People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1896 — Who is the Anarchist [ARTICLE]

Who is the Anarchist

A Massachusetts Minister Scores Hanna and His Metheds. Says He Would Paint the White Reuse Black. American Bluebeard. Skeletons of Union Workingmen Hang: Bleeding: in His Closet. McKinley’s a pitiable Figurehead in public Life Today. The New York Journal contained the following special from Lynn, Mass., dated Sept. 27: The largest congregation ever seen at a Sunday service in any place of worship in this city assembled in the Labor church today to hear the Rev. Herbert N. Casson preach on the subject, “Who Is the Anarchist, Bryan or Hanna?” The auditorium was crowded with people of all shades of political opinion, including leading Republicans, Democrats and Populists, several city officials, local labor leaders and a delegation from the Bryan-Sewall-Wil-liams club of Boston. The preacher’s fame as a pulpit orator is not confined to New England alone. He spoke for two hours and roused his hearers to a high pitch of enthusiasm when he said that “Nebraska never had a better loved son than Brvan.” The Rev. Mr. Casson said that as his sermon was a political one he would omit the reading of the Scripture lesson, and by way of preface read portions of several editorial articles bearing on bis subject from the New York Journal. Mr. Casson said in part: The laws of prosperity are to be discovered, not constructed. The real legislator for whom this nation waits is he who shall find and dare to proclaim the perfect social order foreordained by justice from the beginning of the world. The real anarchist is he who seeks to violate the laws of nature for the exclusive benefit of a small fraction of the community. During the present campaign the epithet “anarchist” has been hurled at the heads of some of the noblest and most capable men that this generation has produced. The fierce searchlight of publicity has blazed upon these men for years and not a single corrupt official act has been discovered. Bryan is caricatured, just as Lincoln was, as a highwayman, as a pirate, even as the devil, and in many similar ways. Whether Bryan’s political views are entirely correct or not, who can deny that he is a citizan of whom any nation in the world might boast?

Whether we consider the sustained ability of his addresses, his gentlemanly endurance of slander and misrepresentation, his unsullied public career or the magnetism of his unaffected cordiality to the sweat stained masses that greet him at every depot, we cannot avoid admiring him as a sturdy specimen of our American manhood. Compare him with the gagged individual who trembles in his mortgaged house lest Hanna may foreclose - compare him with that unfortunate Napoleon who has already met his Wellington and surrendered his convictions, and it is plain to see which best represents the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Bryan is the spokesman of the half awakened producers, who form nine-tenths of the population. He and his associates have revived the apostolic power of •‘casting out?devils” in the Dem ocratic party and of raising, the dead to life among the Republican rank and file. They have givsn" us at last a

real issue instead of a sham one, and though their remedy may seem inadequate to progressive thinkers it is in the right direction and in accordance with the people’s will. During the last few years we have been rapidly developing a slave element in our population - a propertyless class, entirely dependent upon the sale of their labor. No longer does Jack hobnob with his master. The rich and tne poor do not live in the same quarter of the city. A second secession has split our society into two hostile elements, and it is childish to howl “anarchist” at the patriot who proclaims the unwelcome fact and seeks to weld the nation into unity again by repealing the laws that cause it to split asunder. America is the workingman’s “Paradise Lost,” and it can never be regained by passive obedience to the serpent. Our carpenters build magnificent mansions and live in rented tenements themselves. Our mechanics construct electric lights anduse kerosene at home. They manufacture pianos and do not own a tin whistle. They build carriages and go afoot. Our miners dig gold and die poor. They delve in dangerous coal mines and lack fuel in the winter. Our farmers raise grain and want food, export cotton and wool and lack clothing, sell cattle and are without meat. Our marvelous inventions have been monopolized so that in spite of the daily miracles of our machinery the hungry still lack food and the homeless wander through the streets. Step by step the moneyless man is losing his right to exist. Every recent change in legislation has been made to protect property and to defranchise men. Armories are errected and schoolhouses forgotten. Immense grants of land are bestowed upon railroads, but the settlers upon these grants are evicted. Trades union leaders are imprisoned for having contempt for a contemptable judge, while monopolists are aided by injunctions and federal troops. To-day Shakespeare has been revised, and Shylock is the hero of the play. Portia’s plea for mercy is called revolutionary, and Bassanio is branded as a repudiator. There is hardly a trust or syndicate than has inaugurated this campaign of threats and ridicule and object lessons that dare open up its own business career to' the public. One of these defenders of law and national honor, the Standard Oil Company, has illegally increased freight rates, closed rivers and canals, destroyed inventions, bought up inspectors and put its stamp upon explosive oil, attacked the property of competitors and blown up rival refineries. These trusts are religious at one end and murderous at the other.

This lawbreaking, aggressive spirit of monopoly has found a perfect embodiment in the person of Mark Hanna. He to-day towers above McKinley and above the Republican party, the American Bluebeard, who slays his workers instead of his wives. The skeletons of the Seamen’s union, the Miner’s union and the Street Car Men’s union hang bleeding m his closet. When McKinley was governor of Ohio, Hanna was his guardian. Therefore, in criticising Bryan’s opponent, we look not at the servant, but at the master —not at McKinley, the most pitiable figurehead in public life to day, but at Hanna, his owner and tyrant. No man’s character can be described by his private relations with his family. He may be, like the late czar of Russia, a “good husband and father,” but so is every tigei’ and wild beast. Before granting any man the diploma of morality we ask what

the influence of his career has been upon his fellow men. If he has gone through life as an elephant goes through a forest, crashing and breaking a pathway for himself alone, or as a devilfish crawls through the sea, grasping and sucking the lifeblood from every living thing in reach, how can we intrust such a man with the responsibilities and authority of public office? Give Hanna four years of power and he will paint the White House black! He will utterly destroy every vestige of trades unionism, for he will have the army, the navy and the treasury at his command. He will discover that it is cheaper to abolish manhood suffrage than to buy votes, and next November may be the last chance that moneyless men ever may have to record their vote for president. Many Republican workingmen are thoughtlessly going to the ballot box just as an ox goes to a barbecue—gayly decorated in honor of its own death. Mayor Pingree gave us a national motto when he said, “Give the people what they want.” I am not one of those who regard the people as dangerous, covetous animals who must be chained and muzzled. The experiment of the referendum in Switzerland has proved that when the people are left entirely free they are naturally conservative. French revolutions never occur except when some King Louis has repressed the people and goaded them to resistance. “I am the state,” said the boastful king, and the people replied with the guillotine.

1 trust in the common heart of all more than in the private scheming of any financial syndicate. I don’t excuse the ignorance of the masses, I don’t celebrate their poverty, I don’t ignore their frailties, but I say that they are far nearer the truth regarding all social and political problems than those hoodlum students of Yale whose only argument is an insane college yell. It is time to co-operate aud enjoy the creation of our hands; otherwise all the energy and daring and inventiveness of our fathers have come to naught. I do not believe that Columbus discovered America for Hanna or that the monopolist is the last and highest product of human evolution.