CAPITALISM DOOMED. 329 Our forefathers rose against kingly power in government of state and nation. We must rise against kingly power in government of workshop, factory, mine and railroad. The kings that oppress labor today are a worse variety of autocrats than the odious "monarchs"George III., Louis XVI., etc., etc. The Fricks and Pullmans must be dethroned, and so, too, the railroad kings and the oil kings. No more of this school of odious tyrants must be left to curse the world. Private capital must be barred from employing labor. Nothing must be gained by private investments of money. Only to labor must be return nothing to private capital. There must be left in the hands of individuals nothing but tools and these shall cost them nothing but a small tax to cover the cost of construction and wear and tear. Of course, if government can "protect industry"-as today it pretends to do- -as on sugar-it can build factories, workshops, dig irrigating canals, bore artesian wells, expend money in any line of improvements designed to "promote the general welfare." Why object to this and yet favor the expenditure of millions for the building of iron-clad war ships and for the support of standing armies and for munitions of war? There is nothing government may do to promote war that it may not do to promote peace. It builds forts, improves rivers and harbors and makes public highways. It does indirectly build up manufactories and develop agriculture (production of sugar) by taxing the consumers of imported sugar and by paying direct bounties. All this has been done at all times in our country's history, from the days of George Washington, first President, down to the present time under Roosevelt. But the "protection of industry" is only a pretense. The industrious workers are not protected. Who are? Only speculators-the investors of money-not labor. Though we now boast of "free labor," yet labor is not free. And the gulf between Lazarus and Dives is growing wider and wider in this world, as it will in the next-conditions then being reversed-if we may believe the divine record. No wonder the question is asked, "What is the best plan of peacefully settling the difficulties between capital and labor?" There is no way of settling those difficulties but one alone-the abolition of private capital. The tools of production must no longer be controlled by private ownership. Monopoly must take its hands off them as well as off the lands. But that is not all. Monopoly must also take its hands off the money. And this question of money is vital. YE 248TH LESSON. Capitalism Doomed. No half way reform will cure the diseased body politic. Shortsighted statesmen are blocking the wheels of the car of progress. Why do men not see that evolution is the law of social progress as in biology? If not evolution then revolution. What ails the world? Society has outgrown her institutions. The old order of production is dead and buried. The old system of distribution is outgrown. Much is produced, but little distributed at home. The outlet is "foreign trade." Who wants foreign markets? The capitalist and the speculator, not the people. Home consumption is all that is needed. But home consumption is blocked. How? By capitalism. Capitalism must be abolished. But what does this demand mean? It means co-operative production and co-operative distribution. Production goes forward by the united labor of many. To the many all things of right belong. Back to nature we must return. How so? By nature each has a like ownership of the common product. Is this true? Yes, it is true. It is the same whether we live in a cabin or a castle, on oat meal porridge or surloin steak, dress in homespun or broadcloth, cotton or silk, sleep on sheep skin couch or feather bed, warmed by wood fire or steam radiator. When all natural and essential wants are supplied we have all we need, we have all we can consume. Anything beyond is superfluous. Then what is needed? "Distribution." That is all. The first step to the accomplishment of this Christian demand is "sell all thou hast and give it to the poor." Is this right? What a vast meaning has this command of Jesus Christ to him who has great riches. It means that beyond his natural needs he is entitled to nothing; that the wealth of this world is by right and by nature common; that the possessions of the rich are not theirs by right divine. I do not wonder that Christ was crucified and thousands upon thousands of his disciples have suffered martyrdom. The "rights of property" denied-antagonizes monopoly-so-called "vested rights." How many poor men demanding their Christian rights have been shot down within the last few years by Pinkerton's thugs, national guards and regulars in obedience to the demands of "property owners?" Hundreds. The life of one man outweighs all property rights on earth. But the speculators have intrenched themselves behind the laws made at their dictation and they have armed thir minions to execute the martyrs. They do not care for human life. The people are a “mob” to be annihilated when in the midst of plenty they are starving and cry for food. Capital having seized control of the machinery of government, legislative, judicial and executive, and by coercive laws, decisions of courts and marshaling of armed men by the governors of states, backed by the president of the United States and the regular army, would place the toilers helpless on their knees before millionaires. That is the purpose. Said a capitalist recently: "a silver dollar laid upon the shelf for a year is, at the end of that time, a silver dollar still: Sut a living workman laid upon the shelf for a year, at the end of that time, is a skeleton." That is the logic of the situation and the purpose of capitalism is the enslavement of toil by the use of the cat-o'-nine-tails of starvation. But poor, old, decrepit capital has forgotten that intelligence is a force omnipotent, and that the toiling millions of to-day are intelligent and they are mighty, with the might of Hercules, manufacturing and handling as they do, all the tools, both of life and death, the plow and the sword. The time has now come, and is right here it is the "now" when labor shall break the shell and come out of its ancient environment into the sunlight of the new era--the era of free lands, free tools and free money. The barner of the new has been unfurled to the breeze and the flag of the oid must be hauled down, never to be again raised, to the end of time. YE 249TH LESSON. The Duty of the Hour. No man should be given the control of another. No man should ever say to another "go." No man should give command. No man should be compelled to obey the mandate of another. Whatever is done should be done voluntarily, not anything involuntarily. All tasks should be self-imposed. There is no more common expression on the lips of men than this, viz.: "A man has a right to quit work; but he has no right to say that another shall not work.” Yes, that is true. If a man really "quits work" and really "gives up" his place he has no right in the matter. But a striker, though he ceases to work for the time being, does not by so ceasing to work give up his place. THE WRONGS OF THE NEGRO. 331 He has not "quit work," de jure though de facto, he has laid down his tools. He has no more "quit work" in the sense of giving up his job than he quits every night when he goes home to his supper and his bed. He only halts. He does not even "break ranks.' Here then is the fallacy, it is in assuming that the toiler has "quit work" when he strikes. Here the law should step in and say, "settle your quarrel or the whole business must close for good. Not a wheel shall turn till it is settled." But how may it be settled? How is a dispute settled about debt? Do the disputants fight it out like Corbet and Sullivan, or do they go before a peaceful court to settle it? If you say I owe you five dollars and I deny the debt you sue me before a justice of the peace. If you substantiate the claim in a legal way I am beaten. Now ought not strikes be settled before courts? Surely so. It should be made by law as much the interest of the employer to go before a court as of the employed. But how may it be made his interest? By the shutting up of the shop when a strike occurs-the shutting of it up by the sheriff. "Closed until the quarrel is settled"-should be posted on the door of the factory-and the sheriff's name should be signed to the notice. But now the strikers are ejected when they demur to their enslavement and the courts, governors, presidents, sheriffs, armed constables, deputy marshals, guards and regulars stand in with the employer and help to enforce his ukase. The mandate is "you must work on my terms or quit"-and the government says: "I will enforce the mandate"--and the terms are the employer's. What is the difference between this and chattel slavery? None at all. They are the same. What ought the mandate be? "Fair play." That is what the law should say. Why? Because interests are mutual. And according to nature they are equal and the same. The employer's interest in the business is no more than is that of the employed. How is that made out? By nature no man has any farther interest in any employment, trade, business or occupation than his living. That is all he can have. He consumes so much during his life-so much of food product-so much clothing -has shelter under a roof-a bed to sleep in-fire to warm by what else? Nothing. All men must have and do have the same or they perish. And if you say "one must care for wife and children." Yes; and so, too, must every man do the same. It is his duty to have a wife and to bring up a family. So the needs of one are just as great as are the needs of another. Really the income of one must be the same as that of another-speaking according to nature. In all discussions of wages, income, etc.-only the natural needs of mankind are considered by the social reformer. Make ample provision for the wants of all the living-is what he is looking to do. His office ends when all common and natural wants are satisfied. cares not for the artificial wants of mankind-nor to what extent the artificial wants grow-not vices-if the natural wants of each and all are provided for in a Christian way. He YE 250TH LESSON. The Wrongs of the Negro. Alumni of Princeton College, New Jersey, commissioners in attendance at the great Presbyterian Assembly in Des Moines, Iowa, 1906, mainly clergymen-refused admission to their banquet to Dr. Matthew Anderson of Philadelphia, pastor of the Berean Presbyterian church of that city-a prominent figure in the assembly. A man of great refinement and scholarship, a graduate from Oberlin College. A morn ing paper said of him: "A graduate from a leading Congregational college of the country, then from the Princeton Theological seminary, and finally from Yale in a post graduate course, he took up his work in Philadelphia twenty-seven years ago, beginning with nothing but his own enthusiasm. He has builded up in the Berean Presbyterian church an institution that now owns church property worth $150,000, and which maintains a number of notable auxiliary institutions. Among these latter are: A kindergarten; a building and loan association with 556 members, $126,326 in assets and with 145 home-owning members; a seaside home; a bureau of mutual help; a manual training and industrial school with more than 200 pupils and property valued at $25,000; an annual educational conference and a trades association." Why was this great man treated with contempt by so-called "disciples of Jesus Christ-mainly clergymen? Was it because he has a portion of negro blood in his veins? Like eighty per cent of the colored race in America, he by right may as well be named "Anglo Saxon" as negro. He is son or grandson of slave owner or overseer; his mother or grandmother, being a slave, was compelled to bear children to the "lord of the lash." Now, if the negro had not submitted to be a slave to our fathers, but, like the Indian, with tomahawk and scalping knife, fire and faggot, had stood up for his natural rights, he would, like the Indian, be received and feted at banquets. He that would cut our throats rather than submit to our wrong, we respect. Shall we wait until the colored race has risen in America, as the blacks rose in Hayti a hundred years ago, and has filled the land with fire and slaughter, to treat the negro with fairness? America is cosmopolitan And her true patriots are all true brothers:- Upholders of the starry flag, are one; The rights of each remain the rights of all; Nor will we see the patriot condemned And put to shame because his skin's not white; Of different hue, but still the self-same blood, All men to dwell upon the mundane globe. The Commonwealth-that man's a citizen And stands the peer (proud equal) of the best. And may become America's President The Generalissimo of all her armies. But the war against the black men by the whites has the same cause at bottom as brought the blacks to America the exploitation of their labor, and not that they're black. Every working man in America ought, on that account, if for no other, espouse the cause of the colored toilers. Men suckled by negro "mammys" have no prejudice of color in vital respects: Your children you've sold on the block, And now your numerous progeny Of yellow skin-shame, shame on thee, You still persist to reprobate; Whom you have wronged, to meanly hate! THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH. What is the remedy? Love. 333 Let us demand with tongue and pen, The progress of the world to-day The high and holy law of love! And have we forgotten in so short a time that the law of compensation is as real as is that of gravitation. The sufferings of two hundred and forty-three years imposed by our white people on the blacks found their level of blood of white men, spilled by white men in the war of the sixties. And now the contumely heaped on the educated colored men and the disfranchisement and the diabolical burnings and abuses of the many colored people and the wrongs inflicted by white men on colored women, will they not find their level in what we, by reason of those wrongs, shall hereafter be brought to suffer? YE 251ST LESSON. The New Heaven and the New Earth. I copy from a book entitled, "The Fortune of the Republic," by Newell Dwight Hillis: "Christ ignored external conditions; He stripped away the rags from the beggar and the purple from the prince and laid his hand upon the soul and whispered 'made in the image of God'." Now, the contention of ye old schoolmaster of ye olden time is still higher. It is that the soul of man is divine-born of God; and man the son of God. Jesus of the New Testament was God's Son fully conscious of his sonship and mission, and that consciousness lifted him above self-seeking. He wanted nothing for self. Like Diogenes, the Cynic, whom Alexander, by his own and his horse's shadow, prevented basking in the sun and whom the great warrior asked what he could bestow on him as a gift that would be accepted. Diogenes replied: "Only do not stand in my sunshine!" His What is wrong of our tramp of to-day? He is half right. disregard of life's superfluities is Christ-like. Every man ought to be as indifferent to wealth, beyond being comfortably housed, comfortably clothed, having healthful food and drink, while giving his time to doing good deeds helpful to humanity in general, as was Jesus. The Cynicism of the Master, though extreme, left him "a garment without seam for which the soldiers cast lots." But he recognized the fact that very little of what is termed "the world's good," is essential to each, and that beyond this all should be com mon. Let not the fields be made sterile in the rage to make money, as they were made in Old Virginia by the old-time cultivation of tobacco and as will the bonanza farms of the north be made in the "capitalistic" production of wheat, nor the coal mines be denuded of their coal nor the forests of timber that the few may grow rich. Why are the ninety and nine of the European race poor? It is that by their toil the few capitalists may be enriched. Thus is manhood being sapped in England so that the young men held down to their crushing toil in factories were found unfit to be accepted as soldiers in the Boer war. And so are we preparing to become the subjects of a more manly race succumbing to their prowess as did |