,
+and in this he is often unsuccessful.  Then misery becomes acute.
+This acute misery is chronicled daily in the newspapers.  Let several
+of the countless instances be cited.
+
+In New York City lived a woman, Mary Mead.  She had three children:
+Mary, one year old; Johanna, two years old; Alice, four years old.
+Her husband could find no work.  They starved.  They were evicted
+from their shelter at 160 Steuben Street.  Mary Mead strangled her
+baby, Mary, one year old; strangled Alice, four years old; failed to
+strangle Johanna, two years old, and then herself took poison.  Said
+the father to the police:  "Constant poverty had driven my wife
+insane.  We lived at No. 160 Steuben Street until a week ago, when we
+were dispossessed.  I could get no work.  I could not even make
+enough to put food into our mouths.  The babies grew ill and weak.
+My wife cried nearly all the time."
+
+"So overwhelmed is the Department of Charities with tens of thousands
+of applications from men out of work that it finds itself unable to
+cope with the situation."--New York Commercial, January 11, 1905.
+
+In a daily paper, because he cannot get work in order to get
+something to eat, modern man advertises as follows:
+
+"Young man, good education, unable to obtain employment, will sell to
+physician and bacteriologist for experimental purposes all right and
+title to his body.  Address for price, box 3466, Examiner."
+
+"Frank A. Mallin went to the central police station Wednesday night
+and asked to be locked up on a charge of vagrancy.  He said he had
+been conducting an unsuccessful search for work for so long that he
+was sure he must be a vagrant.  In any event, he was so hungry he
+must be fed.  Police Judge Graham sentenced him to ninety days'
+imprisonment."--San Francisco Examiner.
+
+In a room at the Soto House, 32 Fourth Street, San Francisco, was
+found the body of W. G. Robbins.  He had turned on the gas.  Also was
+found his diary, from which the following extracts are made
+
+"March 3.--No chance of getting anything here.  What will I do?
+
+"March 7.--Cannot find anything yet.
+
+"March 8.--Am living on doughnuts at five cents a day.
+
+"March 9.--My last quarter gone for room rent.
+
+"March 10.--God help me.  Have only five cents left.  Can get nothing
+to do.  What next?  Starvation or--?  I have spent my last nickel to-
+night.  What shall I do?  Shall it be steal, beg, or die?  I have
+never stolen, begged, or starved in all my fifty years of life, but
+now I am on the brink--death seems the only refuge.
+
+"March 11.--Sick all day--burning fever this afternoon.  Had nothing
+to eat to-day or since yesterday noon.  My head, my head.  Good-bye,
+all."
+
+How fares the child of modern man in this most prosperous of lands?
+In the city of New York 50,000 children go hungry to school every
+morning.  From the same city on January 12, a press despatch was sent
+out over the country of a case reported by Dr. A. E. Daniel, of the
+New York Infirmary for Women and Children.  The case was that of a
+babe, eighteen months old, who earned by its labour fifty cents per
+week in a tenement sweat-shop.
+
+"On a pile of rags in a room bare of furniture and freezing cold,
+Mrs. Mary Gallin, dead from starvation, with an emaciated baby four
+months old crying at her breast, was found this morning at 513 Myrtle
+Avenue, Brooklyn, by Policeman McConnon of the Flushing Avenue
+Station.  Huddled together for warmth in another part of the room
+were the father, James Gallin, and three children ranging from two to
+eight years of age.  The children gazed at the policeman much as
+ravenous animals might have done.  They were famished, and there was
+not a vestige of food in their comfortless home."--New York Journal,
+January 2, 1902.
+
+In the United States 80,000 children are toiling out their lives in
+the textile mills alone.  In the South they work twelve-hour shifts.
+They never see the day.  Those on the night shift are asleep when the
+sun pours its life and warmth over the world, while those on the day
+shift are at the machines before dawn and return to their miserable
+dens, called "homes," after dark.  Many receive no more than ten
+cents a day.  There are babies who work for five and six cents a day.
+Those who work on the night shift are often kept awake by having cold
+water dashed in their faces.  There are children six years of age who
+have already to their credit eleven months' work on the night shift.
+When they become sick, and are unable to rise from their beds to go
+to work, there are men employed to go on horseback from house to
+house, and cajole and bully them into arising and going to work.  Ten
+per cent of them contract active consumption.  All are puny wrecks,
+distorted, stunted, mind and body.  Elbert Hubbard says of the child-
+labourers of the Southern cotton-mills:
+
+"I thought to lift one of the little toilers to ascertain his weight.
+Straightaway through his thirty-five pounds of skin and bones there
+ran a tremor of fear, and he struggled forward to tie a broken
+thread.  I attracted his attention by a touch, and offered him a
+silver dime.  He looked at me dumbly from a face that might have
+belonged to a man of sixty, so furrowed, tightly drawn, and full of
+pain it was.  He did not reach for the money--he did not know what it
+was.  There were dozens of such children in this particular mill.  A
+physician who was with me said that they would all be dead probably
+in two years, and their places filled by others--there were plenty
+more.  Pneumonia carries off most of them.  Their systems are ripe
+for disease, and when it comes there is no rebound--no response.
+Medicine simply does not act--nature is whipped, beaten, discouraged,
+and the child sinks into a stupor and dies."
+
+So fares modern man and the child of modern man in the United States,
+most prosperous and enlightened of all countries on earth.  It must
+be remembered that the instances given are instances only, but they
+can be multiplied myriads of times.  It must also be remembered that
+what is true of the United States is true of all the civilized world.
+Such misery was not true of the caveman.  Then what has happened?
+Has the hostile environment of the caveman grown more hostile for his
+descendants?  Has the caveman's natural efficiency of 1 for food-
+getting and shelter-getting diminished in modern man to one-half or
+one-quarter?
+
+On the contrary, the hostile environment of the caveman has been
+destroyed.  For modern man it no longer exists.  All carnivorous
+enemies, the daily menace of the younger world, have been killed off.
+Many of the species of prey have become extinct.  Here and there, in
+secluded portions of the world, still linger a few of man's fiercer
+enemies.  But they are far from being a menace to mankind.  Modern
+man, when he wants recreation and change, goes to the secluded
+portions of the world for a hunt.  Also, in idle moments, he wails
+regretfully at the passing of the "big game," which he knows in the
+not distant future will disappear from the earth.
+
+Nor since the day of the caveman has man's efficiency for food-
+getting and shelter-getting diminished.  It has increased a
+thousandfold.  Since the day of the caveman, matter has been
+mastered.  The secrets of matter have been discovered.  Its laws have
+been formulated.  Wonderful artifices have been made, and marvellous
+inventions, all tending to increase tremendously man's natural
+efficiency of in every food-getting, shelter-getting exertion, in
+farming, mining, manufacturing, transportation, and communication.
+
+From the caveman to the hand-workers of three generations ago, the
+increase in efficiency for food- and shelter-getting has been very
+great.  But in this day, by machinery, the efficiency of the hand-
+worker of three generations ago has in turn been increased many
+times.  Formerly it required 200 hours of human labour to place 100
+tons of ore on a railroad car.  To-day, aided by machinery, but two
+hours of human labour is required to do the same task.  The United
+States Bureau of Labour is responsible for the following table,
+showing the comparatively recent increase in man's food- and shelter-
+getting efficiency:
+
+                                         Machine    Hand
+                                         Hours      Hours
+Barley (100 bushels)                             9   211
+Corn (50 bushels shelled, stalks, husks and
+          blades cut into fodder)               34   228
+Oats (160 bushels)                              28   265
+Wheat (50 bushels)                               7   160
+Loading ore (loading 100 tons iron ore on cars)  2   200
+Unloading coal (transferring 200 tons from
+       canal-boats to bins 400 feet distant)    20   240
+Pitchforks (50 pitchforks, 12-inch tines)       12   200
+Plough (one landside plough, oak beams and
+        handles)                                 3   118
+
+According to the same authority, under the best conditions for
+organization in farming, labour can produce 20 bushels of wheat for
+66 cents, or 1 bushel for 3.5 cents.  This was done on a bonanza farm
+of 10,000 acres in California, and was the average cost of the whole
+product of the farm.  Mr. Carroll D. Wright says that to-day
+4,500,000 men, aided by machinery, turn out a product that would
+require the labour of 40,000,000 men if produced by hand.  Professor
+Herzog, of Austria, says that 5,000,000 people with the machinery of
+to-day, employed at socially useful labour, would be able to supply a
+population of 20,000,000 people with all the necessaries and small
+luxuries of life by working 1.5 hours per day.
+
+This being so, matter being mastered, man's efficiency for food- and
+shelter-getting being increased a thousandfold over the efficiency of
+the caveman, then why is it that millions of modern men live more
+miserably than lived the caveman?  This is the question the
+revolutionist asks, and he asks it of the managing class, the
+capitalist class.  The capitalist class does not answer it.  The
+capitalist class cannot answer it.
+
+If modern man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency is a
+thousandfold greater than that of the caveman, why, then, are there
+10,000,000 people in the United States to-day who are not properly
+sheltered and properly fed?  If the child of the caveman did not have
+to work, why, then, to-day, in the United States, are 80,000 children
+working out their lives in the textile factories alone?  If the child
+of the caveman did not have to work, why, then, to-day, in the United
+States, are there 1,752,187 child-labourers?
+
+It is a true count in the indictment.  The capitalist class has
+mismanaged, is to-day mismanaging.  In New York City 50,000 children
+go hungry to school, and in New York City there are 1,320
+millionaires.  The point, however, is not that the mass of mankind is
+miserable because of the wealth the capitalist class has taken to
+itself.  Far from it.  The point really is that the mass of mankind
+is miserable, not for want of the wealth taken by the capitalist
+class, BUT FOR WANT OF THE WEALTH THAT WAS NEVER CREATED.  This
+wealth was never created because the capitalist class managed too
+wastefully and irrationally.  The capitalist class, blind and greedy,
+grasping madly, has not only not made the best of its management, but
+made the worst of it.  It is a management prodigiously wasteful.
+This point cannot be emphasized too strongly.
+
+In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the
+caveman, and that modern man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency
+is a thousandfold greater than the caveman's, no other solution is
+possible than that the management is prodigiously wasteful.
+
+With the natural resources of the world, the machinery already
+invented, a rational organization of production and distribution, and
+an equally rational elimination of waste, the able-bodied workers
+would not have to labour more than two or three hours per day to feed
+everybody, clothe everybody, house everybody, educate everybody, and
+give a fair measure of little luxuries to everybody.  There would be
+no more material want and wretchedness, no more children toiling out
+their lives, no more men and women and babes living like beasts and
+dying like beasts.  Not only would matter be mastered, but the
+machine would be mastered.  In such a day incentive would be finer
+and nobler than the incentive of to-day, which is the incentive of
+the stomach.  No man, woman, or child, would be impelled to action by
+an empty stomach.  On the contrary, they would be impelled to action
+as a child in a spelling match is impelled to action, as boys and
+girls at games, as scientists formulating law, as inventors applying
+law, as artists and sculptors painting canvases and shaping clay, as
+poets and statesmen serving humanity by singing and by statecraft.
+The spiritual, intellectual, and artistic uplift consequent upon such
+a condition of society would be tremendous.  All the human world
+would surge upward in a mighty wave.
+
+This was the opportunity vouchsafed the capitalist class.  Less
+blindness on its part, less greediness, and a rational management,
+were all that was necessary.  A wonderful era was possible for the
+human race.  But the capitalist class failed.  It made a shambles of
+civilization.  Nor can the capitalist class plead not guilty.  It
+knew of the opportunity.  Its wise men told of the opportunity, its
+scholars and its scientists told it of the opportunity.  All that
+they said is there to-day in the books, just so much damning evidence
+against it.  It would not listen.  It was too greedy.  It rose up (as
+it rises up to-day), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and
+declared that profits were impossible without the toil of children
+and babes.  It lulled its conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet
+ideals and dear moralities, and allowed the suffering and misery of
+mankind to continue and to increase, in short, the capitalist class
+failed to take advantage of the opportunity.
+
+But the opportunity is still here.  The capitalist class has been
+tried and found wanting.  Remains the working-class to see what it
+can do with the opportunity.  "But the working-class is incapable,"
+says the capitalist class.  "What do you know about it?" the working-
+class replies.  "Because you have failed is no reason that we shall
+fail.  Furthermore, we are going to have a try at it, anyway.  Seven
+millions of us say so.  And what have you to say to that?"
+
+And what can the capitalist class say?  Grant the incapacity of the
+working-class.  Grant that the indictment and the argument of the
+revolutionists are all wrong.  The 7,000,000 revolutionists remain.
+Their existence is a fact.  Their belief in their capacity, and in
+their indictment and their argument, is a fact.  Their constant
+growth is a fact.  Their intention to destroy present-day society is
+a fact, as is also their intention to take possession of the world
+with all its wealth and machinery and governments.  Moreover, it is a
+fact that the working-class is vastly larger than the capitalist
+class.
+
+The revolution is a revolution of the working-class.  How can the
+capitalist class, in the minority, stem this tide of revolution?
+What has it to offer?  What does it offer?  Employers' associations,
+injunctions, civil suits for plundering of the treasuries of the
+labour-unions, clamour and combination for the open shop, bitter and
+shameless opposition to the eight-hour day, strong efforts to defeat
+all reform, child-labour bills, graft in every municipal council,
+strong lobbies and bribery in every legislature for the purchase of
+capitalist legislation, bayonets, machine-guns, policemen's clubs,
+professional strike-breakers and armed Pinkertons--these are the
+things the capitalist class is dumping in front of the tide of
+revolution, as though, forsooth, to hold it back.
+
+The capitalist class is as blind to-day to the menace of the
+revolution as it was blind in the past to its own God-given
+opportunity.  It cannot see how precarious is its position, cannot
+comprehend the power and the portent of the revolution.  It goes on
+its placid way, prattling sweet ideals and dear moralities, and
+scrambling sordidly for material benefits.
+
+No overthrown ruler or class in the past ever considered the
+revolution that overthrew it, and so with the capitalist class of to-
+day.  Instead of compromising, instead of lengthening its lease of
+life by conciliation and by removal of some of the harsher
+oppressions of the working-class, it antagonizes the working-class,
+drives the working-class into revolution.  Every broken strike in
+recent years, every legally plundered trades-union treasury, every
+closed shop made into an open shop, has driven the members of the
+working-class directly hurt over to socialism by hundreds and
+thousands.  Show a working-man that his union fails, and he becomes a
+revolutionist.  Break a strike with an injunction or bankrupt a union
+with a civil suit, and the working-men hurt thereby listen to the
+siren song of the socialist and are lost for ever to the POLITICAL
+CAPITALIST parties.
+
+Antagonism never lulled revolution, and antagonism is about all the
+capitalist class offers.  It is true, it offers some few antiquated
+notions which were very efficacious in the past, but which are no
+longer efficacious.  Fourth-of-July liberty in terms of the
+Declaration of Independence and of the French Encyclopaedists is
+scarcely apposite to-day.  It does not appeal to the working-man who
+has had his head broken by a policeman's club, his union treasury
+bankrupted by a court decision, or his job taken away from him by a
+labour-saving invention.  Nor does the Constitution of the United
+States appear so glorious and constitutional to the working-man who
+has experienced a bull-pen or been unconstitutionally deported from
+Colorado.  Nor are this particular working-man's hurt feelings
+soothed by reading in the newspapers that both the bull-pen and the
+deportation were pre-eminently just, legal, and constitutional.  "To
+hell, then, with the Constitution!" says he, and another
+revolutionist has been made--by the capitalist class.
+
+In short, so blind is the capitalist class that it does nothing to
+lengthen its lease of life, while it does everything to shorten it.
+The capitalist class offers nothing that is clean, noble, and alive.
+The revolutionists offer everything that is clean, noble, and alive.
+They offer service, unselfishness, sacrifice, martyrdom--the things
+that sting awake the imagination of the people, touching their hearts
+with the fervour that arises out of the impulse toward good and which
+is essentially religious in its nature.
+
+But the revolutionists blow hot and blow cold.  They offer facts and
+statistics, economics and scientific arguments.  If the working-man
+be merely selfish, the revolutionists show him, mathematically
+demonstrate to him, that his condition will be bettered by the
+revolution.  If the working-man be the higher type, moved by impulses
+toward right conduct, if he have soul and spirit, the revolutionists
+offer him the things of the soul and the spirit, the tremendous
+things that cannot be measured by dollars and cents, nor be held down
+by dollars and cents.  The revolutionist cries out upon wrong and
+injustice, and preaches righteousness.  And, most potent of all, he
+sings the eternal song of human freedom--a song of all lands and all
+tongues and all time.
+
+Few members of the capitalist class see the revolution.  Most of them
+are too ignorant, and many are too afraid to see it.  It is the same
+old story of every perishing ruling class in the world's history.
+Fat with power and possession, drunken with success, and made soft by
+surfeit and by cessation of struggle, they are like the drones
+clustered about the honey vats when the worker-bees spring upon them
+to end their rotund existence.
+
+President Roosevelt vaguely sees the revolution, is frightened by it,
+and recoils from seeing it.  As he says:  "Above all, we need to
+remember that any kind of class animosity in the political world is,
+if possible, even more wicked, even more destructive to national
+welfare, than sectional, race, or religious animosity."
+
+Class animosity in the political world, President Roosevelt
+maintains, is wicked.  But class animosity in the political world is
+the preachment of the revolutionists.  "Let the class wars in the
+industrial world continue," they say, "but extend the class war to
+the political world."  As their leader, Eugene V. Debs says:  "So far
+as this struggle is concerned, there is no good capitalist and no bad
+working-man.  Every capitalist is your enemy and every working-man is
+your friend."
+
+Here is class animosity in the political world with a vengeance.  And
+here is revolution.  In 1888 there were only 2,000 revolutionists of
+this type in the United States; in 1900 there were 127,000
+revolutionists; in 1904, 435,000 revolutionists.  Wickedness of the
+President Roosevelt definition evidently flourishes and increases in
+the United States.  Quite so, for it is the revolution that
+flourishes and increases.
+
+Here and there a member of the capitalist class catches a clear
+glimpse of the revolution, and raises a warning cry.  But his class
+does not heed.  President Eliot of Harvard raised such a cry:
+
+"I am forced to believe there is a present danger of socialism never
+before so imminent in America in so dangerous a form, because never
+before imminent in so well organized a form.  The danger lies in the
+obtaining control of the trades-unions by the socialists."  And the
+capitalist employers, instead of giving heed to the warnings, are
+perfecting their strike-breaking organization and combining more
+strongly than ever for a general assault upon that dearest of all
+things to the trades-unions--the closed shop.  In so far as this
+assault succeeds, by just that much will the capitalist class shorten
+its lease of life.  It is the old, old story, over again and over
+again.  The drunken drones still cluster greedily about the honey
+vats.
+
+Possibly one of the most amusing spectacles of to-day is the attitude
+of the American press toward the revolution.  It is also a pathetic
+spectacle.  It compels the onlooker to be aware of a distinct loss of
+pride in his species.  Dogmatic utterance from the mouth of ignorance
+may make gods laugh, but it should make men weep.  And the American
+editors (in the general instance) are so impressive about it!  The
+old "divide-up," "men-are-NOT-born-free-and-equal," propositions are
+enunciated gravely and sagely, as things white-hot and new from the
+forge of human wisdom.  Their feeble vapourings show no more than a
+schoolboy's comprehension of the nature of the revolution.  Parasites
+themselves on the capitalist class, serving the capitalist class by
+moulding public opinion, they, too, cluster drunkenly about the honey
+vats.
+
+Of course, this is true only of the large majority of American
+editors.  To say that it is true of all of them would be to cast too
+great obloquy upon the human race.  Also, it would be untrue, for
+here and there an occasional editor does see clearly--and in his
+case, ruled by stomach-incentive, is usually afraid to say what he
+thinks about it.  So far as the science and the sociology of the
+revolution are concerned, the average editor is a generation or so
+behind the facts.  He is intellectually slothful, accepts no facts
+until they are accepted by the majority, and prides himself upon his
+conservatism.  He is an instinctive optimist, prone to believe that
+what ought to be, is.  The revolutionist gave this up long ago, and
+believes not that what ought to be, is, but what is, is, and that it
+may not be what it ought to be at all.
+
+Now and then, rubbing his eyes, vigorously, an editor catches a
+sudden glimpse of the revolution and breaks out in naive volubility,
+as, for instance, the one who wrote the following in the Chicago
+Chronicle:  "American socialists are revolutionists.  They know that
+they are revolutionists.  It is high time that other people should
+appreciate the fact."  A white-hot, brand-new discovery, and he
+proceeded to shout it out from the housetops that we, forsooth, were
+revolutionists.  Why, it is just what we have been doing all these
+years--shouting it out from the housetops that we are revolutionists,
+and stop us who can.
+
+The time should be past for the mental attitude:  "Revolution is
+atrocious.  Sir, there is no revolution."  Likewise should the time
+be past for that other familiar attitude:  "Socialism is slavery.
+Sir, it will never be."  It is no longer a question of dialectics,
+theories, and dreams.  There is no question about it.  The revolution
+is a fact.  It is here now.  Seven million revolutionists, organized,
+working day and night, are preaching the revolution--that passionate
+gospel, the Brotherhood of Man.  Not only is it a cold-blooded
+economic propaganda, but it is in essence a religious propaganda with
+a fervour in it of Paul and Christ.  The capitalist class has been
+indicted.  It has failed in its management and its management is to
+be taken away from it.  Seven million men of the working-class say
+that they are going to get the rest of the working-class to join with
+them and take the management away.  The revolution is here, now.
+Stop it who can.
+
+SACRAMENTO RIVER.
+March 1905.
+
+
+
+THE SOMNAMBULISTS
+
+
+
+"'Tis only fools speak evil of the clay -
+The very stars are made of clay like mine."
+
+The mightiest and absurdest sleep-walker on the planet!  Chained in
+the circle of his own imaginings, man is only too keen to forget his
+origin and to shame that flesh of his that bleeds like all flesh and
+that is good to eat.  Civilization (which is part of the circle of
+his imaginings) has spread a veneer over the surface of the soft-
+shelled animal known as man.  It is a very thin veneer; but so
+wonderfully is man constituted that he squirms on his bit of
+achievement and believes he is garbed in armour-plate.
+
+Yet man to-day is the same man that drank from his enemy's skull in
+the dark German forests, that sacked cities, and stole his women from
+neighbouring clans like any howling aborigine.  The flesh-and-blood
+body of man has not changed in the last several thousand years.  Nor
+has his mind changed.  There is no faculty of the mind of man to-day
+that did not exist in the minds of the men of long ago.  Man has to-
+day no concept that is too wide and deep and abstract for the mind of
+Plato or Aristotle to grasp.  Give to Plato or Aristotle the same
+fund of knowledge that man to-day has access to, and Plato and
+Aristotle would reason as profoundly as the man of to-day and would
+achieve very similar conclusions.
+
+It is the same old animal man, smeared over, it is true, with a
+veneer, thin and magical, that makes him dream drunken dreams of
+self-exaltation and to sneer at the flesh and the blood of him
+beneath the smear.  The raw animal crouching within him is like the
+earthquake monster pent in the crust of the earth.  As he persuades
+himself against the latter till it arouses and shakes down a city, so
+does he persuade himself against the former until it shakes him out
+of his dreaming and he stands undisguised, a brute like any other
+brute.
+
+Starve him, let him miss six meals, and see gape through the veneer
+the hungry maw of the animal beneath.  Get between him and the female
+of his kind upon whom his mating instinct is bent, and see his eyes
+blaze like an angry cat's, hear in his throat the scream of wild
+stallions, and watch his fists clench like an orang-outang's.  Maybe
+he will even beat his chest.  Touch his silly vanity, which he exalts
+into high-sounding pride--call him a liar, and behold the red animal
+in him that makes a hand clutching that is quick like the tensing of
+a tiger's claw, or an eagle's talon, incarnate with desire to rip and
+tear.
+
+It is not necessary to call him a liar to touch his vanity.  Tell a
+plains Indian that he has failed to steal horses from the
+neighbouring tribe, or tell a man living in bourgeois society that he
+has failed to pay his bills at the neighbouring grocer's, and the
+results are the same.  Each, plains Indian and bourgeois, is smeared
+with a slightly different veneer, that is all.  It requires a
+slightly different stick to scrape it off.  The raw animals beneath
+are identical.
+
+But intrude not violently upon man, leave him alone in his
+somnambulism, and he kicks out from under his feet the ladder of life
+up which he has climbed, constitutes himself the centre of the
+universe, dreams sordidly about his own particular god, and maunders
+metaphysically about his own blessed immortality.
+
+True, he lives in a real world, breathes real air, eats real food,
+and sleeps under real blankets, in order to keep real cold away.  And
+there's the rub.  He has to effect adjustments with the real world
+and at the same time maintain the sublimity of his dream.  The result
+of this admixture of the real and the unreal is confusion thrice
+confounded.  The man that walks the real world in his sleep becomes
+such a tangled mass of contradictions, paradoxes, and lies that he
+has to lie to himself in order to stay asleep.
+
+In passing, it may be noted that some men are remarkably constituted
+in this matter of self-deception.  They excel at deceiving
+themselves.  They believe, and they help others to believe.  It
+becomes their function in society, and some of them are paid large
+salaries for helping their fellow-men to believe, for instance, that
+they are not as other animals; for helping the king to believe, and
+his parasites and drudges as well, that he is God's own manager over
+so many square miles of earth-crust; for helping the merchant and
+banking classes to believe that society rests on their shoulders, and
+that civilization would go to smash if they got out from under and
+ceased from their exploitations and petty pilferings.
+
+Prize-fighting is terrible.  This is the dictum of the man who walks
+in his sleep.  He prates about it, and writes to the papers about it,
+and worries the legislators about it.  There is nothing of the brute
+about HIM.  He is a sublimated soul that treads the heights and
+breathes refined ether--in self-comparison with the prize-fighter.
+The man who walks in his sleep ignores the flesh and all its
+wonderful play of muscle, joint, and nerve.  He feels that there is
+something godlike in the mysterious deeps of his being, denies his
+relationship with the brute, and proceeds to go forth into the world
+and express by deeds that something godlike within him.
+
+He sits at a desk and chases dollars through the weeks and months and
+years of his life.  To him the life godlike resolves into a problem
+something like this:  SINCE THE GREAT MASS OF MEN TOIL AT PRODUCING
+WEALTH, HOW BEST CAN HE GET BETWEEN THE GREAT MASS OF MEN AND THE
+WEALTH THEY PRODUCE, AND GET A SLICE FOR HIMSELF?  With tremendous
+exercise of craft, deceit, and guile, he devotes his life godlike to
+this purpose.  As he succeeds, his somnambulism grows profound.  He
+bribes legislatures, buys judges, "controls" primaries, and then goes
+and hires other men to tell him that it is all glorious and right.
+And the funniest thing about it is that this arch-deceiver believes
+all that they tell him.  He reads only the newspapers and magazines
+that tell him what he wants to be told, listens only to the
+biologists who tell him that he is the finest product of the struggle
+for existence, and herds only with his own kind, where, like the
+monkey-folk, they teeter up and down and tell one another how great
+they are.
+
+In the course of his life godlike he ignores the flesh--until he gets
+to table.  He raises his hands in horror at the thought of the
+brutish prize-fighter, and then sits down and gorges himself on roast
+beef, rare and red, running blood under every sawing thrust of the
+implement called a knife.  He has a piece of cloth which he calls a
+napkin, with which he wipes from his lips, and from the hair on his
+lips, the greasy juices of the meat.
+
+He is fastidiously nauseated at the thought of two prize-fighters
+bruising each other with their fists; and at the same time, because
+it will cost him some money, he will refuse to protect the machines
+in his factory, though he is aware that the lack of such protection
+every year mangles, batters, and destroys out of all humanness
+thousands of working-men, women, and children.  He will chatter about
+things refined and spiritual and godlike like himself, and he and the
+men who herd with him will calmly adulterate the commodities they put
+upon the market and which annually kill tens of thousands of babies
+and young children.
+
+He will recoil at the suggestion of the horrid spectacle of two men
+confronting each other with gloved hands in the roped arena, and at
+the same time he will clamour for larger armies and larger navies,
+for more destructive war machines, which, with a single discharge,
+will disrupt and rip to pieces more human beings than have died in
+the whole history of prize-fighting.  He will bribe a city council
+for a franchise or a state legislature for a commercial privilege;
+but he has never been known, in all his sleep-walking history, to
+bribe any legislative body in order to achieve any moral end, such
+as, for instance, abolition of prize-fighting, child-labour laws,
+pure food bills, or old age pensions.
+
+"Ah, but we do not stand for the commercial life," object the
+refined, scholarly, and professional men.  They are also sleep-
+walkers.  They do not stand for the commercial life, but neither do
+they stand against it with all their strength.  They submit to it, to
+the brutality and carnage of it.  They develop classical economists
+who announce that the only possible way for men and women to get food
+and shelter is by the existing method.  They produce university
+professors, men who claim the role of teachers, and who at the same
+time claim that the austere ideal of learning is passionless pursuit
+of passionless intelligence.  They serve the men who lead the
+commercial life, give to their sons somnambulistic educations, preach
+that sleep-walking is the only way to walk, and that the persons who
+walk otherwise are atavisms or anarchists.  They paint pictures for
+the commercial men, write books for them, sing songs for them, act
+plays for them, and dose them with various drugs when their bodies
+have grown gross or dyspeptic from overeating and lack of exercise.
+
+Then there are the good, kind somnambulists who don't prize-fight,
+who don't play the commercial game, who don't teach and preach
+somnambulism, who don't do anything except live on the dividends that
+are coined out of the wan, white fluid that runs in the veins of
+little children, out of mothers' tears, the blood of strong men, and
+the groans and sighs of the old.  The receiver is as bad as the
+thief--ay, and the thief is finer than the receiver; he at least has
+the courage to run the risk.  But the good, kind people who don't do
+anything won't believe this, and the assertion will make them angry--
+for a moment.  They possess several magic phrases, which are like the
+incantations of a voodoo doctor driving devils away.  The phrases
+that the good, kind people repeat to themselves and to one another
+sound like "abstinence," "temperance," "thrift," "virtue."  Sometimes
+they say them backward, when they sound like "prodigality,"
+"drunkenness," "wastefulness," and "immorality."  They do not really
+know the meaning of these phrases, but they think they do, and that
+is all that is necessary for somnambulists.  The calm repetition of
+such phrases invariably drives away the waking devils and lulls to
+slumber.
+
+Our statesmen sell themselves and their country for gold.  Our
+municipal servants and state legislators commit countless treasons.
+The world of graft!  The world of betrayal!  The world of
+somnambulism, whose exalted and sensitive citizens are outraged by
+the knockouts of the prize-ring, and who annually not merely knock
+out, but kill, thousands of babies and children by means of child
+labour and adulterated food.  Far better to have the front of one's
+face pushed in by the fist of an honest prize-fighter than to have
+the lining of one's stomach corroded by the embalmed beef of a
+dishonest manufacturer.
+
+In a prize-fight men are classed.  A lightweight fights with a light-
+weight; he never fights with a heavy-weight, and foul blows are not
+allowed.  Yet in the world of the somnambulists, where soar the
+sublimated spirits, there are no classes, and foul blows are
+continually struck and never disallowed.  Only they are not called
+foul blows.  The world of claw and fang and fist and club has passed
+away--so say the somnambulists.  A rebate is not an elongated claw.
+A Wall Street raid is not a fang slash.  Dummy boards of directors
+and fake accountings are not foul blows of the fist under the belt.
+A present of coal stock by a mine operator to a railroad official is
+not a claw rip to the bowels of a rival mine operator.  The hundred
+million dollars with which a combination beats down to his knees a
+man with a million dollars is not a club.  The man who walks in his
+sleep says it is not a club.  So say all of his kind with which he
+herds.  They gather together and solemnly and gloatingly make and
+repeat certain noises that sound like "discretion," "acumen,"
+"initiative," "enterprise."  These noises are especially gratifying
+when they are made backward.  They mean the same things, but they
+sound different.  And in either case, forward or backward, the spirit
+of the dream is not disturbed.
+
+When a man strikes a foul blow in the prize-ring the fight is
+immediately stopped, he is declared the loser, and he is hissed by
+the audience as he leaves the ring.  But when a man who walks in his
+sleep strikes a foul blow he is immediately declared the victor and
+awarded the prize; and amid acclamations he forthwith turns his prize
+into a seat in the United States Senate, into a grotesque palace on
+Fifth Avenue, and into endowed churches, universities and libraries,
+to say nothing of subsidized newspapers, to proclaim his greatness.
+
+The red animal in the somnambulist will out.  He decries the carnal
+combat of the prize-ring, and compels the red animal to spiritual
+combat.  The poisoned lie, the nasty, gossiping tongue, the brutality
+of the unkind epigram, the business and social nastiness and
+treachery of to-day--these are the thrusts and scratches of the red
+animal when the somnambulist is in charge.  They are not the upper
+cuts and short arm jabs and jolts and slugging blows of the spirit.
+They are the foul blows of the spirit that have never been disbarred,
+as the foul blows of the prize-ring have been disbarred.  (Would it
+not be preferable for a man to strike one full on the mouth with his
+fist than for him to tell a lie about one, or malign those that are
+nearest and dearest?)
+
+For these are the crimes of the spirit, and, alas! they are so much
+more frequent than blows on the mouth.  And whosoever exalts the
+spirit over the flesh, by his own creed avers that a crime of the
+spirit is vastly more terrible than a crime of the flesh.  Thus stand
+the somnambulists convicted by their own creed--only they are not
+real men, alive and awake, and they proceed to mutter magic phrases
+that dispel all doubt as to their undiminished and eternal
+gloriousness.
+
+It is well enough to let the ape and tiger die, but it is hardly fair
+to kill off the natural and courageous apes and tigers and allow the
+spawn of cowardly apes and tigers to live.  The prize-fighting apes
+and tigers will die all in good time in the course of natural
+evolution, but they will not die so long as the cowardly,
+somnambulistic apes and tigers club and scratch and slash.  This is
+not a brief for the prize-fighter.  It is a blow of the fist between
+the eyes of the somnambulists, teetering up and down, muttering magic
+phrases, and thanking God that they are not as other animals.
+
+GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA.
+June 1900.
+
+
+
+THE DIGNITY OF DOLLARS
+
+
+
+Man is a blind, helpless creature.  He looks back with pride upon his
+goodly heritage of the ages, and yet obeys unwittingly every mandate
+of that heritage; for it is incarnate with him, and in it are
+embedded the deepest roots of his soul.  Strive as he will, he cannot
+escape it--unless he be a genius, one of those rare creations to whom
+alone is granted the privilege of doing entirely new and original
+things in entirely new and original ways.  But the common clay-born
+man, possessing only talents, may do only what has been done before
+him.  At the best, if he work hard, and cherish himself exceedingly,
+he may duplicate any or all previous performances of his kind; he may
+even do some of them better; but there he stops, the composite hand
+of his whole ancestry bearing heavily upon him.
+
+And again, in the matter of his ideas, which have been thrust upon
+him, and which he has been busily garnering from the great world ever
+since the day when his eyes first focussed and he drew, startled,
+against the warm breast of his mother--the tyranny of these he cannot
+shake off.  Servants of his will, they at the same time master him.
+They may not coerce genius, but they dictate and sway every action of
+the clay-born.  If he hesitate on the verge of a new departure, they
+whip him back into the well-greased groove; if he pause, bewildered,
+at sight of some unexplored domain, they rise like ubiquitous finger-
+posts and direct him by the village path to the communal meadow.  And
+he permits these things, and continues to permit them, for he cannot
+help them, and he is a slave.  Out of his ideas he may weave cunning
+theories, beautiful ideals; but he is working with ropes of sand.  At
+the slightest stress, the last least bit of cohesion flits away, and
+each idea flies apart from its fellows, while all clamour that he do
+this thing, or think this thing, in the ancient and time-honoured
+way.  He is only a clay-born; so he bends his neck.  He knows further
+that the clay-born are a pitiful, pitiless majority, and that he may
+do nothing which they do not do.
+
+It is only in some way such as this that we may understand and
+explain the dignity which attaches itself to dollars.  In the watches
+of the night, we may assure ourselves that there is no such dignity;
+but jostling with our fellows in the white light of day, we find that
+it does exist, and that we ourselves measure ourselves by the dollars
+we happen to possess.  They give us confidence and carriage and
+dignity--ay, a personal dignity which goes down deeper than the
+garments with which we hide our nakedness.  The world, when it knows
+nothing else of him, measures a man by his clothes; but the man
+himself, if he be neither a genius nor a philosopher, but merely a
+clay-born, measures himself by his pocket-book.  He cannot help it,
+and can no more fling it from him than can the bashful young man his
+self-consciousness when crossing a ballroom floor.
+
+I remember once absenting myself from civilization for weary months.
+When I returned, it was to a strange city in another country.  The
+people were but slightly removed from my own breed, and they spoke
+the same tongue, barring a certain barbarous accent which I learned
+was far older than the one imbibed by me with my mother's milk.  A
+fur cap, soiled and singed by many camp-fires, half sheltered the
+shaggy tendrils of my uncut hair.  My foot-gear was of walrus hide,
+cunningly blended with seal gut.  The remainder of my dress was as
+primal and uncouth.  I was a sight to give merriment to gods and men.
+Olympus must have roared at my coming.  The world, knowing me not,
+could judge me by my clothes alone.  But I refused to be so judged.
+My spiritual backbone stiffened, and I held my head high, looking all
+men in the eyes.  And I did these things, not that I was an egotist,
+not that I was impervious to the critical glances of my fellows, but
+because of a certain hogskin belt, plethoric and sweat-bewrinkled,
+which buckled next the skin above the hips.  Oh, it's absurd, I
+grant, but had that belt not been so circumstanced, and so situated,
+I should have shrunk away into side streets and back alleys, walking
+humbly and avoiding all gregarious humans except those who were
+likewise abroad without belts.  Why?  I do not know, save that in
+such way did my fathers before me.
+
+Viewed in the light of sober reason, the whole thing was
+preposterous.  But I walked down the gang-plank with the mien of a
+hero, of a barbarian who knew himself to be greater than the
+civilization he invaded.  I was possessed of the arrogance of a Roman
+governor.  At last I knew what it was to be born to the purple, and I
+took my seat in the hotel carriage as though it were my chariot about
+to proceed with me to the imperial palace.  People discreetly dropped
+their eyes before my proud gaze, and into their hearts I know I
+forced the query, What manner of man can this mortal be?  I was
+superior to convention, and the very garb which otherwise would have
+damned me tended toward my elevation.  And all this was due, not to
+my royal lineage, nor to the deeds I had done and the champions I had
+overthrown, but to a certain hogskin belt buckled next the skin.  The
+sweat of months was upon it, toil had defaced it, and it was not a
+creation such as would appeal to the aesthetic mind; but it was
+plethoric.  There was the arcanum; each yellow grain conduced to my
+exaltation, and the sum of these grains was the sum of my mightiness.
+Had they been less, just so would have been my stature; more, and I
+should have reached the sky.
+
+And this was my royal progress through that most loyal city.  I
+purchased a host of things from the tradespeople, and bought me such
+pleasures and diversions as befitted one who had long been denied.  I
+scattered my gold lavishly, nor did I chaffer over prices in mart or
+exchange.  And, because of these things I did, I demanded homage.
+Nor was it refused.  I moved through wind-swept groves of limber
+backs; across sunny glades, lighted by the beaming rays from a
+thousand obsequious eyes; and when I tired of this, basked on the
+greensward of popular approval.  Money was very good, I thought, and
+for the time was content.  But there rushed upon me the words of
+Erasmus, "When I get some money I shall buy me some Greek books, and
+afterwards some clothes," and a great shame wrapped me around.  But,
+luckily for my soul's welfare, I reflected and was saved.  By the
+clearer vision vouchsafed me, I beheld Erasmus, fire-flashing,
+heaven-born, while I--I was merely a clay-born, a son of earth.  For
+a giddy moment I had forgotten this, and tottered.  And I rolled over
+on my greensward, caught a glimpse of a regiment of undulating backs,
+and thanked my particular gods that such moods of madness were
+passing brief.
+
+But on another day, receiving with kingly condescension the service
+of my good subjects' backs, I remembered the words of another man,
+long since laid away, who was by birth a nobleman, by nature a
+philosopher and a gentleman, and who by circumstance yielded up his
+head upon the block.  "That a man of lead," he once remarked, "who
+has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish,
+should have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has
+a great heap of that metal; and that if, by some accident or trick of
+law (which sometimes produces as great changes as chance itself), all
+this wealth should pass from the master to the meanest varlet of his
+whole family, he himself would very soon become one of his servants,
+as if he were a thing that belonged to his wealth, and so was bound
+to follow its fortune."
+
+And when I had remembered this much, I unwisely failed to pause and
+reflect.  So I gathered my belongings together, cinched my hogskin
+belt tight about me, and went away to my own country.  It was a very
+foolish thing to do.  I am sure it was.  But when I had recovered my
+reason, I fell upon my particular gods and berated them mightily, and
+as penance for their watchlessness placed them away amongst dust and
+cobwebs.  Oh no, not for long.  They are again enshrined, as bright
+and polished as of yore, and my destiny is once more in their
+keeping.
+
+It is given that travail and vicissitude mark time to man's footsteps
+as he stumbles onward toward the grave; and it is well.  Without the
+bitter one may not know the sweet.  The other day--nay, it was but
+yesterday--I fell before the rhythm of fortune.  The inexorable
+pendulum had swung the counter direction, and there was upon me an
+urgent need.  The hogskin belt was flat as famine, nor did it longer
+gird my loins.  From my window I could descry, at no great distance,
+a very ordinary mortal of a man, working industriously among his
+cabbages.  I thought:  Here am I, capable of teaching him much
+concerning the field wherein he labours--the nitrogenic--why of the
+fertilizer, the alchemy of the sun, the microscopic cell-structure of
+the plant, the cryptic chemistry of root and runner--but thereat he
+straightened his work-wearied back and rested.  His eyes wandered
+over what he had produced in the sweat of his brow, then on to mine.
+And as he stood there drearily, he became reproach incarnate.
+"Unstable as water," he said (I am sure he did)--"unstable as water,
+thou shalt not excel.  Man, where are YOUR cabbages?"
+
+I shrank back.  Then I waxed rebellious.  I refused to answer the
+question.  He had no right to ask it, and his presence was an affront
+upon the landscape.  And a dignity entered into me, and my neck was
+stiffened, my head poised.  I gathered together certain certificates
+of goods and chattels, pointed my heel towards him and his cabbages,
+and journeyed townward.  I was yet a man.  There was naught in those
+certificates to be ashamed of.  But alack-a-day!  While my heels
+thrust the cabbage-man beyond the horizon, my toes were drawing me,
+faltering, like a timid old beggar, into a roaring spate of humanity-
+-men, women, and children without end.  They had no concern with me,
+nor I with them.  I knew it; I felt it.  Like She, after her fire-
+bath in the womb of the world, I dwindled in my own sight.  My feet
+were uncertain and heavy, and my soul became as a meal sack, limp
+with emptiness and tied in the middle.  People looked upon me
+scornfully, pitifully, reproachfully.  (I can swear they did.)  In
+every eye I read the question, Man, where are your cabbages?
+
+So I avoided their looks, shrinking close to the kerbstone and by
+furtive glances directing my progress.  At last I came hard by the
+place, and peering stealthily to the right and left that none who
+knew might behold mc, I entered hurriedly, in the manner of one
+committing an abomination.  'Fore God!  I had done no evil, nor had I
+wronged any man, nor did I contemplate evil; yet was I aware of evil.
+Why?  I do not know, save that there goes much dignity with dollars,
+and being devoid of the one I was destitute of the other.  The person
+I sought practised a profession as ancient as the oracles but far
+more lucrative.  It is mentioned in Exodus; so it must have been
+created soon after the foundations of the world; and despite the
+thunder of ecclesiastics and the mailed hand of kings and conquerors,
+it has endured even to this day.  Nor is it unfair to presume that
+the accounts of this most remarkable business will not be closed
+until the Trumps of Doom are sounded and all things brought to final
+balance.
+
+Wherefore it was in fear and trembling, and with great modesty of
+spirit, that I entered the Presence.  To confess that I was shocked
+were to do my feelings an injustice.  Perhaps the blame may be
+shouldered upon Shylock, Fagin, and their ilk; but I had conceived an
+entirely different type of individual.  This man--why, he was clean
+to look at, his eyes were blue, with the tired look of scholarly
+lucubrations, and his skin had the normal pallor of sedentary
+existence.  He was reading a book, sober and leather-bound, while on
+his finely moulded, intellectual head reposed a black skull-cap.  For
+all the world his look and attitude were those of a college
+professor.  My heart gave a great leap.  Here was hope!  But no; he
+fixed me with a cold and glittering eye, searching with the chill of
+space till my financial status stood before him shivering and
+ashamed.  I communed with myself:  By his brow he is a thinker, but
+his intellect has been prostituted to a mercenary exaction of toll
+from misery.  His nerve centres of judgment and will have not been
+employed in solving the problems of life, but in maintaining his own
+solvency by the insolvency of others.  He trades upon sorrow and
+draws a livelihood from misfortune.  He transmutes tears into
+treasure, and from nakedness and hunger garbs himself in clean linen
+and develops the round of his belly.  He is a bloodsucker and a
+vampire.  He lays unholy hands on heaven and hell at cent. per cent.,
+and his very existence is a sacrilege and a blasphemy.  And yet here
+am I, wilting before him, an arrant coward, with no respect for him
+and less for myself.  Why should this shame be?  Let me rouse in my
+strength and smite him, and, by so doing, wipe clean one offensive
+page.
+
+But no.  As I said, he fixed me with a cold and glittering eye, and
+in it was the aristocrat's undisguised contempt for the canaille.
+Behind him was the solid phalanx of a bourgeois society.  Law and
+order upheld him, while I titubated, cabbageless, on the ragged edge.
+Moreover, he was possessed of a formula whereby to extract juice from
+a flattened lemon, and he would do business with me.
+
+I told him my desires humbly, in quavering syllables.  In return, he
+craved my antecedents and residence, pried into my private life,
+insolently demanded how many children had I and did I live in
+wedlock, and asked divers other unseemly and degrading questions.
+Ay, I was treated like a thief convicted before the act, till I
+produced my certificates of goods and chattels aforementioned.  Never
+had they appeared so insignificant and paltry as then, when he
+sniffed over them with the air of one disdainfully doing a
+disagreeable task.  It is said, "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to
+thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything
+that is lent upon usury"; but he evidently was not my brother, for he
+demanded seventy per cent.  I put my signature to certain indentures,
+received my pottage, and fled from his presence.
+
+Faugh!  I was glad to be quit of it.  How good the outside air was!
+I only prayed that neither my best friend nor my worst enemy should
+ever become aware of what had just transpired.  Ere I had gone a
+block I noticed that the sun had brightened perceptibly, the street
+become less sordid, the gutter mud less filthy.  In people's eyes the
+cabbage question no longer brooded.  And there was a spring to my
+body, an elasticity of step as I covered the pavement.  Within me
+coursed an unwonted sap, and I felt as though I were about to burst
+out into leaves and buds and green things.  My brain was clear and
+refreshed.  There was a new strength to my arm.  My nerves were
+tingling and I was a-pulse with the times.  All men were my brothers.
+Save one--yes, save one.  I would go back and wreck the
+establishment.  I would disrupt that leather-bound volume, violate
+that black skullcap, burn the accounts.  But before fancy could
+father the act, I recollected myself and all which had passed.  Nor
+did I marvel at my new-horn might, at my ancient dignity which had
+returned.  There was a tinkling chink as I ran the yellow pieces
+through my fingers, and with the golden music rippling round me I
+caught a deeper insight into the mystery of things.
+
+OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
+February 1900.
+
+
+
+GOLIAH
+
+
+
+In 1924--to be precise, on the morning of January 3--the city of San
+Francisco awoke to read in one of its daily papers a curious letter,
+which had been received by Walter Bassett and which had evidently
+been written by some crank.  Walter Bassett was the greatest captain
+of industry west of the Rockies, and was one of the small group that
+controlled the nation in everything but name.  As such, he was the
+recipient of lucubrations from countless cranks; but this particular
+lucubration was so different from the average ruck of similar letters
+that, instead of putting it into the waste-basket, he had turned it
+over to a reporter.  It was signed "Goliah," and the superscription
+gave his address as "Palgrave Island."  The letter was as follows:
+
+
+"MR. WALTER BASSETT,
+"DEAR SIR:
+
+"I am inviting you, with nine of your fellow-captains of industry, to
+visit me here on my island for the purpose of considering plans for
+the reconstruction of society upon a more rational basis.  Up to the
+present, social evolution has been a blind and aimless, blundering
+thing.  The time has come for a change.  Man has risen from the
+vitalized slime of the primeval sea to the mastery of matter; but he
+has not yet mastered society.  Man is to-day as much the slave to his
+collective stupidity, as a hundred thousand generations ago he was a
+slave to matter.
+
+"There are two theoretical methods whereby man may become the master
+of society, and make of society an intelligent and efficacious device
+for the pursuit and capture of happiness and laughter.  The first
+theory advances the proposition that no government can be wiser or
+better than the people that compose that government; that reform and
+development must spring from the individual; that in so far as the
+individuals become wiser and better, by that much will their
+government become wiser and better; in short, that the majority of
+individuals must become wiser and better, before their government
+becomes wiser and better.  The mob, the political convention, the
+abysmal brutality and stupid ignorance of all concourses of people,
+give the lie to this theory.  In a mob the collective intelligence
+and mercy is that of the least intelligent and most brutal members
+that compose the mob.  On the other hand, a thousand passengers will
+surrender themselves to the wisdom and discretion of the captain,
+when their ship is in a storm on the sea.  In such matter, he is the
+wisest and most experienced among them.
+
+"The second theory advances the proposition that the majority of the
+people are not pioneers, that they are weighted down by the inertia
+of the established; that the government that is representative of
+them represents only their feebleness, and futility, and brutishness;
+that this blind thing called government is not the serf of their
+wills, but that they are the serfs of it; in short, speaking always
+of the great mass, that they do not make government, but that
+government makes them, and that government is and has been a stupid
+and awful monster, misbegotten of the glimmerings of intelligence
+that come from the inertia-crushed mass.
+
+"Personally, I incline to the second theory.  Also, I am impatient.
+For a hundred thousand generations, from the first social groups of
+our savage forbears, government has remained a monster.  To-day, the
+inertia-crushed mass has less laughter in it than ever before.  In
+spite of man's mastery of matter, human suffering and misery and
+degradation mar the fair world.
+
+"Wherefore I have decided to step in and become captain of this
+world-ship for a while.  I have the intelligence and the wide vision
+of the skilled expert.  Also, I have the power.  I shall be obeyed.
+The men of all the world shall perform my bidding and make
+governments so that they shall become laughter-producers.  These
+modelled governments I have in mind shall not make the people happy,
+wise, and noble by decree; but they shall give opportunity for the
+people to become happy, wise, and noble.
+
+"I have spoken.  I have invited you, and nine of your fellow-
+captains, to confer with me.  On March third the yacht Energon will
+sail from San Francisco.  You are requested to be on board the night
+before.  This is serious.  The affairs of the world must be handled
+for a time by a strong hand.  Mine is that strong hand.  If you fail
+to obey my summons, you will die.  Candidly, I do not expect that you
+will obey.  But your death for failure to obey will cause obedience
+on the part of those I subsequently summon.  You will have served a
+purpose.  And please remember that I have no unscientific
+sentimentality about the value of human life.  I carry always in the
+background of my consciousness the innumerable billions of lives that
+are to laugh and be happy in future aeons on the earth.
+
+"Yours for the reconstruction of society,
+
+"GOLIAH."
+
+
+The publication of this letter did not cause even local amusement.
+Men might have smiled to themselves as they read it, but it was so
+palpably the handiwork of a crank that it did not merit discussion.
+Interest did not arouse till next morning.  An Associated Press
+despatch to the Eastern states, followed by interviews by eager-nosed
+reporters, had brought out the names of the other nine captains of
+industry who had received similar letters, but who had not thought
+the matter of sufficient importance to be made public.  But the
+interest aroused was mild, and it would have died out quickly had not
+Gabberton cartooned a chronic presidential aspirant as "Goliah."
+Then came the song that was sung hilariously from sea to sea, with
+the refrain, "Goliah will catch you if you don't watch out."
+
+The weeks passed and the incident was forgotten.  Walter Bassett had
+forgotten it likewise; but on the evening of February 22, he was
+called to the telephone by the Collector of the Port.  "I just wanted
+to tell you," said the latter, "that the yacht Energon has arrived
+and gone to anchor in the stream off Pier Seven."
+
+What happened that night Walter Bassett has never divulged.  But it
+is known that he rode down in his auto to the water front, chartered
+one of Crowley's launches, and was put aboard the strange yacht.  It
+is further known that when he returned to the shore, three hours
+later, he immediately despatched a sheaf of telegrams to his nine
+fellow-captains of industry who had received letters from Goliah.
+These telegrams were similarly worded, and read:  "The yacht Energon
+has arrived.  There is something in this.  I advise you to come."
+
+Bassett was laughed at for his pains.  It was a huge laugh that went
+up (for his telegrams had been made public), and the popular song on
+Goliah revived and became more popular than ever.  Goliah and Bassett
+were cartooned and lampooned unmercifully, the former, as the Old Man
+of the Sea, riding on the latter's neck.  The laugh tittered and
+rippled through clubs and social circles, was restrainedly merry in
+the editorial columns, and broke out in loud guffaws in the comic
+weeklies.  There was a serious side as well, and Bassett's sanity was
+gravely questioned by many, and especially by his business
+associates.
+
+Bassett had ever been a short-tempered man, and after he sent the
+second sheaf of telegrams to his brother captains, and had been
+laughed at again, he remained silent.  In this second sheaf he had
+said:  "Come, I implore you.  As you value your life, come."  He
+arranged all his business affairs for an absence, and on the night of
+March 2 went on board the Energon.  The latter, properly cleared,
+sailed next morning.  And next morning the newsboys in every city and
+town were crying "Extra."
+
+In the slang of the day, Goliah had delivered the goods.  The nine
+captains of industry who had failed to accept his invitation were
+dead.  A sort of violent disintegration of the tissues was the report
+of the various autopsies held on the bodies of the slain
+millionaires; yet the surgeons and physicians (the most highly
+skilled in the land had participated) would not venture the opinion
+that the men had been slain.  Much less would they venture the
+conclusion, "at the hands of parties unknown."  It was all too
+mysterious.  They were stunned.  Their scientific credulity broke
+down.  They had no warrant in the whole domain of science for
+believing that an anonymous person on Palgrave Island had murdered
+the poor gentlemen.
+
+One thing was quickly learned, however; namely, that Palgrave Island
+was no myth.  It was charted and well known to all navigators, lying
+on the line of 160 west longitude, right at its intersection by the
+tenth parallel north latitude, and only a few miles away from Diana
+Shoal.  Like Midway and Fanning, Palgrave Island was isolated,
+volcanic and coral in formation.  Furthermore, it was uninhabited.  A
+survey ship, in 1887, had visited the place and reported the
+existence of several springs and of a good harbour that was very
+dangerous of approach.  And that was all that was known of the tiny
+speck of land that was soon to have focussed on it the awed attention
+of the world.
+
+Goliah remained silent till March 24.  On the morning of that day,
+the newspapers published his second letter, copies of which had been
+received by the ten chief politicians of the United States--ten
+leading men in the political world who were conventionally known as
+"statesmen."  The letter, with the same superscription as before, was
+as follows:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR:
+
+"I have spoken in no uncertain tone.  I must be obeyed.  You may
+consider this an invitation or a summons; but if you still wish to
+tread this earth and laugh, you will be aboard the yacht Energon, in
+San Francisco harbour, not later than the evening of April 5.  It is
+my wish and my will that you confer with me here on Palgrave Island
+in the matter of reconstructing society upon some rational basis.
+
+"Do not misunderstand me, when I tell you that I am one with a
+theory.  I want to see that theory work, and therefore I call upon
+your cooperation.  In this theory of mine, lives are but pawns; I
+deal with quantities of lives.  I am after laughter, and those that
+stand in the way of laughter must perish.  The game is big.  There
+are fifteen hundred million human lives to-day on the planet.  What
+is your single life against them?  It is as naught, in my theory.
+And remember that mine is the power.  Remember that I am a scientist,
+and that one life, or one million of lives, mean nothing to me as
+arrayed against the countless billions of billions of the lives of
+the generations to come.  It is for their laughter that I seek to
+reconstruct society now; and against them your own meagre little life
+is a paltry thing indeed.
+
+"Whoso has power can command his fellows.  By virtue of that military
+device known as the phalanx, Alexander conquered his bit of the
+world.  By virtue of that chemical device, gunpowder, Cortes with his
+several hundred cut-throats conquered the empire of the Montezumas.
+Now I am in possession of a device that is all my own.  In the course
+of a century not more than half a dozen fundamental discoveries or
+inventions are made.  I have made such an invention.  The possession
+of it gives me the mastery of the world.  I shall use this invention,
+not for commercial exploitation, but for the good of humanity.  For
+that purpose I want help--willing agents, obedient hands; and I am
+strong enough to compel the service.  I am taking the shortest way,
+though I am in no hurry.  I shall not clutter my speed with haste.
+
+"The incentive of material gain developed man from the savage to the
+semi-barbarian he is today.  This incentive has been a useful device
+for the development of the human; but it has now fulfilled its
+function and is ready to be cast aside into the scrap-heap of
+rudimentary vestiges such as gills in the throat and belief in the
+divine right of kings.  Of course you do not think so; but I do not
+see that that will prevent you from aiding me to fling the
+anachronism into the scrap-heap.  For I tell you now that the time
+has come when mere food and shelter and similar sordid things shall
+be automatic, as free and easy and involuntary of access as the air.
+I shall make them automatic, what of my discovery and the power that
+discovery gives me.  And with food and shelter automatic, the
+incentive of material gain passes away from the world for ever.  With
+food and shelter automatic, the higher incentives will universally
+obtain--the spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual incentives that
+will tend to develop and make beautiful and noble body, mind, and
+spirit.  Then all the world will be dominated by happiness and
+laughter.  It will be the reign of universal laughter.
+
+"Yours for that day,
+
+"GOLIAH."
+
+
+Still the world would not believe.  The ten politicians were at
+Washington, so that they did not have the opportunity of being
+convinced that Bassett had had, and not one of them took the trouble
+to journey out to San Francisco to make the opportunity.  As for
+Goliah, he was hailed by the newspapers as another Tom Lawson with a
+panacea; and there were specialists in mental disease who, by
+analysis of Goliah's letters, proved conclusively that he was a
+lunatic.
+
+The yacht Energon arrived in the harbour of San Francisco on the
+afternoon of April 5, and Bassett came ashore.  But the Energon did
+not sail next day, for not one of the ten summoned politicians had
+elected to make the journey to Palgrave Island.  The newsboys,
+however, called "Extra" that day in all the cities.  The ten
+politicians were dead.  The yacht, lying peacefully at anchor in the
+harbour, became the centre of excited interest.  She was surrounded
+by a flotilla of launches and rowboats, and many tugs and steamboats
+ran excursions to her.  While the rabble was firmly kept off, the
+proper authorities and even reporters were permitted to board her.
+The mayor of San Francisco and the chief of police reported that
+nothing suspicious was to be seen upon her, and the port authorities
+announced that her papers were correct and in order in every detail.
+Many photographs and columns of descriptive matter were run in the
+newspapers.
+
+The crew was reported to be composed principally of Scandinavians--
+fair-haired, blue-eyed Swedes, Norwegians afflicted with the
+temperamental melancholy of their race, stolid Russian Finns, and a
+slight sprinkling of Americans and English.  It was noted that there
+was nothing mercurial and flyaway about them.  They seemed weighty
+men, oppressed by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity.  A sober
+seriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them.  They
+appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by
+some overwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman
+hand.  The captain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was
+cartooned in the papers as "Gloomy Gus" (the pessimistic hero of the
+comic supplement).
+
+Some sea-captain recognized the Energon as the yacht Scud, once owned
+by Merrivale of the New York Yacht Club.  With this clue it was soon
+ascertained that the Scud had disappeared several years before.  The
+agent who sold her reported the purchaser to be merely another agent,
+a man he had seen neither before nor since.  The yacht had been
+reconstructed at Duffey's Shipyard in New Jersey.  The change in her
+name and registry occurred at that time and had been legally
+executed.  Then the Energon had disappeared in the shroud of mystery.
+
+In the meantime, Bassett was going crazy--at least his friends and
+business associates said so.  He kept away from his vast business
+enterprises and said that he must hold his hands until the other
+masters of the world could join with him in the reconstruction of
+society--proof indubitable that Goliah's bee had entered his bonnet.
+To reporters he had little to say.  He was not at liberty, he said,
+to relate what he had seen on Palgrave Island; but he could assure
+them that the matter was serious, the most serious thing that had
+ever happened.  His final word was that, the world was on the verge
+of a turnover, for good or ill he did not know, but, one way or the
+other, he was absolutely convinced that the turnover was coming.  As
+for business, business could go hang.  He had seen things, he had,
+and that was all there was to it.
+
+There was a great telegraphing, during this period, between the local
+Federal officials and the state and war departments at Washington.  A
+secret attempt was made late one afternoon to board the Energon and
+place the captain under arrest--the Attorney-General having given the
+opinion that the captain could be held for the murder of the ten
+"statesmen."  The government launch was seen to leave Meigg's Wharf
+and steer for the Energon, and that was the last ever seen of the
+launch and the men on board of it.  The government tried to keep the
+affair hushed up, but the cat was slipped out of the bag by the
+families of the missing men, and the papers were filled with
+monstrous versions of the affair.
+
+The government now proceeded to extreme measures.  The battleship
+Alaska was ordered to capture the strange yacht, or, failing that, to
+sink her.  These were secret instructions; but thousands of eyes,
+from the water front and from the shipping in the harbour, witnessed
+what happened that afternoon.  The battleship got under way and
+steamed slowly toward the Energon.  At half a mile distant the
+battleship blew up--simply blew up, that was all, her shattered frame
+sinking to the bottom of the bay, a riff-raff of wreckage and a few
+survivors strewing the surface.  Among the survivors was a young
+lieutenant who had had charge of the wireless on board the Alaska.
+The reporters got hold of him first, and he talked.  No sooner had
+the Alaska got under way, he said, than a message was received from
+the Energon.  It was in the international code, and it was a warning
+to the Alaska to come no nearer than half a mile.  He had sent the
+message, through the speaking tube, immediately to the captain.  He
+did not know anything more, except that the Energon twice repeated
+the message and that five minutes afterward the explosion occurred.
+The captain of the Alaska had perished with his ship, and nothing
+more was to be learned.
+
+The Energon, however, promptly hoisted anchor and cleared out to sea.
+A great clamour was raised by the papers; the government was charged
+with cowardice and vacillation in its dealings with a mere pleasure
+yacht and a lunatic who called himself "Goliah," and immediate and
+decisive action was demanded.  Also, a great cry went up about the
+loss of life, especially the wanton killing of the ten "statesmen."
+Goliah promptly replied.  In fact, so prompt was his reply that the
+experts in wireless telegraphy announced that, since it was
+impossible to send wireless messages so great a distance, Goliah was
+in their very midst and not on Palgrave Island.  Goliah's letter was
+delivered to the Associated Press by a messenger boy who had been
+engaged on the street.  The letter was as follows:
+
+
+"What are a few paltry lives?  In your insane wars you destroy
+millions of lives and think nothing of it.  In your fratricidal
+commercial struggle you kill countless babes, women, and men, and you
+triumphantly call the shambles 'individualism.'  I call it anarchy.
+I am going to put a stop to your wholesale destruction of human
+beings.  I want laughter, not slaughter.  Those of you who stand in
+the way of laughter will get slaughter.
+
+"Your government is trying to delude you into believing that the
+destruction of the Alaska was an accident.  Know here and now that it
+was by my orders that the Alaska was destroyed.  In a few short
+months, all battleships on all seas will be destroyed or flung to the
+scrap-heap, and all nations shall disarm; fortresses shall be
+dismantled, armies disbanded, and warfare shall cease from the earth.
+Mine is the power.  I am the will of God.  The whole world shall be
+in vassalage to me, but it shall be a vassalage of peace.
+
+"I am
+
+GOLIAH."
+
+
+"Blow Palgrave Island out of the water!" was the head-line retort of
+the newspapers.  The government was of the same frame of mind, and
+the assembling of the fleets began.  Walter Bassett broke out in
+ineffectual protest, but was swiftly silenced by the threat of a
+lunacy commission.  Goliah remained silent.  Against Palgrave Island
+five great fleets were hurled--the Asiatic Squadron, the South
+Pacific Squadron, the North Pacific Squadron, the Caribbean Squadron,
+and half of the North Atlantic Squadron, the two latter coming
+through the Panama Canal.
+
+"I have the honour to report that we sighted Palgrave Island on the
+evening of April 29," ran the report of Captain Johnson, of the
+battleship North Dakota, to the Secretary of the Navy.  "The Asiatic
+Squadron was delayed and did not arrive until the morning of April
+30.  A council of the admirals was held, and it was decided to attack
+early next morning.  The destroyer, Swift VII, crept in, unmolested,
+and reported no warlike preparations on the island.  It noted several
+small merchant steamers in the harbour, and the existence of a small
+village in a hopelessly exposed position that could be swept by our
+fire.
+
+"It had been decided that all the vessels should rush in, scattered,
+upon the island, opening fire at three miles, and continuing to the
+edge of the reef, there to retain loose formation and engage.
+Palgrave Island repeatedly warned us, by wireless, in the
+international code, to keep outside the ten-mile limit; but no heed
+was paid to the warnings.
+
+"The North Dakota did not take part in the movement of the morning of
+May 1.  This was due to a slight accident of the preceding night that
+temporarily disabled her steering-gear.  The morning of May 1 broke
+clear and calm.  There was a slight breeze from the south-west that
+quickly died away.  The North Dakota lay twelve miles off the island.
+At the signal the squadrons charged in upon the island, from all
+sides, at full speed.  Our wireless receiver continued to tick off
+warnings from the island.  The ten-mile limit was passed, and nothing
+happened.  I watched through my glasses.  At five miles nothing
+happened; at four miles nothing happened; at three miles, the New
+York, in the lead on our side of the island, opened fire.  She fired
+only one shot.  Then she blew up.  The rest of the vessels never
+fired a shot.  They began to blow up, everywhere, before our eyes.
+Several swerved about and started back, but they failed to escape.
+The destroyer, Dart XXX, nearly made the ten-mile limit when she blew
+up.  She was the last survivor.  No harm came to the North Dakota,
+and that night, the steering-gear being repaired, I gave orders to
+sail for San Francisco."
+
+To say that the United States was stunned is but to expose the
+inadequacy of language.  The whole world was stunned.  It confronted
+that blight of the human brain, the unprecedented.  Human endeavour
+was a jest, a monstrous futility, when a lunatic on a lonely island,
+who owned a yacht and an exposed village, could destroy five of the
+proudest fleets of Christendom.  And how had he done it?  Nobody
+knew.  The scientists lay down in the dust of the common road and
+wailed and gibbered.  They did not know.  Military experts committed
+suicide by scores.  The mighty fabric of warfare they had fashioned
+was a gossamer veil rent asunder by a miserable lunatic.  It was too
+much for their sanity.  Mere human reason could not withstand the
+shock.  As the savage is crushed by the sleight-of-hand of the witch
+doctor, so was the world crushed by the magic of Goliah.  How did he
+do it?  It was the awful face of the Unknown upon which the world
+gazed and by which it was frightened out of the memory of its
+proudest achievements.
+
+But all the world was not stunned.  There was the invariable
+exception--the Island Empire of Japan.  Drunken with the wine of
+success deep-quaffed, without superstition and without faith in aught
+but its own ascendant star, laughing at the wreckage of science and
+mad with pride of race, it went forth upon the way of war.  America's
+fleets had been destroyed.  From the battlements of heaven the
+multitudinous ancestral shades of Japan leaned down.  The
+opportunity, God-given, had come.  The Mikado was in truth a brother
+to the gods.
+
+The war-monsters of Japan were loosed in mighty fleets.  The
+Philippines were gathered in as a child gathers a nosegay.  It took
+longer for the battleships to travel to Hawaii, to Panama, and to the
+Pacific Coast.  The United States was panic-stricken, and there arose
+the powerful party of dishonourable peace.  In the midst of the
+clamour the Energon arrived in San Francisco Bay and Goliah spoke
+once more.  There was a little brush as the Energon came in, and a
+few explosions of magazines occurred along the war-tunnelled hills as
+the coast defences went to smash.  Also, the blowing up of the
+submarine mines in the Golden Gate made a remarkably fine display.
+Goliah's message to the people of San Francisco, dated as usual from
+Palgrave Island, was published in the papers.  It ran:
+
+
+"Peace?  Peace be with you.  You shall have peace.  I have spoken to
+this purpose before.  And give you me peace.  Leave my yacht Energon
+alone.  Commit one overt act against her and not one stone in San
+Francisco shall stand upon another.
+
+"To-morrow let all good citizens go out upon the hills that slope
+down to the sea.  Go with music and laughter and garlands.  Make
+festival for the new age that is dawning.  Be like children upon your
+hills, and witness the passing of war.  Do not miss the opportunity.
+It is your last chance to behold what henceforth you will be
+compelled to seek in museums of antiquities.
+
+"I promise you a merry day,
+
+"GOLIAH."
+
+
+The madness of magic was in the air.  With the people it was as if
+all their gods had crashed and the heavens still stood.  Order and
+law had passed away from the universe; but the sun still shone, the
+wind still blew, the flowers still bloomed--that was the amazing
+thing about it.  That water should continue to run downhill was a
+miracle.  All the stabilities of the human mind and human achievement
+were crumbling.  The one stable thing that remained was Goliah, a
+madman on an island.  And so it was that the whole population of San
+Francisco went forth next day in colossal frolic upon the hills that
+overlooked the sea.  Brass bands and banners went forth, brewery
+wagons and Sunday-school picnics--all the strange heterogeneous
+groupings of swarming metropolitan life.
+
+On the sea-rim rose the smoke from the funnels of a hundred hostile
+vessels of war, all converging upon the helpless, undefended Golden
+Gate.  And not all undefended, for out through the Golden Gate moved
+the Energon, a tiny toy of white, rolling like a straw in the stiff
+sea on the bar where a strong ebb-tide ran in the teeth of the summer
+sea-breeze.  But the Japanese were cautious.  Their thirty- and
+forty-thousand-ton battleships slowed down half a dozen miles
+offshore and manoeuvred in ponderous evolutions, while tiny scout-
+boats (lean, six-funnelled destroyers) ran in, cutting blackly the
+flashing sea like so many sharks.  But, compared with the Energon,
+they were leviathans.  Compared with them, the Energon was as the
+sword of the arch-angel Michael, and they the forerunners of the
+hosts of hell.
+
+But the flashing of the sword, the good people of San Francisco,
+gathered on her hills, never saw.  Mysterious, invisible, it cleaved
+the air and smote the mightiest blows of combat the world had ever
+witnessed.  The good people of San Francisco saw little and
+understood less.  They saw only a million and a half tons of brine-
+cleaving, thunder-flinging fabrics hurled skyward and smashed back in
+ruin to sink into the sea.  It was all over in five minutes.
+Remained upon the wide expanse of sea only the Energon, rolling white
+and toylike on the bar.
+
+Goliah spoke to the Mikado and the Elder Statesmen.  It was only an
+ordinary cable message, despatched from San Francisco by the captain
+of the Energon, but it was of sufficient moment to cause the
+immediate withdrawal of Japan from the Philippines and of her
+surviving fleets from the sea.  Japan the sceptical was converted.
+She had felt the weight of Goliah's arm.  And meekly she obeyed when
+Goliah commanded her to dismantle her war vessels and to turn the
+metal into useful appliances for the arts of peace.  In all the
+ports, navy-yards, machine-shops, and foundries of Japan tens of
+thousands of brown-skinned artisans converted the war-monsters into
+myriads of useful things, such as ploughshares (Goliah insisted on
+ploughshares), gasolene engines, bridge-trusses, telephone and
+telegraph wires, steel rails, locomotives, and rolling stock for
+railways.  It was a world-penance for a world to see, and paltry
+indeed it made appear that earlier penance, barefooted in the snow,
+of an emperor to a pope for daring to squabble over temporal power.
+
+Goliah's next summons was to the ten leading scientists of the United
+States.  This time there was no hesitancy in obeying.  The savants
+were ludicrously prompt, some of them waiting in San Francisco for
+weeks so as not to miss the scheduled sailing-date.  They departed on
+the Energon on June 15; and while they were on the sea, on the way to
+Palgrave Island, Goliah performed another spectacular feat.  Germany
+and France were preparing to fly at each other's throats.  Goliah
+commanded peace.  They ignored the command, tacitly agreeing to fight
+it out on land where it seemed safer for the belligerently inclined.
+Goliah set the date of June 19 for the cessation of hostile
+preparations.  Both countries mobilized their armies on June 18, and
+hurled them at the common frontier.  And on June 19, Goliah struck.
+All generals, war-secretaries, and jingo-leaders in the two countries
+died on that day; and that day two vast armies, undirected, like
+strayed sheep, walked over each other's frontiers and fraternized.
+But the great German war lord had escaped--it was learned, afterward,
+by hiding in the huge safe where were stored the secret archives of
+his empire.  And when he emerged he was a very penitent war lord, and
+like the Mikado of Japan he was set to work beating his sword-blades
+into ploughshares and pruning-hooks.
+
+But in the escape of the German Emperor was discovered a great
+significance.  The scientists of the world plucked up courage, got
+back their nerve.  One thing was conclusively evident--Goliah's power
+was not magic.  Law still reigned in the universe.  Goliah's power
+had limitations, else had the German Emperor not escaped by secretly
+hiding in a steel safe.  Many learned articles on the subject
+appeared in the magazines.
+
+The ten scientists arrived back from Palgrave Island on July 6.
+Heavy platoons of police protected them from the reporters.  No, they
+had not see Goliah, they said in the one official interview that was
+vouchsafed; but they had talked with him, and they had seen things.
+They were not permitted to state definitely all that they had seen
+and heard, but they could say that the world was about to be
+revolutionized.  Goliah was in the possession of a tremendous
+discovery that placed all the world at his mercy, and it was a good
+thing for the world that Goliah was merciful.  The ten scientists
+proceeded directly to Washington on a special train, where, for days,
+they were closeted with the heads of government, while the nation
+hung breathless on the outcome.
+
+But the outcome was a long time in arriving.  From Washington the
+President issued commands to the masters and leading figures of the
+nation.  Everything was secret.  Day by day deputations of bankers,
+railway lords, captains of industry, and Supreme Court justices
+arrived; and when they arrived they remained.  The weeks dragged on,
+and then, on August 25, began the famous issuance of proclamations.
+Congress and the Senate co-operated with the President in this, while
+the Supreme Court justices gave their sanction and the money lords
+and the captains of industry agreed.  War was declared upon the
+capitalist masters of the nation.  Martial law was declared over the
+whole United States.  The supreme power was vested in the President.
+
+In one day, child-labour in the whole country was abolished.  It was
+done by decree, and the United States was prepared with its army to
+enforce its decrees.  In the same day all women factory workers were
+dismissed to their homes, and all the sweat-shops were closed.  "But
+we cannot make profits!" wailed the petty capitalists.  "Fools!" was
+the retort of Goliah.  "As if the meaning of life were profits!  Give
+up your businesses and your profit-mongering."  "But there is nobody
+to buy our business!" they wailed.  "Buy and sell--is that all the
+meaning life has for you?" replied Goliah.  "You have nothing to
+sell.  Turn over your little cut-throating, anarchistic businesses to
+the government so that they may be rationally organized and
+operated."  And the next day, by decree, the government began taking
+possession of all factories, shops, mines, ships, railroads, and
+producing lands.
+
+The nationalization of the means of production and distribution went
+on apace.  Here and there were sceptical capitalists of moment.  They
+were made prisoners and haled to Palgrave Island, and when they
+returned they always acquiesced in what the government was doing.  A
+little later the journey to Palgrave Island became unnecessary.  When
+objection was made, the reply of the officials was "Goliah has
+spoken"--which was another way of saying, "He must be obeyed."
+
+The captains of industry became heads of departments.  It was found
+that civil engineers, for instance, worked just as well in government
+employ as before, they had worked in private employ.  It was found
+that men of high executive ability could not violate their nature.
+They could not escape exercising their executive ability, any more
+than a crab could escape crawling or a bird could escape flying.  And
+so it was that all the splendid force of the men who had previously
+worked for themselves was now put to work for the good of society.
+The half-dozen great railway chiefs co-operated in the organizing of
+a national system of railways that was amazingly efficacious.  Never
+again was there such a thing as a car shortage.  These chiefs were
+not the Wall Street railway magnates, but they were the men who
+formerly had done the real work while in the employ of the Wall
+Street magnates.
+
+Wall Street was dead.  There was no more buying and selling and
+speculating.  Nobody had anything to buy or sell.  There was nothing
+in which to speculate.  "Put the stock gamblers to work," said
+Goliah; "give those that are young, and that so desire, a chance to
+learn useful trades."  "Put the drummers, and salesmen, and
+advertising agents, and real estate agents to work," said Goliah; and
+by hundreds of thousands the erstwhile useless middlemen and
+parasites went into useful occupations.  The four hundred thousand
+idle gentlemen of the country who had lived upon incomes were
+likewise put to work.  Then there were a lot of helpless men in high
+places who were cleared out, the remarkable thing about this being
+that they were cleared out by their own fellows.  Of this class were
+the professional politicians, whose wisdom and power consisted of
+manipulating machine politics and of grafting.  There was no longer
+any graft.  Since there were no private interests to purchase special
+privileges, no bribes were offered to legislators, and legislators
+for the first time legislated for the people.  The result was that
+men who were efficient, not in corruption, but in direction, found
+their way into the legislatures.
+
+With this rational organization of society amazing results were
+brought about.  The national day's work was eight hours, and yet
+production increased.  In spite of the great permanent improvements
+and of the immense amount of energy consumed in systematizing the
+competitive chaos of society, production doubled and tripled upon
+itself.  The standard of living increased, and still consumption
+could not keep up with production.  The maximum working age was
+decreased to fifty years, to forty-nine years, and to forty-eight
+years.  The minimum working age went up from sixteen years to
+eighteen years.  The eight-hour day became a seven-hour day, and in a
+few months the national working day was reduced to five hours.
+
+In the meantime glimmerings were being caught, not of the identity of
+Goliah, but of how he had worked and prepared for his assuming
+control of the world.  Little things leaked out, clues were followed
+up, apparently unrelated things were pieced together.  Strange
+stories of blacks stolen from Africa were remembered, of Chinese and
+Japanese contract coolies who had mysteriously disappeared, of lonely
+South Sea Islands raided and their inhabitants carried away; stories
+of yachts and merchant steamers, mysteriously purchased, that had
+disappeared and the descriptions of which remotely tallied with the
+crafts that had carried the Orientals and Africans and islanders
+away.  Where had Goliah got the sinews of war? was the question.  And
+the surmised answer was:  By exploiting these stolen labourers.  It
+was they that lived in the exposed village on Palgrave Island.  It
+was the product of their toil that had purchased the yachts and
+merchant steamers and enabled Goliah's agents to permeate society and
+carry out his will.  And what was the product of their toil that had
+given Goliah the wealth necessary to realize his plans?  Commercial
+radium, the newspapers proclaimed; and radiyte, and radiosole, and
+argatium, and argyte, and the mysterious golyte (that had proved so
+valuable in metallurgy).  These were the new compounds, discovered in
+the first decade of the twentieth century, the commercial and
+scientific use of which had become so enormous in the second decade.
+
+The line of fruit boats that ran from Hawaii to San Francisco was
+declared to be the property of Goliah.  This was a surmise, for no
+other owner could be discovered, and the agents who handled the
+shipments of the fruit boats were only agents.  Since no one else
+owned the fruit boats, then Goliah must own them.  The point of which
+is:  THAT IT LEAKED OUT THAT THE MAJOR PORTION of THE WORLD'S SUPPLY
+IN THESE PRECIOUS COMPOUNDS WAS BROUGHT TO SAN FRANCISCO BY THOSE
+VERY FRUIT BOATS.  That the whole chain of surmise was correct was
+proved in later years when Goliah's slaves were liberated and
+honourably pensioned by the international government of the world.
+It was at that time that the seal of secrecy was lifted from the lips
+of his agents and higher emissaries, and those that chose revealed
+much of the mystery of Goliah's organization and methods.  His
+destroying angels, however, remained for ever dumb.  Who the men were
+who went forth to the high places and killed at his bidding will be
+unknown to the end of time--for kill they did, by means of that very
+subtle and then-mysterious force that Goliah had discovered and named
+"Energon."
+
+But at that time Energon, the little giant that was destined to do
+the work of the world, was unknown and undreamed of.  Only Goliah
+knew, and he kept his secret well.  Even his agents, who were armed
+with it, and who, in the case of the yacht Energon, destroyed a
+mighty fleet of war-ships by exploding their magazines, knew not what
+the subtle and potent force was, nor how it was manufactured.  They
+knew only one of its many uses, and in that one use they had been
+instructed by Goliah.  It is now well known that radium, and radiyte,
+and radiosole, and all the other compounds, were by-products of the
+manufacture of Energon by Goliah from the sunlight; but at that time
+nobody knew what Energon was, and Goliah continued to awe and rule
+the world.
+
+One of the uses of Energon was in wireless telegraphy.  It was by its
+means that Goliah was able to communicate with his agents all over
+the world.  At that time the apparatus required by an agent was so
+clumsy that it could not be packed in anything less than a fair-sized
+steamer trunk.  To-day, thanks to the improvements of Hendsoll, the
+perfected apparatus can be carried in a coat pocket.
+
+It was in December, 1924, that Goliah sent out his famous "Christmas
+Letter," part of the text of which is here given:
+
+
+"So far, while I have kept the rest of the nations from each other's
+throats, I have devoted myself particularly to the United States.
+Now I have not given to the people of the United States a rational
+social organization.  What I have done has been to compel them to
+make that organization themselves.  There is more laughter in the
+United States these days, and there is more sense.  Food and shelter
+are no longer obtained by the anarchistic methods of so-called
+individualism but are now wellnigh automatic.  And the beauty of it
+is that the people of the United States have achieved all this for
+themselves.  I did not achieve it for them.  I repeat, they achieved
+it for themselves.  All that I did was to put the fear of death in
+the hearts of the few that sat in the high places and obstructed the
+coming of rationality and laughter.  The fear of death made those in
+the high places get out of the way, that was all, and gave the
+intelligence of man a chance to realize itself socially.
+
+"In the year that is to come I shall devote myself to the rest of the
+world.  I shall put the fear of death in the hearts of all that sit
+in the high places in all the nations.  And they will do as they have
+done in the United States--get down out of the high places and give
+the intelligence of man a chance for social rationality.  All the
+nations shall tread the path the United States is now on.
+
+"And when all the nations are well along on that path, I shall have
+something else for them.  But first they must travel that path for
+themselves.  They must demonstrate that the intelligence of mankind
+to-day, with the mechanical energy now at its disposal, is capable of
+organizing society so that food and shelter be made automatic, labour
+be reduced to a three-hour day, and joy and laughter be made
+universal.  And when that is accomplished, not by me but by the
+intelligence of mankind, then I shall make a present to the world of
+a new mechanical energy.  This is my discovery.  This Energon is
+nothing more nor less than the cosmic energy that resides in the
+solar rays.  When it is harnessed by mankind it will do the work of
+the world.  There will be no more multitudes of miners slaving out
+their lives in the bowels of the earth, no more sooty firemen and
+greasy engineers.  All may dress in white if they so will.  The work
+of life will have become play and young and old will be the children
+of joy, and the business of living will become joy; and they will
+compete, one with another, in achieving ethical concepts and
+spiritual heights, in fashioning pictures and songs, and stories, in
+statecraft and beauty craft, in the sweat and the endeavour of the
+wrestler and the runner and the player of games--all will compete,
+not for sordid coin and base material reward, but for the joy that
+shall be theirs in the development and vigour of flesh and in the
+development and keenness of spirit.  All will be joy-smiths, and
+their task shall be to beat out laughter from the ringing anvil of
+life.
+
+"And now one word for the immediate future.  On New Year's Day all
+nations shall disarm, all fortresses and war-ships shall be
+dismantled, and all armies shall be disbanded.
+
+GOLIAH."
+
+
+On New Year's Day all the world disarmed.  The millions of soldiers
+and sailors and workmen in the standing armies, in the navies, and in
+the countless arsenals, machine-shops, and factories for the
+manufacture of war machinery, were dismissed to their homes.  These
+many millions of men, as well as their costly war machinery, had
+hitherto been supported on the back of labour.  They now went into
+useful occupations, and the released labour giant heaved a mighty
+sigh of relief.  The policing of the world was left to the peace
+officers and was purely social, whereas war had been distinctly anti-
+social.
+
+Ninety per cent. of the crimes against society had been crimes
+against private property.  With the passing of private property, at
+least in the means of production, and with the organization of
+industry that gave every man a chance, the crimes against private
+property practically ceased.  The police forces everywhere were
+reduced repeatedly and again and again.  Nearly all occasional and
+habitual criminals ceased voluntarily from their depredations.  There
+was no longer any need for them to commit crime.  They merely changed
+with changing conditions.  A smaller number of criminals was put into
+hospitals and cured.  And the remnant of the hopelessly criminal and
+degenerate was segregated.  And the courts in all countries were
+likewise decreased in number again and again.  Ninety-five per cent.
+of all civil cases had been squabbles over property, conflicts of
+property-rights, lawsuits, contests of wills, breaches of contract,
+bankruptcies, etc.  With the passing of private property, this
+ninety-five per cent. of the cases that cluttered the courts also
+passed.  The courts became shadows, attenuated ghosts, rudimentary
+vestiges of the anarchistic times that had preceded the coming of
+Goliah.
+
+The year 1925 was a lively year in the world's history.  Goliah ruled
+the world with a strong hand.  Kings and emperors journeyed to
+Palgrave Island, saw the wonders of Energon, and went away, with the
+fear of death in their hearts, to abdicate thrones and crowns and
+hereditary licenses.  When Goliah spoke to politicians (so-called
+"statesmen"), they obeyed . . . or died.  He dictated universal
+reforms, dissolved refractory parliaments, and to the great
+conspiracy that was formed of mutinous money lords and captains of
+industry he sent his destroying angels.  "The time is past for
+fooling," he told them.  "You are anachronisms.  You stand in the way
+of humanity.  To the scrap-heap with you."  To those that protested,
+and they were many, he said:  "This is no time for logomachy.  You
+can argue for centuries.  It is what you have done in the past.  I
+have no time for argument.  Get out of the way."
+
+With the exception of putting a stop to war, and of indicating the
+broad general plan, Goliah did nothing.  By putting the fear of death
+into the hearts of those that sat in the high places and obstructed
+progress, Goliah made the opportunity for the unshackled intelligence
+of the best social thinkers of the world to exert itself.  Goliah
+left all the multitudinous details of reconstruction to these social
+thinkers.  He wanted them to prove that they were able to do it, and
+they proved it.  It was due to their initiative that the white plague
+was stamped out from the world.  It was due to them, and in spite of
+a deal of protesting from the sentimentalists, that all the extreme
+hereditary inefficients were segregated and denied marriage.
+
+Goliah had nothing whatever to do with the instituting of the
+colleges of invention.  This idea originated practically
+simultaneously in the minds of thousands of social thinkers.  The
+time was ripe for the realization of the idea, and everywhere arose
+the splendid institutions of invention.  For the first time the
+ingenuity of man was loosed upon the problem of simplifying life,
+instead of upon the making of money-earning devices.  The affairs of
+life, such as house-cleaning, dish and window-washing, dust-removing,
+and scrubbing and clothes-washing, and all the endless sordid and
+necessary details, were simplified by invention until they became
+automatic.  We of to-day cannot realize the barbarously filthy and
+slavish lives of those that lived prior to 1925.
+
+The international government of the world was another idea that
+sprang simultaneously into the minds of thousands.  The successful
+realization of this idea was a surprise to many, but as a surprise it
+was nothing to that received by the mildly protestant sociologists
+and biologists when irrefutable facts exploded the doctrine of
+Malthus.  With leisure and joy in the world; with an immensely higher
+standard of living; and with the enormous spaciousness of opportunity
+for recreation, development, and pursuit of beauty and nobility and
+all the higher attributes, the birth-rate fell, and fell
+astoundingly.  People ceased breeding like cattle.  And better than
+that, it was immediately noticeable that a higher average of children
+was being born.  The doctrine of Malthus was knocked into a cocked
+hat--or flung to the scrap-heap, as Goliah would have put it.
+
+All that Goliah had predicted that the intelligence of mankind could
+accomplish with the mechanical energy at its disposal, came to pass.
+Human dissatisfaction practically disappeared.  The elderly people
+were the great grumblers; but when they were honourably pensioned by
+society, as they passed the age limit for work, the great majority
+ceased grumbling.  They found themselves better off in their idle old
+days under the new regime, enjoying vastly more pleasure and comforts
+than they had in their busy and toilsome youth under the old regime.
+The younger generation had easily adapted itself too the changed
+order, and the very young had never known anything else.  The sum of
+human happiness had increased enormously.  The world had become gay
+and sane.  Even the old fogies of professors of sociology, who had
+opposed with might and main the coming of the new regime, made no
+complaint.  They were a score of times better remunerated than in the
+old days, and they were not worked nearly so hard.  Besides, they
+were busy revising sociology and writing new text-books on the
+subject.  Here and there, it is true, there were atavisms, men who
+yearned for the flesh-pots and cannibal-feasts of the old alleged
+"individualism," creatures long of teeth and savage of claw who
+wanted to prey upon their fellow-men; but they were looked upon as
+diseased, and were treated in hospitals.  A small remnant, however,
+proved incurable, and was confined in asylums and denied marriage.
+Thus there was no progeny to inherit their atavistic tendencies.
+
+As the years went by, Goliah dropped out of the running of the world.
+There was nothing for him to run.  The world was running itself, and
+doing it smoothly and beautifully.  In 1937, Goliah made his long-
+promised present of Energon to the world.  He himself had devised a
+thousand ways in which the little giant should do the work of the
+world--all of which he made public at the same time.  But instantly
+the colleges of invention seized upon Energon and utilized it in a
+hundred thousand additional ways.  In fact, as Goliah confessed in
+his letter of March 1938, the colleges of invention cleared up
+several puzzling features of Energon that had baffled him during the
+preceding years.  With the introduction of the use of Energon the
+two-hour work-day was cut down almost to nothing.  As Goliah had
+predicted, work indeed became play.  And, so tremendous was man's
+productive capacity, due to Energon and the rational social
+utilization of it, that the humblest citizen enjoyed leisure and time
+and opportunity for an immensely greater abundance of living than had
+the most favoured under the old anarchistic system.
+
+Nobody had ever seen Goliah, and all peoples began to clamour for
+their saviour to appear.  While the world did not minimize his
+discovery of Energon, it was decided that greater than that was his
+wide social vision.  He was a superman, a scientific superman; and
+the curiosity of the world to see him had become wellnigh unbearable.
+It was in 1941, after much hesitancy on his part, that he finally
+emerged from Palgrave Island.  He arrived on June 6 in San Francisco,
+and for the first time, since his retirement to Palgrave Island, the
+world looked upon his face.  And the world was disappointed.  Its
+imagination had been touched.  An heroic figure had been made out of
+Goliah.  He was the man, or the demi-god, rather, who had turned the
+planet over.  The deeds of Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, and
+Napoleon were as the play of babes alongside his colossal
+achievements.
+
+And ashore in San Francisco and through its streets stepped and rode
+a little old man, sixty-five years of age, well preserved, with a
+pink-and-white complexion and a bald spot on his head the size of an
+apple.  He was short-sighted and wore spectacles.  But when the
+spectacles were removed, his were quizzical blue eyes like a child's,
+filled with mild wonder at the world.  Also his eyes had a way of
+twinkling, accompanied by a screwing up of the face, as if he laughed
+at the huge joke he had played upon the world, trapping it, in spite
+of itself, into happiness and laughter.
+
+For a scientific superman and world tyrant, he had remarkable
+weaknesses.  He loved sweets, and was inordinately fond of salted
+almonds and salted pecans, especially of the latter.  He always
+carried a paper bag of them in his pocket, and he had a way of saying
+frequently that the chemism of his nature demanded such fare.
+Perhaps his most astonishing failing was cats.  He had an
+ineradicable aversion to that domestic animal.  It will be remembered
+that he fainted dead away with sudden fright, while speaking in
+Brotherhood Palace, when the janitor's cat walked out upon the stage
+and brushed against his legs.
+
+But no sooner had he revealed himself to the world than he was
+identified.  Old-time friends had no difficulty in recognizing him as
+Percival Stultz, the German-American who, in 1898, had worked in the
+Union Iron Works, and who, for two years at that time, had been
+secretary of Branch 369 of the International Brotherhood of
+Machinists.  It was in 1901, then twenty-five years of age, that he
+had taken special scientific courses at the University of California,
+at the same time supporting himself by soliciting what was then known
+as "life insurance."  His records as a student are preserved in the
+university museum, and they are unenviable.  He is remembered by the
+professors he sat under chiefly for his absent-mindedness.
+Undoubtedly, even then, he was catching glimpses of the wide visions
+that later were to be his.
+
+His naming himself "Goliah" and shrouding himself in mystery was his
+little joke, he later explained.  As Goliah, or any other thing like
+that, he said, he was able to touch the imagination of the world and
+turn it over; but as Percival Stultz, wearing side-whiskers and
+spectacles, and weighing one hundred and eighteen pounds, he would
+have been unable to turn over a pecan--"not even a salted pecan."
+
+But the world quickly got over its disappointment in his personal
+appearance and antecedents.  It knew him and revered him as the
+master-mind of the ages; and it loved him for himself, for his
+quizzical short-sighted eyes and the inimitable way in which he
+screwed up his face when he laughed; it loved him for his simplicity
+and comradeship and warm humanness, and for his fondness for salted
+pecans and his aversion to cats.  And to-day, in the wonder-city of
+Asgard, rises in awful beauty that monument to him that dwarfs the
+pyramids and all the monstrous blood-stained monuments of antiquity.
+And on that monument, as all know, is inscribed in imperishable
+bronze the prophecy and the fulfilment:  "ALL WILL BE JOY-SMITHS, AND
+THEIR TASK SHALL BE TO BEAT OUT LAUGHTER FROM THE RINGING ANVIL OF
+LIFE."
+
+[EDITORIAL NOTE.--This remarkable production is the work of Harry
+Beckwith, a student in the Lowell High School of San Francisco, and
+it is here reproduced chiefly because of the youth of its author.
+Far be it from our policy to burden our readers with ancient history;
+and when it is known that Harry Beckwith was only fifteen when the
+fore-going was written, our motive will be understood.  "Goliah" won
+the Premier for high school composition in 2254, and last year Harry
+Beckwith took advantage of the privilege earned, by electing to spend
+six months in Asgard.  The wealth of historical detail, the
+atmosphere of the times, and the mature style of the composition are
+especially noteworthy in one so young.]
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN POPPY
+
+
+
+I have a poppy field.  That is, by the grace of God and the good-
+nature of editors, I am enabled to place each month divers gold
+pieces into a clerical gentleman's hands, and in return for said gold
+pieces I am each month reinvested with certain proprietary-rights in
+a poppy field.  This field blazes on the rim of the Piedmont Hills.
+Beneath lies all the world.  In the distance, across the silver sweep
+of bay, San Francisco smokes on her many hills like a second Rome.
+Not far away, Mount Tamalpais thrusts a rugged shoulder into the sky;
+and midway between is the Golden Gate, where sea mists love to
+linger.  From the poppy field we often see the shimmering blue of the
+Pacific beyond, and the busy ships that go for ever out and in.
+
+"We shall have great joy in our poppy field," said Bess.  "Yes," said
+I; "how the poor city folk will envy when they come to see us, and
+how we will make all well again when we send them off with great
+golden armfuls!"
+
+"But those things will have to come down," I added, pointing to
+numerous obtrusive notices (relics of the last tenant) displayed
+conspicuously along the boundaries, and bearing, each and all, this
+legend:
+
+
+"PRIVATE GROUNDS.  NO TRESPASSING."
+
+
+"Why should we refuse the poor city folk a ramble over our field,
+because, forsooth, they have not the advantage of our acquaintance?"
+
+"How I abhor such things," said Bess; "the arrogant symbols of
+power."
+
+"They disgrace human nature," said I.
+
+"They shame the generous landscape," she said, "and they are
+abominable."
+
+"Piggish!" quoth I, hotly.  "Down with them!"
+
+We looked forward to the coming of the poppies, did Bess and I,
+looked forward as only creatures of the city may look who have been
+long denied.  I have forgotten to mention the existence of a house
+above the poppy field, a squat and wandering bungalow in which we had
+elected to forsake town traditions and live in fresher and more
+vigorous ways.  The first poppies came, orange-yellow and golden in
+the standing grain, and we went about gleefully, as though drunken
+with their wine, and told each other that the poppies were there.  We
+laughed at unexpected moments, in the midst of silences, and at times
+grew ashamed and stole forth secretly to gaze upon our treasury.  But
+when the great wave of poppy-flame finally spilled itself down the
+field, we shouted aloud, and danced, and clapped our hands, freely
+and frankly mad.
+
+And then came the Goths.  My face was in a lather, the time of the
+first invasion, and I suspended my razor in mid-air to gaze out on my
+beloved field.  At the far end I saw a little girl and a little boy,
+their arms filled with yellow spoil.  Ah, thought I, an unwonted
+benevolence burgeoning, what a delight to me is their delight!  It is
+sweet that children should pick poppies in my field.  All summer
+shall they pick poppies in my field.  But they must be little
+children, I added as an afterthought, and they must pick from the
+lower end--this last prompted by a glance at the great golden fellows
+nodding in the wheat beneath my window.  Then the razor descended.
+Shaving was always an absorbing task, and I did not glance out of the
+window again until the operation was completed.  And then I was
+bewildered.  Surely this was not my poppy field.  No--and yes, for
+there were the tall pines clustering austerely together on one side,
+the magnolia tree burdened with bloom, and the Japanese quinces
+splashing the driveway hedge with blood.  Yes, it was the field, but
+no wave of poppy-flame spilled down it, nor did the great golden
+fellows nod in the wheat beneath my window.  I rushed into a jacket
+and out of the house.  In the far distance were disappearing two huge
+balls of colour, orange and yellow, for all the world like
+perambulating poppies of cyclopean breed.
+
+"Johnny," said I to the nine-year-old son of my sister, "Johnny,
+whenever little girls come into our field to pick poppies, you must
+go down to them, and in a very quiet and gentlemanly manner, tell
+them it is not allowed."
+
+Warm days came, and the sun drew another blaze from the free-bosomed
+earth.  Whereupon a neighbour's little girl, at the behest of her
+mother, duly craved and received permission from Bess to gather a few
+poppies for decorative purposes.  But of this I was uninformed, and
+when I descried her in the midst of the field I waved my arms like a
+semaphore against the sky.
+
+"Little girl!" called I.  "Little girl!"
+
+The little girl's legs blurred the landscape as she fled, and in high
+elation I sought Bess to tell of the potency of my voice.  Nobly she
+came to the rescue, departing forthwith on an expedition of
+conciliation and explanation to the little girl's mother.  But to
+this day the little girl seeks cover at sight of me, and I know the
+mother will never be as cordial as she would otherwise have been.
+
+Came dark, overcast days, stiff, driving winds, and pelting rains,
+day on day, without end, and the city folk cowered in their dwelling-
+places like flood-beset rats; and like rats, half-drowned and
+gasping, when the weather cleared they crawled out and up the green
+Piedmont slopes to bask in the blessed sunshine.  And they invaded my
+field in swarms and droves, crushing the sweet wheat into the earth
+and with lustful hands ripping the poppies out by the roots.
+
+"I shall put up the warnings against trespassing," I said.
+
+"Yes," said Bess, with a sigh.  "I'm afraid it is necessary."
+
+The day was yet young when she sighed again:
+
+"I'm afraid, O Man, that your signs are of no avail.  People have
+forgotten how to read, these days."
+
+I went out on the porch.  A city nymph, in cool summer gown and
+picture hat, paused before one of my newly reared warnings and read
+it through with care.  Profound deliberation characterized her
+movements.  She was statuesquely tall, but with a toss of the head
+and a flirt of the skirt she dropped on hands and knees, crawled
+under the fence, and came to her feet on the inside with poppies in
+both her hands.  I walked down the drive and talked ethically to her,
+and she went away.  Then I put up more signs.
+
+At one time, years ago, these hills were carpeted with poppies.  As
+between the destructive forces and the will "to live," the poppies
+maintained an equilibrium with their environment.  But the city folk
+constituted a new and terrible destructive force, the equilibrium was
+overthrown, and the poppies wellnigh perished.  Since the city folk
+plucked those with the longest stems and biggest bowls, and since it
+is the law of kind to procreate kind, the long-stemmed, big-bowled
+poppies failed to go to seed, and a stunted, short-stemmed variety
+remained to the hills.  And not only was it stunted and short-
+stemmed, but sparsely distributed as well.  Each day and every day,
+for years and years, the city folk swarmed over the Piedmont Hills,
+and only here and there did the genius of the race survive in the
+form of miserable little flowers, close-clinging and quick-blooming,
+like children of the slums dragged hastily and precariously through
+youth to a shrivelled and futile maturity.
+
+On the other hand, the poppies had prospered in my field; and not
+only had they been sheltered from the barbarians, but also from the
+birds.  Long ago the field was sown in wheat, which went to seed
+unharvested each year, and in the cool depths of which the poppy
+seeds were hidden from the keen-eyed songsters.  And further,
+climbing after the sun through the wheat stalks, the poppies grew
+taller and taller and more royal even than the primordial ones of the
+open.
+
+So the city folk, gazing from the bare hills to my blazing, burning
+field, were sorely tempted, and, it must be told, as sorely fell.
+But no sorer was their fall than that of my beloved poppies.  Where
+the grain holds the dew and takes the bite from the sun the soil is
+moist, and in such soil it is easier to pull the poppies out by the
+roots than to break the stalk.  Now the city folk, like other folk,
+are inclined to move along the line of least resistance, and for each
+flower they gathered, there were also gathered many crisp-rolled buds
+and with them all the possibilities and future beauties of the plant
+for all time to come.
+
+One of the city folk, a middle-aged gentleman, with white hands and
+shifty eyes, especially made life interesting for me.  We called him
+the "Repeater," what of his ways.  When from the porch we implored
+him to desist, he was wont slowly and casually to direct his steps
+toward the fence, simulating finely the actions of a man who had not
+heard, but whose walk, instead, had terminated of itself or of his
+own volition.  To heighten this effect, now and again, still casually
+and carelessly, he would stoop and pluck another poppy.  Thus did he
+deceitfully save himself the indignity of being put out, and rob us
+of the satisfaction of putting him out, but he came, and he came
+often, each time getting away with an able-bodied man's share of
+plunder.
+
+It is not good to be of the city folk.  Of this I am convinced.
+There is something in the mode of life that breeds an alarming
+condition of blindness and deafness, or so it seems with the city
+folk that come to my poppy field.  Of the many to whom I have talked
+ethically not one has been found who ever saw the warnings so
+conspicuously displayed, while of those called out to from the porch,
+possibly one in fifty has heard.  Also, I have discovered that the
+relation of city folk to country flowers is quite analogous to that
+of a starving man to food.  No more than the starving man realizes
+that five pounds of meat is not so good as an ounce, do they realize
+that five hundred poppies crushed and bunched are less beautiful than
+two or three in a free cluster, where the green leaves and golden
+bowls may expand to their full loveliness.
+
+Less forgivable than the unaesthetic are the mercenary.  Hordes of
+young rascals plunder me and rob the future that they may stand on
+street corners and retail "California poppies, only five cents a
+bunch!"  In spite of my precautions some of them made a dollar a day
+out of my field.  One horde do I remember with keen regret.
+Reconnoitring for a possible dog, they applied at the kitchen door
+for "a drink of water, please."  While they drank they were besought
+not to pick any flowers.  They nodded, wiped their mouths, and
+proceeded to take themselves off by the side of the bungalow.  They
+smote the poppy field beneath my windows, spread out fan-shaped six
+wide, picking with both hands, and ripped a swath of destruction
+through the very heart of the field.  No cyclone travelled faster or
+destroyed more completely.  I shouted after them, but they sped on
+the wings of the wind, great regal poppies, broken-stalked and
+mangled, trailing after them or cluttering their wake--the most high-
+handed act of piracy, I am confident, ever committed off the high
+seas.
+
+One day I went a-fishing, and on that day a woman entered the field.
+Appeals and remonstrances from the porch having no effect upon her,
+Bess despatched a little girl to beg of her to pick no more poppies.
+The woman calmly went on picking.  Then Bess herself went down
+through the heat of the day.  But the woman went on picking, and
+while she picked she discussed property and proprietary rights,
+denying Bess's sovereignty until deeds and documents should be
+produced in proof thereof.  And all the time she went on picking,
+never once overlooking her hand.  She was a large woman, belligerent
+of aspect, and Bess was only a woman and not prone to fisticuffs.  So
+the invader picked until she could pick no more, said "Good-day," and
+sailed majestically away.
+
+"People have really grown worse in the last several years, I think,"
+said Bess to me in a tired sort of voice that night, as we sat in the
+library after dinner.
+
+Next day I was inclined to agree with her.  "There's a woman and a
+little girl heading straight for the poppies," said May, a maid about
+the bungalow.  I went out on the porch and waited their advent.  They
+plunged through the pine trees and into the fields, and as the roots
+of the first poppies were pulled I called to them.  They were about a
+hundred feet away.  The woman and the little girl turned to the sound
+of my voice and looked at me.  "Please do not pick the poppies," I
+pleaded.  They pondered this for a minute; then the woman said
+something in an undertone to the little girl, and both backs jack-
+knifed as the slaughter recommenced.  I shouted, but they had become
+suddenly deaf.  I screamed, and so fiercely that the little girl
+wavered dubiously.  And while the woman went on picking I could hear
+her in low tones heartening the little girl.
+
+I recollected a siren whistle with which I was wont to summon Johnny,
+the son of my sister.  It was a fearsome thing, of a kind to wake the
+dead, and I blew and blew, but the jack-knifed backs never unclasped.
+I do not mind with men, but I have never particularly favoured
+physical encounters with women; yet this woman, who encouraged a
+little girl in iniquity, tempted me.
+
+I went into the bungalow and fetched my rifle.  Flourishing it in a
+sanguinary manner and scowling fearsomely, I charged upon the
+invaders.  The little girl fled, screaming, to the shelter of the
+pines, but the woman calmly went on picking.  She took not the least
+notice.  I had expected her to run at sight of me, and it was
+embarrassing.  There was I, charging down the field like a wild bull
+upon a woman who would not get out of the way.  I could only slow
+down, supremely conscious of how ridiculous it all was.  At a
+distance of ten feet she straightened up and deigned to look at me.
+I came to a halt and blushed to the roots of my hair.  Perhaps I
+really did frighten her (I sometimes try to persuade myself that this
+is so), or perhaps she took pity on me; but, at any rate, she stalked
+out of my field with great composure, nay, majesty, her arms brimming
+with orange and gold.
+
+Nevertheless, thenceforward I saved my lungs and flourished my rifle.
+Also, I made fresh generalizations.  To commit robbery women take
+advantage of their sex.  Men have more respect for property than
+women.  Men are less insistent in crime than women.  And women are
+less afraid of guns than men.  Likewise, we conquer the earth in
+hazard and battle by the virtues of our mothers.  We are a race of
+land-robbers and sea-robbers, we Anglo-Saxons, and small wonder, when
+we suckle at the breasts of a breed of women such as maraud my poppy
+field.
+
+Still the pillage went on.  Sirens and gun-flourishings were without
+avail.  The city folk were great of heart and undismayed, and I noted
+the habit of "repeating" was becoming general.  What booted it how
+often they were driven forth if each time they were permitted to
+carry away their ill-gotten plunder?  When one has turned the same
+person away twice and thrice an emotion arises somewhat akin to
+homicide.  And when one has once become conscious of this sanguinary
+feeling his whole destiny seems to grip hold of him and drag him into
+the abyss.  More than once I found myself unconsciously pulling the
+rifle into position to get a sight on the miserable trespassers.  In
+my sleep I slew them in manifold ways and threw their carcasses into
+the reservoir.  Each day the temptation to shoot them in the legs
+became more luring, and every day I felt my fate calling to me
+imperiously.  Visions of the gallows rose up before me, and with the
+hemp about my neck I saw stretched out the pitiless future of my
+children, dark with disgrace and shame.  I became afraid of myself,
+and Bess went about with anxious face, privily beseeching my friends
+to entice me into taking a vacation.  Then, and at the last gasp,
+came the thought that saved me:  WHY NOT CONFISCATE?  If their forays
+were bootless, in the nature of things their forays would cease.
+
+The first to enter my field thereafter was a man.
+
+I was waiting for him  And, oh joy! it was the "Repeater" himself,
+smugly complacent with knowledge of past success.  I dropped the
+rifle negligently across the hollow of my arm and went down to him.
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you for those poppies," I said in my oiliest
+tones; "but really, you know, I must have them."
+
+He regarded me speechlessly.  It must have made a great picture.  It
+surely was dramatic.  With the rifle across my arm and my suave
+request still ringing in my ears, I felt like Black Bart, and Jesse
+James, and Jack Sheppard, and Robin Hood, and whole generations of
+highwaymen.
+
+"Come, come," I said, a little sharply and in what I imagined was the
+true fashion; "I am sorry to inconvenience you, believe me, but I
+must have those poppies."
+
+I absently shifted the gun and smiled.  That fetched him.  Without a
+word he passed them over and turned his toes toward the fence, but no
+longer casual and careless was his carriage, I nor did he stoop to
+pick the occasional poppy by the way.  That was the last of the
+"Repeater."  I could see by his eyes that he did not like me, and his
+back reproached me all the way down the field and out of sight.
+
+From that day the bungalow has been flooded with poppies.  Every vase
+and earthen jar is filled with them.  They blaze on every mantel and
+run riot through all the rooms.  I present them to my friends in huge
+bunches, and still the kind city folk come and gather more for me.
+"Sit down for a moment," I say to the departing guest.  And there we
+sit in the shade of the porch while aspiring city creatures pluck my
+poppies and sweat under the brazen sun.  And when their arms are
+sufficiently weighted with my yellow glories, I go down with the
+rifle over my arm and disburden them.  Thus have I become convinced
+that every situation has its compensations.
+
+Confiscation was successful, so far as it went; but I had forgotten
+one thing; namely, the vast number of the city folk.  Though the old
+transgressors came no more, new ones arrived every day, and I found
+myself confronted with the titanic task of educating a whole cityful
+to the inexpediency of raiding my poppy field.  During the process of
+disburdening them I was accustomed to explaining my side of the case,
+but I soon gave this over.  It was a waste of breath.  They could not
+understand.  To one lady, who insinuated that I was miserly, I said:
+
+"My dear madam, no hardship is worked upon you.  Had I not been
+parsimonious yesterday and the day before, these poppies would have
+been picked by the city hordes of that day and the day before, and
+your eyes, which to-day have discovered this field, would have beheld
+no poppies at all.  The poppies you may not pick to-day are the
+poppies I did not permit to be picked yesterday and the day before.
+Therefore, believe me, you are denied nothing."
+
+"But the poppies are here to-day," she said, glaring carnivorously
+upon their glow and splendour.
+
+"I will pay you for them," said a gentleman, at another time.  (I had
+just relieved him of an armful.)  I felt a sudden shame, I know not
+why, unless it be that his words had just made clear to me that a
+monetary as well as an aesthetic value was attached to my flowers.
+The apparent sordidness of my position overwhelmed me, and I said
+weakly:  "I do not sell my poppies.  You may have what you have
+picked."  But before the week was out I confronted the same gentleman
+again.  "I will pay you for them," he said.  "Yes," I said, "you may
+pay me for them.  Twenty dollars, please."  He gasped, looked at me
+searchingly, gasped again, and silently and sadly put the poppies
+down.  But it remained, as usual, for a woman to attain the sheerest
+pitch of audacity.  When I declined payment and demanded my plucked
+beauties, she refused to give them up.  "I picked these poppies," she
+said, "and my time is worth money.  When you have paid me for my time
+you may have them."  Her cheeks flamed rebellion, and her face,
+withal a pretty one, was set and determined.  Now, I was a man of the
+hill tribes, and she a mere woman of the city folk, and though it is
+not my inclination to enter into details, it is my pleasure to state
+that that bunch of poppies subsequently glorified the bungalow and
+that the woman departed to the city unpaid.  Anyway, they were my
+poppies.
+
+"They are God's poppies," said the Radiant Young Radical,
+democratically shocked at sight of me turning city folk out of my
+field.  And for two weeks she hated me with a deathless hatred.  I
+sought her out and explained.  I explained at length.  I told the
+story of the poppy as Maeterlinck has told the life of the bee.  I
+treated the question biologically, psychologically, and
+sociologically, I discussed it ethically and aesthetically.  I grew
+warm over it, and impassioned; and when I had done, she professed
+conversion, but in my heart of hearts I knew it to be compassion.  I
+fled to other friends for consolation.  I retold the story of the
+poppy.  They did not appear supremely interested.  I grew excited.
+They were surprised and pained.  They looked at me curiously.  "It
+ill-befits your dignity to squabble over poppies," they said.  "It is
+unbecoming."
+
+I fled away to yet other friends.  I sought vindication.  The thing
+had become vital, and I needs must put myself right.  I felt called
+upon to explain, though well knowing that he who explains is lost.  I
+told the story of the poppy over again.  I went into the minutest
+details.  I added to it, and expanded.  I talked myself hoarse, and
+when I could talk no more they looked bored.  Also, they said insipid
+things, and soothful things, and things concerning other things, and
+not at all to the point.  I was consumed with anger, and there and
+then I renounced them all.
+
+At the bungalow I lie in wait for chance visitors.  Craftily I broach
+the subject, watching their faces closely the while to detect first
+signs of disapprobation, whereupon I empty long-stored vials of wrath
+upon their heads.  I wrangle for hours with whosoever does not say I
+am right.  I am become like Guy de Maupassant's old man who picked up
+a piece of string.  I am incessantly explaining, and nobody will
+understand.  I have become more brusque in my treatment of the
+predatory city folk.  No longer do I take delight in their
+disburdenment, for it has become an onerous duty, a wearisome and
+distasteful task.  My friends look askance and murmur pityingly on
+the side when we meet in the city.  They rarely come to see me now.
+They are afraid.  I am an embittered and disappointed man, and all
+the light seems to have gone out of my life and into my blazing
+field.  So one pays for things.
+
+PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.
+April 1902.
+
+
+
+THE SHRINKAGE OF THE PLANET
+
+
+
+What a tremendous affair it was, the world of Homer, with its
+indeterminate boundaries, vast regions, and immeasurable distances.
+The Mediterranean and the Euxine were illimitable stretches of ocean
+waste over which years could be spent in endless wandering.  On their
+mysterious shores were the improbable homes of impossible peoples.
+The Great Sea, the Broad Sea, the Boundless Sea; the Ethiopians,
+"dwelling far away, the most distant of men," and the Cimmerians,
+"covered with darkness and cloud," where "baleful night is spread
+over timid mortals."  Phonicia was a sore journey, Egypt simply
+unattainable, while the Pillars of Hercules marked the extreme edge
+of the universe.  Ulysses was nine days in sailing from Ismarus the
+city of the Ciconians, to the country of the Lotus-eaters--a period
+of time which to-day would breed anxiety in the hearts of the
+underwriters should it be occupied by the slowest tramp steamer in
+traversing the Mediterranean and Black Seas from Gibraltar to
+Sebastopol.
+
+Homer's world, restricted to less than a drummer's circuit, was
+nevertheless immense, surrounded by a thin veneer of universe--the
+Stream of Ocean.  But how it has shrunk!  To-day, precisely charted,
+weighed, and measured, a thousand times larger than the world of
+Homer, it is become a tiny speck, gyrating to immutable law through a
+universe the bounds of which have been pushed incalculably back.  The
+light of Algol shines upon it--a light which travels at one hundred
+and ninety thousand miles per second, yet requires forty-seven years
+to reach its destination.  And the denizens of this puny ball have
+come to know that Algol possesses an invisible companion, three and a
+quarter millions of miles away, and that the twain move in their
+respective orbits at rates of fifty-five and twenty-six miles per
+second.  They also know that beyond it are great chasms of space,
+innumerable worlds, and vast star systems.
+
+While much of the shrinkage to which the planet has been subjected is
+due to the increased knowledge of mathematics and physics, an equal,
+if not greater, portion may be ascribed to the perfection of the
+means of locomotion and communication.  The enlargement of stellar
+space, demonstrating with stunning force the insignificance of the
+earth, has been negative in its effect; but the quickening of travel
+and intercourse, by making the earth's parts accessible and knitting
+them together, has been positive.
+
+The advantage of the animal over the vegetable kingdom is obvious.
+The cabbage, should its environment tend to become worse, must live
+it out, or die; the rabbit may move on in quest of a better.  But,
+after all, the swift-footed creatures are circumscribed in their
+wanderings.  The first large river almost inevitably bars their way,
+and certainly the first salt sea becomes an impassable obstacle.
+Better locomotion may be classed as one of the prime aims of the old
+natural selection; for in that primordial day the race was to the
+swift as surely as the battle to the strong.  But man, already pre-
+eminent in the common domain because of other faculties, was not
+content with the one form of locomotion afforded by his lower limbs.
+He swam in the sea, and, still better, becoming aware of the buoyant
+virtues of wood, learned to navigate its surface.  Likewise, from
+among the land animals he chose the more likely to bear him and his
+burdens.  The next step was the domestication of these useful aids.
+Here, in its organic significance, natural selection ceased to
+concern itself with locomotion.  Man had displayed his impatience at
+her tedious methods and his own superiority in the hastening of
+affairs.  Thenceforth he must depend upon himself, and faster-
+swimming or faster-running men ceased to be bred.  The one, half-
+amphibian, breasting the water with muscular arms, could not hope to
+overtake or escape an enemy who propelled a fire-hollowed tree trunk
+by means of a wooden paddle; nor could the other, trusting to his own
+nimbleness, compete with a foe who careered wildly across the plain
+on the back of a half-broken stallion.
+
+So, in that dim day, man took upon himself the task of increasing his
+dominion over space and time, and right nobly has he acquitted
+himself.  Because of it he became a road builder and a bridge
+builder; likewise, he wove clumsy sails of rush and matting.  At a
+very remote period he must also have recognized that force moves
+along the line of least resistance, and in virtue thereof, placed
+upon his craft rude keels which enabled him to beat to windward in a
+seaway.  As he excelled in these humble arts, just so did he add to
+his power over his less progressive fellows and lay the foundations
+for the first glimmering civilizations--crude they were beyond
+conception, sporadic and ephemeral, but each formed a necessary part
+of the groundwork upon which was to rise the mighty civilization of
+our latter-day world.
+
+Divorced from the general history of man's upward climb, it would
+seem incredible that so long a time should elapse between the moment
+of his first improvements over nature in the matter of locomotion and
+that of the radical changes he was ultimately to compass.  The
+principles which were his before history was, were his, neither more
+nor less, even to the present century.  He utilized improved
+applications, but the principles of themselves were ever the same,
+whether in the war chariots of Achilles and Pharaoh or the mail-coach
+and diligence of the European traveller, the cavalry of the Huns or
+of Prince Rupert, the triremes and galleys of Greece and Rome or the
+East India-men and clipper ships of the last century.  But when the
+moment came to alter the methods of travel, the change was so
+sweeping that it may be safely classed as a revolution.  Though the
+discovery of steam attaches to the honour of the last century, the
+potency of the new power was not felt till the beginning of this.  By
+1800 small steamers were being used for coasting purposes in England;
+1830 witnessed the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway;
+while it was not until 1838 that the Atlantic was first crossed by
+the steamships Great Western and Sirius.  In 1869 the East was made
+next-door neighbour to the West.  Over almost the same ground where
+had toiled the caravans of a thousand generations, the Suez Canal was
+dug.  Clive, during his first trip, was a year and a half en route
+from England to India; were he alive to-day he could journey to
+Calcutta in twenty-two days.  After reading De Quincey's hyperbolical
+description of the English mail-coach, one cannot down the desire to
+place that remarkable man on the pilot of the White Mail or of the
+Twentieth Century.
+
+But this tremendous change in the means of locomotion meant far more
+than the mere rapid transit of men from place to place.  Until then,
+though its influence and worth cannot be overestimated, commerce had
+eked out a precarious and costly existence.  The fortuitous played
+too large a part in the trade of men.  The mischances by land and
+sea, the mistakes and delays, were adverse elements of no mean
+proportions.  But improved locomotion meant improved carrying, and
+commerce received an impetus as remarkable as it was unexpected.  In
+his fondest fancies James Watt could not have foreseen even the
+approximate result of his invention, the Hercules which was to spring
+from the puny child of his brain and hands.  An illuminating
+spectacle, were it possible, would be afforded by summoning him from
+among the Shades to a place in the engine-room of an ocean greyhound.
+The humblest trimmer would treat him with the indulgence of a child;
+while an oiler, a greasy nimbus about his head and in his hand, as
+sceptre, a long-snouted can, would indeed appear to him a demigod and
+ruler of forces beyond his ken.
+
+It has ever been the world's dictum that empire and commerce go hand
+in hand.  In the past the one was impossible without the other.  Rome
+gathered to herself the wealth of the Mediterranean nations, and it
+was only by an unwise distribution of it that she became emasculated
+and lost both power and trade.  With a just system of economics it is
+highly probable that for centuries she could have held back the
+welling tide of the Germanic peoples.  When upon her ruins rose the
+institutions of the conquering Teutons, commerce slipped away, and
+with it empire.  In the present, empire and commerce have become
+interdependent.  Such wonders has the industrial revolution wrought
+in a few swift decades, and so great has been the shrinkage of the
+planet, that the industrial nations have long since felt the
+imperative demand for foreign markets.  The favoured portions of the
+earth are occupied.  From their seats in the temperate zones the
+militant commercial nations proceed to the exploitation of the
+tropics, and for the possession of these they rush to war hot-footed.
+Like wolves at the end of a gorge, they wrangle over the fragments.
+There are no more planets, no more fragments, and they are yet
+hungry.  There are no longer Cimmerians and Ethiopians, in wide-
+stretching lands, awaiting them.  On either hand they confront the
+naked poles, and they recoil from unnavigable space to an intenser
+struggle among themselves.  And all the while the planet shrinks
+beneath their grasp.
+
+Of this struggle one thing may be safely predicated; a commercial
+power must be a sea power.  Upon the control of the sea depends the
+control of trade.  Carthage threatened Rome till she lost her navy;
+and then for thirteen days the smoke of her burning rose to the
+skies, and the ground was ploughed and sown with salt on the site of
+her most splendid edifices.  The cities of Italy were the world's
+merchants till new trade routes were discovered and the dominion of
+the sea passed on to the west and fell into other hands.  Spain and
+Portugal, inaugurating an era of maritime discovery, divided the new
+world between them, but gave way before a breed of sea-rovers, who,
+after many generations of attachment to the soil, had returned to
+their ancient element.  With the destruction of her Armada Spain's
+colossal dream of colonial empire passed away.  Against the new power
+Holland strove in vain, and when France acknowledged the superiority
+of the Briton upon the sea, she at the same time relinquished her
+designs upon the world.  Hampered by her feeble navy, her contest for
+supremacy upon the land was her last effort and with the passing of
+Napoleon she retired within herself to struggle with herself as best
+she might.  For fifty years England held undisputed sway upon the
+sea, controlled markets, and domineered trade, laying, during that
+period, the foundations of her empire.  Since then other naval powers
+have arisen, their attitudes bearing significantly upon the future;
+for they have learned that the mastery of the world belongs to the
+masters of the sea.
+
+That many of the phases of this world shrinkage are pathetic, goes
+without question.  There is much to condemn in the rise of the
+economic over the imaginative spirit, much for which the energetic
+Philistine can never atone.  Perhaps the deepest pathos of all may be
+found in the spectacle of John Ruskin weeping at the profanation of
+the world by the vandalism of the age.  Steam launches violate the
+sanctity of the Venetian canals; where Xerxes bridged the Hellespont
+ply the filthy funnels of our modern shipping; electric cars run in
+the shadow of the pyramids; and it was only the other day that Lord
+Kitchener was in a railroad wreck near the site of ancient Luxor.
+But there is always the other side.  If the economic man has defiled
+temples and despoiled nature, he has also preserved.  He has policed
+the world and parked it, reduced the dangers of life and limb, made
+the tenure of existence less precarious, and rendered a general
+relapse of society impossible.  There can never again be an
+intellectual holocaust, such as the burning of the Alexandrian
+library.  Civilizations may wax and wane, but the totality of
+knowledge cannot decrease.  With the possible exception of a few
+trade secrets, arts and sciences may be discarded, but they can never
+be lost.  And these things must remain true until the end of man's
+time upon the earth.
+
+Up to yesterday communication for any distance beyond the sound of
+the human voice or the sight of the human eye was bound up with
+locomotion.  A letter presupposed a carrier.  The messenger started
+with the message, and he could not but avail himself of the
+prevailing modes of travel.  If the voyage to Australia required four
+months, four months were required for communication; by no known
+means could this time be lessened.  But with the advent of the
+telegraph and telephone, communication and locomotion were divorced.
+In a few hours, at most, there could be performed what by the old way
+would have required months.  In 1837 the needle telegraph was
+invented, and nine years later the Electric Telegraph Company was
+formed for the purpose of bringing it into general use.  Government
+postal systems also came into being, later to consolidate into an
+international union and to group the nations of the earth into a
+local neighbourhood.  The effects of all this are obvious, and no
+fitter illustration may be presented than the fact that to-day, in
+the matter of communication, the Klondike is virtually nearer to
+Boston than was Bunker Hill in the time of Warren.
+
+A contemporaneous and remarkable shrinkage of a vast stretch of
+territory may be instanced in the Northland.  From its rise at Lake
+Linderman the Yukon runs twenty-five hundred miles to Bering Sea,
+traversing an almost unknown region, the remote recesses of which had
+never felt the moccasined foot of the pathfinder.  At occasional
+intervals men wallowed into its dismal fastnesses, or emerged gaunt
+and famine-worn.  But in the fall of 1896 a great gold strike was
+made--greater than any since the days of California and Australia;
+yet, so rude were the means of communication, nearly a year elapsed
+before the news of it reached the eager ear of the world.  Passionate
+pilgrims disembarked their outfits at Dyea.  Over the terrible
+Chilcoot Pass the trail led to the lakes, thirty miles away.
+Carriage was yet in its most primitive stage, the road builder and
+bridge builder unheard of.  With heavy packs upon their backs men
+plunged waist-deep into hideous quagmires, bridged mountain torrents
+by felling trees across them, toiled against the precipitous slopes
+of the ice-worn mountains, and crossed the dizzy faces of innumerable
+glaciers.  When, after incalculable toil they reached the lakes, they
+went into the woods, sawed pine trees into lumber by hand, and built
+it into boats.  In these, overloaded, unseaworthy, they battled down
+the long chain of lakes.  Within the memory of the writer there
+lingers the picture of a sheltered nook on the shores of Lake Le
+Barge, in which half a thousand gold seekers lay storm-bound.  Day
+after day they struggled against the seas in the teeth of a northerly
+gale, and night after night returned to their camps, repulsed but not
+disheartened.  At the rapids they ran their boats through, hit or
+miss, and after infinite toil and hardship, on the breast of a
+jarring ice flood, arrived at the Klondike.  From the beach at Dyea
+to the eddy below the Barracks at Dawson, they had paid for their
+temerity the tax of human life demanded by the elements.  A year
+later, so greatly had the country shrunk, the tourist, on
+disembarking from the ocean steamship, took his seat in a modern
+railway coach.  A few hours later, at Lake Bennet, he stepped aboard
+a commodious river steamer.  At the rapids he rode around on a
+tramway to take passage on another steamer below.  And in a few hours
+more he was in Dawson, without having once soiled the lustre of his
+civilized foot-gear.  Did he wish to communicate with the outside
+world, he strolled into the telegraph office.  A few short months
+before he would have written a letter and deemed himself favoured
+above mortals were it delivered within the year.
+
+From man's drawing the world closer and closer together, his own
+affairs and institutions have consolidated.  Concentration may typify
+the chief movement of the age--concentration, classification, order;
+the reduction of friction between the parts of the social organism.
+The urban tendency of the rural populations led to terrible
+congestion in the great cities.  There was stifling and impure air,
+and lo, rapid transit at once attacked the evil.  Every great city
+has become but the nucleus of a greater city which surrounds it; the
+one the seat of business, the other the seat of domestic happiness.
+Between the two, night and morning, by electric road, steam railway,
+and bicycle path, ebbs and flows the middle-class population.  And in
+the same direction lies the remedy for the tenement evil.  In the
+cleansing country air the slum cannot exist.  Improvement in road-
+beds and the means of locomotion, a tremor of altruism, a little
+legislation, and the city by day will sleep in the country by night.
+
+What a play-ball has this planet of ours become!  Steam has made its
+parts accessible and drawn them closer together.  The telegraph
+annihilates space and time.  Each morning every part knows what every
+other part is thinking, contemplating, or doing.  A discovery in a
+German laboratory is being demonstrated in San Francisco within
+twenty-four hours.  A book written in South Africa is published by
+simultaneous copyright in every English-speaking country, and on the
+following day is in the hands of the translators.  The death of an
+obscure missionary in China, or of a whisky smuggler in the South
+Seas, is served up, the world over, with the morning toast.  The
+wheat output of Argentine or the gold of Klondike is known wherever
+men meet and trade.  Shrinkage or centralization has been such that
+the humblest clerk in any metropolis may place his hand on the pulse
+of the world.  And because of all this, everywhere is growing order
+and organization.  The church, the state; men, women, and children;
+the criminal and the law, the honest man and the thief, industry and
+commerce, capital and labour, the trades and the professions, the
+arts and the sciences--all are organizing for pleasure, profit,
+policy, or intellectual pursuit.  They have come to know the strength
+of numbers, solidly phalanxed and driving onward with singleness of
+purpose.  These purposes may be various and many, but one and all,
+ever discovering new mutual interests and objects, obeying a law
+which is beyond them, these petty aggregations draw closer together,
+forming greater aggregations and congeries of aggregations.  And
+these, in turn, vaguely merging each into each, present glimmering
+adumbrations of the coming human solidarity which shall be man's
+crowning glory.
+
+OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
+January 1900.
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+
+Speaking of homes, I am building one now, and I venture to assert
+that very few homes have received more serious thought in the
+planning.  Let me tell you about it.  In the first place, there will
+be no grounds whatever, no fences, lawns, nor flowers.  Roughly, the
+dimensions will be forty-five feet by fifteen.  That is, it will be
+fifteen feet wide at its widest--and, if you will pardon the bull, it
+will be narrower than it is wide.
+
+The details must submit to the general plan of economy.  There will
+be no veranda, no porch entrances, no grand staircases.  I'm ashamed
+to say how steep the stairways are going to be.  The bedrooms will be
+seven by seven, and one will be even smaller.  A bedroom is only good
+to sleep in, anyway.  There will be no hallway, thank goodness.
+Rooms were made to go through.  Why a separate passage for traffic?
+
+The bath-room will be a trifle larger than the size of the smallest
+bath-tub--it won't require so much work to keep in order.  The
+kitchen won't be very much larger, but this will make it easy for the
+cook.  In place of a drawing-room, there will be a large living-room-
+-fourteen by six.  The walls of this room will be covered with books,
+and it can serve as library and smoking-room as well.  Then, the
+floor-space not being occupied, we shall use the room as a dining-
+room.  Incidentally, such a room not being used after bedtime, the
+cook and the second boy can sleep in it.  One thing that I am
+temperamentally opposed to is waste, and why should all this splendid
+room be wasted at night when we do not occupy it?
+
+My ideas are cramped, you say?--Oh, I forgot to tell you that this
+home I am describing is to be a floating home, and that my wife and I
+are to journey around the world in it for the matter of seven years
+or more.  I forgot also to state that there will be an engine-room in
+it for a seventy-horse-power engine, a dynamo, storage batteries,
+etc.; tanks for water to last long weeks at sea; space for fifteen
+hundred gallons of gasolene, fire extinguishers, and life-preservers;
+and a great store-room for food, spare sails, anchors, hawsers,
+tackles, and a thousand and one other things.
+
+Since I have not yet built my land house, I haven't got beyond a few
+general ideas, and in presenting them I feel as cocksure as the
+unmarried woman who writes the column in the Sunday supplement on how
+to rear children.  My first idea about a house is that it should be
+built to live in.  Throughout the house, in all the building of it,
+this should be the paramount idea.  It must be granted that this idea
+is lost sight of by countless persons who build houses apparently for
+every purpose under the sun except to live in them.
+
+Perhaps it is because of the practical life I have lived that I
+worship utility and have come to believe that utility and beauty
+should be one, and that there is no utility that need not be
+beautiful.  What finer beauty than strength--whether it be airy
+steel, or massive masonry, or a woman's hand?  A plain black leather
+strap is beautiful.  It is all strength and all utility, and it is
+beautiful.  It efficiently performs work in the world, and it is good
+to look upon.  Perhaps it is because it is useful that it is
+beautiful.  I do not know.  I sometimes wonder.
+
+A boat on the sea is beautiful.  Yet it is not built for beauty.
+Every graceful line of it is a utility, is designed to perform work.
+It is created for the express purpose of dividing the water in front
+of it, of gliding over the water beneath it, of leaving the water
+behind it--and all with the least possible wastage of stress and
+friction.  It is not created for the purpose of filling the eye with
+beauty.  It is created for the purpose of moving through the sea and
+over the sea with the smallest resistance and the greatest stability;
+yet, somehow, it does fill the eye with its beauty.  And in so far as
+a boat fails in its purpose, by that much does it diminish in beauty.
+
+I am still a long way from the house I have in my mind some day to
+build, yet I have arrived somewhere.  I have discovered, to my own
+satisfaction at any rate, that beauty and utility should be one.  In
+applying this general idea to the building of a house, it may be
+stated, in another and better way; namely, construction and
+decoration must be one.  This idea is more important than the
+building of the house, for without the idea the house so built is
+certain to be an insult to intelligence and beauty-love.
+
+I bought a house in a hurry in the city of Oakland some time ago.  I
+do not live in it.  I sleep in it half a dozen times a year.  I do
+not love the house.  I am hurt every time I look at it.  No drunken
+rowdy or political enemy can insult me so deeply as that house does.
+Let me tell you why.  It is an ordinary two-storey frame house.
+After it was built, the criminal that constructed it nailed on, at
+the corners perpendicularly, some two-inch fluted planks.  These
+planks rise the height of the house, and to a drunken man have the
+appearance of fluted columns.  To complete the illusion in the eyes
+of the drunken man, the planks are topped with wooden Ionic capitals,
+nailed on, and in, I may say, bas-relief.
+
+When I analyze the irritation these fluted planks cause in me, I find
+the reason in the fact that the first rule for building a house has
+been violated.  These decorative planks are no part of the
+construction.  They have no use, no work to perform.  They are
+plastered gawds that tell lies that nobody believes.  A column is
+made for the purpose of supporting weight; this is its use.  A
+column, when it is a utility, is beautiful.  The fluted wooden
+columns nailed on outside my house are not utilities.  They are not
+beautiful.  They are nightmares.  They not only support no weight,
+but they themselves are a weight that drags upon the supports of the
+house.  Some day, when I get time, one of two things will surely
+happen.  Either I'll go forth and murder the man who perpetrated the
+atrocity, or else I'll take an axe and chop off the lying, fluted
+planks.
+
+A thing must be true, or it is not beautiful, any more than a painted
+wanton is beautiful, any more than a sky-scraper is beautiful that is
+intrinsically and structurally light and that has a false massiveness
+of pillars plastered on outside.  The true sky-scraper IS beautiful--
+and this is the reluctant admission of a man who dislikes humanity-
+festering cities.  The true sky-scraper is beautiful, and it is
+beautiful in so far as it is true.  In its construction it is light
+and airy, therefore in its appearance it must be light and airy.  It
+dare not, if it wishes to be beautiful, lay claim to what it is not.
+And it should not bulk on the city-scape like Leviathan; it should
+rise and soar, light and airy and fairylike.
+
+Man is an ethical animal--or, at least, he is more ethical than any
+other animal.  Wherefore he has certain yearnings for honesty.  And
+in no way can these yearnings be more thoroughly satisfied than by
+the honesty of the house in which he lives and passes the greater
+part of his life.
+
+They that dwelt in San Francisco were dishonest.  They lied and
+cheated in their business life (like the dwellers in all cities), and
+because they lied and cheated in their business life, they lied and
+cheated in the buildings they erected.  Upon the tops of the simple,
+severe walls of their buildings they plastered huge projecting
+cornices.  These cornices were not part of the construction.  They
+made believe to be part of the construction, and they were lies.  The
+earth wrinkled its back for twenty-eight seconds, and the lying
+cornices crashed down as all lies are doomed to crash down.  In this
+particular instance, the lies crashed down upon the heads of the
+people fleeing from their reeling habitations, and many were killed.
+They paid the penalty of dishonesty.
+
+Not alone should the construction of a house be truthful and honest,
+but the material must be honest.  They that lived in San Francisco
+were dishonest in the material they used.  They sold one quality of
+material and delivered another quality of material.  They always
+delivered an inferior quality.  There is not one case recorded in the
+business history of San Francisco where a contractor or builder
+delivered a quality superior to the one sold.  A seven-million-dollar
+city hall became thirty cents in twenty-eight seconds.  Because the
+mortar was not honest, a thousand walls crashed down and scores of
+lives were snuffed out.  There is something, after all, in the
+contention of a few religionists that the San Francisco earthquake
+was a punishment for sin.  It was a punishment for sin; but it was
+not for sin against God.  The people of San Francisco sinned against
+themselves.
+
+An honest house tells the truth about itself.  There is a house here
+in Glen Ellen.  It stands on a corner.  It is built of beautiful red
+stone.  Yet it is not beautiful.  On three sides the stone is joined
+and pointed.  The fourth side is the rear.  It faces the back yard.
+The stone is not pointed.  It is all a smudge of dirty mortar, with
+here and there bricks worked in when the stone gave out.  The house
+is not what it seems.  It is a lie.  All three of the walls spend
+their time lying about the fourth wall.  They keep shouting out that
+the fourth wall is as beautiful as they.  If I lived long in that
+house I should not be responsible for my morals.  The house is like a
+man in purple and fine linen, who hasn't had a bath for a month.  If
+I lived long in that house I should become a dandy and cut out
+bathing--for the same reason, I suppose, that an African is black and
+that an Eskimo eats whale-blubber.  I shall not build a house like
+that house.
+
+Last year I started to build a barn.  A man who was a liar undertook
+to do the stonework and concrete work for me.  He could not tell the
+truth to my face; he could not tell the truth in his work.  I was
+building for posterity.  The concrete foundations were four feet wide
+and sunk three and one-half feet into the earth.  The stone walls
+were two feet thick and nine feet high.  Upon them were to rest the
+great beams that were to carry all the weight of hay and the forty
+tons of the roof.  The man who was a liar made beautiful stone walls.
+I used to stand alongside of them and love them.  I caressed their
+massive strength with my hands.  I thought about them in bed, before
+I went to sheep.  And they were lies.
+
+Came the earthquake.  Fortunately the rest of the building of the
+barn had been postponed.  The beautiful stone walls cracked in all
+directions.  I started, to repair, and discovered the whole enormous
+lie.  The walls were shells.  On each face were beautiful, massive
+stones--on edge.  The inside was hollow.  This hollow in some places
+was filled with clay and loose gravel.  In other places it was filled
+with air and emptiness, with here and there a piece of kindling-wood
+or dry-goods box, to aid in the making of the shell.  The walls were
+lies.  They were beautiful, but they were not useful.  Construction
+and decoration had been divorced.  The walls were all decoration.
+They hadn't any construction in them.  "As God lets Satan live," I
+let that lying man live, but--I have built new walls from the
+foundation up.
+
+And now to my own house beautiful, which I shall build some seven or
+ten years from now.  I have a few general ideas about it.  It must be
+honest in construction, material, and appearance.  If any feature of
+it, despite my efforts, shall tell lies, I shall remove that feature.
+Utility and beauty must be indissolubly wedded.  Construction and
+decoration must be one.  If the particular details keep true to these
+general ideas, all will be well.
+
+I have not thought of many details.  But here are a few.  Take the
+bath-room, for instance.  It shall be as beautiful as any room in the
+house, just as it will be as useful.  The chance is, that it will be
+the most expensive room in the house.  Upon that we are resolved--
+even if we are compelled to build it first, and to live in a tent
+till we can get more money to go on with the rest of the house.  In
+the bath-room no delights of the bath shall be lacking.  Also, a
+large part of the expensiveness will be due to the use of material
+that will make it easy to keep the bathroom clean and in order.  Why
+should a servant toil unduly that my body may be clean?  On the other
+hand, the honesty of my own flesh, and the square dealing I give it,
+are more important than all the admiration of my friends for
+expensive decorative schemes and magnificent trivialities.  More
+delightful to me is a body that sings than a stately and costly grand
+staircase built for show.  Not that I like grand staircases less, but
+that I like bath-rooms more.
+
+I often regret that I was born in this particular period of the
+world.  In the matter of servants, how I wish I were living in the
+golden future of the world, where there will be no servants--naught
+but service of love.  But in the meantime, living here and now, being
+practical, understanding the rationality and the necessity of the
+division of labour, I accept servants.  But such acceptance does not
+justify me in lack of consideration for them.  In my house beautiful
+their rooms shall not be dens and holes.  And on this score I foresee
+a fight with the architect.  They shall have bath-rooms, toilet
+conveniences, and comforts for their leisure time and human life--if
+I have to work Sundays to pay for it.  Even under the division of
+labour I recognize that no man has a right to servants who will not
+treat them as humans compounded of the same clay as himself, with
+similar bundles of nerves and desires, contradictions,
+irritabilities, and lovablenesses.  Heaven in the drawing-room and
+hell in the kitchen is not the atmosphere for a growing child to
+breathe--nor an adult either.  One of the great and selfish
+objections to chattel slavery was the effect on the masters
+themselves.
+
+And because of the foregoing, one chief aim in the building of my
+house beautiful will be to have a house that will require the minimum
+of trouble and work to keep clean and orderly.  It will be no spick
+and span and polished house, with an immaculateness that testifies to
+the tragedy of drudge.  I live in California where the days are warm.
+I'd prefer that the servants had three hours to go swimming (or
+hammocking) than be compelled to spend those three hours in keeping
+the house spick and span.  Therefore it devolves upon me to build a
+house that can be kept clean and orderly without the need of those
+three hours.
+
+But underneath the spick and span there is something more dreadful
+than the servitude of the servants.  This dreadful thing is the
+philosophy of the spick and span.  In Korea the national costume is
+white.  Nobleman and coolie dress alike in white.  It is hell on the
+women who do the washing, but there is more in it than that.  The
+coolie cannot keep his white clothes clean.  He toils and they get
+dirty.  The dirty white of his costume is the token of his
+inferiority.  The nobleman's dress is always spotless white.  It
+means that he doesn't have to work.  But it means, further, that
+somebody else has to work for him.  His superiority is not based upon
+song-craft nor state-craft, upon the foot-races he has run nor the
+wrestlers he has thrown.  His superiority is based upon the fact that
+he doesn't have to work, and that others are compelled to work for
+him.  And so the Korean drone flaunts his clean white clothes, for
+the same reason that the Chinese flaunts his monstrous finger-nails,
+and the white man and woman flaunt the spick-and-spanness of their
+spotless houses.
+
+There will be hardwood floors in my house beautiful.  But these
+floors will not be polished mirrors nor skating-rinks.  They will be
+just plain and common hardwood floors.  Beautiful carpets are not
+beautiful to the mind that knows they are filled with germs and
+bacilli.  They are no more beautiful than the hectic flush of fever,
+or the silvery skin of leprosy.  Besides, carpets enslave.  A thing
+that enslaves is a monster, and monsters are not beautiful.
+
+The fireplaces in my house will be many and large.  Small fires and
+cold weather mean hermetically-sealed rooms and a jealous cherishing
+of heated and filth-laden air.  With large fire-places and generous
+heat, some windows may be open all the time, and without hardship all
+the windows can be opened every little while and the rooms flushed
+with clean pure air.  I have nearly died in the stagnant, rotten air
+of other people's houses--especially in the Eastern states.  In Maine
+I have slept in a room with storm-windows immovable, and with one
+small pane five inches by six, that could be opened.  Did I say
+slept?  I panted with my mouth in the opening and blasphemed till I
+ruined all my chances of heaven.
+
+For countless thousands of years my ancestors have lived and died and
+drawn all their breaths in the open air.  It is only recently that we
+have begun to live in houses.  The change is a hardship, especially
+on the lungs.  I've got only one pair of lungs, and I haven't the
+address of any repair-shop.  Wherefore I stick by the open air as
+much as possible.  For this reason my house will have large verandas,
+and, near to the kitchen, there will be a veranda dining-room.  Also,
+there will be a veranda fireplace, where we can breathe fresh air and
+be comfortable when the evenings are touched with frost.
+
+I have a plan for my own bedroom.  I spend long hours in bed,
+reading, studying, and working.  I have tried sleeping in the open,
+but the lamp attracts all the creeping, crawling, butting, flying,
+fluttering things to the pages of my book, into my ears and blankets,
+and down the back of my neck.  So my bedroom shall be indoors.
+
+But it will be, not be of, indoors.  Three sides of it will be open.
+The fourth side will divide it from the rest of the house.  The three
+sides will be screened against the creeping, fluttering things, but
+not against the good fresh air and all the breezes that blow.  For
+protection against storm, to keep out the driving rain, there will be
+a sliding glass, so made that when not in use it will occupy small
+space and shut out very little air.
+
+There is little more to say about this house.  I am to build seven or
+ten years from now.  There is plenty of time in which to work up all
+the details in accord with the general principles I have laid down.
+It will be a usable house and a beautiful house, wherein the
+aesthetic guest can find comfort for his eyes as well as for his
+body.  It will be a happy house--or else I'll burn it down.  It will
+be a house of air and sunshine and laughter.  These three cannot be
+divorced.  Laughter without air and sunshine becomes morbid,
+decadent, demoniac.  I have in me a thousand generations.  Laughter
+that is decadent is not good for these thousand generations.
+
+GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA.
+July 1906.
+
+
+
+THE GOLD HUNTERS OF THE NORTH
+
+
+
+"Where the Northern Lights come down a' nights to dance on the
+houseless snow."
+
+
+"Ivan, I forbid you to go farther in this undertaking.  Not a word
+about this, or we are all undone.  Let the Americans and the English
+know that we have gold in these mountains, then we are ruined.  They
+will rush in on us by thousands, and crowd us to the wall--to the
+death."
+
+So spoke the old Russian governor, Baranov, at Sitka, in 1804, to one
+of his Slavonian hunters, who had just drawn from his pocket a
+handful of golden nuggets.  Full well Baranov, fur trader and
+autocrat, understood and feared the coming of the sturdy, indomitable
+gold hunters of Anglo-Saxon stock.  And thus he suppressed the news,
+as did the governors that followed him, so that when the United
+States bought Alaska in 1867, she bought it for its furs and
+fisheries, without a thought of its treasures underground.
+
+No sooner, however, had Alaska become American soil than thousands of
+our adventurers were afoot and afloat for the north.  They were the
+men of "the days of gold," the men of California, Fraser, Cassiar,
+and Cariboo.  With the mysterious, infinite faith of the prospector,
+they believed that the gold streak, which ran through the Americas
+from Cape Horn to California, did not "peter out" in British
+Columbia.  That it extended farther north, was their creed, and
+"Farther North" became their cry.  No time was lost, and in the early
+seventies, leaving the Treadwell and the Silver Bow Basin to be
+discovered by those who came after, they went plunging on into the
+white unknown.  North, farther north, they struggled, till their
+picks rang in the frozen beaches of the Arctic Ocean, and they
+shivered by driftwood fires on the ruby sands of Nome.
+
+But first, in order that this colossal adventure may be fully
+grasped, the recentness and the remoteness of Alaska must be
+emphasized.  The interior of Alaska and the contiguous Canadian
+territory was a vast wilderness.  Its hundreds of thousands of square
+miles were as dark and chartless as Darkest Africa.  In 1847, when
+the first Hudson Bay Company agents crossed over the Rockies from the
+Mackenzie to poach on the preserves of the Russian Bear, they thought
+that the Yukon flowed north and emptied into the Arctic Ocean.
+Hundreds of miles below, however, were the outposts of the Russian
+traders.  They, in turn, did not know where the Yukon had its source,
+and it was not till later that Russ and Saxon learned that it was the
+same mighty stream they were occupying.  And a little over ten years
+later, Frederick Whymper voyaged up the Great Bend to Fort Yukon
+under the Arctic Circle.
+
+From fort to fort, from York Factory on Hudson's Bay to Fort Yukon in
+Alaska, the English traders transported their goods--a round trip
+requiring from a year to a year and a half.  It was one of their
+deserters, in 1867, escaping down the Yukon to Bering Sea, who was
+the first white man to make the North-west Passage by land from the
+Atlantic to the Pacific.  It was at this time that the first accurate
+description of a fair portion of the Yukon was given by Dr. W. H.
+Ball, of the Smithsonian Institution.  But even he had never seen its
+source, and it was not given him to appreciate the marvel of that
+great natural highway.
+
+No more remarkable river in this one particular is there in the
+world; taking its rise in Crater Lake, thirty miles from the ocean,
+the Yukon flows for twenty-five hundred miles, through the heart of
+the continent, ere it empties into the sea.  A portage of thirty
+miles, and then a highway for traffic one tenth the girth of the
+earth!
+
+As late as 1869, Frederick Whymper, fellow of the Royal Geographical
+Society, stated on hearsay that the Chilcat Indians were believed
+occasionally to make a short portage across the Coast Range from salt
+water to the head-reaches of the Yukon.  But it remained for a gold
+hunter, questing north, ever north, to be first of all white men to
+cross the terrible Chilcoot Pass, and tap the Yukon at its head.
+This happened only the other day, but the man has become a dim
+legendary hero.  Holt was his name, and already the mists of
+antiquity have wrapped about the time of his passage.  1872, 1874,
+and 1878 are the dates variously given--a confusion which time will
+never clear.
+
+Holt penetrated as far as the Hootalinqua, and on his return to the
+coast reported coarse gold.  The next recorded adventurer is one
+Edward Bean, who in 1880 headed a party of twenty-five miners from
+Sitka into the uncharted land.  And in the same year, other parties
+(now forgotten, for who remembers or ever hears the wanderings of the
+gold hunters?) crossed the Pass, built boats out of the standing
+timber, and drifted down the Yukon and farther north.
+
+And then, for a quarter of a century, the unknown and unsung heroes
+grappled with the frost, and groped for the gold they were sure lay
+somewhere among the shadows of the Pole.  In the struggle with the
+terrifying and pitiless natural forces, they returned to the
+primitive, garmenting themselves in the skins of wild beasts, and
+covering their feet with the walrus mucluc and the moosehide
+moccasin.  They forgot the world and its ways, as the world had
+forgotten them; killed their meat as they found it; feasted in plenty
+and starved in famine, and searched unceasingly for the yellow lure.
+They crisscrossed the land in every direction, threaded countless
+unmapped rivers in precarious birch-bark canoes, and with snowshoes
+and dogs broke trail through thousands of miles of silent white,
+where man had never been.  They struggled on, under the aurora
+borealis or the midnight sun, through temperatures that ranged from
+one hundred degrees above zero to eighty degrees below, living, in
+the grim humour of the land, on "rabbit tracks and salmon bellies."
+
+To-day, a man may wander away from the trail for a hundred days, and
+just as he is congratulating himself that at last he is treading
+virgin soil, he will come upon some ancient and dilapidated cabin,
+and forget his disappointment in wonder at the man who reared the
+logs.  Still, if one wanders from the trail far enough and deviously
+enough, he may chance upon a few thousand square miles which he may
+have all to himself.  On the other hand, no matter how far and how
+deviously he may wander, the possibility always remains that he may
+stumble, not alone upon a deserted cabin, but upon an occupied one.
+
+As an instance of this, and of the vastness of the land, no better
+case need be cited than that of Harry Maxwell.  An able seaman,
+hailing from New Bedford, Massachusetts, his ship, the brig Fannie E.
+Lee, was pinched in the Arctic ice.  Passing from whaleship to
+whaleship, he eventually turned up at Point Barrow in the summer of
+1880.  He was NORTH of the Northland, and from this point of vantage
+he determined to pull south of the interior in search of gold.
+Across the mountains from Fort Macpherson, and a couple of hundred
+miles eastward from the Mackenzie, he built a cabin and established
+his headquarters.  And here, for nineteen continuous years, he hunted
+his living and prospected.  He ranged from the never opening ice to
+the north as far south as the Great Slave Lake.  Here he met
+Warburton Pike, the author and explorer--an incident he now looks
+back upon as chief among the few incidents of his solitary life.
+
+When this sailor-miner had accumulated $20,000 worth of dust he
+concluded that civilization was good enough for him, and proceeded
+"to pull for the outside."  From the Mackenzie he went up the Little
+Peel to its headwaters, found a pass through the mountains, nearly
+starved to death on his way across to the Porcupine Hills, and
+eventually came out on the Yukon River, where he learned for the
+first time of the Yukon gold hunters and their discoveries.  Yet for
+twenty years they had been working there, his next-door neighbours,
+virtually, in a land of such great spaces.  At Victoria, British
+Columbia, previous to his going east over the Canadian Pacific (the
+existence of which he had just learned), he pregnantly remarked that
+he had faith in the Mackenzie watershed, and that he was going back
+after he had taken in the World's Fair and got a whiff or two of
+civilization.
+
+Faith!  It may or may not remove mountains, but it has certainly made
+the Northland.  No Christian martyr ever possessed greater faith than
+did the pioneers of Alaska.  They never doubted the bleak and barren
+land.  Those who came remained, and more ever came.  They could not
+leave.  They "knew" the gold was there, and they persisted.  Somehow,
+the romance of the land and the quest entered into their blood, the
+spell of it gripped hold of them and would not let them go.  Man
+after man of them, after the most terrible privation and suffering,
+shook the muck of the country from his moccasins and departed for
+good.  But the following spring always found him drifting down the
+Yukon on the tail of the ice jams.
+
+Jack McQuestion aptly vindicates the grip of the North.  After a
+residence of thirty years he insists that the climate is delightful,
+and declares that whenever he makes a trip to the States he is
+afflicted with home-sickness.  Needless to say, the North still has
+him and will keep tight hold of him until he dies.  In fact, for him
+to die elsewhere would be inartistic and insincere.  Of three of the
+"pioneer" pioneers, Jack McQuestion alone survives.  In 1871, from
+one to seven years before Holt went over Chilcoot, in the company of
+Al Mayo and Arthur Harper, McQuestion came into the Yukon from the
+North-west over the Hudson Bay Company route from the Mackenzie to
+Fort Yukon.  The names of these three men, as their lives, are bound
+up in the history of the country, and so long as there be histories
+and charts, that long will the Mayo and McQuestion rivers and the
+Harper and Ladue town site of Dawson be remembered.  As an agent of
+the Alaska Commercial Company, in 1873, McQuestion built Fort
+Reliance, six miles below the Klondike River.  In 1898 the writer met
+Jack McQuestion at Minook, on the Lower Yukon.  The old pioneer,
+though grizzled, was hale and hearty, and as optimistic as when he
+first journeyed into the land along the path of the Circle.  And no
+man more beloved is there in all the North.  There will be great
+sadness there when his soul goes questing on over the Last Divide--
+"farther north," perhaps--who can tell?
+
+Frank Dinsmore is a fair sample of the men who made the Yukon
+country.  A Yankee, born, in Auburn, Maine, the Wanderlust early laid
+him by the heels, and at sixteen he was heading west on the trail
+that led "farther north."  He prospected in the Black Hills, Montana,
+and in the Coeur d'Alene, then heard a whisper of the North, and went
+up to Juneau on the Alaskan Panhandle.  But the North still
+whispered, and more insistently, and he could not rest till he went
+over Chilcoot, and down into the mysterious Silent Land.  This was in
+1882, and he went down the chain of lakes, down the Yukon, up the
+Pelly, and tried his luck on the bars of McMillan River.  In the
+fall, a perambulating skeleton, he came back over the Pass in a
+blizzard, with a rag of shirt, tattered overalls, and a handful of
+raw flour.
+
+But he was unafraid.  That winter he worked for a grubstake in
+Juneau, and the next spring found the heels of his moccasins turned
+towards salt water and his face toward Chilcoot.  This was repeated
+the next spring, and the following spring, and the spring after that,
+until, in 1885, he went over the Pass for good.  There was to be no
+return for him until he found the gold he sought.
+
+The years came and went, but he remained true to his resolve.  For
+eleven long years, with snow-shoe and canoe, pickaxe and gold-pan, he
+wrote out his life on the face of the land.  Upper Yukon, Middle
+Yukon, Lower Yukon--he prospected faithfully and well.  His bed was
+anywhere.  Winter or summer he carried neither tent nor stove, and
+his six-pound sleeping-robe of Arctic hare was the warmest covering
+he was ever known to possess.  Rabbit tracks and salmon bellies were
+his diet with a vengeance, for he depended largely on his rifle and
+fishing-tackle.  His endurance equalled his courage.  On a wager he
+lifted thirteen fifty-pound sacks of flour and walked off with them.
+Winding up a seven-hundred-mile trip on the ice with a forty-mile
+run, he came into camp at six o'clock in the evening and found a
+"squaw dance" under way.  He should have been exhausted.  Anyway, his
+muclucs were frozen stiff.  But he kicked them off and danced all
+night in stocking-feet.
+
+At the last fortune came to him.  The quest was ended, and he
+gathered up his gold and pulled for the outside.  And his own end was
+as fitting as that of his quest.  Illness came upon him down in San
+Francisco, and his splendid life ebbed slowly out as he sat in his
+big easy-chair, in the Commercial Hotel, the "Yukoner's home."  The
+doctors came, discussed, consulted, the while he matured more plans
+of Northland adventure; for the North still gripped him and would not
+let him go.  He grew weaker day by day, but each day he said, "To-
+morrow I'll be all right."  Other old-timers, "out on furlough,",
+came to see him.  They wiped their eyes and swore under their
+breaths, then entered and talked largely and jovially about going in
+with him over the trail when spring came.  But there in the big easy-
+chair it was that his Long Trail ended, and the life passed out of
+him still fixed on "farther north."
+
+From the time of the first white man, famine loomed black and gloomy
+over the land.  It was chronic with the Indians and Eskimos; it
+became chronic with the gold hunters.  It was ever present, and so it
+came about that life was commonly expressed in terms of "grub"--was
+measured by cups of flour.  Each winter, eight months long, the
+heroes of the frost faced starvation.  It became the custom, as fall
+drew on, for partners to cut the cards or draw straws to determine
+which should hit the hazardous trail for salt water, and which should
+remain and endure the hazardous darkness of the Arctic night.
+
+There was never food enough to winter the whole population.  The A.
+C. Company worked hard to freight up the grub, but the gold hunters
+came faster and dared more audaciously.  When the A. C. Company added
+a new stern-wheeler to its fleet, men said, "Now we shall have
+plenty."  But more gold hunters poured in over the passes to the
+south, more voyageurs and fur traders forced a way through the
+Rockies from the east, more seal hunters and coast adventurers poled
+up from Bering Sea on the west, more sailors deserted from the whale-
+ships to the north, and they all starved together in right brotherly
+fashion.  More steamers were added, but the tide of prospectors
+welled always in advance.  Then the N. A. T. & T.  Company came upon
+the scene, and both companies added steadily to their fleets.  But it
+was the same old story; famine would not depart.  In fact, famine
+grew with the population, till, in the winter of 1897-1898, the
+United States government was forced to equip a reindeer relief
+expedition.  As of old, that winter partners cut the cards and drew
+straws, and remained or pulled for salt water as chance decided.
+They were wise of old time, and had learned never to figure on relief
+expeditions.  They had heard of such things, but no mortal man of
+them had ever laid eyes on one.
+
+The hard luck of other mining countries pales into insignificance
+before the hard luck of the North.  And as for the hardship, it
+cannot be conveyed by printed page or word of mouth.  No man may know
+who has not undergone.  And those who have undergone, out of their
+knowledge, claim that in the making of the world God grew tired, and
+when He came to the last barrowload, "just dumped it anyhow," and
+that was how Alaska happened to be.  While no adequate conception of
+the life can be given to the stay-at-home, yet the men themselves
+sometimes give a clue to its rigours.  One old Minook miner testified
+thus:  "Haven't you noticed the expression on the faces of us
+fellows?  You can tell a new-comer the minute you see him; he looks
+alive, enthusiastic, perhaps jolly.  We old miners are always grave,
+unless were drinking."
+
+Another old-timer, out of the bitterness of a "home-mood," imagined
+himself a Martian astronomer explaining to a friend, with the aid of
+a powerful telescope, the institutions of the earth.  "There are the
+continents," he indicated; "and up there near the polar cap is a
+country, frigid and burning and lonely and apart, called Alaska.
+Now, in other countries and states there are great insane asylums,
+but, though crowded, they are insufficient; so there is Alaska given
+over to the worst cases.  Now and then some poor insane creature
+comes to his senses in those awful solitudes, and, in wondering joy,
+escapes from the land and hastens back to his home.  But most cases
+are incurable.  They just suffer along, poor devils, forgetting their
+former life quite, or recalling it like a dream."  Again the grip of
+the North, which will not let one go--for "MOST CASES ARE INCURABLE."
+
+For a quarter of a century the battle with frost and famine went on.
+The very severity of the struggle with Nature seemed to make the gold
+hunters kindly toward one another.  The latch-string was always out,
+and the open hand was the order of the day.  Distrust was unknown,
+and it was no hyperbole for a man to take the last shirt off his back
+for a comrade.  Most significant of all, perhaps, in this connection,
+was the custom of the old days, that when August the first came
+around, the prospectors who had failed to locate "pay dirt" were
+permitted to go upon the ground of their more fortunate comrades and
+take out enough for the next year's grub-stake.
+
+In 1885 rich bar-washing was done on the Stewart River, and in 1886
+Cassiar Bar was struck just below the mouth of the Hootalinqua.  It
+was at this time that the first moderate strike was made on Forty
+Mile Creek, so called because it was judged to be that distance below
+Fort Reliance of Jack McQuestion fame.  A prospector named Williams
+started for the outside with dogs and Indians to carry the news, but
+suffered such hardship on the summit of Chilcoot that he was carried
+dying into the store of Captain John Healy at Dyea.  But he had
+brought the news through--COARSE GOLD!  Within three months more than
+two hundred miners had passed in over Chilcoot, stampeding for Forty
+Mile.  Find followed find--Sixty Mile, Miller, Glacier, Birch,
+Franklin, and the Koyokuk.  But they were all moderate discoveries,
+and the miners still dreamed and searched for the fabled stream, "Too
+Much Gold," where gold was so plentiful that gravel had to be
+shovelled into the sluice-boxes in order to wash it.
+
+And all the time the Northland was preparing to play its own huge
+joke.  It was a great joke, albeit an exceeding bitter one, and it
+has led the old-timers to believe that the land is left in darkness
+the better part of the year because God goes away and leaves it to
+itself.  After all the risk and toil and faithful endeavour, it was
+destined that few of the heroes should be in at the finish when Too
+Much Gold turned its yellow-treasure to the stars.
+
+First, there was Robert Henderson--and this is true history.
+Henderson had faith in the Indian River district.  For three years,
+by himself, depending mainly on his rifle, living on straight meat a
+large portion of the time, he prospected many of the Indian River
+tributaries, just missed finding the rich creeks, Sulphur and
+Dominion, and managed to make grub (poor grub) out of Quartz Creek
+and Australia Creek.  Then he crossed the divide between Indian River
+and the Klondike, and on one of the "feeders" of the latter found
+eight cents to the pan.  This was considered excellent in those
+simple days.  Naming the creek "Gold Bottom," he recrossed the divide
+and got three men, Munson, Dalton, and Swanson, to return with him.
+The four took out $750.  And be it emphasized, and emphasized again,
+THAT THIS WAS THE FIRST KLONDIKE GOLD EVER SHOVELLED IN AND WASHED
+OUT.  And be it also emphasized, THAT ROBERT HENDERSON WAS THE
+DISCOVERER OF KLONDIKE, ALL LIES AND HEARSAY TALES TO THE CONTRARY.
+
+Running out of grub, Henderson again recrossed the divide, and went
+down the Indian River and up the Yukon to Sixty Mile.  Here Joe Ladue
+ran the trading post, and here Joe Ladue had originally grub-staked
+Henderson.  Henderson told his tale, and a dozen men (all it
+contained) deserted the Post for the scene of his find.  Also,
+Henderson persuaded a party of prospectors bound for Stewart River,
+to forgo their trip and go down and locate with him.  He loaded his
+boat with supplies, drifted down the Yukon to the mouth of the
+Klondike, and towed and poled up the Klondike to Gold Bottom.  But at
+the mouth of the Klondike he met George Carmack, and thereby hangs
+the tale.
+
+Carmack was a squawman.  He was familiarly known as "Siwash" George--
+a derogatory term which had arisen out of his affinity for the
+Indians.  At the time Henderson encountered him he was catching
+salmon with his Indian wife and relatives on the site of what was to
+become Dawson, the Golden City of the Snows.  Henderson, bubbling
+over with good-will, open-handed, told Carmack of his discovery.  But
+Carmack was satisfied where he was.  He was possessed by no
+overweening desire for the strenuous life.  Salmon were good enough
+for him.  But Henderson urged him to come on and locate, until, when
+he yielded, he wanted to take the whole tribe along.  Henderson
+refused to stand for this, said that he must give the preference over
+Siwashes to his old Sixty Mile friends, and, it is rumoured, said
+some things about Siwashes that were not nice.
+
+The next morning Henderson went on alone up the Klondike to Gold
+Bottom.  Carmack, by this time aroused, took a short cut afoot for
+the same place.  Accompanied by his two Indian brothers-in-law,
+Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley, he went up Rabbit Creek (now
+Bonanza), crossed into Gold Bottom, and staked near Henderson's
+discovery.  On the way up he had panned a few shovels on Rabbit
+Creek, and he showed Henderson "colours" he had obtained.  Henderson
+made him promise, if he found anything on the way back, that he would
+send up one of the Indians with the news.  Henderson also agreed to
+pay for his service, for he seemed to feel that they were on the
+verge of something big, and he wanted to make sure.
+
+Carmack returned down Rabbit Creek.  While he was taking a sleep on
+the bank about half a mile below the mouth of what was to be known as
+Eldorado, Skookum Jim tried his luck, and from surface prospects got
+from ten cents to a dollar to the pan.  Carmack and his brother-in-
+law staked and hit "the high places" for Forty Mile, where they filed
+on the claims before Captain Constantine, and renamed the creek
+Bonanza.  And Henderson was forgotten.  No word of it reached him.
+Carmack broke his promise.
+
+Weeks afterward, when Bonanza and Eldorado were staked from end to
+end and there was no more room, a party of late comers pushed over
+the divide and down to Gold Bottom, where they found Henderson still
+at work.  When they told him they were from Bonanza, he was
+nonplussed.  He had never heard of such a place.  But when they
+described it, he recognized it as Rabbit Creek.  Then they told him
+of its marvellous richness, and, as Tappan Adney relates, when
+Henderson realized what he had lost through Carmack's treachery, "he
+threw down his shovel and went and sat on the bank, so sick at heart
+that it was some time before he could speak."
+
+Then there were the rest of the old-timers, the men of Forty Mile and
+Circle City.  At the time of the discovery, nearly all of them were
+over to the west at work in the old diggings or prospecting for new
+ones.  As they said of themselves, they were the kind of men who are
+always caught out with forks when it rains soup.  In the stampede
+that followed the news of Carmack's strike very few old miners took
+part.  They were not there to take part.  But the men who did go on
+the stampede were mainly the worthless ones, the new-comers, and the
+camp hangers on.  And while Bob Henderson plugged away to the east,
+and the heroes plugged away to the west, the greenhorns and rounders
+went up and staked Bonanza.
+
+But the Northland was not yet done with its joke.  When fall came on
+and the heroes returned to Forty Mile and to Circle City, they
+listened calmly to the up-river tales of Siwash discoveries and
+loafers' prospects, and shook their heads.  They judged by the
+calibre of the men interested, and branded it a bunco game.  But
+glowing reports continued to trickle down the Yukon, and a few of the
+old-timers went up to see.  They looked over the ground--the
+unlikeliest place for gold in all their experience--and they went
+down the river again, "leaving it to the Swedes."
+
+Again the Northland turned the tables.  The Alaskan gold hunter is
+proverbial, not so much for his unveracity, as for his inability to
+tell the precise truth.  In a country of exaggerations, he likewise
+is prone to hyperbolic description of things actual.  But when it
+came to Klondike, he could not stretch the truth as fast as the truth
+itself stretched.  Carmack first got a dollar pan.  He lied when he
+said it was two dollars and a half.  And when those who doubted him
+did get two-and-a-half pans, they said they were getting an ounce,
+and lo! ere the lie had fairly started on its way, they were getting,
+not one ounce, but five ounces.  This they claimed was six ounces;
+but when they filled a pan of dirt to prove the lie, they washed out
+twelve ounces.  And so it went.  They continued valiantly to lie, but
+the truth continued to outrun them.
+
+But the Northland's hyperborean laugh was not yet ended.  When
+Bonanza was staked from mouth to source, those who had failed to "get
+in," disgruntled and sore, went up the "pups" and feeders.  Eldorado
+was one of these feeders, and many men, after locating on it, turned
+their backs upon their claims and never gave them a second thought.
+One man sold a half-interest in five hundred feet of it for a sack of
+flour.  Other owners wandered around trying to bunco men into buying
+them out for a song.  And then Eldorado "showed up."  It was far, far
+richer than Bonanza, with an average value of a thousand dollars a
+foot to every foot of it.
+
+A Swede named Charley Anderson had been at work on Miller Creek the
+year of the strike, and arrived in Dawson with a few hundred dollars.
+Two miners, who had staked No. 29 Eldorado, decided that he was the
+proper man upon whom to "unload."  He was too canny to approach
+sober, so at considerable expense they got him drunk.  Even then it
+was hard work, but they kept him befuddled for several days, and
+finally, inveigled him into buying No. 29 for $750.  When Anderson
+sobered up, he wept at his folly, and pleaded to have his money back.
+But the men who had duped him were hard-hearted.  They laughed at
+him, and kicked themselves for not having tapped him for a couple of
+hundred more.  Nothing remained for Anderson but to work the
+worthless ground.  This he did, and out of it he took over three-
+quarters of a million of dollars.
+
+It was not till Frank Dinsmore, who already had big holdings on Birch
+Creek, took a hand, that the old-timers developed faith in the new
+diggings.  Dinsmore received a letter from a man on the spot, calling
+it "the biggest thing in the world," and harnessed his dogs and went
+up to investigate.  And when he sent a letter back, saying that he
+had never seen "anything like it," Circle City for the first time
+believed, and at once was precipitated one of the wildest stampedes
+the country had ever seen or ever will see.  Every dog was taken,
+many went without dogs, and even the women and children and weaklings
+hit the three hundred miles of ice through the long Arctic night for
+the biggest thing in the world.  It is related that but twenty
+people, mostly cripples and unable to travel, were left in Circle
+City when the smoke of the last sled disappeared up the Yukon.
+
+Since that time gold has been discovered in all manner of places,
+under the grass roots of the hill-side benches, in the bottom of
+Monte Cristo Island, and in the sands of the sea at Nome.  And now
+the gold hunter who knows his business shuns the "favourable looking"
+spots, confident in his hard-won knowledge that he will find the most
+gold in the least likely place.  This is sometimes adduced to support
+the theory that the gold hunters, rather than the explorers, are the
+men who will ultimately win to the Pole.  Who knows?  It is in their
+blood, and they are capable of it.
+
+PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.
+February 1902.
+
+
+
+FOMA GORDYEEFF
+
+
+
+"What, without asking, hither hurried WHENCE?
+And, without asking, WHITHER hurried hence!
+Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
+Must drown the memory of that insolence!"
+
+"Foma Gordyeeff" is a big book--not only is the breadth of Russia in
+it, but the expanse of life.  Yet, though in each land, in this world
+of marts and exchanges, this age of trade and traffic, passionate
+figures rise up and demand of life what its fever is, in "Foma
+Gordyeeff" it is a Russian who so rises up and demands.  For Gorky,
+the Bitter One, is essentially a Russian in his grasp on the facts of
+life and in his treatment.  All the Russian self-analysis and
+insistent introspection are his.  And, like all his brother Russians,
+ardent, passionate protest impregnates his work.  There is a purpose
+to it.  He writes because he has something to say which the world
+should hear.  From that clenched fist of his, light and airy
+romances, pretty and sweet and beguiling, do not flow, but realities-
+-yes, big and brutal and repulsive, but real.
+
+He raises the cry of the miserable and the despised, and in a
+masterly arraignment of commercialism, protests against social
+conditions, against the grinding of the faces of the poor and weak,
+and the self-pollution of the rich and strong, in their mad lust for
+place and power.  It is to be doubted strongly if the average
+bourgeois, smug and fat and prosperous, can understand this man Foma
+Gordyeeff.  The rebellion in his blood is something to which their
+own does not thrill.  To them it will be inexplicable that this man,
+with his health and his millions, could not go on living as his class
+lived, keeping regular hours at desk and stock exchange, driving
+close contracts, underbidding his competitors, and exulting in the
+business disasters of his fellows.  It would appear so easy, and,
+after such a life, well appointed and eminently respectable, he could
+die.  "Ah," Foma will interrupt rudely--he is given to rude
+interruptions--"if to die and disappear is the end of these money-
+grubbing years, why money-grub?"  And the bourgeois whom he rudely
+interrupted will not understand.  Nor did Mayakin understand as he
+laboured holily with his wayward godson.
+
+"Why do you brag?"  Foma, bursts out upon him.  "What have you to
+brag about?  Your son--where is he?  Your daughter--what is she?
+Ekh, you manager of life!  Come, now, you're clever, you know
+everything--tell me, why do you live?  Why do you accumulate money?
+Aren't you going to die?  Well, what then?"  And Mayakin finds
+himself speechless and without answer, but unshaken and unconvinced.
+
+Receiving by heredity the fierce, bull-like nature of his father plus
+the passive indomitableness and groping spirit of his mother, Foma,
+proud and rebellious, is repelled by the selfish, money-seeking
+environment into which he is born.  Ignat, his father, and Mayakin,
+the godfather, and all the horde of successful merchants singing the
+paean of the strong and the praises of merciless, remorseless laissez
+faire, cannot entice him.  Why? he demands.  This is a nightmare,
+this life!  It is without significance!  What does it all mean?  What
+is there underneath?  What is the meaning of that which is
+underneath?
+
+"You do well to pity people," Ignat tells Foma, the boy, "only you
+must use judgment with your pity.  First consider the man, find out
+what he is like, what use can be made of him; and if you see that he
+is a strong and capable man, help him if you like.  But if a man is
+weak, not inclined to work--spit upon him and go your way.  And you
+must know that when a man complains about everything, and cries out
+and groans--he is not worth more than two kopeks, he is not worthy of
+pity, and will be of no use to you if you do help him."
+
+Such the frank and militant commercialism, bellowed out between
+glasses of strong liquor.  Now comes Mayakin, speaking softly and
+without satire:
+
+"Eh, my boy, what is a beggar?  A beggar is a man who is forced, by
+fate, to remind us of Christ; he is Christ's brother; he is the bell
+of the Lord, and rings in life for the purpose of awakening our
+conscience, of stirring up the satiety of man's flesh.  He stands
+under the window and sings, 'For Christ's sa-ake!' and by that chant
+he reminds us of Christ, of His holy command to help our neighbour.
+But men have so ordered their lives that it is utterly impossible for
+them to act in accordance with Christ's teaching, and Jesus Christ
+has become entirely superfluous to us.  Not once, but, in all
+probability, a thousand times, we have given Him over to be
+crucified, but still we cannot banish Him from our lives so long as
+His poor brethren sing His name in the streets and remind us of Him.
+And so now we have hit upon the idea of shutting up the beggars in
+such special buildings, so that they may not roam about the streets
+and stir up our consciences."
+
+But Foma will have none of it.  He is neither to be enticed nor
+cajoled.  The cry of his nature is for light.  He must have light.
+And in burning revolt he goes seeking the meaning of life.  "His
+thoughts embraced all those petty people who toiled at hard labour.
+It was strange--why did they live?  What satisfaction was it to them
+to live on the earth?  All they did was to perform their dirty,
+arduous toil, eat poorly; they were miserably clad, addicted to
+drunkenness.  One was sixty years old, but he still toiled side by
+side with young men.  And they all presented themselves to Foma's
+imagination as a huge heap of worms, who were swarming over the earth
+merely to eat."
+
+He becomes the living interrogation of life.  He cannot begin living
+until he knows what living means, and he seeks its meaning vainly.
+"Why should I try to live life when I do not know what life is?" he
+objects when Mayakin strives with him to return and manage his
+business.  Why should men fetch and carry for him? be slaves to him
+and his money?
+
+"Work is not everything to a man," he says; "it is not true that
+justification lies in work . . . Some people never do any work at
+all, all their lives long--yet they live better than the toilers.
+Why is that?  And what justification have I?  And how will all the
+people who give their orders justify themselves?  What have they
+lived for?  But my idea is that everybody ought, without fail, to
+know solidly what he is living for.  Is it possible that a man is
+born to toil, accumulate money, build a house, beget children, and--
+die?  No; life means something in itself. . . .  A man has been born,
+has lived, has died--why?  All of us must consider why we are living,
+by God, we must!  There is no sense in our life--there is no sense at
+all.  Some are rich--they have money enough for a thousand men all to
+themselves--and they live without occupation; others bow their backs
+in toil all their life, and they haven't a penny."
+
+But Foma can only be destructive.  He is not constructive.  The dim
+groping spirit of his mother and the curse of his environment press
+too heavily upon him, and he is crushed to debauchery and madness.
+He does not drink because liquor tastes good in his mouth.  In the
+vile companions who purvey to his baser appetites he finds no charm.
+It is all utterly despicable and sordid, but thither his quest leads
+him and he follows the quest.  He knows that everything is wrong, but
+he cannot right it, cannot tell why.  He can only attack and
+demolish.  "What justification have you all in the sight of God?  Why
+do you live?" he demands of the conclave of merchants, of life's
+successes.  "You have not constructed life--you have made a cesspool!
+You have disseminated filth and stifling exhalations by your deeds.
+Have you any conscience?  Do you remember God?  A five-kopek piece--
+that is your God!  But you have expelled your conscience!"
+
+Like the cry of Isaiah, "Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for
+your misfortunes that shall come upon you," is Foma's:  "You blood-
+suckers!  You live on other people's strength; you work with other
+people's hands!  For all this you shall be made to pay!  You shall
+perish--you shall be called to account for all!  For all--to the last
+little tear-drop!"
+
+Stunned by this puddle of life, unable to make sense of it, Foma
+questions, and questions vainly, whether of Sofya Medynsky in her
+drawing-room of beauty, or in the foulest depths of the first chance
+courtesan's heart.  Linboff, whose books contradict one another,
+cannot help him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the
+verse writers and harlots in dives and boozingkens.  And so,
+wondering, pondering, perplexed, amazed, whirling through the mad
+whirlpool of life, dancing the dance of death, groping for the
+nameless, indefinite something, the magic formula, the essence, the
+intrinsic fact, the flash of light through the murk and dark--the
+rational sanction for existence, in short--Foma Gordyeeff goes down
+to madness and death.
+
+It is not a pretty book, but it is a masterful interrogation of life-
+-not of life universal, but of life particular, the social life of
+to-day.  It is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice.
+One lays the book down sick at heart--sick for life with all its
+"lyings and its lusts."  But it is a healthy book.  So fearful is its
+portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted
+charms from vice, that its tendency cannot but be strongly for good.
+It is a goad, to prick sleeping human consciences awake and drive
+them into the battle for humanity.
+
+But no story is told, nothing is finished, some one will object.
+Surely, when Sasha leaped overboard and swam to Foma, something
+happened.  It was pregnant with possibilities.  Yet it was not
+finished, was not decisive.  She left him to go with the son of a
+rich vodka-maker.  And all that was best in Sofya Medynsky was
+quickened when she looked upon Foma with the look of the Mother-
+Woman.  She might have been a power for good in his life, she might
+have shed light into it and lifted him up to safety and honour and
+understanding.  Yet she went away next day, and he never saw her
+again.  No story is told, nothing is finished.
+
+Ah, but surely the story of Foma Gordyeeff is told; his life is
+finished, as lives are being finished each day around us.  Besides,
+it is the way of life, and the art of Gorky is the art of realism.
+But it is a less tedious realism than that of Tolstoy or Turgenev.
+It lives and breathes from page to page with a swing and dash and go
+that they rarely attain.  Their mantle has fallen on his young
+shoulders, and he promises to wear it royally.
+
+Even so, but so helpless, hopeless, terrible is this life of Foma
+Gordyeeff that we would be filled with profound sorrow for Gorky did
+we not know that he has come up out of the Valley of Shadow.  That he
+hopes, we know, else would he not now be festering in a Russian
+prison because he is brave enough to live the hope he feels.  He
+knows life, why and how it should be lived.  And in conclusion, this
+one thing is manifest:  Foma Gordyeeff is no mere statement of an
+intellectual problem.  For as he lived and interrogated living, so in
+sweat and blood and travail has Gorky lived.
+
+PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.
+November 1901.
+
+
+
+THESE BONES SHALL RISE AGAIN
+
+
+
+Rudyard Kipling, "prophet of blood and vulgarity, prince of
+ephemerals and idol of the unelect"--as a Chicago critic chortles--is
+dead.  It is true.  He is dead, dead and buried.  And a fluttering,
+chirping host of men, little men and unseeing men, have heaped him
+over with the uncut leaves of Kim, wrapped him in Stalky & Co., for
+winding sheet, and for headstone reared his unconventional lines, The
+Lesson.  It was very easy.  The simplest thing in the world.  And the
+fluttering, chirping gentlemen are rubbing their hands in amaze and
+wondering why they did not do it long ago, it was so very, very
+simple.
+
+But the centuries to come, of which the fluttering, chirping
+gentlemen are prone to talk largely, will have something to say in
+the matter.  And when they, the future centuries, quest back to the
+nineteenth century to find what manner of century it was--to find,
+not what the people of the nineteenth century thought they thought,
+but what they really thought, not what they thought they ought to do,
+but what they really did do, then a certain man, Kipling, will be
+read--and read with understanding.  "They thought they read him with
+understanding, those people of the nineteenth century," the future
+centuries will say; "and then they thought there was no understanding
+in him, and after that they did not know what they thought."
+
+But this is over-severe.  It applies only to that class which serves
+a function somewhat similar to that served by the populace of old
+time in Rome.  This is the unstable, mob-minded mass, which sits on
+the fence, ever ready to fall this side or that and indecorously
+clamber back again; which puts a Democratic administration into
+office one election, and a Republican the next; which discovers and
+lifts up a prophet to-day that it may stone him tomorrow; which
+clamours for the book everybody else is reading, for no reason under
+the sun save that everybody else is reading it.  This is the class of
+whim and caprice, of fad and vogue, the unstable, incoherent, mob-
+mouthed, mob-minded mass, the "monkey-folk," if you please, of these
+latter days.  Now it may be reading The Eternal City.  Yesterday it
+was reading The Master Christian, and some several days before that
+it was reading Kipling.  Yes, almost to his shame be it, these folk
+were reading him.  But it was not his fault.  If he depended upon
+them he well deserves to be dead and buried and never to rise again.
+But to them, let us be thankful, he never lived.  They thought he
+lived, but he was as dead then as he is now and as he always will be.
+
+He could not help it because he became the vogue, and it is easily
+understood.  When he lay ill, fighting with close grapples with
+death, those who knew him were grieved.  They were many, and in many
+voices, to the rim of the Seven Seas, they spoke their grief.
+Whereupon, and with celerity, the mob-minded mass began to inquire as
+to this man whom so many mourned.  If everybody else mourned, it were
+fit that they mourn too.  So a vast wail went up.  Each was a spur to
+the other's grief, and each began privately to read this man they had
+never read and publicly to proclaim this man they had always read.
+And straightaway next day they drowned their grief in a sea of
+historical romance and forgot all about him.  The reaction was
+inevitable.  Emerging from the sea into which they had plunged, they
+became aware that they had so soon forgotten him, and would have been
+ashamed, had not the fluttering, chirping men said, "Come, let us
+bury him."  And they put him in a hole, quickly, out of their sight.
+
+And when they have crept into their own little holes, and smugly laid
+themselves down in their last long sleep, the future centuries will
+roll the stone away and he will come forth again.  For be it known:
+THAT MAN OF US IS IMPERISHABLE WHO MAKES HIS CENTURY IMPERISHABLE.
+That man of us who seizes upon the salient facts of our life, who
+tells what we thought, what we were, and for what we stood--that man
+shall be the mouthpiece to the centuries, and so long as they listen
+he shall endure.
+
+We remember the caveman.  We remember him because he made his century
+imperishable.  But, unhappily, we remember him dimly, in a collective
+sort of way, because he memorialized his century dimly, in a
+collective sort of way.  He had no written speech, so he left us rude
+scratchings of beasts and things, cracked marrow-bones, and weapons
+of stone.  It was the best expression of which he was capable.  Had
+he scratched his own particular name with the scratchings of beasts
+and things, stamped his cracked marrowbones with his own particular
+seal, trade-marked his weapons of stone with his own particular
+device, that particular man would we remember.  But he did the best
+he could, and we remember him as best we may.
+
+Homer takes his place with Achilles and the Greek and Trojan heroes.
+Because he remembered them, we remember him.  Whether he be one or a
+dozen men, or a dozen generations of men, we remember him.  And so
+long as the name of Greece is known on the lips of men, so long will
+the name of Homer be known.  There are many such names, linked with
+their times, which have come down to us, many more which will yet go
+down; and to them, in token that we have lived, must we add some few
+of our own.
+
+Dealing only with the artist, be it understood, only those artists
+will go down who have spoken true of us.  Their truth must be the
+deepest and most significant, their voices clear and strong, definite
+and coherent.  Half-truths and partial-truths will not do, nor will
+thin piping voices and quavering lays.  There must be the cosmic
+quality in what they sing.  They must seize upon and press into
+enduring art-forms the vital facts of our existence.  They must tell
+why we have lived, for without any reason for living, depend upon it,
+in the time to come, it will be as though we had never lived.  Nor
+are the things that were true of the people a thousand years or so
+ago true of us to-day.  The romance of Homer's Greece is the romance
+of Homer's Greece.  That is undeniable.  It is not our romance.  And
+he who in our time sings the romance of Homer's Greece cannot expect
+to sing it so well as Homer did, nor will he be singing about us or
+our romance at all.  A machine age is something quite different from
+an heroic age.  What is true of rapid-fire guns, stock-exchanges, and
+electric motors, cannot possibly be true of hand-flung javelins and
+whirring chariot wheels.  Kipling knows this.  He has been telling it
+to us all his life, living it all his life in the work he has done.
+
+What the Anglo-Saxon has done, he has memorialized.  And by Anglo-
+Saxon is not meant merely the people of that tight little island on
+the edge of the Western Ocean.  Anglo-Saxon stands for the English-
+speaking people of all the world, who, in forms and institutions and
+traditions, are more peculiarly and definitely English than anything
+else.  This people Kipling has sung.  Their sweat and blood and toil
+have been the motives of his songs; but underlying all the motives of
+his songs is the motive of motives, the sum of them all and something
+more, which is one with what underlies all the Anglo-Saxon sweat and
+blood and toil; namely, the genius of the race.  And this is the
+cosmic quality.  Both that which is true of the race for all time,
+and that which is true of the race for all time applied to this
+particular time, he has caught up and pressed into his art-forms.  He
+has caught the dominant note of the Anglo-Saxon and pressed it into
+wonderful rhythms which cannot be sung out in a day and which will
+not be sung out in a day.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon is a pirate, a land robber and a sea robber.
+Underneath his thin coating of culture, he is what he was in Morgan's
+time, in Drake's time, in William's time, in Alfred's time.  The
+blood and the tradition of Hengist and Horsa are in his veins.  In
+battle he is subject to the blood-lusts of the Berserkers of old.
+Plunder and booty fascinate him immeasurably.  The schoolboy of to-
+day dreams the dream of Clive and Hastings.  The Anglo-Saxon is
+strong of arm and heavy of hand, and he possesses a primitive
+brutality all his own.  There is a discontent in his blood, an
+unsatisfaction that will not let him rest, but sends him adventuring
+over the sea and among the lands in the midst of the sea.  He does
+not know when he is beaten, wherefore the term "bulldog" is attached
+to him, so that all may know his unreasonableness.  He has "some care
+as to the purity of his ways, does not wish for strange gods, nor
+juggle with intellectual phantasmagoria."  He loves freedom, but is
+dictatorial to others, is self-willed, has boundless energy, and does
+things for himself.  He is also a master of matter, an organizer of
+law, and an administrator of justice.
+
+And in the nineteenth century he has lived up to his reputation.
+Being the nineteenth century and no other century, and in so far
+different from all other centuries, he has expressed himself
+differently.  But blood will tell, and in the name of God, the Bible,
+and Democracy, he has gone out over the earth, possessing himself of
+broad lands and fat revenues, and conquering by virtue of his sheer
+pluck and enterprise and superior machinery.
+
+Now the future centuries, seeking to find out what the nineteenth
+century Anglo-Saxon was and what were his works, will have small
+concern with what he did not do and what he would have liked to do.
+These things he did do, and for these things will he be remembered.
+His claim on posterity will be that in the nineteenth century he
+mastered matter; his twentieth-century claim will be, in the highest
+probability, that he organized life--but that will be sung by the
+twentieth-century Kiplings or the twenty-first-century Kiplings.
+Rudyard Kipling of the nineteenth century has sung of "things as they
+are."  He has seen life as it is, "taken it up squarely," in both his
+hands, and looked upon it.  What better preachment upon the Anglo-
+Saxon and what he has done can be had than The Bridge Builders? what
+better appraisement than The White Man's Burden?  As for faith and
+clean ideals--not of "children and gods, but men in a world of men"--
+who has preached them better than he?
+
+Primarily, Kipling has stood for the doer as opposed to the dreamer--
+the doer, who lists not to idle songs of empty days, but who goes
+forth and does things, with bended back and sweated brow and work-
+hardened hands.  The most characteristic thing about Kipling is his
+lover of actuality, his intense practicality, his proper and
+necessary respect for the hard-headed, hard-fisted fact.  And, above
+all, he has preached the gospel of work, and as potently as Carlyle
+ever preached.  For he has preached it not only to those in the high
+places, but to the common men, to the great sweating thong of common
+men who hear and understand yet stand agape at Carlyle's turgid
+utterance.  Do the thing to your hand, and do it with all your might.
+Never mind what the thing is; so long as it is something.  Do it.  Do
+it and remember Tomlinson, sexless and soulless Tomlinson, who was
+denied at Heaven's gate.
+
+The blundering centuries have perseveringly pottered and groped
+through the dark; but it remained for Kipling's century to roll in
+the sun, to formulate, in other words, the reign of law.  And of the
+artists in Kipling's century, he of them all has driven the greater
+measure of law in the more consummate speech:
+
+
+Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience.
+Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.
+   Make ye sure to each his own
+   That he reap what he hath sown;
+By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord.
+
+
+- And so it runs, from McAndrew's Law, Order, Duty, and Restraint, to
+his last least line, whether of The Vampire or The Recessional.  And
+no prophet out of Israel has cried out more loudly the sins of the
+people, nor called them more awfully to repent.
+
+"But he is vulgar, he stirs the puddle of life," object the
+fluttering, chirping gentlemen, the Tomlinsonian men.  Well, and
+isn't life vulgar?  Can you divorce the facts of life?  Much of good
+is there, and much of ill; but who may draw aside his garment and
+say, "I am none of them"?  Can you say that the part is greater than
+the whole? that the whole is more or less than the sum of the parts?
+As for the puddle of life, the stench is offensive to you?  Well, and
+what then?  Do you not live in it?  Why do you not make it clean?  Do
+you clamour for a filter to make clean only your own particular
+portion?  And, made clean, are you wroth because Kipling has stirred
+it muddy again?  At least he has stirred it healthily, with steady
+vigour and good-will.  He has not brought to the surface merely its
+dregs, but its most significant values.  He has told the centuries to
+come of our lyings and our lusts, but he has also told the centuries
+to come of the seriousness which is underneath our lyings and our
+lusts.  And he has told us, too, and always has he told us, to be
+clean and strong and to walk upright and manlike.
+
+"But he has no sympathy," the fluttering gentlemen chirp.  "We admire
+his art and intellectual brilliancy, we all admire his art and
+intellectual brilliancy, his dazzling technique and rare rhythmical
+sense; but . . . he is totally devoid of sympathy."  Dear!  Dear!
+What is to be understood by this?  Should he sprinkle his pages with
+sympathetic adjectives, so many to the paragraph, as the country
+compositor sprinkles commas?  Surely not.  The little gentlemen are
+not quite so infinitesimal as that.  There have been many tellers of
+jokes, and the greater of them, it is recorded, never smiled at their
+own, not even in the crucial moment when the audience wavered between
+laughter and tears.
+
+And so with Kipling.  Take The Vampire, for instance.  It has been
+complained that there is no touch of pity in it for the man and his
+ruin, no sermon on the lesson of it, no compassion for the human
+weakness, no indignation at the heartlessness.  But are we
+kindergarten children that the tale be told to us in words of one
+syllable?  Or are we men and women, able to read between the lines
+what Kipling intended we should read between the lines?  "For some of
+him lived, but the most of him died."  Is there not here all the
+excitation in the world for our sorrow, our pity, our indignation?
+And what more is the function of art than to excite states of
+consciousness complementary to the thing portrayed?  The colour of
+tragedy is red.  Must the artist also paint in the watery tears and
+wan-faced grief?  "For some of him lived, but the most of him died"--
+can the heartache of the situation be conveyed more achingly?  Or
+were it better that the young man, some of him alive but most of him
+dead, should come out before the curtain and deliver a homily to the
+weeping audience?
+
+The nineteenth century, so far as the Anglo-Saxon is concerned, was
+remarkable for two great developments:  the mastery of matter and the
+expansion of the race.  Three great forces operated in it:
+nationalism, commercialism, democracy--the marshalling of the races,
+the merciless, remorseless laissez faire of the dominant bourgeoisie,
+and the practical, actual working government of men within a very
+limited equality.  The democracy of the nineteenth century is not the
+democracy of which the eighteenth century dreamed.  It is not the
+democracy of the Declaration, but it is what we have practised and
+lived that reconciles it to the fact of the "lesser breeds without
+the Law."
+
+It is of these developments and forces of the nineteenth century that
+Kipling has sung.  And the romance of it he has sung, that which
+underlies and transcends objective endeavour, which deals with race
+impulses, race deeds, and race traditions.  Even into the steam-laden
+speech of his locomotives has he breathed our life, our spirit, our
+significance.  As he is our mouthpiece, so are they his mouthpieces.
+And the romance of the nineteenth-century man as he has thus
+expressed himself in the nineteenth century, in shaft and wheel, in
+steel and steam, in far journeying and adventuring, Kipling has
+caught up in wondrous songs for the future centuries to sing.
+
+If the nineteenth century is the century of the Hooligan, then is
+Kipling the voice of the Hooligan as surely as he is the voice of the
+nineteenth century.  Who is more representative?  Is David Harum more
+representative of the nineteenth century?  Is Mary Johnston, Charles
+Major, or Winston Churchill?  Is Bret Harte?  William Dean Howells?
+Gilbert Parker?  Who of them all is as essentially representative of
+nineteenth-century life?  When Kipling is forgotten, will Robert
+Louis Stevenson be remembered for his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, his
+Kidnapped and his David Balfour?  Not so.  His Treasure Island will
+be a classic, to go down with Robinson Crusoe, Through the Looking-
+Glass, and The Jungle Books.  He will be remembered for his essays,
+for his letters, for his philosophy of life, for himself.  He will be
+the well beloved, as he has been the well beloved.  But his will be
+another claim upon posterity than what we are considering.  For each
+epoch has its singer.  As Scott sang the swan song of chivalry and
+Dickens the burgher-fear of the rising merchant class, so Kipling, as
+no one else, has sung the hymn of the dominant bourgeoisie, the war
+march of the white man round the world, the triumphant paean of
+commercialism and imperialism.  For that will he be remembered.
+
+OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
+October 1901.
+
+
+
+THE OTHER ANIMALS
+
+
+
+American journalism has its moments of fantastic hysteria, and when
+it is on the rampage the only thing for a rational man to do is to
+climb a tree and let the cataclysm go by.  And so, some time ago,
+when the word nature-faker was coined, I, for one, climbed into my
+tree and stayed there.  I happened to be in Hawaii at the time, and a
+Honolulu reporter elicited the sentiment from me that I thanked God I
+was not an authority on anything.  This sentiment was promptly cabled
+to America in an Associated Press despatch, whereupon the American
+press (possibly annoyed because I had not climbed down out of my
+tree) charged me with paying for advertising by cable at a dollar per
+word--the very human way of the American press, which, when a man
+refuses to come down and be licked, makes faces at him.
+
+But now that the storm is over, let us come and reason together.  I
+have been guilty of writing two animal-stories--two books about dogs.
+The writing of these two stories, on my part, was in truth a protest
+against the "humanizing" of animals, of which it seemed to me several
+"animal writers" had been profoundly guilty.  Time and again, and
+many times, in my narratives, I wrote, speaking of my dog-heroes:
+"He did not think these things; he merely did them," etc.  And I did
+this repeatedly, to the clogging of my narrative and in violation of
+my artistic canons; and I did it in order to hammer into the average
+human understanding that these dog-heroes of mine were not directed
+by abstract reasoning, but by instinct, sensation, and emotion, and
+by simple reasoning.  Also, I endeavoured to make my stories in line
+with the facts of evolution; I hewed them to the mark set by
+scientific research, and awoke, one day, to find myself bundled neck
+and crop into the camp of the nature-fakers.
+
+President Roosevelt was responsible for this, and he tried to condemn
+me on two counts.  (1) I was guilty of having a big, fighting bull-
+dog whip a wolf-dog.  (2) I was guilty of allowing a lynx to kill a
+wolf-dog in a pitched battle.  Regarding the second count, President
+Roosevelt was wrong in his field observations taken while reading my
+book.  He must have read it hastily, for in my story I had the wolf-
+dog kill the lynx.  Not only did I have my wolf-dog kill the lynx,
+but I made him eat the body of the lynx as well.  Remains only the
+first count on which to convict me of nature-faking, and the first
+count does not charge me with diverging from ascertained facts.  It
+is merely a statement of a difference of opinion.  President
+Roosevelt does not think a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog.  I think a
+bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog.  And there we are.  Difference of
+opinion may make, and does make, horse-racing.  I can understand that
+difference of opinion can make dog-fighting.  But what gets me is how
+difference of opinion regarding the relative fighting merits of a
+bull-dog and a wolf-dog makes me a nature-faker and President
+Roosevelt a vindicated and triumphant scientist.
+
+Then entered John Burroughs to clinch President Roosevelt's
+judgments.  In this alliance there is no difference of opinion.  That
+Roosevelt can do no wrong is Burroughs's opinion; and that Burroughs
+is always right is Roosevelt's opinion.  Both are agreed that animals
+do not reason.  They assert that all animals below man are automatons
+and perform actions only of two sorts--mechanical and reflex--and
+that in such actions no reasoning enters at all.  They believe that
+man is the only animal capable of reasoning and that ever does
+reason.  This is a view that makes the twentieth-century scientist
+smile.  It is not modern at all.  It is distinctly mediaeval.
+President Roosevelt and John Burroughs, in advancing such a view, are
+homocentric in the same fashion that the scholastics of earlier and
+darker centuries were homocentric.  Had the world not been discovered
+to be round until after the births of President Roosevelt and John
+Burroughs, they would have been geocentric as well in their theories
+of the Cosmos.  They could not have believed otherwise.  The stuff of
+their minds is so conditioned.  They talk the argot of evolution,
+while they no more understand the essence and the import of evolution
+than does a South Sea Islander or Sir Oliver Lodge understand the
+noumena of radio-activity.
+
+Now, President Roosevelt is an amateur.  He may know something of
+statecraft and of big-game shooting; he may be able to kill a deer
+when he sees it and to measure it and weigh it after he has shot it;
+he may be able to observe carefully and accurately the actions and
+antics of tomtits and snipe, and, after he has observed it,
+definitely and coherently to convey the information of when the first
+chipmunk, in a certain year and a certain latitude and longitude,
+came out in the spring and chattered and gambolled--but that he
+should be able, as an individual observer, to analyze all animal life
+and to synthetize and develop all that is known of the method and
+significance of evolution, would require a vaster credulity for you
+or me to believe than is required for us to believe the biggest
+whopper ever told by an unmitigated nature-faker.  No, President
+Roosevelt does not understand evolution, and he does not seem to have
+made much of an attempt to understand evolution.
+
+Remains John Burroughs, who claims to be a thorough-going
+evolutionist.  Now, it is rather hard for a young man to tackle an
+old man.  It is the nature of young men to be more controlled in such
+matters, and it is the nature of old men, presuming upon the wisdom
+that is very often erroneously associated with age, to do the
+tackling.  In this present question of nature-faking, the old men did
+the tackling, while I, as one young man, kept quiet a long time.  But
+here goes at last.  And first of all let Mr. Burroughs's position be
+stated, and stated in his words.
+
+"Why impute reason to an animal if its behaviour can be explained on
+the theory of instinct?"  Remember these words, for they will be
+referred to later.  "A goodly number of persons seem to have
+persuaded themselves that animals do reason."  "But instinct suffices
+for the animals . . . they get along very well without reason."
+"Darwin tried hard to convince himself that animals do at times
+reason in a rudimentary way; but Darwin was also a much greater
+naturalist than psychologist."  The preceding quotation is
+tantamount, on Mr. Burroughs's part, to a flat denial that animals
+reason even in a rudimentary way.  And when Mr. Burrough denies that
+animals reason even in a rudimentary way, it is equivalent to
+affirming, in accord with the first quotation in this paragraph, that
+instinct will explain every animal act that might be confounded with
+reason by the unskilled or careless observer.
+
+Having bitten off this large mouthful, Mr. Burroughs proceeds with
+serene and beautiful satisfaction to masticate it in the following
+fashion.  He cites a large number of instances of purely instinctive
+actions on the part of animals, and triumphantly demands if they are
+acts of reason.  He tells of the robin that fought day after day its
+reflected image in a window-pane; of the birds in South America that
+were guilty of drilling clear through a mud wall, which they mistook
+for a solid clay bank:  of the beaver that cut down a tree four times
+because it was held at the top by the branches of other trees; of the
+cow that licked the skin of her stuffed calf so affectionately that
+it came apart, whereupon she proceeded to eat the hay with which it
+was stuffed.  He tells of the phobe-bird that betrays her nest on the
+porch by trying to hide it with moss in similar fashion to the way
+all phobe-birds hide their nests when they are built among rocks.  He
+tells of the highhole that repeatedly drills through the clap-boards
+of an empty house in a vain attempt to find a thickness of wood deep
+enough in which to build its nest.  He tells of the migrating
+lemmings of Norway that plunge into the sea and drown in vast numbers
+because of their instinct to swim lakes and rivers in the course of
+their migrations.  And, having told a few more instances of like
+kidney, he triumphantly demands:  "Where now is your much-vaunted
+reasoning of the lower animals?
+
+No schoolboy in a class debate could be guilty of unfairer argument.
+It is equivalent to replying to the assertion that 2+2=4, by saying:
+"No; because 12/4=3; I have demonstrated my honourable opponent's
+error."  When a man attacks your ability as a foot-racer, promptly
+prove to him that he was drunk the week before last, and the average
+man in the crowd of gaping listeners will believe that you have
+convincingly refuted the slander on your fleetness of foot.  On my
+honour, it will work.  Try it some time.  It is done every day.  Mr.
+Burroughs has done it himself, and, I doubt not, pulled the
+sophistical wool over a great many pairs of eyes.  No, no, Mr.
+Burroughs; you can't disprove that animals reason by proving that
+they possess instincts.  But the worst of it is that you have at the
+same time pulled the wool over your own eyes.  You have set up a
+straw man and knocked the stuffing out of him in the complacent
+belief that it was the reasoning of lower animals you were knocking
+out of the minds of those who disagreed with you.  When the highhole
+perforated the icehouse and let out the sawdust, you called him a
+lunatic . . .
+
+But let us be charitable--and serious.  What Mr. Burroughs instances
+as acts of instinct certainly are acts of instincts.  By the same
+method of logic one could easily adduce a multitude of instinctive
+acts on the part of man and thereby prove that man is an unreasoning
+animal.  But man performs actions of both sorts.  Between man and the
+lower animals Mr. Burroughs finds a vast gulf.  This gulf divides man
+from the rest of his kin by virtue of the power of reason that he
+alone possesses.  Man is a voluntary agent.  Animals are automatons.
+The robin fights its reflection in the window-pane because it is his
+instinct to fight and because he cannot reason out the physical laws
+that make this reflection appear real.  An animal is a mechanism that
+operates according to fore-ordained rules.  Wrapped up in its
+heredity, and determined long before it was born, is a certain
+limited capacity of ganglionic response to eternal stimuli.  These
+responses have been fixed in the species through adaptation to
+environment.  Natural selection has compelled the animal
+automatically to respond in a fixed manner and a certain way to all
+the usual external stimuli it encounters in the course of a usual
+life.  Thus, under usual circumstances, it does the usual thing.
+Under unusual circumstances it still does the usual thing, wherefore
+the highhole perforating the ice-house is guilty of lunacy--of
+unreason, in short.  To do the unusual thing under unusual
+circumstances, successfully to adjust to a strange environment for
+which his heredity has not automatically fitted an adjustment, Mr.
+Burroughs says is impossible.  He says it is impossible because it
+would be a non-instinctive act, and, as is well known animals act
+only through instinct.  And right here we catch a glimpse of Mr.
+Burroughs's cart standing before his horse.  He has a thesis, and
+though the heavens fall he will fit the facts to the thesis.
+Agassiz, in his opposition to evolution, had a similar thesis, though
+neither did he fit the facts to it nor did the heavens fall.  Facts
+are very disagreeable at times.
+
+But let us see.  Let us test Mr. Burroughs's test of reason and
+instinct.  When I was a small boy I had a dog named Rollo.  According
+to Mr. Burroughs, Rollo was an automaton, responding to external
+stimuli mechanically as directed by his instincts.  Now, as is well
+known, the development of instinct in animals is a dreadfully slow
+process.  There is no known case of the development of a single
+instinct in domestic animals in all the history of their
+domestication.  Whatever instincts they possess they brought with
+them from the wild thousands of years ago.  Therefore, all Rollo's
+actions were ganglionic discharges mechanically determined by the
+instincts that had been developed and fixed in the species thousands
+of years ago.  Very well.  It is clear, therefore, that in all his
+play with me he would act in old-fashioned ways, adjusting himself to
+the physical and psychical factors in his environment according to
+the rules of adjustment which had obtained in the wild and which had
+become part of his heredity.
+
+Rollo and I did a great deal of rough romping.  He chased me and I
+chased him.  He nipped my legs, arms, and hands, often so hard that I
+yelled, while I rolled him and tumbled him and dragged him about,
+often so strenuously as to make him yelp.  In the course of the play
+many variations arose.  I would make believe to sit down and cry.
+All repentance and anxiety, he would wag his tail and lick my face,
+whereupon I would give him the laugh.  He hated to be laughed at, and
+promptly he would spring for me with good-natured, menacing jaws, and
+the wild romp would go on.  I had scored a point.  Then he hit upon a
+trick.  Pursuing him into the woodshed, I would find him in a far
+corner, pretending to sulk.  Now, he dearly loved the play, and never
+got enough of it.  But at first he fooled me.  I thought I had
+somehow hurt his feelings and I came and knelt before him, petting
+him, and speaking lovingly.  Promptly, in a wild outburst, he was up
+and away, tumbling me over on the floor as he dashed out in a mad
+skurry around the yard.  He had scored a point.
+
+After a time, it became largely a game of wits.  I reasoned my acts,
+of course, while his were instinctive.  One day, as he pretended to
+sulk in the corner, I glanced out of the woodshed doorway, simulated
+pleasure in face, voice, and language, and greeted one of my
+schoolboy friends.  Immediately Rollo forgot to sulk, rushed out to
+see the newcomer, and saw empty space.  The laugh was on him, and he
+knew it, and I gave it to him, too.  I fooled him in this way two or
+three times; then be became wise.  One day I worked a variation.
+Suddenly looking out the door, making believe that my eyes had been
+attracted by a moving form, I said coldly, as a child educated in
+turning away bill-collectors would say:  "No my father is not at
+home."  Like a shot, Rollo was out the door.  He even ran down the
+alley to the front of the house in a vain attempt to find the man I
+had addressed.  He came back sheepishly to endure the laugh and
+resume the game.
+
+And now we come to the test.  I fooled Rollo, but how was the fooling
+made possible?  What precisely went on in that brain of his?
+According to Mr. Burroughs, who denies even rudimentary reasoning to
+the lower animals, Rollo acted instinctively, mechanically responding
+to the external stimulus, furnished by me, which led him to believe
+that a man was outside the door.
+
+Since Rollo acted instinctively, and since all instincts are very
+ancient, tracing back to the pre-domestication period, we can
+conclude only that Rollo's wild ancestors, at the time this
+particular instinct was fixed into the heredity of the species, must
+have been in close, long-continued, and vital contact with man, the
+voice of man, and the expressions on the face of man.  But since the
+instinct must have been developed during the pre-domestication
+period, how under the sun could his wild, undomesticated ancestors
+have experienced the close, long-continued, and vital contact with
+man?
+
+Mr. Burroughs says that "instinct suffices for the animals," that
+"they get along very well without reason."  But I say, what all the
+poor nature-fakers will say, that Rollo reasoned.  He was born into
+the world a bundle of instincts and a pinch of brain-stuff, all
+wrapped around in a framework of bone, meat, and hide.  As he
+adjusted to his environment he gained experiences.  He remembered
+these experiences.  He learned that he mustn't chase the cat, kill
+chickens, nor bite little girls' dresses.  He learned that little
+boys had little boy playmates.  He learned that men came into back
+yards.  He learned that the animal man, on meeting with his own kind,
+was given to verbal and facial greeting.  He learned that when a boy
+greeted a playmate he did it differently from the way he greeted a
+man.  All these he learned and remembered.  They were so many
+observations--so many propositions, if you please.  Now, what went on
+behind those brown eyes of his, inside that pinch of brain-stuff,
+when I turned suddenly to the door and greeted an imaginary person
+outside?  Instantly, out of the thousands of observations stored in
+his brain, came to the front of his consciousness the particular
+observations connected with this particular situation.  Next, he
+established a relation between these observations.  This relation was
+his conclusion, achieved, as every psychologist will agree, by a
+definite cell-action of his grey matter.  From the fact that his
+master turned suddenly toward the door, and from the fact that his
+master's voice, facial expression, and whole demeanour expressed
+surprise and delight, he concluded that a friend was outside.  He
+established a relation between various things, and the act of
+establishing relations between things is an act of reason--of
+rudimentary reason, granted, but none the less of reason.
+
+Of course Rollo was fooled.  But that is no call for us to throw
+chests about it.  How often has every last one of us been fooled in
+precisely similar fashion by another who turned and suddenly
+addressed an imaginary intruder?  Here is a case in point that
+occurred in the West.  A robber had held up a railroad train.  He
+stood in the aisle between the seats, his revolver presented at the
+head of the conductor, who stood facing him.  The conductor was at
+his mercy.
+
+But the conductor suddenly looked over the robber's shoulder, at the
+same time saying aloud to an imaginary person standing at the
+robber's back:  "Don't shoot him."  Like a flash the robber whirled
+about to confront this new danger, and like a flash the conductor
+shot him down.  Show me, Mr. Burroughs, where the mental process in
+the robber's brain was a shade different from the mental processes in
+Rollo's brain, and I'll quit nature-faking and join the Trappists.
+Surely, when a man's mental process and a dog's mental process are
+precisely similar, the much-vaunted gulf of Mr. Burroughs's fancy has
+been bridged.
+
+I had a dog in Oakland.  His name was Glen.  His father was Brown, a
+wolf-dog that had been brought down from Alaska., and his mother was
+a half-wild mountain shepherd dog.  Neither father nor mother had had
+any experience with automobiles.  Glen came from the country, a half-
+grown puppy, to live in Oakland.  Immediately he became infatuated
+with an automobile.  He reached the culmination of happiness when he
+was permitted to sit up in the front seat alongside the chauffeur.
+He would spend a whole day at a time on an automobile debauch, even
+going without food.  Often the machine started directly from inside
+the barn, dashed out the driveway without stopping, and was gone.
+Glen got left behind several times.  The custom was established that
+whoever was taking the machine out should toot the horn before
+starting.  Glen learned the signal.  No matter where he was or what
+he was doing, when that horn tooted he was off for the barn and up
+into the front seat.
+
+One morning, while Glen was on the back porch eating his breakfast of
+mush and milk, the chauffeur tooted.  Glen rushed down the steps,
+into the barn, and took his front seat, the mush and milk dripping
+down his excited and happy chops.  In passing, I may point out that
+in thus forsaking his breakfast for the automobile he was displaying
+what is called the power of choice--a peculiarly lordly attribute
+that, according to Mr. Burroughs, belongs to man alone.  Yet Glen
+made his choice between food and fun.
+
+It was not that Glen wanted his breakfast less, but that he wanted
+his ride more.  The toot was only a joke.  The automobile did not
+start.  Glen waited and watched.  Evidently he saw no signs of an
+immediate start, for finally he jumped out of the seat and went back
+to his breakfast.  He ate with indecent haste, like a man anxious to
+catch a train.  Again the horn tooted, again he deserted his
+breakfast, and again he sat in the seat and waited vainly for the
+machine to go.
+
+They came close to spoiling Glen's breakfast for him, for he was kept
+on the jump between porch and barn.  Then he grew wise.  They tooted
+the horn loudly and insistently, but he stayed by his breakfast and
+finished it.  Thus once more did he display power of choice,
+incidentally of control, for when that horn tooted it was all he
+could do to refrain from running for the barn.
+
+The nature-faker would analyze what went on in Glen's brain somewhat
+in the following fashion.  He had had, in his short life, experiences
+that not one of all his ancestors had ever had.  He had learned that
+automobiles went fast, that once in motion it was impossible for him
+to get on board, that the toot of the horn was a noise that was
+peculiar to automobiles.  These were so many propositions.  Now
+reasoning can be defined as the act or process of the brain by which,
+from propositions known or assumed, new propositions are reached.
+Out of the propositions which I have shown were Glen's, and which had
+become his through the medium of his own observation of the phenomena
+of life, he made the new proposition that when the horn tooted it was
+time for him to get on board.
+
+But on the morning I have described, the chauffeur fooled Glen.
+Somehow and much to his own disgust, his reasoning was erroneous.
+The machine did not start after all.  But to reason incorrectly is
+very human.  The great trouble in all acts of reasoning is to include
+all the propositions in the problem.  Glen had included every
+proposition but one, namely, the human proposition, the joke in the
+brain of the chauffeur.  For a number of times Glen was fooled.  Then
+he performed another mental act.  In his problem he included the
+human proposition (the joke in the brain of the chauffeur), and he
+reached the new conclusion that when the horn tooted the automobile
+was NOT going to start.  Basing his action on this conclusion, he
+remained on the porch and finished his breakfast.  You and I, and
+even Mr. Burroughs, perform acts of reasoning precisely similar to
+this every day in our lives.  How Mr. Burroughs will explain Glen's
+action by the instinctive theory is beyond me.  In wildest fantasy,
+even, my brain refuses to follow Mr. Burroughs into the primeval
+forest where Glen's dim ancestors, to the tooting of automobile
+horns, were fixing into the heredity of the breed the particular
+instinct that would enable Glen, a few thousand years later, capably
+to cope with automobiles.
+
+Dr. C. J. Romanes tells of a female chimpanzee who was taught to
+count straws up to five.  She held the straws in her hand, exposing
+the ends to the number requested.  If she were asked for three, she
+held up three.  If she were asked for four, she held up four.  All
+this is a mere matter of training.  But consider now, Mr. Burroughs,
+what follows.  When she was asked for five straws and she had only
+four, she doubled one straw, exposing both its ends and thus making
+up the required number.  She did not do this only once, and by
+accident.  She did it whenever more straws were asked for than she
+possessed.  Did she perform a distinctly reasoning act? or was her
+action the result of blind, mechanical instinct?  If Mr. Burroughs
+cannot answer to his own satisfaction, he may call Dr. Romanes a
+nature-faker and dismiss the incident from his mind.
+
+The foregoing is a trick of erroneous human reasoning that works very
+successfully in the United States these days.  It is certainly a
+trick of Mr. Burroughs, of which he is guilty with distressing
+frequency.  When a poor devil of a writer records what he has seen,
+and when what he has seen does not agree with Mr. Burroughs's
+mediaeval theory, he calls said writer a nature-faker.  When a man
+like Mr. Hornaday comes along, Mr. Burroughs works a variation of the
+trick on him.  Mr. Hornaday has made a close study of the orang in
+captivity and of the orang in its native state.  Also, he has studied
+closely many other of the higher animal types.  Also, in the tropics,
+he has studied the lower types of man.  Mr. Hornaday is a man of
+experience and reputation.  When he was asked if animals reasoned,
+out of all his knowledge on the subject he replied that to ask him
+such a question was equivalent to asking him if fishes swim.  Now Mr.
+Burroughs has not had much experience in studying the lower human
+types and the higher animal types.  Living in a rural district in the
+state of New York, and studying principally birds in that limited
+habitat, he has been in contact neither with the higher animal types
+nor the lower human types.  But Mr. Hornaday's reply is such a facer
+to him and his homocentric theory that he has to do something.  And
+he does it.  He retorts:  "I suspect that Mr. Hornaday is a better
+naturalist than he is a comparative psychologist."  Exit Mr.
+Hornaday.  Who the devil is Mr. Hornaday, anyway?  The sage of
+Slabsides has spoken.  When Darwin concluded that animals were
+capable of reasoning in a rudimentary way, Mr. Burroughs laid him out
+in the same fashion by saying:  "But Darwin was also a much greater
+naturalist than psychologist"--and this despite Darwin's long life of
+laborious research that was not wholly confined to a rural district
+such as Mr. Burroughs inhabits in New York.  Mr. Burroughs's method
+of argument is beautiful.  It reminds one of the man whose
+pronunciation was vile, but who said:  "Damn the dictionary; ain't I
+here?"
+
+And now we come to the mental processes of Mr. Burroughs--to the
+psychology of the ego, if you please.  Mr. Burroughs has troubles of
+his own with the dictionary.  He violates language from the
+standpoint both of logic and science.  Language is a tool, and
+definitions embodied in language should agree with the facts and
+history of life.  But Mr. Burroughs's definitions do not so agree.
+This, in turn, is not the fault of his education, but of his ego.  To
+him, despite his well-exploited and patronizing devotion to them, the
+lower animals are disgustingly low.  To him, affinity and kinship
+with the other animals is a repugnant thing.  He will have none of
+it.  He is too glorious a personality not to have between him and the
+other animals a vast and impassable gulf.  The cause of Mr.
+Burroughs's mediaeval view of the other animals is to be found, not
+in his knowledge of those other animals, but in the suggestion of his
+self-exalted ego.  In short, Mr. Burroughs's homocentric theory has
+been developed out of his homocentric ego, and by the misuse of
+language he strives to make the facts of life agree with his theory.
+
+After the instances I have cited of actions of animals which are
+impossible of explanation as due to instinct, Mr. Burroughs may
+reply:  "Your instances are easily explained by the simple law of
+association."  To this I reply, first, then why did you deny
+rudimentary reason to animals? and why did you state flatly that
+"instinct suffices for the animals"?  And, second, with great
+reluctance and with overwhelming humility, because of my youth, I
+suggest that you do not know exactly what you do mean by that phrase
+"the simple law of association."  Your trouble, I repeat, is with
+definitions.  You have grasped that man performs what is called
+ABSTRACT reasoning, you have made a definition of abstract reason,
+and, betrayed by that great maker of theories, the ego, you have come
+to think that all reasoning is abstract and that what is not abstract
+reason is not reason at all.  This is your attitude toward
+rudimentary reason.  Such a process, in one of the other animals,
+must be either abstract or it is not a reasoning process.  Your
+intelligence tells you that such a process is not abstract reasoning,
+and your homocentric thesis compels you to conclude that it can be
+only a mechanical, instinctive process.
+
+Definitions must agree, not with egos, but with life.  Mr. Burroughs
+goes on the basis that a definition is something hard and fast,
+absolute and eternal.  He forgets that all the universe is in flux;
+that definitions are arbitrary and ephemeral; that they fix, for a
+fleeting instant of time, things that in the past were not, that in
+the future will be not, that out of the past become, and that out of
+the present pass on to the future and become other things.
+Definitions cannot rule life.  Definitions cannot be made to rule
+life.  Life must rule definitions or else the definitions perish.
+
+Mr. Burroughs forgets the evolution of reason.  He makes a definition
+of reason without regard to its history, and that definition is of
+reason purely abstract.  Human reason, as we know it to-day, is not a
+creation, but a growth.  Its history goes back to the primordial
+slime that was quick with muddy life; its history goes back to the
+first vitalized inorganic.  And here are the steps of its ascent from
+the mud to man:  simple reflex action, compound reflex action,
+memory, habit, rudimentary reason, and abstract reason.  In the
+course of the climb, thanks to natural selection, instinct was
+evolved.  Habit is a development in the individual.  Instinct is a
+race-habit.  Instinct is blind, unreasoning, mechanical.  This was
+the dividing of the ways in the climb of aspiring life.  The perfect
+culmination of instinct we find in the ant-heap and the beehive.
+Instinct proved a blind alley.  But the other path, that of reason,
+led on and on even to Mr. Burroughs and you and me.
+
+There are no impassable gulfs, unless one chooses, as Mr. Burroughs
+does, to ignore the lower human types and the higher animal types,
+and to compare human mind with bird mind.  It was impossible for life
+to reason abstractly until speech was developed.  Equipped with
+swords, with tools of thought, in short, the slow development of the
+power to reason in the abstract went on.  The lowest human types do
+little or no reasoning in the abstract.  With every word, with every
+increase in the complexity of thought, with every ascertained fact so
+gained, went on action and reaction in the grey matter of the speech
+discoverer, and slowly, step by step, through hundreds of thousands
+of years, developed the power of reason.
+
+Place a honey-bee in a glass bottle.  Turn the bottom of the bottle
+toward a lighted lamp so that the open mouth is away from the lamp.
+Vainly, ceaselessly, a thousand times, undeterred by the bafflement
+and the pain, the bee will hurl himself against the bottom of the
+bottle as he strives to win to the light.  That is instinct.  Place
+your dog in a back yard and go away.  He is your dog.  He loves you.
+He yearns toward you as the bee yearns toward the light.  He listens
+to your departing footsteps.  But the fence is too high.  Then he
+turns his back upon the direction in which you are departing, and
+runs around the yard.  He is frantic with affection and desire.  But
+he is not blind.  He is observant.  He is looking for a hole under
+the fence, or through the fence, or for a place where the fence is
+not so high.  He sees a dry-goods box standing against the fence.
+Presto!  He leaps upon it, goes over the barrier, and tears down the
+street to overtake you.  Is that instinct?
+
+Here, in the household where I am writing this, is a little Tahitian
+"feeding-child."  He believes firmly that a tiny dwarf resides in the
+box of my talking-machine and that it is the tiny dwarf who does the
+singing and the talking.  Not even Mr. Burroughs will affirm that the
+child has reached this conclusion by an instinctive process.  Of
+course, the child reasons the existence of the dwarf in the box.  How
+else could the box talk and sing?  In that child's limited experience
+it has never encountered a single instance where speech and song were
+produced otherwise than by direct human agency.  I doubt not that the
+dog is considerably surprised when he hears his master's voice coming
+out of a box.
+
+The adult savage, on his first introduction to a telephone, rushes
+around to the adjoining room to find the man who is talking through
+the partition.  Is this act instinctive?  No.  Out of his limited
+experience, out of his limited knowledge of physics, he reasons that
+the only explanation possible is that a man is in the other room
+talking through the partition.
+
+But that savage cannot be fooled by a hand-mirror.  We must go lower
+down in the animal scale, to the monkey.  The monkey swiftly learns
+that the monkey it sees is not in the glass, wherefore it reaches
+craftily behind the glass.  Is this instinct?  No.  It is rudimentary
+reasoning.  Lower than the monkey in the scale of brain is the robin,
+and the robin fights its reflection in the window-pane.  Now climb
+with me for a space.  From the robin to the monkey, where is the
+impassable gulf? and where is the impassable gulf between the monkey
+and the feeding-child? between the feeding-child and the savage who
+seeks the man behind the partition? ay, and between the savage and
+the astute financiers Mrs. Chadwick fooled and the thousands who were
+fooled by the Keeley Motor swindle?
+
+Let us be very humble.  We who are so very human are very animal.
+Kinship with the other animals is no more repugnant to Mr. Burroughs
+than was the heliocentric theory to the priests who compelled Galileo
+to recant.  Not correct human reason, not the evidence of the
+ascertained fact, but pride of ego, was responsible for the
+repugnance.
+
+In his stiff-necked pride, Mr. Burroughs runs a hazard more
+humiliating to that pride than any amount of kinship with the other
+animals.  When a dog exhibits choice, direction, control, and reason;
+when it is shown that certain mental processes in that dog's brain
+are precisely duplicated in the brain of man; and when Mr. Burroughs
+convincingly proves that every action of the dog is mechanical and
+automatic--then, by precisely the same arguments, can it be proved
+that the similar actions of man are mechanical and automatic.  No,
+Mr. Burroughs, though you stand on the top of the ladder of life, you
+must not kick out that ladder from under your feet.  You must not
+deny your relatives, the other animals.  Their history is your
+history, and if you kick them to the bottom of the abyss, to the
+bottom of the abyss you go yourself.  By them you stand or fall.
+What you repudiate in them you repudiate in yourself--a pretty
+spectacle, truly, of an exalted animal striving to disown the stuff
+of life out of which it is made, striving by use of the very reason
+that was developed by evolution to deny the possession of evolution
+that developed it.  This may be good egotism, but it is not good
+science.
+
+PAPEETE, TAHITI.
+March 1908.
+
+
+
+THE YELLOW PERIL
+
+
+
+No more marked contrast appears in passing from our Western land to
+the paper houses and cherry blossoms of Japan than appears in passing
+from Korea to China.  To achieve a correct appreciation of the
+Chinese the traveller should first sojourn amongst the Koreans for
+several months, and then, one fine day, cross over the Yalu into
+Manchuria.  It would be of exceptional advantage to the correctness
+of appreciation did he cross over the Yalu on the heels of a hostile
+and alien army.
+
+War is to-day the final arbiter in the affairs of men, and it is as
+yet the final test of the worth-whileness of peoples.  Tested thus,
+the Korean fails.  He lacks the nerve to remain when a strange army
+crosses his land.  The few goods and chattels he may have managed to
+accumulate he puts on his back, along with his doors and windows, and
+away he heads for his mountain fastnesses.  Later he may return, sans
+goods, chattels, doors, and windows, impelled by insatiable curiosity
+for a "look see."  But it is curiosity merely--a timid, deerlike
+curiosity.  He is prepared to bound away on his long legs at the
+first hint of danger or trouble.
+
+Northern Korea was a desolate land when the Japanese passed through.
+Villages and towns were deserted.  The fields lay untouched.  There
+was no ploughing nor sowing, no green things growing.  Little or
+nothing was to be purchased.  One carried one's own food with him and
+food for horses and servants was the anxious problem that waited at
+the day's end.  In many a lonely village not an ounce nor a grain of
+anything could be bought, and yet there might be standing around
+scores of white-garmented, stalwart Koreans, smoking yard-long pipes
+and chattering, chattering--ceaselessly chattering.  Love, money, or
+force could not procure from them a horseshoe or a horseshoe nail.
+
+"Upso," was their invariable reply.  "Upso," cursed word, which means
+"Have not got."
+
+They had tramped probably forty miles that day, down from their
+hiding-places, just for a "look see," and forty miles back they would
+cheerfully tramp, chattering all the way over what they had seen.
+Shake a stick at them as they stand chattering about your camp-fire,
+and the gloom of the landscape will be filled with tall, flitting
+ghosts, bounding like deer, with great springy strides which one
+cannot but envy.  They have splendid vigour and fine bodies, but they
+are accustomed to being beaten and robbed without protest or
+resistance by every chance foreigner who enters their country.
+
+From this nerveless, forsaken Korean land I rode down upon the sandy
+islands of the Yalu.  For weeks these islands had been the dread
+between-the-lines of two fighting armies.  The air above had been
+rent by screaming projectiles.  The echoes of the final battle had
+scarcely died away.  The trains of Japanese wounded and Japanese dead
+were trailing by.
+
+On the conical hill, a quarter of a mile away, the Russian dead were
+being buried in their trenches and in the shell holes made by the
+Japanese.  And here, in the thick of it all, a man was ploughing.
+Green things were growing--young onions--and the man who was weeding
+them paused from his labour long enough to sell me a handful.  Near
+by was the smoke-blackened ruin of the farmhouse, fired by the
+Russians when they retreated from the riverbed.  Two men were
+removing the debris, cleaning the confusion, preparatory to
+rebuilding.  They were clad in blue.  Pigtails hung down their backs.
+I was in China!
+
+I rode to the shore, into the village of Kuelian-Ching.  There were
+no lounging men smoking long pipes and chattering.  The previous day
+the Russians had been there, a bloody battle had been fought, and to-
+day the Japanese were there--but what was that to talk about?
+Everybody was busy.  Men were offering eggs and chickens and fruit
+for sale upon the street, and bread, as I live, bread in small round
+loaves or buns.  I rode on into the country.  Everywhere a toiling
+population was in evidence.  The houses and walls were strong and
+substantial.  Stone and brick replaced the mud walls of the Korean
+dwellings.  Twilight fell and deepened, and still the ploughs went up
+and down the fields, the sowers following after.  Trains of
+wheelbarrows, heavily loaded, squeaked by, and Pekin carts, drawn by
+from four to six cows, horses, mules, ponies, or jackasses--cows even
+with their newborn calves tottering along on puny legs outside the
+traces.  Everybody worked.  Everything worked.  I saw a man mending
+the road.  I was in China.
+
+I came to the city of Antung, and lodged with a merchant.  He was a
+grain merchant.  Corn he had, hundreds of bushels, stored in great
+bins of stout matting; peas and beans in sacks, and in the back yard
+his millstones went round and round, grinding out meal.  Also, in his
+back yard, were buildings containing vats sunk into the ground, and
+here the tanners were at work making leather.  I bought a measure of
+corn from mine host for my horses, and he overcharged me thirty
+cents.  I was in China.  Antung was jammed with Japanese troops.  It
+was the thick of war.  But it did not matter.  The work of Antung
+went on just the same.  The shops were wide open; the streets were
+lined with pedlars.  One could buy anything; get anything made.  I
+dined at a Chinese restaurant, cleansed myself at a public bath in a
+private tub with a small boy to assist in the scrubbing.  I bought
+condensed milk, bitter, canned vegetables, bread, and cake.  I repeat
+it, cake--good cake.  I bought knives, forks, and spoons, granite-
+ware dishes and mugs.  There were horseshoes and horseshoers.  A
+worker in iron realized for me new designs of mine for my tent poles.
+My shoes were sent out to be repaired.  A barber shampooed my hair.
+A servant returned with corn-beef in tins, a bottle of port, another
+of cognac, and beer, blessed beer, to wash out from my throat the
+dust of an army.  It was the land of Canaan.  I was in China.
+
+The Korean is the perfect type of inefficiency--of utter
+worthlessness.  The Chinese is the perfect type of industry.  For
+sheer work no worker in the world can compare with him.  Work is the
+breath of his nostrils.  It is his solution of existence.  It is to
+him what wandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual adventure
+have been to other peoples.  Liberty to him epitomizes itself in
+access to the means of toil.  To till the soil and labour
+interminably with rude implements and utensils is all he asks of life
+and of the powers that be.  Work is what he desires above all things,
+and he will work at anything for anybody.
+
+During the taking of the Taku forts he carried scaling ladders at the
+heads of the storming columns and planted them against the walls.  He
+did this, not from a sense of patriotism, but for the invading
+foreign devils because they paid him a daily wage of fifty cents.  He
+is not frightened by war.  He accepts it as he does rain and
+sunshine, the changing of the seasons, and other natural phenomena.
+He prepares for it, endures it, and survives it, and when the tide of
+battle sweeps by, the thunder of the guns still reverberating in the
+distant canyons, he is seen calmly bending to his usual tasks.  Nay,
+war itself bears fruits whereof he may pick.  Before the dead are
+cold or the burial squads have arrived he is out on the field,
+stripping the mangled bodies, collecting the shrapnel, and ferreting
+in the shell holes for slivers and fragments of iron.
+
+The Chinese is no coward.  He does not carry away his doors amid
+windows to the mountains, but remains to guard them when alien
+soldiers occupy his town.  He does not hide away his chickens and his
+eggs, nor any other commodity he possesses.  He proceeds at once to
+offer them for sale.  Nor is he to be bullied into lowering his
+price.  What if the purchaser be a soldier and an alien made cocky by
+victory and confident by overwhelming force?  He has two large pears
+saved over from last year which he will sell for five sen, or for the
+same price three small pears.  What if one soldier persist in taking
+away with him three large pears?  What if there be twenty other
+soldiers jostling about him?  He turns over his sack of fruit to
+another Chinese and races down the street after his pears and the
+soldier responsible for their flight, and he does not return till he
+has wrenched away one large pear from that soldier's grasp.
+
+Nor is the Chinese the type of permanence which he has been so often
+designated.  He is not so ill-disposed toward new ideas and new
+methods as his history would seem to indicate.  True, his forms,
+customs, and methods have been permanent these many centuries, but
+this has been due to the fact that his government was in the hands of
+the learned classes, and that these governing scholars found their
+salvation lay in suppressing all progressive ideas.  The ideas behind
+the Boxer troubles and the outbreaks over the introduction of
+railroad and other foreign devil machinations have emanated from the
+minds of the literati, and been spread by their pamphlets and
+propagandists.
+
+Originality and enterprise have been suppressed in the Chinese for
+scores of generations.  Only has remained to him industry, and in
+this has he found the supreme expression of his being.  On the other
+hand, his susceptibility to new ideas has been well demonstrated
+wherever he has escaped beyond the restrictions imposed upon him by
+his government.  So far as the business man is concerned he has
+grasped far more clearly the Western code of business, the Western
+ethics of business, than has the Japanese.  He has learned, as a
+matter of course, to keep his word or his bond.  As yet, the Japanese
+business man has failed to understand this.  When he has signed a
+time contract and when changing conditions cause him to lose by it,
+the Japanese merchant cannot understand why he should live up to his
+contract.  It is beyond his comprehension and repulsive to his common
+sense that he should live up to his contract and thereby lose money.
+He firmly believes that the changing conditions themselves absolve
+him.  And in so far adaptable as he has shown himself to be in other
+respects, he fails to grasp a radically new idea where the Chinese
+succeeds.
+
+Here we have the Chinese, four hundred millions of him, occupying a
+vast land of immense natural resources--resources of a twentieth-
+century age, of a machine age; resources of coal and iron, which are
+the backbone of commercial civilization.  He is an indefatigable
+worker.  He is not dead to new ideas, new methods, new systems.
+Under a capable management he can be made to do anything.  Truly
+would he of himself constitute the much-heralded Yellow Peril were it
+not for his present management.  This management, his government, is
+set, crystallized.  It is what binds him down to building as his
+fathers built.  The governing class, entrenched by the precedent and
+power of centuries and by the stamp it has put upon his mind, will
+never free him.  It would be the suicide of the governing class, and
+the governing class knows it.
+
+Comes now the Japanese.  On the streets of Antung, of Feng-Wang-
+Chang, or of any other Manchurian city, the following is a familiar
+scene:  One is hurrying home through the dark of the unlighted
+streets when he comes upon a paper lantern resting on the ground.  On
+one side squats a Chinese civilian on his hams, on the other side
+squats a Japanese soldier.  One dips his forefinger in the dust and
+writes strange, monstrous characters.  The other nods understanding,
+sweeps the dust slate level with his hand, and with his forefinger
+inscribes similar characters.  They are talking.  They cannot speak
+to each other, but they can write.  Long ago one borrowed the other's
+written language, and long before that, untold generations ago, they
+diverged from a common root, the ancient Mongol stock.
+
+There have been changes, differentiations brought about by diverse
+conditions and infusions of other blood; but down at the bottom of
+their being, twisted into the fibres of them, is a heritage in
+common--a sameness in kind which time has not obliterated.  The
+infusion of other blood, Malay, perhaps, has made the Japanese a race
+of mastery and power, a fighting race through all its history, a race
+which has always despised commerce and exalted fighting.
+
+To-day, equipped with the finest machines and systems of destruction
+the Caucasian mind has devised, handling machines and systems with
+remarkable and deadly accuracy, this rejuvenescent Japanese race has
+embarked on a course of conquest the goal of which no man knows.  The
+head men of Japan are dreaming ambitiously, and the people are
+dreaming blindly, a Napoleonic dream.  And to this dream the Japanese
+clings and will cling with bull-dog tenacity.  The soldier shouting
+"Nippon, Banzai!" on the walls of Wiju, the widow at home in her
+paper house committing suicide so that her only son, her sole
+support, may go to the front, are both expressing the unanimity of
+the dream.
+
+The late disturbance in the Far East marked the clashing of the
+dreams, for the Slav, too, is dreaming greatly.  Granting that the
+Japanese can hurl back the Slav and that the two great branches of
+the Anglo-Saxon race do not despoil him of his spoils, the Japanese
+dream takes on substantiality.  Japan's population is no larger
+because her people have continually pressed against the means of
+subsistence.  But given poor, empty Korea for a breeding colony and
+Manchuria for a granary, and at once the Japanese begins to increase
+by leaps and bounds.
+
+Even so, he would not of himself constitute a Brown Peril.  He has
+not the time in which to grow and realize the dream.  He is only
+forty-five millions, and so fast does the economic exploitation of
+the planet hurry on the planet's partition amongst the Western
+peoples that, before he could attain the stature requisite to menace,
+he would see the Western giants in possession of the very stuff of
+his dream.
+
+The menace to the Western world lies, not in the little brown man,
+but in the four hundred millions of yellow men should the little
+brown man undertake their management.  The Chinese is not dead to new
+ideas; he is an efficient worker; makes a good soldier, and is
+wealthy in the essential materials of a machine age.  Under a capable
+management he will go far.  The Japanese is prepared and fit to
+undertake this management.  Not only has he proved himself an apt
+imitator of Western material progress, a sturdy worker, and a capable
+organizer, but he is far more fit to manage the Chinese than are we.
+The baffling enigma of the Chinese character is no baffling enigma to
+him.  He understands as we could never school ourselves nor hope to
+understand.  Their mental processes are largely the same.  He thinks
+with the same thought-symbols as does the Chinese, and he thinks in
+the same peculiar grooves.  He goes on where we are balked by the
+obstacles of incomprehension.  He takes the turning which we cannot
+perceive, twists around the obstacle, and, presto! is out of sight in
+the ramifications of the Chinese mind where we cannot follow.
+
+The Chinese has been called the type of permanence, and well he has
+merited it, dozing as he has through the ages.  And as truly was the
+Japanese the type of permanence up to a generation ago, when he
+suddenly awoke and startled the world with a rejuvenescence the like
+of which the world had never seen before.  The ideas of the West were
+the leaven which quickened the Japanese; and the ideas of the West,
+transmitted by the Japanese mind into ideas Japanese, may well make
+the leaven powerful enough to quicken the Chinese.
+
+We have had Africa for the Afrikander, and at no distant day we shall
+hear "Asia for the Asiatic!"  Four hundred million indefatigable
+workers (deft, intelligent, and unafraid to die), aroused and
+rejuvenescent, managed and guided by forty-five million additional
+human beings who are splendid fighting animals, scientific and
+modern, constitute that menace to the Western world which has been
+well named the "Yellow Peril."  The possibility of race adventure has
+not passed away.  We are in the midst of our own.  The Slav is just
+girding himself up to begin.  Why may not the yellow and the brown
+start out on an adventure as tremendous as our own and more
+strikingly unique?
+
+The ultimate success of such an adventure the Western mind refuses to
+consider.  It is not the nature of life to believe itself weak.
+There is such a thing as race egotism as well as creature egotism,
+and a very good thing it is.  In the first place, the Western world
+will not permit the rise of the yellow peril.  It is firmly convinced
+that it will not permit the yellow and the brown to wax strong and
+menace its peace and comfort.  It advances this idea with
+persistency, and delivers itself of long arguments showing how and
+why this menace will not be permitted to arise.  Today, far more
+voices are engaged in denying the yellow peril than in prophesying
+it.  The Western world is warned, if not armed, against the
+possibility of it.
+
+In the second place, there is a weakness inherent in the brown man
+which will bring his adventure to naught.  From the West he has
+borrowed all our material achievement and passed our ethical
+achievement by.  Our engines of production and destruction he has
+made his.  What was once solely ours he now duplicates, rivalling our
+merchants in the commerce of the East, thrashing the Russian on sea
+and land.  A marvellous imitator truly, but imitating us only in
+things material.  Things spiritual cannot be imitated; they must be
+felt and lived, woven into the very fabric of life, and here the
+Japanese fails.
+
+It required no revolution of his nature to learn to calculate the
+range and fire a field gun or to march the goose-step.  It was a mere
+matter of training.  Our material achievement is the product of our
+intellect.  It is knowledge, and knowledge, like coin, is
+interchangeable.  It is not wrapped up in the heredity of the new-
+born child, but is something to be acquired afterward.  Not so with
+our soul stuff, which is the product of an evolution which goes back
+to the raw beginnings of the race.  Our soul stuff is not a coin to
+be pocketed by the first chance comer.  The Japanese cannot pocket it
+any more than he can thrill to short Saxon words or we can thrill to
+Chinese hieroglyphics.  The leopard cannot change its spots, nor can
+the Japanese, nor can we.  We are thumbed by the ages into what we
+are, and by no conscious inward effort can we in a day rethumb
+ourselves.  Nor can the Japanese in a day, or a generation, rethumb
+himself in our image.
+
+Back of our own great race adventure, back of our robberies by sea
+and land, our lusts and violences and all the evil things we have
+done, there is a certain integrity, a sternness of conscience, a
+melancholy responsibility of life, a sympathy and comradeship and
+warm human feel, which is ours, indubitably ours, and which we cannot
+teach to the Oriental as we would teach logarithms or the trajectory
+of projectiles.  That we have groped for the way of right conduct and
+agonized over the soul betokens our spiritual endowment.  Though we
+have strayed often and far from righteousness, the voices of the
+seers have always been raised, and we have harked back to the bidding
+of conscience.  The colossal fact of our history is that we have made
+the religion of Jesus Christ our religion.  No matter how dark in
+error and deed, ours has been a history of spiritual struggle and
+endeavour.  We are pre-eminently a religious race, which is another
+way of saying that we are a right-seeking race.
+
+"What do you think of the Japanese?" was asked an American woman
+after she had lived some time in Japan.  "It seems to me that they
+have no soul," was her answer.
+
+This must not be taken to mean that the Japanese is without soul.
+But it serves to illustrate the enormous difference between their
+souls and this woman's soul.  There was no feel, no speech, no
+recognition.  This Western soul did not dream that the Eastern soul
+existed, it was so different, so totally different.
+
+Religion, as a battle for the right in our sense of right, as a
+yearning and a strife for spiritual good and purity, is unknown to
+the Japanese.
+
+Measured by what religion means to us, the Japanese is a race without
+religion.  Yet it has a religion, and who shall say that it is not as
+great a religion as ours, nor as efficacious?  As one Japanese has
+written:
+
+"Our reflection brought into prominence not so much the moral as the
+national consciousness of the individual. . . . To us the country is
+more than land and soil from which to mine gold or reap grain--it is
+the sacred abode of the gods, the spirit of our forefathers; to us
+the Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a Reichsstaat, or even
+the Patron of a Kulturstaat; he is the bodily representative of
+heaven on earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy."
+
+The religion of Japan is practically a worship of the State itself.
+Patriotism is the expression of this worship.  The Japanese mind does
+not split hairs as to whether the Emperor is Heaven incarnate or the
+State incarnate.  So far as the Japanese are concerned, the Emperor
+lives, is himself deity.  The Emperor is the object to live for and
+to die for.  The Japanese is not an individualist.  He has developed
+national consciousness instead of moral consciousness.  He is not
+interested in his own moral welfare except in so far as it is the
+welfare of the State.  The honour of the individual, per se, does not
+exist.  Only exists the honour of the State, which is his honour.  He
+does not look upon himself as a free agent, working out his own
+personal salvation.  Spiritual agonizing is unknown to him.  He has a
+"sense of calm trust in fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, a
+stoic composure in sight of danger or calamity, a disdain of life and
+friendliness with death."  He relates himself to the State as,
+amongst bees, the worker is related to the hive; himself nothing, the
+State everything; his reasons for existence the exaltation and
+glorification of the State.
+
+The most admired quality to-day of the Japanese is his patriotism.
+The Western world is in rhapsodies over it, unwittingly measuring the
+Japanese patriotism by its own conceptions of patriotism.  "For God,
+my country, and the Czar!" cries the Russian patriot; but in the
+Japanese mind there is no differentiation between the three.  The
+Emperor is the Emperor, and God and country as well.  The patriotism
+of the Japanese is blind and unswerving loyalty to what is
+practically an absolutism.  The Emperor can do no wrong, nor can the
+five ambitious great men who have his ear and control the destiny of
+Japan.
+
+No great race adventure can go far nor endure long which has no
+deeper foundation than material success, no higher prompting than
+conquest for conquest's sake and mere race glorification.  To go far
+and to endure, it must have behind it an ethical impulse, a sincerely
+conceived righteousness.  But it must be taken into consideration
+that the above postulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism,
+urged by our belief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith
+in ourselves which may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies.
+So be it.  The world is whirling faster to-day than ever before.  It
+has gained impetus.  Affairs rush to conclusion.  The Far East is the
+point of contact of the adventuring Western people as well as of the
+Asiatic.  We shall not have to wait for our children's time nor our
+children's children.  We shall ourselves see and largely determine
+the adventure of the Yellow and the Brown.
+
+FENG-WANG-CHENG, MANCHURIA.
+June 1904,
+
+
+
+WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME
+
+
+
+I was born in the working-class.  Early I discovered enthusiasm,
+ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my
+child-life.  My environment was crude and rough and raw.  I had no
+outlook, but an uplook rather.  My place in society was at the
+bottom.  Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness,
+both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were
+alike starved and tormented.
+
+Above me towered the colossal edifice of society, and to my mind the
+only way out was up.  Into this edifice I early resolved to climb.
+Up above, men wore black clothes and boiled shirts, and women dressed
+in beautiful gowns.  Also, there were good things to eat, and there
+was plenty to eat.  This much for the flesh.  Then there were the
+things of the spirit.  Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of
+the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living.  I
+knew all this because I read "Seaside Library" novels, in which, with
+the exception of the villains and adventuresses, all men and women
+thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a beautiful tongue, and performed
+glorious deeds.  In short, as I accepted the rising of the sun, I
+accepted that up above me was all that was fine and noble and
+gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all that made
+life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and
+misery.
+
+But it is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the
+working-class--especially if he is handicapped by the possession of
+ideals and illusions.  I lived on a ranch in California, and was hard
+put to find the ladder whereby to climb.  I early inquired the rate
+of interest on invested money, and worried my child's brain into an
+understanding of the virtues and excellences of that remarkable
+invention of man, compound interest.  Further, I ascertained the
+current rates of wages for workers of all ages, and the cost of
+living.  From all this data I concluded that if I began immediately
+and worked and saved until I was fifty years of age, I could then
+stop working and enter into participation in a fair portion of the
+delights and goodnesses that would then be open to me higher up in
+society.  Of course, I resolutely determined not to marry, while I
+quite forgot to consider at all that great rock of disaster in the
+working-class world--sickness.
+
+But the life that was in me demanded more than a meagre existence of
+scraping and scrimping.  Also, at ten years of age, I became a
+newsboy on the streets of a city, and found myself with a changed
+uplook.  All about me were still the same sordidness and
+wretchedness, and up above me was still the same paradise waiting to
+be gained; but the ladder whereby to climb was a different one.  It
+was now the ladder of business.  Why save my earnings and invest in
+government bonds, when, by buying two newspapers for five cents, with
+a turn of the wrist I could sell them for ten cents and double my
+capital?  The business ladder was the ladder for me, and I had a
+vision of myself becoming a bald-headed and successful merchant
+prince.
+
+Alas for visions!  When I was sixteen I had already earned the title
+of "prince."  But this title was given me by a gang of cut-throats
+and thieves, by whom I was called "The Prince of the Oyster Pirates."
+And at that time I had climbed the first rung of the business ladder.
+I was a capitalist.  I owned a boat and a complete oyster-pirating
+outfit.  I had begun to exploit my fellow-creatures.  I had a crew of
+one man.  As captain and owner I took two-thirds of the spoils, and
+gave the crew one-third, though the crew worked just as hard as I did
+and risked just as much his life and liberty.
+
+This one rung was the height I climbed up the business ladder.  One
+night I went on a raid amongst the Chinese fishermen.  Ropes and nets
+were worth dollars and cents.  It was robbery, I grant, but it was
+precisely the spirit of capitalism.  The capitalist takes away the
+possessions of his fellow-creatures by means of a rebate, or of a
+betrayal of trust, or by the purchase of senators and supreme-court
+judges.  I was merely crude.  That was the only difference.  I used a
+gun.
+
+But my crew that night was one of those inefficients against whom the
+capitalist is wont to fulminate, because, forsooth, such inefficients
+increase expenses and reduce dividends.  My crew did both.  What of
+his carelessness he set fire to the big mainsail and totally
+destroyed it.  There weren't any dividends that night, and the
+Chinese fishermen were richer by the nets and ropes we did not get.
+I was bankrupt, unable just then to pay sixty-five dollars for a new
+mainsail.  I left my boat at anchor and went off on a bay-pirate boat
+on a raid up the Sacramento River.  While away on this trip, another
+gang of bay pirates raided my boat.  They stole everything, even the
+anchors; and later on, when I recovered the drifting hulk, I sold it
+for twenty dollars.  I had slipped back the one rung I had climbed,
+and never again did I attempt the business ladder.
+
+From then on I was mercilessly exploited by other capitalists.  I had
+the muscle, and they made money out of it while I made but a very
+indifferent living out of it.  I was a sailor before the mast, a
+longshoreman, a roustabout; I worked in canneries, and factories, and
+laundries; I mowed lawns, and cleaned carpets, and washed windows.
+And I never got the full product of my toil.  I looked at the
+daughter of the cannery owner, in her carriage, and knew that it was
+my muscle, in part, that helped drag along that carriage on its
+rubber tyres.  I looked at the son of the factory owner, going to
+college, and knew that it was my muscle that helped, in part, to pay
+for the wine and good fellowship he enjoyed.
+
+But I did not resent this.  It was all in the game.  They were the
+strong.  Very well, I was strong.  I would carve my way to a place
+amongst them and make money out of the muscles of other men.  I was
+not afraid of work.  I loved hard work.  I would pitch in and work
+harder than ever and eventually become a pillar of society.
+
+And just then, as luck would have it, I found an employer that was of
+the same mind.  I was willing to work, and he was more than willing
+that I should work.  I thought I was learning a trade.  In reality, I
+had displaced two men.  I thought he was making an electrician out of
+me; as a matter of fact, he was making fifty dollars per month out of
+me.  The two men I had displaced had received forty dollars each per
+month; I was doing the work of both for thirty dollars per month.
+
+This employer worked me nearly to death.  A man may love oysters, but
+too many oysters will disincline him toward that particular diet.
+And so with me.  Too much work sickened me.  I did not wish ever to
+see work again.  I fled from work.  I became a tramp, begging my way
+from door to door, wandering over the United States and sweating
+bloody sweats in slums and prisons.
+
+I had been born in the working-class, and I was now, at the age of
+eighteen, beneath the point at which I had started.  I was down in
+the cellar of society, down in the subterranean depths of misery
+about which it is neither nice nor proper to speak.  I was in the
+pit, the abyss, the human cesspool, the shambles and the charnel-
+house of our civilization.  This is the part of the edifice of
+society that society chooses to ignore.  Lack of space compels me
+here to ignore it, and I shall say only that the things I there saw
+gave me a terrible scare.
+
+I was scared into thinking.  I saw the naked simplicities of the
+complicated civilization in which I lived.  Life was a matter of food
+and shelter.  In order to get food and shelter men sold things.  The
+merchant sold shoes, the politician sold his manhood, and the
+representative of the people, with exceptions, of course, sold his
+trust; while nearly all sold their honour.  Women, too, whether on
+the street or in the holy bond of wedlock, were prone to sell their
+flesh.  All things were commodities, all people bought and sold.  The
+one commodity that labour had to sell was muscle.  The honour of
+labour had no price in the marketplace.  Labour had muscle, and
+muscle alone, to sell.
+
+But there was a difference, a vital difference.  Shoes and trust and
+honour had a way of renewing themselves.  They were imperishable
+stocks.  Muscle, on the other hand, did not renew.  As the shoe
+merchant sold shoes, he continued to replenish his stock.  But there
+was no way of replenishing the labourer's stock of muscle.  The more
+he sold of his muscle, the less of it remained to him.  It was his
+one commodity, and each day his stock of it diminished.  In the end,
+if he did not die before, he sold out and put up his shutters.  He
+was a muscle bankrupt, and nothing remained to him but to go down
+into the cellar of society and perish miserably.
+
+I learned, further, that brain was likewise a commodity.  It, too,
+was different from muscle.  A brain seller was only at his prime when
+he was fifty or sixty years old, and his wares were fetching higher
+prices than ever.  But a labourer was worked out or broken down at
+forty-five or fifty.  I had been in the cellar of society, and I did
+not like the place as a habitation.  The pipes and drains were
+unsanitary, and the air was bad to breathe.  If I could not live on
+the parlour floor of society, I could, at any rate, have a try at the
+attic.  It was true, the diet there was slim, but the air at least
+was pure.  So I resolved to sell no more muscle, and to become a
+vendor of brains.
+
+Then began a frantic pursuit of knowledge.  I returned to California
+and opened the books.  While thus equipping myself to become a brain
+merchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology.
+There I found, in a certain class of books, scientifically
+formulated, the simple sociological concepts I had already worked out
+for myself.  Other and greater minds, before I was born, had worked
+out all that I had thought and a vast deal more.  I discovered that I
+was a socialist.
+
+The socialists were revolutionists, inasmuch as they struggled to
+overthrow the society of the present, and out of the material to
+build the society of the future.  I, too, was a socialist and a
+revolutionist.  I joined the groups of working-class and intellectual
+revolutionists, and for the first time came into intellectual living.
+Here I found keen-flashing intellects and brilliant wits; for here I
+met strong and alert-brained, withal horny-handed, members of the
+working-class; unfrocked preachers too wide in their Christianity for
+any congregation of Mammon-worshippers; professors broken on the
+wheel of university subservience to the ruling class and flung out
+because they were quick with knowledge which they strove to apply to
+the affairs of mankind.
+
+Here I found, also, warm faith in the human, glowing idealism,
+sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and martyrdom--all the
+splendid, stinging things of the spirit.  Here life was clean, noble,
+and alive.  Here life rehabilitated itself, became wonderful and
+glorious; and I was glad to be alive.  I was in touch with great
+souls who exalted flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to
+whom the thin wail of the starved slum child meant more than all the
+pomp and circumstance of commercial expansion and world empire.  All
+about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort, and my days
+and nights were sunshine and starshine, all fire and dew, with before
+my eyes, ever burning and blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's own
+Grail, the warm human, long-suffering and maltreated, but to be
+rescued and saved at the last.
+
+And I, poor foolish I, deemed all this to be a mere foretaste of the
+delights of living I should find higher above me in society.  I had
+lost many illusions since the day I read "Seaside Library" novels on
+the California ranch.  I was destined to lose many of the illusions I
+still retained.
+
+As a brain merchant I was a success.  Society opened its portals to
+me.  I entered right in on the parlour floor, and my disillusionment
+proceeded rapidly.  I sat down to dinner with the masters of society,
+and with the wives and daughters of the masters of society.  The
+women were gowned beautifully, I admit; but to my naive surprise I
+discovered that they were of the same clay as all the rest of the
+women I had known down below in the cellar.  "The colonel's lady and
+Judy O'Grady were sisters under their skins"--and gowns.
+
+It was not this, however, so much as their materialism, that shocked
+me.  It is true, these beautifully gowned, beautiful women prattled
+sweet little ideals and dear little moralities; but in spite of their
+prattle the dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic.
+And they were so sentimentally selfish!  They assisted in all kinds
+of sweet little charities, and informed one of the fact, while all
+the time the food they ate and the beautiful clothes they wore were
+bought out of dividends stained with the blood of child labour, and
+sweated labour, and of prostitution itself.  When I mentioned such
+facts, expecting in my innocence that these sisters of Judy O'Grady
+would at once strip off their blood-dyed silks and jewels, they
+became excited and angry, and read me preachments about the lack of
+thrift, the drink, and the innate depravity that caused all the
+misery in society's cellar.  When I mentioned that I couldn't quite
+see that it was the lack of thrift, the intemperance, and the
+depravity of a half-starved child of six that made it work twelve
+hours every night in a Southern cotton mill, these sisters of Judy
+O'Grady attacked my private life and called me an "agitator"--as
+though that, forsooth, settled the argument.
+
+Nor did I fare better with the masters themselves.  I had expected to
+find men who were clean, noble, and alive, whose ideals were clean,
+noble, and alive.  I went about amongst the men who sat in the high
+places--the preachers, the politicians, the business men, the
+professors, and the editors.  I ate meat with them, drank wine with
+them, automobiled with them, and studied them.  It is true, I found
+many that were clean and noble; but with rare exceptions, they were
+not ALIVE.  I do verily believe I could count the exceptions on the
+fingers of my two hands.  Where they were not alive with rottenness,
+quick with unclean life, there were merely the unburied dead--clean
+and noble, like well-preserved mummies, but not alive.  In this
+connection I may especially mention the professors I met, the men who
+live up to that decadent university ideal, "the passionless pursuit
+of passionless intelligence."
+
+I met men who invoked the name of the Prince of Peace in their
+diatribes against war, and who put rifles in the hands of Pinkertons
+with which to shoot down strikers in their own factories.  I met men
+incoherent with indignation at the brutality of prize-fighting, and
+who, at the same time, were parties to the adulteration of food that
+killed each year more babies than even red-handed Herod had killed.
+
+I talked in hotels and clubs and homes and Pullmans, and steamer-
+chairs with captains of industry, and marvelled at how little
+travelled they were in the realm of intellect.  On the other hand, I
+discovered that their intellect, in the business sense, was
+abnormally developed.  Also, I discovered that their morality, where
+business was concerned, was nil.
+
+This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman, was a dummy director
+and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans.
+This gentleman, who collected fine editions and was an especial
+patron of literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed
+boss of a municipal machine.  This editor, who published patent
+medicine advertisements and did not dare print the truth in his paper
+about said patent medicines for fear of losing the advertising,
+called me a scoundrelly demagogue because I told him that his
+political economy was antiquated and that his biology was
+contemporaneous with Pliny.
+
+This senator was the tool and the slave, the little puppet of a
+gross, uneducated machine boss; so was this governor and this supreme
+court judge; and all three rode on railroad passes.  This man,
+talking soberly and earnestly about the beauties of idealism and the
+goodness of God, had just betrayed his comrades in a business deal.
+This man, a pillar of the church and heavy contributor to foreign
+missions, worked his shop girls ten hours a day on a starvation wage
+and thereby directly encouraged prostitution.  This man, who endowed
+chairs in universities, perjured himself in courts of law over a
+matter of dollars and cents.  And this railroad magnate broke his
+word as a gentleman and a Christian when he granted a secret rebate
+to one of two captains of industry locked together in a struggle to
+the death.
+
+It was the same everywhere, crime and betrayal, betrayal and crime--
+men who were alive, but who were neither clean nor noble, men who
+were clean and noble, but who were not alive.  Then there was a
+great, hopeless mass, neither noble nor alive, but merely clean.  It
+did not sin positively nor deliberately; but it did sin passively and
+ignorantly by acquiescing in the current immorality and profiting by
+it.  Had it been noble and alive it would not have been ignorant, and
+it would have refused to share in the profits of betrayal and crime.
+
+I discovered that I did not like to live on the parlour floor of
+society.  Intellectually I was as bored.  Morally and spiritually I
+was sickened.  I remembered my intellectuals and idealists, my
+unfrocked preachers, broken professors, and clean-minded, class-
+conscious working-men.  I remembered my days and nights of sunshine
+and starshine, where life was all a wild sweet wonder, a spiritual
+paradise of unselfish adventure and ethical romance.  And I saw
+before me, ever blazing and burning, the Holy Grail.
+
+So I went back to the working-class, in which I had been born and
+where I belonged.  I care no longer to climb.  The imposing edifice
+of society above my head holds no delights for me.  It is the
+foundation of the edifice that interests me.  There I am content to
+labour, crowbar in hand, shoulder to shoulder with intellectuals,
+idealists, and class-conscious working-men, getting a solid pry now
+and again and setting the whole edifice rocking.  Some day, when we
+get a few more hands and crowbars to work, we'll topple it over,
+along with all its rotten life and unburied dead, its monstrous
+selfishness and sodden materialism.  Then we'll cleanse the cellar
+and build a new habitation for mankind, in which there will be no
+parlour floor, in which all the rooms will be bright and airy, and
+where the air that is breathed will be clean, noble, and alive.
+
+Such is my outlook.  I look forward to a time when man shall progress
+upon something worthier and higher than his stomach, when there will
+be a finer incentive to impel men to action than the incentive of to-
+day, which is the incentive of the stomach.  I retain my belief in
+the nobility and excellence of the human.  I believe that spiritual
+sweetness and unselfishness will conquer the gross gluttony of to-
+day.  And last of all, my faith is in the working-class.  As some
+Frenchman has said, "The stairway of time is ever echoing with the
+wooden shoe going up, the polished boot descending."
+
+NEWTON, IOWA.
+November 1905.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, REVOLUTION AND OTHER ESSAYS ***
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+Title: Revolution and Other Essays
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+Author: Jack London
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+<p>
+<a name="startoftext"></a>
+Transcribed from the 1910 Mills and Boon edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk.<br>
+<br>
+REVOLUTION AND OTHER ESSAYS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Contents:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Revolution<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Somnambulists&nbsp;  <br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Dignity of Dollars<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Goliah<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Golden Poppy<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Shrinkage of the Planet<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The House Beautiful<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Gold Hunters of the North<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Fom&aacute; Gordy&eacute;eff<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;These Bones shall Rise Again<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Other Animals<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Yellow Peril<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What Life Means to Me<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+REVOLUTION<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;The present is enough for common souls,<br>
+Who, never looking forward, are indeed<br>
+Mere clay, wherein the footprints of their age<br>
+Are petrified for ever.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+I received a letter the other day.&nbsp; It was from a man in Arizona.&nbsp;
+It began, &ldquo;Dear Comrade.&rdquo;&nbsp; It ended, &ldquo;Yours for
+the Revolution.&rdquo;&nbsp; I replied to the letter, and my letter
+began, &ldquo;Dear Comrade.&rdquo;&nbsp; It ended, &ldquo;Yours for
+the Revolution.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the United States there are 400,000
+men, of men and women nearly 1,000,000, who begin their letters &ldquo;Dear
+Comrade,&rdquo; and end them &ldquo;Yours for the Revolution.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+In Germany there are 3,000,000 men who begin their letters &ldquo;Dear
+Comrade&rdquo; and end them &ldquo;Yours for the Revolution&rdquo;;
+in France, 1,000,000 men; in Austria, 800,000 men; in Belgium, 300,000
+men; in Italy, 250,000 men; in England, 100,000 men; in Switzerland,
+100,000 men; in Denmark, 55,000 men; in Sweden, 50,000 men; in Holland,
+40,000 men; in Spain, 30,000 men - comrades all, and revolutionists.<br>
+<br>
+These are numbers which dwarf the grand armies of Napoleon and Xerxes.&nbsp;
+But they are numbers not of conquest and maintenance of the established
+order, but of conquest and revolution.&nbsp; They compose, when the
+roll is called, an army of 7,000,000 men, who, in accordance with the
+conditions of to-day, are fighting with all their might for the conquest
+of the wealth of the world and for the complete overthrow of existing
+society.<br>
+<br>
+There has never been anything like this revolution in the history of
+the world.&nbsp; There is nothing analogous between it and the American
+Revolution or the French Revolution.&nbsp; It is unique, colossal.&nbsp;
+Other revolutions compare with it as asteroids compare with the sun.&nbsp;
+It is alone of its kind, the first world-revolution in a world whose
+history is replete with revolutions.&nbsp; And not only this, for it
+is the first organized movement of men to become a world movement, limited
+only by the limits of the planet.<br>
+<br>
+This revolution is unlike all other revolutions in many respects.&nbsp;
+It is not sporadic.&nbsp; It is not a flame of popular discontent, arising
+in a day and dying down in a day.&nbsp; It is older than the present
+generation.&nbsp; It has a history and traditions, and a martyr-roll
+only less extensive possibly than the martyr-roll of Christianity.&nbsp;
+It has also a literature a myriad times more imposing, scientific, and
+scholarly than the literature of any previous revolution.<br>
+<br>
+They call themselves &ldquo;comrades,&rdquo; these men, comrades in
+the socialist revolution.&nbsp; Nor is the word empty and meaningless,
+coined of mere lip service.&nbsp; It knits men together as brothers,
+as men should be knit together who stand shoulder to shoulder under
+the red banner of revolt.&nbsp; This red banner, by the way, symbolizes
+the brotherhood of man, and does not symbolize the incendiarism that
+instantly connects itself with the red banner in the affrighted bourgeois
+mind.&nbsp; The comradeship of the revolutionists is alive and warm.&nbsp;
+It passes over geographical lines, transcends race prejudice, and has
+even proved itself mightier than the Fourth of July, spread-eagle Americanism
+of our forefathers.&nbsp; The French socialist working-men and the German
+socialist working-men forget Alsace and Lorraine, and, when war threatens,
+pass resolutions declaring that as working-men and comrades they have
+no quarrel with each other.&nbsp; Only the other day, when Japan and
+Russia sprang at each other&rsquo;s throats, the revolutionists of Japan
+addressed the following message to the revolutionists of Russia: &ldquo;Dear
+Comrades - Your government and ours have recently plunged into war to
+carry out their imperialistic tendencies, but for us socialists there
+are no boundaries, race, country, or nationality.&nbsp; We are comrades,
+brothers, and sisters, and have no reason to fight.&nbsp; Your enemies
+are not the Japanese people, but our militarism and so-called patriotism.&nbsp;
+Patriotism and militarism are our mutual enemies.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+In January 1905, throughout the United States the socialists held mass-meetings
+to express their sympathy for their struggling comrades, the revolutionists
+of Russia, and, more to the point, to furnish the sinews of war by collecting
+money and cabling it to the Russian leaders.&nbsp; The fact of this
+call for money, and the ready response, and the very wording of the
+call, make a striking and practical demonstration of the international
+solidarity of this world-revolution:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Whatever may be the immediate results of the present revolt in
+Russia, the socialist propaganda in that country has received from it
+an impetus unparalleled in the history of modern class wars.&nbsp; The
+heroic battle for freedom is being fought almost exclusively by the
+Russian working-class under the intellectual leadership of Russian socialists,
+thus once more demonstrating the fact that the class-conscious working-men
+have become the vanguard of all liberating movements of modern times.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Here are 7,000,000 comrades in an organized, international, world-wide,
+revolutionary movement.&nbsp; Here is a tremendous human force.&nbsp;
+It must be reckoned with.&nbsp; Here is power.&nbsp; And here is romance
+- romance so colossal that it seems to be beyond the ken of ordinary
+mortals.&nbsp; These revolutionists are swayed by great passion.&nbsp;
+They have a keen sense of personal right, much of reverence for humanity,
+but little reverence, if any at all, for the rule of the dead.&nbsp;
+They refuse to be ruled by the dead.&nbsp; To the bourgeois mind their
+unbelief in the dominant conventions of the established order is startling.&nbsp;
+They laugh to scorn the sweet ideals and dear moralities of bourgeois
+society.&nbsp; They intend to destroy bourgeois society with most of
+its sweet ideals and dear moralities, and chiefest among these are those
+that group themselves under such heads as private ownership of capital,
+survival of the fittest, and patriotism - even patriotism.<br>
+<br>
+Such an army of revolution, 7,000,000 strong, is a thing to make rulers
+and ruling classes pause and consider.&nbsp; The cry of this army is,
+&ldquo;No quarter!&nbsp; We want all that you possess.&nbsp; We will
+be content with nothing less than all that you possess.&nbsp; We want
+in our hands the reins of power and the destiny of mankind.&nbsp; Here
+are our hands.&nbsp; They are strong hands.&nbsp; We are going to take
+your governments, your palaces, and all your purpled ease away from
+you, and in that day you shall work for your bread even as the peasant
+in the field or the starved and runty clerk in your metropolises.&nbsp;
+Here are our hands.&nbsp; They are strong hands.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Well may rulers and ruling classes pause and consider.&nbsp; This is
+revolution.&nbsp; And, further, these 7,000,000 men are not an army
+on paper.&nbsp; Their fighting strength in the field is 7,000,000.&nbsp;
+To-day they cast 7,000,000 votes in the civilized countries of the world.<br>
+<br>
+Yesterday they were not so strong.&nbsp; Tomorrow they will be still
+stronger.&nbsp; And they are fighters.&nbsp; They love peace.&nbsp;
+They are unafraid of war.&nbsp; They intend nothing less than to destroy
+existing capitalist society and to take possession of the whole world.&nbsp;
+If the law of the land permits, they fight for this end peaceably, at
+the ballot-box.&nbsp; If the law of the land does not permit, and if
+they have force meted out to them, they resort to force themselves.&nbsp;
+They meet violence with violence.&nbsp; Their hands are strong and they
+are unafraid.&nbsp; In Russia, for instance, there is no suffrage.&nbsp;
+The government executes the revolutionists.&nbsp; The revolutionists
+kill the officers of the government.&nbsp; The revolutionists meet legal
+murder with assassination.<br>
+<br>
+Now here arises a particularly significant phase which it would be well
+for the rulers to consider.&nbsp; Let me make it concrete.&nbsp; I am
+a revolutionist.&nbsp; Yet I am a fairly sane and normal individual.&nbsp;
+I speak, and I <i>think, </i>of these assassins in Russia as &ldquo;my
+comrades.&rdquo;&nbsp; So do all the comrades in America, and all the
+7,000,000 comrades in the world.&nbsp; Of what worth an organized, international,
+revolutionary movement if our comrades are not backed up the world over!&nbsp;
+The worth is shown by the fact that we do back up the assassinations
+by our comrades in Russia.&nbsp; They are not disciples of Tolstoy,
+nor are we.&nbsp; We are revolutionists.<br>
+<br>
+Our comrades in Russia have formed what they call &ldquo;The Fighting
+Organization.&rdquo;&nbsp; This Fighting Organization accused, tried,
+found guilty, and condemned to death, one Sipiaguin, Minister of Interior.&nbsp;
+On April 2 he was shot and killed in the Maryinsky Palace.&nbsp; Two
+years later the Fighting Organization condemned to death and executed
+another Minister of Interior, Von Plehve.&nbsp; Having done so, it issued
+a document, dated July 29, 1904, setting forth the counts of its indictment
+of Von Plehve and its responsibility for the assassination.&nbsp; Now,
+and to the point, this document was sent out to the socialists of the
+world, and by them was published everywhere in the magazines and newspapers.&nbsp;
+The point is, not that the socialists of the world were unafraid to
+do it, not that they dared to do it, but that they did it as a matter
+of routine, giving publication to what may be called an official document
+of the international revolutionary movement.<br>
+<br>
+These are high lights upon the revolution - granted, but they are also
+facts.&nbsp; And they are given to the rulers and the ruling classes,
+not in bravado, not to frighten them, but for them to consider more
+deeply the spirit and nature of this world-revolution.&nbsp; The time
+has come for the revolution to demand consideration.&nbsp; It has fastened
+upon every civilized country in the world.&nbsp; As fast as a country
+becomes civilized, the revolution fastens upon it.&nbsp; With the introduction
+of the machine into Japan, socialism was introduced.&nbsp; Socialism
+marched into the Philippines shoulder to shoulder with the American
+soldiers.&nbsp; The echoes of the last gun had scarcely died away when
+socialist locals were forming in Cuba and Porto Rico.&nbsp; Vastly more
+significant is the fact that of all the countries the revolution has
+fastened upon, on not one has it relaxed its grip.&nbsp; On the contrary,
+on every country its grip closes tighter year by year.&nbsp; As an active
+movement it began obscurely over a generation ago.&nbsp; In 1867, its
+voting strength in the world was 30,000.&nbsp; By 1871 its vote had
+increased to 1,000,000.&nbsp; Not till 1884 did it pass the half-million
+point.&nbsp; By 1889 it had passed the million point, it had then gained
+momentum.&nbsp; In 1892 the socialist vote of the world was 1,798,391;
+in 1893, 2,585,898; in 1895, 3,033,718; in 1898, 4,515,591; in 1902,
+5,253,054; in 1903, 6,285,374; and in the year of our Lord 1905 it passed
+the seven-million mark.<br>
+<br>
+Nor has this flame of revolution left the United States untouched.&nbsp;
+In 1888 there were only 2,068 socialist votes.&nbsp; In 1902 there were
+127,713 socialist votes.&nbsp; And in 1904 435,040 socialist votes were
+cast.&nbsp; What fanned this flame?&nbsp; Not hard times.&nbsp; The
+first four years of the twentieth century were considered prosperous
+years, yet in that time more than 300,000 men added themselves to the
+ranks of the revolutionists, flinging their defiance in the teeth of
+bourgeois society and taking their stand under the blood-red banner.&nbsp;
+In the state of the writer, California, one man in twelve is an avowed
+and registered revolutionist.<br>
+<br>
+One thing must be clearly understood.&nbsp; This is no spontaneous and
+vague uprising of a large mass of discontented and miserable people
+- a blind and instinctive recoil from hurt.&nbsp; On the contrary, the
+propaganda is intellectual; the movement is based upon economic necessity
+and is in line with social evolution; while the miserable people have
+not yet revolted.&nbsp; The revolutionist is no starved and diseased
+slave in the shambles at the bottom of the social pit, but is, in the
+main, a hearty, well-fed working-man, who sees the shambles waiting
+for him and his children and recoils from the descent.&nbsp; The very
+miserable people are too helpless to help themselves.&nbsp; But they
+are being helped, and the day is not far distant when their numbers
+will go to swell the ranks of the revolutionists.<br>
+<br>
+Another thing must be clearly understood.&nbsp; In spite of the fact
+that middle-class men and professional men are interested in the movement,
+it is nevertheless a distinctly working-class revolt.&nbsp; The world
+over, it is a working-class revolt.&nbsp; The workers of the world,
+as a class, are fighting the capitalists of the world, as a class.&nbsp;
+The so-called great middle class is a growing anomaly in the social
+struggle.&nbsp; It is a perishing class (wily statisticians to the contrary),
+and its historic mission of buffer between the capitalist and working-classes
+has just about been fulfilled.&nbsp; Little remains for it but to wail
+as it passes into oblivion, as it has already begun to wail in accents
+Populistic and Jeffersonian-Democratic.&nbsp; The fight is on.&nbsp;
+The revolution is here now, and it is the world&rsquo;s workers that
+are in revolt.<br>
+<br>
+Naturally the question arises: Why is this so?&nbsp; No mere whim of
+the spirit can give rise to a world-revolution.&nbsp; Whim does not
+conduce to unanimity.&nbsp; There must be a deep-seated cause to make
+7,000,000 men of the one mind, to make them cast off allegiance to the
+bourgeois gods and lose faith in so fine a thing as patriotism.&nbsp;
+There are many counts of the indictment which the revolutionists bring
+against the capitalist class, but for present use only one need be stated,
+and it is a count to which capital has never replied and can never reply.<br>
+<br>
+The capitalist class has managed society, and its management has failed.&nbsp;
+And not only has it failed in its management, but it has failed deplorably,
+ignobly, horribly.&nbsp; The capitalist class had an opportunity such
+as was vouchsafed no previous ruling class in the history of the world.&nbsp;
+It broke away from the rule of the old feudal aristocracy and made modern
+society.&nbsp; It mastered matter, organized the machinery of life,
+and made possible a wonderful era for mankind, wherein no creature should
+cry aloud because it had not enough to eat, and wherein for every child
+there would be opportunity for education, for intellectual and spiritual
+uplift.&nbsp; Matter being mastered, and the machinery of life organized,
+all this was possible.&nbsp; Here was the chance, God-given, and the
+capitalist class failed.&nbsp; It was blind and greedy.&nbsp; It prattled
+sweet ideals and dear moralities, rubbed its eyes not once, nor ceased
+one whit in its greediness, and smashed down in a failure as tremendous
+only as was the opportunity it had ignored.<br>
+<br>
+But all this is like so much cobwebs to the bourgeois mind.&nbsp; As
+it was blind in the past, it is blind now and cannot see nor understand.&nbsp;
+Well, then, let the indictment be stated more definitely, in terms sharp
+and unmistakable.&nbsp; In the first place, consider the caveman.&nbsp;
+He was a very simple creature.&nbsp; His head slanted back like an orang-outang&rsquo;s,
+and he had but little more intelligence.&nbsp; He lived in a hostile
+environment, the prey of all manner of fierce life.&nbsp; He had no
+inventions nor artifices.&nbsp; His natural efficiency for food-getting
+was, say, 1.&nbsp; He did not even till the soil.&nbsp; With his natural
+efficiency of 1, he fought off his carnivorous enemies and got himself
+food and shelter.&nbsp; He must have done all this, else he would not
+have multiplied and spread over the earth and sent his progeny down,
+generation by generation, to become even you and me.<br>
+<br>
+The caveman, with his natural efficiency of 1, got enough to eat most
+of the time, and no caveman went hungry all the time.&nbsp; Also, he
+lived a healthy, open-air life, loafed and rested himself, and found
+plenty of time in which to exercise his imagination and invent gods.&nbsp;
+That is to say, he did not have to work all his waking moments in order
+to get enough to eat.&nbsp; The child of the caveman (and this is true
+of the children of all savage peoples) had a childhood, and by that
+is meant a happy childhood of play and development.<br>
+<br>
+And now, how fares modern man?&nbsp; Consider the United States, the
+most prosperous and most enlightened country of the world.&nbsp; In
+the United States there are 10,000,000 people living in poverty.&nbsp;
+By poverty is meant that condition in life in which, through lack of
+food and adequate shelter, the mere standard of working efficiency cannot
+be maintained.&nbsp; In the United States there are 10,000,000 people
+who have not enough to eat.&nbsp; In the United States, because they
+have not enough to eat, there are 10,000,000 people who cannot keep
+the ordinary 1 measure of strength in their bodies.&nbsp; This means
+that these 10,000,000 people are perishing, are dying, body and soul,
+slowly, because they have not enough to eat.&nbsp; All over this broad,
+prosperous, enlightened land, are men, women, and children who are living
+miserably.&nbsp; In all the great cities, where they are segregated
+in slum ghettos by hundreds of thousands and by millions, their misery
+becomes beastliness.&nbsp; No caveman ever starved as chronically as
+they starve, ever slept as vilely as they sleep, ever festered with
+rottenness and disease as they fester, nor ever toiled as hard and for
+as long hours as they toil.<br>
+<br>
+In Chicago there is a woman who toiled sixty hours per week.&nbsp; She
+was a garment worker.&nbsp; She sewed buttons on clothes.&nbsp; Among
+the Italian garment workers of Chicago, the average weekly wage of the
+dressmakers is 90 cents, but they work every week in the year.&nbsp;
+The average weekly wage of the pants finishers is $1.31, and the average
+number of weeks employed in the year is 27.85.&nbsp; The average yearly
+earnings of the dressmakers is $37; of the pants finishers, $42.4l.&nbsp;
+Such wages means no childhood for the children, beastliness of living,
+and starvation for all.<br>
+<br>
+Unlike the caveman, modern man cannot get food and shelter whenever
+he feels like working for it.&nbsp; Modern man has first to find the
+work, and in this he is often unsuccessful.&nbsp; Then misery becomes
+acute.&nbsp; This acute misery is chronicled daily in the newspapers.&nbsp;
+Let several of the countless instances be cited.<br>
+<br>
+In New York City lived a woman, Mary Mead.&nbsp; She had three children:
+Mary, one year old; Johanna, two years old; Alice, four years old.&nbsp;
+Her husband could find no work.&nbsp; They starved.&nbsp; They were
+evicted from their shelter at 160 Steuben Street.&nbsp; Mary Mead strangled
+her baby, Mary, one year old; strangled Alice, four years old; failed
+to strangle Johanna, two years old, and then herself took poison.&nbsp;
+Said the father to the police: &ldquo;Constant poverty had driven my
+wife insane.&nbsp; We lived at No. 160 Steuben Street until a week ago,
+when we were dispossessed.&nbsp; I could get no work.&nbsp; I could
+not even make enough to put food into our mouths.&nbsp; The babies grew
+ill and weak.&nbsp; My wife cried nearly all the time.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;So overwhelmed is the Department of Charities with tens of thousands
+of applications from men out of work that it finds itself unable to
+cope with the situation.&rdquo; - <i>New</i> <i>York Commercial, </i>January
+11, 1905.<br>
+<br>
+In a daily paper, because he cannot get work in order to get something
+to eat, modern man advertises as follows:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Young man, good education, unable to obtain employment, will
+sell to physician and bacteriologist for experimental purposes all right
+and title to his body.&nbsp; Address for price, box 3466, <i>Examiner</i>.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Frank A. Mallin went to the central police station Wednesday
+night and asked to be locked up on a charge of vagrancy.&nbsp; He said
+he had been conducting an unsuccessful search for work for so long that
+he was sure he must be a vagrant.&nbsp; In any event, he was so hungry
+he must be fed.&nbsp; Police Judge Graham sentenced him to ninety days&rsquo;
+imprisonment.&rdquo;<i> - San Francisco Examiner.<br>
+<br>
+</i>In a room at the Soto House, 32 Fourth Street, San Francisco, was
+found the body of W. G. Robbins.&nbsp; He had turned on the gas.&nbsp;
+Also was found his diary, from which the following extracts are made<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;<i>March </i>3. - No chance of getting anything here.&nbsp; What
+will I do?<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;<i>March </i>7. - Cannot find anything yet.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;<i>March </i>8. - Am living on doughnuts at five cents a day.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;<i>March </i>9. - My last quarter gone for room rent.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;<i>March </i>10. - God help me.&nbsp; Have only five cents left.&nbsp;
+Can get nothing to do.&nbsp; What next?&nbsp; Starvation or - ?&nbsp;
+I have spent my last nickel to-night.&nbsp; What shall I do?&nbsp; Shall
+it be steal, beg, or die?&nbsp; I have never stolen, begged, or starved
+in all my fifty years of life, but now I am on the brink - death seems
+the only refuge.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;<i>March </i>11. - Sick all day - burning fever this afternoon.&nbsp;
+Had nothing to eat to-day or since yesterday noon.&nbsp; My head, my
+head.&nbsp; Good-bye, all.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+How fares the child of modern man in this most prosperous of lands?&nbsp;
+In the city of New York 50,000 children go hungry to school every morning.&nbsp;
+From the same city on January 12, a press despatch was sent out over
+the country of a case reported by Dr. A. E. Daniel, of the New York
+Infirmary for Women and Children.&nbsp; The case was that of a babe,
+eighteen months old, who earned by its labour fifty cents per week in
+a tenement sweat-shop.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;On a pile of rags in a room bare of furniture and freezing cold,
+Mrs. Mary Gallin, dead from starvation, with an emaciated baby four
+months old crying at her breast, was found this morning at 513 Myrtle
+Avenue, Brooklyn, by Policeman McConnon of the Flushing Avenue Station.&nbsp;
+Huddled together for warmth in another part of the room were the father,
+James Gallin, and three children ranging from two to eight years of
+age.&nbsp; The children gazed at the policeman much as ravenous animals
+might have done.&nbsp; They were famished, and there was not a vestige
+of food in their comfortless home.&rdquo; - <i>New York Journal, </i>January
+2, 1902.<br>
+<br>
+In the United States 80,000 children are toiling out their lives in
+the textile mills alone.&nbsp; In the South they work twelve-hour shifts.&nbsp;
+They never see the day.&nbsp; Those on the night shift are asleep when
+the sun pours its life and warmth over the world, while those on the
+day shift are at the machines before dawn and return to their miserable
+dens, called &ldquo;homes,&rdquo; after dark.&nbsp; Many receive no
+more than ten cents a day.&nbsp; There are babies who work for five
+and six cents a day.&nbsp; Those who work on the night shift are often
+kept awake by having cold water dashed in their faces.&nbsp; There are
+children six years of age who have already to their credit eleven months&rsquo;
+work on the night shift.&nbsp; When they become sick, and are unable
+to rise from their beds to go to work, there are men employed to go
+on horseback from house to house, and cajole and bully them into arising
+and going to work.&nbsp; Ten per cent of them contract active consumption.&nbsp;
+All are puny wrecks, distorted, stunted, mind and body.&nbsp; Elbert
+Hubbard says of the child-labourers of the Southern cotton-mills:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I thought to lift one of the little toilers to ascertain his
+weight.&nbsp; Straightaway through his thirty-five pounds of skin and
+bones there ran a tremor of fear, and he struggled forward to tie a
+broken thread.&nbsp; I attracted his attention by a touch, and offered
+him a silver dime.&nbsp; He looked at me dumbly from a face that might
+have belonged to a man of sixty, so furrowed, tightly drawn, and full
+of pain it was.&nbsp; He did not reach for the money - he did not know
+what it was.&nbsp; There were dozens of such children in this particular
+mill.&nbsp; A physician who was with me said that they would all be
+dead probably in two years, and their places filled by others - there
+were plenty more.&nbsp; Pneumonia carries off most of them.&nbsp; Their
+systems are ripe for disease, and when it comes there is no rebound
+- no response.&nbsp; Medicine simply does not act - nature is whipped,
+beaten, discouraged, and the child sinks into a stupor and dies.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+So fares modern man and the child of modern man in the United States,
+most prosperous and enlightened of all countries on earth.&nbsp; It
+must be remembered that the instances given are instances only, but
+they can be multiplied myriads of times.&nbsp; It must also be remembered
+that what is true of the United States is true of all the civilized
+world.&nbsp; Such misery was not true of the caveman.&nbsp; Then what
+has happened?&nbsp; Has the hostile environment of the caveman grown
+more hostile for his descendants?&nbsp; Has the caveman&rsquo;s natural
+efficiency of 1 for food-getting and shelter-getting diminished in modern
+man to one-half or one-quarter?<br>
+<br>
+On the contrary, the hostile environment of the caveman has been destroyed.&nbsp;
+For modern man it no longer exists.&nbsp; All carnivorous enemies, the
+daily menace of the younger world, have been killed off.&nbsp; Many
+of the species of prey have become extinct.&nbsp; Here and there, in
+secluded portions of the world, still linger a few of man&rsquo;s fiercer
+enemies.&nbsp; But they are far from being a menace to mankind.&nbsp;
+Modern man, when he wants recreation and change, goes to the secluded
+portions of the world for a hunt.&nbsp; Also, in idle moments, he wails
+regretfully at the passing of the &ldquo;big game,&rdquo; which he knows
+in the not distant future will disappear from the earth.<br>
+<br>
+Nor since the day of the caveman has man&rsquo;s efficiency for food-getting
+and shelter-getting diminished.&nbsp; It has increased a thousandfold.&nbsp;
+Since the day of the caveman, matter has been mastered.&nbsp; The secrets
+of matter have been discovered.&nbsp; Its laws have been formulated.&nbsp;
+Wonderful artifices have been made, and marvellous inventions, all tending
+to increase tremendously man&rsquo;s natural efficiency of in every
+food-getting, shelter-getting exertion, in farming, mining, manufacturing,
+transportation, and communication.<br>
+<br>
+From the caveman to the hand-workers of three generations ago, the increase
+in efficiency for food- and shelter-getting has been very great.&nbsp;
+But in this day, by machinery, the efficiency of the hand-worker of
+three generations ago has in turn been increased many times.&nbsp; Formerly
+it required 200 hours of human labour to place 100 tons of ore on a
+railroad car.&nbsp; To-day, aided by machinery, but two hours of human
+labour is required to do the same task.&nbsp; The United States Bureau
+of Labour is responsible for the following table, showing the comparatively
+recent increase in man&rsquo;s food- and shelter-getting efficiency:<br>
+<br>
+<pre>
+                &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Machine&nbsp;&nbsp; Hand
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hours&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hours
+Barley (100 bushels)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;   9&nbsp;  211
+Corn (50 bushels shelled, stalks, husks and
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;blades cut into fodder)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  34&nbsp;  228
+Oats (160 bushels)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  28&nbsp;  265
+Wheat (50 bushels)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;   7&nbsp;  160
+Loading ore (loading 100 tons iron ore on cars)&nbsp; 2&nbsp;  200
+Unloading coal (transferring 200 tons from
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;canal-boats to bins 400 feet distant)&nbsp; &nbsp; 20&nbsp;  240
+Pitchforks (50 pitchforks, 12-inch tines)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  12&nbsp;  200
+Plough (one landside plough, oak beams and
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;handles)&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;    3&nbsp;  118
+</pre>
+<p>According to the same authority, under the best conditions for organization
+in farming, labour can produce 20 bushels of wheat for 66 cents, or
+1 bushel for 3&frac12; cents.&nbsp; This was done on a bonanza farm
+of 10,000 acres in California, and was the average cost of the whole
+product of the farm.&nbsp; Mr. Carroll D. Wright says that to-day 4,500,000
+men, aided by machinery, turn out a product that would require the labour
+of 40,000,000 men if produced by hand.&nbsp; Professor Herzog, of Austria,
+says that 5,000,000 people with the machinery of to-day, employed at
+socially useful labour, would be able to supply a population of 20,000,000
+people with all the necessaries and small luxuries of life by working
+1&frac12; hours per day.<br>
+<br>
+This being so, matter being mastered, man&rsquo;s efficiency for food-
+and shelter-getting being increased a thousandfold over the efficiency
+of the caveman, then why is it that millions of modern men live more
+miserably than lived the caveman?&nbsp; This is the question the revolutionist
+asks, and he asks it of the managing class, the capitalist class.&nbsp;
+The capitalist class does not answer it.&nbsp; The capitalist class
+cannot answer it.<br>
+<br>
+If modern man&rsquo;s food- and shelter-getting efficiency is a thousandfold
+greater than that of the caveman, why, then, are there 10,000,000 people
+in the United States to-day who are not properly sheltered and properly
+fed?&nbsp; If the child of the caveman did not have to work, why, then,
+to-day, in the United States, are 80,000 children working out their
+lives in the textile factories alone?&nbsp; If the child of the caveman
+did not have to work, why, then, to-day, in the United States, are there
+1,752,187 child-labourers?<br>
+<br>
+It is a true count in the indictment.&nbsp; The capitalist class has
+mismanaged, is to-day mismanaging.&nbsp; In New York City 50,000 children
+go hungry to school, and in New York City there are 1,320 millionaires.&nbsp;
+The point, however, is not that the mass of mankind is miserable because
+of the wealth the capitalist class has taken to itself.&nbsp; Far from
+it.&nbsp; The point really is that the mass of mankind is miserable,
+not for want of the wealth taken by the capitalist class, <i>but for
+want of the wealth that was never created</i>.&nbsp; This wealth was
+never created because the capitalist class managed too wastefully and
+irrationally.&nbsp; The capitalist class, blind and greedy, grasping
+madly, has not only not made the best of its management, but made the
+worst of it.&nbsp; It is a management prodigiously wasteful.&nbsp; This
+point cannot be emphasized too strongly.<br>
+<br>
+In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the
+caveman, and that modern man&rsquo;s food- and shelter-getting efficiency
+is a thousandfold greater than the caveman&rsquo;s, no other solution
+is possible than that the management is prodigiously wasteful.<br>
+<br>
+With the natural resources of the world, the machinery already invented,
+a rational organization of production and distribution, and an equally
+rational elimination of waste, the able-bodied workers would not have
+to labour more than two or three hours per day to feed everybody, clothe
+everybody, house everybody, educate everybody, and give a fair measure
+of little luxuries to everybody.&nbsp; There would be no more material
+want and wretchedness, no more children toiling out their lives, no
+more men and women and babes living like beasts and dying like beasts.&nbsp;
+Not only would matter be mastered, but the machine would be mastered.&nbsp;
+In such a day incentive would be finer and nobler than the incentive
+of to-day, which is the incentive of the stomach.&nbsp; No man, woman,
+or child, would be impelled to action by an empty stomach.&nbsp; On
+the contrary, they would be impelled to action as a child in a spelling
+match is impelled to action, as boys and girls at games, as scientists
+formulating law, as inventors applying law, as artists and sculptors
+painting canvases and shaping clay, as poets and statesmen serving humanity
+by singing and by statecraft.&nbsp; The spiritual, intellectual, and
+artistic uplift consequent upon such a condition of society would be
+tremendous.&nbsp; All the human world would surge upward in a mighty
+wave.<br>
+<br>
+This was the opportunity vouchsafed the capitalist class.&nbsp; Less
+blindness on its part, less greediness, and a rational management, were
+all that was necessary.&nbsp; A wonderful era was possible for the human
+race.&nbsp; But the capitalist class failed.&nbsp; It made a shambles
+of civilization.&nbsp; Nor can the capitalist class plead not guilty.&nbsp;
+It knew of the opportunity.&nbsp; Its wise men told of the opportunity,
+its scholars and its scientists told it of the opportunity.&nbsp; All
+that they said is there to-day in the books, just so much damning evidence
+against it.&nbsp; It would not listen.&nbsp; It was too greedy.&nbsp;
+It rose up (as it rises up to-day), shamelessly, in our legislative
+halls, and declared that profits were impossible without the toil of
+children and babes.&nbsp; It lulled its conscience to sleep with prattle
+of sweet ideals and dear moralities, and allowed the suffering and misery
+of mankind to continue and to increase, in short, the capitalist class
+failed to take advantage of the opportunity.<br>
+<br>
+But the opportunity is still here.&nbsp; The capitalist class has been
+tried and found wanting.&nbsp; Remains the working-class to see what
+it can do with the opportunity.&nbsp; &ldquo;But the working-class is
+incapable,&rdquo; says the capitalist class.&nbsp; &ldquo;What do you
+know about it?&rdquo; the working-class replies.&nbsp; &ldquo;Because
+you have failed is no reason that we shall fail.&nbsp; Furthermore,
+we are going to have a try at it, anyway.&nbsp; Seven millions of us
+say so.&nbsp; And what have you to say to that?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+And what can the capitalist class say?&nbsp; Grant the incapacity of
+the working-class.&nbsp; Grant that the indictment and the argument
+of the revolutionists are all wrong.&nbsp; The 7,000,000 revolutionists
+remain.&nbsp; Their existence is a fact.&nbsp; Their belief in their
+capacity, and in their indictment and their argument, is a fact.&nbsp;
+Their constant growth is a fact.&nbsp; Their intention to destroy present-day
+society is a fact, as is also their intention to take possession of
+the world with all its wealth and machinery and governments.&nbsp; Moreover,
+it is a fact that the working-class is vastly larger than the capitalist
+class.<br>
+<br>
+The revolution is a revolution of the working-class.&nbsp; How can the
+capitalist class, in the minority, stem this tide of revolution?&nbsp;
+What has it to offer?&nbsp; What does it offer?&nbsp; Employers&rsquo;
+associations, injunctions, civil suits for plundering of the treasuries
+of the labour-unions, clamour and combination for the open shop, bitter
+and shameless opposition to the eight-hour day, strong efforts to defeat
+all reform, child-labour bills, graft in every municipal council, strong
+lobbies and bribery in every legislature for the purchase of capitalist
+legislation, bayonets, machine-guns, policemen&rsquo;s clubs, professional
+strike-breakers and armed Pinkertons - these are the things the capitalist
+class is dumping in front of the tide of revolution, as though, forsooth,
+to hold it back.<br>
+<br>
+The capitalist class is as blind to-day to the menace of the revolution
+as it was blind in the past to its own God-given opportunity.&nbsp;
+It cannot see how precarious is its position, cannot comprehend the
+power and the portent of the revolution.&nbsp; It goes on its placid
+way, prattling sweet ideals and dear moralities, and scrambling sordidly
+for material benefits.<br>
+<br>
+No overthrown ruler or class in the past ever considered the revolution
+that overthrew it, and so with the capitalist class of to-day.&nbsp;
+Instead of compromising, instead of lengthening its lease of life by
+conciliation and by removal of some of the harsher oppressions of the
+working-class, it antagonizes the working-class, drives the working-class
+into revolution.&nbsp; Every broken strike in recent years, every legally
+plundered trades-union treasury, every closed shop made into an open
+shop, has driven the members of the working-class directly hurt over
+to socialism by hundreds and thousands.&nbsp; Show a working-man that
+his union fails, and he becomes a revolutionist.&nbsp; Break a strike
+with an injunction or bankrupt a union with a civil suit, and the working-men
+hurt thereby listen to the siren song of the socialist and are lost
+for ever to the <i>political capitalist </i>parties.<br>
+<br>
+Antagonism never lulled revolution, and antagonism is about all the
+capitalist class offers.&nbsp; It is true, it offers some few antiquated
+notions which were very efficacious in the past, but which are no longer
+efficacious.&nbsp; Fourth-of-July liberty in terms of the Declaration
+of Independence and of the French Encyclop&aelig;dists is scarcely apposite
+to-day.&nbsp; It does not appeal to the working-man who has had his
+head broken by a policeman&rsquo;s club, his union treasury bankrupted
+by a court decision, or his job taken away from him by a labour-saving
+invention.&nbsp; Nor does the Constitution of the United States appear
+so glorious and constitutional to the working-man who has experienced
+a bull-pen or been unconstitutionally deported from Colorado.&nbsp;
+Nor are this particular working-man&rsquo;s hurt feelings soothed by
+reading in the newspapers that both the bull-pen and the deportation
+were pre-eminently just, legal, and constitutional.&nbsp; &ldquo;To
+hell, then, with the Constitution!&rdquo; says he, and another revolutionist
+has been made - by the capitalist class.<br>
+<br>
+In short, so blind is the capitalist class that it does nothing to lengthen
+its lease of life, while it does everything to shorten it.&nbsp; The
+capitalist class offers nothing that is clean, noble, and alive.&nbsp;
+The revolutionists offer everything that is clean, noble, and alive.&nbsp;
+They offer service, unselfishness, sacrifice, martyrdom - the things
+that sting awake the imagination of the people, touching their hearts
+with the fervour that arises out of the impulse toward good and which
+is essentially religious in its nature.<br>
+<br>
+But the revolutionists blow hot and blow cold.&nbsp; They offer facts
+and statistics, economics and scientific arguments.&nbsp; If the working-man
+be merely selfish, the revolutionists show him, mathematically demonstrate
+to him, that his condition will be bettered by the revolution.&nbsp;
+If the working-man be the higher type, moved by impulses toward right
+conduct, if he have soul and spirit, the revolutionists offer him the
+things of the soul and the spirit, the tremendous things that cannot
+be measured by dollars and cents, nor be held down by dollars and cents.&nbsp;
+The revolutionist cries out upon wrong and injustice, and preaches righteousness.&nbsp;
+And, most potent of all, he sings the eternal song of human freedom
+- a song of all lands and all tongues and all time.<br>
+<br>
+Few members of the capitalist class see the revolution.&nbsp; Most of
+them are too ignorant, and many are too afraid to see it.&nbsp; It is
+the same old story of every perishing ruling class in the world&rsquo;s
+history.&nbsp; Fat with power and possession, drunken with success,
+and made soft by surfeit and by cessation of struggle, they are like
+the drones clustered about the honey vats when the worker-bees spring
+upon them to end their rotund existence.<br>
+<br>
+President Roosevelt vaguely sees the revolution, is frightened by it,
+and recoils from seeing it.&nbsp; As he says: &ldquo;Above all, we need
+to remember that any kind of class animosity in the political world
+is, if possible, even more wicked, even more destructive to national
+welfare, than sectional, race, or religious animosity.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Class animosity in the political world, President Roosevelt maintains,
+is wicked.&nbsp; But class animosity in the political world is the preachment
+of the revolutionists.&nbsp; &ldquo;Let the class wars in the industrial
+world continue,&rdquo; they say, &ldquo;but extend the class war to
+the political world.&rdquo;&nbsp; As their leader, Eugene V. Debs says:
+&ldquo;So far as this struggle is concerned, there is no good capitalist
+and no bad working-man.&nbsp; Every capitalist is your enemy and every
+working-man is your friend.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Here is class animosity in the political world with a vengeance.&nbsp;
+And here is revolution.&nbsp; In 1888 there were only 2,000 revolutionists
+of this type in the United States; in 1900 there were 127,000 revolutionists;
+in 1904, 435,000 revolutionists.&nbsp; Wickedness of the President Roosevelt
+definition evidently flourishes and increases in the United States.&nbsp;
+Quite so, for it is the revolution that flourishes and increases.<br>
+<br>
+Here and there a member of the capitalist class catches a clear glimpse
+of the revolution, and raises a warning cry.&nbsp; But his class does
+not heed.&nbsp; President Eliot of Harvard raised such a cry:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I am forced to believe there is a present danger of socialism
+never before so imminent in America in so dangerous a form, because
+never before imminent in so well organized a form.&nbsp; The danger
+lies in the obtaining control of the trades-unions by the socialists.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And the capitalist employers, instead of giving heed to the warnings,
+are perfecting their strike-breaking organization and combining more
+strongly than ever for a general assault upon that dearest of all things
+to the trades-unions - the closed shop.&nbsp; In so far as this assault
+succeeds, by just that much will the capitalist class shorten its lease
+of life.&nbsp; It is the old, old story, over again and over again.&nbsp;
+The drunken drones still cluster greedily about the honey vats.<br>
+<br>
+Possibly one of the most amusing spectacles of to-day is the attitude
+of the American press toward the revolution.&nbsp; It is also a pathetic
+spectacle.&nbsp; It compels the onlooker to be aware of a distinct loss
+of pride in his species.&nbsp; Dogmatic utterance from the mouth of
+ignorance may make gods laugh, but it should make men weep.&nbsp; And
+the American editors (in the general instance) are so impressive about
+it!&nbsp; The old &ldquo;divide-up,&rdquo; &ldquo;men-are-<i>not</i>-born-free-and-equal,&rdquo;
+propositions are enunciated gravely and sagely, as things white-hot
+and new from the forge of human wisdom.&nbsp; Their feeble vapourings
+show no more than a schoolboy&rsquo;s comprehension of the nature of
+the revolution.&nbsp; Parasites themselves on the capitalist class,
+serving the capitalist class by moulding public opinion, they, too,
+cluster drunkenly about the honey vats.<br>
+<br>
+Of course, this is true only of the large majority of American editors.&nbsp;
+To say that it is true of all of them would be to cast too great obloquy
+upon the human race.&nbsp; Also, it would be untrue, for here and there
+an occasional editor does see clearly - and in his case, ruled by stomach-incentive,
+is usually afraid to say what he thinks about it.&nbsp; So far as the
+science and the sociology of the revolution are concerned, the average
+editor is a generation or so behind the facts.&nbsp; He is intellectually
+slothful, accepts no facts until they are accepted by the majority,
+and prides himself upon his conservatism.&nbsp; He is an instinctive
+optimist, prone to believe that what ought to be, is.&nbsp; The revolutionist
+gave this up long ago, and believes not that what ought to be, is, but
+what is, is, and that it may not be what it ought to be at all.<br>
+<br>
+Now and then, rubbing his eyes, vigorously, an editor catches a sudden
+glimpse of the revolution and breaks out in naive volubility, as, for
+instance, the one who wrote the following in the <i>Chicago Chronicle:
+</i>&ldquo;American socialists are revolutionists.&nbsp; They know that
+they are revolutionists.&nbsp; It is high time that other people should
+appreciate the fact.&rdquo;&nbsp; A white-hot, brand-new discovery,
+and he proceeded to shout it out from the housetops that we, forsooth,
+were revolutionists.&nbsp; Why, it is just what we have been doing all
+these years - shouting it out from the housetops that we are revolutionists,
+and stop us who can.<br>
+<br>
+The time should be past for the mental attitude: &ldquo;Revolution is
+atrocious.&nbsp; Sir, there is no revolution.&rdquo;&nbsp; Likewise
+should the time be past for that other familiar attitude: &ldquo;Socialism
+is slavery.&nbsp; Sir, it will never be.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is no longer
+a question of dialectics, theories, and dreams.&nbsp; There is no question
+about it.&nbsp; The revolution is a fact.&nbsp; It is here now.&nbsp;
+Seven million revolutionists, organized, working day and night, are
+preaching the revolution - that passionate gospel, the Brotherhood of
+Man.&nbsp; Not only is it a cold-blooded economic propaganda, but it
+is in essence a religious propaganda with a fervour in it of Paul and
+Christ.&nbsp; The capitalist class has been indicted.&nbsp; It has failed
+in its management and its management is to be taken away from it.&nbsp;
+Seven million men of the working-class say that they are going to get
+the rest of the working-class to join with them and take the management
+away.&nbsp; The revolution is here, now.&nbsp; Stop it who can.<br>
+<br>
+SACRAMENTO RIVER.<br>
+<i>March </i>1905.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE SOMNAMBULISTS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis only fools speak evil of the clay -<br>
+The very stars are made of clay like mine.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The mightiest and absurdest sleep-walker on the planet!&nbsp; Chained
+in the circle of his own imaginings, man is only too keen to forget
+his origin and to shame that flesh of his that bleeds like all flesh
+and that is good to eat.&nbsp; Civilization (which is part of the circle
+of his imaginings) has spread a veneer over the surface of the soft-shelled
+animal known as man.&nbsp; It is a very thin veneer; but so wonderfully
+is man constituted that he squirms on his bit of achievement and believes
+he is garbed in armour-plate.<br>
+<br>
+Yet man to-day is the same man that drank from his enemy&rsquo;s skull
+in the dark German forests, that sacked cities, and stole his women
+from neighbouring clans like any howling aborigine.&nbsp; The flesh-and-blood
+body of man has not changed in the last several thousand years.&nbsp;
+Nor has his mind changed.&nbsp; There is no faculty of the mind of man
+to-day that did not exist in the minds of the men of long ago.&nbsp;
+Man has to-day no concept that is too wide and deep and abstract for
+the mind of Plato or Aristotle to grasp.&nbsp; Give to Plato or Aristotle
+the same fund of knowledge that man to-day has access to, and Plato
+and Aristotle would reason as profoundly as the man of to-day and would
+achieve very similar conclusions.<br>
+<br>
+It is the same old animal man, smeared over, it is true, with a veneer,
+thin and magical, that makes him dream drunken dreams of self-exaltation
+and to sneer at the flesh and the blood of him beneath the smear.&nbsp;
+The raw animal crouching within him is like the earthquake monster pent
+in the crust of the earth.&nbsp; As he persuades himself against the
+latter till it arouses and shakes down a city, so does he persuade himself
+against the former until it shakes him out of his dreaming and he stands
+undisguised, a brute like any other brute.<br>
+<br>
+Starve him, let him miss six meals, and see gape through the veneer
+the hungry maw of the animal beneath.&nbsp; Get between him and the
+female of his kind upon whom his mating instinct is bent, and see his
+eyes blaze like an angry cat&rsquo;s, hear in his throat the scream
+of wild stallions, and watch his fists clench like an orang-outang&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+Maybe he will even beat his chest.&nbsp; Touch his silly vanity, which
+he exalts into high-sounding pride - call him a liar, and behold the
+red animal in him that makes a hand clutching that is quick like the
+tensing of a tiger&rsquo;s claw, or an eagle&rsquo;s talon, incarnate
+with desire to rip and tear.<br>
+<br>
+It is not necessary to call him a liar to touch his vanity.&nbsp; Tell
+a plains Indian that he has failed to steal horses from the neighbouring
+tribe, or tell a man living in bourgeois society that he has failed
+to pay his bills at the neighbouring grocer&rsquo;s, and the results
+are the same.&nbsp; Each, plains Indian and bourgeois, is smeared with
+a slightly different veneer, that is all.&nbsp; It requires a slightly
+different stick to scrape it off.&nbsp; The raw animals beneath are
+identical.<br>
+<br>
+But intrude not violently upon man, leave him alone in his somnambulism,
+and he kicks out from under his feet the ladder of life up which he
+has climbed, constitutes himself the centre of the universe, dreams
+sordidly about his own particular god, and maunders metaphysically about
+his own blessed immortality.<br>
+<br>
+True, he lives in a real world, breathes real air, eats real food, and
+sleeps under real blankets, in order to keep real cold away.&nbsp; And
+there&rsquo;s the rub.&nbsp; He has to effect adjustments with the real
+world and at the same time maintain the sublimity of his dream.&nbsp;
+The result of this admixture of the real and the unreal is confusion
+thrice confounded.&nbsp; The man that walks the real world in his sleep
+becomes such a tangled mass of contradictions, paradoxes, and lies that
+he has to lie to himself in order to stay asleep.<br>
+<br>
+In passing, it may be noted that some men are remarkably constituted
+in this matter of self-deception.&nbsp; They excel at deceiving themselves.&nbsp;
+They believe, and they help others to believe.&nbsp; It becomes their
+function in society, and some of them are paid large salaries for helping
+their fellow-men to believe, for instance, that they are not as other
+animals; for helping the king to believe, and his parasites and drudges
+as well, that he is God&rsquo;s own manager over so many square miles
+of earth-crust; for helping the merchant and banking classes to believe
+that society rests on their shoulders, and that civilization would go
+to smash if they got out from under and ceased from their exploitations
+and petty pilferings.<br>
+<br>
+Prize-fighting is terrible.&nbsp; This is the dictum of the man who
+walks in his sleep.&nbsp; He prates about it, and writes to the papers
+about it, and worries the legislators about it.&nbsp; There is nothing
+of the brute about <i>him</i>.&nbsp; He is a sublimated soul that treads
+the heights and breathes refined ether - in self-comparison with the
+prize-fighter.&nbsp; The man who walks in his sleep ignores the flesh
+and all its wonderful play of muscle, joint, and nerve.&nbsp; He feels
+that there is something godlike in the mysterious deeps of his being,
+denies his relationship with the brute, and proceeds to go forth into
+the world and express by deeds that something godlike within him.<br>
+<br>
+He sits at a desk and chases dollars through the weeks and months and
+years of his life.&nbsp; To him the life godlike resolves into a problem
+something like this: <i>Since the great mass of men toil at producing
+wealth, how best can he get between the great mass of men and the wealth
+they produce, and get a slice for himself</i>?&nbsp; With tremendous
+exercise of craft, deceit, and guile, he devotes his life godlike to
+this purpose.&nbsp; As he succeeds, his somnambulism grows profound.&nbsp;
+He bribes legislatures, buys judges, &ldquo;controls&rdquo; primaries,
+and then goes and hires other men to tell him that it is all glorious
+and right.&nbsp; And the funniest thing about it is that this arch-deceiver
+believes all that they tell him.&nbsp; He reads only the newspapers
+and magazines that tell him what he wants to be told, listens only to
+the biologists who tell him that he is the finest product of the struggle
+for existence, and herds only with his own kind, where, like the monkey-folk,
+they teeter up and down and tell one another how great they are.<br>
+<br>
+In the course of his life godlike he ignores the flesh - until he gets
+to table.&nbsp; He raises his hands in horror at the thought of the
+brutish prize-fighter, and then sits down and gorges himself on roast
+beef, rare and red, running blood under every sawing thrust of the implement
+called a knife.&nbsp; He has a piece of cloth which he calls a napkin,
+with which he wipes from his lips, and from the hair on his lips, the
+greasy juices of the meat.<br>
+<br>
+He is fastidiously nauseated at the thought of two prize-fighters bruising
+each other with their fists; and at the same time, because it will cost
+him some money, he will refuse to protect the machines in his factory,
+though he is aware that the lack of such protection every year mangles,
+batters, and destroys out of all humanness thousands of working-men,
+women, and children.&nbsp; He will chatter about things refined and
+spiritual and godlike like himself, and he and the men who herd with
+him will calmly adulterate the commodities they put upon the market
+and which annually kill tens of thousands of babies and young children.<br>
+<br>
+He will recoil at the suggestion of the horrid spectacle of two men
+confronting each other with gloved hands in the roped arena, and at
+the same time he will clamour for larger armies and larger navies, for
+more destructive war machines, which, with a single discharge, will
+disrupt and rip to pieces more human beings than have died in the whole
+history of prize-fighting.&nbsp; He will bribe a city council for a
+franchise or a state legislature for a commercial privilege; but he
+has never been known, in all his sleep-walking history, to bribe any
+legislative body in order to achieve any moral end, such as, for instance,
+abolition of prize-fighting, child-labour laws, pure food bills, or
+old age pensions.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Ah, but we do not stand for the commercial life,&rdquo; object
+the refined, scholarly, and professional men.&nbsp; They are also sleep-walkers.&nbsp;
+They do not stand for the commercial life, but neither do they stand
+against it with all their strength.&nbsp; They submit to it, to the
+brutality and carnage of it.&nbsp; They develop classical economists
+who announce that the only possible way for men and women to get food
+and shelter is by the existing method.&nbsp; They produce university
+professors, men who claim the <i>r&ocirc;le </i>of teachers, and who
+at the same time claim that the austere ideal of learning is passionless
+pursuit of passionless intelligence.&nbsp; They serve the men who lead
+the commercial life, give to their sons somnambulistic educations, preach
+that sleep-walking is the only way to walk, and that the persons who
+walk otherwise are atavisms or anarchists.&nbsp; They paint pictures
+for the commercial men, write books for them, sing songs for them, act
+plays for them, and dose them with various drugs when their bodies have
+grown gross or dyspeptic from overeating and lack of exercise.<br>
+<br>
+Then there are the good, kind somnambulists who don&rsquo;t prize-fight,
+who don&rsquo;t play the commercial game, who don&rsquo;t teach and
+preach somnambulism, who don&rsquo;t do anything except live on the
+dividends that are coined out of the wan, white fluid that runs in the
+veins of little children, out of mothers&rsquo; tears, the blood of
+strong men, and the groans and sighs of the old.&nbsp; The receiver
+is as bad as the thief - ay, and the thief is finer than the receiver;
+he at least has the courage to run the risk.&nbsp; But the good, kind
+people who don&rsquo;t do anything won&rsquo;t believe this, and the
+assertion will make them angry - for a moment.&nbsp; They possess several
+magic phrases, which are like the incantations of a voodoo doctor driving
+devils away.&nbsp; The phrases that the good, kind people repeat to
+themselves and to one another sound like &ldquo;abstinence,&rdquo; &ldquo;temperance,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;thrift,&rdquo; &ldquo;virtue.&rdquo;&nbsp; Sometimes they say
+them backward, when they sound like &ldquo;prodigality,&rdquo; &ldquo;drunkenness,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;wastefulness,&rdquo; and &ldquo;immorality.&rdquo;&nbsp; They
+do not really know the meaning of these phrases, but they think they
+do, and that is all that is necessary for somnambulists.&nbsp; The calm
+repetition of such phrases invariably drives away the waking devils
+and lulls to slumber.<br>
+<br>
+Our statesmen sell themselves and their country for gold.&nbsp; Our
+municipal servants and state legislators commit countless treasons.&nbsp;
+The world of graft!&nbsp; The world of betrayal!&nbsp; The world of
+somnambulism, whose exalted and sensitive citizens are outraged by the
+knockouts of the prize-ring, and who annually not merely knock out,
+but kill, thousands of babies and children by means of child labour
+and adulterated food.&nbsp; Far better to have the front of one&rsquo;s
+face pushed in by the fist of an honest prize-fighter than to have the
+lining of one&rsquo;s stomach corroded by the embalmed beef of a dishonest
+manufacturer.<br>
+<br>
+In a prize-fight men are classed.&nbsp; A lightweight fights with a
+light-weight; he never fights with a heavy-weight, and foul blows are
+not allowed.&nbsp; Yet in the world of the somnambulists, where soar
+the sublimated spirits, there are no classes, and foul blows are continually
+struck and never disallowed.&nbsp; Only they are not called foul blows.&nbsp;
+The world of claw and fang and fist and club has passed away - so say
+the somnambulists.&nbsp; A rebate is not an elongated claw.&nbsp; A
+Wall Street raid is not a fang slash.&nbsp; Dummy boards of directors
+and fake accountings are not foul blows of the fist under the belt.&nbsp;
+A present of coal stock by a mine operator to a railroad official is
+not a claw rip to the bowels of a rival mine operator.&nbsp; The hundred
+million dollars with which a combination beats down to his knees a man
+with a million dollars is not a club.&nbsp; The man who walks in his
+sleep says it is not a club.&nbsp; So say all of his kind with which
+he herds.&nbsp; They gather together and solemnly and gloatingly make
+and repeat certain noises that sound like &ldquo;discretion,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;acumen,&rdquo; &ldquo;initiative,&rdquo; &ldquo;enterprise.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+These noises are especially gratifying when they are made backward.&nbsp;
+They mean the same things, but they sound different.&nbsp; And in either
+case, forward or backward, the spirit of the dream is not disturbed.<br>
+<br>
+When a man strikes a foul blow in the prize-ring the fight is immediately
+stopped, he is declared the loser, and he is hissed by the audience
+as he leaves the ring.&nbsp; But when a man who walks in his sleep strikes
+a foul blow he is immediately declared the victor and awarded the prize;
+and amid acclamations he forthwith turns his prize into a seat in the
+United States Senate, into a grotesque palace on Fifth Avenue, and into
+endowed churches, universities and libraries, to say nothing of subsidized
+newspapers, to proclaim his greatness.<br>
+<br>
+The red animal in the somnambulist will out.&nbsp; He decries the carnal
+combat of the prize-ring, and compels the red animal to spiritual combat.&nbsp;
+The poisoned lie, the nasty, gossiping tongue, the brutality of the
+unkind epigram, the business and social nastiness and treachery of to-day
+- these are the thrusts and scratches of the red animal when the somnambulist
+is in charge.&nbsp; They are not the upper cuts and short arm jabs and
+jolts and slugging blows of the spirit.&nbsp; They are the foul blows
+of the spirit that have never been disbarred, as the foul blows of the
+prize-ring have been disbarred.&nbsp; (Would it not be preferable for
+a man to strike one full on the mouth with his fist than for him to
+tell a lie about one, or malign those that are nearest and dearest?)<br>
+<br>
+For these are the crimes of the spirit, and, alas! they are so much
+more frequent than blows on the mouth.&nbsp; And whosoever exalts the
+spirit over the flesh, by his own creed avers that a crime of the spirit
+is vastly more terrible than a crime of the flesh.&nbsp; Thus stand
+the somnambulists convicted by their own creed - only they are not real
+men, alive and awake, and they proceed to mutter magic phrases that
+dispel all doubt as to their undiminished and eternal gloriousness.<br>
+<br>
+It is well enough to let the ape and tiger die, but it is hardly fair
+to kill off the natural and courageous apes and tigers and allow the
+spawn of cowardly apes and tigers to live.&nbsp; The prize-fighting
+apes and tigers will die all in good time in the course of natural evolution,
+but they will not die so long as the cowardly, somnambulistic apes and
+tigers club and scratch and slash.&nbsp; This is not a brief for the
+prize-fighter.&nbsp; It is a blow of the fist between the eyes of the
+somnambulists, teetering up and down, muttering magic phrases, and thanking
+God that they are not as other animals.<br>
+<br>
+GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA.<br>
+<i>June </i>1900.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE DIGNITY OF DOLLARS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Man is a blind, helpless creature.&nbsp; He looks back with pride upon
+his goodly heritage of the ages, and yet obeys unwittingly every mandate
+of that heritage; for it is incarnate with him, and in it are embedded
+the deepest roots of his soul.&nbsp; Strive as he will, he cannot escape
+it - unless he be a genius, one of those rare creations to whom alone
+is granted the privilege of doing entirely new and original things in
+entirely new and original ways.&nbsp; But the common clay-born man,
+possessing only talents, may do only what has been done before him.&nbsp;
+At the best, if he work hard, and cherish himself exceedingly, he may
+duplicate any or all previous performances of his kind; he may even
+do some of them better; but there he stops, the composite hand of his
+whole ancestry bearing heavily upon him.<br>
+<br>
+And again, in the matter of his ideas, which have been thrust upon him,
+and which he has been busily garnering from the great world ever since
+the day when his eyes first focussed and he drew, startled, against
+the warm breast of his mother - the tyranny of these he cannot shake
+off.&nbsp; Servants of his will, they at the same time master him.&nbsp;
+They may not coerce genius, but they dictate and sway every action of
+the clay-born.&nbsp; If he hesitate on the verge of a new departure,
+they whip him back into the well-greased groove; if he pause, bewildered,
+at sight of some unexplored domain, they rise like ubiquitous finger-posts
+and direct him by the village path to the communal meadow.&nbsp; And
+he permits these things, and continues to permit them, for he cannot
+help them, and he is a slave.&nbsp; Out of his ideas he may weave cunning
+theories, beautiful ideals; but he is working with ropes of sand.&nbsp;
+At the slightest stress, the last least bit of cohesion flits away,
+and each idea flies apart from its fellows, while all clamour that he
+do this thing, or think this thing, in the ancient and time-honoured
+way.&nbsp; He is only a clay-born; so he bends his neck.&nbsp; He knows
+further that the clay-born are a pitiful, pitiless majority, and that
+he may do nothing which they do not do.<br>
+<br>
+It is only in some way such as this that we may understand and explain
+the dignity which attaches itself to dollars.&nbsp; In the watches of
+the night, we may assure ourselves that there is no such dignity; but
+jostling with our fellows in the white light of day, we find that it
+does exist, and that we ourselves measure ourselves by the dollars we
+happen to possess.&nbsp; They give us confidence and carriage and dignity
+- ay, a personal dignity which goes down deeper than the garments with
+which we hide our nakedness.&nbsp; The world, when it knows nothing
+else of him, measures a man by his clothes; but the man himself, if
+he be neither a genius nor a philosopher, but merely a clay-born, measures
+himself by his pocket-book.&nbsp; He cannot help it, and can no more
+fling it from him than can the bashful young man his self-consciousness
+when crossing a ballroom floor.<br>
+<br>
+I remember once absenting myself from civilization for weary months.&nbsp;
+When I returned, it was to a strange city in another country.&nbsp;
+The people were but slightly removed from my own breed, and they spoke
+the same tongue, barring a certain barbarous accent which I learned
+was far older than the one imbibed by me with my mother&rsquo;s milk.&nbsp;
+A fur cap, soiled and singed by many camp-fires, half sheltered the
+shaggy tendrils of my uncut hair.&nbsp; My foot-gear was of walrus hide,
+cunningly blended with seal gut.&nbsp; The remainder of my dress was
+as primal and uncouth.&nbsp; I was a sight to give merriment to gods
+and men.&nbsp; Olympus must have roared at my coming.&nbsp; The world,
+knowing me not, could judge me by my clothes alone.&nbsp; But I refused
+to be so judged.&nbsp; My spiritual backbone stiffened, and I held my
+head high, looking all men in the eyes.&nbsp; And I did these things,
+not that I was an egotist, not that I was impervious to the critical
+glances of my fellows, but because of a certain hogskin belt, plethoric
+and sweat-bewrinkled, which buckled next the skin above the hips.&nbsp;
+Oh, it&rsquo;s absurd, I grant, but had that belt not been so circumstanced,
+and so situated, I should have shrunk away into side streets and back
+alleys, walking humbly and avoiding all gregarious humans except those
+who were likewise abroad without belts.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; I do not know,
+save that in such way did my fathers before me.<br>
+<br>
+Viewed in the light of sober reason, the whole thing was preposterous.&nbsp;
+But I walked down the gang-plank with the mien of a hero, of a barbarian
+who knew himself to be greater than the civilization he invaded.&nbsp;
+I was possessed of the arrogance of a Roman governor.&nbsp; At last
+I knew what it was to be born to the purple, and I took my seat in the
+hotel carriage as though it were my chariot about to proceed with me
+to the imperial palace.&nbsp; People discreetly dropped their eyes before
+my proud gaze, and into their hearts I know I forced the query, What
+manner of man can this mortal be?&nbsp; I was superior to convention,
+and the very garb which otherwise would have damned me tended toward
+my elevation.&nbsp; And all this was due, not to my royal lineage, nor
+to the deeds I had done and the champions I had overthrown, but to a
+certain hogskin belt buckled next the skin.&nbsp; The sweat of months
+was upon it, toil had defaced it, and it was not a creation such as
+would appeal to the aesthetic mind; but it was plethoric.&nbsp; There
+was the arcanum; each yellow grain conduced to my exaltation, and the
+sum of these grains was the sum of my mightiness.&nbsp; Had they been
+less, just so would have been my stature; more, and I should have reached
+the sky.<br>
+<br>
+And this was my royal progress through that most loyal city.&nbsp; I
+purchased a host of things from the tradespeople, and bought me such
+pleasures and diversions as befitted one who had long been denied.&nbsp;
+I scattered my gold lavishly, nor did I chaffer over prices in mart
+or exchange.&nbsp; And, because of these things I did, I demanded homage.&nbsp;
+Nor was it refused.&nbsp; I moved through wind-swept groves of limber
+backs; across sunny glades, lighted by the beaming rays from a thousand
+obsequious eyes; and when I tired of this, basked on the greensward
+of popular approval.&nbsp; Money was very good, I thought, and for the
+time was content.&nbsp; But there rushed upon me the words of Erasmus,
+&ldquo;When I get some money I shall buy me some Greek books, and afterwards
+some clothes,&rdquo; and a great shame wrapped me around.&nbsp; But,
+luckily for my soul&rsquo;s welfare, I reflected and was saved.&nbsp;
+By the clearer vision vouchsafed me, I beheld Erasmus, fire-flashing,
+heaven-born, while I - I was merely a clay-born, a son of earth.&nbsp;
+For a giddy moment I had forgotten this, and tottered.&nbsp; And I rolled
+over on my greensward, caught a glimpse of a regiment of undulating
+backs, and thanked my particular gods that such moods of madness were
+passing brief.<br>
+<br>
+But on another day, receiving with kingly condescension the service
+of my good subjects&rsquo; backs, I remembered the words of another
+man, long since laid away, who was by birth a nobleman, by nature a
+philosopher and a gentleman, and who by circumstance yielded up his
+head upon the block.&nbsp; &ldquo;That a man of lead,&rdquo; he once
+remarked, &ldquo;who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as
+bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him,
+only because he has a great heap of that metal; and that if, by some
+accident or trick of law (which sometimes produces as great changes
+as chance itself), all this wealth should pass from the master to the
+meanest varlet of his whole family, he himself would very soon become
+one of his servants, as if he were a thing that belonged to his wealth,
+and so was bound to follow its fortune.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+And when I had remembered this much, I unwisely failed to pause and
+reflect.&nbsp; So I gathered my belongings together, cinched my hogskin
+belt tight about me, and went away to my own country.&nbsp; It was a
+very foolish thing to do.&nbsp; I am sure it was.&nbsp; But when I had
+recovered my reason, I fell upon my particular gods and berated them
+mightily, and as penance for their watchlessness placed them away amongst
+dust and cobwebs.&nbsp; Oh no, not for long.&nbsp; They are again enshrined,
+as bright and polished as of yore, and my destiny is once more in their
+keeping.<br>
+<br>
+It is given that travail and vicissitude mark time to man&rsquo;s footsteps
+as he stumbles onward toward the grave; and it is well.&nbsp; Without
+the bitter one may not know the sweet.&nbsp; The other day - nay, it
+was but yesterday - I fell before the rhythm of fortune.&nbsp; The inexorable
+pendulum had swung the counter direction, and there was upon me an urgent
+need.&nbsp; The hogskin belt was flat as famine, nor did it longer gird
+my loins.&nbsp; From my window I could descry, at no great distance,
+a very ordinary mortal of a man, working industriously among his cabbages.&nbsp;
+I thought: Here am I, capable of teaching him much concerning the field
+wherein he labours - the nitrogenic - why of the fertilizer, the alchemy
+of the sun, the microscopic cell-structure of the plant, the cryptic
+chemistry of root and runner - but thereat he straightened his work-wearied
+back and rested.&nbsp; His eyes wandered over what he had produced in
+the sweat of his brow, then on to mine.&nbsp; And as he stood there
+drearily, he became reproach incarnate.&nbsp; &ldquo;Unstable as water,&rdquo;
+he said (I am sure he did) - &ldquo;unstable as water, thou shalt not
+excel.&nbsp; Man, where are <i>your </i>cabbages?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+I shrank back.&nbsp; Then I waxed rebellious.&nbsp; I refused to answer
+the question.&nbsp; He had no right to ask it, and his presence was
+an affront upon the landscape.&nbsp; And a dignity entered into me,
+and my neck was stiffened, my head poised.&nbsp; I gathered together
+certain certificates of goods and chattels, pointed my heel towards
+him and his cabbages, and journeyed townward.&nbsp; I was yet a man.&nbsp;
+There was naught in those certificates to be ashamed of.&nbsp; But alack-a-day!&nbsp;
+While my heels thrust the cabbage-man beyond the horizon, my toes were
+drawing me, faltering, like a timid old beggar, into a roaring spate
+of humanity - men, women, and children without end.&nbsp; They had no
+concern with me, nor I with them.&nbsp; I knew it; I felt it.&nbsp;
+Like She, after her fire-bath in the womb of the world, I dwindled in
+my own sight.&nbsp; My feet were uncertain and heavy, and my soul became
+as a meal sack, limp with emptiness and tied in the middle.&nbsp; People
+looked upon me scornfully, pitifully, reproachfully.&nbsp; (I can swear
+they did.)&nbsp; In every eye I read the question, Man, where are your
+cabbages?<br>
+<br>
+So I avoided their looks, shrinking close to the kerbstone and by furtive
+glances directing my progress.&nbsp; At last I came hard by the place,
+and peering stealthily to the right and left that none who knew might
+behold mc, I entered hurriedly, in the manner of one committing an abomination.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Fore God!&nbsp; I had done no evil, nor had I wronged any man,
+nor did I contemplate evil; yet was I aware of evil.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp;
+I do not know, save that there goes much dignity with dollars, and being
+devoid of the one I was destitute of the other.&nbsp; The person I sought
+practised a profession as ancient as the oracles but far more lucrative.&nbsp;
+It is mentioned in Exodus; so it must have been created soon after the
+foundations of the world; and despite the thunder of ecclesiastics and
+the mailed hand of kings and conquerors, it has endured even to this
+day.&nbsp; Nor is it unfair to presume that the accounts of this most
+remarkable business will not be closed until the Trumps of Doom are
+sounded and all things brought to final balance.<br>
+<br>
+Wherefore it was in fear and trembling, and with great modesty of spirit,
+that I entered the Presence.&nbsp; To confess that I was shocked were
+to do my feelings an injustice.&nbsp; Perhaps the blame may be shouldered
+upon Shylock, Fagin, and their ilk; but I had conceived an entirely
+different type of individual.&nbsp; This man - why, he was clean to
+look at, his eyes were blue, with the tired look of scholarly lucubrations,
+and his skin had the normal pallor of sedentary existence.&nbsp; He
+was reading a book, sober and leather-bound, while on his finely moulded,
+intellectual head reposed a black skull-cap.&nbsp; For all the world
+his look and attitude were those of a college professor.&nbsp; My heart
+gave a great leap.&nbsp; Here was hope!&nbsp; But no; he fixed me with
+a cold and glittering eye, searching with the chill of space till my
+financial status stood before him shivering and ashamed.&nbsp; I communed
+with myself: By his brow he is a thinker, but his intellect has been
+prostituted to a mercenary exaction of toll from misery.&nbsp; His nerve
+centres of judgment and will have not been employed in solving the problems
+of life, but in maintaining his own solvency by the insolvency of others.&nbsp;
+He trades upon sorrow and draws a livelihood from misfortune.&nbsp;
+He transmutes tears into treasure, and from nakedness and hunger garbs
+himself in clean linen and develops the round of his belly.&nbsp; He
+is a bloodsucker and a vampire.&nbsp; He lays unholy hands on heaven
+and hell at cent. per cent., and his very existence is a sacrilege and
+a blasphemy.&nbsp; And yet here am I, wilting before him, an arrant
+coward, with no respect for him and less for myself.&nbsp; Why should
+this shame be?&nbsp; Let me rouse in my strength and smite him, and,
+by so doing, wipe clean one offensive page.<br>
+<br>
+But no.&nbsp; As I said, he fixed me with a cold and glittering eye,
+and in it was the aristocrat&rsquo;s undisguised contempt for the <i>canaille</i>.&nbsp;
+Behind him was the solid phalanx of a bourgeois society.&nbsp; Law and
+order upheld him, while I titubated, cabbageless, on the ragged edge.&nbsp;
+Moreover, he was possessed of a formula whereby to extract juice from
+a flattened lemon, and he would do business with me.<br>
+<br>
+I told him my desires humbly, in quavering syllables.&nbsp; In return,
+he craved my antecedents and residence, pried into my private life,
+insolently demanded how many children had I and did I live in wedlock,
+and asked divers other unseemly and degrading questions.&nbsp; Ay, I
+was treated like a thief convicted before the act, till I produced my
+certificates of goods and chattels aforementioned.&nbsp; Never had they
+appeared so insignificant and paltry as then, when he sniffed over them
+with the air of one disdainfully doing a disagreeable task.&nbsp; It
+is said, &ldquo;Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury
+of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury&rdquo;;
+but he evidently was not my brother, for he demanded seventy per cent.&nbsp;
+I put my signature to certain indentures, received my pottage, and fled
+from his presence.<br>
+<br>
+Faugh!&nbsp; I was glad to be quit of it.&nbsp; How good the outside
+air was!&nbsp; I only prayed that neither my best friend nor my worst
+enemy should ever become aware of what had just transpired.&nbsp; Ere
+I had gone a block I noticed that the sun had brightened perceptibly,
+the street become less sordid, the gutter mud less filthy.&nbsp; In
+people&rsquo;s eyes the cabbage question no longer brooded.&nbsp; And
+there was a spring to my body, an elasticity of step as I covered the
+pavement.&nbsp; Within me coursed an unwonted sap, and I felt as though
+I were about to burst out into leaves and buds and green things.&nbsp;
+My brain was clear and refreshed.&nbsp; There was a new strength to
+my arm.&nbsp; My nerves were tingling and I was a-pulse with the times.&nbsp;
+All men were my brothers.&nbsp; Save one - yes, save one.&nbsp; I would
+go back and wreck the establishment.&nbsp; I would disrupt that leather-bound
+volume, violate that black skullcap, burn the accounts.&nbsp; But before
+fancy could father the act, I recollected myself and all which had passed.&nbsp;
+Nor did I marvel at my new-horn might, at my ancient dignity which had
+returned.&nbsp; There was a tinkling chink as I ran the yellow pieces
+through my fingers, and with the golden music rippling round me I caught
+a deeper insight into the mystery of things.<br>
+<br>
+OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.<br>
+<i>February </i>1900.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+GOLIAH<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+In 1924 - to be precise, on the morning of January 3 - the city of San
+Francisco awoke to read in one of its daily papers a curious letter,
+which had been received by Walter Bassett and which had evidently been
+written by some crank.&nbsp; Walter Bassett was the greatest captain
+of industry west of the Rockies, and was one of the small group that
+controlled the nation in everything but name.&nbsp; As such, he was
+the recipient of lucubrations from countless cranks; but this particular
+lucubration was so different from the average ruck of similar letters
+that, instead of putting it into the waste-basket, he had turned it
+over to a reporter.&nbsp; It was signed &ldquo;Goliah,&rdquo; and the
+superscription gave his address as &ldquo;Palgrave Island.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The letter was as follows:<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;MR. WALTER BASSETT,<br>
+&ldquo;DEAR SIR:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I am inviting you, with nine of your fellow-captains of industry,
+to visit me here on my island for the purpose of considering plans for
+the reconstruction of society upon a more rational basis.&nbsp; Up to
+the present, social evolution has been a blind and aimless, blundering
+thing.&nbsp; The time has come for a change.&nbsp; Man has risen from
+the vitalized slime of the primeval sea to the mastery of matter; but
+he has not yet mastered society.&nbsp; Man is to-day as much the slave
+to his collective stupidity, as a hundred thousand generations ago he
+was a slave to matter.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;There are two theoretical methods whereby man may become the
+master of society, and make of society an intelligent and efficacious
+device for the pursuit and capture of happiness and laughter.&nbsp;
+The first theory advances the proposition that no government can be
+wiser or better than the people that compose that government; that reform
+and development must spring from the individual; that in so far as the
+individuals become wiser and better, by that much will their government
+become wiser and better; in short, that the majority of individuals
+must become wiser and better, before their government becomes wiser
+and better.&nbsp; The mob, the political convention, the abysmal brutality
+and stupid ignorance of all concourses of people, give the lie to this
+theory.&nbsp; In a mob the collective intelligence and mercy is that
+of the least intelligent and most brutal members that compose the mob.&nbsp;
+On the other hand, a thousand passengers will surrender themselves to
+the wisdom and discretion of the captain, when their ship is in a storm
+on the sea.&nbsp; In such matter, he is the wisest and most experienced
+among them.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;The second theory advances the proposition that the majority
+of the people are not pioneers, that they are weighted down by the inertia
+of the established; that the government that is representative of them
+represents only their feebleness, and futility, and brutishness; that
+this blind thing called government is not the serf of their wills, but
+that they are the serfs of it; in short, speaking always of the great
+mass, that they do not make government, but that government makes them,
+and that government is and has been a stupid and awful monster, misbegotten
+of the glimmerings of intelligence that come from the inertia-crushed
+mass.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Personally, I incline to the second theory.&nbsp; Also, I am
+impatient.&nbsp; For a hundred thousand generations, from the first
+social groups of our savage forbears, government has remained a monster.&nbsp;
+To-day, the inertia-crushed mass has less laughter in it than ever before.&nbsp;
+In spite of man&rsquo;s mastery of matter, human suffering and misery
+and degradation mar the fair world.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Wherefore I have decided to step in and become captain of this
+world-ship for a while.&nbsp; I have the intelligence and the wide vision
+of the skilled expert.&nbsp; Also, I have the power.&nbsp; I shall be
+obeyed.&nbsp; The men of all the world shall perform my bidding and
+make governments so that they shall become laughter-producers.&nbsp;
+These modelled governments I have in mind shall not make the people
+happy, wise, and noble by decree; but they shall give opportunity for
+the people to become happy, wise, and noble.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I have spoken.&nbsp; I have invited you, and nine of your fellow-captains,
+to confer with me.&nbsp; On March third the yacht <i>Energon </i>will
+sail from San Francisco.&nbsp; You are requested to be on board the
+night before.&nbsp; This is serious.&nbsp; The affairs of the world
+must be handled for a time by a strong hand.&nbsp; Mine is that strong
+hand.&nbsp; If you fail to obey my summons, you will die.&nbsp; Candidly,
+I do not expect that you will obey.&nbsp; But your death for failure
+to obey will cause obedience on the part of those I subsequently summon.&nbsp;
+You will have served a purpose.&nbsp; And please remember that I have
+no unscientific sentimentality about the value of human life.&nbsp;
+I carry always in the background of my consciousness the innumerable
+billions of lives that are to laugh and be happy in future aeons on
+the earth.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Yours for the reconstruction of society,<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;GOLIAH.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The publication of this letter did not cause even local amusement.&nbsp;
+Men might have smiled to themselves as they read it, but it was so palpably
+the handiwork of a crank that it did not merit discussion.&nbsp; Interest
+did not arouse till next morning.&nbsp; An Associated Press despatch
+to the Eastern states, followed by interviews by eager-nosed reporters,
+had brought out the names of the other nine captains of industry who
+had received similar letters, but who had not thought the matter of
+sufficient importance to be made public.&nbsp; But the interest aroused
+was mild, and it would have died out quickly had not Gabberton cartooned
+a chronic presidential aspirant as &ldquo;Goliah.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then
+came the song that was sung hilariously from sea to sea, with the refrain,
+&ldquo;Goliah will catch you if you don&rsquo;t watch out.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The weeks passed and the incident was forgotten.&nbsp; Walter Bassett
+had forgotten it likewise; but on the evening of February 22, he was
+called to the telephone by the Collector of the Port.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+just wanted to tell you,&rdquo; said the latter, &ldquo;that the yacht
+<i>Energon </i>has arrived and gone to anchor in the stream off Pier
+Seven.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+What happened that night Walter Bassett has never divulged.&nbsp; But
+it is known that he rode down in his auto to the water front, chartered
+one of Crowley&rsquo;s launches, and was put aboard the strange yacht.&nbsp;
+It is further known that when he returned to the shore, three hours
+later, he immediately despatched a sheaf of telegrams to his nine fellow-captains
+of industry who had received letters from Goliah.&nbsp; These telegrams
+were similarly worded, and read: &ldquo;The yacht <i>Energon </i>has
+arrived.&nbsp; There is something in this.&nbsp; I advise you to come.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Bassett was laughed at for his pains.&nbsp; It was a huge laugh that
+went up (for his telegrams had been made public), and the popular song
+on Goliah revived and became more popular than ever.&nbsp; Goliah and
+Bassett were cartooned and lampooned unmercifully, the former, as the
+Old Man of the Sea, riding on the latter&rsquo;s neck.&nbsp; The laugh
+tittered and rippled through clubs and social circles, was restrainedly
+merry in the editorial columns, and broke out in loud guffaws in the
+comic weeklies.&nbsp; There was a serious side as well, and Bassett&rsquo;s
+sanity was gravely questioned by many, and especially by his business
+associates.<br>
+<br>
+Bassett had ever been a short-tempered man, and after he sent the second
+sheaf of telegrams to his brother captains, and had been laughed at
+again, he remained silent.&nbsp; In this second sheaf he had said: &ldquo;Come,
+I implore you.&nbsp; As you value your life, come.&rdquo;&nbsp; He arranged
+all his business affairs for an absence, and on the night of March 2
+went on board the <i>Energon</i>.&nbsp; The latter, properly cleared,
+sailed next morning.&nbsp; And next morning the newsboys in every city
+and town were crying &ldquo;Extra.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+In the slang of the day, Goliah had delivered the goods.&nbsp; The nine
+captains of industry who had failed to accept his invitation were dead.&nbsp;
+A sort of violent disintegration of the tissues was the report of the
+various autopsies held on the bodies of the slain millionaires; yet
+the surgeons and physicians (the most highly skilled in the land had
+participated) would not venture the opinion that the men had been slain.&nbsp;
+Much less would they venture the conclusion, &ldquo;at the hands of
+parties unknown.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was all too mysterious.&nbsp; They
+were stunned.&nbsp; Their scientific credulity broke down.&nbsp; They
+had no warrant in the whole domain of science for believing that an
+anonymous person on Palgrave Island had murdered the poor gentlemen.<br>
+<br>
+One thing was quickly learned, however; namely, that Palgrave Island
+was no myth.&nbsp; It was charted and well known to all navigators,
+lying on the line of 160 west longitude, right at its intersection by
+the tenth parallel north latitude, and only a few miles away from Diana
+Shoal.&nbsp; Like Midway and Fanning, Palgrave Island was isolated,
+volcanic and coral in formation.&nbsp; Furthermore, it was uninhabited.&nbsp;
+A survey ship, in 1887, had visited the place and reported the existence
+of several springs and of a good harbour that was very dangerous of
+approach.&nbsp; And that was all that was known of the tiny speck of
+land that was soon to have focussed on it the awed attention of the
+world.<br>
+<br>
+Goliah remained silent till March 24.&nbsp; On the morning of that day,
+the newspapers published his second letter, copies of which had been
+received by the ten chief politicians of the United States - ten leading
+men in the political world who were conventionally known as &ldquo;statesmen.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The letter, with the same superscription as before, was as follows:<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;DEAR SIR:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I have spoken in no uncertain tone.&nbsp; I must be obeyed.&nbsp;
+You may consider this an invitation or a summons; but if you still wish
+to tread this earth and laugh, you will be aboard the yacht <i>Energon,
+</i>in San Francisco harbour, not later than the evening of April 5.&nbsp;
+It is my wish and my will that you confer with me here on Palgrave Island
+in the matter of reconstructing society upon some rational basis.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Do not misunderstand me, when I tell you that I am one with a
+theory.&nbsp; I want to see that theory work, and therefore I call upon
+your cooperation.&nbsp; In this theory of mine, lives are but pawns;
+I deal with quantities of lives.&nbsp; I am after laughter, and those
+that stand in the way of laughter must perish.&nbsp; The game is big.&nbsp;
+There are fifteen hundred million human lives to-day on the planet.&nbsp;
+What is your single life against them?&nbsp; It is as naught, in my
+theory.&nbsp; And remember that mine is the power.&nbsp; Remember that
+I am a scientist, and that one life, or one million of lives, mean nothing
+to me as arrayed against the countless billions of billions of the lives
+of the generations to come.&nbsp; It is for their laughter that I seek
+to reconstruct society now; and against them your own meagre little
+life is a paltry thing indeed.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Whoso has power can command his fellows.&nbsp; By virtue of that
+military device known as the phalanx, Alexander conquered his bit of
+the world.&nbsp; By virtue of that chemical device, gunpowder, Cortes
+with his several hundred cut-throats conquered the empire of the Montezumas.&nbsp;
+Now I am in possession of a device that is all my own.&nbsp; In the
+course of a century not more than half a dozen fundamental discoveries
+or inventions are made.&nbsp; I have made such an invention.&nbsp; The
+possession of it gives me the mastery of the world.&nbsp; I shall use
+this invention, not for commercial exploitation, but for the good of
+humanity.&nbsp; For that purpose I want help - willing agents, obedient
+hands; and I am strong enough to compel the service.&nbsp; I am taking
+the shortest way, though I am in no hurry.&nbsp; I shall not clutter
+my speed with haste.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;The incentive of material gain developed man from the savage
+to the semi-barbarian he is today.&nbsp; This incentive has been a useful
+device for the development of the human; but it has now fulfilled its
+function and is ready to be cast aside into the scrap-heap of rudimentary
+vestiges such as gills in the throat and belief in the divine right
+of kings.&nbsp; Of course you do not think so; but I do not see that
+that will prevent you from aiding me to fling the anachronism into the
+scrap-heap.&nbsp; For I tell you now that the time has come when mere
+food and shelter and similar sordid things shall be automatic, as free
+and easy and involuntary of access as the air.&nbsp; I shall make them
+automatic, what of my discovery and the power that discovery gives me.&nbsp;
+And with food and shelter automatic, the incentive of material gain
+passes away from the world for ever.&nbsp; With food and shelter automatic,
+the higher incentives will universally obtain - the spiritual, aesthetic,
+and intellectual incentives that will tend to develop and make beautiful
+and noble body, mind, and spirit.&nbsp; Then all the world will be dominated
+by happiness and laughter.&nbsp; It will be the reign of universal laughter.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Yours for that day,<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;GOLIAH.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Still the world would not believe.&nbsp; The ten politicians were at
+Washington, so that they did not have the opportunity of being convinced
+that Bassett had had, and not one of them took the trouble to journey
+out to San Francisco to make the opportunity.&nbsp; As for Goliah, he
+was hailed by the newspapers as another Tom Lawson with a panacea; and
+there were specialists in mental disease who, by analysis of Goliah&rsquo;s
+letters, proved conclusively that he was a lunatic.<br>
+<br>
+The yacht <i>Energon </i>arrived in the harbour of San Francisco on
+the afternoon of April 5, and Bassett came ashore.&nbsp; But the <i>Energon
+</i>did not sail next day, for not one of the ten summoned politicians
+had elected to make the journey to Palgrave Island.&nbsp; The newsboys,
+however, called &ldquo;Extra&rdquo; that day in all the cities.&nbsp;
+The ten politicians were dead.&nbsp; The yacht, lying peacefully at
+anchor in the harbour, became the centre of excited interest.&nbsp;
+She was surrounded by a flotilla of launches and rowboats, and many
+tugs and steamboats ran excursions to her.&nbsp; While the rabble was
+firmly kept off, the proper authorities and even reporters were permitted
+to board her.&nbsp; The mayor of San Francisco and the chief of police
+reported that nothing suspicious was to be seen upon her, and the port
+authorities announced that her papers were correct and in order in every
+detail.&nbsp; Many photographs and columns of descriptive matter were
+run in the newspapers.<br>
+<br>
+The crew was reported to be composed principally of Scandinavians -
+fair-haired, blue-eyed Swedes, Norwegians afflicted with the temperamental
+melancholy of their race, stolid Russian Finns, and a slight sprinkling
+of Americans and English.&nbsp; It was noted that there was nothing
+mercurial and flyaway about them.&nbsp; They seemed weighty men, oppressed
+by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity.&nbsp; A sober seriousness
+and enormous certitude characterized all of them.&nbsp; They appeared
+men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming
+power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand.&nbsp; The captain,
+a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was cartooned in the papers as
+&ldquo;Gloomy Gus&rdquo; (the pessimistic hero of the comic supplement).<br>
+<br>
+Some sea-captain recognized the <i>Energon </i>as the yacht <i>Scud,
+</i>once owned by Merrivale of the New York Yacht Club.&nbsp; With this
+clue it was soon ascertained that the <i>Scud </i>had disappeared several
+years before.&nbsp; The agent who sold her reported the purchaser to
+be merely another agent, a man he had seen neither before nor since.&nbsp;
+The yacht had been reconstructed at Duffey&rsquo;s Shipyard in New Jersey.&nbsp;
+The change in her name and registry occurred at that time and had been
+legally executed.&nbsp; Then the <i>Energon </i>had disappeared in the
+shroud of mystery.<br>
+<br>
+In the meantime, Bassett was going crazy - at least his friends and
+business associates said so.&nbsp; He kept away from his vast business
+enterprises and said that he must hold his hands until the other masters
+of the world could join with him in the reconstruction of society -
+proof indubitable that Goliah&rsquo;s bee had entered his bonnet.&nbsp;
+To reporters he had little to say.&nbsp; He was not at liberty, he said,
+to relate what he had seen on Palgrave Island; but he could assure them
+that the matter was serious, the most serious thing that had ever happened.&nbsp;
+His final word was that, the world was on the verge of a turnover, for
+good or ill he did not know, but, one way or the other, he was absolutely
+convinced that the turnover was coming.&nbsp; As for business, business
+could go hang.&nbsp; He had seen things, he had, and that was all there
+was to it.<br>
+<br>
+There was a great telegraphing, during this period, between the local
+Federal officials and the state and war departments at Washington.&nbsp;
+A secret attempt was made late one afternoon to board the <i>Energon
+</i>and place the captain under arrest - the Attorney-General having
+given the opinion that the captain could be held for the murder of the
+ten &ldquo;statesmen.&rdquo;&nbsp; The government launch was seen to
+leave Meigg&rsquo;s Wharf and steer for the <i>Energon, </i>and that
+was the last ever seen of the launch and the men on board of it.&nbsp;
+The government tried to keep the affair hushed up, but the cat was slipped
+out of the bag by the families of the missing men, and the papers were
+filled with monstrous versions of the affair.<br>
+<br>
+The government now proceeded to extreme measures.&nbsp; The battleship
+<i>Alaska </i>was ordered to capture the strange yacht, or, failing
+that, to sink her.&nbsp; These were secret instructions; but thousands
+of eyes, from the water front and from the shipping in the harbour,
+witnessed what happened that afternoon.&nbsp; The battleship got under
+way and steamed slowly toward the <i>Energon</i>.&nbsp; At half a mile
+distant the battleship blew up - simply blew up, that was all, her shattered
+frame sinking to the bottom of the bay, a riff-raff of wreckage and
+a few survivors strewing the surface.&nbsp; Among the survivors was
+a young lieutenant who had had charge of the wireless on board the <i>Alaska</i>.&nbsp;
+The reporters got hold of him first, and he talked.&nbsp; No sooner
+had the <i>Alaska </i>got under way, he said, than a message was received
+from the <i>Energon</i>.&nbsp; It was in the international code, and
+it was a warning to the <i>Alaska </i>to come no nearer than half a
+mile.&nbsp; He had sent the message, through the speaking tube, immediately
+to the captain.&nbsp; He did not know anything more, except that the
+<i>Energon </i>twice repeated the message and that five minutes afterward
+the explosion occurred.&nbsp; The captain of the <i>Alaska </i>had perished
+with his ship, and nothing more was to be learned.<br>
+<br>
+The <i>Energon, </i>however, promptly hoisted anchor and cleared out
+to sea.&nbsp; A great clamour was raised by the papers; the government
+was charged with cowardice and vacillation in its dealings with a mere
+pleasure yacht and a lunatic who called himself &ldquo;Goliah,&rdquo;
+and immediate and decisive action was demanded.&nbsp; Also, a great
+cry went up about the loss of life, especially the wanton killing of
+the ten &ldquo;statesmen.&rdquo;&nbsp; Goliah promptly replied.&nbsp;
+In fact, so prompt was his reply that the experts in wireless telegraphy
+announced that, since it was impossible to send wireless messages so
+great a distance, Goliah was in their very midst and not on Palgrave
+Island.&nbsp; Goliah&rsquo;s letter was delivered to the Associated
+Press by a messenger boy who had been engaged on the street.&nbsp; The
+letter was as follows:<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;What are a few paltry lives?&nbsp; In your insane wars you destroy
+millions of lives and think nothing of it.&nbsp; In your fratricidal
+commercial struggle you kill countless babes, women, and men, and you
+triumphantly call the shambles &lsquo;individualism.&rsquo;&nbsp; I
+call it anarchy.&nbsp; I am going to put a stop to your wholesale destruction
+of human beings.&nbsp; I want laughter, not slaughter.&nbsp; Those of
+you who stand in the way of laughter will get slaughter.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Your government is trying to delude you into believing that the
+destruction of the <i>Alaska </i>was an accident.&nbsp; Know here and
+now that it was by my orders that the <i>Alaska </i>was destroyed.&nbsp;
+In a few short months, all battleships on all seas will be destroyed
+or flung to the scrap-heap, and all nations shall disarm; fortresses
+shall be dismantled, armies disbanded, and warfare shall cease from
+the earth.&nbsp; Mine is the power.&nbsp; I am the will of God.&nbsp;
+The whole world shall be in vassalage to me, but it shall be a vassalage
+of peace.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I am<br>
+<br>
+GOLIAH.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Blow Palgrave Island out of the water!&rdquo; was the head-line
+retort of the newspapers.&nbsp; The government was of the same frame
+of mind, and the assembling of the fleets began.&nbsp; Walter Bassett
+broke out in ineffectual protest, but was swiftly silenced by the threat
+of a lunacy commission.&nbsp; Goliah remained silent.&nbsp; Against
+Palgrave Island five great fleets were hurled - the Asiatic Squadron,
+the South Pacific Squadron, the North Pacific Squadron, the Caribbean
+Squadron, and half of the North Atlantic Squadron, the two latter coming
+through the Panama Canal.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I have the honour to report that we sighted Palgrave Island on
+the evening of April 29,&rdquo; ran the report of Captain Johnson, of
+the battleship <i>North Dakota, </i>to the Secretary of the Navy.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The Asiatic Squadron was delayed and did not arrive until the
+morning of April 30.&nbsp; A council of the admirals was held, and it
+was decided to attack early next morning.&nbsp; The destroyer, <i>Swift
+VII, </i>crept in, unmolested, and reported no warlike preparations
+on the island.&nbsp; It noted several small merchant steamers in the
+harbour, and the existence of a small village in a hopelessly exposed
+position that could be swept by our fire.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;It had been decided that all the vessels should rush in, scattered,
+upon the island, opening fire at three miles, and continuing to the
+edge of the reef, there to retain loose formation and engage.&nbsp;
+Palgrave Island repeatedly warned us, by wireless, in the international
+code, to keep outside the ten-mile limit; but no heed was paid to the
+warnings.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;The <i>North Dakota </i>did not take part in the movement of
+the morning of May 1.&nbsp; This was due to a slight accident of the
+preceding night that temporarily disabled her steering-gear.&nbsp; The
+morning of May 1 broke clear and calm.&nbsp; There was a slight breeze
+from the south-west that quickly died away.&nbsp; The <i>North Dakota
+</i>lay twelve miles off the island.&nbsp; At the signal the squadrons
+charged in upon the island, from all sides, at full speed.&nbsp; Our
+wireless receiver continued to tick off warnings from the island.&nbsp;
+The ten-mile limit was passed, and nothing happened.&nbsp; I watched
+through my glasses.&nbsp; At five miles nothing happened; at four miles
+nothing happened; at three miles, the <i>New York, </i>in the lead on
+our side of the island, opened fire.&nbsp; She fired only one shot.&nbsp;
+Then she blew up.&nbsp; The rest of the vessels never fired a shot.&nbsp;
+They began to blow up, everywhere, before our eyes.&nbsp; Several swerved
+about and started back, but they failed to escape.&nbsp; The destroyer,
+<i>Dart XXX, </i>nearly made the ten-mile limit when she blew up.&nbsp;
+She was the last survivor.&nbsp; No harm came to the <i>North Dakota,
+</i>and that night, the steering-gear being repaired, I gave orders
+to sail for San Francisco.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+To say that the United States was stunned is but to expose the inadequacy
+of language.&nbsp; The whole world was stunned.&nbsp; It confronted
+that blight of the human brain, the unprecedented.&nbsp; Human endeavour
+was a jest, a monstrous futility, when a lunatic on a lonely island,
+who owned a yacht and an exposed village, could destroy five of the
+proudest fleets of Christendom.&nbsp; And how had he done it?&nbsp;
+Nobody knew.&nbsp; The scientists lay down in the dust of the common
+road and wailed and gibbered.&nbsp; They did not know.&nbsp; Military
+experts committed suicide by scores.&nbsp; The mighty fabric of warfare
+they had fashioned was a gossamer veil rent asunder by a miserable lunatic.&nbsp;
+It was too much for their sanity.&nbsp; Mere human reason could not
+withstand the shock.&nbsp; As the savage is crushed by the sleight-of-hand
+of the witch doctor, so was the world crushed by the magic of Goliah.&nbsp;
+How did he do it?&nbsp; It was the awful face of the Unknown upon which
+the world gazed and by which it was frightened out of the memory of
+its proudest achievements.<br>
+<br>
+But all the world was not stunned.&nbsp; There was the invariable exception
+- the Island Empire of Japan.&nbsp; Drunken with the wine of success
+deep-quaffed, without superstition and without faith in aught but its
+own ascendant star, laughing at the wreckage of science and mad with
+pride of race, it went forth upon the way of war.&nbsp; America&rsquo;s
+fleets had been destroyed.&nbsp; From the battlements of heaven the
+multitudinous ancestral shades of Japan leaned down.&nbsp; The opportunity,
+God-given, had come.&nbsp; The Mikado was in truth a brother to the
+gods.<br>
+<br>
+The war-monsters of Japan were loosed in mighty fleets.&nbsp; The Philippines
+were gathered in as a child gathers a nosegay.&nbsp; It took longer
+for the battleships to travel to Hawaii, to Panama, and to the Pacific
+Coast.&nbsp; The United States was panic-stricken, and there arose the
+powerful party of dishonourable peace.&nbsp; In the midst of the clamour
+the <i>Energon </i>arrived in San Francisco Bay and Goliah spoke once
+more.&nbsp; There was a little brush as the <i>Energon </i>came in,
+and a few explosions of magazines occurred along the war-tunnelled hills
+as the coast defences went to smash.&nbsp; Also, the blowing up of the
+submarine mines in the Golden Gate made a remarkably fine display.&nbsp;
+Goliah&rsquo;s message to the people of San Francisco, dated as usual
+from Palgrave Island, was published in the papers.&nbsp; It ran:<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Peace?&nbsp; Peace be with you.&nbsp; You shall have peace.&nbsp;
+I have spoken to this purpose before.&nbsp; And give you me peace.&nbsp;
+Leave my yacht <i>Energon </i>alone.&nbsp; Commit one overt act against
+her and not one stone in San Francisco shall stand upon another.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;To-morrow let all good citizens go out upon the hills that slope
+down to the sea.&nbsp; Go with music and laughter and garlands.&nbsp;
+Make festival for the new age that is dawning.&nbsp; Be like children
+upon your hills, and witness the passing of war.&nbsp; Do not miss the
+opportunity.&nbsp; It is your last chance to behold what henceforth
+you will be compelled to seek in museums of antiquities.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I promise you a merry day,<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;GOLIAH.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The madness of magic was in the air.&nbsp; With the people it was as
+if all their gods had crashed and the heavens still stood.&nbsp; Order
+and law had passed away from the universe; but the sun still shone,
+the wind still blew, the flowers still bloomed - that was the amazing
+thing about it.&nbsp; That water should continue to run downhill was
+a miracle.&nbsp; All the stabilities of the human mind and human achievement
+were crumbling.&nbsp; The one stable thing that remained was Goliah,
+a madman on an island.&nbsp; And so it was that the whole population
+of San Francisco went forth next day in colossal frolic upon the hills
+that overlooked the sea.&nbsp; Brass bands and banners went forth, brewery
+wagons and Sunday-school picnics - all the strange heterogeneous groupings
+of swarming metropolitan life.<br>
+<br>
+On the sea-rim rose the smoke from the funnels of a hundred hostile
+vessels of war, all converging upon the helpless, undefended Golden
+Gate.&nbsp; And not all undefended, for out through the Golden Gate
+moved the <i>Energon, </i>a tiny toy of white, rolling like a straw
+in the stiff sea on the bar where a strong ebb-tide ran in the teeth
+of the summer sea-breeze.&nbsp; But the Japanese were cautious.&nbsp;
+Their thirty- and forty-thousand-ton battleships slowed down half a
+dozen miles offshore and manoeuvred in ponderous evolutions, while tiny
+scout-boats (lean, six-funnelled destroyers) ran in, cutting blackly
+the flashing sea like so many sharks.&nbsp; But, compared with the <i>Energon,
+</i>they were leviathans.&nbsp; Compared with them, the <i>Energon </i>was
+as the sword of the arch-angel Michael, and they the forerunners of
+the hosts of hell.<br>
+<br>
+But the flashing of the sword, the good people of San Francisco, gathered
+on her hills, never saw.&nbsp; Mysterious, invisible, it cleaved the
+air and smote the mightiest blows of combat the world had ever witnessed.&nbsp;
+The good people of San Francisco saw little and understood less.&nbsp;
+They saw only a million and a half tons of brine-cleaving, thunder-flinging
+fabrics hurled skyward and smashed back in ruin to sink into the sea.&nbsp;
+It was all over in five minutes.&nbsp; Remained upon the wide expanse
+of sea only the <i>Energon, </i>rolling white and toylike on the bar.<br>
+<br>
+Goliah spoke to the Mikado and the Elder Statesmen.&nbsp; It was only
+an ordinary cable message, despatched from San Francisco by the captain
+of the <i>Energon, </i>but it was of sufficient moment to cause the
+immediate withdrawal of Japan from the Philippines and of her surviving
+fleets from the sea.&nbsp; Japan the sceptical was converted.&nbsp;
+She had felt the weight of Goliah&rsquo;s arm.&nbsp; And meekly she
+obeyed when Goliah commanded her to dismantle her war vessels and to
+turn the metal into useful appliances for the arts of peace.&nbsp; In
+all the ports, navy-yards, machine-shops, and foundries of Japan tens
+of thousands of brown-skinned artisans converted the war-monsters into
+myriads of useful things, such as ploughshares (Goliah insisted on ploughshares),
+gasolene engines, bridge-trusses, telephone and telegraph wires, steel
+rails, locomotives, and rolling stock for railways.&nbsp; It was a world-penance
+for a world to see, and paltry indeed it made appear that earlier penance,
+barefooted in the snow, of an emperor to a pope for daring to squabble
+over temporal power.<br>
+<br>
+Goliah&rsquo;s next summons was to the ten leading scientists of the
+United States.&nbsp; This time there was no hesitancy in obeying.&nbsp;
+The savants were ludicrously prompt, some of them waiting in San Francisco
+for weeks so as not to miss the scheduled sailing-date.&nbsp; They departed
+on the <i>Energon </i>on June 15; and while they were on the sea, on
+the way to Palgrave Island, Goliah performed another spectacular feat.&nbsp;
+Germany and France were preparing to fly at each other&rsquo;s throats.&nbsp;
+Goliah commanded peace.&nbsp; They ignored the command, tacitly agreeing
+to fight it out on land where it seemed safer for the belligerently
+inclined.&nbsp; Goliah set the date of June 19 for the cessation of
+hostile preparations.&nbsp; Both countries mobilized their armies on
+June 18, and hurled them at the common frontier.&nbsp; And on June 19,
+Goliah struck.&nbsp; All generals, war-secretaries, and jingo-leaders
+in the two countries died on that day; and that day two vast armies,
+undirected, like strayed sheep, walked over each other&rsquo;s frontiers
+and fraternized.&nbsp; But the great German war lord had escaped - it
+was learned, afterward, by hiding in the huge safe where were stored
+the secret archives of his empire.&nbsp; And when he emerged he was
+a very penitent war lord, and like the Mikado of Japan he was set to
+work beating his sword-blades into ploughshares and pruning-hooks.<br>
+<br>
+But in the escape of the German Emperor was discovered a great significance.&nbsp;
+The scientists of the world plucked up courage, got back their nerve.&nbsp;
+One thing was conclusively evident - Goliah&rsquo;s power was not magic.&nbsp;
+Law still reigned in the universe.&nbsp; Goliah&rsquo;s power had limitations,
+else had the German Emperor not escaped by secretly hiding in a steel
+safe.&nbsp; Many learned articles on the subject appeared in the magazines.<br>
+<br>
+The ten scientists arrived back from Palgrave Island on July 6.&nbsp;
+Heavy platoons of police protected them from the reporters.&nbsp; No,
+they had not see Goliah, they said in the one official interview that
+was vouchsafed; but they had talked with him, and they had seen things.&nbsp;
+They were not permitted to state definitely all that they had seen and
+heard, but they could say that the world was about to be revolutionized.&nbsp;
+Goliah was in the possession of a tremendous discovery that placed all
+the world at his mercy, and it was a good thing for the world that Goliah
+was merciful.&nbsp; The ten scientists proceeded directly to Washington
+on a special train, where, for days, they were closeted with the heads
+of government, while the nation hung breathless on the outcome.<br>
+<br>
+But the outcome was a long time in arriving.&nbsp; From Washington the
+President issued commands to the masters and leading figures of the
+nation.&nbsp; Everything was secret.&nbsp; Day by day deputations of
+bankers, railway lords, captains of industry, and Supreme Court justices
+arrived; and when they arrived they remained.&nbsp; The weeks dragged
+on, and then, on August 25, began the famous issuance of proclamations.&nbsp;
+Congress and the Senate co-operated with the President in this, while
+the Supreme Court justices gave their sanction and the money lords and
+the captains of industry agreed.&nbsp; War was declared upon the capitalist
+masters of the nation.&nbsp; Martial law was declared over the whole
+United States.&nbsp; The supreme power was vested in the President.<br>
+<br>
+In one day, child-labour in the whole country was abolished.&nbsp; It
+was done by decree, and the United States was prepared with its army
+to enforce its decrees.&nbsp; In the same day all women factory workers
+were dismissed to their homes, and all the sweat-shops were closed.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But we cannot make profits!&rdquo; wailed the petty capitalists.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Fools!&rdquo; was the retort of Goliah.&nbsp; &ldquo;As if the
+meaning of life were profits!&nbsp; Give up your businesses and your
+profit-mongering.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;But there is nobody to buy our
+business!&rdquo; they wailed.&nbsp; &ldquo;Buy and sell - is that all
+the meaning life has for you?&rdquo; replied Goliah.&nbsp; &ldquo;You
+have nothing to sell.&nbsp; Turn over your little cut-throating, anarchistic
+businesses to the government so that they may be rationally organized
+and operated.&rdquo;&nbsp; And the next day, by decree, the government
+began taking possession of all factories, shops, mines, ships, railroads,
+and producing lands.<br>
+<br>
+The nationalization of the means of production and distribution went
+on apace.&nbsp; Here and there were sceptical capitalists of moment.&nbsp;
+They were made prisoners and haled to Palgrave Island, and when they
+returned they always acquiesced in what the government was doing.&nbsp;
+A little later the journey to Palgrave Island became unnecessary.&nbsp;
+When objection was made, the reply of the officials was &ldquo;Goliah
+has spoken&rdquo; - which was another way of saying, &ldquo;He must
+be obeyed.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The captains of industry became heads of departments.&nbsp; It was found
+that civil engineers, for instance, worked just as well in government
+employ as before, they had worked in private employ.&nbsp; It was found
+that men of high executive ability could not violate their nature.&nbsp;
+They could not escape exercising their executive ability, any more than
+a crab could escape crawling or a bird could escape flying.&nbsp; And
+so it was that all the splendid force of the men who had previously
+worked for themselves was now put to work for the good of society.&nbsp;
+The half-dozen great railway chiefs co-operated in the organizing of
+a national system of railways that was amazingly efficacious.&nbsp;
+Never again was there such a thing as a car shortage.&nbsp; These chiefs
+were not the Wall Street railway magnates, but they were the men who
+formerly had done the real work while in the employ of the Wall Street
+magnates.<br>
+<br>
+Wall Street was dead.&nbsp; There was no more buying and selling and
+speculating.&nbsp; Nobody had anything to buy or sell.&nbsp; There was
+nothing in which to speculate.&nbsp; &ldquo;Put the stock gamblers to
+work,&rdquo; said Goliah; &ldquo;give those that are young, and that
+so desire, a chance to learn useful trades.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Put
+the drummers, and salesmen, and advertising agents, and real estate
+agents to work,&rdquo; said Goliah; and by hundreds of thousands the
+erstwhile useless middlemen and parasites went into useful occupations.&nbsp;
+The four hundred thousand idle gentlemen of the country who had lived
+upon incomes were likewise put to work.&nbsp; Then there were a lot
+of helpless men in high places who were cleared out, the remarkable
+thing about this being that they were cleared out by their own fellows.&nbsp;
+Of this class were the professional politicians, whose wisdom and power
+consisted of manipulating machine politics and of grafting.&nbsp; There
+was no longer any graft.&nbsp; Since there were no private interests
+to purchase special privileges, no bribes were offered to legislators,
+and legislators for the first time legislated for the people.&nbsp;
+The result was that men who were efficient, not in corruption, but in
+direction, found their way into the legislatures.<br>
+<br>
+With this rational organization of society amazing results were brought
+about.&nbsp; The national day&rsquo;s work was eight hours, and yet
+production increased.&nbsp; In spite of the great permanent improvements
+and of the immense amount of energy consumed in systematizing the competitive
+chaos of society, production doubled and tripled upon itself.&nbsp;
+The standard of living increased, and still consumption could not keep
+up with production.&nbsp; The maximum working age was decreased to fifty
+years, to forty-nine years, and to forty-eight years.&nbsp; The minimum
+working age went up from sixteen years to eighteen years.&nbsp; The
+eight-hour day became a seven-hour day, and in a few months the national
+working day was reduced to five hours.<br>
+<br>
+In the meantime glimmerings were being caught, not of the identity of
+Goliah, but of how he had worked and prepared for his assuming control
+of the world.&nbsp; Little things leaked out, clues were followed up,
+apparently unrelated things were pieced together.&nbsp; Strange stories
+of blacks stolen from Africa were remembered, of Chinese and Japanese
+contract coolies who had mysteriously disappeared, of lonely South Sea
+Islands raided and their inhabitants carried away; stories of yachts
+and merchant steamers, mysteriously purchased, that had disappeared
+and the descriptions of which remotely tallied with the crafts that
+had carried the Orientals and Africans and islanders away.&nbsp; Where
+had Goliah got the sinews of war? was the question.&nbsp; And the surmised
+answer was: By exploiting these stolen labourers.&nbsp; It was they
+that lived in the exposed village on Palgrave Island.&nbsp; It was the
+product of their toil that had purchased the yachts and merchant steamers
+and enabled Goliah&rsquo;s agents to permeate society and carry out
+his will.&nbsp; And what was the product of their toil that had given
+Goliah the wealth necessary to realize his plans?&nbsp; Commercial radium,
+the newspapers proclaimed; and radiyte, and radiosole, and argatium,
+and argyte, and the mysterious golyte (that had proved so valuable in
+metallurgy).&nbsp; These were the new compounds, discovered in the first
+decade of the twentieth century, the commercial and scientific use of
+which had become so enormous in the second decade.<br>
+<br>
+The line of fruit boats that ran from Hawaii to San Francisco was declared
+to be the property of Goliah.&nbsp; This was a surmise, for no other
+owner could be discovered, and the agents who handled the shipments
+of the fruit boats were only agents.&nbsp; Since no one else owned the
+fruit boats, then Goliah must own them.&nbsp; The point of which is:
+<i>that it leaked out that the major portion </i>of <i>the world</i>&rsquo;<i>s
+supply in these precious compounds was brought to San Francisco by those
+very fruit boats</i>.&nbsp; That the whole chain of surmise was correct
+was proved in later years when Goliah&rsquo;s slaves were liberated
+and honourably pensioned by the international government of the world.&nbsp;
+It was at that time that the seal of secrecy was lifted from the lips
+of his agents and higher emissaries, and those that chose revealed much
+of the mystery of Goliah&rsquo;s organization and methods.&nbsp; His
+destroying angels, however, remained for ever dumb.&nbsp; Who the men
+were who went forth to the high places and killed at his bidding will
+be unknown to the end of time - for kill they did, by means of that
+very subtle and then-mysterious force that Goliah had discovered and
+named &ldquo;Energon.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+But at that time Energon, the little giant that was destined to do the
+work of the world, was unknown and undreamed of.&nbsp; Only Goliah knew,
+and he kept his secret well.&nbsp; Even his agents, who were armed with
+it, and who, in the case of the yacht <i>Energon, </i>destroyed a mighty
+fleet of war-ships by exploding their magazines, knew not what the subtle
+and potent force was, nor how it was manufactured.&nbsp; They knew only
+one of its many uses, and in that one use they had been instructed by
+Goliah.&nbsp; It is now well known that radium, and radiyte, and radiosole,
+and all the other compounds, were by-products of the manufacture of
+Energon by Goliah from the sunlight; but at that time nobody knew what
+Energon was, and Goliah continued to awe and rule the world.<br>
+<br>
+One of the uses of Energon was in wireless telegraphy.&nbsp; It was
+by its means that Goliah was able to communicate with his agents all
+over the world.&nbsp; At that time the apparatus required by an agent
+was so clumsy that it could not be packed in anything less than a fair-sized
+steamer trunk.&nbsp; To-day, thanks to the improvements of Hendsoll,
+the perfected apparatus can be carried in a coat pocket.<br>
+<br>
+It was in December, 1924, that Goliah sent out his famous &ldquo;Christmas
+Letter,&rdquo; part of the text of which is here given:<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;So far, while I have kept the rest of the nations from each other&rsquo;s
+throats, I have devoted myself particularly to the United States.&nbsp;
+Now I have not given to the people of the United States a rational social
+organization.&nbsp; What I have done has been to compel them to make
+that organization themselves.&nbsp; There is more laughter in the United
+States these days, and there is more sense.&nbsp; Food and shelter are
+no longer obtained by the anarchistic methods of so-called individualism
+but are now wellnigh automatic.&nbsp; And the beauty of it is that the
+people of the United States have achieved all this for themselves.&nbsp;
+I did not achieve it for them.&nbsp; I repeat, they achieved it for
+themselves.&nbsp; All that I did was to put the fear of death in the
+hearts of the few that sat in the high places and obstructed the coming
+of rationality and laughter.&nbsp; The fear of death made those in the
+high places get out of the way, that was all, and gave the intelligence
+of man a chance to realize itself socially.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;In the year that is to come I shall devote myself to the rest
+of the world.&nbsp; I shall put the fear of death in the hearts of all
+that sit in the high places in all the nations.&nbsp; And they will
+do as they have done in the United States - get down out of the high
+places and give the intelligence of man a chance for social rationality.&nbsp;
+All the nations shall tread the path the United States is now on.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;And when all the nations are well along on that path, I shall
+have something else for them.&nbsp; But first they must travel that
+path for themselves.&nbsp; They must demonstrate that the intelligence
+of mankind to-day, with the mechanical energy now at its disposal, is
+capable of organizing society so that food and shelter be made automatic,
+labour be reduced to a three-hour day, and joy and laughter be made
+universal.&nbsp; And when that is accomplished, not by me but by the
+intelligence of mankind, then I shall make a present to the world of
+a new mechanical energy.&nbsp; This is my discovery.&nbsp; This Energon
+is nothing more nor less than the cosmic energy that resides in the
+solar rays.&nbsp; When it is harnessed by mankind it will do the work
+of the world.&nbsp; There will be no more multitudes of miners slaving
+out their lives in the bowels of the earth, no more sooty firemen and
+greasy engineers.&nbsp; All may dress in white if they so will.&nbsp;
+The work of life will have become play and young and old will be the
+children of joy, and the business of living will become joy; and they
+will compete, one with another, in achieving ethical concepts and spiritual
+heights, in fashioning pictures and songs, and stories, in statecraft
+and beauty craft, in the sweat and the endeavour of the wrestler and
+the runner and the player of games - all will compete, not for sordid
+coin and base material reward, but for the joy that shall be theirs
+in the development and vigour of flesh and in the development and keenness
+of spirit.&nbsp; All will be joy-smiths, and their task shall be to
+beat out laughter from the ringing anvil of life.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;And now one word for the immediate future.&nbsp; On New Year&rsquo;s
+Day all nations shall disarm, all fortresses and war-ships shall be
+dismantled, and all armies shall be disbanded.<br>
+<br>
+GOLIAH.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+On New Year&rsquo;s Day all the world disarmed.&nbsp; The millions of
+soldiers and sailors and workmen in the standing armies, in the navies,
+and in the countless arsenals, machine-shops, and factories for the
+manufacture of war machinery, were dismissed to their homes.&nbsp; These
+many millions of men, as well as their costly war machinery, had hitherto
+been supported on the back of labour.&nbsp; They now went into useful
+occupations, and the released labour giant heaved a mighty sigh of relief.&nbsp;
+The policing of the world was left to the peace officers and was purely
+social, whereas war had been distinctly anti-social.<br>
+<br>
+Ninety per cent. of the crimes against society had been crimes against
+private property.&nbsp; With the passing of private property, at least
+in the means of production, and with the organization of industry that
+gave every man a chance, the crimes against private property practically
+ceased.&nbsp; The police forces everywhere were reduced repeatedly and
+again and again.&nbsp; Nearly all occasional and habitual criminals
+ceased voluntarily from their depredations.&nbsp; There was no longer
+any need for them to commit crime.&nbsp; They merely changed with changing
+conditions.&nbsp; A smaller number of criminals was put into hospitals
+and cured.&nbsp; And the remnant of the hopelessly criminal and degenerate
+was segregated.&nbsp; And the courts in all countries were likewise
+decreased in number again and again.&nbsp; Ninety-five per cent. of
+all civil cases had been squabbles over property, conflicts of property-rights,
+lawsuits, contests of wills, breaches of contract, bankruptcies, etc.&nbsp;
+With the passing of private property, this ninety-five per cent. of
+the cases that cluttered the courts also passed.&nbsp; The courts became
+shadows, attenuated ghosts, rudimentary vestiges of the anarchistic
+times that had preceded the coming of Goliah.<br>
+<br>
+The year 1925 was a lively year in the world&rsquo;s history.&nbsp;
+Goliah ruled the world with a strong hand.&nbsp; Kings and emperors
+journeyed to Palgrave Island, saw the wonders of Energon, and went away,
+with the fear of death in their hearts, to abdicate thrones and crowns
+and hereditary licenses.&nbsp; When Goliah spoke to politicians (so-called
+&ldquo;statesmen&rdquo;), they obeyed . . . or died.&nbsp; He dictated
+universal reforms, dissolved refractory parliaments, and to the great
+conspiracy that was formed of mutinous money lords and captains of industry
+he sent his destroying angels.&nbsp; &ldquo;The time is past for fooling,&rdquo;
+he told them.&nbsp; &ldquo;You are anachronisms.&nbsp; You stand in
+the way of humanity.&nbsp; To the scrap-heap with you.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+To those that protested, and they were many, he said: &ldquo;This is
+no time for logomachy.&nbsp; You can argue for centuries.&nbsp; It is
+what you have done in the past.&nbsp; I have no time for argument.&nbsp;
+Get out of the way.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+With the exception of putting a stop to war, and of indicating the broad
+general plan, Goliah did nothing.&nbsp; By putting the fear of death
+into the hearts of those that sat in the high places and obstructed
+progress, Goliah made the opportunity for the unshackled intelligence
+of the best social thinkers of the world to exert itself.&nbsp; Goliah
+left all the multitudinous details of reconstruction to these social
+thinkers.&nbsp; He wanted them to prove that they were able to do it,
+and they proved it.&nbsp; It was due to their initiative that the white
+plague was stamped out from the world.&nbsp; It was due to them, and
+in spite of a deal of protesting from the sentimentalists, that all
+the extreme hereditary inefficients were segregated and denied marriage.<br>
+<br>
+Goliah had nothing whatever to do with the instituting of the colleges
+of invention.&nbsp; This idea originated practically simultaneously
+in the minds of thousands of social thinkers.&nbsp; The time was ripe
+for the realization of the idea, and everywhere arose the splendid institutions
+of invention.&nbsp; For the first time the ingenuity of man was loosed
+upon the problem of simplifying life, instead of upon the making of
+money-earning devices.&nbsp; The affairs of life, such as house-cleaning,
+dish and window-washing, dust-removing, and scrubbing and clothes-washing,
+and all the endless sordid and necessary details, were simplified by
+invention until they became automatic.&nbsp; We of to-day cannot realize
+the barbarously filthy and slavish lives of those that lived prior to
+1925.<br>
+<br>
+The international government of the world was another idea that sprang
+simultaneously into the minds of thousands.&nbsp; The successful realization
+of this idea was a surprise to many, but as a surprise it was nothing
+to that received by the mildly protestant sociologists and biologists
+when irrefutable facts exploded the doctrine of Malthus.&nbsp; With
+leisure and joy in the world; with an immensely higher standard of living;
+and with the enormous spaciousness of opportunity for recreation, development,
+and pursuit of beauty and nobility and all the higher attributes, the
+birth-rate fell, and fell astoundingly.&nbsp; People ceased breeding
+like cattle.&nbsp; And better than that, it was immediately noticeable
+that a higher average of children was being born.&nbsp; The doctrine
+of Malthus was knocked into a cocked hat - or flung to the scrap-heap,
+as Goliah would have put it.<br>
+<br>
+All that Goliah had predicted that the intelligence of mankind could
+accomplish with the mechanical energy at its disposal, came to pass.&nbsp;
+Human dissatisfaction practically disappeared.&nbsp; The elderly people
+were the great grumblers; but when they were honourably pensioned by
+society, as they passed the age limit for work, the great majority ceased
+grumbling.&nbsp; They found themselves better off in their idle old
+days under the new regime, enjoying vastly more pleasure and comforts
+than they had in their busy and toilsome youth under the old regime.&nbsp;
+The younger generation had easily adapted itself too the changed order,
+and the very young had never known anything else.&nbsp; The sum of human
+happiness had increased enormously.&nbsp; The world had become gay and
+sane.&nbsp; Even the old fogies of professors of sociology, who had
+opposed with might and main the coming of the new regime, made no complaint.&nbsp;
+They were a score of times better remunerated than in the old days,
+and they were not worked nearly so hard.&nbsp; Besides, they were busy
+revising sociology and writing new text-books on the subject.&nbsp;
+Here and there, it is true, there were atavisms, men who yearned for
+the flesh-pots and cannibal-feasts of the old alleged &ldquo;individualism,&rdquo;
+creatures long of teeth and savage of claw who wanted to prey upon their
+fellow-men; but they were looked upon as diseased, and were treated
+in hospitals.&nbsp; A small remnant, however, proved incurable, and
+was confined in asylums and denied marriage.&nbsp; Thus there was no
+progeny to inherit their atavistic tendencies.<br>
+<br>
+As the years went by, Goliah dropped out of the running of the world.&nbsp;
+There was nothing for him to run.&nbsp; The world was running itself,
+and doing it smoothly and beautifully.&nbsp; In 1937, Goliah made his
+long-promised present of Energon to the world.&nbsp; He himself had
+devised a thousand ways in which the little giant should do the work
+of the world - all of which he made public at the same time.&nbsp; But
+instantly the colleges of invention seized upon Energon and utilized
+it in a hundred thousand additional ways.&nbsp; In fact, as Goliah confessed
+in his letter of March 1938, the colleges of invention cleared up several
+puzzling features of Energon that had baffled him during the preceding
+years.&nbsp; With the introduction of the use of Energon the two-hour
+work-day was cut down almost to nothing.&nbsp; As Goliah had predicted,
+work indeed became play.&nbsp; And, so tremendous was man&rsquo;s productive
+capacity, due to Energon and the rational social utilization of it,
+that the humblest citizen enjoyed leisure and time and opportunity for
+an immensely greater abundance of living than had the most favoured
+under the old anarchistic system.<br>
+<br>
+Nobody had ever seen Goliah, and all peoples began to clamour for their
+saviour to appear.&nbsp; While the world did not minimize his discovery
+of Energon, it was decided that greater than that was his wide social
+vision.&nbsp; He was a superman, a scientific superman; and the curiosity
+of the world to see him had become wellnigh unbearable.&nbsp; It was
+in 1941, after much hesitancy on his part, that he finally emerged from
+Palgrave Island.&nbsp; He arrived on June 6 in San Francisco, and for
+the first time, since his retirement to Palgrave Island, the world looked
+upon his face.&nbsp; And the world was disappointed.&nbsp; Its imagination
+had been touched.&nbsp; An heroic figure had been made out of Goliah.&nbsp;
+He was the man, or the demi-god, rather, who had turned the planet over.&nbsp;
+The deeds of Alexander, C&aelig;sar, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon were
+as the play of babes alongside his colossal achievements.<br>
+<br>
+And ashore in San Francisco and through its streets stepped and rode
+a little old man, sixty-five years of age, well preserved, with a pink-and-white
+complexion and a bald spot on his head the size of an apple.&nbsp; He
+was short-sighted and wore spectacles.&nbsp; But when the spectacles
+were removed, his were quizzical blue eyes like a child&rsquo;s, filled
+with mild wonder at the world.&nbsp; Also his eyes had a way of twinkling,
+accompanied by a screwing up of the face, as if he laughed at the huge
+joke he had played upon the world, trapping it, in spite of itself,
+into happiness and laughter.<br>
+<br>
+For a scientific superman and world tyrant, he had remarkable weaknesses.&nbsp;
+He loved sweets, and was inordinately fond of salted almonds and salted
+pecans, especially of the latter.&nbsp; He always carried a paper bag
+of them in his pocket, and he had a way of saying frequently that the
+chemism of his nature demanded such fare.&nbsp; Perhaps his most astonishing
+failing was cats.&nbsp; He had an ineradicable aversion to that domestic
+animal.&nbsp; It will be remembered that he fainted dead away with sudden
+fright, while speaking in Brotherhood Palace, when the janitor&rsquo;s
+cat walked out upon the stage and brushed against his legs.<br>
+<br>
+But no sooner had he revealed himself to the world than he was identified.&nbsp;
+Old-time friends had no difficulty in recognizing him as Percival Stultz,
+the German-American who, in 1898, had worked in the Union Iron Works,
+and who, for two years at that time, had been secretary of Branch 369
+of the International Brotherhood of Machinists.&nbsp; It was in 1901,
+then twenty-five years of age, that he had taken special scientific
+courses at the University of California, at the same time supporting
+himself by soliciting what was then known as &ldquo;life insurance.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+His records as a student are preserved in the university museum, and
+they are unenviable.&nbsp; He is remembered by the professors he sat
+under chiefly for his absent-mindedness.&nbsp; Undoubtedly, even then,
+he was catching glimpses of the wide visions that later were to be his.<br>
+<br>
+His naming himself &ldquo;Goliah&rdquo; and shrouding himself in mystery
+was his little joke, he later explained.&nbsp; As Goliah, or any other
+thing like that, he said, he was able to touch the imagination of the
+world and turn it over; but as Percival Stultz, wearing side-whiskers
+and spectacles, and weighing one hundred and eighteen pounds, he would
+have been unable to turn over a pecan - &ldquo;not even a salted pecan.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+But the world quickly got over its disappointment in his personal appearance
+and antecedents.&nbsp; It knew him and revered him as the master-mind
+of the ages; and it loved him for himself, for his quizzical short-sighted
+eyes and the inimitable way in which he screwed up his face when he
+laughed; it loved him for his simplicity and comradeship and warm humanness,
+and for his fondness for salted pecans and his aversion to cats.&nbsp;
+And to-day, in the wonder-city of Asgard, rises in awful beauty that
+monument to him that dwarfs the pyramids and all the monstrous blood-stained
+monuments of antiquity.&nbsp; And on that monument, as all know, is
+inscribed in imperishable bronze the prophecy and the fulfilment: &ldquo;ALL
+WILL BE JOY-SMITHS, AND THEIR TASK SHALL BE TO BEAT OUT LAUGHTER FROM
+THE RINGING ANVIL OF LIFE.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+[EDITORIAL NOTE. - This remarkable production is the work of Harry Beckwith,
+a student in the Lowell High School of San Francisco, and it is here
+reproduced chiefly because of the youth of its author.&nbsp; Far be
+it from our policy to burden our readers with ancient history; and when
+it is known that Harry Beckwith was only fifteen when the fore-going
+was written, our motive will be understood.&nbsp; &ldquo;Goliah&rdquo;
+won the Premier for high school composition in 2254, and last year Harry
+Beckwith took advantage of the privilege earned, by electing to spend
+six months in Asgard.&nbsp; The wealth of historical detail, the atmosphere
+of the times, and the mature style of the composition are especially
+noteworthy in one so young.]<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE GOLDEN POPPY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+I have a poppy field.&nbsp; That is, by the grace of God and the good-nature
+of editors, I am enabled to place each month divers gold pieces into
+a clerical gentleman&rsquo;s hands, and in return for said gold pieces
+I am each month reinvested with certain proprietary-rights in a poppy
+field.&nbsp; This field blazes on the rim of the Piedmont Hills.&nbsp;
+Beneath lies all the world.&nbsp; In the distance, across the silver
+sweep of bay, San Francisco smokes on her many hills like a second Rome.&nbsp;
+Not far away, Mount Tamalpais thrusts a rugged shoulder into the sky;
+and midway between is the Golden Gate, where sea mists love to linger.&nbsp;
+From the poppy field we often see the shimmering blue of the Pacific
+beyond, and the busy ships that go for ever out and in.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;We shall have great joy in our poppy field,&rdquo; said Bess.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;how the poor city folk will envy when
+they come to see us, and how we will make all well again when we send
+them off with great golden armfuls!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;But those things will have to come down,&rdquo; I added, pointing
+to numerous obtrusive notices (relics of the last tenant) displayed
+conspicuously along the boundaries, and bearing, each and all, this
+legend:<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;<i>Private Grounds.&nbsp; No Trespassing.</i>&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Why should we refuse the poor city folk a ramble over our field,
+because, forsooth, they have not the advantage of our acquaintance?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;How I abhor such things,&rdquo; said Bess; &ldquo;the arrogant
+symbols of power.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;They disgrace human nature,&rdquo; said I.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;They shame the generous landscape,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and
+they are abominable.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Piggish!&rdquo; quoth I, hotly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Down with them!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+We looked forward to the coming of the poppies, did Bess and I, looked
+forward as only creatures of the city may look who have been long denied.&nbsp;
+I have forgotten to mention the existence of a house above the poppy
+field, a squat and wandering bungalow in which we had elected to forsake
+town traditions and live in fresher and more vigorous ways.&nbsp; The
+first poppies came, orange-yellow and golden in the standing grain,
+and we went about gleefully, as though drunken with their wine, and
+told each other that the poppies were there.&nbsp; We laughed at unexpected
+moments, in the midst of silences, and at times grew ashamed and stole
+forth secretly to gaze upon our treasury.&nbsp; But when the great wave
+of poppy-flame finally spilled itself down the field, we shouted aloud,
+and danced, and clapped our hands, freely and frankly mad.<br>
+<br>
+And then came the Goths.&nbsp; My face was in a lather, the time of
+the first invasion, and I suspended my razor in mid-air to gaze out
+on my beloved field.&nbsp; At the far end I saw a little girl and a
+little boy, their arms filled with yellow spoil.&nbsp; Ah, thought I,
+an unwonted benevolence burgeoning, what a delight to me is their delight!&nbsp;
+It is sweet that children should pick poppies in my field.&nbsp; All
+summer shall they pick poppies in my field.&nbsp; But they must be little
+children, I added as an afterthought, and they must pick from the lower
+end - this last prompted by a glance at the great golden fellows nodding
+in the wheat beneath my window.&nbsp; Then the razor descended.&nbsp;
+Shaving was always an absorbing task, and I did not glance out of the
+window again until the operation was completed.&nbsp; And then I was
+bewildered.&nbsp; Surely this was not my poppy field.&nbsp; No - and
+yes, for there were the tall pines clustering austerely together on
+one side, the magnolia tree burdened with bloom, and the Japanese quinces
+splashing the driveway hedge with blood.&nbsp; Yes, it was the field,
+but no wave of poppy-flame spilled down it, nor did the great golden
+fellows nod in the wheat beneath my window.&nbsp; I rushed into a jacket
+and out of the house.&nbsp; In the far distance were disappearing two
+huge balls of colour, orange and yellow, for all the world like perambulating
+poppies of cyclopean breed.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Johnny,&rdquo; said I to the nine-year-old son of my sister,
+&ldquo;Johnny, whenever little girls come into our field to pick poppies,
+you must go down to them, and in a very quiet and gentlemanly manner,
+tell them it is not allowed.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Warm days came, and the sun drew another blaze from the free-bosomed
+earth.&nbsp; Whereupon a neighbour&rsquo;s little girl, at the behest
+of her mother, duly craved and received permission from Bess to gather
+a few poppies for decorative purposes.&nbsp; But of this I was uninformed,
+and when I descried her in the midst of the field I waved my arms like
+a semaphore against the sky.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Little girl!&rdquo; called I.&nbsp; &ldquo;Little girl!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The little girl&rsquo;s legs blurred the landscape as she fled, and
+in high elation I sought Bess to tell of the potency of my voice.&nbsp;
+Nobly she came to the rescue, departing forthwith on an expedition of
+conciliation and explanation to the little girl&rsquo;s mother.&nbsp;
+But to this day the little girl seeks cover at sight of me, and I know
+the mother will never be as cordial as she would otherwise have been.<br>
+<br>
+Came dark, overcast days, stiff, driving winds, and pelting rains, day
+on day, without end, and the city folk cowered in their dwelling-places
+like flood-beset rats; and like rats, half-drowned and gasping, when
+the weather cleared they crawled out and up the green Piedmont slopes
+to bask in the blessed sunshine.&nbsp; And they invaded my field in
+swarms and droves, crushing the sweet wheat into the earth and with
+lustful hands ripping the poppies out by the roots.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I shall put up the warnings against trespassing,&rdquo; I said.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bess, with a sigh.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid
+it is necessary.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The day was yet young when she sighed again:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid, O Man, that your signs are of no avail.&nbsp;
+People have forgotten how to read, these days.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+I went out on the porch.&nbsp; A city nymph, in cool summer gown and
+picture hat, paused before one of my newly reared warnings and read
+it through with care.&nbsp; Profound deliberation characterized her
+movements.&nbsp; She was statuesquely tall, but with a toss of the head
+and a flirt of the skirt she dropped on hands and knees, crawled under
+the fence, and came to her feet on the inside with poppies in both her
+hands.&nbsp; I walked down the drive and talked ethically to her, and
+she went away.&nbsp; Then I put up more signs.<br>
+<br>
+At one time, years ago, these hills were carpeted with poppies.&nbsp;
+As between the destructive forces and the will &ldquo;to live,&rdquo;
+the poppies maintained an equilibrium with their environment.&nbsp;
+But the city folk constituted a new and terrible destructive force,
+the equilibrium was overthrown, and the poppies wellnigh perished.&nbsp;
+Since the city folk plucked those with the longest stems and biggest
+bowls, and since it is the law of kind to procreate kind, the long-stemmed,
+big-bowled poppies failed to go to seed, and a stunted, short-stemmed
+variety remained to the hills.&nbsp; And not only was it stunted and
+short-stemmed, but sparsely distributed as well.&nbsp; Each day and
+every day, for years and years, the city folk swarmed over the Piedmont
+Hills, and only here and there did the genius of the race survive in
+the form of miserable little flowers, close-clinging and quick-blooming,
+like children of the slums dragged hastily and precariously through
+youth to a shrivelled and futile maturity.<br>
+<br>
+On the other hand, the poppies had prospered in my field; and not only
+had they been sheltered from the barbarians, but also from the birds.&nbsp;
+Long ago the field was sown in wheat, which went to seed unharvested
+each year, and in the cool depths of which the poppy seeds were hidden
+from the keen-eyed songsters.&nbsp; And further, climbing after the
+sun through the wheat stalks, the poppies grew taller and taller and
+more royal even than the primordial ones of the open.<br>
+<br>
+So the city folk, gazing from the bare hills to my blazing, burning
+field, were sorely tempted, and, it must be told, as sorely fell.&nbsp;
+But no sorer was their fall than that of my beloved poppies.&nbsp; Where
+the grain holds the dew and takes the bite from the sun the soil is
+moist, and in such soil it is easier to pull the poppies out by the
+roots than to break the stalk.&nbsp; Now the city folk, like other folk,
+are inclined to move along the line of least resistance, and for each
+flower they gathered, there were also gathered many crisp-rolled buds
+and with them all the possibilities and future beauties of the plant
+for all time to come.<br>
+<br>
+One of the city folk, a middle-aged gentleman, with white hands and
+shifty eyes, especially made life interesting for me.&nbsp; We called
+him the &ldquo;Repeater,&rdquo; what of his ways.&nbsp; When from the
+porch we implored him to desist, he was wont slowly and casually to
+direct his steps toward the fence, simulating finely the actions of
+a man who had not heard, but whose walk, instead, had terminated of
+itself or of his own volition.&nbsp; To heighten this effect, now and
+again, still casually and carelessly, he would stoop and pluck another
+poppy.&nbsp; Thus did he deceitfully save himself the indignity of being
+put out, and rob us of the satisfaction of putting him out, but he came,
+and he came often, each time getting away with an able-bodied man&rsquo;s
+share of plunder.<br>
+<br>
+It is not good to be of the city folk.&nbsp; Of this I am convinced.&nbsp;
+There is something in the mode of life that breeds an alarming condition
+of blindness and deafness, or so it seems with the city folk that come
+to my poppy field.&nbsp; Of the many to whom I have talked ethically
+not one has been found who ever saw the warnings so conspicuously displayed,
+while of those called out to from the porch, possibly one in fifty has
+heard.&nbsp; Also, I have discovered that the relation of city folk
+to country flowers is quite analogous to that of a starving man to food.&nbsp;
+No more than the starving man realizes that five pounds of meat is not
+so good as an ounce, do they realize that five hundred poppies crushed
+and bunched are less beautiful than two or three in a free cluster,
+where the green leaves and golden bowls may expand to their full loveliness.<br>
+<br>
+Less forgivable than the unaesthetic are the mercenary.&nbsp; Hordes
+of young rascals plunder me and rob the future that they may stand on
+street corners and retail &ldquo;California poppies, only five cents
+a bunch!&rdquo;&nbsp; In spite of my precautions some of them made a
+dollar a day out of my field.&nbsp; One horde do I remember with keen
+regret.&nbsp; Reconnoitring for a possible dog, they applied at the
+kitchen door for &ldquo;a drink of water, please.&rdquo;&nbsp; While
+they drank they were besought not to pick any flowers.&nbsp; They nodded,
+wiped their mouths, and proceeded to take themselves off by the side
+of the bungalow.&nbsp; They smote the poppy field beneath my windows,
+spread out fan-shaped six wide, picking with both hands, and ripped
+a swath of destruction through the very heart of the field.&nbsp; No
+cyclone travelled faster or destroyed more completely.&nbsp; I shouted
+after them, but they sped on the wings of the wind, great regal poppies,
+broken-stalked and mangled, trailing after them or cluttering their
+wake - the most high-handed act of piracy, I am confident, ever committed
+off the high seas.<br>
+<br>
+One day I went a-fishing, and on that day a woman entered the field.&nbsp;
+Appeals and remonstrances from the porch having no effect upon her,
+Bess despatched a little girl to beg of her to pick no more poppies.&nbsp;
+The woman calmly went on picking.&nbsp; Then Bess herself went down
+through the heat of the day.&nbsp; But the woman went on picking, and
+while she picked she discussed property and proprietary rights, denying
+Bess&rsquo;s sovereignty until deeds and documents should be produced
+in proof thereof.&nbsp; And all the time she went on picking, never
+once overlooking her hand.&nbsp; She was a large woman, belligerent
+of aspect, and Bess was only a woman and not prone to fisticuffs.&nbsp;
+So the invader picked until she could pick no more, said &ldquo;Good-day,&rdquo;
+and sailed majestically away.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;People have really grown worse in the last several years, I think,&rdquo;
+said Bess to me in a tired sort of voice that night, as we sat in the
+library after dinner.<br>
+<br>
+Next day I was inclined to agree with her.&nbsp; &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+a woman and a little girl heading straight for the poppies,&rdquo; said
+May, a maid about the bungalow.&nbsp; I went out on the porch and waited
+their advent.&nbsp; They plunged through the pine trees and into the
+fields, and as the roots of the first poppies were pulled I called to
+them.&nbsp; They were about a hundred feet away.&nbsp; The woman and
+the little girl turned to the sound of my voice and looked at me.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Please do not pick the poppies,&rdquo; I pleaded.&nbsp; They
+pondered this for a minute; then the woman said something in an undertone
+to the little girl, and both backs jack-knifed as the slaughter recommenced.&nbsp;
+I shouted, but they had become suddenly deaf.&nbsp; I screamed, and
+so fiercely that the little girl wavered dubiously.&nbsp; And while
+the woman went on picking I could hear her in low tones heartening the
+little girl.<br>
+<br>
+I recollected a siren whistle with which I was wont to summon Johnny,
+the son of my sister.&nbsp; It was a fearsome thing, of a kind to wake
+the dead, and I blew and blew, but the jack-knifed backs never unclasped.&nbsp;
+I do not mind with men, but I have never particularly favoured physical
+encounters with women; yet this woman, who encouraged a little girl
+in iniquity, tempted me.<br>
+<br>
+I went into the bungalow and fetched my rifle.&nbsp; Flourishing it
+in a sanguinary manner and scowling fearsomely, I charged upon the invaders.&nbsp;
+The little girl fled, screaming, to the shelter of the pines, but the
+woman calmly went on picking.&nbsp; She took not the least notice.&nbsp;
+I had expected her to run at sight of me, and it was embarrassing.&nbsp;
+There was I, charging down the field like a wild bull upon a woman who
+would not get out of the way.&nbsp; I could only slow down, supremely
+conscious of how ridiculous it all was.&nbsp; At a distance of ten feet
+she straightened up and deigned to look at me.&nbsp; I came to a halt
+and blushed to the roots of my hair.&nbsp; Perhaps I really did frighten
+her (I sometimes try to persuade myself that this is so), or perhaps
+she took pity on me; but, at any rate, she stalked out of my field with
+great composure, nay, majesty, her arms brimming with orange and gold.<br>
+<br>
+Nevertheless, thenceforward I saved my lungs and flourished my rifle.&nbsp;
+Also, I made fresh generalizations.&nbsp; To commit robbery women take
+advantage of their sex.&nbsp; Men have more respect for property than
+women.&nbsp; Men are less insistent in crime than women.&nbsp; And women
+are less afraid of guns than men.&nbsp; Likewise, we conquer the earth
+in hazard and battle by the virtues of our mothers.&nbsp; We are a race
+of land-robbers and sea-robbers, we Anglo-Saxons, and small wonder,
+when we suckle at the breasts of a breed of women such as maraud my
+poppy field.<br>
+<br>
+Still the pillage went on.&nbsp; Sirens and gun-flourishings were without
+avail.&nbsp; The city folk were great of heart and undismayed, and I
+noted the habit of &ldquo;repeating&rdquo; was becoming general.&nbsp;
+What booted it how often they were driven forth if each time they were
+permitted to carry away their ill-gotten plunder?&nbsp; When one has
+turned the same person away twice and thrice an emotion arises somewhat
+akin to homicide.&nbsp; And when one has once become conscious of this
+sanguinary feeling his whole destiny seems to grip hold of him and drag
+him into the abyss.&nbsp; More than once I found myself unconsciously
+pulling the rifle into position to get a sight on the miserable trespassers.&nbsp;
+In my sleep I slew them in manifold ways and threw their carcasses into
+the reservoir.&nbsp; Each day the temptation to shoot them in the legs
+became more luring, and every day I felt my fate calling to me imperiously.&nbsp;
+Visions of the gallows rose up before me, and with the hemp about my
+neck I saw stretched out the pitiless future of my children, dark with
+disgrace and shame.&nbsp; I became afraid of myself, and Bess went about
+with anxious face, privily beseeching my friends to entice me into taking
+a vacation.&nbsp; Then, and at the last gasp, came the thought that
+saved me:<i> Why not confiscate</i>?&nbsp; If their forays were bootless,
+in the nature of things their forays would cease.<br>
+<br>
+The first to enter my field thereafter was a man.<br>
+<br>
+I was waiting for him&nbsp; And, oh joy! it was the &ldquo;Repeater&rdquo;
+himself, smugly complacent with knowledge of past success.&nbsp; I dropped
+the rifle negligently across the hollow of my arm and went down to him.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I am sorry to trouble you for those poppies,&rdquo; I said in
+my oiliest tones; &ldquo;but really, you know, I must have them.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+He regarded me speechlessly.&nbsp; It must have made a great picture.&nbsp;
+It surely was dramatic.&nbsp; With the rifle across my arm and my suave
+request still ringing in my ears, I felt like Black Bart, and Jesse
+James, and Jack Sheppard, and Robin Hood, and whole generations of highwaymen.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; I said, a little sharply and in what I imagined
+was the true fashion; &ldquo;I am sorry to inconvenience you, believe
+me, but I must have those poppies.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+I absently shifted the gun and smiled.&nbsp; That fetched him.&nbsp;
+Without a word he passed them over and turned his toes toward the fence,
+but no longer casual and careless was his carriage, I nor did he stoop
+to pick the occasional poppy by the way.&nbsp; That was the last of
+the &ldquo;Repeater.&rdquo;&nbsp; I could see by his eyes that he did
+not like me, and his back reproached me all the way down the field and
+out of sight.<br>
+<br>
+From that day the bungalow has been flooded with poppies.&nbsp; Every
+vase and earthen jar is filled with them.&nbsp; They blaze on every
+mantel and run riot through all the rooms.&nbsp; I present them to my
+friends in huge bunches, and still the kind city folk come and gather
+more for me.&nbsp; &ldquo;Sit down for a moment,&rdquo; I say to the
+departing guest.&nbsp; And there we sit in the shade of the porch while
+aspiring city creatures pluck my poppies and sweat under the brazen
+sun.&nbsp; And when their arms are sufficiently weighted with my yellow
+glories, I go down with the rifle over my arm and disburden them.&nbsp;
+Thus have I become convinced that every situation has its compensations.<br>
+<br>
+Confiscation was successful, so far as it went; but I had forgotten
+one thing; namely, the vast number of the city folk.&nbsp; Though the
+old transgressors came no more, new ones arrived every day, and I found
+myself confronted with the titanic task of educating a whole cityful
+to the inexpediency of raiding my poppy field.&nbsp; During the process
+of disburdening them I was accustomed to explaining my side of the case,
+but I soon gave this over.&nbsp; It was a waste of breath.&nbsp; They
+could not understand.&nbsp; To one lady, who insinuated that I was miserly,
+I said:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;My dear madam, no hardship is worked upon you.&nbsp; Had I not
+been parsimonious yesterday and the day before, these poppies would
+have been picked by the city hordes of that day and the day before,
+and your eyes, which to-day have discovered this field, would have beheld
+no poppies at all.&nbsp; The poppies you may not pick to-day are the
+poppies I did not permit to be picked yesterday and the day before.&nbsp;
+Therefore, believe me, you are denied nothing.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;But the poppies are here to-day,&rdquo; she said, glaring carnivorously
+upon their glow and splendour.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I will pay you for them,&rdquo; said a gentleman, at another
+time.&nbsp; (I had just relieved him of an armful.)&nbsp; I felt a sudden
+shame, I know not why, unless it be that his words had just made clear
+to me that a monetary as well as an aesthetic value was attached to
+my flowers.&nbsp; The apparent sordidness of my position overwhelmed
+me, and I said weakly: &ldquo;I do not sell my poppies.&nbsp; You may
+have what you have picked.&rdquo;&nbsp; But before the week was out
+I confronted the same gentleman again.&nbsp; &ldquo;I will pay you for
+them,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you may
+pay me for them.&nbsp; Twenty dollars, please.&rdquo;&nbsp; He gasped,
+looked at me searchingly, gasped again, and silently and sadly put the
+poppies down.&nbsp; But it remained, as usual, for a woman to attain
+the sheerest pitch of audacity.&nbsp; When I declined payment and demanded
+my plucked beauties, she refused to give them up.&nbsp; &ldquo;I picked
+these poppies,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and my time is worth money.&nbsp;
+When you have paid me for my time you may have them.&rdquo;&nbsp; Her
+cheeks flamed rebellion, and her face, withal a pretty one, was set
+and determined.&nbsp; Now, I was a man of the hill tribes, and she a
+mere woman of the city folk, and though it is not my inclination to
+enter into details, it is my pleasure to state that that bunch of poppies
+subsequently glorified the bungalow and that the woman departed to the
+city unpaid.&nbsp; Anyway, they were my poppies.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;They are God&rsquo;s poppies,&rdquo; said the Radiant Young Radical,
+democratically shocked at sight of me turning city folk out of my field.&nbsp;
+And for two weeks she hated me with a deathless hatred.&nbsp; I sought
+her out and explained.&nbsp; I explained at length.&nbsp; I told the
+story of the poppy as Maeterlinck has told the life of the bee.&nbsp;
+I treated the question biologically, psychologically, and sociologically,
+I discussed it ethically and aesthetically.&nbsp; I grew warm over it,
+and impassioned; and when I had done, she professed conversion, but
+in my heart of hearts I knew it to be compassion.&nbsp; I fled to other
+friends for consolation.&nbsp; I retold the story of the poppy.&nbsp;
+They did not appear supremely interested.&nbsp; I grew excited.&nbsp;
+They were surprised and pained.&nbsp; They looked at me curiously.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It ill-befits your dignity to squabble over poppies,&rdquo; they
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is unbecoming.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+I fled away to yet other friends.&nbsp; I sought vindication.&nbsp;
+The thing had become vital, and I needs must put myself right.&nbsp;
+I felt called upon to explain, though well knowing that he who explains
+is lost.&nbsp; I told the story of the poppy over again.&nbsp; I went
+into the minutest details.&nbsp; I added to it, and expanded.&nbsp;
+I talked myself hoarse, and when I could talk no more they looked bored.&nbsp;
+Also, they said insipid things, and soothful things, and things concerning
+other things, and not at all to the point.&nbsp; I was consumed with
+anger, and there and then I renounced them all.<br>
+<br>
+At the bungalow I lie in wait for chance visitors.&nbsp; Craftily I
+broach the subject, watching their faces closely the while to detect
+first signs of disapprobation, whereupon I empty long-stored vials of
+wrath upon their heads.&nbsp; I wrangle for hours with whosoever does
+not say I am right.&nbsp; I am become like Guy de Maupassant&rsquo;s
+old man who picked up a piece of string.&nbsp; I am incessantly explaining,
+and nobody will understand.&nbsp; I have become more brusque in my treatment
+of the predatory city folk.&nbsp; No longer do I take delight in their
+disburdenment, for it has become an onerous duty, a wearisome and distasteful
+task.&nbsp; My friends look askance and murmur pityingly on the side
+when we meet in the city.&nbsp; They rarely come to see me now.&nbsp;
+They are afraid.&nbsp; I am an embittered and disappointed man, and
+all the light seems to have gone out of my life and into my blazing
+field.&nbsp; So one pays for things.<br>
+<br>
+PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.<br>
+<i>April </i>1902.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE SHRINKAGE OF THE PLANET<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+What a tremendous affair it was, the world of Homer, with its indeterminate
+boundaries, vast regions, and immeasurable distances.&nbsp; The Mediterranean
+and the Euxine were illimitable stretches of ocean waste over which
+years could be spent in endless wandering.&nbsp; On their mysterious
+shores were the improbable homes of impossible peoples.&nbsp; The Great
+Sea, the Broad Sea, the Boundless Sea; the Ethiopians, &ldquo;dwelling
+far away, the most distant of men,&rdquo; and the Cimmerians, &ldquo;covered
+with darkness and cloud,&rdquo; where &ldquo;baleful night is spread
+over timid mortals.&rdquo;&nbsp; Ph&oelig;nicia was a sore journey,
+Egypt simply unattainable, while the Pillars of Hercules marked the
+extreme edge of the universe.&nbsp; Ulysses was nine days in sailing
+from Ismarus the city of the Ciconians, to the country of the Lotus-eaters
+- a period of time which to-day would breed anxiety in the hearts of
+the underwriters should it be occupied by the slowest tramp steamer
+in traversing the Mediterranean and Black Seas from Gibraltar to Sebastopol.<br>
+<br>
+Homer&rsquo;s world, restricted to less than a drummer&rsquo;s circuit,
+was nevertheless immense, surrounded by a thin veneer of universe -
+the Stream of Ocean.&nbsp; But how it has shrunk!&nbsp; To-day, precisely
+charted, weighed, and measured, a thousand times larger than the world
+of Homer, it is become a tiny speck, gyrating to immutable law through
+a universe the bounds of which have been pushed incalculably back.&nbsp;
+The light of Algol shines upon it - a light which travels at one hundred
+and ninety thousand miles per second, yet requires forty-seven years
+to reach its destination.&nbsp; And the denizens of this puny ball have
+come to know that Algol possesses an invisible companion, three and
+a quarter millions of miles away, and that the twain move in their respective
+orbits at rates of fifty-five and twenty-six miles per second.&nbsp;
+They also know that beyond it are great chasms of space, innumerable
+worlds, and vast star systems.<br>
+<br>
+While much of the shrinkage to which the planet has been subjected is
+due to the increased knowledge of mathematics and physics, an equal,
+if not greater, portion may be ascribed to the perfection of the means
+of locomotion and communication.&nbsp; The enlargement of stellar space,
+demonstrating with stunning force the insignificance of the earth, has
+been negative in its effect; but the quickening of travel and intercourse,
+by making the earth&rsquo;s parts accessible and knitting them together,
+has been positive.<br>
+<br>
+The advantage of the animal over the vegetable kingdom is obvious.&nbsp;
+The cabbage, should its environment tend to become worse, must live
+it out, or die; the rabbit may move on in quest of a better.&nbsp; But,
+after all, the swift-footed creatures are circumscribed in their wanderings.&nbsp;
+The first large river almost inevitably bars their way, and certainly
+the first salt sea becomes an impassable obstacle.&nbsp; Better locomotion
+may be classed as one of the prime aims of the old natural selection;
+for in that primordial day the race was to the swift as surely as the
+battle to the strong.&nbsp; But man, already pre-eminent in the common
+domain because of other faculties, was not content with the one form
+of locomotion afforded by his lower limbs.&nbsp; He swam in the sea,
+and, still better, becoming aware of the buoyant virtues of wood, learned
+to navigate its surface.&nbsp; Likewise, from among the land animals
+he chose the more likely to bear him and his burdens.&nbsp; The next
+step was the domestication of these useful aids.&nbsp; Here, in its
+organic significance, natural selection ceased to concern itself with
+locomotion.&nbsp; Man had displayed his impatience at her tedious methods
+and his own superiority in the hastening of affairs.&nbsp; Thenceforth
+he must depend upon himself, and faster-swimming or faster-running men
+ceased to be bred.&nbsp; The one, half-amphibian, breasting the water
+with muscular arms, could not hope to overtake or escape an enemy who
+propelled a fire-hollowed tree trunk by means of a wooden paddle; nor
+could the other, trusting to his own nimbleness, compete with a foe
+who careered wildly across the plain on the back of a half-broken stallion.<br>
+<br>
+So, in that dim day, man took upon himself the task of increasing his
+dominion over space and time, and right nobly has he acquitted himself.&nbsp;
+Because of it he became a road builder and a bridge builder; likewise,
+he wove clumsy sails of rush and matting.&nbsp; At a very remote period
+he must also have recognized that force moves along the line of least
+resistance, and in virtue thereof, placed upon his craft rude keels
+which enabled him to beat to windward in a seaway.&nbsp; As he excelled
+in these humble arts, just so did he add to his power over his less
+progressive fellows and lay the foundations for the first glimmering
+civilizations - crude they were beyond conception, sporadic and ephemeral,
+but each formed a necessary part of the groundwork upon which was to
+rise the mighty civilization of our latter-day world.<br>
+<br>
+Divorced from the general history of man&rsquo;s upward climb, it would
+seem incredible that so long a time should elapse between the moment
+of his first improvements over nature in the matter of locomotion and
+that of the radical changes he was ultimately to compass.&nbsp; The
+principles which were his before history was, were his, neither more
+nor less, even to the present century.&nbsp; He utilized improved applications,
+but the principles of themselves were ever the same, whether in the
+war chariots of Achilles and Pharaoh or the mail-coach and diligence
+of the European traveller, the cavalry of the Huns or of Prince Rupert,
+the triremes and galleys of Greece and Rome or the East India-men and
+clipper ships of the last century.&nbsp; But when the moment came to
+alter the methods of travel, the change was so sweeping that it may
+be safely classed as a revolution.&nbsp; Though the discovery of steam
+attaches to the honour of the last century, the potency of the new power
+was not felt till the beginning of this.&nbsp; By 1800 small steamers
+were being used for coasting purposes in England; 1830 witnessed the
+opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; while it was not until
+1838 that the Atlantic was first crossed by the steamships <i>Great
+Western </i>and <i>Sirius</i>.&nbsp; In 1869 the East was made next-door
+neighbour to the West.&nbsp; Over almost the same ground where had toiled
+the caravans of a thousand generations, the Suez Canal was dug.&nbsp;
+Clive, during his first trip, was a year and a half <i>en route </i>from
+England to India; were he alive to-day he could journey to Calcutta
+in twenty-two days.&nbsp; After reading De Quincey&rsquo;s hyperbolical
+description of the English mail-coach, one cannot down the desire to
+place that remarkable man on the pilot of the White Mail or of the Twentieth
+Century.<br>
+<br>
+But this tremendous change in the means of locomotion meant far more
+than the mere rapid transit of men from place to place.&nbsp; Until
+then, though its influence and worth cannot be overestimated, commerce
+had eked out a precarious and costly existence.&nbsp; The fortuitous
+played too large a part in the trade of men.&nbsp; The mischances by
+land and sea, the mistakes and delays, were adverse elements of no mean
+proportions.&nbsp; But improved locomotion meant improved carrying,
+and commerce received an impetus as remarkable as it was unexpected.&nbsp;
+In his fondest fancies James Watt could not have foreseen even the approximate
+result of his invention, the Hercules which was to spring from the puny
+child of his brain and hands.&nbsp; An illuminating spectacle, were
+it possible, would be afforded by summoning him from among the Shades
+to a place in the engine-room of an ocean greyhound.&nbsp; The humblest
+trimmer would treat him with the indulgence of a child; while an oiler,
+a greasy nimbus about his head and in his hand, as sceptre, a long-snouted
+can, would indeed appear to him a demigod and ruler of forces beyond
+his ken.<br>
+<br>
+It has ever been the world&rsquo;s dictum that empire and commerce go
+hand in hand.&nbsp; In the past the one was impossible without the other.&nbsp;
+Rome gathered to herself the wealth of the Mediterranean nations, and
+it was only by an unwise distribution of it that she became emasculated
+and lost both power and trade.&nbsp; With a just system of economics
+it is highly probable that for centuries she could have held back the
+welling tide of the Germanic peoples.&nbsp; When upon her ruins rose
+the institutions of the conquering Teutons, commerce slipped away, and
+with it empire.&nbsp; In the present, empire and commerce have become
+interdependent.&nbsp; Such wonders has the industrial revolution wrought
+in a few swift decades, and so great has been the shrinkage of the planet,
+that the industrial nations have long since felt the imperative demand
+for foreign markets.&nbsp; The favoured portions of the earth are occupied.&nbsp;
+From their seats in the temperate zones the militant commercial nations
+proceed to the exploitation of the tropics, and for the possession of
+these they rush to war hot-footed.&nbsp; Like wolves at the end of a
+gorge, they wrangle over the fragments.&nbsp; There are no more planets,
+no more fragments, and they are yet hungry.&nbsp; There are no longer
+Cimmerians and Ethiopians, in wide-stretching lands, awaiting them.&nbsp;
+On either hand they confront the naked poles, and they recoil from unnavigable
+space to an intenser struggle among themselves.&nbsp; And all the while
+the planet shrinks beneath their grasp.<br>
+<br>
+Of this struggle one thing may be safely predicated; a commercial power
+must be a sea power.&nbsp; Upon the control of the sea depends the control
+of trade.&nbsp; Carthage threatened Rome till she lost her navy; and
+then for thirteen days the smoke of her burning rose to the skies, and
+the ground was ploughed and sown with salt on the site of her most splendid
+edifices.&nbsp; The cities of Italy were the world&rsquo;s merchants
+till new trade routes were discovered and the dominion of the sea passed
+on to the west and fell into other hands.&nbsp; Spain and Portugal,
+inaugurating an era of maritime discovery, divided the new world between
+them, but gave way before a breed of sea-rovers, who, after many generations
+of attachment to the soil, had returned to their ancient element.&nbsp;
+With the destruction of her Armada Spain&rsquo;s colossal dream of colonial
+empire passed away.&nbsp; Against the new power Holland strove in vain,
+and when France acknowledged the superiority of the Briton upon the
+sea, she at the same time relinquished her designs upon the world.&nbsp;
+Hampered by her feeble navy, her contest for supremacy upon the land
+was her last effort and with the passing of Napoleon she retired within
+herself to struggle with herself as best she might.&nbsp; For fifty
+years England held undisputed sway upon the sea, controlled markets,
+and domineered trade, laying, during that period, the foundations of
+her empire.&nbsp; Since then other naval powers have arisen, their attitudes
+bearing significantly upon the future; for they have learned that the
+mastery of the world belongs to the masters of the sea.<br>
+<br>
+That many of the phases of this world shrinkage are pathetic, goes without
+question.&nbsp; There is much to condemn in the rise of the economic
+over the imaginative spirit, much for which the energetic Philistine
+can never atone.&nbsp; Perhaps the deepest pathos of all may be found
+in the spectacle of John Ruskin weeping at the profanation of the world
+by the vandalism of the age.&nbsp; Steam launches violate the sanctity
+of the Venetian canals; where Xerxes bridged the Hellespont ply the
+filthy funnels of our modern shipping; electric cars run in the shadow
+of the pyramids; and it was only the other day that Lord Kitchener was
+in a railroad wreck near the site of ancient Luxor.&nbsp; But there
+is always the other side.&nbsp; If the economic man has defiled temples
+and despoiled nature, he has also preserved.&nbsp; He has policed the
+world and parked it, reduced the dangers of life and limb, made the
+tenure of existence less precarious, and rendered a general relapse
+of society impossible.&nbsp; There can never again be an intellectual
+holocaust, such as the burning of the Alexandrian library.&nbsp; Civilizations
+may wax and wane, but the totality of knowledge cannot decrease.&nbsp;
+With the possible exception of a few trade secrets, arts and sciences
+may be discarded, but they can never be lost.&nbsp; And these things
+must remain true until the end of man&rsquo;s time upon the earth.<br>
+<br>
+Up to yesterday communication for any distance beyond the sound of the
+human voice or the sight of the human eye was bound up with locomotion.&nbsp;
+A letter presupposed a carrier.&nbsp; The messenger started with the
+message, and he could not but avail himself of the prevailing modes
+of travel.&nbsp; If the voyage to Australia required four months, four
+months were required for communication; by no known means could this
+time be lessened.&nbsp; But with the advent of the telegraph and telephone,
+communication and locomotion were divorced.&nbsp; In a few hours, at
+most, there could be performed what by the old way would have required
+months.&nbsp; In 1837 the needle telegraph was invented, and nine years
+later the Electric Telegraph Company was formed for the purpose of bringing
+it into general use.&nbsp; Government postal systems also came into
+being, later to consolidate into an international union and to group
+the nations of the earth into a local neighbourhood.&nbsp; The effects
+of all this are obvious, and no fitter illustration may be presented
+than the fact that to-day, in the matter of communication, the Klondike
+is virtually nearer to Boston than was Bunker Hill in the time of Warren.<br>
+<br>
+A contemporaneous and remarkable shrinkage of a vast stretch of territory
+may be instanced in the Northland.&nbsp; From its rise at Lake Linderman
+the Yukon runs twenty-five hundred miles to Bering Sea, traversing an
+almost unknown region, the remote recesses of which had never felt the
+moccasined foot of the pathfinder.&nbsp; At occasional intervals men
+wallowed into its dismal fastnesses, or emerged gaunt and famine-worn.&nbsp;
+But in the fall of 1896 a great gold strike was made - greater than
+any since the days of California and Australia; yet, so rude were the
+means of communication, nearly a year elapsed before the news of it
+reached the eager ear of the world.&nbsp; Passionate pilgrims disembarked
+their outfits at Dyea.&nbsp; Over the terrible Chilcoot Pass the trail
+led to the lakes, thirty miles away.&nbsp; Carriage was yet in its most
+primitive stage, the road builder and bridge builder unheard of.&nbsp;
+With heavy packs upon their backs men plunged waist-deep into hideous
+quagmires, bridged mountain torrents by felling trees across them, toiled
+against the precipitous slopes of the ice-worn mountains, and crossed
+the dizzy faces of innumerable glaciers.&nbsp; When, after incalculable
+toil they reached the lakes, they went into the woods, sawed pine trees
+into lumber by hand, and built it into boats.&nbsp; In these, overloaded,
+unseaworthy, they battled down the long chain of lakes.&nbsp; Within
+the memory of the writer there lingers the picture of a sheltered nook
+on the shores of Lake Le Barge, in which half a thousand gold seekers
+lay storm-bound.&nbsp; Day after day they struggled against the seas
+in the teeth of a northerly gale, and night after night returned to
+their camps, repulsed but not disheartened.&nbsp; At the rapids they
+ran their boats through, hit or miss, and after infinite toil and hardship,
+on the breast of a jarring ice flood, arrived at the Klondike.&nbsp;
+From the beach at Dyea to the eddy below the Barracks at Dawson, they
+had paid for their temerity the tax of human life demanded by the elements.&nbsp;
+A year later, so greatly had the country shrunk, the tourist, on disembarking
+from the ocean steamship, took his seat in a modern railway coach.&nbsp;
+A few hours later, at Lake Bennet, he stepped aboard a commodious river
+steamer.&nbsp; At the rapids he rode around on a tramway to take passage
+on another steamer below.&nbsp; And in a few hours more he was in Dawson,
+without having once soiled the lustre of his civilized foot-gear.&nbsp;
+Did he wish to communicate with the outside world, he strolled into
+the telegraph office.&nbsp; A few short months before he would have
+written a letter and deemed himself favoured above mortals were it delivered
+within the year.<br>
+<br>
+From man&rsquo;s drawing the world closer and closer together, his own
+affairs and institutions have consolidated.&nbsp; Concentration may
+typify the chief movement of the age - concentration, classification,
+order; the reduction of friction between the parts of the social organism.&nbsp;
+The urban tendency of the rural populations led to terrible congestion
+in the great cities.&nbsp; There was stifling and impure air, and lo,
+rapid transit at once attacked the evil.&nbsp; Every great city has
+become but the nucleus of a greater city which surrounds it; the one
+the seat of business, the other the seat of domestic happiness.&nbsp;
+Between the two, night and morning, by electric road, steam railway,
+and bicycle path, ebbs and flows the middle-class population.&nbsp;
+And in the same direction lies the remedy for the tenement evil.&nbsp;
+In the cleansing country air the slum cannot exist.&nbsp; Improvement
+in road-beds and the means of locomotion, a tremor of altruism, a little
+legislation, and the city by day will sleep in the country by night.<br>
+<br>
+What a play-ball has this planet of ours become!&nbsp; Steam has made
+its parts accessible and drawn them closer together.&nbsp; The telegraph
+annihilates space and time.&nbsp; Each morning every part knows what
+every other part is thinking, contemplating, or doing.&nbsp; A discovery
+in a German laboratory is being demonstrated in San Francisco within
+twenty-four hours.&nbsp; A book written in South Africa is published
+by simultaneous copyright in every English-speaking country, and on
+the following day is in the hands of the translators.&nbsp; The death
+of an obscure missionary in China, or of a whisky smuggler in the South
+Seas, is served up, the world over, with the morning toast.&nbsp; The
+wheat output of Argentine or the gold of Klondike is known wherever
+men meet and trade.&nbsp; Shrinkage or centralization has been such
+that the humblest clerk in any metropolis may place his hand on the
+pulse of the world.&nbsp; And because of all this, everywhere is growing
+order and organization.&nbsp; The church, the state; men, women, and
+children; the criminal and the law, the honest man and the thief, industry
+and commerce, capital and labour, the trades and the professions, the
+arts and the sciences - all are organizing for pleasure, profit, policy,
+or intellectual pursuit.&nbsp; They have come to know the strength of
+numbers, solidly phalanxed and driving onward with singleness of purpose.&nbsp;
+These purposes may be various and many, but one and all, ever discovering
+new mutual interests and objects, obeying a law which is beyond them,
+these petty aggregations draw closer together, forming greater aggregations
+and congeries of aggregations.&nbsp; And these, in turn, vaguely merging
+each into each, present glimmering adumbrations of the coming human
+solidarity which shall be man&rsquo;s crowning glory.<br>
+<br>
+OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.<br>
+<i>January </i>1900.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Speaking of homes, I am building one now, and I venture to assert that
+very few homes have received more serious thought in the planning.&nbsp;
+Let me tell you about it.&nbsp; In the first place, there will be no
+grounds whatever, no fences, lawns, nor flowers.&nbsp; Roughly, the
+dimensions will be forty-five feet by fifteen.&nbsp; That is, it will
+be fifteen feet wide at its widest - and, if you will pardon the bull,
+it will be narrower than it is wide.<br>
+<br>
+The details must submit to the general plan of economy.&nbsp; There
+will be no veranda, no porch entrances, no grand staircases.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m
+ashamed to say how steep the stairways are going to be.&nbsp; The bedrooms
+will be seven by seven, and one will be even smaller.&nbsp; A bedroom
+is only good to sleep in, anyway.&nbsp; There will be no hallway, thank
+goodness.&nbsp; Rooms were made to go through.&nbsp; Why a separate
+passage for traffic?<br>
+<br>
+The bath-room will be a trifle larger than the size of the smallest
+bath-tub - it won&rsquo;t require so much work to keep in order.&nbsp;
+The kitchen won&rsquo;t be very much larger, but this will make it easy
+for the cook.&nbsp; In place of a drawing-room, there will be a large
+living-room - fourteen by six.&nbsp; The walls of this room will be
+covered with books, and it can serve as library and smoking-room as
+well.&nbsp; Then, the floor-space not being occupied, we shall use the
+room as a dining-room.&nbsp; Incidentally, such a room not being used
+after bedtime, the cook and the second boy can sleep in it.&nbsp; One
+thing that I am temperamentally opposed to is waste, and why should
+all this splendid room be wasted at night when we do not occupy it?<br>
+<br>
+My ideas are cramped, you say? - Oh, I forgot to tell you that this
+home I am describing is to be a floating home, and that my wife and
+I are to journey around the world in it for the matter of seven years
+or more.&nbsp; I forgot also to state that there will be an engine-room
+in it for a seventy-horse-power engine, a dynamo, storage batteries,
+etc.; tanks for water to last long weeks at sea; space for fifteen hundred
+gallons of gasolene, fire extinguishers, and life-preservers; and a
+great store-room for food, spare sails, anchors, hawsers, tackles, and
+a thousand and one other things.<br>
+<br>
+Since I have not yet built my land house, I haven&rsquo;t got beyond
+a few general ideas, and in presenting them I feel as cocksure as the
+unmarried woman who writes the column in the Sunday supplement on how
+to rear children.&nbsp; My first idea about a house is that it should
+be built to live in.&nbsp; Throughout the house, in all the building
+of it, this should be the paramount idea.&nbsp; It must be granted that
+this idea is lost sight of by countless persons who build houses apparently
+for every purpose under the sun except to live in them.<br>
+<br>
+Perhaps it is because of the practical life I have lived that I worship
+utility and have come to believe that utility and beauty should be one,
+and that there is no utility that need not be beautiful.&nbsp; What
+finer beauty than strength - whether it be airy steel, or massive masonry,
+or a woman&rsquo;s hand?&nbsp; A plain black leather strap is beautiful.&nbsp;
+It is all strength and all utility, and it is beautiful.&nbsp; It efficiently
+performs work in the world, and it is good to look upon.&nbsp; Perhaps
+it is because it is useful that it is beautiful.&nbsp; I do not know.&nbsp;
+I sometimes wonder.<br>
+<br>
+A boat on the sea is beautiful.&nbsp; Yet it is not built for beauty.&nbsp;
+Every graceful line of it is a utility, is designed to perform work.&nbsp;
+It is created for the express purpose of dividing the water in front
+of it, of gliding over the water beneath it, of leaving the water behind
+it - and all with the least possible wastage of stress and friction.&nbsp;
+It is not created for the purpose of filling the eye with beauty.&nbsp;
+It is created for the purpose of moving through the sea and over the
+sea with the smallest resistance and the greatest stability; yet, somehow,
+it does fill the eye with its beauty.&nbsp; And in so far as a boat
+fails in its purpose, by that much does it diminish in beauty.<br>
+<br>
+I am still a long way from the house I have in my mind some day to build,
+yet I have arrived somewhere.&nbsp; I have discovered, to my own satisfaction
+at any rate, that beauty and utility should be one.&nbsp; In applying
+this general idea to the building of a house, it may be stated, in another
+and better way; namely, construction and decoration must be one.&nbsp;
+This idea is more important than the building of the house, for without
+the idea the house so built is certain to be an insult to intelligence
+and beauty-love.<br>
+<br>
+I bought a house in a hurry in the city of Oakland some time ago.&nbsp;
+I do not live in it.&nbsp; I sleep in it half a dozen times a year.&nbsp;
+I do not love the house.&nbsp; I am hurt every time I look at it.&nbsp;
+No drunken rowdy or political enemy can insult me so deeply as that
+house does.&nbsp; Let me tell you why.&nbsp; It is an ordinary two-storey
+frame house.&nbsp; After it was built, the criminal that constructed
+it nailed on, at the corners perpendicularly, some two-inch fluted planks.&nbsp;
+These planks rise the height of the house, and to a drunken man have
+the appearance of fluted columns.&nbsp; To complete the illusion in
+the eyes of the drunken man, the planks are topped with wooden Ionic
+capitals, nailed on, and in, I may say, bas-relief.<br>
+<br>
+When I analyze the irritation these fluted planks cause in me, I find
+the reason in the fact that the first rule for building a house has
+been violated.&nbsp; These decorative planks are no part of the construction.&nbsp;
+They have no use, no work to perform.&nbsp; They are plastered gawds
+that tell lies that nobody believes.&nbsp; A column is made for the
+purpose of supporting weight; this is its use.&nbsp; A column, when
+it is a utility, is beautiful.&nbsp; The fluted wooden columns nailed
+on outside my house are not utilities.&nbsp; They are not beautiful.&nbsp;
+They are nightmares.&nbsp; They not only support no weight, but they
+themselves are a weight that drags upon the supports of the house.&nbsp;
+Some day, when I get time, one of two things will surely happen.&nbsp;
+Either I&rsquo;ll go forth and murder the man who perpetrated the atrocity,
+or else I&rsquo;ll take an axe and chop off the lying, fluted planks.<br>
+<br>
+A thing must be true, or it is not beautiful, any more than a painted
+wanton is beautiful, any more than a sky-scraper is beautiful that is
+intrinsically and structurally light and that has a false massiveness
+of pillars plastered on outside.&nbsp; The true sky-scraper <i>is </i>beautiful
+- and this is the reluctant admission of a man who dislikes humanity-festering
+cities.&nbsp; The true sky-scraper is beautiful, and it is beautiful
+in so far as it is true.&nbsp; In its construction it is light and airy,
+therefore in its appearance it must be light and airy.&nbsp; It dare
+not, if it wishes to be beautiful, lay claim to what it is not.&nbsp;
+And it should not bulk on the city-scape like Leviathan; it should rise
+and soar, light and airy and fairylike.<br>
+<br>
+Man is an ethical animal - or, at least, he is more ethical than any
+other animal.&nbsp; Wherefore he has certain yearnings for honesty.&nbsp;
+And in no way can these yearnings be more thoroughly satisfied than
+by the honesty of the house in which he lives and passes the greater
+part of his life.<br>
+<br>
+They that dwelt in San Francisco were dishonest.&nbsp; They lied and
+cheated in their business life (like the dwellers in all cities), and
+because they lied and cheated in their business life, they lied and
+cheated in the buildings they erected.&nbsp; Upon the tops of the simple,
+severe walls of their buildings they plastered huge projecting cornices.&nbsp;
+These cornices were not part of the construction.&nbsp; They made believe
+to be part of the construction, and they were lies.&nbsp; The earth
+wrinkled its back for twenty-eight seconds, and the lying cornices crashed
+down as all lies are doomed to crash down.&nbsp; In this particular
+instance, the lies crashed down upon the heads of the people fleeing
+from their reeling habitations, and many were killed.&nbsp; They paid
+the penalty of dishonesty.<br>
+<br>
+Not alone should the construction of a house be truthful and honest,
+but the material must be honest.&nbsp; They that lived in San Francisco
+were dishonest in the material they used.&nbsp; They sold one quality
+of material and delivered another quality of material.&nbsp; They always
+delivered an inferior quality.&nbsp; There is not one case recorded
+in the business history of San Francisco where a contractor or builder
+delivered a quality superior to the one sold.&nbsp; A seven-million-dollar
+city hall became thirty cents in twenty-eight seconds.&nbsp; Because
+the mortar was not honest, a thousand walls crashed down and scores
+of lives were snuffed out.&nbsp; There is something, after all, in the
+contention of a few religionists that the San Francisco earthquake was
+a punishment for sin.&nbsp; It was a punishment for sin; but it was
+not for sin against God.&nbsp; The people of San Francisco sinned against
+themselves.<br>
+<br>
+An honest house tells the truth about itself.&nbsp; There is a house
+here in Glen Ellen.&nbsp; It stands on a corner.&nbsp; It is built of
+beautiful red stone.&nbsp; Yet it is not beautiful.&nbsp; On three sides
+the stone is joined and pointed.&nbsp; The fourth side is the rear.&nbsp;
+It faces the back yard.&nbsp; The stone is not pointed.&nbsp; It is
+all a smudge of dirty mortar, with here and there bricks worked in when
+the stone gave out.&nbsp; The house is not what it seems.&nbsp; It is
+a lie.&nbsp; All three of the walls spend their time lying about the
+fourth wall.&nbsp; They keep shouting out that the fourth wall is as
+beautiful as they.&nbsp; If I lived long in that house I should not
+be responsible for my morals.&nbsp; The house is like a man in purple
+and fine linen, who hasn&rsquo;t had a bath for a month.&nbsp; If I
+lived long in that house I should become a dandy and cut out bathing
+- for the same reason, I suppose, that an African is black and that
+an Eskimo eats whale-blubber.&nbsp; I shall not build a house like that
+house.<br>
+<br>
+Last year I started to build a barn.&nbsp; A man who was a liar undertook
+to do the stonework and concrete work for me.&nbsp; He could not tell
+the truth to my face; he could not tell the truth in his work.&nbsp;
+I was building for posterity.&nbsp; The concrete foundations were four
+feet wide and sunk three and one-half feet into the earth.&nbsp; The
+stone walls were two feet thick and nine feet high.&nbsp; Upon them
+were to rest the great beams that were to carry all the weight of hay
+and the forty tons of the roof.&nbsp; The man who was a liar made beautiful
+stone walls.&nbsp; I used to stand alongside of them and love them.&nbsp;
+I caressed their massive strength with my hands.&nbsp; I thought about
+them in bed, before I went to sheep.&nbsp; And they were lies.<br>
+<br>
+Came the earthquake.&nbsp; Fortunately the rest of the building of the
+barn had been postponed.&nbsp; The beautiful stone walls cracked in
+all directions.&nbsp; I started, to repair, and discovered the whole
+enormous lie.&nbsp; The walls were shells.&nbsp; On each face were beautiful,
+massive stones - on edge.&nbsp; The inside was hollow.&nbsp; This hollow
+in some places was filled with clay and loose gravel.&nbsp; In other
+places it was filled with air and emptiness, with here and there a piece
+of kindling-wood or dry-goods box, to aid in the making of the shell.&nbsp;
+The walls were lies.&nbsp; They were beautiful, but they were not useful.&nbsp;
+Construction and decoration had been divorced.&nbsp; The walls were
+all decoration.&nbsp; They hadn&rsquo;t any construction in them.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;As God lets Satan live,&rdquo; I let that lying man live, but
+- I have built new walls from the foundation up.<br>
+<br>
+And now to my own house beautiful, which I shall build some seven or
+ten years from now.&nbsp; I have a few general ideas about it.&nbsp;
+It must be honest in construction, material, and appearance.&nbsp; If
+any feature of it, despite my efforts, shall tell lies, I shall remove
+that feature.&nbsp; Utility and beauty must be indissolubly wedded.&nbsp;
+Construction and decoration must be one.&nbsp; If the particular details
+keep true to these general ideas, all will be well.<br>
+<br>
+I have not thought of many details.&nbsp; But here are a few.&nbsp;
+Take the bath-room, for instance.&nbsp; It shall be as beautiful as
+any room in the house, just as it will be as useful.&nbsp; The chance
+is, that it will be the most expensive room in the house.&nbsp; Upon
+that we are resolved - even if we are compelled to build it first, and
+to live in a tent till we can get more money to go on with the rest
+of the house.&nbsp; In the bath-room no delights of the bath shall be
+lacking.&nbsp; Also, a large part of the expensiveness will be due to
+the use of material that will make it easy to keep the bathroom clean
+and in order.&nbsp; Why should a servant toil unduly that my body may
+be clean?&nbsp; On the other hand, the honesty of my own flesh, and
+the square dealing I give it, are more important than all the admiration
+of my friends for expensive decorative schemes and magnificent trivialities.&nbsp;
+More delightful to me is a body that sings than a stately and costly
+grand staircase built for show.&nbsp; Not that I like grand staircases
+less, but that I like bath-rooms more.<br>
+<br>
+I often regret that I was born in this particular period of the world.&nbsp;
+In the matter of servants, how I wish I were living in the golden future
+of the world, where there will be no servants - naught but service of
+love.&nbsp; But in the meantime, living here and now, being practical,
+understanding the rationality and the necessity of the division of labour,
+I accept servants.&nbsp; But such acceptance does not justify me in
+lack of consideration for them.&nbsp; In my house beautiful their rooms
+shall not be dens and holes.&nbsp; And on this score I foresee a fight
+with the architect.&nbsp; They shall have bath-rooms, toilet conveniences,
+and comforts for their leisure time and human life - if I have to work
+Sundays to pay for it.&nbsp; Even under the division of labour I recognize
+that no man has a right to servants who will not treat them as humans
+compounded of the same clay as himself, with similar bundles of nerves
+and desires, contradictions, irritabilities, and lovablenesses.&nbsp;
+Heaven in the drawing-room and hell in the kitchen is not the atmosphere
+for a growing child to breathe - nor an adult either.&nbsp; One of the
+great and selfish objections to chattel slavery was the effect on the
+masters themselves.<br>
+<br>
+And because of the foregoing, one chief aim in the building of my house
+beautiful will be to have a house that will require the minimum of trouble
+and work to keep clean and orderly.&nbsp; It will be no spick and span
+and polished house, with an immaculateness that testifies to the tragedy
+of drudge.&nbsp; I live in California where the days are warm.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;d prefer that the servants had three hours to go swimming (or
+hammocking) than be compelled to spend those three hours in keeping
+the house spick and span.&nbsp; Therefore it devolves upon me to build
+a house that can be kept clean and orderly without the need of those
+three hours.<br>
+<br>
+But underneath the spick and span there is something more dreadful than
+the servitude of the servants.&nbsp; This dreadful thing is the philosophy
+of the spick and span.&nbsp; In Korea the national costume is white.&nbsp;
+Nobleman and coolie dress alike in white.&nbsp; It is hell on the women
+who do the washing, but there is more in it than that.&nbsp; The coolie
+cannot keep his white clothes clean.&nbsp; He toils and they get dirty.&nbsp;
+The dirty white of his costume is the token of his inferiority.&nbsp;
+The nobleman&rsquo;s dress is always spotless white.&nbsp; It means
+that he doesn&rsquo;t have to work.&nbsp; But it means, further, that
+somebody else has to work for him.&nbsp; His superiority is not based
+upon song-craft nor state-craft, upon the foot-races he has run nor
+the wrestlers he has thrown.&nbsp; His superiority is based upon the
+fact that he doesn&rsquo;t have to work, and that others are compelled
+to work for him.&nbsp; And so the Korean drone flaunts his clean white
+clothes, for the same reason that the Chinese flaunts his monstrous
+finger-nails, and the white man and woman flaunt the spick-and-spanness
+of their spotless houses.<br>
+<br>
+There will be hardwood floors in my house beautiful.&nbsp; But these
+floors will not be polished mirrors nor skating-rinks.&nbsp; They will
+be just plain and common hardwood floors.&nbsp; Beautiful carpets are
+not beautiful to the mind that knows they are filled with germs and
+bacilli.&nbsp; They are no more beautiful than the hectic flush of fever,
+or the silvery skin of leprosy.&nbsp; Besides, carpets enslave.&nbsp;
+A thing that enslaves is a monster, and monsters are not beautiful.<br>
+<br>
+The fireplaces in my house will be many and large.&nbsp; Small fires
+and cold weather mean hermetically-sealed rooms and a jealous cherishing
+of heated and filth-laden air.&nbsp; With large fire-places and generous
+heat, some windows may be open all the time, and without hardship all
+the windows can be opened every little while and the rooms flushed with
+clean pure air.&nbsp; I have nearly died in the stagnant, rotten air
+of other people&rsquo;s houses - especially in the Eastern states.&nbsp;
+In Maine I have slept in a room with storm-windows immovable, and with
+one small pane five inches by six, that could be opened.&nbsp; Did I
+say slept?&nbsp; I panted with my mouth in the opening and blasphemed
+till I ruined all my chances of heaven.<br>
+<br>
+For countless thousands of years my ancestors have lived and died and
+drawn all their breaths in the open air.&nbsp; It is only recently that
+we have begun to live in houses.&nbsp; The change is a hardship, especially
+on the lungs.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve got only one pair of lungs, and I haven&rsquo;t
+the address of any repair-shop.&nbsp; Wherefore I stick by the open
+air as much as possible.&nbsp; For this reason my house will have large
+verandas, and, near to the kitchen, there will be a veranda dining-room.&nbsp;
+Also, there will be a veranda fireplace, where we can breathe fresh
+air and be comfortable when the evenings are touched with frost.<br>
+<br>
+I have a plan for my own bedroom.&nbsp; I spend long hours in bed, reading,
+studying, and working.&nbsp; I have tried sleeping in the open, but
+the lamp attracts all the creeping, crawling, butting, flying, fluttering
+things to the pages of my book, into my ears and blankets, and down
+the back of my neck.&nbsp; So my bedroom shall be indoors.<br>
+<br>
+But it will be, not be of, indoors.&nbsp; Three sides of it will be
+open.&nbsp; The fourth side will divide it from the rest of the house.&nbsp;
+The three sides will be screened against the creeping, fluttering things,
+but not against the good fresh air and all the breezes that blow.&nbsp;
+For protection against storm, to keep out the driving rain, there will
+be a sliding glass, so made that when not in use it will occupy small
+space and shut out very little air.<br>
+<br>
+There is little more to say about this house.&nbsp; I am to build seven
+or ten years from now.&nbsp; There is plenty of time in which to work
+up all the details in accord with the general principles I have laid
+down.&nbsp; It will be a usable house and a beautiful house, wherein
+the aesthetic guest can find comfort for his eyes as well as for his
+body.&nbsp; It will be a happy house - or else I&rsquo;ll burn it down.&nbsp;
+It will be a house of air and sunshine and laughter.&nbsp; These three
+cannot be divorced.&nbsp; Laughter without air and sunshine becomes
+morbid, decadent, demoniac.&nbsp; I have in me a thousand generations.&nbsp;
+Laughter that is decadent is not good for these thousand generations.<br>
+<br>
+GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA.<br>
+<i>July </i>1906.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE GOLD HUNTERS OF THE NORTH<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Where the Northern Lights come down a&rsquo; nights to dance
+on the houseless snow.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Ivan, I forbid you to go farther in this undertaking.&nbsp; Not
+a word about this, or we are all undone.&nbsp; Let the Americans and
+the English know that we have gold in these mountains, then we are ruined.&nbsp;
+They will rush in on us by thousands, and crowd us to the wall - to
+the death.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+So spoke the old Russian governor, Baranov, at Sitka, in 1804, to one
+of his Slavonian hunters, who had just drawn from his pocket a handful
+of golden nuggets.&nbsp; Full well Baranov, fur trader and autocrat,
+understood and feared the coming of the sturdy, indomitable gold hunters
+of Anglo-Saxon stock.&nbsp; And thus he suppressed the news, as did
+the governors that followed him, so that when the United States bought
+Alaska in 1867, she bought it for its furs and fisheries, without a
+thought of its treasures underground.<br>
+<br>
+No sooner, however, had Alaska become American soil than thousands of
+our adventurers were afoot and afloat for the north.&nbsp; They were
+the men of &ldquo;the days of gold,&rdquo; the men of California, Fraser,
+Cassiar, and Cariboo.&nbsp; With the mysterious, infinite faith of the
+prospector, they believed that the gold streak, which ran through the
+Americas from Cape Horn to California, did not &ldquo;peter out&rdquo;
+in British Columbia.&nbsp; That it extended farther north, was their
+creed, and &ldquo;Farther North&rdquo; became their cry.&nbsp; No time
+was lost, and in the early seventies, leaving the Treadwell and the
+Silver Bow Basin to be discovered by those who came after, they went
+plunging on into the white unknown.&nbsp; North, farther north, they
+struggled, till their picks rang in the frozen beaches of the Arctic
+Ocean, and they shivered by driftwood fires on the ruby sands of Nome.<br>
+<br>
+But first, in order that this colossal adventure may be fully grasped,
+the recentness and the remoteness of Alaska must be emphasized.&nbsp;
+The interior of Alaska and the contiguous Canadian territory was a vast
+wilderness.&nbsp; Its hundreds of thousands of square miles were as
+dark and chartless as Darkest Africa.&nbsp; In 1847, when the first
+Hudson Bay Company agents crossed over the Rockies from the Mackenzie
+to poach on the preserves of the Russian Bear, they thought that the
+Yukon flowed north and emptied into the Arctic Ocean.&nbsp; Hundreds
+of miles below, however, were the outposts of the Russian traders.&nbsp;
+They, in turn, did not know where the Yukon had its source, and it was
+not till later that Russ and Saxon learned that it was the same mighty
+stream they were occupying.&nbsp; And a little over ten years later,
+Frederick Whymper voyaged up the Great Bend to Fort Yukon under the
+Arctic Circle.<br>
+<br>
+From fort to fort, from York Factory on Hudson&rsquo;s Bay to Fort Yukon
+in Alaska, the English traders transported their goods - a round trip
+requiring from a year to a year and a half.&nbsp; It was one of their
+deserters, in 1867, escaping down the Yukon to Bering Sea, who was the
+first white man to make the North-west Passage by land from the Atlantic
+to the Pacific.&nbsp; It was at this time that the first accurate description
+of a fair portion of the Yukon was given by Dr. W. H. Ball, of the Smithsonian
+Institution.&nbsp; But even he had never seen its source, and it was
+not given him to appreciate the marvel of that great natural highway.<br>
+<br>
+No more remarkable river in this one particular is there in the world;
+taking its rise in Crater Lake, thirty miles from the ocean, the Yukon
+flows for twenty-five hundred miles, through the heart of the continent,
+ere it empties into the sea.&nbsp; A portage of thirty miles, and then
+a highway for traffic one tenth the girth of the earth!<br>
+<br>
+As late as 1869, Frederick Whymper, fellow of the Royal Geographical
+Society, stated on hearsay that the Chilcat Indians were believed occasionally
+to make a short portage across the Coast Range from salt water to the
+head-reaches of the Yukon.&nbsp; But it remained for a gold hunter,
+questing north, ever north, to be first of all white men to cross the
+terrible Chilcoot Pass, and tap the Yukon at its head.&nbsp; This happened
+only the other day, but the man has become a dim legendary hero.&nbsp;
+Holt was his name, and already the mists of antiquity have wrapped about
+the time of his passage.&nbsp; 1872, 1874, and 1878 are the dates variously
+given - a confusion which time will never clear.<br>
+<br>
+Holt penetrated as far as the Hootalinqua, and on his return to the
+coast reported coarse gold.&nbsp; The next recorded adventurer is one
+Edward Bean, who in 1880 headed a party of twenty-five miners from Sitka
+into the uncharted land.&nbsp; And in the same year, other parties (now
+forgotten, for who remembers or ever hears the wanderings of the gold
+hunters?) crossed the Pass, built boats out of the standing timber,
+and drifted down the Yukon and farther north.<br>
+<br>
+And then, for a quarter of a century, the unknown and unsung heroes
+grappled with the frost, and groped for the gold they were sure lay
+somewhere among the shadows of the Pole.&nbsp; In the struggle with
+the terrifying and pitiless natural forces, they returned to the primitive,
+garmenting themselves in the skins of wild beasts, and covering their
+feet with the walrus <i>mucluc </i>and the moosehide moccasin.&nbsp;
+They forgot the world and its ways, as the world had forgotten them;
+killed their meat as they found it; feasted in plenty and starved in
+famine, and searched unceasingly for the yellow lure.&nbsp; They crisscrossed
+the land in every direction, threaded countless unmapped rivers in precarious
+birch-bark canoes, and with snowshoes and dogs broke trail through thousands
+of miles of silent white, where man had never been.&nbsp; They struggled
+on, under the aurora borealis or the midnight sun, through temperatures
+that ranged from one hundred degrees above zero to eighty degrees below,
+living, in the grim humour of the land, on &ldquo;rabbit tracks and
+salmon bellies.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+To-day, a man may wander away from the trail for a hundred days, and
+just as he is congratulating himself that at last he is treading virgin
+soil, he will come upon some ancient and dilapidated cabin, and forget
+his disappointment in wonder at the man who reared the logs.&nbsp; Still,
+if one wanders from the trail far enough and deviously enough, he may
+chance upon a few thousand square miles which he may have all to himself.&nbsp;
+On the other hand, no matter how far and how deviously he may wander,
+the possibility always remains that he may stumble, not alone upon a
+deserted cabin, but upon an occupied one.<br>
+<br>
+As an instance of this, and of the vastness of the land, no better case
+need be cited than that of Harry Maxwell.&nbsp; An able seaman, hailing
+from New Bedford, Massachusetts, his ship, the brig <i>Fannie E. Lee,
+</i>was pinched in the Arctic ice.&nbsp; Passing from whaleship to whaleship,
+he eventually turned up at Point Barrow in the summer of 1880.&nbsp;
+He was <i>north </i>of the Northland, and from this point of vantage
+he determined to pull south of the interior in search of gold.&nbsp;
+Across the mountains from Fort Macpherson, and a couple of hundred miles
+eastward from the Mackenzie, he built a cabin and established his headquarters.&nbsp;
+And here, for nineteen continuous years, he hunted his living and prospected.&nbsp;
+He ranged from the never opening ice to the north as far south as the
+Great Slave Lake.&nbsp; Here he met Warburton Pike, the author and explorer
+- an incident he now looks back upon as chief among the few incidents
+of his solitary life.<br>
+<br>
+When this sailor-miner had accumulated $20,000 worth of dust he concluded
+that civilization was good enough for him, and proceeded &ldquo;to pull
+for the outside.&rdquo;&nbsp; From the Mackenzie he went up the Little
+Peel to its headwaters, found a pass through the mountains, nearly starved
+to death on his way across to the Porcupine Hills, and eventually came
+out on the Yukon River, where he learned for the first time of the Yukon
+gold hunters and their discoveries.&nbsp; Yet for twenty years they
+had been working there, his next-door neighbours, virtually, in a land
+of such great spaces.&nbsp; At Victoria, British Columbia, previous
+to his going east over the Canadian Pacific (the existence of which
+he had just learned), he pregnantly remarked that he had faith in the
+Mackenzie watershed, and that he was going back after he had taken in
+the World&rsquo;s Fair and got a whiff or two of civilization.<br>
+<br>
+Faith!&nbsp; It may or may not remove mountains, but it has certainly
+made the Northland.&nbsp; No Christian martyr ever possessed greater
+faith than did the pioneers of Alaska.&nbsp; They never doubted the
+bleak and barren land.&nbsp; Those who came remained, and more ever
+came.&nbsp; They could not leave.&nbsp; They &ldquo;knew&rdquo; the
+gold was there, and they persisted.&nbsp; Somehow, the romance of the
+land and the quest entered into their blood, the spell of it gripped
+hold of them and would not let them go.&nbsp; Man after man of them,
+after the most terrible privation and suffering, shook the muck of the
+country from his moccasins and departed for good.&nbsp; But the following
+spring always found him drifting down the Yukon on the tail of the ice
+jams.<br>
+<br>
+Jack McQuestion aptly vindicates the grip of the North.&nbsp; After
+a residence of thirty years he insists that the climate is delightful,
+and declares that whenever he makes a trip to the States he is afflicted
+with home-sickness.&nbsp; Needless to say, the North still has him and
+will keep tight hold of him until he dies.&nbsp; In fact, for him to
+die elsewhere would be inartistic and insincere.&nbsp; Of three of the
+&ldquo;pioneer&rdquo; pioneers, Jack McQuestion alone survives.&nbsp;
+In 1871, from one to seven years before Holt went over Chilcoot, in
+the company of Al Mayo and Arthur Harper, McQuestion came into the Yukon
+from the North-west over the Hudson Bay Company route from the Mackenzie
+to Fort Yukon.&nbsp; The names of these three men, as their lives, are
+bound up in the history of the country, and so long as there be histories
+and charts, that long will the Mayo and McQuestion rivers and the Harper
+and Ladue town site of Dawson be remembered.&nbsp; As an agent of the
+Alaska Commercial Company, in 1873, McQuestion built Fort Reliance,
+six miles below the Klondike River.&nbsp; In 1898 the writer met Jack
+McQuestion at Minook, on the Lower Yukon.&nbsp; The old pioneer, though
+grizzled, was hale and hearty, and as optimistic as when he first journeyed
+into the land along the path of the Circle.&nbsp; And no man more beloved
+is there in all the North.&nbsp; There will be great sadness there when
+his soul goes questing on over the Last Divide - &ldquo;farther north,&rdquo;
+perhaps - who can tell?<br>
+<br>
+Frank Dinsmore is a fair sample of the men who made the Yukon country.&nbsp;
+A Yankee, born, in Auburn, Maine, the <i>Wanderlust </i>early laid him
+by the heels, and at sixteen he was heading west on the trail that led
+&ldquo;farther north.&rdquo;&nbsp; He prospected in the Black Hills,
+Montana, and in the Coeur d&rsquo;Alene, then heard a whisper of the
+North, and went up to Juneau on the Alaskan Panhandle.&nbsp; But the
+North still whispered, and more insistently, and he could not rest till
+he went over Chilcoot, and down into the mysterious Silent Land.&nbsp;
+This was in 1882, and he went down the chain of lakes, down the Yukon,
+up the Pelly, and tried his luck on the bars of McMillan River.&nbsp;
+In the fall, a perambulating skeleton, he came back over the Pass in
+a blizzard, with a rag of shirt, tattered overalls, and a handful of
+raw flour.<br>
+<br>
+But he was unafraid.&nbsp; That winter he worked for a grubstake in
+Juneau, and the next spring found the heels of his moccasins turned
+towards salt water and his face toward Chilcoot.&nbsp; This was repeated
+the next spring, and the following spring, and the spring after that,
+until, in 1885, he went over the Pass for good.&nbsp; There was to be
+no return for him until he found the gold he sought.<br>
+<br>
+The years came and went, but he remained true to his resolve.&nbsp;
+For eleven long years, with snow-shoe and canoe, pickaxe and gold-pan,
+he wrote out his life on the face of the land.&nbsp; Upper Yukon, Middle
+Yukon, Lower Yukon - he prospected faithfully and well.&nbsp; His bed
+was anywhere.&nbsp; Winter or summer he carried neither tent nor stove,
+and his six-pound sleeping-robe of Arctic hare was the warmest covering
+he was ever known to possess.&nbsp; Rabbit tracks and salmon bellies
+were his diet with a vengeance, for he depended largely on his rifle
+and fishing-tackle.&nbsp; His endurance equalled his courage.&nbsp;
+On a wager he lifted thirteen fifty-pound sacks of flour and walked
+off with them.&nbsp; Winding up a seven-hundred-mile trip on the ice
+with a forty-mile run, he came into camp at six o&rsquo;clock in the
+evening and found a &ldquo;squaw dance&rdquo; under way.&nbsp; He should
+have been exhausted.&nbsp; Anyway, his <i>muclucs </i>were frozen stiff.&nbsp;
+But he kicked them off and danced all night in stocking-feet.<br>
+<br>
+At the last fortune came to him.&nbsp; The quest was ended, and he gathered
+up his gold and pulled for the outside.&nbsp; And his own end was as
+fitting as that of his quest.&nbsp; Illness came upon him down in San
+Francisco, and his splendid life ebbed slowly out as he sat in his big
+easy-chair, in the Commercial Hotel, the &ldquo;Yukoner&rsquo;s home.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The doctors came, discussed, consulted, the while he matured more plans
+of Northland adventure; for the North still gripped him and would not
+let him go.&nbsp; He grew weaker day by day, but each day he said, &ldquo;To-morrow
+I&rsquo;ll be all right.&rdquo;&nbsp; Other old-timers, &ldquo;out on
+furlough,&rdquo;, came to see him.&nbsp; They wiped their eyes and swore
+under their breaths, then entered and talked largely and jovially about
+going in with him over the trail when spring came.&nbsp; But there in
+the big easy-chair it was that his Long Trail ended, and the life passed
+out of him still fixed on &ldquo;farther north.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+From the time of the first white man, famine loomed black and gloomy
+over the land.&nbsp; It was chronic with the Indians and Eskimos; it
+became chronic with the gold hunters.&nbsp; It was ever present, and
+so it came about that life was commonly expressed in terms of &ldquo;grub&rdquo;
+- was measured by cups of flour.&nbsp; Each winter, eight months long,
+the heroes of the frost faced starvation.&nbsp; It became the custom,
+as fall drew on, for partners to cut the cards or draw straws to determine
+which should hit the hazardous trail for salt water, and which should
+remain and endure the hazardous darkness of the Arctic night.<br>
+<br>
+There was never food enough to winter the whole population.&nbsp; The
+A. C. Company worked hard to freight up the grub, but the gold hunters
+came faster and dared more audaciously.&nbsp; When the A. C. Company
+added a new stern-wheeler to its fleet, men said, &ldquo;Now we shall
+have plenty.&rdquo;&nbsp; But more gold hunters poured in over the passes
+to the south, more <i>voyageurs </i>and fur traders forced a way through
+the Rockies from the east, more seal hunters and coast adventurers poled
+up from Bering Sea on the west, more sailors deserted from the whale-ships
+to the north, and they all starved together in right brotherly fashion.&nbsp;
+More steamers were added, but the tide of prospectors welled always
+in advance.&nbsp; Then the N. A. T. &amp; T.&nbsp; Company came upon
+the scene, and both companies added steadily to their fleets.&nbsp;
+But it was the same old story; famine would not depart.&nbsp; In fact,
+famine grew with the population, till, in the winter of 1897-1898, the
+United States government was forced to equip a reindeer relief expedition.&nbsp;
+As of old, that winter partners cut the cards and drew straws, and remained
+or pulled for salt water as chance decided.&nbsp; They were wise of
+old time, and had learned never to figure on relief expeditions.&nbsp;
+They had heard of such things, but no mortal man of them had ever laid
+eyes on one.<br>
+<br>
+The hard luck of other mining countries pales into insignificance before
+the hard luck of the North.&nbsp; And as for the hardship, it cannot
+be conveyed by printed page or word of mouth.&nbsp; No man may know
+who has not undergone.&nbsp; And those who have undergone, out of their
+knowledge, claim that in the making of the world God grew tired, and
+when He came to the last barrowload, &ldquo;just dumped it anyhow,&rdquo;
+and that was how Alaska happened to be.&nbsp; While no adequate conception
+of the life can be given to the stay-at-home, yet the men themselves
+sometimes give a clue to its rigours.&nbsp; One old Minook miner testified
+thus: &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you noticed the expression on the faces of
+us fellows?&nbsp; You can tell a new-comer the minute you see him; he
+looks alive, enthusiastic, perhaps jolly.&nbsp; We old miners are always
+grave, unless were drinking.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Another old-timer, out of the bitterness of a &ldquo;home-mood,&rdquo;
+imagined himself a Martian astronomer explaining to a friend, with the
+aid of a powerful telescope, the institutions of the earth.&nbsp; &ldquo;There
+are the continents,&rdquo; he indicated; &ldquo;and up there near the
+polar cap is a country, frigid and burning and lonely and apart, called
+Alaska.&nbsp; Now, in other countries and states there are great insane
+asylums, but, though crowded, they are insufficient; so there is Alaska
+given over to the worst cases.&nbsp; Now and then some poor insane creature
+comes to his senses in those awful solitudes, and, in wondering joy,
+escapes from the land and hastens back to his home.&nbsp; But most cases
+are incurable.&nbsp; They just suffer along, poor devils, forgetting
+their former life quite, or recalling it like a dream.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Again the grip of the North, which will not let one go - for &ldquo;<i>most
+cases are incurable.</i>&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+For a quarter of a century the battle with frost and famine went on.&nbsp;
+The very severity of the struggle with Nature seemed to make the gold
+hunters kindly toward one another.&nbsp; The latch-string was always
+out, and the open hand was the order of the day.&nbsp; Distrust was
+unknown, and it was no hyperbole for a man to take the last shirt off
+his back for a comrade.&nbsp; Most significant of all, perhaps, in this
+connection, was the custom of the old days, that when August the first
+came around, the prospectors who had failed to locate &ldquo;pay dirt&rdquo;
+were permitted to go upon the ground of their more fortunate comrades
+and take out enough for the next year&rsquo;s grub-stake.<br>
+<br>
+In 1885 rich bar-washing was done on the Stewart River, and in 1886
+Cassiar Bar was struck just below the mouth of the Hootalinqua.&nbsp;
+It was at this time that the first moderate strike was made on Forty
+Mile Creek, so called because it was judged to be that distance below
+Fort Reliance of Jack McQuestion fame.&nbsp; A prospector named Williams
+started for the outside with dogs and Indians to carry the news, but
+suffered such hardship on the summit of Chilcoot that he was carried
+dying into the store of Captain John Healy at Dyea.&nbsp; But he had
+brought the news through - <i>coarse</i> <i>gold</i>!&nbsp; Within three
+months more than two hundred miners had passed in over Chilcoot, stampeding
+for Forty Mile.&nbsp; Find followed find - Sixty Mile, Miller, Glacier,
+Birch, Franklin, and the Koyokuk.&nbsp; But they were all moderate discoveries,
+and the miners still dreamed and searched for the fabled stream, &ldquo;Too
+Much Gold,&rdquo; where gold was so plentiful that gravel had to be
+shovelled into the sluice-boxes in order to wash it.<br>
+<br>
+And all the time the Northland was preparing to play its own huge joke.&nbsp;
+It was a great joke, albeit an exceeding bitter one, and it has led
+the old-timers to believe that the land is left in darkness the better
+part of the year because God goes away and leaves it to itself.&nbsp;
+After all the risk and toil and faithful endeavour, it was destined
+that few of the heroes should be in at the finish when Too Much Gold
+turned its yellow-treasure to the stars.<br>
+<br>
+First, there was Robert Henderson - and this is true history.&nbsp;
+Henderson had faith in the Indian River district.&nbsp; For three years,
+by himself, depending mainly on his rifle, living on straight meat a
+large portion of the time, he prospected many of the Indian River tributaries,
+just missed finding the rich creeks, Sulphur and Dominion, and managed
+to make grub (poor grub) out of Quartz Creek and Australia Creek.&nbsp;
+Then he crossed the divide between Indian River and the Klondike, and
+on one of the &ldquo;feeders&rdquo; of the latter found eight cents
+to the pan.&nbsp; This was considered excellent in those simple days.&nbsp;
+Naming the creek &ldquo;Gold Bottom,&rdquo; he recrossed the divide
+and got three men, Munson, Dalton, and Swanson, to return with him.&nbsp;
+The four took out $750.&nbsp; And be it emphasized, and emphasized again,
+<i>that this was the first Klondike gold ever shovelled in and washed
+out</i>.&nbsp; And be it also emphasized, <i>that Robert Henderson was
+the discoverer of Klondike, all lies and hearsay tales to the contrary.<br>
+<br>
+</i>Running out of grub, Henderson again recrossed the divide, and went
+down the Indian River and up the Yukon to Sixty Mile.&nbsp; Here Joe
+Ladue ran the trading post, and here Joe Ladue had originally grub-staked
+Henderson.&nbsp; Henderson told his tale, and a dozen men (all it contained)
+deserted the Post for the scene of his find.&nbsp; Also, Henderson persuaded
+a party of prospectors bound for Stewart River, to forgo their trip
+and go down and locate with him.&nbsp; He loaded his boat with supplies,
+drifted down the Yukon to the mouth of the Klondike, and towed and poled
+up the Klondike to Gold Bottom.&nbsp; But at the mouth of the Klondike
+he met George Carmack, and thereby hangs the tale.<br>
+<br>
+Carmack was a squawman.&nbsp; He was familiarly known as &ldquo;Siwash&rdquo;
+George - a derogatory term which had arisen out of his affinity for
+the Indians.&nbsp; At the time Henderson encountered him he was catching
+salmon with his Indian wife and relatives on the site of what was to
+become Dawson, the Golden City of the Snows.&nbsp; Henderson, bubbling
+over with good-will, open-handed, told Carmack of his discovery.&nbsp;
+But Carmack was satisfied where he was.&nbsp; He was possessed by no
+overweening desire for the strenuous life.&nbsp; Salmon were good enough
+for him.&nbsp; But Henderson urged him to come on and locate, until,
+when he yielded, he wanted to take the whole tribe along.&nbsp; Henderson
+refused to stand for this, said that he must give the preference over
+Siwashes to his old Sixty Mile friends, and, it is rumoured, said some
+things about Siwashes that were not nice.<br>
+<br>
+The next morning Henderson went on alone up the Klondike to Gold Bottom.&nbsp;
+Carmack, by this time aroused, took a short cut afoot for the same place.&nbsp;
+Accompanied by his two Indian brothers-in-law, Skookum Jim and Tagish
+Charley, he went up Rabbit Creek (now Bonanza), crossed into Gold Bottom,
+and staked near Henderson&rsquo;s discovery.&nbsp; On the way up he
+had panned a few shovels on Rabbit Creek, and he showed Henderson &ldquo;colours&rdquo;
+he had obtained.&nbsp; Henderson made him promise, if he found anything
+on the way back, that he would send up one of the Indians with the news.&nbsp;
+Henderson also agreed to pay for his service, for he seemed to feel
+that they were on the verge of something big, and he wanted to make
+sure.<br>
+<br>
+Carmack returned down Rabbit Creek.&nbsp; While he was taking a sleep
+on the bank about half a mile below the mouth of what was to be known
+as Eldorado, Skookum Jim tried his luck, and from surface prospects
+got from ten cents to a dollar to the pan.&nbsp; Carmack and his brother-in-law
+staked and hit &ldquo;the high places&rdquo; for Forty Mile, where they
+filed on the claims before Captain Constantine, and renamed the creek
+Bonanza.&nbsp; And Henderson was forgotten.&nbsp; No word of it reached
+him.&nbsp; Carmack broke his promise.<br>
+<br>
+Weeks afterward, when Bonanza and Eldorado were staked from end to end
+and there was no more room, a party of late comers pushed over the divide
+and down to Gold Bottom, where they found Henderson still at work.&nbsp;
+When they told him they were from Bonanza, he was nonplussed.&nbsp;
+He had never heard of such a place.&nbsp; But when they described it,
+he recognized it as Rabbit Creek.&nbsp; Then they told him of its marvellous
+richness, and, as Tappan Adney relates, when Henderson realized what
+he had lost through Carmack&rsquo;s treachery, &ldquo;he threw down
+his shovel and went and sat on the bank, so sick at heart that it was
+some time before he could speak.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Then there were the rest of the old-timers, the men of Forty Mile and
+Circle City.&nbsp; At the time of the discovery, nearly all of them
+were over to the west at work in the old diggings or prospecting for
+new ones.&nbsp; As they said of themselves, they were the kind of men
+who are always caught out with forks when it rains soup.&nbsp; In the
+stampede that followed the news of Carmack&rsquo;s strike very few old
+miners took part.&nbsp; They were not there to take part.&nbsp; But
+the men who did go on the stampede were mainly the worthless ones, the
+new-comers, and the camp hangers on.&nbsp; And while Bob Henderson plugged
+away to the east, and the heroes plugged away to the west, the greenhorns
+and rounders went up and staked Bonanza.<br>
+<br>
+But the Northland was not yet done with its joke.&nbsp; When fall came
+on and the heroes returned to Forty Mile and to Circle City, they listened
+calmly to the up-river tales of Siwash discoveries and loafers&rsquo;
+prospects, and shook their heads.&nbsp; They judged by the calibre of
+the men interested, and branded it a bunco game.&nbsp; But glowing reports
+continued to trickle down the Yukon, and a few of the old-timers went
+up to see.&nbsp; They looked over the ground - the unlikeliest place
+for gold in all their experience - and they went down the river again,
+&ldquo;leaving it to the Swedes.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Again the Northland turned the tables.&nbsp; The Alaskan gold hunter
+is proverbial, not so much for his unveracity, as for his inability
+to tell the precise truth.&nbsp; In a country of exaggerations, he likewise
+is prone to hyperbolic description of things actual.&nbsp; But when
+it came to Klondike, he could not stretch the truth as fast as the truth
+itself stretched.&nbsp; Carmack first got a dollar pan.&nbsp; He lied
+when he said it was two dollars and a half.&nbsp; And when those who
+doubted him did get two-and-a-half pans, they said they were getting
+an ounce, and lo! ere the lie had fairly started on its way, they were
+getting, not one ounce, but five ounces.&nbsp; This they claimed was
+six ounces; but when they filled a pan of dirt to prove the lie, they
+washed out twelve ounces.&nbsp; And so it went.&nbsp; They continued
+valiantly to lie, but the truth continued to outrun them.<br>
+<br>
+But the Northland&rsquo;s hyperborean laugh was not yet ended.&nbsp;
+When Bonanza was staked from mouth to source, those who had failed to
+&ldquo;get in,&rdquo; disgruntled and sore, went up the &ldquo;pups&rdquo;
+and feeders.&nbsp; Eldorado was one of these feeders, and many men,
+after locating on it, turned their backs upon their claims and never
+gave them a second thought.&nbsp; One man sold a half-interest in five
+hundred feet of it for a sack of flour.&nbsp; Other owners wandered
+around trying to bunco men into buying them out for a song.&nbsp; And
+then Eldorado &ldquo;showed up.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was far, far richer
+than Bonanza, with an average value of a thousand dollars a foot to
+every foot of it.<br>
+<br>
+A Swede named Charley Anderson had been at work on Miller Creek the
+year of the strike, and arrived in Dawson with a few hundred dollars.&nbsp;
+Two miners, who had staked No. 29 Eldorado, decided that he was the
+proper man upon whom to &ldquo;unload.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was too canny
+to approach sober, so at considerable expense they got him drunk.&nbsp;
+Even then it was hard work, but they kept him befuddled for several
+days, and finally, inveigled him into buying No. 29 for $750.&nbsp;
+When Anderson sobered up, he wept at his folly, and pleaded to have
+his money back.&nbsp; But the men who had duped him were hard-hearted.&nbsp;
+They laughed at him, and kicked themselves for not having tapped him
+for a couple of hundred more.&nbsp; Nothing remained for Anderson but
+to work the worthless ground.&nbsp; This he did, and out of it he took
+over three-quarters of a million of dollars.<br>
+<br>
+It was not till Frank Dinsmore, who already had big holdings on Birch
+Creek, took a hand, that the old-timers developed faith in the new diggings.&nbsp;
+Dinsmore received a letter from a man on the spot, calling it &ldquo;the
+biggest thing in the world,&rdquo; and harnessed his dogs and went up
+to investigate.&nbsp; And when he sent a letter back, saying that he
+had never seen &ldquo;anything like it,&rdquo; Circle City for the first
+time believed, and at once was precipitated one of the wildest stampedes
+the country had ever seen or ever will see.&nbsp; Every dog was taken,
+many went without dogs, and even the women and children and weaklings
+hit the three hundred miles of ice through the long Arctic night for
+the biggest thing in the world.&nbsp; It is related that but twenty
+people, mostly cripples and unable to travel, were left in Circle City
+when the smoke of the last sled disappeared up the Yukon.<br>
+<br>
+Since that time gold has been discovered in all manner of places, under
+the grass roots of the hill-side benches, in the bottom of Monte Cristo
+Island, and in the sands of the sea at Nome.&nbsp; And now the gold
+hunter who knows his business shuns the &ldquo;favourable looking&rdquo;
+spots, confident in his hard-won knowledge that he will find the most
+gold in the least likely place.&nbsp; This is sometimes adduced to support
+the theory that the gold hunters, rather than the explorers, are the
+men who will ultimately win to the Pole.&nbsp; Who knows?&nbsp; It is
+in their blood, and they are capable of it.<br>
+<br>
+PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.<br>
+<i>February </i>1902.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+FOM&Aacute; GORDY&Eacute;EFF<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;What, without asking, hither hurried <i>Whence</i>?<br>
+And, without asking, <i>Whither </i>hurried hence!<br>
+Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine<br>
+Must drown the memory of that insolence!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Fom&aacute; Gordy&eacute;eff&rdquo; is a big book - not only
+is the breadth of Russia in it, but the expanse of life.&nbsp; Yet,
+though in each land, in this world of marts and exchanges, this age
+of trade and traffic, passionate figures rise up and demand of life
+what its fever is, in &ldquo;Fom&aacute; Gordy&eacute;eff&rdquo; it
+is a Russian who so rises up and demands.&nbsp; For G&oacute;rky, the
+Bitter One, is essentially a Russian in his grasp on the facts of life
+and in his treatment.&nbsp; All the Russian self-analysis and insistent
+introspection are his.&nbsp; And, like all his brother Russians, ardent,
+passionate protest impregnates his work.&nbsp; There is a purpose to
+it.&nbsp; He writes because he has something to say which the world
+should hear.&nbsp; From that clenched fist of his, light and airy romances,
+pretty and sweet and beguiling, do not flow, but realities - yes, big
+and brutal and repulsive, but real.<br>
+<br>
+He raises the cry of the miserable and the despised, and in a masterly
+arraignment of commercialism, protests against social conditions, against
+the grinding of the faces of the poor and weak, and the self-pollution
+of the rich and strong, in their mad lust for place and power.&nbsp;
+It is to be doubted strongly if the average bourgeois, smug and fat
+and prosperous, can understand this man Fom&aacute; Gordy&eacute;eff.&nbsp;
+The rebellion in his blood is something to which their own does not
+thrill.&nbsp; To them it will be inexplicable that this man, with his
+health and his millions, could not go on living as his class lived,
+keeping regular hours at desk and stock exchange, driving close contracts,
+underbidding his competitors, and exulting in the business disasters
+of his fellows.&nbsp; It would appear so easy, and, after such a life,
+well appointed and eminently respectable, he could die.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo;
+Fom&aacute; will interrupt rudely - he is given to rude interruptions
+- &ldquo;if to die and disappear is the end of these money-grubbing
+years, why money-grub?&rdquo;&nbsp; And the bourgeois whom he rudely
+interrupted will not understand.&nbsp; Nor did May&aacute;kin understand
+as he laboured holily with his wayward godson.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Why do you brag?&rdquo;&nbsp; Fom&aacute;, bursts out upon him.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What have you to brag about?&nbsp; Your son - where is he?&nbsp;
+Your daughter - what is she?&nbsp; Ekh, you manager of life!&nbsp; Come,
+now, you&rsquo;re clever, you know everything - tell me, why do you
+live?&nbsp; Why do you accumulate money?&nbsp; Aren&rsquo;t you going
+to die?&nbsp; Well, what then?&rdquo;&nbsp; And May&aacute;kin finds
+himself speechless and without answer, but unshaken and unconvinced.<br>
+<br>
+Receiving by heredity the fierce, bull-like nature of his father plus
+the passive indomitableness and groping spirit of his mother, Fom&aacute;,
+proud and rebellious, is repelled by the selfish, money-seeking environment
+into which he is born.&nbsp; Ign&aacute;t, his father, and May&aacute;kin,
+the godfather, and all the horde of successful merchants singing the
+p&aelig;an of the strong and the praises of merciless, remorseless <i>laissez
+faire, </i>cannot entice him.&nbsp; Why? he demands.&nbsp; This is a
+nightmare, this life!&nbsp; It is without significance!&nbsp; What does
+it all mean?&nbsp; What is there underneath?&nbsp; What is the meaning
+of that which is underneath?<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;You do well to pity people,&rdquo; Ign&aacute;t tells Fom&aacute;,
+the boy, &ldquo;only you must use judgment with your pity.&nbsp; First
+consider the man, find out what he is like, what use can be made of
+him; and if you see that he is a strong and capable man, help him if
+you like.&nbsp; But if a man is weak, not inclined to work - spit upon
+him and go your way.&nbsp; And you must know that when a man complains
+about everything, and cries out and groans - he is not worth more than
+two kop&eacute;ks, he is not worthy of pity, and will be of no use to
+you if you do help him.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Such the frank and militant commercialism, bellowed out between glasses
+of strong liquor.&nbsp; Now comes May&aacute;kin, speaking softly and
+without satire:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Eh, my boy, what is a beggar?&nbsp; A beggar is a man who is
+forced, by fate, to remind us of Christ; he is Christ&rsquo;s brother;
+he is the bell of the Lord, and rings in life for the purpose of awakening
+our conscience, of stirring up the satiety of man&rsquo;s flesh.&nbsp;
+He stands under the window and sings, &lsquo;For Christ&rsquo;s sa-ake!&rsquo;
+and by that chant he reminds us of Christ, of His holy command to help
+our neighbour.&nbsp; But men have so ordered their lives that it is
+utterly impossible for them to act in accordance with Christ&rsquo;s
+teaching, and Jesus Christ has become entirely superfluous to us.&nbsp;
+Not once, but, in all probability, a thousand times, we have given Him
+over to be crucified, but still we cannot banish Him from our lives
+so long as His poor brethren sing His name in the streets and remind
+us of Him.&nbsp; And so now we have hit upon the idea of shutting up
+the beggars in such special buildings, so that they may not roam about
+the streets and stir up our consciences.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+But Fom&aacute; will have none of it.&nbsp; He is neither to be enticed
+nor cajoled.&nbsp; The cry of his nature is for light.&nbsp; He must
+have light.&nbsp; And in burning revolt he goes seeking the meaning
+of life.&nbsp; &ldquo;His thoughts embraced all those petty people who
+toiled at hard labour.&nbsp; It was strange - why did they live?&nbsp;
+What satisfaction was it to them to live on the earth?&nbsp; All they
+did was to perform their dirty, arduous toil, eat poorly; they were
+miserably clad, addicted to drunkenness.&nbsp; One was sixty years old,
+but he still toiled side by side with young men.&nbsp; And they all
+presented themselves to Fom&aacute;&rsquo;s imagination as a huge heap
+of worms, who were swarming over the earth merely to eat.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+He becomes the living interrogation of life.&nbsp; He cannot begin living
+until he knows what living means, and he seeks its meaning vainly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Why should I try to live life when I do not know what life is?&rdquo;
+he objects when May&aacute;kin strives with him to return and manage
+his business.&nbsp; Why should men fetch and carry for him? be slaves
+to him and his money?<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Work is not everything to a man,&rdquo; he says; &ldquo;it is
+not true that justification lies in work . . . Some people never do
+any work at all, all their lives long - yet they live better than the
+toilers.&nbsp; Why is that?&nbsp; And what justification have I?&nbsp;
+And how will all the people who give their orders justify themselves?&nbsp;
+What have they lived for?&nbsp; But my idea is that everybody ought,
+without fail, to know solidly what he is living for.&nbsp; Is it possible
+that a man is born to toil, accumulate money, build a house, beget children,
+and - die?&nbsp; No; life means something in itself. . . .&nbsp; A man
+has been born, has lived, has died - why?&nbsp; All of us must consider
+why we are living, by God, we must!&nbsp; There is no sense in our life
+- there is no sense at all.&nbsp; Some are rich - they have money enough
+for a thousand men all to themselves - and they live without occupation;
+others bow their backs in toil all their life, and they haven&rsquo;t
+a penny.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+But Fom&aacute; can only be destructive.&nbsp; He is not constructive.&nbsp;
+The dim groping spirit of his mother and the curse of his environment
+press too heavily upon him, and he is crushed to debauchery and madness.&nbsp;
+He does not drink because liquor tastes good in his mouth.&nbsp; In
+the vile companions who purvey to his baser appetites he finds no charm.&nbsp;
+It is all utterly despicable and sordid, but thither his quest leads
+him and he follows the quest.&nbsp; He knows that everything is wrong,
+but he cannot right it, cannot tell why.&nbsp; He can only attack and
+demolish.&nbsp; &ldquo;What justification have you all in the sight
+of God?&nbsp; Why do you live?&rdquo; he demands of the conclave of
+merchants, of life&rsquo;s successes.&nbsp; &ldquo;You have not constructed
+life - you have made a cesspool!&nbsp; You have disseminated filth and
+stifling exhalations by your deeds.&nbsp; Have you any conscience?&nbsp;
+Do you remember God?&nbsp; A five-kop&eacute;k piece - that is your
+God!&nbsp; But you have expelled your conscience!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Like the cry of Isaiah, &ldquo;Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl
+for your misfortunes that shall come upon you,&rdquo; is Fom&aacute;&rsquo;s:
+&ldquo;You blood-suckers!&nbsp; You live on other people&rsquo;s strength;
+you work with other people&rsquo;s hands!&nbsp; For all this you shall
+be made to pay!&nbsp; You shall perish - you shall be called to account
+for all!&nbsp; For all - to the last little tear-drop!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Stunned by this puddle of life, unable to make sense of it, Fom&aacute;
+questions, and questions vainly, whether of S&oacute;fya Medynsky in
+her drawing-room of beauty, or in the foulest depths of the first chance
+courtesan&rsquo;s heart.&nbsp; Linboff, whose books contradict one another,
+cannot help him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the verse
+writers and harlots in dives and boozingkens.&nbsp; And so, wondering,
+pondering, perplexed, amazed, whirling through the mad whirlpool of
+life, dancing the dance of death, groping for the nameless, indefinite
+something, the magic formula, the essence, the intrinsic fact, the flash
+of light through the murk and dark - the rational sanction for existence,
+in short - Fom&aacute; Gordy&eacute;eff goes down to madness and death.<br>
+<br>
+It is not a pretty book, but it is a masterful interrogation of life
+- not of life universal, but of life particular, the social life of
+to-day.&nbsp; It is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice.&nbsp;
+One lays the book down sick at heart - sick for life with all its &ldquo;lyings
+and its lusts.&rdquo;&nbsp; But it is a healthy book.&nbsp; So fearful
+is its portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its stripping of the
+painted charms from vice, that its tendency cannot but be strongly for
+good.&nbsp; It is a goad, to prick sleeping human consciences awake
+and drive them into the battle for humanity.<br>
+<br>
+But no story is told, nothing is finished, some one will object.&nbsp;
+Surely, when S&aacute;sha leaped overboard and swam to Fom&aacute;,
+something happened.&nbsp; It was pregnant with possibilities.&nbsp;
+Yet it was not finished, was not decisive.&nbsp; She left him to go
+with the son of a rich vodka-maker.&nbsp; And all that was best in S&oacute;fya
+Medynsky was quickened when she looked upon Fom&aacute; with the look
+of the Mother-Woman.&nbsp; She might have been a power for good in his
+life, she might have shed light into it and lifted him up to safety
+and honour and understanding.&nbsp; Yet she went away next day, and
+he never saw her again.&nbsp; No story is told, nothing is finished.<br>
+<br>
+Ah, but surely the story of Fom&aacute; Gordy&eacute;eff is told; his
+life is finished, as lives are being finished each day around us.&nbsp;
+Besides, it is the way of life, and the art of G&oacute;rky is the art
+of realism.&nbsp; But it is a less tedious realism than that of Tolstoy
+or Turgenev.&nbsp; It lives and breathes from page to page with a swing
+and dash and go that they rarely attain.&nbsp; Their mantle has fallen
+on his young shoulders, and he promises to wear it royally.<br>
+<br>
+Even so, but so helpless, hopeless, terrible is this life of Fom&aacute;
+Gordy&eacute;eff that we would be filled with profound sorrow for G&oacute;rky
+did we not know that he has come up out of the Valley of Shadow.&nbsp;
+That he hopes, we know, else would he not now be festering in a Russian
+prison because he is brave enough to live the hope he feels.&nbsp; He
+knows life, why and how it should be lived.&nbsp; And in conclusion,
+this one thing is manifest: Fom&aacute; Gordy&eacute;eff is no mere
+statement of an intellectual problem.&nbsp; For as he lived and interrogated
+living, so in sweat and blood and travail has G&oacute;rky lived.<br>
+<br>
+PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.<br>
+<i>November </i>1901.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THESE BONES SHALL RISE AGAIN<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Rudyard Kipling, &ldquo;prophet of blood and vulgarity, prince of ephemerals
+and idol of the unelect&rdquo; - as a Chicago critic chortles - is dead.&nbsp;
+It is true.&nbsp; He is dead, dead and buried.&nbsp; And a fluttering,
+chirping host of men, little men and unseeing men, have heaped him over
+with the uncut leaves of <i>Kim, </i>wrapped him in <i>Stalky </i>&amp;
+<i>Co., </i>for winding sheet, and for headstone reared his unconventional
+lines, <i>The Lesson</i>.&nbsp; It was very easy.&nbsp; The simplest
+thing in the world.&nbsp; And the fluttering, chirping gentlemen are
+rubbing their hands in amaze and wondering why they did not do it long
+ago, it was so very, very simple.<br>
+<br>
+But the centuries to come, of which the fluttering, chirping gentlemen
+are prone to talk largely, will have something to say in the matter.&nbsp;
+And when they, the future centuries, quest back to the nineteenth century
+to find what manner of century it was - to find, not what the people
+of the nineteenth century thought they thought, but what they really
+thought, not what they thought they ought to do, but what they really
+did do, then a certain man, Kipling, will be read - and read with understanding.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;They thought they read him with understanding, those people of
+the nineteenth century,&rdquo; the future centuries will say; &ldquo;and
+then they thought there was no understanding in him, and after that
+they did not know what they thought.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+But this is over-severe.&nbsp; It applies only to that class which serves
+a function somewhat similar to that served by the populace of old time
+in Rome.&nbsp; This is the unstable, mob-minded mass, which sits on
+the fence, ever ready to fall this side or that and indecorously clamber
+back again; which puts a Democratic administration into office one election,
+and a Republican the next; which discovers and lifts up a prophet to-day
+that it may stone him tomorrow; which clamours for the book everybody
+else is reading, for no reason under the sun save that everybody else
+is reading it.&nbsp; This is the class of whim and caprice, of fad and
+vogue, the unstable, incoherent, mob-mouthed, mob-minded mass, the &ldquo;monkey-folk,&rdquo;
+if you please, of these latter days.&nbsp; Now it may be reading <i>The
+Eternal City</i>.&nbsp; Yesterday it was reading <i>The Master Christian,
+</i>and some several days before that it was reading Kipling.&nbsp;
+Yes, almost to his shame be it, these folk were reading him.&nbsp; But
+it was not his fault.&nbsp; If he depended upon them he well deserves
+to be dead and buried and never to rise again.&nbsp; But to them, let
+us be thankful, he never lived.&nbsp; They thought he lived, but he
+was as dead then as he is now and as he always will be.<br>
+<br>
+He could not help it because he became the vogue, and it is easily understood.&nbsp;
+When he lay ill, fighting with close grapples with death, those who
+knew him were grieved.&nbsp; They were many, and in many voices, to
+the rim of the Seven Seas, they spoke their grief.&nbsp; Whereupon,
+and with celerity, the mob-minded mass began to inquire as to this man
+whom so many mourned.&nbsp; If everybody else mourned, it were fit that
+they mourn too.&nbsp; So a vast wail went up.&nbsp; Each was a spur
+to the other&rsquo;s grief, and each began privately to read this man
+they had never read and publicly to proclaim this man they had always
+read.&nbsp; And straightaway next day they drowned their grief in a
+sea of historical romance and forgot all about him.&nbsp; The reaction
+was inevitable.&nbsp; Emerging from the sea into which they had plunged,
+they became aware that they had so soon forgotten him, and would have
+been ashamed, had not the fluttering, chirping men said, &ldquo;Come,
+let us bury him.&rdquo;&nbsp; And they put him in a hole, quickly, out
+of their sight.<br>
+<br>
+And when they have crept into their own little holes, and smugly laid
+themselves down in their last long sleep, the future centuries will
+roll the stone away and he will come forth again.&nbsp; For be it known:
+<i>That man of us is imperishable who makes his century imperishable</i>.&nbsp;
+That man of us who seizes upon the salient facts of our life, who tells
+what we thought, what we were, and for what we stood - that man shall
+be the mouthpiece to the centuries, and so long as they listen he shall
+endure.<br>
+<br>
+We remember the caveman.&nbsp; We remember him because he made his century
+imperishable.&nbsp; But, unhappily, we remember him dimly, in a collective
+sort of way, because he memorialized his century dimly, in a collective
+sort of way.&nbsp; He had no written speech, so he left us rude scratchings
+of beasts and things, cracked marrow-bones, and weapons of stone.&nbsp;
+It was the best expression of which he was capable.&nbsp; Had he scratched
+his own particular name with the scratchings of beasts and things, stamped
+his cracked marrowbones with his own particular seal, trade-marked his
+weapons of stone with his own particular device, that particular man
+would we remember.&nbsp; But he did the best he could, and we remember
+him as best we may.<br>
+<br>
+Homer takes his place with Achilles and the Greek and Trojan heroes.&nbsp;
+Because he remembered them, we remember him.&nbsp; Whether he be one
+or a dozen men, or a dozen generations of men, we remember him.&nbsp;
+And so long as the name of Greece is known on the lips of men, so long
+will the name of Homer be known.&nbsp; There are many such names, linked
+with their times, which have come down to us, many more which will yet
+go down; and to them, in token that we have lived, must we add some
+few of our own.<br>
+<br>
+Dealing only with the artist, be it understood, only those artists will
+go down who have spoken true of us.&nbsp; Their truth must be the deepest
+and most significant, their voices clear and strong, definite and coherent.&nbsp;
+Half-truths and partial-truths will not do, nor will thin piping voices
+and quavering lays.&nbsp; There must be the cosmic quality in what they
+sing.&nbsp; They must seize upon and press into enduring art-forms the
+vital facts of our existence.&nbsp; They must tell why we have lived,
+for without any reason for living, depend upon it, in the time to come,
+it will be as though we had never lived.&nbsp; Nor are the things that
+were true of the people a thousand years or so ago true of us to-day.&nbsp;
+The romance of Homer&rsquo;s Greece is the romance of Homer&rsquo;s
+Greece.&nbsp; That is undeniable.&nbsp; It is not our romance.&nbsp;
+And he who in our time sings the romance of Homer&rsquo;s Greece cannot
+expect to sing it so well as Homer did, nor will he be singing about
+us or our romance at all.&nbsp; A machine age is something quite different
+from an heroic age.&nbsp; What is true of rapid-fire guns, stock-exchanges,
+and electric motors, cannot possibly be true of hand-flung javelins
+and whirring chariot wheels.&nbsp; Kipling knows this.&nbsp; He has
+been telling it to us all his life, living it all his life in the work
+he has done.<br>
+<br>
+What the Anglo-Saxon has done, he has memorialized.&nbsp; And by Anglo-Saxon
+is not meant merely the people of that tight little island on the edge
+of the Western Ocean.&nbsp; Anglo-Saxon stands for the English-speaking
+people of all the world, who, in forms and institutions and traditions,
+are more peculiarly and definitely English than anything else.&nbsp;
+This people Kipling has sung.&nbsp; Their sweat and blood and toil have
+been the motives of his songs; but underlying all the motives of his
+songs is the motive of motives, the sum of them all and something more,
+which is one with what underlies all the Anglo-Saxon sweat and blood
+and toil; namely, the genius of the race.&nbsp; And this is the cosmic
+quality.&nbsp; Both that which is true of the race for all time, and
+that which is true of the race for all time applied to this particular
+time, he has caught up and pressed into his art-forms.&nbsp; He has
+caught the dominant note of the Anglo-Saxon and pressed it into wonderful
+rhythms which cannot be sung out in a day and which will not be sung
+out in a day.<br>
+<br>
+The Anglo-Saxon is a pirate, a land robber and a sea robber.&nbsp; Underneath
+his thin coating of culture, he is what he was in Morgan&rsquo;s time,
+in Drake&rsquo;s time, in William&rsquo;s time, in Alfred&rsquo;s time.&nbsp;
+The blood and the tradition of Hengist and Horsa are in his veins.&nbsp;
+In battle he is subject to the blood-lusts of the Berserkers of old.&nbsp;
+Plunder and booty fascinate him immeasurably.&nbsp; The schoolboy of
+to-day dreams the dream of Clive and Hastings.&nbsp; The Anglo-Saxon
+is strong of arm and heavy of hand, and he possesses a primitive brutality
+all his own.&nbsp; There is a discontent in his blood, an unsatisfaction
+that will not let him rest, but sends him adventuring over the sea and
+among the lands in the midst of the sea.&nbsp; He does not know when
+he is beaten, wherefore the term &ldquo;bulldog&rdquo; is attached to
+him, so that all may know his unreasonableness.&nbsp; He has &ldquo;some
+care as to the purity of his ways, does not wish for strange gods, nor
+juggle with intellectual phantasmagoria.&rdquo;&nbsp; He loves freedom,
+but is dictatorial to others, is self-willed, has boundless energy,
+and does things for himself.&nbsp; He is also a master of matter, an
+organizer of law, and an administrator of justice.<br>
+<br>
+And in the nineteenth century he has lived up to his reputation.&nbsp;
+Being the nineteenth century and no other century, and in so far different
+from all other centuries, he has expressed himself differently.&nbsp;
+But blood will tell, and in the name of God, the Bible, and Democracy,
+he has gone out over the earth, possessing himself of broad lands and
+fat revenues, and conquering by virtue of his sheer pluck and enterprise
+and superior machinery.<br>
+<br>
+Now the future centuries, seeking to find out what the nineteenth century
+Anglo-Saxon was and what were his works, will have small concern with
+what he did not do and what he would have liked to do.&nbsp; These things
+he did do, and for these things will he be remembered.&nbsp; His claim
+on posterity will be that in the nineteenth century he mastered matter;
+his twentieth-century claim will be, in the highest probability, that
+he organized life - but that will be sung by the twentieth-century Kiplings
+or the twenty-first-century Kiplings.&nbsp; Rudyard Kipling of the nineteenth
+century has sung of &ldquo;things as they are.&rdquo;&nbsp; He has seen
+life as it is, &ldquo;taken it up squarely,&rdquo; in both his hands,
+and looked upon it.&nbsp; What better preachment upon the Anglo-Saxon
+and what he has done can be had than <i>The Bridge Builders? </i>what
+better appraisement than <i>The White Man</i>&rsquo;<i>s Burden</i>?&nbsp;
+As for faith and clean ideals - not of &ldquo;children and gods, but
+men in a world of men&rdquo; - who has preached them better than he?<br>
+<br>
+Primarily, Kipling has stood for the doer as opposed to the dreamer
+- the doer, who lists not to idle songs of empty days, but who goes
+forth and does things, with bended back and sweated brow and work-hardened
+hands.&nbsp; The most characteristic thing about Kipling is his lover
+of actuality, his intense practicality, his proper and necessary respect
+for the hard-headed, hard-fisted fact.&nbsp; And, above all, he has
+preached the gospel of work, and as potently as Carlyle ever preached.&nbsp;
+For he has preached it not only to those in the high places, but to
+the common men, to the great sweating thong of common men who hear and
+understand yet stand agape at Carlyle&rsquo;s turgid utterance.&nbsp;
+Do the thing to your hand, and do it with all your might.&nbsp; Never
+mind what the thing is; so long as it is something.&nbsp; Do it.&nbsp;
+Do it and remember Tomlinson, sexless and soulless Tomlinson, who was
+denied at Heaven&rsquo;s gate.<br>
+<br>
+The blundering centuries have perseveringly pottered and groped through
+the dark; but it remained for Kipling&rsquo;s century to roll in the
+sun, to formulate, in other words, the reign of law.&nbsp; And of the
+artists in Kipling&rsquo;s century, he of them all has driven the greater
+measure of law in the more consummate speech:<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Keep ye the Law - be swift in all obedience.<br>
+Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Make ye sure to each his own<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That he reap what he hath sown;<br>
+By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+- And so it runs, from McAndrew&rsquo;s <i>Law, Order, Duty, and Restraint,
+</i>to his last least line, whether of <i>The Vampire </i>or <i>The
+Recessional</i>.&nbsp; And no prophet out of Israel has cried out more
+loudly the sins of the people, nor called them more awfully to repent.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;But he is vulgar, he stirs the puddle of life,&rdquo; object
+the fluttering, chirping gentlemen, the Tomlinsonian men.&nbsp; Well,
+and isn&rsquo;t life vulgar?&nbsp; Can you divorce the facts of life?&nbsp;
+Much of good is there, and much of ill; but who may draw aside his garment
+and say, &ldquo;I am none of them&rdquo;?&nbsp; Can you say that the
+part is greater than the whole? that the whole is more or less than
+the sum of the parts?&nbsp; As for the puddle of life, the stench is
+offensive to you?&nbsp; Well, and what then?&nbsp; Do you not live in
+it?&nbsp; Why do you not make it clean?&nbsp; Do you clamour for a filter
+to make clean only your own particular portion?&nbsp; And, made clean,
+are you wroth because Kipling has stirred it muddy again?&nbsp; At least
+he has stirred it healthily, with steady vigour and good-will.&nbsp;
+He has not brought to the surface merely its dregs, but its most significant
+values.&nbsp; He has told the centuries to come of our lyings and our
+lusts, but he has also told the centuries to come of the seriousness
+which is underneath our lyings and our lusts.&nbsp; And he has told
+us, too, and always has he told us, to be clean and strong and to walk
+upright and manlike.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;But he has no sympathy,&rdquo; the fluttering gentlemen chirp.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;We admire his art and intellectual brilliancy, we all admire
+his art and intellectual brilliancy, his dazzling technique and rare
+rhythmical sense; but . . . he is totally devoid of sympathy.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Dear!&nbsp; Dear!&nbsp; What is to be understood by this?&nbsp; Should
+he sprinkle his pages with sympathetic adjectives, so many to the paragraph,
+as the country compositor sprinkles commas?&nbsp; Surely not.&nbsp;
+The little gentlemen are not quite so infinitesimal as that.&nbsp; There
+have been many tellers of jokes, and the greater of them, it is recorded,
+never smiled at their own, not even in the crucial moment when the audience
+wavered between laughter and tears.<br>
+<br>
+And so with Kipling.&nbsp; Take <i>The Vampire, </i>for instance.&nbsp;
+It has been complained that there is no touch of pity in it for the
+man and his ruin, no sermon on the lesson of it, no compassion for the
+human weakness, no indignation at the heartlessness.&nbsp; But are we
+kindergarten children that the tale be told to us in words of one syllable?&nbsp;
+Or are we men and women, able to read between the lines what Kipling
+intended we should read between the lines?&nbsp; &ldquo;For some of
+him lived, but the most of him died.&rdquo;&nbsp; Is there not here
+all the excitation in the world for our sorrow, our pity, our indignation?&nbsp;
+And what more is the function of art than to excite states of consciousness
+complementary to the thing portrayed?&nbsp; The colour of tragedy is
+red.&nbsp; Must the artist also paint in the watery tears and wan-faced
+grief?&nbsp; &ldquo;For some of him lived, but the most of him died&rdquo;
+- can the heartache of the situation be conveyed more achingly?&nbsp;
+Or were it better that the young man, some of him alive but most of
+him dead, should come out before the curtain and deliver a homily to
+the weeping audience?<br>
+<br>
+The nineteenth century, so far as the Anglo-Saxon is concerned, was
+remarkable for two great developments: the mastery of matter and the
+expansion of the race.&nbsp; Three great forces operated in it: nationalism,
+commercialism, democracy - the marshalling of the races, the merciless,
+remorseless <i>laissez faire </i>of the dominant bourgeoisie, and the
+practical, actual working government of men within a very limited equality.&nbsp;
+The democracy of the nineteenth century is not the democracy of which
+the eighteenth century dreamed.&nbsp; It is not the democracy of the
+Declaration, but it is what we have practised and lived that reconciles
+it to the fact of the &ldquo;lesser breeds without the Law.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+It is of these developments and forces of the nineteenth century that
+Kipling has sung.&nbsp; And the romance of it he has sung, that which
+underlies and transcends objective endeavour, which deals with race
+impulses, race deeds, and race traditions.&nbsp; Even into the steam-laden
+speech of his locomotives has he breathed our life, our spirit, our
+significance.&nbsp; As he is our mouthpiece, so are they his mouthpieces.&nbsp;
+And the romance of the nineteenth-century man as he has thus expressed
+himself in the nineteenth century, in shaft and wheel, in steel and
+steam, in far journeying and adventuring, Kipling has caught up in wondrous
+songs for the future centuries to sing.<br>
+<br>
+If the nineteenth century is the century of the Hooligan, then is Kipling
+the voice of the Hooligan as surely as he is the voice of the nineteenth
+century.&nbsp; Who is more representative?&nbsp; Is <i>David Harum </i>more
+representative of the nineteenth century?&nbsp; Is Mary Johnston, Charles
+Major, or Winston Churchill?&nbsp; Is Bret Harte?&nbsp; William Dean
+Howells?&nbsp; Gilbert Parker?&nbsp; Who of them all is as essentially
+representative of nineteenth-century life?&nbsp; When Kipling is forgotten,
+will Robert Louis Stevenson be remembered for his <i>Dr. Jekyll and
+Mr. Hyde, </i>his <i>Kidnapped </i>and his <i>David Balfour</i>?&nbsp;
+Not so.&nbsp; His <i>Treasure Island </i>will be a classic, to go down
+with <i>Robinson Crusoe, Through the Looking-Glass, </i>and <i>The Jungle
+Books</i>.&nbsp; He will be remembered for his essays, for his letters,
+for his philosophy of life, for himself.&nbsp; He will be the well beloved,
+as he has been the well beloved.&nbsp; But his will be another claim
+upon posterity than what we are considering.&nbsp; For each epoch has
+its singer.&nbsp; As Scott sang the swan song of chivalry and Dickens
+the burgher-fear of the rising merchant class, so Kipling, as no one
+else, has sung the hymn of the dominant bourgeoisie, the war march of
+the white man round the world, the triumphant p&aelig;an of commercialism
+and imperialism.&nbsp; For that will he be remembered.<br>
+<br>
+OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.<br>
+<i>October </i>1901.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE OTHER ANIMALS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+American journalism has its moments of fantastic hysteria, and when
+it is on the rampage the only thing for a rational man to do is to climb
+a tree and let the cataclysm go by.&nbsp; And so, some time ago, when
+the word <i>nature-faker </i>was coined, I, for one, climbed into my
+tree and stayed there.&nbsp; I happened to be in Hawaii at the time,
+and a Honolulu reporter elicited the sentiment from me that I thanked
+God I was not an authority on anything.&nbsp; This sentiment was promptly
+cabled to America in an Associated Press despatch, whereupon the American
+press (possibly annoyed because I had not climbed down out of my tree)
+charged me with paying for advertising by cable at a dollar per word
+- the very human way of the American press, which, when a man refuses
+to come down and be licked, makes faces at him.<br>
+<br>
+But now that the storm is over, let us come and reason together.&nbsp;
+I have been guilty of writing two animal-stories - two books about dogs.&nbsp;
+The writing of these two stories, on my part, was in truth a protest
+against the &ldquo;humanizing&rdquo; of animals, of which it seemed
+to me several &ldquo;animal writers&rdquo; had been profoundly guilty.&nbsp;
+Time and again, and many times, in my narratives, I wrote, speaking
+of my dog-heroes: &ldquo;He did not think these things; he merely did
+them,&rdquo; etc.&nbsp; And I did this repeatedly, to the clogging of
+my narrative and in violation of my artistic canons; and I did it in
+order to hammer into the average human understanding that these dog-heroes
+of mine were not directed by abstract reasoning, but by instinct, sensation,
+and emotion, and by simple reasoning.&nbsp; Also, I endeavoured to make
+my stories in line with the facts of evolution; I hewed them to the
+mark set by scientific research, and awoke, one day, to find myself
+bundled neck and crop into the camp of the nature-fakers.<br>
+<br>
+President Roosevelt was responsible for this, and he tried to condemn
+me on two counts.&nbsp; (1) I was guilty of having a big, fighting bull-dog
+whip a wolf-dog.&nbsp; (2) I was guilty of allowing a lynx to kill a
+wolf-dog in a pitched battle.&nbsp; Regarding the second count, President
+Roosevelt was wrong in his field observations taken while reading my
+book.&nbsp; He must have read it hastily, for in my story I had the
+wolf-dog kill the lynx.&nbsp; Not only did I have my wolf-dog kill the
+lynx, but I made him eat the body of the lynx as well.&nbsp; Remains
+only the first count on which to convict me of nature-faking, and the
+first count does not charge me with diverging from ascertained facts.&nbsp;
+It is merely a statement of a difference of opinion.&nbsp; President
+Roosevelt does not think a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog.&nbsp; I think
+a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog.&nbsp; And there we are.&nbsp; Difference
+of opinion may make, and does make, horse-racing.&nbsp; I can understand
+that difference of opinion can make dog-fighting.&nbsp; But what gets
+me is how difference of opinion regarding the relative fighting merits
+of a bull-dog and a wolf-dog makes me a nature-faker and President Roosevelt
+a vindicated and triumphant scientist.<br>
+<br>
+Then entered John Burroughs to clinch President Roosevelt&rsquo;s judgments.&nbsp;
+In this alliance there is no difference of opinion.&nbsp; That Roosevelt
+can do no wrong is Burroughs&rsquo;s opinion; and that Burroughs is
+always right is Roosevelt&rsquo;s opinion.&nbsp; Both are agreed that
+animals do not reason.&nbsp; They assert that all animals below man
+are automatons and perform actions only of two sorts - mechanical and
+reflex - and that in such actions no reasoning enters at all.&nbsp;
+They believe that man is the only animal capable of reasoning and that
+ever does reason.&nbsp; This is a view that makes the twentieth-century
+scientist smile.&nbsp; It is not modern at all.&nbsp; It is distinctly
+mediaeval.&nbsp; President Roosevelt and John Burroughs, in advancing
+such a view, are homocentric in the same fashion that the scholastics
+of earlier and darker centuries were homocentric.&nbsp; Had the world
+not been discovered to be round until after the births of President
+Roosevelt and John Burroughs, they would have been geocentric as well
+in their theories of the Cosmos.&nbsp; They could not have believed
+otherwise.&nbsp; The stuff of their minds is so conditioned.&nbsp; They
+talk the argot of evolution, while they no more understand the essence
+and the import of evolution than does a South Sea Islander or Sir Oliver
+Lodge understand the noumena of radio-activity.<br>
+<br>
+Now, President Roosevelt is an amateur.&nbsp; He may know something
+of statecraft and of big-game shooting; he may be able to kill a deer
+when he sees it and to measure it and weigh it after he has shot it;
+he may be able to observe carefully and accurately the actions and antics
+of tomtits and snipe, and, after he has observed it, definitely and
+coherently to convey the information of when the first chipmunk, in
+a certain year and a certain latitude and longitude, came out in the
+spring and chattered and gambolled - but that he should be able, as
+an individual observer, to analyze all animal life and to synthetize
+and develop all that is known of the method and significance of evolution,
+would require a vaster credulity for you or me to believe than is required
+for us to believe the biggest whopper ever told by an unmitigated nature-faker.&nbsp;
+No, President Roosevelt does not understand evolution, and he does not
+seem to have made much of an attempt to understand evolution.<br>
+<br>
+Remains John Burroughs, who claims to be a thorough-going evolutionist.&nbsp;
+Now, it is rather hard for a young man to tackle an old man.&nbsp; It
+is the nature of young men to be more controlled in such matters, and
+it is the nature of old men, presuming upon the wisdom that is very
+often erroneously associated with age, to do the tackling.&nbsp; In
+this present question of nature-faking, the old men did the tackling,
+while I, as one young man, kept quiet a long time.&nbsp; But here goes
+at last.&nbsp; And first of all let Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s position be
+stated, and stated in his words.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Why impute reason to an animal if its behaviour can be explained
+on the theory of instinct?&rdquo;&nbsp; Remember these words, for they
+will be referred to later.&nbsp; &ldquo;A goodly number of persons seem
+to have persuaded themselves that animals do reason.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;But
+instinct suffices for the animals . . . they get along very well without
+reason.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Darwin tried hard to convince himself that
+animals do at times reason in a rudimentary way; but Darwin was also
+a much greater naturalist than psychologist.&rdquo;&nbsp; The preceding
+quotation is tantamount, on Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s part, to a flat denial
+that animals reason even in a rudimentary way.&nbsp; And when Mr. Burrough
+denies that animals reason even in a rudimentary way, it is equivalent
+to affirming, in accord with the first quotation in this paragraph,
+that instinct will explain every animal act that might be confounded
+with reason by the unskilled or careless observer.<br>
+<br>
+Having bitten off this large mouthful, Mr. Burroughs proceeds with serene
+and beautiful satisfaction to masticate it in the following fashion.&nbsp;
+He cites a large number of instances of purely instinctive actions on
+the part of animals, and triumphantly demands if they are acts of reason.&nbsp;
+He tells of the robin that fought day after day its reflected image
+in a window-pane; of the birds in South America that were guilty of
+drilling clear through a mud wall, which they mistook for a solid clay
+bank: of the beaver that cut down a tree four times because it was held
+at the top by the branches of other trees; of the cow that licked the
+skin of her stuffed calf so affectionately that it came apart, whereupon
+she proceeded to eat the hay with which it was stuffed.&nbsp; He tells
+of the ph&oelig;be-bird that betrays her nest on the porch by trying
+to hide it with moss in similar fashion to the way all ph&oelig;be-birds
+hide their nests when they are built among rocks.&nbsp; He tells of
+the highhole that repeatedly drills through the clap-boards of an empty
+house in a vain attempt to find a thickness of wood deep enough in which
+to build its nest.&nbsp; He tells of the migrating lemmings of Norway
+that plunge into the sea and drown in vast numbers because of their
+instinct to swim lakes and rivers in the course of their migrations.&nbsp;
+And, having told a few more instances of like kidney, he triumphantly
+demands: &ldquo;Where now is your much-vaunted reasoning of the lower
+animals?<br>
+<br>
+No schoolboy in a class debate could be guilty of unfairer argument.&nbsp;
+It is equivalent to replying to the assertion that 2+2=4, by saying:
+&ldquo;No; because 12/4=3; I have demonstrated my honourable opponent&rsquo;s
+error.&rdquo;&nbsp; When a man attacks your ability as a foot-racer,
+promptly prove to him that he was drunk the week before last, and the
+average man in the crowd of gaping listeners will believe that you have
+convincingly refuted the slander on your fleetness of foot.&nbsp; On
+my honour, it will work.&nbsp; Try it some time.&nbsp; It is done every
+day.&nbsp; Mr. Burroughs has done it himself, and, I doubt not, pulled
+the sophistical wool over a great many pairs of eyes.&nbsp; No, no,
+Mr. Burroughs; you can&rsquo;t disprove that animals reason by proving
+that they possess instincts.&nbsp; But the worst of it is that you have
+at the same time pulled the wool over your own eyes.&nbsp; You have
+set up a straw man and knocked the stuffing out of him in the complacent
+belief that it was the reasoning of lower animals you were knocking
+out of the minds of those who disagreed with you.&nbsp; When the highhole
+perforated the icehouse and let out the sawdust, you called him a lunatic
+. . .<br>
+<br>
+But let us be charitable - and serious.&nbsp; What Mr. Burroughs instances
+as acts of instinct certainly are acts of instincts.&nbsp; By the same
+method of logic one could easily adduce a multitude of instinctive acts
+on the part of man and thereby prove that man is an unreasoning animal.&nbsp;
+But man performs actions of both sorts.&nbsp; Between man and the lower
+animals Mr. Burroughs finds a vast gulf.&nbsp; This gulf divides man
+from the rest of his kin by virtue of the power of reason that he alone
+possesses.&nbsp; Man is a voluntary agent.&nbsp; Animals are automatons.&nbsp;
+The robin fights its reflection in the window-pane because it is his
+instinct to fight and because he cannot reason out the physical laws
+that make this reflection appear real.&nbsp; An animal is a mechanism
+that operates according to fore-ordained rules.&nbsp; Wrapped up in
+its heredity, and determined long before it was born, is a certain limited
+capacity of ganglionic response to eternal stimuli.&nbsp; These responses
+have been fixed in the species through adaptation to environment.&nbsp;
+Natural selection has compelled the animal automatically to respond
+in a fixed manner and a certain way to all the usual external stimuli
+it encounters in the course of a usual life.&nbsp; Thus, under usual
+circumstances, it does the usual thing.&nbsp; Under unusual circumstances
+it still does the usual thing, wherefore the highhole perforating the
+ice-house is guilty of lunacy - of unreason, in short.&nbsp; To do the
+unusual thing under unusual circumstances, successfully to adjust to
+a strange environment for which his heredity has not automatically fitted
+an adjustment, Mr. Burroughs says is impossible.&nbsp; He says it is
+impossible because it would be a non-instinctive act, and, as is well
+known animals act only through instinct.&nbsp; And right here we catch
+a glimpse of Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s cart standing before his horse.&nbsp;
+He has a thesis, and though the heavens fall he will fit the facts to
+the thesis.&nbsp; Agassiz, in his opposition to evolution, had a similar
+thesis, though neither did he fit the facts to it nor did the heavens
+fall.&nbsp; Facts are very disagreeable at times.<br>
+<br>
+But let us see.&nbsp; Let us test Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s test of reason
+and instinct.&nbsp; When I was a small boy I had a dog named Rollo.&nbsp;
+According to Mr. Burroughs, Rollo was an automaton, responding to external
+stimuli mechanically as directed by his instincts.&nbsp; Now, as is
+well known, the development of instinct in animals is a dreadfully slow
+process.&nbsp; There is no known case of the development of a single
+instinct in domestic animals in all the history of their domestication.&nbsp;
+Whatever instincts they possess they brought with them from the wild
+thousands of years ago.&nbsp; Therefore, all Rollo&rsquo;s actions were
+ganglionic discharges mechanically determined by the instincts that
+had been developed and fixed in the species thousands of years ago.&nbsp;
+Very well.&nbsp; It is clear, therefore, that in all his play with me
+he would act in old-fashioned ways, adjusting himself to the physical
+and psychical factors in his environment according to the rules of adjustment
+which had obtained in the wild and which had become part of his heredity.<br>
+<br>
+Rollo and I did a great deal of rough romping.&nbsp; He chased me and
+I chased him.&nbsp; He nipped my legs, arms, and hands, often so hard
+that I yelled, while I rolled him and tumbled him and dragged him about,
+often so strenuously as to make him yelp.&nbsp; In the course of the
+play many variations arose.&nbsp; I would make believe to sit down and
+cry.&nbsp; All repentance and anxiety, he would wag his tail and lick
+my face, whereupon I would give him the laugh.&nbsp; He hated to be
+laughed at, and promptly he would spring for me with good-natured, menacing
+jaws, and the wild romp would go on.&nbsp; I had scored a point.&nbsp;
+Then he hit upon a trick.&nbsp; Pursuing him into the woodshed, I would
+find him in a far corner, pretending to sulk.&nbsp; Now, he dearly loved
+the play, and never got enough of it.&nbsp; But at first he fooled me.&nbsp;
+I thought I had somehow hurt his feelings and I came and knelt before
+him, petting him, and speaking lovingly.&nbsp; Promptly, in a wild outburst,
+he was up and away, tumbling me over on the floor as he dashed out in
+a mad skurry around the yard.&nbsp; He had scored a point.<br>
+<br>
+After a time, it became largely a game of wits.&nbsp; I reasoned my
+acts, of course, while his were instinctive.&nbsp; One day, as he pretended
+to sulk in the corner, I glanced out of the woodshed doorway, simulated
+pleasure in face, voice, and language, and greeted one of my schoolboy
+friends.&nbsp; Immediately Rollo forgot to sulk, rushed out to see the
+newcomer, and saw empty space.&nbsp; The laugh was on him, and he knew
+it, and I gave it to him, too.&nbsp; I fooled him in this way two or
+three times; then be became wise.&nbsp; One day I worked a variation.&nbsp;
+Suddenly looking out the door, making believe that my eyes had been
+attracted by a moving form, I said coldly, as a child educated in turning
+away bill-collectors would say: &ldquo;No my father is not at home.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Like a shot, Rollo was out the door.&nbsp; He even ran down the alley
+to the front of the house in a vain attempt to find the man I had addressed.&nbsp;
+He came back sheepishly to endure the laugh and resume the game.<br>
+<br>
+And now we come to the test.&nbsp; I fooled Rollo, but how was the fooling
+made possible?&nbsp; What precisely went on in that brain of his?&nbsp;
+According to Mr. Burroughs, who denies even rudimentary reasoning to
+the lower animals, Rollo acted instinctively, mechanically responding
+to the external stimulus, furnished by me, which led him to believe
+that a man was outside the door.<br>
+<br>
+Since Rollo acted instinctively, and since all instincts are very ancient,
+tracing back to the pre-domestication period, we can conclude only that
+Rollo&rsquo;s wild ancestors, at the time this particular instinct was
+fixed into the heredity of the species, must have been in close, long-continued,
+and vital contact with man, the voice of man, and the expressions on
+the face of man.&nbsp; But since the instinct must have been developed
+during the pre-domestication period, how under the sun could his wild,
+undomesticated ancestors have experienced the close, long-continued,
+and vital contact with man?<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Burroughs says that &ldquo;instinct suffices for the animals,&rdquo;
+that &ldquo;they get along very well without reason.&rdquo;&nbsp; But
+I say, what all the poor nature-fakers will say, that Rollo reasoned.&nbsp;
+He was born into the world a bundle of instincts and a pinch of brain-stuff,
+all wrapped around in a framework of bone, meat, and hide.&nbsp; As
+he adjusted to his environment he gained experiences.&nbsp; He remembered
+these experiences.&nbsp; He learned that he mustn&rsquo;t chase the
+cat, kill chickens, nor bite little girls&rsquo; dresses.&nbsp; He learned
+that little boys had little boy playmates.&nbsp; He learned that men
+came into back yards.&nbsp; He learned that the animal man, on meeting
+with his own kind, was given to verbal and facial greeting.&nbsp; He
+learned that when a boy greeted a playmate he did it differently from
+the way he greeted a man.&nbsp; All these he learned and remembered.&nbsp;
+They were so many observations - so many propositions, if you please.&nbsp;
+Now, what went on behind those brown eyes of his, inside that pinch
+of brain-stuff, when I turned suddenly to the door and greeted an imaginary
+person outside?&nbsp; Instantly, out of the thousands of observations
+stored in his brain, came to the front of his consciousness the particular
+observations connected with this particular situation.&nbsp; Next, he
+established a relation between these observations.&nbsp; This relation
+was his conclusion, achieved, as every psychologist will agree, by a
+definite cell-action of his grey matter.&nbsp; From the fact that his
+master turned suddenly toward the door, and from the fact that his master&rsquo;s
+voice, facial expression, and whole demeanour expressed surprise and
+delight, he concluded that a friend was outside.&nbsp; He established
+a relation between various things, and the act of establishing relations
+between things is an act of reason - of rudimentary reason, granted,
+but none the less of reason.<br>
+<br>
+Of course Rollo was fooled.&nbsp; But that is no call for us to throw
+chests about it.&nbsp; How often has every last one of us been fooled
+in precisely similar fashion by another who turned and suddenly addressed
+an imaginary intruder?&nbsp; Here is a case in point that occurred in
+the West.&nbsp; A robber had held up a railroad train.&nbsp; He stood
+in the aisle between the seats, his revolver presented at the head of
+the conductor, who stood facing him.&nbsp; The conductor was at his
+mercy.<br>
+<br>
+But the conductor suddenly looked over the robber&rsquo;s shoulder,
+at the same time saying aloud to an imaginary person standing at the
+robber&rsquo;s back: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t shoot him.&rdquo;&nbsp; Like
+a flash the robber whirled about to confront this new danger, and like
+a flash the conductor shot him down.&nbsp; Show me, Mr. Burroughs, where
+the mental process in the robber&rsquo;s brain was a shade different
+from the mental processes in Rollo&rsquo;s brain, and I&rsquo;ll quit
+nature-faking and join the Trappists.&nbsp; Surely, when a man&rsquo;s
+mental process and a dog&rsquo;s mental process are precisely similar,
+the much-vaunted gulf of Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s fancy has been bridged.<br>
+<br>
+I had a dog in Oakland.&nbsp; His name was Glen.&nbsp; His father was
+Brown, a wolf-dog that had been brought down from Alaska., and his mother
+was a half-wild mountain shepherd dog.&nbsp; Neither father nor mother
+had had any experience with automobiles.&nbsp; Glen came from the country,
+a half-grown puppy, to live in Oakland.&nbsp; Immediately he became
+infatuated with an automobile.&nbsp; He reached the culmination of happiness
+when he was permitted to sit up in the front seat alongside the chauffeur.&nbsp;
+He would spend a whole day at a time on an automobile debauch, even
+going without food.&nbsp; Often the machine started directly from inside
+the barn, dashed out the driveway without stopping, and was gone.&nbsp;
+Glen got left behind several times.&nbsp; The custom was established
+that whoever was taking the machine out should toot the horn before
+starting.&nbsp; Glen learned the signal.&nbsp; No matter where he was
+or what he was doing, when that horn tooted he was off for the barn
+and up into the front seat.<br>
+<br>
+One morning, while Glen was on the back porch eating his breakfast of
+mush and milk, the chauffeur tooted.&nbsp; Glen rushed down the steps,
+into the barn, and took his front seat, the mush and milk dripping down
+his excited and happy chops.&nbsp; In passing, I may point out that
+in thus forsaking his breakfast for the automobile he was displaying
+what is called the power of choice - a peculiarly lordly attribute that,
+according to Mr. Burroughs, belongs to man alone.&nbsp; Yet Glen made
+his choice between food and fun.<br>
+<br>
+It was not that Glen wanted his breakfast less, but that he wanted his
+ride more.&nbsp; The toot was only a joke.&nbsp; The automobile did
+not start.&nbsp; Glen waited and watched.&nbsp; Evidently he saw no
+signs of an immediate start, for finally he jumped out of the seat and
+went back to his breakfast.&nbsp; He ate with indecent haste, like a
+man anxious to catch a train.&nbsp; Again the horn tooted, again he
+deserted his breakfast, and again he sat in the seat and waited vainly
+for the machine to go.<br>
+<br>
+They came close to spoiling Glen&rsquo;s breakfast for him, for he was
+kept on the jump between porch and barn.&nbsp; Then he grew wise.&nbsp;
+They tooted the horn loudly and insistently, but he stayed by his breakfast
+and finished it.&nbsp; Thus once more did he display power of choice,
+incidentally of control, for when that horn tooted it was all he could
+do to refrain from running for the barn.<br>
+<br>
+The nature-faker would analyze what went on in Glen&rsquo;s brain somewhat
+in the following fashion.&nbsp; He had had, in his short life, experiences
+that not one of all his ancestors had ever had.&nbsp; He had learned
+that automobiles went fast, that once in motion it was impossible for
+him to get on board, that the toot of the horn was a noise that was
+peculiar to automobiles.&nbsp; These were so many propositions.&nbsp;
+Now reasoning can be defined as the act or process of the brain by which,
+from propositions known or assumed, new propositions are reached.&nbsp;
+Out of the propositions which I have shown were Glen&rsquo;s, and which
+had become his through the medium of his own observation of the phenomena
+of life, he made the new proposition that when the horn tooted it was
+time for him to get on board.<br>
+<br>
+But on the morning I have described, the chauffeur fooled Glen.&nbsp;
+Somehow and much to his own disgust, his reasoning was erroneous.&nbsp;
+The machine did not start after all.&nbsp; But to reason incorrectly
+is very human.&nbsp; The great trouble in all acts of reasoning is to
+include all the propositions in the problem.&nbsp; Glen had included
+every proposition but one, namely, the human proposition, the joke in
+the brain of the chauffeur.&nbsp; For a number of times Glen was fooled.&nbsp;
+Then he performed another mental act.&nbsp; In his problem he included
+the human proposition (the joke in the brain of the chauffeur), and
+he reached the new conclusion that when the horn tooted the automobile
+was <i>not </i>going to start.&nbsp; Basing his action on this conclusion,
+he remained on the porch and finished his breakfast.&nbsp; You and I,
+and even Mr. Burroughs, perform acts of reasoning precisely similar
+to this every day in our lives.&nbsp; How Mr. Burroughs will explain
+Glen&rsquo;s action by the instinctive theory is beyond me.&nbsp; In
+wildest fantasy, even, my brain refuses to follow Mr. Burroughs into
+the primeval forest where Glen&rsquo;s dim ancestors, to the tooting
+of automobile horns, were fixing into the heredity of the breed the
+particular instinct that would enable Glen, a few thousand years later,
+capably to cope with automobiles.<br>
+<br>
+Dr. C. J. Romanes tells of a female chimpanzee who was taught to count
+straws up to five.&nbsp; She held the straws in her hand, exposing the
+ends to the number requested.&nbsp; If she were asked for three, she
+held up three.&nbsp; If she were asked for four, she held up four.&nbsp;
+All this is a mere matter of training.&nbsp; But consider now, Mr. Burroughs,
+what follows.&nbsp; When she was asked for five straws and she had only
+four, she doubled one straw, exposing both its ends and thus making
+up the required number.&nbsp; She did not do this only once, and by
+accident.&nbsp; She did it whenever more straws were asked for than
+she possessed.&nbsp; Did she perform a distinctly reasoning act? or
+was her action the result of blind, mechanical instinct?&nbsp; If Mr.
+Burroughs cannot answer to his own satisfaction, he may call Dr. Romanes
+a nature-faker and dismiss the incident from his mind.<br>
+<br>
+The foregoing is a trick of erroneous human reasoning that works very
+successfully in the United States these days.&nbsp; It is certainly
+a trick of Mr. Burroughs, of which he is guilty with distressing frequency.&nbsp;
+When a poor devil of a writer records what he has seen, and when what
+he has seen does not agree with Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s mediaeval theory,
+he calls said writer a nature-faker.&nbsp; When a man like Mr. Hornaday
+comes along, Mr. Burroughs works a variation of the trick on him.&nbsp;
+Mr. Hornaday has made a close study of the orang in captivity and of
+the orang in its native state.&nbsp; Also, he has studied closely many
+other of the higher animal types.&nbsp; Also, in the tropics, he has
+studied the lower types of man.&nbsp; Mr. Hornaday is a man of experience
+and reputation.&nbsp; When he was asked if animals reasoned, out of
+all his knowledge on the subject he replied that to ask him such a question
+was equivalent to asking him if fishes swim.&nbsp; Now Mr. Burroughs
+has not had much experience in studying the lower human types and the
+higher animal types.&nbsp; Living in a rural district in the state of
+New York, and studying principally birds in that limited habitat, he
+has been in contact neither with the higher animal types nor the lower
+human types.&nbsp; But Mr. Hornaday&rsquo;s reply is such a facer to
+him and his homocentric theory that he has to do something.&nbsp; And
+he does it.&nbsp; He retorts: &ldquo;I suspect that Mr. Hornaday is
+a better naturalist than he is a comparative psychologist.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Exit Mr. Hornaday.&nbsp; Who the devil is Mr. Hornaday, anyway?&nbsp;
+The sage of Slabsides has spoken.&nbsp; When Darwin concluded that animals
+were capable of reasoning in a rudimentary way, Mr. Burroughs laid him
+out in the same fashion by saying: &ldquo;But Darwin was also a much
+greater naturalist than psychologist&rdquo; - and this despite Darwin&rsquo;s
+long life of laborious research that was not wholly confined to a rural
+district such as Mr. Burroughs inhabits in New York.&nbsp; Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s
+method of argument is beautiful.&nbsp; It reminds one of the man whose
+pronunciation was vile, but who said: &ldquo;Damn the dictionary; ain&rsquo;t
+I here?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+And now we come to the mental processes of Mr. Burroughs - to the psychology
+of the ego, if you please.&nbsp; Mr. Burroughs has troubles of his own
+with the dictionary.&nbsp; He violates language from the standpoint
+both of logic and science.&nbsp; Language is a tool, and definitions
+embodied in language should agree with the facts and history of life.&nbsp;
+But Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s definitions do not so agree.&nbsp; This, in
+turn, is not the fault of his education, but of his ego.&nbsp; To him,
+despite his well-exploited and patronizing devotion to them, the lower
+animals are disgustingly low.&nbsp; To him, affinity and kinship with
+the other animals is a repugnant thing.&nbsp; He will have none of it.&nbsp;
+He is too glorious a personality not to have between him and the other
+animals a vast and impassable gulf.&nbsp; The cause of Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s
+mediaeval view of the other animals is to be found, not in his knowledge
+of those other animals, but in the suggestion of his self-exalted ego.&nbsp;
+In short, Mr. Burroughs&rsquo;s homocentric theory has been developed
+out of his homocentric ego, and by the misuse of language he strives
+to make the facts of life agree with his theory.<br>
+<br>
+After the instances I have cited of actions of animals which are impossible
+of explanation as due to instinct, Mr. Burroughs may reply: &ldquo;Your
+instances are easily explained by the simple law of association.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+To this I reply, first, then why did you deny rudimentary reason to
+animals? and why did you state flatly that &ldquo;instinct suffices
+for the animals&rdquo;?&nbsp; And, second, with great reluctance and
+with overwhelming humility, because of my youth, I suggest that you
+do not know exactly what you do mean by that phrase &ldquo;the simple
+law of association.&rdquo;&nbsp; Your trouble, I repeat, is with definitions.&nbsp;
+You have grasped that man performs what is called <i>abstract </i>reasoning,
+you have made a definition of abstract reason, and, betrayed by that
+great maker of theories, the ego, you have come to think that all reasoning
+is abstract and that what is not abstract reason is not reason at all.&nbsp;
+This is your attitude toward rudimentary reason.&nbsp; Such a process,
+in one of the other animals, must be either abstract or it is not a
+reasoning process.&nbsp; Your intelligence tells you that such a process
+is not abstract reasoning, and your homocentric thesis compels you to
+conclude that it can be only a mechanical, instinctive process.<br>
+<br>
+Definitions must agree, not with egos, but with life.&nbsp; Mr. Burroughs
+goes on the basis that a definition is something hard and fast, absolute
+and eternal.&nbsp; He forgets that all the universe is in flux; that
+definitions are arbitrary and ephemeral; that they fix, for a fleeting
+instant of time, things that in the past were not, that in the future
+will be not, that out of the past become, and that out of the present
+pass on to the future and become other things.&nbsp; Definitions cannot
+rule life.&nbsp; Definitions cannot be made to rule life.&nbsp; Life
+must rule definitions or else the definitions perish.<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Burroughs forgets the evolution of reason.&nbsp; He makes a definition
+of reason without regard to its history, and that definition is of reason
+purely abstract.&nbsp; Human reason, as we know it to-day, is not a
+creation, but a growth.&nbsp; Its history goes back to the primordial
+slime that was quick with muddy life; its history goes back to the first
+vitalized inorganic.&nbsp; And here are the steps of its ascent from
+the mud to man: simple reflex action, compound reflex action, memory,
+habit, rudimentary reason, and abstract reason.&nbsp; In the course
+of the climb, thanks to natural selection, instinct was evolved.&nbsp;
+Habit is a development in the individual.&nbsp; Instinct is a race-habit.&nbsp;
+Instinct is blind, unreasoning, mechanical.&nbsp; This was the dividing
+of the ways in the climb of aspiring life.&nbsp; The perfect culmination
+of instinct we find in the ant-heap and the beehive.&nbsp; Instinct
+proved a blind alley.&nbsp; But the other path, that of reason, led
+on and on even to Mr. Burroughs and you and me.<br>
+<br>
+There are no impassable gulfs, unless one chooses, as Mr. Burroughs
+does, to ignore the lower human types and the higher animal types, and
+to compare human mind with bird mind.&nbsp; It was impossible for life
+to reason abstractly until speech was developed.&nbsp; Equipped with
+swords, with tools of thought, in short, the slow development of the
+power to reason in the abstract went on.&nbsp; The lowest human types
+do little or no reasoning in the abstract.&nbsp; With every word, with
+every increase in the complexity of thought, with every ascertained
+fact so gained, went on action and reaction in the grey matter of the
+speech discoverer, and slowly, step by step, through hundreds of thousands
+of years, developed the power of reason.<br>
+<br>
+Place a honey-bee in a glass bottle.&nbsp; Turn the bottom of the bottle
+toward a lighted lamp so that the open mouth is away from the lamp.&nbsp;
+Vainly, ceaselessly, a thousand times, undeterred by the bafflement
+and the pain, the bee will hurl himself against the bottom of the bottle
+as he strives to win to the light.&nbsp; That is instinct.&nbsp; Place
+your dog in a back yard and go away.&nbsp; He is your dog.&nbsp; He
+loves you.&nbsp; He yearns toward you as the bee yearns toward the light.&nbsp;
+He listens to your departing footsteps.&nbsp; But the fence is too high.&nbsp;
+Then he turns his back upon the direction in which you are departing,
+and runs around the yard.&nbsp; He is frantic with affection and desire.&nbsp;
+But he is not blind.&nbsp; He is observant.&nbsp; He is looking for
+a hole under the fence, or through the fence, or for a place where the
+fence is not so high.&nbsp; He sees a dry-goods box standing against
+the fence.&nbsp; Presto!&nbsp; He leaps upon it, goes over the barrier,
+and tears down the street to overtake you.&nbsp; Is that instinct?<br>
+<br>
+Here, in the household where I am writing this, is a little Tahitian
+&ldquo;feeding-child.&rdquo;&nbsp; He believes firmly that a tiny dwarf
+resides in the box of my talking-machine and that it is the tiny dwarf
+who does the singing and the talking.&nbsp; Not even Mr. Burroughs will
+affirm that the child has reached this conclusion by an instinctive
+process.&nbsp; Of course, the child reasons the existence of the dwarf
+in the box.&nbsp; How else could the box talk and sing?&nbsp; In that
+child&rsquo;s limited experience it has never encountered a single instance
+where speech and song were produced otherwise than by direct human agency.&nbsp;
+I doubt not that the dog is considerably surprised when he hears his
+master&rsquo;s voice coming out of a box.<br>
+<br>
+The adult savage, on his first introduction to a telephone, rushes around
+to the adjoining room to find the man who is talking through the partition.&nbsp;
+Is this act instinctive?&nbsp; No.&nbsp; Out of his limited experience,
+out of his limited knowledge of physics, he reasons that the only explanation
+possible is that a man is in the other room talking through the partition.<br>
+<br>
+But that savage cannot be fooled by a hand-mirror.&nbsp; We must go
+lower down in the animal scale, to the monkey.&nbsp; The monkey swiftly
+learns that the monkey it sees is not in the glass, wherefore it reaches
+craftily behind the glass.&nbsp; Is this instinct?&nbsp; No.&nbsp; It
+is rudimentary reasoning.&nbsp; Lower than the monkey in the scale of
+brain is the robin, and the robin fights its reflection in the window-pane.&nbsp;
+Now climb with me for a space.&nbsp; From the robin to the monkey, where
+is the impassable gulf? and where is the impassable gulf between the
+monkey and the feeding-child? between the feeding-child and the savage
+who seeks the man behind the partition? ay, and between the savage and
+the astute financiers Mrs. Chadwick fooled and the thousands who were
+fooled by the Keeley Motor swindle?<br>
+<br>
+Let us be very humble.&nbsp; We who are so very human are very animal.&nbsp;
+Kinship with the other animals is no more repugnant to Mr. Burroughs
+than was the heliocentric theory to the priests who compelled Galileo
+to recant.&nbsp; Not correct human reason, not the evidence of the ascertained
+fact, but pride of ego, was responsible for the repugnance.<br>
+<br>
+In his stiff-necked pride, Mr. Burroughs runs a hazard more humiliating
+to that pride than any amount of kinship with the other animals.&nbsp;
+When a dog exhibits choice, direction, control, and reason; when it
+is shown that certain mental processes in that dog&rsquo;s brain are
+precisely duplicated in the brain of man; and when Mr. Burroughs convincingly
+proves that every action of the dog is mechanical and automatic - then,
+by precisely the same arguments, can it be proved that the similar actions
+of man are mechanical and automatic.&nbsp; No, Mr. Burroughs, though
+you stand on the top of the ladder of life, you must not kick out that
+ladder from under your feet.&nbsp; You must not deny your relatives,
+the other animals.&nbsp; Their history is your history, and if you kick
+them to the bottom of the abyss, to the bottom of the abyss you go yourself.&nbsp;
+By them you stand or fall.&nbsp; What you repudiate in them you repudiate
+in yourself - a pretty spectacle, truly, of an exalted animal striving
+to disown the stuff of life out of which it is made, striving by use
+of the very reason that was developed by evolution to deny the possession
+of evolution that developed it.&nbsp; This may be good egotism, but
+it is not good science.<br>
+<br>
+PAPEETE, TAHITI.<br>
+<i>March </i>1908.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE YELLOW PERIL<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+No more marked contrast appears in passing from our Western land to
+the paper houses and cherry blossoms of Japan than appears in passing
+from Korea to China.&nbsp; To achieve a correct appreciation of the
+Chinese the traveller should first sojourn amongst the Koreans for several
+months, and then, one fine day, cross over the Yalu into Manchuria.&nbsp;
+It would be of exceptional advantage to the correctness of appreciation
+did he cross over the Yalu on the heels of a hostile and alien army.<br>
+<br>
+War is to-day the final arbiter in the affairs of men, and it is as
+yet the final test of the worth-whileness of peoples.&nbsp; Tested thus,
+the Korean fails.&nbsp; He lacks the nerve to remain when a strange
+army crosses his land.&nbsp; The few goods and chattels he may have
+managed to accumulate he puts on his back, along with his doors and
+windows, and away he heads for his mountain fastnesses.&nbsp; Later
+he may return, sans goods, chattels, doors, and windows, impelled by
+insatiable curiosity for a &ldquo;look see.&rdquo;&nbsp; But it is curiosity
+merely - a timid, deerlike curiosity.&nbsp; He is prepared to bound
+away on his long legs at the first hint of danger or trouble.<br>
+<br>
+Northern Korea was a desolate land when the Japanese passed through.&nbsp;
+Villages and towns were deserted.&nbsp; The fields lay untouched.&nbsp;
+There was no ploughing nor sowing, no green things growing.&nbsp; Little
+or nothing was to be purchased.&nbsp; One carried one&rsquo;s own food
+with him and food for horses and servants was the anxious problem that
+waited at the day&rsquo;s end.&nbsp; In many a lonely village not an
+ounce nor a grain of anything could be bought, and yet there might be
+standing around scores of white-garmented, stalwart Koreans, smoking
+yard-long pipes and chattering, chattering - ceaselessly chattering.&nbsp;
+Love, money, or force could not procure from them a horseshoe or a horseshoe
+nail.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Upso,&rdquo; was their invariable reply.&nbsp; &ldquo;Upso,&rdquo;
+cursed word, which means &ldquo;Have not got.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+They had tramped probably forty miles that day, down from their hiding-places,
+just for a &ldquo;look see,&rdquo; and forty miles back they would cheerfully
+tramp, chattering all the way over what they had seen.&nbsp; Shake a
+stick at them as they stand chattering about your camp-fire, and the
+gloom of the landscape will be filled with tall, flitting ghosts, bounding
+like deer, with great springy strides which one cannot but envy.&nbsp;
+They have splendid vigour and fine bodies, but they are accustomed to
+being beaten and robbed without protest or resistance by every chance
+foreigner who enters their country.<br>
+<br>
+From this nerveless, forsaken Korean land I rode down upon the sandy
+islands of the Yalu.&nbsp; For weeks these islands had been the dread
+between-the-lines of two fighting armies.&nbsp; The air above had been
+rent by screaming projectiles.&nbsp; The echoes of the final battle
+had scarcely died away.&nbsp; The trains of Japanese wounded and Japanese
+dead were trailing by.<br>
+<br>
+On the conical hill, a quarter of a mile away, the Russian dead were
+being buried in their trenches and in the shell holes made by the Japanese.&nbsp;
+And here, in the thick of it all, a man was ploughing.&nbsp; Green things
+were growing - young onions - and the man who was weeding them paused
+from his labour long enough to sell me a handful.&nbsp; Near by was
+the smoke-blackened ruin of the farmhouse, fired by the Russians when
+they retreated from the riverbed.&nbsp; Two men were removing the debris,
+cleaning the confusion, preparatory to rebuilding.&nbsp; They were clad
+in blue.&nbsp; Pigtails hung down their backs.&nbsp; I was in China!<br>
+<br>
+I rode to the shore, into the village of Kuelian-Ching.&nbsp; There
+were no lounging men smoking long pipes and chattering.&nbsp; The previous
+day the Russians had been there, a bloody battle had been fought, and
+to-day the Japanese were there - but what was that to talk about?&nbsp;
+Everybody was busy.&nbsp; Men were offering eggs and chickens and fruit
+for sale upon the street, and bread, as I live, bread in small round
+loaves or buns.&nbsp; I rode on into the country.&nbsp; Everywhere a
+toiling population was in evidence.&nbsp; The houses and walls were
+strong and substantial.&nbsp; Stone and brick replaced the mud walls
+of the Korean dwellings.&nbsp; Twilight fell and deepened, and still
+the ploughs went up and down the fields, the sowers following after.&nbsp;
+Trains of wheelbarrows, heavily loaded, squeaked by, and Pekin carts,
+drawn by from four to six cows, horses, mules, ponies, or jackasses
+- cows even with their newborn calves tottering along on puny legs outside
+the traces.&nbsp; Everybody worked.&nbsp; Everything worked.&nbsp; I
+saw a man mending the road.&nbsp; I was in China.<br>
+<br>
+I came to the city of Antung, and lodged with a merchant.&nbsp; He was
+a grain merchant.&nbsp; Corn he had, hundreds of bushels, stored in
+great bins of stout matting; peas and beans in sacks, and in the back
+yard his millstones went round and round, grinding out meal.&nbsp; Also,
+in his back yard, were buildings containing vats sunk into the ground,
+and here the tanners were at work making leather.&nbsp; I bought a measure
+of corn from mine host for my horses, and he overcharged me thirty cents.&nbsp;
+I was in China.&nbsp; Antung was jammed with Japanese troops.&nbsp;
+It was the thick of war.&nbsp; But it did not matter.&nbsp; The work
+of Antung went on just the same.&nbsp; The shops were wide open; the
+streets were lined with pedlars.&nbsp; One could buy anything; get anything
+made.&nbsp; I dined at a Chinese restaurant, cleansed myself at a public
+bath in a private tub with a small boy to assist in the scrubbing.&nbsp;
+I bought condensed milk, bitter, canned vegetables, bread, and cake.&nbsp;
+I repeat it, cake - good cake.&nbsp; I bought knives, forks, and spoons,
+granite-ware dishes and mugs.&nbsp; There were horseshoes and horseshoers.&nbsp;
+A worker in iron realized for me new designs of mine for my tent poles.&nbsp;
+My shoes were sent out to be repaired.&nbsp; A barber shampooed my hair.&nbsp;
+A servant returned with corn-beef in tins, a bottle of port, another
+of cognac, and beer, blessed beer, to wash out from my throat the dust
+of an army.&nbsp; It was the land of Canaan.&nbsp; I was in China.<br>
+<br>
+The Korean is the perfect type of inefficiency - of utter worthlessness.&nbsp;
+The Chinese is the perfect type of industry.&nbsp; For sheer work no
+worker in the world can compare with him.&nbsp; Work is the breath of
+his nostrils.&nbsp; It is his solution of existence.&nbsp; It is to
+him what wandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual adventure
+have been to other peoples.&nbsp; Liberty to him epitomizes itself in
+access to the means of toil.&nbsp; To till the soil and labour interminably
+with rude implements and utensils is all he asks of life and of the
+powers that be.&nbsp; Work is what he desires above all things, and
+he will work at anything for anybody.<br>
+<br>
+During the taking of the Tak&uacute; forts he carried scaling ladders
+at the heads of the storming columns and planted them against the walls.&nbsp;
+He did this, not from a sense of patriotism, but for the invading foreign
+devils because they paid him a daily wage of fifty cents.&nbsp; He is
+not frightened by war.&nbsp; He accepts it as he does rain and sunshine,
+the changing of the seasons, and other natural phenomena.&nbsp; He prepares
+for it, endures it, and survives it, and when the tide of battle sweeps
+by, the thunder of the guns still reverberating in the distant canyons,
+he is seen calmly bending to his usual tasks.&nbsp; Nay, war itself
+bears fruits whereof he may pick.&nbsp; Before the dead are cold or
+the burial squads have arrived he is out on the field, stripping the
+mangled bodies, collecting the shrapnel, and ferreting in the shell
+holes for slivers and fragments of iron.<br>
+<br>
+The Chinese is no coward.&nbsp; He does not carry away his doors amid
+windows to the mountains, but remains to guard them when alien soldiers
+occupy his town.&nbsp; He does not hide away his chickens and his eggs,
+nor any other commodity he possesses.&nbsp; He proceeds at once to offer
+them for sale.&nbsp; Nor is he to be bullied into lowering his price.&nbsp;
+What if the purchaser be a soldier and an alien made cocky by victory
+and confident by overwhelming force?&nbsp; He has two large pears saved
+over from last year which he will sell for five sen, or for the same
+price three small pears.&nbsp; What if one soldier persist in taking
+away with him three large pears?&nbsp; What if there be twenty other
+soldiers jostling about him?&nbsp; He turns over his sack of fruit to
+another Chinese and races down the street after his pears and the soldier
+responsible for their flight, and he does not return till he has wrenched
+away one large pear from that soldier&rsquo;s grasp.<br>
+<br>
+Nor is the Chinese the type of permanence which he has been so often
+designated.&nbsp; He is not so ill-disposed toward new ideas and new
+methods as his history would seem to indicate.&nbsp; True, his forms,
+customs, and methods have been permanent these many centuries, but this
+has been due to the fact that his government was in the hands of the
+learned classes, and that these governing scholars found their salvation
+lay in suppressing all progressive ideas.&nbsp; The ideas behind the
+Boxer troubles and the outbreaks over the introduction of railroad and
+other foreign devil machinations have emanated from the minds of the
+literati, and been spread by their pamphlets and propagandists.<br>
+<br>
+Originality and enterprise have been suppressed in the Chinese for scores
+of generations.&nbsp; Only has remained to him industry, and in this
+has he found the supreme expression of his being.&nbsp; On the other
+hand, his susceptibility to new ideas has been well demonstrated wherever
+he has escaped beyond the restrictions imposed upon him by his government.&nbsp;
+So far as the business man is concerned he has grasped far more clearly
+the Western code of business, the Western ethics of business, than has
+the Japanese.&nbsp; He has learned, as a matter of course, to keep his
+word or his bond.&nbsp; As yet, the Japanese business man has failed
+to understand this.&nbsp; When he has signed a time contract and when
+changing conditions cause him to lose by it, the Japanese merchant cannot
+understand why he should live up to his contract.&nbsp; It is beyond
+his comprehension and repulsive to his common sense that he should live
+up to his contract and thereby lose money.&nbsp; He firmly believes
+that the changing conditions themselves absolve him.&nbsp; And in so
+far adaptable as he has shown himself to be in other respects, he fails
+to grasp a radically new idea where the Chinese succeeds.<br>
+<br>
+Here we have the Chinese, four hundred millions of him, occupying a
+vast land of immense natural resources - resources of a twentieth-century
+age, of a machine age; resources of coal and iron, which are the backbone
+of commercial civilization.&nbsp; He is an indefatigable worker.&nbsp;
+He is not dead to new ideas, new methods, new systems.&nbsp; Under a
+capable management he can be made to do anything.&nbsp; Truly would
+he of himself constitute the much-heralded Yellow Peril were it not
+for his present management.&nbsp; This management, his government, is
+set, crystallized.&nbsp; It is what binds him down to building as his
+fathers built.&nbsp; The governing class, entrenched by the precedent
+and power of centuries and by the stamp it has put upon his mind, will
+never free him.&nbsp; It would be the suicide of the governing class,
+and the governing class knows it.<br>
+<br>
+Comes now the Japanese.&nbsp; On the streets of Antung, of Feng-Wang-Chang,
+or of any other Manchurian city, the following is a familiar scene:
+One is hurrying home through the dark of the unlighted streets when
+he comes upon a paper lantern resting on the ground.&nbsp; On one side
+squats a Chinese civilian on his hams, on the other side squats a Japanese
+soldier.&nbsp; One dips his forefinger in the dust and writes strange,
+monstrous characters.&nbsp; The other nods understanding, sweeps the
+dust slate level with his hand, and with his forefinger inscribes similar
+characters.&nbsp; They are talking.&nbsp; They cannot speak to each
+other, but they can write.&nbsp; Long ago one borrowed the other&rsquo;s
+written language, and long before that, untold generations ago, they
+diverged from a common root, the ancient Mongol stock.<br>
+<br>
+There have been changes, differentiations brought about by diverse conditions
+and infusions of other blood; but down at the bottom of their being,
+twisted into the fibres of them, is a heritage in common - a sameness
+in kind which time has not obliterated.&nbsp; The infusion of other
+blood, Malay, perhaps, has made the Japanese a race of mastery and power,
+a fighting race through all its history, a race which has always despised
+commerce and exalted fighting.<br>
+<br>
+To-day, equipped with the finest machines and systems of destruction
+the Caucasian mind has devised, handling machines and systems with remarkable
+and deadly accuracy, this rejuvenescent Japanese race has embarked on
+a course of conquest the goal of which no man knows.&nbsp; The head
+men of Japan are dreaming ambitiously, and the people are dreaming blindly,
+a Napoleonic dream.&nbsp; And to this dream the Japanese clings and
+will cling with bull-dog tenacity.&nbsp; The soldier shouting &ldquo;Nippon,
+Banzai!&rdquo; on the walls of Wiju, the widow at home in her paper
+house committing suicide so that her only son, her sole support, may
+go to the front, are both expressing the unanimity of the dream.<br>
+<br>
+The late disturbance in the Far East marked the clashing of the dreams,
+for the Slav, too, is dreaming greatly.&nbsp; Granting that the Japanese
+can hurl back the Slav and that the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon
+race do not despoil him of his spoils, the Japanese dream takes on substantiality.&nbsp;
+Japan&rsquo;s population is no larger because her people have continually
+pressed against the means of subsistence.&nbsp; But given poor, empty
+Korea for a breeding colony and Manchuria for a granary, and at once
+the Japanese begins to increase by leaps and bounds.<br>
+<br>
+Even so, he would not of himself constitute a Brown Peril.&nbsp; He
+has not the time in which to grow and realize the dream.&nbsp; He is
+only forty-five millions, and so fast does the economic exploitation
+of the planet hurry on the planet&rsquo;s partition amongst the Western
+peoples that, before he could attain the stature requisite to menace,
+he would see the Western giants in possession of the very stuff of his
+dream.<br>
+<br>
+The menace to the Western world lies, not in the little brown man, but
+in the four hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown man
+undertake their management.&nbsp; The Chinese is not dead to new ideas;
+he is an efficient worker; makes a good soldier, and is wealthy in the
+essential materials of a machine age.&nbsp; Under a capable management
+he will go far.&nbsp; The Japanese is prepared and fit to undertake
+this management.&nbsp; Not only has he proved himself an apt imitator
+of Western material progress, a sturdy worker, and a capable organizer,
+but he is far more fit to manage the Chinese than are we.&nbsp; The
+baffling enigma of the Chinese character is no baffling enigma to him.&nbsp;
+He understands as we could never school ourselves nor hope to understand.&nbsp;
+Their mental processes are largely the same.&nbsp; He thinks with the
+same thought-symbols as does the Chinese, and he thinks in the same
+peculiar grooves.&nbsp; He goes on where we are balked by the obstacles
+of incomprehension.&nbsp; He takes the turning which we cannot perceive,
+twists around the obstacle, and, presto! is out of sight in the ramifications
+of the Chinese mind where we cannot follow.<br>
+<br>
+The Chinese has been called the type of permanence, and well he has
+merited it, dozing as he has through the ages.&nbsp; And as truly was
+the Japanese the type of permanence up to a generation ago, when he
+suddenly awoke and startled the world with a rejuvenescence the like
+of which the world had never seen before.&nbsp; The ideas of the West
+were the leaven which quickened the Japanese; and the ideas of the West,
+transmitted by the Japanese mind into ideas Japanese, may well make
+the leaven powerful enough to quicken the Chinese.<br>
+<br>
+We have had Africa for the Afrikander, and at no distant day we shall
+hear &ldquo;Asia for the Asiatic!&rdquo;&nbsp; Four hundred million
+indefatigable workers (deft, intelligent, and unafraid to die), aroused
+and rejuvenescent, managed and guided by forty-five million additional
+human beings who are splendid fighting animals, scientific and modern,
+constitute that menace to the Western world which has been well named
+the &ldquo;Yellow Peril.&rdquo;&nbsp; The possibility of race adventure
+has not passed away.&nbsp; We are in the midst of our own.&nbsp; The
+Slav is just girding himself up to begin.&nbsp; Why may not the yellow
+and the brown start out on an adventure as tremendous as our own and
+more strikingly unique?<br>
+<br>
+The ultimate success of such an adventure the Western mind refuses to
+consider.&nbsp; It is not the nature of life to believe itself weak.&nbsp;
+There is such a thing as race egotism as well as creature egotism, and
+a very good thing it is.&nbsp; In the first place, the Western world
+will not permit the rise of the yellow peril.&nbsp; It is firmly convinced
+that it will not permit the yellow and the brown to wax strong and menace
+its peace and comfort.&nbsp; It advances this idea with persistency,
+and delivers itself of long arguments showing how and why this menace
+will not be permitted to arise.&nbsp; Today, far more voices are engaged
+in denying the yellow peril than in prophesying it.&nbsp; The Western
+world is warned, if not armed, against the possibility of it.<br>
+<br>
+In the second place, there is a weakness inherent in the brown man which
+will bring his adventure to naught.&nbsp; From the West he has borrowed
+all our material achievement and passed our ethical achievement by.&nbsp;
+Our engines of production and destruction he has made his.&nbsp; What
+was once solely ours he now duplicates, rivalling our merchants in the
+commerce of the East, thrashing the Russian on sea and land.&nbsp; A
+marvellous imitator truly, but imitating us only in things material.&nbsp;
+Things spiritual cannot be imitated; they must be felt and lived, woven
+into the very fabric of life, and here the Japanese fails.<br>
+<br>
+It required no revolution of his nature to learn to calculate the range
+and fire a field gun or to march the goose-step.&nbsp; It was a mere
+matter of training.&nbsp; Our material achievement is the product of
+our intellect.&nbsp; It is knowledge, and knowledge, like coin, is interchangeable.&nbsp;
+It is not wrapped up in the heredity of the new-born child, but is something
+to be acquired afterward.&nbsp; Not so with our soul stuff, which is
+the product of an evolution which goes back to the raw beginnings of
+the race.&nbsp; Our soul stuff is not a coin to be pocketed by the first
+chance comer.&nbsp; The Japanese cannot pocket it any more than he can
+thrill to short Saxon words or we can thrill to Chinese hieroglyphics.&nbsp;
+The leopard cannot change its spots, nor can the Japanese, nor can we.&nbsp;
+We are thumbed by the ages into what we are, and by no conscious inward
+effort can we in a day rethumb ourselves.&nbsp; Nor can the Japanese
+in a day, or a generation, rethumb himself in our image.<br>
+<br>
+Back of our own great race adventure, back of our robberies by sea and
+land, our lusts and violences and all the evil things we have done,
+there is a certain integrity, a sternness of conscience, a melancholy
+responsibility of life, a sympathy and comradeship and warm human feel,
+which is ours, indubitably ours, and which we cannot teach to the Oriental
+as we would teach logarithms or the trajectory of projectiles.&nbsp;
+That we have groped for the way of right conduct and agonized over the
+soul betokens our spiritual endowment.&nbsp; Though we have strayed
+often and far from righteousness, the voices of the seers have always
+been raised, and we have harked back to the bidding of conscience.&nbsp;
+The colossal fact of our history is that we have made the religion of
+Jesus Christ our religion.&nbsp; No matter how dark in error and deed,
+ours has been a history of spiritual struggle and endeavour.&nbsp; We
+are pre-eminently a religious race, which is another way of saying that
+we are a right-seeking race.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;What do you think of the Japanese?&rdquo; was asked an American
+woman after she had lived some time in Japan.&nbsp; &ldquo;It seems
+to me that they have no soul,&rdquo; was her answer.<br>
+<br>
+This must not be taken to mean that the Japanese is without soul.&nbsp;
+But it serves to illustrate the enormous difference between their souls
+and this woman&rsquo;s soul.&nbsp; There was no feel, no speech, no
+recognition.&nbsp; This Western soul did not dream that the Eastern
+soul existed, it was so different, so totally different.<br>
+<br>
+Religion, as a battle for the right in our sense of right, as a yearning
+and a strife for spiritual good and purity, is unknown to the Japanese.<br>
+<br>
+Measured by what religion means to us, the Japanese is a race without
+religion.&nbsp; Yet it has a religion, and who shall say that it is
+not as great a religion as ours, nor as efficacious?&nbsp; As one Japanese
+has written:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Our reflection brought into prominence not so much the moral
+as the national consciousness of the individual. . . . To us the country
+is more than land and soil from which to mine gold or reap grain - it
+is the sacred abode of the gods, the spirit of our forefathers; to us
+the Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a Reichsstaat, or even
+the Patron of a Kulturstaat; he is the bodily representative of heaven
+on earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The religion of Japan is practically a worship of the State itself.&nbsp;
+Patriotism is the expression of this worship.&nbsp; The Japanese mind
+does not split hairs as to whether the Emperor is Heaven incarnate or
+the State incarnate.&nbsp; So far as the Japanese are concerned, the
+Emperor lives, is himself deity.&nbsp; The Emperor is the object to
+live for and to die for.&nbsp; The Japanese is not an individualist.&nbsp;
+He has developed national consciousness instead of moral consciousness.&nbsp;
+He is not interested in his own moral welfare except in so far as it
+is the welfare of the State.&nbsp; The honour of the individual, <i>per
+se, </i>does not exist.&nbsp; Only exists the honour of the State, which
+is his honour.&nbsp; He does not look upon himself as a free agent,
+working out his own personal salvation.&nbsp; Spiritual agonizing is
+unknown to him.&nbsp; He has a &ldquo;sense of calm trust in fate, a
+quiet submission to the inevitable, a stoic composure in sight of danger
+or calamity, a disdain of life and friendliness with death.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He relates himself to the State as, amongst bees, the worker is related
+to the hive; himself nothing, the State everything; his reasons for
+existence the exaltation and glorification of the State.<br>
+<br>
+The most admired quality to-day of the Japanese is his patriotism.&nbsp;
+The Western world is in rhapsodies over it, unwittingly measuring the
+Japanese patriotism by its own conceptions of patriotism.&nbsp; &ldquo;For
+God, my country, and the Czar!&rdquo; cries the Russian patriot; but
+in the Japanese mind there is no differentiation between the three.&nbsp;
+The Emperor is the Emperor, and God and country as well.&nbsp; The patriotism
+of the Japanese is blind and unswerving loyalty to what is practically
+an absolutism.&nbsp; The Emperor can do no wrong, nor can the five ambitious
+great men who have his ear and control the destiny of Japan.<br>
+<br>
+No great race adventure can go far nor endure long which has no deeper
+foundation than material success, no higher prompting than conquest
+for conquest&rsquo;s sake and mere race glorification.&nbsp; To go far
+and to endure, it must have behind it an ethical impulse, a sincerely
+conceived righteousness.&nbsp; But it must be taken into consideration
+that the above postulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism,
+urged by our belief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith
+in ourselves which may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies.&nbsp;
+So be it.&nbsp; The world is whirling faster to-day than ever before.&nbsp;
+It has gained impetus.&nbsp; Affairs rush to conclusion.&nbsp; The Far
+East is the point of contact of the adventuring Western people as well
+as of the Asiatic.&nbsp; We shall not have to wait for our children&rsquo;s
+time nor our children&rsquo;s children.&nbsp; We shall ourselves see
+and largely determine the adventure of the Yellow and the Brown.<br>
+<br>
+FENG-WANG-CHENG, MANCHURIA.<br>
+<i>June </i>1904,<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+I was born in the working-class.&nbsp; Early I discovered enthusiasm,
+ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my
+child-life.&nbsp; My environment was crude and rough and raw.&nbsp;
+I had no outlook, but an uplook rather.&nbsp; My place in society was
+at the bottom.&nbsp; Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness,
+both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike
+starved and tormented.<br>
+<br>
+Above me towered the colossal edifice of society, and to my mind the
+only way out was up.&nbsp; Into this edifice I early resolved to climb.&nbsp;
+Up above, men wore black clothes and boiled shirts, and women dressed
+in beautiful gowns.&nbsp; Also, there were good things to eat, and there
+was plenty to eat.&nbsp; This much for the flesh.&nbsp; Then there were
+the things of the spirit.&nbsp; Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses
+of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living.&nbsp;
+I knew all this because I read &ldquo;Seaside Library&rdquo; novels,
+in which, with the exception of the villains and adventuresses, all
+men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a beautiful tongue,
+and performed glorious deeds.&nbsp; In short, as I accepted the rising
+of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fine and noble
+and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all that made
+life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and misery.<br>
+<br>
+But it is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the working-class
+- especially if he is handicapped by the possession of ideals and illusions.&nbsp;
+I lived on a ranch in California, and was hard put to find the ladder
+whereby to climb.&nbsp; I early inquired the rate of interest on invested
+money, and worried my child&rsquo;s brain into an understanding of the
+virtues and excellences of that remarkable invention of man, compound
+interest.&nbsp; Further, I ascertained the current rates of wages for
+workers of all ages, and the cost of living.&nbsp; From all this data
+I concluded that if I began immediately and worked and saved until I
+was fifty years of age, I could then stop working and enter into participation
+in a fair portion of the delights and goodnesses that would then be
+open to me higher up in society.&nbsp; Of course, I resolutely determined
+not to marry, while I quite forgot to consider at all that great rock
+of disaster in the working-class world - sickness.<br>
+<br>
+But the life that was in me demanded more than a meagre existence of
+scraping and scrimping.&nbsp; Also, at ten years of age, I became a
+newsboy on the streets of a city, and found myself with a changed uplook.&nbsp;
+All about me were still the same sordidness and wretchedness, and up
+above me was still the same paradise waiting to be gained; but the ladder
+whereby to climb was a different one.&nbsp; It was now the ladder of
+business.&nbsp; Why save my earnings and invest in government bonds,
+when, by buying two newspapers for five cents, with a turn of the wrist
+I could sell them for ten cents and double my capital?&nbsp; The business
+ladder was the ladder for me, and I had a vision of myself becoming
+a bald-headed and successful merchant prince.<br>
+<br>
+Alas for visions!&nbsp; When I was sixteen I had already earned the
+title of &ldquo;prince.&rdquo;&nbsp; But this title was given me by
+a gang of cut-throats and thieves, by whom I was called &ldquo;The Prince
+of the Oyster Pirates.&rdquo;&nbsp; And at that time I had climbed the
+first rung of the business ladder.&nbsp; I was a capitalist.&nbsp; I
+owned a boat and a complete oyster-pirating outfit.&nbsp; I had begun
+to exploit my fellow-creatures.&nbsp; I had a crew of one man.&nbsp;
+As captain and owner I took two-thirds of the spoils, and gave the crew
+one-third, though the crew worked just as hard as I did and risked just
+as much his life and liberty.<br>
+<br>
+This one rung was the height I climbed up the business ladder.&nbsp;
+One night I went on a raid amongst the Chinese fishermen.&nbsp; Ropes
+and nets were worth dollars and cents.&nbsp; It was robbery, I grant,
+but it was precisely the spirit of capitalism.&nbsp; The capitalist
+takes away the possessions of his fellow-creatures by means of a rebate,
+or of a betrayal of trust, or by the purchase of senators and supreme-court
+judges.&nbsp; I was merely crude.&nbsp; That was the only difference.&nbsp;
+I used a gun.<br>
+<br>
+But my crew that night was one of those inefficients against whom the
+capitalist is wont to fulminate, because, forsooth, such inefficients
+increase expenses and reduce dividends.&nbsp; My crew did both.&nbsp;
+What of his carelessness he set fire to the big mainsail and totally
+destroyed it.&nbsp; There weren&rsquo;t any dividends that night, and
+the Chinese fishermen were richer by the nets and ropes we did not get.&nbsp;
+I was bankrupt, unable just then to pay sixty-five dollars for a new
+mainsail.&nbsp; I left my boat at anchor and went off on a bay-pirate
+boat on a raid up the Sacramento River.&nbsp; While away on this trip,
+another gang of bay pirates raided my boat.&nbsp; They stole everything,
+even the anchors; and later on, when I recovered the drifting hulk,
+I sold it for twenty dollars.&nbsp; I had slipped back the one rung
+I had climbed, and never again did I attempt the business ladder.<br>
+<br>
+From then on I was mercilessly exploited by other capitalists.&nbsp;
+I had the muscle, and they made money out of it while I made but a very
+indifferent living out of it.&nbsp; I was a sailor before the mast,
+a longshoreman, a roustabout; I worked in canneries, and factories,
+and laundries; I mowed lawns, and cleaned carpets, and washed windows.&nbsp;
+And I never got the full product of my toil.&nbsp; I looked at the daughter
+of the cannery owner, in her carriage, and knew that it was my muscle,
+in part, that helped drag along that carriage on its rubber tyres.&nbsp;
+I looked at the son of the factory owner, going to college, and knew
+that it was my muscle that helped, in part, to pay for the wine and
+good fellowship he enjoyed.<br>
+<br>
+But I did not resent this.&nbsp; It was all in the game.&nbsp; They
+were the strong.&nbsp; Very well, I was strong.&nbsp; I would carve
+my way to a place amongst them and make money out of the muscles of
+other men.&nbsp; I was not afraid of work.&nbsp; I loved hard work.&nbsp;
+I would pitch in and work harder than ever and eventually become a pillar
+of society.<br>
+<br>
+And just then, as luck would have it, I found an employer that was of
+the same mind.&nbsp; I was willing to work, and he was more than willing
+that I should work.&nbsp; I thought I was learning a trade.&nbsp; In
+reality, I had displaced two men.&nbsp; I thought he was making an electrician
+out of me; as a matter of fact, he was making fifty dollars per month
+out of me.&nbsp; The two men I had displaced had received forty dollars
+each per month; I was doing the work of both for thirty dollars per
+month.<br>
+<br>
+This employer worked me nearly to death.&nbsp; A man may love oysters,
+but too many oysters will disincline him toward that particular diet.&nbsp;
+And so with me.&nbsp; Too much work sickened me.&nbsp; I did not wish
+ever to see work again.&nbsp; I fled from work.&nbsp; I became a tramp,
+begging my way from door to door, wandering over the United States and
+sweating bloody sweats in slums and prisons.<br>
+<br>
+I had been born in the working-class, and I was now, at the age of eighteen,
+beneath the point at which I had started.&nbsp; I was down in the cellar
+of society, down in the subterranean depths of misery about which it
+is neither nice nor proper to speak.&nbsp; I was in the pit, the abyss,
+the human cesspool, the shambles and the charnel-house of our civilization.&nbsp;
+This is the part of the edifice of society that society chooses to ignore.&nbsp;
+Lack of space compels me here to ignore it, and I shall say only that
+the things I there saw gave me a terrible scare.<br>
+<br>
+I was scared into thinking.&nbsp; I saw the naked simplicities of the
+complicated civilization in which I lived.&nbsp; Life was a matter of
+food and shelter.&nbsp; In order to get food and shelter men sold things.&nbsp;
+The merchant sold shoes, the politician sold his manhood, and the representative
+of the people, with exceptions, of course, sold his trust; while nearly
+all sold their honour.&nbsp; Women, too, whether on the street or in
+the holy bond of wedlock, were prone to sell their flesh.&nbsp; All
+things were commodities, all people bought and sold.&nbsp; The one commodity
+that labour had to sell was muscle.&nbsp; The honour of labour had no
+price in the marketplace.&nbsp; Labour had muscle, and muscle alone,
+to sell.<br>
+<br>
+But there was a difference, a vital difference.&nbsp; Shoes and trust
+and honour had a way of renewing themselves.&nbsp; They were imperishable
+stocks.&nbsp; Muscle, on the other hand, did not renew.&nbsp; As the
+shoe merchant sold shoes, he continued to replenish his stock.&nbsp;
+But there was no way of replenishing the labourer&rsquo;s stock of muscle.&nbsp;
+The more he sold of his muscle, the less of it remained to him.&nbsp;
+It was his one commodity, and each day his stock of it diminished.&nbsp;
+In the end, if he did not die before, he sold out and put up his shutters.&nbsp;
+He was a muscle bankrupt, and nothing remained to him but to go down
+into the cellar of society and perish miserably.<br>
+<br>
+I learned, further, that brain was likewise a commodity.&nbsp; It, too,
+was different from muscle.&nbsp; A brain seller was only at his prime
+when he was fifty or sixty years old, and his wares were fetching higher
+prices than ever.&nbsp; But a labourer was worked out or broken down
+at forty-five or fifty.&nbsp; I had been in the cellar of society, and
+I did not like the place as a habitation.&nbsp; The pipes and drains
+were unsanitary, and the air was bad to breathe.&nbsp; If I could not
+live on the parlour floor of society, I could, at any rate, have a try
+at the attic.&nbsp; It was true, the diet there was slim, but the air
+at least was pure.&nbsp; So I resolved to sell no more muscle, and to
+become a vendor of brains.<br>
+<br>
+Then began a frantic pursuit of knowledge.&nbsp; I returned to California
+and opened the books.&nbsp; While thus equipping myself to become a
+brain merchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology.&nbsp;
+There I found, in a certain class of books, scientifically formulated,
+the simple sociological concepts I had already worked out for myself.&nbsp;
+Other and greater minds, before I was born, had worked out all that
+I had thought and a vast deal more.&nbsp; I discovered that I was a
+socialist.<br>
+<br>
+The socialists were revolutionists, inasmuch as they struggled to overthrow
+the society of the present, and out of the material to build the society
+of the future.&nbsp; I, too, was a socialist and a revolutionist.&nbsp;
+I joined the groups of working-class and intellectual revolutionists,
+and for the first time came into intellectual living.&nbsp; Here I found
+keen-flashing intellects and brilliant wits; for here I met strong and
+alert-brained, withal horny-handed, members of the working-class; unfrocked
+preachers too wide in their Christianity for any congregation of Mammon-worshippers;
+professors broken on the wheel of university subservience to the ruling
+class and flung out because they were quick with knowledge which they
+strove to apply to the affairs of mankind.<br>
+<br>
+Here I found, also, warm faith in the human, glowing idealism, sweetnesses
+of unselfishness, renunciation, and martyrdom - all the splendid, stinging
+things of the spirit.&nbsp; Here life was clean, noble, and alive.&nbsp;
+Here life rehabilitated itself, became wonderful and glorious; and I
+was glad to be alive.&nbsp; I was in touch with great souls who exalted
+flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin wail of
+the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance
+of commercial expansion and world empire.&nbsp; All about me were nobleness
+of purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine
+and starshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning and
+blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ&rsquo;s own Grail, the warm human, long-suffering
+and maltreated, but to be rescued and saved at the last.<br>
+<br>
+And I, poor foolish I, deemed all this to be a mere foretaste of the
+delights of living I should find higher above me in society.&nbsp; I
+had lost many illusions since the day I read &ldquo;Seaside Library&rdquo;
+novels on the California ranch.&nbsp; I was destined to lose many of
+the illusions I still retained.<br>
+<br>
+As a brain merchant I was a success.&nbsp; Society opened its portals
+to me.&nbsp; I entered right in on the parlour floor, and my disillusionment
+proceeded rapidly.&nbsp; I sat down to dinner with the masters of society,
+and with the wives and daughters of the masters of society.&nbsp; The
+women were gowned beautifully, I admit; but to my na&iuml;ve surprise
+I discovered that they were of the same clay as all the rest of the
+women I had known down below in the cellar.&nbsp; &ldquo;The colonel&rsquo;s
+lady and Judy O&rsquo;Grady were sisters under their skins&rdquo; -
+and gowns.<br>
+<br>
+It was not this, however, so much as their materialism, that shocked
+me.&nbsp; It is true, these beautifully gowned, beautiful women prattled
+sweet little ideals and dear little moralities; but in spite of their
+prattle the dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic.&nbsp;
+And they were so sentimentally selfish!&nbsp; They assisted in all kinds
+of sweet little charities, and informed one of the fact, while all the
+time the food they ate and the beautiful clothes they wore were bought
+out of dividends stained with the blood of child labour, and sweated
+labour, and of prostitution itself.&nbsp; When I mentioned such facts,
+expecting in my innocence that these sisters of Judy O&rsquo;Grady would
+at once strip off their blood-dyed silks and jewels, they became excited
+and angry, and read me preachments about the lack of thrift, the drink,
+and the innate depravity that caused all the misery in society&rsquo;s
+cellar.&nbsp; When I mentioned that I couldn&rsquo;t quite see that
+it was the lack of thrift, the intemperance, and the depravity of a
+half-starved child of six that made it work twelve hours every night
+in a Southern cotton mill, these sisters of Judy O&rsquo;Grady attacked
+my private life and called me an &ldquo;agitator&rdquo; - as though
+that, forsooth, settled the argument.<br>
+<br>
+Nor did I fare better with the masters themselves.&nbsp; I had expected
+to find men who were clean, noble, and alive, whose ideals were clean,
+noble, and alive.&nbsp; I went about amongst the men who sat in the
+high places - the preachers, the politicians, the business men, the
+professors, and the editors.&nbsp; I ate meat with them, drank wine
+with them, automobiled with them, and studied them.&nbsp; It is true,
+I found many that were clean and noble; but with rare exceptions, they
+were not <i>alive</i>.&nbsp; I do verily believe I could count the exceptions
+on the fingers of my two hands.&nbsp; Where they were not alive with
+rottenness, quick with unclean life, there were merely the unburied
+dead - clean and noble, like well-preserved mummies, but not alive.&nbsp;
+In this connection I may especially mention the professors I met, the
+men who live up to that decadent university ideal, &ldquo;the passionless
+pursuit of passionless intelligence.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+I met men who invoked the name of the Prince of Peace in their diatribes
+against war, and who put rifles in the hands of Pinkertons with which
+to shoot down strikers in their own factories.&nbsp; I met men incoherent
+with indignation at the brutality of prize-fighting, and who, at the
+same time, were parties to the adulteration of food that killed each
+year more babies than even red-handed Herod had killed.<br>
+<br>
+I talked in hotels and clubs and homes and Pullmans, and steamer-chairs
+with captains of industry, and marvelled at how little travelled they
+were in the realm of intellect.&nbsp; On the other hand, I discovered
+that their intellect, in the business sense, was abnormally developed.&nbsp;
+Also, I discovered that their morality, where business was concerned,
+was nil.<br>
+<br>
+This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman, was a dummy director
+and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans.&nbsp;
+This gentleman, who collected fine editions and was an especial patron
+of literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss of
+a municipal machine.&nbsp; This editor, who published patent medicine
+advertisements and did not dare print the truth in his paper about said
+patent medicines for fear of losing the advertising, called me a scoundrelly
+demagogue because I told him that his political economy was antiquated
+and that his biology was contemporaneous with Pliny.<br>
+<br>
+This senator was the tool and the slave, the little puppet of a gross,
+uneducated machine boss; so was this governor and this supreme court
+judge; and all three rode on railroad passes.&nbsp; This man, talking
+soberly and earnestly about the beauties of idealism and the goodness
+of God, had just betrayed his comrades in a business deal.&nbsp; This
+man, a pillar of the church and heavy contributor to foreign missions,
+worked his shop girls ten hours a day on a starvation wage and thereby
+directly encouraged prostitution.&nbsp; This man, who endowed chairs
+in universities, perjured himself in courts of law over a matter of
+dollars and cents.&nbsp; And this railroad magnate broke his word as
+a gentleman and a Christian when he granted a secret rebate to one of
+two captains of industry locked together in a struggle to the death.<br>
+<br>
+It was the same everywhere, crime and betrayal, betrayal and crime -
+men who were alive, but who were neither clean nor noble, men who were
+clean and noble, but who were not alive.&nbsp; Then there was a great,
+hopeless mass, neither noble nor alive, but merely clean.&nbsp; It did
+not sin positively nor deliberately; but it did sin passively and ignorantly
+by acquiescing in the current immorality and profiting by it.&nbsp;
+Had it been noble and alive it would not have been ignorant, and it
+would have refused to share in the profits of betrayal and crime.<br>
+<br>
+I discovered that I did not like to live on the parlour floor of society.&nbsp;
+Intellectually I was as bored.&nbsp; Morally and spiritually I was sickened.&nbsp;
+I remembered my intellectuals and idealists, my unfrocked preachers,
+broken professors, and clean-minded, class-conscious working-men.&nbsp;
+I remembered my days and nights of sunshine and starshine, where life
+was all a wild sweet wonder, a spiritual paradise of unselfish adventure
+and ethical romance.&nbsp; And I saw before me, ever blazing and burning,
+the Holy Grail.<br>
+<br>
+So I went back to the working-class, in which I had been born and where
+I belonged.&nbsp; I care no longer to climb.&nbsp; The imposing edifice
+of society above my head holds no delights for me.&nbsp; It is the foundation
+of the edifice that interests me.&nbsp; There I am content to labour,
+crowbar in hand, shoulder to shoulder with intellectuals, idealists,
+and class-conscious working-men, getting a solid pry now and again and
+setting the whole edifice rocking.&nbsp; Some day, when we get a few
+more hands and crowbars to work, we&rsquo;ll topple it over, along with
+all its rotten life and unburied dead, its monstrous selfishness and
+sodden materialism.&nbsp; Then we&rsquo;ll cleanse the cellar and build
+a new habitation for mankind, in which there will be no parlour floor,
+in which all the rooms will be bright and airy, and where the air that
+is breathed will be clean, noble, and alive.<br>
+<br>
+Such is my outlook.&nbsp; I look forward to a time when man shall progress
+upon something worthier and higher than his stomach, when there will
+be a finer incentive to impel men to action than the incentive of to-day,
+which is the incentive of the stomach.&nbsp; I retain my belief in the
+nobility and excellence of the human.&nbsp; I believe that spiritual
+sweetness and unselfishness will conquer the gross gluttony of to-day.&nbsp;
+And last of all, my faith is in the working-class.&nbsp; As some Frenchman
+has said, &ldquo;The stairway of time is ever echoing with the wooden
+shoe going up, the polished boot descending.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+NEWTON, IOWA.<br>
+November 1905.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, REVOLUTION AND OTHER ESSAYS ***<br>
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