Although the temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty years, it is apparent to all that it is just now being crowned with a degree of success hitherto unparalleled.

The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed from a cold abstract theory to a living, breathing, active, and powerful chieftain, going forth 鈥渃onquering and to conquer.鈥�^[1] The citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temple and his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made, are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of the conqueror鈥檚 fame is sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and calling millions to his standard at a blast.

For this new and splendid success, we heartily rejoice. That that success is so much greater now than heretofore, is doubtless owing to rational causes; and if we would have it continue, we shall do well to inquire what those causes are. The warfare heretofore waged against the demon of intemperance has, somehow or other, been erroneous. Either the champions engaged, or the tactics they adopted, have not been the most proper. These champions for the most part have been preachers, lawyers, and hired agents. Between these and the mass of mankind there is a want of approachability, if the term be admissible, partially at least, fatal to their success. They are supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest with those very persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade.

And again, it is so easy and so common to ascribe motives to men of these classes, other than those they profess to act upon. The preacher, it is said, advocates temperance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union of the church and state; the lawyer, from his pride and vanity of hearing himself speak; and the hired agent, for his salary. But when one, who has long been known as a victim of intemperance, bursts the fetters that have bound him, and appears before his neighbors 鈥渃lothed, and in his right mind,鈥�^[2] a redeemed specimen of long lost humanity, and stands up with tears of joy trembling in his eyes, to tell of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no more forever; of his once naked and starving children, now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife long weighed down with woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness, and renewed affection; and how easily it all is done, once it is resolved to be done; however simple his language, there is a logic, and an eloquence in it that few, with human feelings, can resist. They cannot say that he desires a union of church and state, for he is not a church member; they cannot say he is vain of hearing himself speak, for his whole demeanor shows he would gladly avoid speaking at all; they cannot say he speaks for pay, for he receives none, and asks for none. Nor can his sincerity in any way be doubted; or his sympathy for those he would persuade to imitate his example be denied.

In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class of champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But, had the old school champions themselves been of the most wise selecting, was their system of tactics the most judicious? It seems to me it was not. Too much denunciation against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers was indulged in. This, I think, was both impolitic and unjust. It was impolitic because it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to any thing; still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own business; and least of all, where such driving is to be submitted to, at the expense of pecuniary interest, or burning appetite. When the dram-seller and drinker were incessantly told, not in the accents of entreaty and persuasion, diffidently addressed by erring man to an erring brother, but in the thundering tones of anathema and denunciation, with which the lordly Judge often groups together all the crimes of the felon鈥檚 life, and thrusts them in his face just ere he passes sentence of death upon him, that they were the authors of all the vice and misery and crime in the land; that they were the manufacturers and material of all the thieves and robbers and murderers that infested the earth; that their houses were the workshops of the devil; and that their persons should be shunned by all the good and virtuous, as moral pestilences鈥擨 say, when they were told all this, and in this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow, very slow, to acknowledge the truth of such denunciations, and to join the ranks of their denouncers in a hue and cry against themselves.

To have expected them to do otherwise than they did鈥攖o have expected them not to meet denunciation with denunciation, crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema, was to expect a reversal of human nature, which is God鈥檚 decree, and never can be reversed. When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim 鈥渢hat a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.鈥� So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and tho鈥� you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall no more be able to pierce him than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.

Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest.

On this point, the Washingtonians greatly excel the temperance advocates of former times. Those whom they desire to convince and persuade are their old friends and companions. They know they are not demons, nor even the worst of men. They know that generally, they are kind, generous, and charitable, even beyond the example of their more staid and sober neighbors. They are practical philanthropists; and they glow with a generous and brotherly zeal that mere theorizers are incapable of feeling. Benevolence and charity possess their hearts entirely; and out of the abundance of their hearts, their tongues give utterance. 鈥淟ove through all their actions runs, and all their words are mild.鈥�^[3] In this spirit they speak and act, and in the same, they are heard and regarded. And when such is the temper of the advocate, and such of the audience, no good cause can be unsuccessful.

But I have said that denunciations against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers are unjust as well as impolitic. Let us see.

I have not inquired at what period of time the use of intoxicating drinks commenced; nor is it important to know.^[4] It is sufficient that to all of us who now inhabit the world, the practice of drinking them is just as old as the world itself鈥攖hat is, we have seen the one, just as long as we have seen the other. When all such of us, as have now reached the years of maturity, first opened our eyes upon the stage of existence, we found intoxicating liquor recognized by everybody, used by everybody, and repudiated by nobody. It commonly entered into the first draft of the infant and the last draft of the dying man. From the sideboard of the parson down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer, it was constantly found. Physicians prescribed it in this, that, and the other disease. Government provided it for soldiers and sailors; and to have a rolling or raising, a husking or hoe-down, anywhere about without it was positively insufferable.

So, too, it was everywhere a respectable article of manufacture and of merchandise. The making of it was regarded as an honorable livelihood; and he who could make most was the most enterprising and respectable. Large and small manufactories of it were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly goods of their owners were invested. Wagons drew it from town to town鈥攂oats bore it from clime to clime, and the winds wafted it from nation to nation; and merchants bought and sold it, by wholesale and retail, with precisely the same feelings on the part of the seller, buyer, and bystander as are felt at the selling and buying of flour, beef, bacon, or any other of the real necessaries of life. Universal public opinion not only tolerated but recognized and adopted its use.

It is true that even then, it was known and acknowledged, that many were greatly injured by it; but none seemed to think the injury arose from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing. The victims of it were pitied and compassionated, just as now are the heirs of consumptions and other hereditary diseases. Their failing was treated as a misfortune, and not as a crime, or even as a disgrace.

If, then, what I have been saying be true, is it wonderful that some should think and act now as all thought and acted twenty years ago? And is it just to assail, contemn, or despise them, for doing so? The universal sense of mankind, on any subject, is an argument, or at least an influence not easily overcome. The success of the argument in favor of the existence of an over-ruling Providence, mainly depends upon that sense; and men ought not, in justice, to be denounced for yielding to it in any case, for giving it up slowly, especially where they are backed by interest, fixed habits, or burning appetites.

Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old reformers fell, was the position that all habitual drunkards were utterly incorrigible, and therefore, must be turned adrift, and damned without remedy, in order that the grace of temperance might abound to the temperate then, and to all mankind some hundred years thereafter. There is in this something so repugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so cold-blooded and feelingless, that it never did, nor ever can enlist the enthusiasm of a popular cause. We could not love the man who taught it鈥攚e could not hear him with patience. The heart could not throw open its portals to it. The generous man could not adopt it. It could not mix with his blood. It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers overboard to lighten the boat for our security鈥攖hat the noble-minded shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing.

And besides this, the benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a system were too remote in point of time to warmly engage many in its behalf. Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think, we are, at the same time, doing something for ourselves. What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal happiness of others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of which community take no pains whatever to secure their own eternal welfare, at a no greater distant day? Great distance, in either time or space, has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind. Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded, even in our own cases, and much less in the cases of others.

Still, in addition to this, there is something so ludicrous in promises of good, or threats of evil, a great way off, as to render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned into ridicule. 鈥淏etter lay down that spade you鈥檙e stealing, Paddy鈥攊f you don鈥檛 you鈥檒l pay for it at the day of judgment.鈥� 鈥淏y the powers, if ye鈥檒l credit me so long, I鈥檒l take another, jist.鈥�

By the Washingtonians, this system of consigning the habitual drunkard to hopeless ruin is repudiated. They adopt a more enlarged philanthropy. They go for present as well as future good. They labor for all now living, as well as all hereafter to live. They teach hope to all鈥攄espair to none. As applying to their cause, they deny the doctrine of unpardonable sin. As in Christianity it is taught, so in this they teach, that

While the lamp holds out to burn,
The vilest sinner may return.^[5]

And, what is a matter of most profound gratulation, they, by experiment upon experiment, and example upon example, prove the maxim to be no less true in the one case than in the other. On every hand we behold those who but yesterday were the chief of sinners, now the chief apostles of the cause. Drunken devils are cast out by ones, by sevens, and by legions; and their unfortunate victims, like the poor possessed, who was redeemed from his long and lonely wanderings in the tombs,^[6] are publishing to the ends of the earth, how great things have been done for them.

To these new champions, and this new system of tactics, our late success is mainly owing; and to them we must mainly look for the final consummation. The ball is now rolling gloriously on, and none are so able as they to increase its speed, and its bulk鈥攖o add to its momentum, and its magnitude. Even though unlearned in letters, for this task none are so well educated. To fit them for this work, they have been taught in the true school. They have been in that gulf, from which they would teach others the means of escape. They have passed that prison wall, which others have long declared impassable; and who that has not shall dare to weigh opinions with them, as to the mode of passing.

But if it be true, as I have insisted, that those who have suffered by intemperance personally, and have reformed, are the most powerful and efficient instruments to push the reformation to ultimate success, it does not follow that those who have not suffered, have no part left them to perform. Whether or not the world would be vastly benefitted by a total and final banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues, and, I believe, all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts.

Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what the good of the whole demands? Shall he who cannot do much, be for that reason excused if he do nothing? 鈥淏ut,鈥� says one, 鈥渨hat good can I do by signing the pledge? I never drink even without signing.鈥� This question has already been asked and answered more than millions of times. Let it be answered once more. For the man to suddenly, or in any other way, to break off from the use of drams, who has indulged in them for a long course of years, and until his appetite for them has become ten or a hundred-fold stronger, and more craving, than any natural appetite can be, requires a most powerful moral effort. In such an undertaking, he needs every moral support and influence that can possibly be brought to his aid and thrown around him. And not only so; but every moral prop should be taken from whatever argument might rise in his mind to lure him to his backsliding. When he casts his eyes around him, he should be able to see all that he respects, all that he admires, and all that [he?] loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him onward; and none beckoning him back, to his former miserable 鈥渨allowing in the mire.鈥�^[7]

But it is said by some, that men will think and act for themselves; that none will disuse spirits or anything else, merely because his neighbors do; and that moral influence is not that powerful engine contended for. Let us examine this. Let me ask the man who could maintain this position most stiffly, what compensation he will accept to go to church some Sunday and sit during the sermon with his wife鈥檚 bonnet upon his head? Not a trifle, I鈥檒l venture. And why not? There would be nothing irreligious in it: nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable. Then why not? Is it not because there would be something egregiously unfashionable in it? Then it is the influence of fashion; and what is the influence of fashion, but the influence that other people鈥檚 actions have on our own actions, the strong inclination each of us feels to do as we see all our neighbors do? Nor is the influence of fashion confined to any particular thing or class of things. It is just as strong on one subject as another. Let us make it as unfashionable to withhold our names from the temperance cause as for husbands to wear their wives鈥� bonnets to church, and instances will be just as rare in the one case as the other.

鈥淏ut,鈥� say some, 鈥渨e are no drunkards; and we shall not acknowledge ourselves such by joining a reformed drunkard鈥檚 society, whatever our influence might be.鈥� Surely no Christian will adhere to this objection. If they believe, as they profess, that Omnipotence condescended to take on himself the form of sinful man, and, as such, to die an ignominious death for their sakes, surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely lesser condescension, for the temporal, and perhaps eternal salvation, of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of their own fellow creatures. Nor is the condescension very great.

In my judgment, such of us as have never fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of appetite than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have. Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice. The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some dear relative, more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth, like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay if not the first, the fairest born of every family. Shall he now be arrested in his desolating career? In that arrest, all can give aid that will; and who shall be excused that can, and will not? Far around as human breath has ever blown, he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, and our friends prostrate in the chains of moral death. To all the living everywhere we cry, 鈥淐ome sound the moral resurrection trump, that these may rise and stand up, an exceeding great army鈥濃�斺�淐ome from the four winds, O breath! and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.鈥�^[8]

If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then indeed, will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen. Of our political revolution of 鈥�76 we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.

But with all these glorious results, past, present, and to come, it had its evils too. It breathed forth famine, swam in blood, and rode in fire; and long, long after, the orphan鈥檚 cry, and the widow鈥檚 wail, continued to break the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price, paid for the blessings it bought.

Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it, we shall find a stronger bondage broken; a viler slavery, manumitted; a greater tyrant deposed. In it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. By it, none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest. Even the dram-maker and dram-seller will have glided into other occupations so gradually, as never to have felt the change; and will stand ready to join all others in the universal song of gladness.

And what a noble ally this, to the cause of political freedom. With such an aid, its march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition, the sorrow quenching drafts of perfect liberty. Happy day when, all appetites controlled, all passions subdued, all matter subjected, mind, all conquering mind, shall live and move the monarch of the world. Glorious consummation! Hail, fall of Fury! Reign of Reason, all hail!

And when the victory shall be complete鈥攚hen there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth鈥攈ow proud the title of that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions, that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly distinguished that people who shall have planted, and nurtured to maturity, both the political and moral freedom of their species.

This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birthday of Washington. We are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the mightiest name of earth鈥�long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name a eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor, leave it shining on.

The post The Temperance Address appeared first on 澳门六合彩开奖直播.

The organized populism of late-nineteenth-century America was predominantly an outgrowth of southern and midwestern agrarian movements during the 1870s and 1880s. Cooperative alliances emerged claiming to defend the interests of farmers in the face of railroad expansion, exploitative banking practices, and diminishing crop prices. Of key importance were groups such as the Farmers鈥� Alliance, the Agricultural Wheel, and the Grange. In the early 1890s, the Farmers鈥� Alliance and other groups reached out to northeastern labor to form the relatively short-lived Populist (or People鈥檚) Party. Among other things, the new party advocated the regulation and possible public ownership of the railroads, the abolition of national banking, the graduated income tax, reduced tariffs, abandoning the gold standard and embracing free silver, the initiative and referendum, the direct election of U.S. senators, and the eight-hour workday.

The Populist Party reached its zenith when it joined with the Democrats to nominate William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896. While the Democratic Party absorbed Jennings鈥� defeat and survived, the smaller Populist Party could not, especially when Bryan lost again in 1900. The Populist Party collapsed soon afterward. Various strands of the party were absorbed into other elements of the political landscape, among them an emerging movement we now call progressivism.

The American progressive movement lasted roughly from the early 1890s to the early 1920s, encompassing much more than the political party that sprang up around Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Yet, as with many such 鈥渕ovements,鈥� it 聽is difficult to reduce progressivism to a single defining concept or motivation. Among turn-of-the century progressives we find a hodgepodge of political and intellectual strains. Under the tent of progressivism one could find the remnants of the populist agrarians, a variety of Christian social activists, temperance advocates and suffragists, labor and industrial reformers, and university Ph.D.s in philosophy and the new behavioral and social sciences, just to name a few. Nevertheless, we might see in the movement some common themes, perhaps the most significant of which resides in the name attached to it鈥斺�減rogressivism.鈥� It might seem obvious, but one key element uniting many of these reformers, politicians, and intellectuals was their shared embrace of the doctrine of Progress with a capital 鈥淧.鈥� The particular engine of that progress, be it the internal dynamics of history itself or some notion of biological or social evolution, varied among thinkers. We might say, however, that a progressive is someone who likely adheres to some notion that the human condition, and the human being, are improving, developing, or evolving over time. Through social, political, and economic reform, we not only participate in that progress but might help speed it along. As the 鈥渋sm鈥� in the name suggests, progressivism is an ideology of progress. Distinguished from philosophy, which contemplates truth for its own sake, ideology tends to investigate and employ ideas for the expressed purpose of practical, political action, be it preservation or change. Whatever particular concerns might separate the various elements of the progressive movement, they were united in their dedication to changing American life in the name of progress.

In general, the progressives sought to reinterpret the American political order by giving the people more direct power over legislation and elected politicians, and in turn, giving administrative experts in state and federal agencies more power to regulate social and economic life. Progressive political scientists such as Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow distinguished politics from administration. Politics might determine the broad ends or purposes of government, but administration, they argued, deals with detailed policy and the particular, technical means by which we secure those ends. Many progressives argued that enlightened administration could be released from the restraints of elections, separation of powers, and checks and balances to help solve political and economic problems. This progressive vision was perhaps best realized a few years later in the form of Franklin Roosevelt鈥檚 New Deal. Political scientists sometimes refer to this as the rise of the 鈥渁dministrative state.鈥�

Key to the progressive project was the attempt to regulate certain sectors of the economy and redistribute wealth and private property in the name of 聽鈥渟ocial and industrial justice.鈥� But these policies, many progressives argued, would not be enacted as long as the political process was dominated by powerful special interests and as long as the Constitution presented supposedly antidemocratic obstacles to progressive reform (e.g., representation, a difficult method of constitutional amendment, federalism, separation of powers and checks and balances, and a cumbersome legislative process).

For many, the progressive project required an explicit, direct criticism of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Progressive thinkers understood that the natural rights and social contract thinking that informed the Declaration of Independence provided the basis for a limited government constitutionalism that often seemed to frustrate contemporary progressive reform. They often claimed that these founding principles had been swept aside in the march of progressive history or by the evolutionary science of Darwinism. Educated men, they asserted, now knew that there were no transhistorical truths or natural rights that applied to all human beings everywhere and always. Liberty ought not to be seen as natural to man, but as a product of history, a convention, or a dispensation of government. Moreover, if human nature and political wisdom can be improved through historical and scientific progress, perhaps limitations on government were no longer necessary. These admittedly abstract ideas had very practical consequences for America鈥檚 political development.

This document volume deviates from more common 鈥渢extbook鈥� approaches to the study of populism and progressivism in American history, not only because it focuses on primary sources but because it takes ideas seriously. Indeed, the leaders in these movements asked Americans to think about the proper ends and means of American democracy. This is especially true of the progressive movement. Insofar as it is a reaction to the founding, any real understanding of progressivism requires that we place its ideas and institutions in conversation with those of the Founders. We must weigh, balance, and ultimately judge what among their opinions is most reasonable. Necessarily limited in its scope, the present volume can only contribute to part of that dialogue. The reader might begin to construct that dialogue, however, by pairing this volume with others in the Core Documents series, perhaps those on the American Founding and the Constitutional Convention.

I thank David Tucker for editorial advice and assistance. I am also grateful for the advice provided by two anonymous readers. In closing, I should also note that this volume is in part the result of a progressivism course I sometimes teach as a visiting faculty member in Ashland University鈥檚 MAHG program (Master of Arts in American History and Government). I wish to thank the students in those classes鈥攎ost of them teachers鈥攆or their conversation, insights, questions, and dedication to learning through primary source documents. I have also benefitted much from other faculty who have taught the course, among them Christopher Burkett, David Alvis, Ronald J. Pestritto, and William Atto. Pestritto and Atto鈥檚 excellent and frequently assigned reader on American progressivism originated in their iteration of the course. That volume should be required reading for anyone interested in the principles of American progressivism and is listed among the suggested readings in Appendix C.

Jason R. Jividen

Saint Vincent College

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The chief modern industrial problem is often stated to be the distribution of property. What is wanted is widely diffused property, and it is desired to bring about this wide diffusion without injustice, and without injury to the springs of economic activity.

Many proposals are brought forward which aim to produce a more general prosperity. Two of the best known are the single tax and socialism.^[1] These, however, apart from all other considerations, encounter the strongest obstacles to their introduction because they are so averse to powerful private interests. Wise social reform will always seek for the line of least resistance. It is granted that the end proposed by socialism and the single tax is desirable in so far as it contemplates a wide distribution of wealth; but before committing ourselves to any extreme doctrines it is well to ask, What can be done without radical change?鈥攊n other words, what can we accomplish in order to ameliorate the condition of the masses without departure from the fundamental principles of the existing social order? When we reflect upon it, we find that there are many things, and that these are quite sufficient to occupy the thoughts and energies of well-wishers of their kind for a long time to come. At the present time I feel inclined to classify the chief things required to bring about an improved condition of society in the United States under three heads, namely:

First鈥擡ducation in its broadest sense, including kindergartens, manual training, technical schools, colleges, and universities.

Second鈥擳he abolition of private monopoly, and the substitution therefor of public ownership and management of all those enterprises which are by nature monopolies, like railways, gas and electric-lighting businesses, telegraphs, telephones, etc.

Third鈥擜 reform of the laws of inheritance.

What can be done by a regulation of inheritance to change the distribution of property, and consequently of the opportunities and income which property yields? Once in a generation nearly all property changes owners, and that gives opportunity for bringing about the greatest changes within half a century. There is a perpetual flow of property from the dead to the living, and it is possible by means of law to exercise much influence over this current. When we attempt to bring about reform and improvement by a wise regulation of inheritance, we have a solid basis of experience to help us. One part of such legislation which naturally suggests itself is the taxation of the estates of decedents, and such estates are taxed to a greater or less extent in nearly all鈥攑erhaps in all鈥攇reat modern nations. We may mention England, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland as countries with particularly instructive experience in the taxation of inheritances. Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland in the United States have experience which is valuable as far as it goes. Three of the countries named, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland, have taxation of inheritances, which amounts to a conscious attempt to influence the distribution of property.

Someone may interrupt at this point with the objection, 鈥淵ou are proposing measures which impair the rights of private property.鈥� The objection is not valid. The right of inheritance is one right, and the right of private property is another and a distinct right. He has made but little progress in the fundamental principles of jurisprudence who does not see how clearly separated are these two rights. The right of property means an exclusive right of control over a thing, but the right of inheritance means the transfer of this right in one manner or another. If there is no will, it means the right of someone to succeed to property, and this right is a product of positive law. If a will is made, the right of inheritance means not an exclusive right of control vested in a person, but the right of a person to say who shall exercise the right of property over things which were his while he was living, after he is dead, and, consequently, after he has lost all rights of property, because the dead have no proprietary rights whatever. Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England clearly discriminates between the rights of property and the rights which we lump together under the designation 鈥渋nheritance.鈥� He says:

Naturally speaking, the instant a man ceases to be, he ceases to have any dominion: else if he had a right to dispose of his acquisitions one moment beyond his life he would also have a right to direct their disposal for a million of ages after him, which would be highly absurd and inconvenient. All property must, therefore, cease upon death, considering men as absolute individuals unconnected with civil society. . . . Wills, therefore, and testaments, rights of inheritance and succession, are all of them creatures of the civil or municipal laws, and accordingly are in all respects regulated by them; every distinct country having distinct ceremonies and requisites to make a testament completely valid; neither does anything vary more than the right of inheritance under different national establishments.^[2]

Blackstone says it is an erroneous principle to suppose that 鈥渢he son has by nature a right to succeed to his father’s lands,鈥� or that the owner 鈥渋s by nature entitled to direct the succession of his property after his own decease.鈥�^[3]

The right of property in itself is not an unlimited one, but is limited and regulated to an increasing extent by all modern nations. . . . But when we come to the claim that my right of disposing of property by last will and testament is practically unlimited, it means not only my right to regulate the use of certain portions of the earth鈥檚 surface, or claims to certain portions of other valuable things in this earth, during my lifetime, but for all future time. There are those, indeed, who go so far as to hold that a man may establish certain regulations for the use of property after he is dead and gone, and that these regulations must be binding upon all future generations. Could any claim be more monstrous? It is in itself the extremest radicalism. We may say, in fact, that it is the furthest reach which radicalism has yet attained. . . .

When no will is made, the rule according to which property is divided among wife and children in this country is, perhaps, tolerably satisfactory; but suppose a man dies making no will, and has only collateral relatives: what should be their legal claim upon the estate? The modern laws which provide that even distant relatives may inherit the property of intestates are survivals of an earlier period, when large family groups lived together and formed a kind of a family partnership under the authority of the patriarch. When a man died under such circumstances, it was only natural that his property should pass to the family or the clan, itself but a larger family, for all were united together by the ties of interest and affection. There was a correspondence between rights and duties. But what is the case at the present time? The peculiar ties which bind together distant relatives are practically unworthy of consideration. Rights and duties ought to be coordinate, but distant relatives recognize no special duties toward one another, and do not think about their common relationship unless there is some property to be inherited from a distant rich relative, for whom they care nothing. In the absence of a will, there is positively no reason whatever why anyone should inherit from a third cousin. The family reason does not cover the case, because family feeling does not in our day extend so far, and, indeed, there is no reason why it should. . . .

All inheritances of every sort should be taxed, provided the share of an heir exceeds a certain amount. The state or the local political unit鈥攁s town or city鈥攎ust be recognized as a co-heir entitled to a share in all inheritances. A man is made what he is by family, by town, or the local political circle which surrounds him, and by the state in which he lives, and all have claims which ought to be recognized. Taxation of inheritance is the means whereby this claim of the state and town may secure recognition. It should, however, be borne in mind that it is a peculiar tax, and rests upon a different basis from the ordinary tax. The justification which appeals to me most strongly is that the political organisms are co-heirs. There are, however, many different standpoints from which the taxation of inheritances can be justified. Property which comes by inheritance is an income received without toil. It is for the one receiving it an unearned increment of property, and on this account may properly be taxed. The most satisfactory basis upon which property can rest is personal toil and exertion of some kind, and when property comes otherwise than as a return for social service, a special tax finds a good solid basis in justice.

It generally happens, perhaps universally, that a large property does not pay its fair share of taxes during the lifetime of its owner, and the tax upon estates when their owners die may be regarded鈥攊f it is not too large鈥攁s a payment of back taxes. It is notorious with us that personal property bears relatively a very small proportion of the burdens of government, and it has been proposed that the ordinary property tax on personal property should be abolished, and that in the place thereof there should be substituted a tax on all estates of decedents in so far as they consist of personal property. These, however, are grounds only for a limited tax, which in the case of personal property ought to be added to the regular inheritance tax, if personal property is otherwise exempted from taxation.

The taxation of inheritances should be graduated, the tax increasing as the relationship becomes more distant, and as the property becomes larger. This is in the line of the present development of taxation of inheritances. . . .

The use to be made of the funds acquired by the taxation of inheritances, and by establishing the co-heirship of town and state, must vary according to time and place. . . . In cases of cities, towns, and states weighed down with debt, the payment of bonds would be an excellent employment of the funds. In case taxes are extraordinarily high and are weighing down industry, the tax rate might be reduced. I think, however, that there are very few places in the United States where a properly developed tax system would not provide for all present expenditures of government without overburdening anyone. But there are great improvements which it is desirable to carry out, and these funds could be used to effect improvements which cost too much to be defrayed out of the ordinary taxation.

The states of the Union, and many of the towns, ought to go into forestry, purchasing large tracts of land, especially on mountains and along river courses, and covering these with trees. States and cities have allowed the ownership of valuable public works to slip away from them into the hands of private corporations. Waterworks, gasworks, streetcar lines, and the like might be purchased and operated at cost. All great cities require a larger number of parks, especially of small parks in the crowded sections. Sanitary measures may be mentioned, and some of these are expensive. They, however, lower the death rate and improve the health of the community. There are many cities which ought to buy slums and tear down the houses in them. The city of Manchester, England, bought quite a large tract of land in the center of the city, which was the worst slum region in it, and tore down all the houses. It then leased the land for a limited term of years, to be built up with houses according to plans and specifications laid down. The result has been a remarkable improvement in Manchester, and it is said that, when these leases fall in, Manchester will be one of the richest, if not the richest, municipal corporation in the world. London has recently decided to undertake a similar improvement, but it is stated that in the case of London this will involve great expense.

School funds ought to be increased until they become great enough, with the aid of current taxation, to provide the entire population with the best educational facilities of every sort, including manual training, kindergartens, public libraries, universities, industrial museums, art galleries, and the like. It would be especially desirable to improve the schools in the rural communities, establishing good high schools wherever the population is sufficient to furnish them with pupils. Good schools in the country districts would tend to keep people in the country, for now many leave the country and go to the cities purposely to educate their children. It is on every account desirable to make the country pleasanter and more attractive as a place of abode. Another fund may be suggested as suitable to be accumulated out of property inherited by the state and town, and that would be a highway fund, designed to help to improve the streets and roads of the state. The income of this fund could be distributed to towns and counties in such a manner as to encourage them in the improvement of roads and streets. It might be provided, for example, that for every two or three dollars expended by the local political unit one should be granted from the fund.

I believe the line of reform proposed in this article will stand every test which can be applied to it. It is, as already mentioned, a reform which meets with approval wherever tried, and with increasing approval the longer it is tried. It is a reform especially in keeping with democratic institutions, and it has succeeded best in democratic countries. So perfectly is it in keeping with true democracy that the purer, the more complete, and the more cultured the democratic countries have become in which this reform has been tried, the more they are inclined to move further along the same line. It is entirely compatible with the fundamental principles of the existing social order, and does not interfere with its normal and peaceful evolution. It antagonizes no other line of progress, but helps forward every other true reform. It provides ample public funds when accompanied by a rational system of taxation, and yet lays a burden heavy to be borne on no one.

We may examine this reform of the laws of inheritance with respect to the family, and we find that it tends to the development of the family as an institution far better than the existing laws in the United States. It recognizes the solidarity of the family. The husband is responsible to the wife and the wife to the husband, and both are responsible for the children they have brought into the world. It coordinates rights and duties. It may be stated, however, in this connection that duty should be extended among the various members of a family; in particular the reciprocal duties of parents and children should be sharpened and strengthened. The duty of support鈥攁nd adequate support in proportion to means鈥攕hould apply both to parents and to children, parents supporting the children in their youth, and children the parents in their old age. The various members of the family organism should be drawn together by an extension of duties. It may be questioned whether anyone should have the right to inherit from a person provided he may not under any circumstances be called upon to minister to his support. As Emerson and the other great thinkers have long been saying, it is time now to stop talking so much about rights, and to begin to emphasize duties.^[4]

If we look at this reform from the standpoint of society, we find that it stands every test to which it can be subjected. It diffuses property widely and results in a great number of families with an ample competence, and tends to prevent the growth of plutocracy. It is these families with a competence lifting them above a severe struggle for bare physical necessities that carry forward the world鈥檚 civilization. It is from these families that the great leaders of men come, and not from either of the two extremes of society, the very rich or the very poor, both of which extremes we wish to abolish. Excessive wealth discourages exertion, but a suitable reform of the laws of inheritance will remove from us many idle persons who consume annually immense quantities of wealth but contribute nothing to the support of the race; and who, leading idle lives, cultivate bad ideals and disseminate social poison. For the sake of the sons of the rich, as well as for the sake of the sons of the poor, we need a reform of the laws of inheritance.

A reform of the laws of inheritance of property will help us to approach that ideal condition in which the man who does not work shall not eat, and it will also tend to an equalization of opportunities so as to give all a fairer start in life, allowing each one to make such use of his opportunities as his capacity and diligence permit, and thus rendering inequalities, economic and social, less odious and injurious, more stimulating and helpful. This reform tends to make income a reward for service, thus realizing in a higher degree than at present the demands of justice. It must tend indirectly to discourage idleness and to encourage industry, and to repress that gambling, speculative spirit which desires something for nothing and wants to get a living without rendering an honest return of some kind.

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The act of Congress entitled 鈥淎n act to enforce the provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes,鈥� approved April 20, A. D. 1871, being a law of extraordinary public importance, I consider it my duty to issue this my proclamation calling the attention of the people of the United States thereto, enjoining upon all good citizens, and especially upon all public officers, to be zealous in the enforcement thereof, and warning all persons to abstain from committing any of the acts thereby prohibited.

This law of Congress applies to all parts of the United States and will be enforced everywhere to the extent of the powers vested in the Executive. But inasmuch as the necessity therefore is well known to have been caused chiefly by persistent violations of the rights of citizens of the United States by combinations of lawless and disaffected persons in certain localities lately the theater of insurrection and military conflict, I do particularly exhort the people of those parts of the country to suppress all such combinations by their own voluntary efforts through the agency of local laws and to maintain the rights of all citizens of the United States and to secure to all such citizens the equal protection of the laws.

Fully sensible of the responsibility imposed upon the executive by the act of Congress to which public attention is now called, and reluctant to call into exercise any of the extraordinary powers thereby conferred upon me except in cases of imperative necessity, I do, nevertheless, deem it my duty to make known that I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the executive whenever and wherever it shall become necessary to do so for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws.

It is my earnest wish that peace and cheerful obedience to law may prevail throughout the land and that all traces of our late unhappy civil strife may be speedily removed. These ends can be easily reached by acquiescence in the results of the conflict, now written in our Constitution, and by the due and proper enforcement of equal, just, and impartial laws in every part of our country.

The failure of local communities to furnish such means for the attainment of results so earnestly desired imposes upon the National Government the duty of putting forth all its energies for the protection of its citizens of every race and color and for the restoration of peace and order throughout the entire country.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of May, A. D. 1871, and of the Independence of the United States the ninety-fifth.

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Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Executive Department

Harrisburg, March 30, 1905

To the Honorable, the Senate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania:

Gentlemen: I return herewith, without my approval Senate Bill No. 35, entitled, “An Act for the prevention of idiocy.” This bill has what may be called with propriety an attractive title. If idiocy could be prevented by an act of assembly, we may be quite sure that such an act would have long been passed and approved in this state, and that such laws would have been enacted in all civilized countries. The subject of the act is not the prevention of idiocy, but it is to provide that in every institution in the state, entrusted with the care of idiots and imbecile children, a neurologist, a surgeon and a physician shall be authorized to perform an operation upon the inmates “for the prevention of procreation.” What is the nature of the operation is not described but it is such an operation as they shall decide to be “safest and most effective.” It is plain that the safest and most effective method of preventing procreation would be to cut the heads off the inmates, and such authority is given by the bill to this staff of scientific experts. It is not probable that they would resort to this means for the prevention of procreation, but it is probable that they would endeavor to destroy some part of the human organism. Scientists, like all other men whose experiences have been limited to one pursuit, and whose minds have been developed in a particular direction, sometimes need to be restrained. Men of high scientific attainments are prone, in their love for technique, to lose sight of broad principles outside of their domain of thought. A surgeon may possibly be so eager to advance in skill as to be forgetful of the danger to his patient. Anatomists may be willing to gather information by the infliction of pain and suffering upon helpless creatures, although a higher standard of conduct would teach them that it is far better for humanity to bear its own ills than to escape them by knowledge only secured through cruelty to other creatures. This bill, whatever good might possibly result from it if its provisions should become a law, violates the principles of ethics. These feeble-minded and imbecile children have been entrusted to the institutions by their parents or guardians for the purpose of training and instruction. It is proposed to experiment upon them, not for their instruction, but in order to help society in the future. It is to be done without their consent, which they cannot give, and without the consent of their parents or guardians, who are responsible for their welfare. It would be in contravention of the laws which have been enacted for the establishment of these institutions. These laws have in contemplation the training and the instruction of the children. This bill assumes that they cannot be so instructed and trained. Moreover, the course it is proposed to pursue would have a tendency to prevent such training and instruction. Everyone knows, whether he be a scientist or an ordinary observer, that to destroy virility is to lessen the capacity, the energy and the spirit which lead to effort. The bill is, furthermore, illogical in its thought. Idiocy will not be prevented by the prevention of procreation among these inmates. This mental condition is due to causes many of which are entirely beyond our knowledge. It existed long before there were ever such inmates of such institutions. If this plan is to be adopted, to make it effective it should be carried into operation in the world at large, and not in institutions where the inmates are watched by nurses, kept separate, and have all the care which is likely to render procreation there very rare, if not altogether impossible. In one of these institutions, I am reliably informed, there have only been three births in ten years. A great objection is that the bill would encourage experimentation upon living animals, and would be the beginning of experimentation upon living human beings, leading logically to results which can readily be forecasted. The chief physician, in charge at Elwyn,¹ has candidly told us, in an article recently published upon “Heredity,” that “Studies in heredity tend to emphasize the wisdom of those ancient peoples who taught that the healthful development of the individual and the elimination of the weakling was the truest patriotism – springing from an abiding sense of the fulfillment of a duty to the state.’’

To permit such an operation would be to inflict cruelty upon a helpless class in the community which the state has undertaken to protect. However skillfully performed, it would at times lead to peritonitis, blood poisoning, lockjaw and death. For these reasons the bill is not approved.

SAML. W. PENNYPACKER

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Drs. Keigwin and Hillis Invite Richard Bennett to Speak in Churches.

The Rev. Dr. A. E. Keigwin announced a platform meeting¹ yesterday in the West End Presbyterian Church, at Amsterdam Avenue and 105th Street, for next Sunday night on the subject of eugenics. One of the speakers will be Richard Bennett, the actor.² The Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis is another pastor who plans to push a eugenics campaign. He arranged with Mr. Bennett yesterday for a meeting early in the Fall in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, similar to the one to be held next Sunday night in West End Church.³

“Much of our public difficulty and more of our public expense to-day are due, in my judgement,” said the Rev. Dr. Keigwin yesterday, “to the dense ignorance of young men and women about the weightier physical affairs of human life. I heartily approve of this present movement, and think Christian ministers may well forego vacations to push it. If we will deliver men and women from the shackles of ignorance concerning themselves, we shall effect a reform that is vital to the whole human family, and especially to our own country.”

The Liberal Ministers Association of New York, composed of Unitarian and Universalist pastors, and reform rabbis, among them the Rev. Drs. Wise, Magnes, Mendes, and Silverman, has appointed a Eugenics Committee, with the Rev. Edgar S. Weirs of Montclair as Chairman. It is charged to investigate the subject this Summer and report next Fall. The Rev. Dr. John Haynes Holmes, as a member of the association, said yesterday:

“What the recommendations of this committee may be I know not, but for myself I hope and shall urge that the association binds all of its members as a group to perform nothing, but health marriages. I believe in the health marriage. Both parties should present certificates, and ministers ought not to marry any who cannot. That is the ideal. The difficulty is to carry the ideal out. Eventually the State will make it a law. While we are waiting for the State to act, what are we to do? I feel it is the business of the Church to show the way because the Church has a moral responsibility. Such an important matter ought not to be left to the individual minister. Acting alone, he can accomplish little. Ministers should act in groups. Dean Sumner and the Chicago Cathedral have shown us the way.”⁴

Two pastors of Fifth Avenue churches advocated the plan yesterday. Both are among the ministers who perform the largest number of fashionable marriage ceremonies. Said the Rev. Dr. Charles L. Slattery, rector of Grace Church:

“It is desirable that the personal health of each party to a marriage be certified to, but the requirement for such certificate ought to come from the State, not from the Church, because it is the function of the State to guard the health of its citizens. I am glad to see the Church take steps toward reform, and toward compelling the State to do its part.”

The Brick Presbyterian Church,⁵ through the decision of its pastor, the Rev. Dr. William P. Merrill, takes its stand with others. “I think the general movement to require proper conditions of health from all men and women contemplating marriage is right. The State ought to obtain the fulfillment of that condition, and the Church ought to co-operate in every practical way,” the pastor said yesterday.

It was said yesterday that the subject of eugenics will come into the Episcopal General Convention⁶ in this city in October through the report of a committee on which are Bishop Anderson of Chicago, whose cathedral took an early stand on health marriages; Bishop Spalding of Utah, whose book on the Mormons attracted wide attention; Bishop Williams of Michigan, whose views are known to be radical; Dean Hodges of Cambridge, Dean Sumner of Chicago, Jacob A. Riis, Gifford Pinchot,⁷ the Rev. J. Howard Melish of Brooklyn, and Clinton Rogers Woodruff, the head of a social welfare movement.

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The commission has tried to find the drift of public opinion as to strike, boycotts, and labor disputes upon railroads, and to find their remedy. The invitation freely extended in this direction has brought before the commission many expressions of views, orally and by written communications. A condensation of these latter is presented with this report. In reaching its conclusions the commission has endeavored, after careful consideration, to give due weight to the many suggestions and arguments presented. It is encouraging to find general concurrence, even among labor leaders, in condemning strikes, boycotts, and lockouts as barbarisms unfit for the intelligence of this age, and as economically considered, very injurious and destructive forces. Whether won or lost is broadly immaterial. They are war – internecine war – and call for progress to a higher plane of education and intelligence in adjusting the relations of capital and labor. These barbarisms waste the products of both capital and labor, defy law and order, disturb society, intimidate capital, convert industrial paths where there ought to be plenty into highways of poverty and crime, bear as their fruit the arrogant flush of victory and the humiliating sting of defeat, and lead to preparations for greater and more destructive conflicts. Since nations have grown to the wisdom of avoiding disputes by conciliation, and even of settling them by arbitration, why should capital and labor in their dependence upon each other persist in cutting each other’s throats as a settlement of differences? Official reports show that much progress has been made in the more sane direction of conciliation and arbitration even in America. Abroad they are in advance of us in this policy. Were our population as dense and opportunities as limited as abroad, present industrial conditions would keep us much more disturbed than we now are by contests between capital and labor.

In England, prior to 1824, it was conspiracy and felony for labor to unite for purposes now regarded there by all classes as desirable for the safety of the Government, of capital, and for the protection of the rights of labor.¹ All industrial labor is there, as a rule, covered by unions trained to greater conservatism through many disastrous conflicts under harsh conditions and surroundings. Capital abroad prefers to deal with these unions rather than with individuals or mobs, and from their joint efforts in good faith at conciliation and arbitration much good and many peaceful days have resulted. In fifteen of our States arbitration in various forms is now provided by law; the United States and eleven States have sanctioned labor organizations by statute. Some of our courts, however, are still poring over the law reports of antiquity in order to construe conspiracy out of labor unions. We also have employers who obstruct progress by perverting and misapplying the law of supply and demand, and who, while insisting upon individualism for workmen, demand that they shall be let alone to combine as they please and that society and all its forces shall protect them in their resulting contentions.

The general sentiment of employers, shared in by some of the most prominent railroad representatives we have heard, is now favorable to organization among employees. It results in a clearer presentation and calmer discussion of differences, instills mutual respect and forbearance, brings out the essentials, and eliminates misunderstandings and immaterial matters. To an ordinary observer, argument to sustain the justice and necessity of labor unions and unity of action by laborers is superfluous.

The rapid concentration of power and wealth, under stimulating legislative conditions, in persons, corporations, and monopolies has greatly changed the business and industrial situation. Our railroads were chartered upon the theory that their competition would amply protect shippers as to rates, etc., and employees as to wages and other conditions. Combination² has largely destroyed this theory, and has seriously disturbed the natural working of the laws of supply and demand, which, in theory, are based upon competition for labor between those who “demand” it as well as among those who supply it. The interstate commerce act and railroad-commission legislation in over thirty States are simply efforts of the people to free themselves from the results of this destruction of competition by combination. Labor is likewise affected by this progressive combination. While competition among railroad employers of labor is gradually disappearing, competition among those who supply labor goes on with increasing severity. For instance, as we have shown, there is no longer any competitive demand among the 24 railroads at Chicago for switchmen. They have ceased competing with each other; they are no longer 24 separate and competing employers; they are virtually one. To be sure, this combination has not covered the whole field of labor supply as yet, but it is constantly advancing in that direction. Competition for switchmen’s labor still continues with outside employers, among whom, again, we find a like tendency to eliminate competitive demand for labor by similar combination. In view of this progressive perversion of the laws of supply and demand by capital and changed conditions, no man can well deny the right nor dispute the wisdom of unity for legislative and protective purposes among those who supply labor.

However men may differ about the propriety and legality of labor unions, we must all recognize the fact that we have them with us to stay and to grow more numerous and powerful. Is it not wise to fully recognize them by law; to admit their necessity as labor guides and protectors, to conserve their usefulness, increase their responsibility, and to prevent their follies and aggression by conferring upon them the privileges enjoyed by corporations, with like proper restrictions and regulations? The growth of corporate power and wealth has been the marvel of the past fifty years. Corporations have undoubtedly benefited the country and brought its resources to our doors. It will not be surprising if the marvel of the next fifty years be the advancement of labor to a position of like power and responsibility. We have heretofore encouraged the one and comparatively neglected the other. Does not wisdom demand that each be encouraged to prosper legitimately and to grow into harmonious relations of equal standing and responsibility before the law? This involves nothing hostile to the true interests and rights of either. . . .

The commission deems recommendations of specific remedies premature. Such a problem, for instance, as universal Government ownership of railroads is too vast, many-sided, and far away, if at-tempted, to be considered as an immediate, practical remedy. It belongs to the socialistic group of public questions where Government ownership is advocated of monopolies, such as telegraphs, telephones, express companies, and municipal ownership of waterworks, gas and electric lighting, and street railways. These questions are pressing more urgently as time goes on. They need to be well studied and considered in every aspect by all citizens. Should continued combinations and consolidations result in half a dozen or less ownerships of our railroads within a few years, as is by no means unlikely, the question of Government ownership will be forced to the front, and we need to be ready to dispose of it intelligently. As combination goes on there will certainly at least have to be greater Government regulation and control of quasi-public corporations than we have now.

Whenever a nation or a state finds itself in such relation to a railroad that its investments therein must be either lost or protected by ownership, would it not be wise that the road be taken and the experiment be tried as an object lesson in Government ownership? The Massachusetts Railroad Commission, which is noted for its eminent services as a conservative pioneer in the direction of Government control of railroads through the force of public opinion, for several years urged that the experiment of State ownership be tried with the Fitchburg system, because of the large State investment in the Hoosac Tunnel. We need to fear everything revolutionary and wrong, but we need fear nothing that any nation can successfully attempt in directions made necessary by changed economic or industrial conditions. Other nations under their conditions own and operate telegraphs and railroad with varying results. Whether it is practicable for this nation to do so successfully when it becomes necessary to save an investment or when the people determine it shall be done, is an open and serious question which can not be answered fully except by actual experiment. . . .

In solving these questions, corporations seldom aid the efforts of the people or their legislators. Fear of change and the threatened loss of some power invariably make them obstructionists. They do not desire to be dealt with by any legislation; they simply want to be let alone, confident in their ability to protect themselves. Whatever is right to be done by statutes must be done by the people for their own protection and to meet the just demand that railroad labor shall have public and impartial hearing of all grievances.

The commission does not pretend to present a specific solution of these questions. Its effort is simply to present the facts; to point out that the relations of capital and labor are so disturbed as to urgently demand the attention of all thinking and patriotic citizens; to suggest a line of search for practical remedial legislation which may be followed with safety, and, finally, to urge and invite labor and railroads to hearty cooperation with the Government and the people in efforts to substitute law and reason in labor dispute for the dangers, sufferings, uncertainties, and wide-spread calamities incident to strikes, boycotts, and lockouts. . . . can we fix the hanging period?

The commission urges employers to recognize labor organizations; that such organizations be dealt with through representatives, with special reference to conciliation and arbitration when difficulties are threatened or arise. It is satisfied that employers should come in closer touch with labor and should recognize that, while the interests of labor and capital are not identical, they are reciprocal.

The commission is satisfied that if employers everywhere will endeavor to act in concert with labor; that if wages can be raised under economic conditions they can be raised voluntarily, and that if when there are reductions, reasons be given for the reduction, much friction can be avoided. It is also satisfied that if employers will consider employees as thoroughly essential to industrial success as capital, and thus take labor into consultation at proper times, much of the severity of strikes can be tempered and their number reduced.

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The home life of the Indian of to-day is essentially the same as the home life of the Indian of thirty years ago. Any progress he may have made is due to change of environment, produced by the coming of white people, and the consequent passing away of old customs.

The daily routine of home life is the same, the aforesaid change produced by environment being shown by the fact that in place of the tepee the Indian once occupied, he now lives in a frame house and can boast of a well, a stable, a few fruit trees and a vegetable garden. The fact that in place of hunting wild game over the prairies, he now farms and raises good crops of corn, wheat, and oats makes but little difference in the internal workings of the home.

Long ago the Indian had a removable house suited to his requirements, a tepee or tent which was made of buckskin or canvas stretched over a pyramid formed by means of poles tied together at the top with buckskin, a house easy to carry around with him in his nomadic journeyings.

When the tribe found a place where they could settle down and live eight months in the year they built mud lodges as their permanent residences. These are dome-shaped, the frame work consisting of poles, willow branches and rushes, and from base to apex it is covered with sod several inches thick. They have wide entranceways, several feet long and high enough to permit a tall person to stand upright. They are like tunnels leading into the lodge, which is circular in form. Light and air enter by means of a large circular opening in the top of the dome, this also serving as a means of exit for the smoke. The lodge is well ventilated – warm in winter and cool in summer. Several families live in them at a time, and the only two or three now left on this reservation are used for holding councils, public gatherings and dances, as they can accommodate over a hundred people.

How often as children we used to climb upon these lodges and pick the sunflowers and grasses growing on them. Near sunset the old men would sit up on these lodges where they could pursue their meditations undisturbed and alone, and I remember looking at them reverently as I played around with the other children, for I regarded them with a great deal of awe, for to me they seemed so wise.

Trodden by hundreds of feet the earthen floor is almost as hard as stone, and coming in from the hot dusty road how gratefully cool it felt to our little bare feet as we played in and out, riding our make-believe horse made of sunflower stalks. In the center is a little hollow where the fire is built and all the cooking is done. Around this place we used to gather to listen to thrilling stories of battles with the dreaded Sioux, buffalo hunts and ghost stories. When it came to the last I used to look up fearfully at the opening above, for fear I should see a dog looking down, for it is a superstition among the Indians that if a dog looks down through this opening into the lodge some one of the company is sure to die soon. If such a thing happened the dog was killed immediately. It was always a relief to see the blue sky and stars looking down.

After a while the Indians built log houses of only one room, the roof covered with turf.

Now, on this reservation we have almost every family living in a neat frame house, one story or one story and a half high, wainscoted, plastered or papered inside; very clean and neatly painted outside. The premises are clear of rubbish.

These houses are built by the Indians with their own money, but the desire to own such houses was started several years ago when the “Connecticut Home-Building Fund” started the Home-Building Department of the Women’s National Indian Association.¹ The seed then sown has borne fruit here and elsewhere. Whether you enter with me into a tent, a mud-lodge or log house, or one of these neat frame houses you would see the same home-life going on in every one of them.

There is little variation, one day of the week being almost the same as another.

The family usually arise early – in the summer about sunrise, but in winter the breakfast is usually considerably delayed, for they follow suntime. In most cases the hostess arises and builds the fire, gets the water and cooks the simple meal. Very few have had bread, but it is now getting to be the general rule in many families to make light bread. They have biscuit made with soda or baking powder, and sometimes “fried cakes,” light brown in color and very appetizing. Coffee, sometimes fresh beef, for, in this country where there are thousands of head of cattle it is hard to get beef; sometimes fruit, dried, and in the summer potatoes and beans. You can see that their diet is very simple. The food is divided and put on plates, the coffee is poured out into cups and then the food is handed around to each individual. Usually after the meal is over the dishes are put away in a little cupboard. If it is summer the husband and men in the family go out to their work and the wife cleans up the house and begins to get the noon-meal. It is the same as breakfast. They do not do very much sewing for their clothes are simply and quickly made. The houses on the reservation are far apart and the women cannot very well pass away the time by gossip with the neighbors, as some of our white friends have the privilege of doing. What a deprivation is this! Let us all be thankful for our privileges.

The evening meal is simple, and the time between that and the retiring hour is spent in talking over the events of the day or in telling news. We have no telegraph lines or telephones, but news has a wonderfully quick way of travelling from one house to another. Rumors on a reservation are the same as rumors anywhere else. When they reach the end (?)² of their journey they have received quite an addition, and a wise person will credit only one third of the story as truth.

There are no books, pictures or recreations save the dances, and no games except cards which are used for gambling. A narrow life in some respects. The Indians are passionately fond of their children; having no books, pictures or recreations in their home life, they lavish all attention on their children. There are some cases where the step-father or step-mother, as the case may be, makes no difference whatever between their children and the step-children. They show their affection for their children also.

Some ask the absurd question, “Do the Indians really love their wives?” The Indians are human beings just as the white people are, and there are Indian men who are just as careful, watchful and affectionate to their wives as anyone would wish to see anywhere. They do not make an outward show of their affection, but I know from personal observation that they are truly devoted to each other. One day I had to pull a young woman’s tooth, and as the husband was a strong muscular man I was in hopes he would support her head for me. He sent for his brother to do it and when he saw me take the forceps up he beat a hasty retreat. I heard him walking up and down in the other room, and when they told him I was through he appeared with such a happy relieved look on his face and thanked me so earnestly. I could not help but be glad for him that she was through with her suffering. There are many instances like this that I know of. Of course, there are some cases entirely different, and where there is no happiness. But so we find it wherever we go in this world.

Indian women no longer stand in the background. Few work in the fields or do heavy work. Where it used to be the lot of the women to provide the wood, now the men get it in almost all cases. Even in so small a thing as walking or riding where the woman had to walk behind or ride in the back of the wagon, now she walks beside her husband, and in vehicles you see the woman riding beside her husband on the seat.

The old customs are fast disappearing and in place of the Indian of twenty years ago, who lived in a tent and supported himself by hunting wild game, we have an independent man who is earning his bread by his own toil, living in a frame house and learning very fast how to transact business like white people. The wife standing beside her husband shows only his true advancement, and the home is happier for this progress.

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The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already much-worn topic of reconstruction.

Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more intense, or of aspirations more sincere and ardent. There are the best of reasons for this profound interest. Questions of vast moment, left undecided by the last session of Congress, must be manfully grappled with by this. No political skirmishing will avail. The occasion demands statesmanship.

Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results, – a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure . . . [and a futile] effort to bring under Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress. The last session really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions. The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land,¹ do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will.

While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs, – an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other political idea, – no general assertion of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature.

The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, in spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book.

Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South; and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise, – a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for his protection.

One of the invaluable compensations of the late Rebellion is the highly instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to republican government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and despotic governments, no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory before the war has been made fact by the war. . . .  can we avoid this hanging line?

It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been taught to our cost. It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic. At any rate, to this grand work of national regeneration and entire purification Congress must now address itself, with full purpose that the work shall this time be thoroughly done. The deadly upas,² root and branch, leaf and fiber, body and sap, must be utterly destroyed. The country is evidently not in a condition to listen patiently to pleas for postponement, however plausible, nor will it permit the responsibility to be shifted to other shoulders. Authority and power are here commensurate with the duty imposed. There are no cloud-flung shadows to obscure the way. Truth shines with brighter light and intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding implores relief from its distress and agony.

If time was at first needed, Congress has now had time. All the requisite materials from which to form an intelligent judgment are now before it. Whether its members look at the origin, the progress, the termination of the war, or at the mockery of a peace now existing, they will find only one unbroken chain of argument in favor of a radical policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of the last session, some excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President³ stood in the way; . . . Congress knows now that it must go on without his aid, and even against his machinations.⁴ . . . The members go to Washington fresh from the inspiring presence of the people. . . . Radicalism, so far from being odious, is now the popular passport to power. The men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the largest majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities, or else left at home. The strange controversy between the President and the Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed of by the people. The high reconstructive powers which he so confidently, ostentatiously, and haughtily claimed, have been disallowed, denounced, and utterly repudiated; while those claimed by Congress have been confirmed. . . .

Without attempting to settle here the metaphysical and somewhat theological question (about which so much has already been said and written), whether once in the Union means always in the Union, – agreeably to the formula, once in grace always in grace, – it is obvious to common sense that the rebellious States stand today, in point of law, precisely where they stood when, exhausted, beaten, conquered, they fell powerless at the feet of Federal authority. Their State governments were overthrown, and the lives and property of the leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited. In reconstructing the institutions of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it. Let there be no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress.⁵ These pretended governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order, should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate.

It is not, however, within the scope of this paper to point out the precise steps to be taken, and the means to be employed. The people are less concerned about these than the grand end to be attained. They demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious States, – where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property; such a one as will cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall^{6LC-DIG-pga-01366} can now be tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important work. . .

Men denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion; but it is no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering Rebel armies as in reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of the negro is the true solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of events, which goes directly to the point, disdaining all concern for the color or features of men, has determined the interests of the country as identical with and inseparable from those of the negro.

The policy that emancipated and armed the negro – now seen to have been wise and proper by the dullest – was not certainly more sternly demanded than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with the negro was success in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the nation must fall or flourish with the negro.

Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens, whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. The mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States, – so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal voter in all the States.

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Mr. President, I regret that I feel the necessity of bringing up again some parts of the speech of the Senator who has just taken his seat. However, he would not allow me to answer or interject an objection as he went along. It has reference to the race question in the South, the question which has been the cause of more sorrow, more misery, more loss of life, more expenditure of treasure than any and all questions which have confronted the American people from the foundation of the Government to the present day. Out of it grew the war, and after the war came the results of the war, and those results are with us now. The South has this question always with it. It cannot get rid of it. Is it there. It is like Banquo’s ghost, and will not down.¹ I have felt called on to attack the Republican policy of this day and time and to accuse the Republicans in this Chamber with being hypocrites in regard to that issue; I have felt constrained to do so by reason of the facts and of the events of the past few years.

The Senator from Wisconsin² . . . gave us a picture of the condition of the slave during the war, and of the debt of gratitude which the Southern people owe to those slaves, who had charge of our wives and children and homes, and, to their everlasting credit, during those four long and bloody years not one solitary crime was reported against them of the kind that is now reported every week. I say that he cannot exceed me in appreciation of the fact that the Southern people did owe and do owe and will exceedingly owe a debt of gratitude to their slaves for their behavior.

But I would call the Senator’s attention to the absolute and inevitable corollary, that if the slaves of the South, with the opportunities which were afforded them during those years when all the men were at the front, and when their wrongs, if they had any, would have prompted revenge, were guilty of no crime against their mistresses and their children, it in thunder tones gives the lie to the charges as to the cruelty of the slave system in the South.

There were numerous instances, possibly too numerous, of cruelty and wrongdoing, and I shall not apologize for the system, for, thank God, it is gone – torn up by the roots at a great cost of life and sacrifice of property. I would not restore it if I could by the waving of a hand. But I say to him when he parades that as a reason why we ought to be grateful – and I acknowledge that we ought – he at once convicts himself and those of his fellows who went on that crusade of blood and destruction for the purpose of liberating those people of having been misled and of having given Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin undue weight in inaugurating that crusade. I have already given due credit on this floor to the North for patriotism and honesty of purpose and I realize that the love of the Union was a mighty factor in that great struggle. But it cannot be denied that the slaves of the South were a superior set of men and women to the freedmen of today, and that the poison in their minds – the race hatred of the whites – is the result of the teachings of Northern fanatics. Ravishing a woman, white or black, was never known to occur in the South till after the reconstruction era. So much for that phase of the subject.

As to the rights of the negros in the South, of which he now claims to be the champion –

Mr. Spooner. [interrupting] No.

Mr. Tillman. Well, I do not understand the Senator. I am very unfortunate in being unable to fathom his meaning. He speaks clearly, and I usually have the means of interpreting language that is plain and unmistakable; but he did say something about the rights of those people.

Mr. Spooner. I did.

Mr. Tillman. And he said we had taken their rights away from them. He asked me was it right to murder them in order to carry the elections. I never saw one murdered. I never saw one shot at an election. It was the riots before the election, precipitated by their own hotheadedness in attempting to hold the government, that brought on conflicts between the races and caused the shotgun to be used. That is what I meant by saying we used the shotgun.

I want to call attention to one fact. He said that the Republican Party gave the negroes the ballot in order to protect themselves against the indignities and wrongs that were attempted to be heaped upon them by the enactment of the black code.³ I say that [the negroes were given the ballot] because the Republicans of that day, led by Thad Stevens, wanted to put white necks under black heels and to get revenge. There is a difference of opinion. You have your opinion about it, and I have mine, and we can never agree.

I want to ask the Senator this proposition in arithmetic: In my State, there were 135,000 negro voters, or negroes of voting age, and some 90,000 or 95,000 white voters. General Canby⁴ set up a carpetbag government⁵ there and turned our State over to this majority. Now, I want to ask you, with a free vote and a fair count, how are you going to beat 135,000 to 95,000? How are you going to do it? You had set us an impossible task. You had handcuffed us [and] thrown away the key, and you propped your carpet bag negro government with bayonets. Whenever it was necessary to sustain the government you held it up by the Army.

Mr. President, I have not the facts and figures here, but I want the country to get the full view of the Southern side of this question and the justification for anything we did. We were sorry we had the necessity forced upon us, but we could not help it, and as white men we are not sorry for it, and we do not propose to apologize for anything we have done in connection to it. We took the government away from them in 1876. We did take it. If no other Senator has come here previous to this time who would acknowledge it, more’s the pity. We have had no fraud in our elections in South Carolina since 1884. There has been no organized Republican Party in the State.

We did not disfranchise the negroes until 1895. Then we had a constitutional convention convened which took the matter up calmly, deliberately, and avowedly with the purpose of disenfranchising as many of them as we could under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. We adopted the educational qualification as the only means left to us, and the negro is as contented and as prosperous and as well protected in South Carolina today as in any State of the Union south of the Potomac. He is not meddling with politics, for he found that the more he meddled with them, the worse off he got. As to his “rights” – I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern the white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be equal to the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him.⁶ I would to God the last one of them was in Africa and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores. . . .

I want to ask permission in this connection to print a speech which I made in the constitutional convention of South Carolina when it convened in 1895, in which the whole carpetbag regime and the indignities and wrongs heaped upon our people, the robberies which we have suffered, and all the facts and figures there brought out are incorporated, and let the whole of the facts go to the country. I am not ashamed to have those facts go to the country. They are our justification for the present situation in our State. . . .

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