YE 196TH LESSON.

Slavery by Indirection.

We live under a condition of labor's enslavement as real as existed in Greece and Rome when seven-eighths of the adult population were chattel slaves. Slavery is enforced servitude. Under natural conditions every man is compelled by those conditions to bestir himself to obtain food, shelter and clothing for himself and his dependents. When these have been obtained he is free to devote his time as is most to his own liking. How far different are present conditions? The difference between chattel slavery and wage slavery is only nominal. Go to South Africa, for illustration, and learn how native labor is obtained-how the negro is forced to serve the British on the master's terms. The native has few wants. He is compelled to hire out to work in the mines and on the farms for the Englishmen. How? A "hut tax" is levied on each village, kraal or tribe. It must be paid in English money-pounds, shillings, pence. How may the native obtain this? He must work for the English at ten shillings (two dollars and fifty cents) a month, and earn it. It is found that when the tax is paid he quits work and returns to his family and home. How must this be prevented? Increase the tax or lower his wages. He, refusing to pay, the tax collectors provoke a riot. A policeman is hurt or killed, a dozen rioters killed. The other day for the killing of a policeman, a dozen natives were condemned by court-martial and shot. These natives were converts to Christianity and spent the night before their execution in prayer. Of course no notice is taken of natives killed by tax collectors in the "riots." Their lives count for nothing, they "rebelled." Such is capitalistic rule. Such is British tyranny and wrong.

It is the same in America. The millions are kept poor and dependent designedly that they may be compelled to toil for the building up of the fortunes of the few. The tramp is the outcome. "Tis said he will not work. That is a lie. He is as willing to earn by honest labor a living as is any other man under like conditions. Human nature is the same in all men. The "men out of work" are the ripened fruit of our social order. The railroads want as many men out of work that can turn a brake as possible, so that, in time of a strike, their wants will compel them to take the places of strikers. It is the same in all employments. "Tis like "hut tax," and worse, a means of enslavement.

The poor of our cities are as a rule no more responsible for their poverty than are sufferers from cyclone, wave, earthquake or fire, and their sufferings should be relieved the same in the one case as the others. But to propose this would elicit a howl from the very same rich men that have given large sums to help the sufferers by earthquake, wind, fire and flood. Why so? It would raise wages. None but professional strikebreakers would take the places of strikers if toilers out of work and suffering for bread were not driven to do so by the condition in which they have been placed designedly by the capitalistic class, as the "hut tax" is levied by the English-not so shocking as the chopping off of hands, practiced by the Belgians; but as wicked and inhuman. And so is our designedly compelling men into servitude by starving them as bad as the Belgian and British methods of enslavement of labor.

What is the road out of slavery? There is but one-the ballot. The governing power of the nation and the states must rest where it belongswith the many-the toilers. New Zealand is the first state in the world to emerge from the bondage of commercialism and capitalism; next Australia, and the next will be England. America will not be far behind the mother-land. English workingmen now sing "Rule Britania," with the meaning, "We Shall Rule Her." Yes, it is in the air that toilers shall rule the world. Poverty has already been abolished. What is wrong? The many are robbed of their just portion and the Rockefellers and their kind hold it out of their reach. What right has one man to the oil that Nature has produced in her laboratory during the millions of

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL.

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years she has been at work, or to the coal beneath the mountains? Does not the oil belong to him who pumps it out? The coal to him who digs it out? No man has any right, under any conditions, to command anothers' labor or to take for his any share of it under any circumstances.

The thing we call "money" is the ball and chain that fetters the many. Money is the soul of artificial wealth; and artificial wealth is the only wealth that is not perishable; and it is not in any sense essential. It is only a means of enslavement of the millions who produce the essentials of life. The only real wealth is the bread we eat, the clothes we wear and protection from cold and damp. "Watered stock," government bonds, etc., bring "dividends." All "dividends" that do not measure the same to each and all are wrong. "Distribution to every one according as he or she has need" alone is right.

YE 197TH LESSON.

Society and the Individual.

I am a slave to the state as much so as was the negro on the plantation a slave to his master. My life may be placed in jeopardy and I be forced to give it up "freely for my country." Now the negro slave was guaranteed the essentials of life. Is the citizen guaranteed these by the state? Yes, nominally so. But he must become a "pauper" before the state will give him succor. True, New Zealand pensions all her aged-foreshadowing what the future will bring to all the aged and dependent the world

over.

"Better days are coming bye and bye." And these the reformer is laboring to hurry on. In a primitive social state, each person having like access to the soil and to the rivers and the lakes, to the woods and the prairies; and all working individually and not in herds, as now they do work under a boss who thinks that he "owns" the workers like a shepherd his sheep, but is not at all responsible for their well-being-there were then only families; but it was to the interest of all concerned that they were large families, able to care for the old and helpless; and bountiful nature furnished every home with plenty.

All is changed now. Men become millionaires and billionaires. How? By appropriating to themselves what belongs to others, as the Bible says, by "keeping back by fraud the hire of the laborers," and as we say, "by the exploitation of the industrious"-robbery as much so as that practiced by highwaymen; and by grasping unjustly the benefits of machinery. Labor builds the machines. "But the capitalists," do you say, "pay the workers for building them." That is false. What has the capitalist of wealth that was not unjustly taken from the hands of the toilers? And all that is in return paid to the toilers for manipulating the machines the capitalist soon gets back from them. How? Out of the production of the machines.

Whatever money required for the carrying on of business should be advanced by the government, as now the national banks have advanced to them by the government millions, besides being given the privilege of issuing their own notes as money that never are returned to the banks for redemption as long as their charters last. Toilers, similarly associated and incorporated, should have like privilege with associations of money manipulators, and thus co-operative production be inaugurated and carried forward.

The money manipulator is enriched by wars. How is it with the toiling many? They bear all and suffer all. Their ghastly dead bodies cover the battle fields, and their wounds bleed and the surgeons saw off their. limbs for the public weal. And it is labor that pays the war debts-to whom? To the money lords. It is, indeed, an "ill wind that blows nobody good." When wars shall cease to enrich the banking and money

lending class wars will be no more. If property was made to be no more sacred than life; if bonded "war debts" were made unlawful, there would be no wars in the present age. If property were "drafted" as men are, we would have only "peace on earth."

Why have we this condition of things? It is because the people do not rule. There is no man that possesses rightfully any thing more sacred than his life. Why should he be drafted into the army? Why should he be forced to give his life for the common weal and the banker not forced to give his money-all he possesses-for the common weal? Why the one be killed and the other enriched? A little money-consideration frees the banker from the "draft"; then he becomes a "bond owner," and so is enriched while the other gives up his life-all "for his country.” Why is it so? It is so because of tradition, which is only inherited barbarism.

There is nothing sacred but life. "Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ" is the one and only law of property, for the law of the land must conform to the divine law-the law of God, the "higher law." To assure life is alone legitimate. Property insurance should go no farther than to what is essential to life-to the preservation of the lives and happiness of each and every human being-the "bearing of each other's burdens." And the preservation of "equality"-that "your abundance may be a supply for their want, and their abundance may be a supply for your want, that there may be equality," as St. Paul says II Cor. VIII:14) that is the Christian order. If there be room in my house for one more person to lie down he must not be left to sleep out of doors. Hundreds walk the streets of London, New York and other cities all the night long while there are comfortable rooms and beds empty on either hand. This is unchristian. The latch string should hang out of every door and no wayfarer be shut out in the cold or rain. That is God's law of hospitality. Whence came the lumber for your great house so empty while poor people sleep in garbage boxes in the alleys? It came from the pineries. What right has one to more of that pine-timber than another? None at all. He is criminal who sleeps in a warm bed while others are shut out of doors by him when he could give shelter and comfort to them. Let every latch string hang out always and every table be common. Grand is he that can say truly: "No man ever came to my house hungry and I gave him not meat, a stranger and I entertained him not, naked and I clothed him not, sick and afflicted and I ministered not unto him."

YE 198TH LESSON.

Standing For the Right.

What is the duty of the patriot? It is to stand for the right-the common good. In reaching after the common welfare we may have to sacrifice our own individual welfare. And is this quite true? Did John Brown indeed sacrifice his own welfare when he gave up his life on the gallows? I think not. Death is the common lot. He chose the opportune time to die. It was gain to him and not loss.

What specific action is demanded of the patriot in the present hour? What his duty? It is to help cure the ills of society. of these ills that must be removed.

There is one

And it is the paramount issue. Will the people see it? Honest, sober, Christian men are aroused to it. It is the salcon evil. It breaks up families. It destroys homes. A very distinguished writer has truly said: "It is the mature opinion of every one who has thought upon the history of the world that the thing of highest importance for all times and all nations is family life. So long as the first concern of a country

*

is for its homes it matters little what it seeks second or third."

The home should be the first concern of every patriot. Father, mother, little ones the father at home every minute of respite from toil, enraptured with love of wife and children, every cent of his earnings placed in his wife's hands and he accounting to her for every cent spent and not one cent for liquor. This is the ideal home.

How is it today in the city? The saloon business is the most profitable of all occupations. Whose money is spent here? The toiler's, and his family in sore distress, hardly having covers for their beds in winter and no meat for the table-only crusts and water.

We old men look back and say: "It was not so when we were boys." No "boarding houses" then; but only "homes."

I ask again how is it now? I will not defame the sons and daughters of to-day. The present corruption is only superficial. It reaches not the many, whose virtue by contrast shines the brighter. We have girls by the million, pure as the snow and as lovely as the wild rose of Iowa. And we have young manhood worthy of the loveliness of our daughters. But there are broken homes, too many divorces, too much demoralization, distress, disorder, debauchery, decay, despair-death. What a change in the last decade! But society has a conscience and there will be a halt.

We should with profound seriousness approach the present situation. Is the church dead? Oh for the earnestness of the Roundheads of 1640! I would that the veterans of Cromwell could rise from their graves and come to our help. They never charged but they routed the enemy. But it was not they that carried the day. It was God. "God made the enemy stubble to our swords," says Cromwell, after the battle of Marston Moor. "Give glory, all the glory to God." We want this old faith in God to come back. After the battle of Naseby he wrote to parliament: "This is none other but the hand of God and to Him alone belongs the glory wherein none are to share with him." The word on that day was: "God our strength." Here is what the greatest of English generals further says of the battle of Naseby: "It may be thought that some praises are due to the gallant men of whose valor so much mention has been made, their humble suit to you and to all that have an interest in this blessing is, that in the remembrance of God's praise they be forgotten. It's their joy that they are the instruments of God's glory and their country's good. It's their honor that God vouchsafes to use them. Sir, they that have been employed in this service know that faith and prayer obtained this city for you. I do not say ours only, but of the people of God with you and all England over, who have wrestled with God for a blessing in this very thing. Our desires are that God may be glorified in the same spirit of faith by which we ask all our sufficiency and have received it. It is meet that He have all praise."

It is even now worth while for the politician to regard the public conscience. It is not regarded. Only the demands of incoroporate greed are heeded.

Cromwell conquered the king by enlisting only "honest, sober, Godfearing men" to fight the battles of the Commons. We would say, elect to office only upright men, upholders of education and morality, men devoted to the welfare of the rising generation. Let the office seek the

man.

YE 199TH LESSON.

The New Era.

A fierce struggle of interests-speculators on top-that is our situation to-day-how to make investments of money pay, the only object of legislation for the past half century in the United States. Investments of money can only pay by taking from labor its due and turning it over to the credit of capital. Capital is by nature inert.

It does not by any natural process grow. It only grows by absorption. Absorption of what? Of the earnings of labor. It is labor that creates all wealth.

What I mean here by the word "capital" is the artificial means of controlling the production of wealth. What I mean by "wealth" are those products of labor that are essential to human existence. Capital is that form of artificial wealth that gives control of natural wealth. But money in itself is of no value. Its value consists in what it will buy or command and control of wealth.

Money commands products. Then to give the control of the money supply of a nation to a syndicate of speculators is to give control of the products of the labor of the toilers of the nation to that syndicate. Where should the control of the money supply rest? In the people. In the state. In the many. No advantage should be given by the state to any one or to any class of men over any one or over all of the community in reference to money. If one man can have money

furnished him at one per cent or one-half of one per cent per annum, as have the bankers the bank bills, it should be so furnished to all men. It is strange if any intelligent man will controvert this selfevident truth. He cannot.

This it is, then, to "free the money." It is to place it within reach of each and all alike, without especial privilege to any." All treated just alike," should be the law on the subject. National bankers have special privileges. This is the greatest wrong. This wrong must be righted. It cannot be borne. But it is only just now only within a few years-that the working class have become sufficiently well informed to know that they have not an equal show under the laws with all others to know that they are but slaves. Whoever is a laborer is a slave, to the commercial or speculative class, today.

It is not the fact that he works that makes him a slave. It is the social system of which he, as a toiler, forms an integral part, that fastens chains upon his limbs and an iron collar about his neck. Under that social system chattel slavery flourished for many centuries, yes, for millenniums. The abolition of chattel slavery universally in Christian countries has made the condition of the workers worse than before when considered with reference to the means of subsistence. What once was assured is now uncertain. No chattel-slave master ever starved his slaves to death voluntarily. But the wage-slave master is responsible for all the hunger that exists in the huts of the toilers. It was always to the interest of the chattel-slave master that his slaves were well kept. It is to the interest of the wage-slave maser to rob his slaves of all-to leave them nothing. So the abolition of chattel slavery is a loss and not a gain-if we consider only as essential to human happiness food, raiment, shelter, bed, and a fire to warm by. And really, there is no gain of freedom. No man can be free who is hungry and naked. The tramp is worse off than was ever a negro slave.

Not

What must be done? Our social state must be reconstructed. one stone of the ancient temple of our social system must be left upon another. It must be demolished from top to its deepest foundation-must be levelled to the ground--and a new temple must be erected in its place unlike the old in every respect. Instead of competition there must be co-operation. Distribution must be brought about without private speculation. And so, too, must production. All speculation must end. Speculation is only robbery. It is intolerable in a Christian state. There must be established a community of common interests not unlike the Pentecostal commonwealth described in the Acts of the Apostles. We must restore that primitive Christian community and make it world-wide. That is the "New Republic" in which all things will be common, and God shall dwell with men and be their God and they his people- -our own Columbia that is to be-the United States of the World.

When I talk with politicians they tell me it will take centuries to