Liberty Vol. X. No. 13. | Liberty, Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order

[Unedited]

“For always in thine eyes, O Liberty!

Shines that high light whereby the world is saved;

And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.”

John Hay.

On Picket Duty.

“Pere Peinard,” the most violent of all the Communist organs, has been revived in London by its editor, E. Pouget, who publishes it fort-nightly in the form of a tiny pamphlet, each number bearing a new title. The editor’s address is 23 Bing Edward Street, Islington, London, England.

The “American Journal of Politics” for November contains two thoroughly Anarchistic articles, — one on the question of patents and copyrights, by H. Olerich, and the other on the question of strikes and boycotts, by Victor Yarros. Mr. Olerich gives a very able presentation of the arguments against property in ideas which have been repeatedly advanced in the editorial columns of Liberty, and re-enforces them with weighty considerations of his own. Mr. Yarros’s article is a reply to Prof von Hoist, that inflated and over-rated writer on constitutional law having contributed to the “Journal of Political Economy” an article on the Chicago troubles of last summer which Mr. Yarros very properly characterizes as hysterical, rhetorical, rabid, intemperate, and almost riotous. But Mr. Yarros does not content himself with adjectives; as is his habit, he backs them up with arguments, and, if Prof. von Hoist attempts to answer them, he will find that he has a difficult task before him. In my opinion, David has once more slain Goliath. The “American Journal of Politics” is to be highly commended for admitting such articles to its pages.

Another strike is on at Pullman. The dissatisfaction on this occasion is with Thomas H. Wickes, second vice-president of the Pullman Car Company and the man who was the most active and obstinate of all in the struggle against the strikers last summer. It is now complained that Mr. Wickes has been guilty of extreme cruelty. The complainant, and thus far the sole striker, is no less a person than Mrs. Wickes. She sues for a divorce on the ground that Mr. Wickes is in the habit of beating, striking, kicking, and otherwise cruelly abusing her. That is to say, she strikes because she has been struck. Now, would it not be one of the finest things that ever happened in the world if all the other wives in the country were to inaugurate a general and sympathetic strike? Wholesale indictments for conspiracy would be sure to follow; Cleveland, who has an old-time reputation as an upholder of the family, would speedily call out the troops; and Historian von Hoist would fill several pages of the “Journal of Political Economy” with exclamations of holy horror at the people thus presuming to paralyze reproduction and commerce.

Boston recently labored under a moral spasm. The ministers started it, and the police played second fiddle in a really admirable manner. The societies which make it their business to mind other people’s are so overworked about the eyes in spying around that many of them have found glasses necessary. Everything is being prohibited. Even the innocent little telegraphic ticker which supplies stock quotations, baseball scores, racing news, etc., to hotels, restaurants, and bar-rooms, has been hauled up as an instrument conducing to gambling. Of course, the courts will not uphold such seizures, but this is not compensation to the persons who are annoyed and whose business is damaged every time a few parsons take it into their heads to run amuck. The sensational parson is becoming such a public nuisance that every good citizen should feel it his duty to sue him for damages.

I do not see the pertinence of Mr. Bilgram’s article in another column commenting upon my criticism of him in No. 294 of Liberty. His rejoinder is directed against a fancied assertion of mine that crushing of competitors by under-selling is a bad thing; and, imputing this assertion to me, he hints that I have flopped over from Anarchism to State Socialism. If he will read a third time the paragraph which he has already read twice, he will see that it expresses no opinion whatever as to the badness or the goodness of the policy of crushing competitors. The ground taken was simply this, — that, when government, supported as it is by compulsory taxation, engages in any line of business, free competition in that business becomes an absurdity, and that Mr. Bilgram is therefore bound, as a champion of free competition, to deny the right of government to engage in business. This was my sole contention, and Mr. Bilgram makes not the slightest attempt to meet it. What he does say is that he does not favor underselling by the State, and that, if the State were to undersell in the banking business, it would teach the economists a much-needed lesson. Now I have not charged him with favoring underselling by the State, nor have I disputed that such underselling would have the educational value that he points out. But I do not think it just to teach economists at the expense of producers (even though they be producers of money), and since Mr. Bilgram, after all, does not favor giving the lesson, I assume that he agrees with me in this. And now I ask Mr. Bilgram this question: Does free competition exist when one competitor has and exercises the power to meet by robbery the deficit arising from the practice of selling below cost?

Time was when it was impossible to hint at the practicability of furnishing for almost nothing a paper currency based neither on gold nor on government bonds, but on individual credit, without raising thereby a storm of sneers from papers like the “Nation” at “the idiots who think that, in order to have money, it is only necessary to start the printing presses.” But now these same papers, the “Nation” first of all, are telling us that, under the Baltimore plan of currency reform, “the currency will be supplied at a cost of next to nothing. This does not mean,” the “Nation” kindly explains, “that we can all of us pick up money in the street. If we could do so, it would be worth nothing. We shall have to pay one hundred cents’ worth of our goods or labor for every dollar, whether it be silver or bank-notes; but in the former case society as a whole must begin by paying out fifty cents for the material of which the dollar is composed, while in the other case it pays only a small fraction of a cent It seems something like a paradox to say that money which posts nothing is better than that which costs fifty per cent. of its face value, but it is true, because the bank-notes represent one hundred cents in bank assets.” Which seeming paradox is nothing more or less than the good old doctrine preached by Anarchists and reviled by Godkinians ever since Proudhon wrote his “Solution du Probleme Social” nearly half a century ago. “The bank-notes,” continues the “Nation,” “are swapping tickets. The Baltimore plan, as Mr. Hepburn tersely said, is a plan for swapping well-known credit for less-known credit.” In formulating this conception of the banking business Liberty was years before Mr. Hepburn or the “Nation.” In my essay on “State Socialism and Anarchism,” written in 1886, I described the business of banks of issue as “an exchange of the known and widely available credits of the banks for the unknown and unavailable, but equally good, credits of the customers.” Nor was the idea original with me; practically the same thing had been said by others at an earlier date. But at that time the “Nation” either could not or would not see this truth. In fact, journals of its stamp seldom recognize a truth when first announced by its discoverers. Before it can gain their sanction it must be uttered by some ape of high repute.

“In abolishing rent and interest, the last vestiges of old-time slavery, the Revolution abolishes at one stroke the sword of the executioner, the seal of the magistrate, the club of the policeman, the gunge of the exciseman, the erasing-knife of the department clerk, all those insignia of Politics, which young Liberty grinds beneath her heel.” — Proudhon.

The appearance in the editorial column of articles over other signatures than the editor’s initial indicates that the editor approves their central purpose and general tenor, though he does not hold himself responsible for every phrase or word. But the appearance in other parts of the paper of articles by the same or other writers by no means indicates that he disapproves them in any respect, such disposition of them being governed largely by motives of convenience.

The Church and Woman Suffrage.

Without any desire to enter upon a discussion of the question of woman suffrage with either the editor or Mr. Robinson, I may perhaps be permitted to call the attention of the readers of Liberty to a misapprehension under which one of the disputants is laboring. I think that it would be very difficult for Mr. Robinson to be more mistaken about any other matter of fact than he seems to be regarding the attitude of the conservative forces toward the political equality of woman. He asks if there is a church anywhere that advocates it. Fifteen years ago the minister who advocated giving the ballot to woman was the exception. Today the Protestant minister at the North (with the possible exception of the Episcopalian, who is not a very conspicuous factor in the discussion of political questions) who does not champion woman suffrage is the man who is rarely found. The tide began to turn about ten years ago, and it has gathered volume every year since, and it still continues to swell. It began in the West, and the further you go in that direction the stronger you will find it to be. So far it is relatively weak in the South, and is not so powerful here as in the middle West.

The genesis of this movement is very easy to trace, especially to one who has lived in the prohibition States and is familiar with their politics. Mr. Robinson is well aware, of course, that in the case of all the Protestant churches the membership in and attendance of women is many fold greater than that of men. So notorious is this fact that it is a common saying that, were it not for the women, more than half of the Protestant churches would have to close their doors. They are sustained by the moral and pecuniary support which the women bring to them. Many of the men who do go to church attend only because their wives and sweethearts are generally there on Sunday, while the number is still larger who give money to the church simply because their wives are members thereof and they must help support the conventicle if they would have peace at home. Could Mr. Robinson leave his office and go out among the people and spend a few years in getting acquainted with them in town, village, and country, be would be astounded at the number of indifferentists and Infidels who give with a more or less free hand to the churches. Of course, the clergy know well where their friends are and which sex it is that they have the most influence over, and hence it was very natural that they should early grasp the idea that the ballot in the hands of woman would immediately and vastly augment their power and enrich the church. The first political use they had for woman was in the fight for prohibition, and they realize that they are likely to be ultimately beaten there if they do not arm her with a vote. Next came the Sunday question, — if it was not primary in the thought of the preacher, — and from that point the vista of tyranny widened out until at this time the militant branch of the church expects nothing less from the assistance of “enfranchised woman” than the establishment of a theocracy in which religion, morals, and politics will be absolutely dominated by the reactionary principles of the most orthodox wing of Protestant Christianity. Before the clerical influence was enlisted on the side of the woman suffragists the ballot for woman was demanded on the ground that it was her right to vote because she was amenable to the criminal laws, because she was a taxpayer, and because one sex cannot legislate justly for another. But it was not long after the ministers came to her side before the tone of the woman-suffrage advocates changed, and from that time on we heard less and less about equality of rights and more and more concerning what woman would do in the suppression business when once she got her hands on the reins of authority. She would suppress the liquor traffic, she would legislate the social evil out of existence, she would preserve the “Sabbath” from “desecration,” and now she is prepared to Christianize the Constitution and outlaw Free-thought. She long since allied herself with the priesthood for the regulation of art and literature, and years ago in Kansas she had already been so corrupted by the ministers that, when she got into office in Oskaloosa, she had an ordinance adopted prohibiting the presence of a stallion in any stable within the city limits! That was shortly after she was given the municipal ballot; and now, on the eve of her investiture with full suffrage, her and the clerics’ influence has become so potent that the officials have begun the regeneration of society along more “radical” lines by the castration of the feeble-minded in State institutions. The minister can think of no other method of “reform” so beautiful and efficient as statute law, and he, knowing his influence with woman, is only too eager to give her political power. Of course there are exceptions, even in the West, but they are becoming fewer every day.

There is another consideration which must always be borne in mind. The churches, as churches, are much more religious and social than they are political in their direct work. The greater portion of their scheming is done indirectly through the auxiliary societies. The differentiation of functions has been going on for some time, and, if you want to know what the live, aggressive divisions of Protestant Christianity are after, you must make yourself acquainted with the demands and plans of these societies. Among such organizations are The National Reform Association, The American Sabbath Union, The Divorce Reform League, The King’s Daughters, The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, The Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor, The Epworth League, The League for the Promotion of Purity in Literature and Art (a branch of the Y. M. C. A.), and the Prohibition party. The last contains a few people who are not Christians, but the others are wholly Christian. They are the pioneer political corps of the Protestant churches, and they are for woman suffrage by the overwhelming majority of the membership of each. Although they are many societies, they are seeking the same general end, and there is the strongest bond of sympathy between the leaders of the most reactionary and the (apparently) comparatively harmless organizations. Frances Willard, the head of the W. C. T. U., is an ardent National Reformer (the God-in-the-Constitution party), and the department of Sunday observance of the W. C. T. U. is very active and successful in its field. Taken altogether, these societies stand for all that is bigoted and reactionary, outside of the economic domain, in American politics. That they also stand for woman suffrage is significant, to say the least. Between them they are fighting for prohibition, for rigid Sunday laws, for the Bible in the schools, for one moral code anti that the priest’s, for no divorce except for adultery and the prohibition of the remarriage of the offending partner, for a censorship of literature, art, and the stage, and the Christianization of the Constitution and laws. For some of these measures they are all united, and no one of them is alone in its propaganda.

As to the Catholic Church, it has always permitted to its members considerable liberty of action in regard to most matters not directly affecting their faith. But the prohibitory idea has during the last few years gained a large number of adherents in that organization, and there are not wanting indications of a tendency in the Catholic Church to accept and act upon the Puritanic principle. Once it begins to move with an accelerating momentum in that direction, it will not be long before its astute leaders will perceive the wisdom of giving the ballot to woman, as the Northern Protestants have already. The Catholic Church holds for indissoluble marriage, and its vote would be cast solidly for the so-called “reforms” of the Protestant authoritarians. The latter would make almost any concession to the Catholics to secure their assistance. It needs no prophet’s eye to see that in two decades the American Catholics will be as devoted to the cause of woman suffrage as the majority of the Protestants now are, and for similar selfish reasons. E. C. Walker.

Strikes and State Control.

“These railroad strikes will never cease,” said the Populist, “until all means of transportation are under State control.”

“You think that will stop them?” asked the Anarchist.

Pop. — “Most assuredly it will. Look at our post office. Look at our streets. Look at our schools. Are they not all under State control?”

Anar. — “Yes. And look at our sewers. Look at our garbage wagons. If the stench from those is not strong enough, look at our Senate. Are they not all under State control?”

Pop. — “Your attempted sarcasm is no argument. Tell me, who ever heard of a strike in the post office? Yes, or in your garbage wagons either?”

Anar. — “Not my garbage wagons, but yours. However, I recollect the strikes to which you refer.”

Pop. — “The strikes to which I refer! What do you mean?”

Anar. — “I mean that you have picked out the two worst possible examples. If you bad asked me if I had ever heard of a strike in the Senate, it would have been difficult for me to give you an affirmative answer. I believe striking — at least, the particular kind of striking of which we are speaking — is not much in vogue among robbers of any kind. But with the post office and garbage wagons it is different.”

Pop. — “Come, come, you don’t mean to tell me that the post office officials ever went on strike!”

Anar. — “That is exactly what I do mean to tell you. In July, 1890, the postmen of London went on strike. It was not for any paltry raise of wages, either; but for the right to organize. The secretary of the Postmen’s Union gives us his side of the story in the “Nineteenth Century” for July, 1890. He says: ‘In the opinion of Mr. Raikes (then postmaster general) the postmen may have a union on condition that its secretary is appointed by the department, that it holds no meetings, that it makes no appeal to the public, and that it makes no attempt to better the condition of its members.’ What would you say if Pullman or Carnegie wished to appoint the secretaries of their employees’ unions?”

Pop. — “The cases are entirely different. Anyway, one isolated case proves nothing.”

Anar. — “On the contrary, it proves everything. It proves that the State denies its employees the right to organize, and that State control does not prevent strikes. But, if you desire more examples, I can give them. The policemen at the Bow Street police station, London, went on strike at about the same time as the postmen, and for the same reason. The Grenadier Guards, the crack regiment of the British army, struck in the same month.”

Pop. — “You can’t talk of that as a strike. In the case of soldiers it must be considered as rebellion.”

Anar. — “And so it will be considered rebellion for a soldier in the Industrial Army’ to manifest discontent. Probably he will be treated as the Grenadiers were. Five of them were sent to prison with hard labor for terms ranging from eighteen months to two years; the rest of the regiment was sent to an unhealthy climate in the West Indies in the hope that they would die quietly.”

Pop. — “That was in England, and has nothing whatsoever to do with affairs in this country. Such things would be impossible here.”

Anar. — “My dear fellow, you show most lamentable ignorance. The regulations of the army, police, and post-office departments in this country are not very different from those in England. Do you suppose the United States would tolerate any union except the ‘Communism of Pelf’ among its employees?”

Pop. — “Your glittering generalizations amount to nothing. You can’t give a single instance of public employees going on strike in this country.”

Anar. — “That depends entirely upon your definition of a public employee. If that term only includes high-salaried officials, I must agree with you. But, if it includes the poor devils who drive the city garbage wagons, you are off again. In July, 1890, — a month that seems to have devoted its whole time to proving the falsity of your ideas, — the teamsters in the employ of the street-cleaning department of New York City went on strike for higher wages. They were almost unorganized, and the city authorities had no trouble in suppressing the disturbance’ in a couple of days.” But the Populist was moving down the street, muttering something that sounded like “No use talking to those fellows; they never want to do anything practical.” F. D. Burrow.

Counterfeits at a Premium.

To the Editor of Liberty:

James Monroe, LL.D., senior professor of political science and modern history in Oberlin College, lectured here yesterday on an experience of his at the time of the John Brown raid. He had occasion to tell something about the old State bank notes. At that time, said he, many State legislatures, to increase the use of coin, had prohibited the issuing of small notes. The result was not a perceptible increase in the use of coin, but a great scarcity of money of the prohibited denominations. A great number of counter-feit one-dollar notes on the Northern Bank of Kentucky were in circulation, and were well known to business men everywhere as counterfeits; but, owing to the want of a one-dollar circulating medium, they were everywhere accepted at par by a tacit understanding. Nearly all notes of higher denominations, even on banks of known soundness, were at varying rates of discount; so that, of all the money Prof. Monroe had with him on the occasion he was telling of, these notorious counterfeits were the only ones that passed everywhere at par and without question. Having just learned the facts about this currency, and being a man of tender conscience, he made it a rule in offering these bills to say, “I have been told it is counterfeit”; but that made no difference, — they were always acceptable. How widely this state of things prevailed I do not know; Prof. Monroe’s story related to Ohio and Virginia.

He said in comment that this was the most remarkable case of fiat money within his knowledge, seeing that these notes had behind them neither a legal-tender law nor the credit of a responsible issuer, but, on the contrary, there was everywhere a law with heavy penalties against the use of such counterfeits. It seemed to me that more than one useful lesson could be drawn from this interesting and reliable bit of economic history.

Stephen T. Byington.

Oberlin, Ohio, October 12, 1894.

I wish that Mr. Byington had told us what lesson, if any, Prof. Monroe drew from these facts, and what lessons he draws from them himself. The lesson that I draw from them is the truth which Liberty has always maintained, in opposition to the economists who sneer — or, rather, who used to sneer — at the quantity doctrine, — namely, that abundance is an essential quality of a good circulating medium, and that the worst of all money (I am conscious of the Hibernicism) is no money at all. In other words, it is more advantageous to be able to exchange one’s products by a medium that circulates more or less readily, at least at the time, even though there be a certainty that ultimately it will lose its circulating power, than to be unable to exchange them at all save by barter.

Nevertheless it must be remembered that wherever irredeemable or partially redeemable money comes into use somebody ultimately will “get left.” In the case cited by Prof. Monroe, for instance, there must have been a time when the counterfeits lost their circulating power, since they are no longer in circulation and never were redeemed. The last holders, therefore, since they received the counterfeits at par, suffered a loss equal to the face value. If it be asked why the counterfeits maintained their face value while genuine notes were at a discount, the answer is that admitted counterfeits must circulate at par or not at all, zero being the only scientific estimate of their value; whereas the value of the genuine notes could be estimated with a considerable degree of accuracy in accordance with the standing of the bank issuing them and the difficulty (in those days a factor of importance) of their presentation for redemption.

Prof. Monroe’s facts show, then, not that fiat money is good money, but that inferior money, and for a time even worthless money, is more acceptable than no money. T.

A recent issue of “Justice” informs its readers that at a Single Tax meeting in Philadelphia a speaker who had impugned the motives of the Single Taxers by saying that they would not believe in the taxation of land values if they were owners of land, was promptly rebuked by another speaker, who declared that, although himself an Irish land-lord, it had always seemed ridiculous to him that people in Ireland should pay him rent. This second speaker is designated by “Justice” as an advocate of the Single Tax and a worker for it. I am afraid that the wish of the “Justice” reporter was father to his thought. I will lay him a wager of a two years’ subscription to “Justice” ($2.00) against a year’s subscription to Liberty ($2.00) that I can name the gentleman who administered the deserved rebuke, and that, whatever his opinion may be of the comparative merits of single and multi-form taxation, he neither works for nor believes in the Single Tax, but is an Anarchist who regards the taxation of land values as robbery and the occupancy and use of land as a just title to the full product thereof.

The New York “Sun” is violently opposed to the proposal of the newsdealers that half cents be coined. It bases its opposition on patriotic grounds, and thinks that the nation should not demean itself by imitating China. But the discerning reader detects between the lines another and more genuine reason for the “Sun’s” attitude, — namely, that the “Sun,” which is a two-cent paper, has already been sufficiently injured by the one-cent papers, and has no desire to be injured still further by the appearance of half-cent papers.

For Salvage.

For always in thine eyes, O Politician!

Shines that high light whereby the world is saved

And, being saved, is pocketed by thee.

“The garden of the laws is full of ironical plants, of unexpected Mowers and by no means its slightest charm is this subversion of the natural order, whereby appear at the end of stems and branches fruit just the opposite of that which is promised by the essence of the tree or bush. The apple-tree bears figs, and the cherry-tree medlars: plants yield sweet potatoes, and hollyhocks salsify. It is delicious.” Séverine.

The Beauties of Government.

The readers of Liberty are urgently invited to contribute to this department. It is open to any statement of facts which exhibit the State in any phase of its fourfold capacity of fool, meddler, knave, and tyrant. Either original accounts based upon the writer’s own knowledge, or apparently reliable accounts clipped front recent publications, are welcome.

How the Sacred Majority Is Made.

[New York Sun.]

On the first floor at the southeast corner of Fifty-eighth street and Eighth avenue, Lemuel Ely Quigg, Republican candidate for Congress in the Fourteenth district against John Connelly, Democrat, sat yester-day with his stage manager, Mr. William Leary, lately of the slaughter-house district. Lemuel Ely had in front of him a paper bag such as Secretary Morton uses for sending out seeds at the expense of the government. The bag was covered with figures. The Congressman chewed nervously on the end of a pencil.

“It’s no use, Billy,” said he. “If the women could vote, we’d have it in a walk, but —” and he heaved a sigh.

The Hon. Mr. Leary in an absent-minded way picked up a calla lily bulb from a bushel basket full of them, and began eating it.

“Look out, Billy, stop that said the Congressman, energetically. “Here’s a nickel. Go buy apples. That bulb you’re eating may be worth a vote.” Mr. Leary was covered with confusion.

“Billy,” said the Congressman a moment later, “if the women could vote, we’d be elected dead sure. It looks now as though these flower seeds would save us; by gum, it does. I say, Billy, it was lucky I saved up my share of Uncle Morton’s seeds, wasn’t it? And I say, Billy, did you send that package of cyclanthera to the gas-house district this morning?” “I did,” said Billy. “They’ll grow down there.”

“And did you send that lot of hamamelidacefe to the slaughter-house district?”

“I did,” said Billy. “But what is it?”

“Oh, them,” said the Congressman; “they are a natural order of calycifloral dicotyledons belonging to Lindley’s umbellal alliance of epigynous exogens. They’ll grow in the slaughter house district.”

“Sufferin’ witch hazel!” said Billy, rubbing the perspiration from his face, “but he’s swallowed a dictionary.”

“That’s it, Billy,” said the Congressman; “witch hazel.”

Then the Congressman asked about some other plants. Billy said he had supplied the water front, the mixed ale flat district, Hell’s Kitchen, and the brown stone front district with flower seeds and bulbs enough to cover them with flowers, and still had two cases left. The Congressman went back to figuring, and while he was at it one of his constituents came in.

“It’s you, Mr. Quigg, is it?” said the constituent. “An’ d’ye know, Congressman, it’s me that’s been along th’ river front talkin’ for yer? It’s not a house Oi’ve missed a-talkin’ for you, and d’ye know that leery word Oi’ve said has been a soilent protist against this man Connelly?”

Mr. Quigg thanked him and went on figuring. “Lemuel,” said Mr. Leary after a while, “that was a great fair, wasn’t it? That ought to make us votes.”

“Oh, William!” returned the Congressman. “If the women could only vote.”

Mr. Leary’s reference to the fair was the first the reporter had heard of Mr. Quigg’s canvass among the women. It appears that on last Thursday at noon a demure young woman walked into the headquarters and lisped: “Please, Mr. Quigg, won’t you come to our fair?”

Mr. Leary, who is very susceptible, nearly fell over himself in getting a chair for her.

“Why, my dear child!” he said. “Cone? Of course we’ll come. Shall we come alone?”

“No; bring your friends,” said the young woman. “Now, please conic.”

The young lady went away. William sent out a general alarm for the boys from the various Assembly districts. The Congressman hired a brass band and a fife and drum corps. John Gunner sent 850 of his men; Sam Campbell sent as many; and Quigg himself gathered up a lot. At 8 o’clock there were 900 on hand. The drums beat, and the procession started out for St. Monica’s Church, where the fair was.

“Women?” said Mr. Leary yesterday. “Say, there were a million of ’em, an’ the boys just fell in an’ jollied ’em. Pretty? Well, you couldn’t a-got a prettier lot on earth. Well, we gave ’em a concert an’ we’ bought out their fair. Did we make any votes? Well, I’ll give it to you straight. Baby kissing isn’t in it.”

Just then Mr. T. St. John Gaffney, who was driving in his drag, stopped and came in. Mr. Gaffney wore a box coat.

“How are you, St. John?” said Mr. Leary.

“Sinjin, if you please,” said Mr. Gaffney. “I was just goin’ by in me drag, y’ know, in me drag, old fella, and I thought I’d stop in, don’t ye know, stop in. I didn’t know, old fella, but I could help you, you know, help you. I’m driving around all day, you know, all day, in me drag.”

“Well,” said Mr. Quigg, “I’m making a campaign along the river front where the people live who have votes.”

“Well,” said Mr. Gaffney, “that’s right, me boy. I was only goin’ by in me drag, ye know, in me drag, and thought I’d stop — I’d stop, you know.” Then Mr. Gaffney blew out.

There are two pictures on the wall in Mr. Quigg’s headquarters. One is of Quigg and the other is of Lincoln. Under Mr. Lincoln’s picture is the quotation: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.”

[And meanwhile the liberties of sensible men hang upon the question whether Lemuel Ely Quigg can, by these and other persuasive methods, corral one more fool than John Connelly, or Connelly, by similar methods, can corral one more fool than Quigg. That is, they are supposed to hang upon this, but really they do not. The worst feature of the matter is that, whether Connelly or Quigg secures the Holy Majority, the liberties of the people continue to hang.]

Arrested for Being Too Attractive.

[New York Sun.]

A portly, well-dressed man leaned against one of the marble pillars in front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel at seven o’clock Wednesday night smoking a perfecto, when a stylish little English woman halted in front of him. She had brown hair and bright blue eyes. Calmly producing a cigarette from a dainty silver case, she placed it between her teeth, and said:

“I beg your pardon, but would you be so good as to give me a light?”

The bewildered smoker regarded the woman for a moment as though he could not believe his senses, but, as she continued to hold out her neatly gloved hand, he blurted out: “I — er — really — oh — ah — excuse me, miss,” and tendered his cigar. The woman took it, lighted her cigarette, thanked him, and sauntered up Broadway, puffing away like an old smoker. The unusual spectacle presented by the woman caused such a crowd to follow her that at Twenty-fifth street it attracted the attention of Policeman David Wilbur.

When he saw what was up, he took her to the West Thirtieth street station, where she said her name was Florence Liget, but refused to give her address. Wilbur’s charge was “smoking on Broadway,” but Sergeant Halpin changed it to “drunk and disorderly,” as the woman appeared to him to be slightly intoxicated.

Yesterday morning, at the Jefferson Market police court, the prisoner told Justice Voorhis that she had smoked on the streets of London and had not been molested. She said she was married and had a son fifteen years old. The justice reproved her for attracting a crowd, and said, if she did it again, she would be punished, Then he discharged her.

[According to this rule of law, if a section of the street should cave in and a crowd should gather around the hole, the police would arrest the hole and the courts would punish it. It would seem to an Anarchist that, if a crowd is essentially an invasive thing, the persons composing it are the parties to be punished, and not those human freaks who, being so abnormal as to mind their own business, thereby become objects of curiosity to an habitually meddlesome world.]

What Should We Do Without the Police?

[Ellen Battelle Dietrick in Twentieth Century.]

A little investigation of the yearly services of police-men in the city of Boston affords interesting food for thought In this connection. In this city of nearly half a million of “all sorts and conditions of men,” there have been no more than 508, and no less than 810, cases of breaking and entering buildings, in any one year from 1887 to 1892. And in this same city, within the same period, there have been no more than 140 cases of robbery in any one year and no less than 100. But the following remarkable fact is true of each year. From 1,700 to over 2,000 innocent persons — the majority of whom are foreigners and half of whom are minors — are arrested without warrant, purely on suspicion, disgraced by unjust arrest and imprisonment, and then turned loose without redress’ This happens with almost the regularity of clock-work. Read the record as found in police reports:

Year	1888.	1889.	1890.	1891.	1892.
Arrested on suspicion	1,784	2,266	1,861	1,819	1,943
Discharged	1,778	2,263	1,858	1,817	1,929
Held for trial	6	3	3	2	14

But this is not all. In the year 1890, 87,000 people (in round numbers) were arrested with and without official warrant, only 2,000 of whom received imprisonment after trial. In 1891, 41,000 were arrested, only 3,000 of whom received imprisonment. In 1892, 48,000 were arrested, only 7,000 of whom received imprisonment. The average yearly amount of property stolen is $95,000. To recover this we have an expenditure of $1,170,000, — that is, on the assumption that property protection is the chief province of the police.

Now, considering that there are only about 500 persons each year, in a population of 500,000, whose property is in danger, and considering that no one of this population of half a million can be assured that he or she will not be one of the 500 bound to be robbed in spite of supporting an expensive police, is it not a legitimate question whether or no protection of property is worth paying for under present conditions?

[Does Mr. Auberon Herbert, who is so fearful of confusion in case the work of protection of property is undertaken by more than one group, think that competition in this line could result in anything worse than the state of affairs described above?]

Still Protecting Home Industry.

[New York Sun.]

James Pollock, a contractor doing work for the city, has procured from Justice Barrett of the Supreme Court a temporary injunction restraining the commissioner of public works and the mayor from compelling him to desist from any further work under his contract until all the stones on the ground where the work is in progress shall be stone dressed or worked within the boundaries of the city, and also from requiring him to remove all stones now on the ground under his contract which have been dressed outside of the city, and from declaring his contract forfeited. The action was brought to test the constitutionality of a law passed last winter forbidding the use in public works of stone dressed in another State.

[Here we have the principle of the tariff introduced into State legislation. After depriving the citizens of the United States of the benefits of exchange with those of other countries, the effort now begins to deprive the citizens of a single State of the benefits of exchange with those of other States. The idea in both cases is to foster production at high prices and under unfavorable conditions, in order that a privileged few may get better prices or better wages than they could command in a free market. It was labor that asked for this legislation, and it is labor that in the long run will be hurt by it. When will labor get enough of this boomerang business? One would think that the lesson of that labor measure, the Inter-State Commerce Act, as read in the light of Federal interference in the Chicago troubles of last summer, would be sufficient to convince the dullest that the remedy for injustice is not in law, but in liberty.]

Direct Legislation.

[New York Sun.]

Tammany Hall’s Executive Committee has taken a positive stand on all questions to be presented to the people at the coming election, and all Tammany Hall Democrats will be asked to vote according to the decision of the committee. Besides voting the straight Tammany Hall ticket from top to bottom, the faithful braves will be instructed to vote against every one of the constitutional amendments and for the municipal construction of a rapid transit railroad system.

The reason for instructing that an adverse ballot be cast on all of the five propositions submitted by way of amendments to the constitution is that it would be difficult to instruct the voters just which of these ballots is that which provides for the Republican partisan reapportionment of the State. It is that amendment to the constitution which Tammany is specially desirous of defeating, and to be sure that all good Tammany voters deposit a negative ballot on that proposition they have been instructed to do so in the case of all propositions. In this election so many ballots will be handed to the individual elector that, unless he has special preparation regarding the manner of using them, he will be likely to be confused.

[All Hail, Great Referendum, Saviour of Mankind!]

To Keep Minors from the Paths of Vice.

[New York Sun.]

Berlin, Oct. 7. — The United Press correspondent has authority from the Chancellerie to say that the bill concerning political associations will have a clause forbidding minors to attend political meetings. If the Reichstag reject the bill in question, it will be dissolved.

[Well, really now, young William, you might do worse. Almost thou persuadest me to become an Archist. But what will Mrs. Dietrick think of your Fatherland, — a country where infants of neither sex are permitted to learn to walk?]

An Expensive Guest.

[Reynolds’s Newspaper.]

In a report just published by the citizens’ auditor of Manchester, it appears that the total expenditure incurred by the Corporation on the occasion of her Majesty’s recent visit of a few hours to the city for the purpose of opening the Ship Canal reached the enormous sum of £6,051 18s. 1d. Among the items in the account are: Four fancy boxes of bonbons, fondants, chocolates, etc., for the Royal children, £1 13s.; vegetables and fruit (including £6 15s. for asparagus at 4s. 6d. per bunch, 22 pints of peas at 2s. 6d. per pint, 8 pines at 12s. 6d. each, 6 melons at 10s. 6d. each, 26¼ lb. grapes at 6s. 6d. per pound, and 24¼ lb. strawberries at 6s. 6d. per pound), total, £48 12s. 9d.; 3 live turtles, £17 14s. 6d.; cigars and cigarettes, £14 10s; 104 silver-gilt and enamel badges for the members of the Council, £143; stabling and keep of Queen’s horses, £22 16s; board and lodging for sixteen members of the Royal household staff, £71 15s. 3d. There are numerous other extraordinary items, but the above will show how the ratepayers’ money is spent.

[More exasperating than the exorbitance of the Queen’s charges for her presence is the fact that the canal could have been opened just as well without her.]

Senner Scents a Sinner.

[Pittsburg Dispatch.]

Chicago, Oct. 26. — For nearly a month a German girl who left the city of her birth to come to Chicago has been detained by the immigration office, at Ellis Island, New York, and a petition is being prepared for presentation to Secretary Carlisle, asking that the girl be permitted to land. The girl is Louise Heusinger. Louise, who is 25 years old, was left an orphan in the city of Chemnitz. For several years she made a living as a domestic. A year or so ago Louise became engaged to Max Luthers, a young mechanic. The bans were published in church and the wedding day set, but the lover betrayed her and ran away.

The girl has but one relative in the world, and that is Mrs. Minna Mueller, of Chicago. Mrs. Mueller went to Germany to look after her sister, and decided to bring her to Chicago and give her a home. They landed in New York September 27, on the steamer Spree, but Immigration Commissioner Senner refused to permit the girl to continue her journey, and ordered her back to Germany. Mrs. Mueller hurried to Chicago, and procured ample bonds to guarantee that her sister would never become a public charge. This did not satisfy the Commissioner. There is no law that applies to the case, except the statute excluding females of immoral character, and the girl’s friends offered testimony to prove that her previous character was of the best.

[Senner is the busybody whose scheme to get Congress to give him arbitrary power to exclude Anarchists from America was fathered by David Bennett Hill and foiled by John De Witt Warner.]

Eyes Not yet on the Free List.

[Adrian Weekly Press.]

Over in Ann Arbor the other day two students peeked through a fence to see a ball game, whereupon they were hauled up before a justice, and, on their admission of the charge, were fined $2.70 each. Great town, that! Won’t some of the learned nincompoops there explain to the ignorant highbinders outside where they derive authority for prohibiting a man from using his eyes? Talk about justice! Why, highway robbery is respectable as compared with this judicial “hold-up.” If there were no students in Ann Arbor, some men would starve to death. The practical worth of a law course at the university is indicated when its professors permit this imposition without entering a protest. We are not justifying the practice of peeking. But we denounce the judicial proceedings as a travesty on justice, with no law to warrant or justify, and those students, if they submit to the steal, are as green as a laboring man who thinks you can tax wealth into his pockets, or fat on his ribs, by a protective tariff. Two looks at the justice who would entertain such a case would be stealing from a dime museum, on the same principle. Let the students sue the officers for malicious prosecution.

[The effete monarchies make the citizen pay a tax on his windows; this enlightened republic makes him pay a tax on his eyes. The State punished these peekers; Anarchism would have told the ball-players to plug up the peek-holes, or take the consequences. That’s the difference between minding other people’s business and making them mind their own.]

Did a Good Thing by Mistake.

[New York Sun.]

Lansing, Mich., Oct. 7. — Attorney-General Ellis, in examining the statutes relative to the management of the prisons of the State, yesterday made the discovery that by a blunder on the part of the legislature of 1893 the convict contract labor system in this State had been abolished.

[Whenever the State does a good thing, it is good gambling to bet that somebody made a mistake. If the State would only keep up this process of abolition by blunder until it had blundered itself out of existence, lovers of liberty for once would have reason to rejoice in its capacity for error.]

Five Days for Guying Two Virgins.

[New York Sun.]

Miss Katie Short, of 871 Brook avenue, appeared yesterday in the Morrisania Police Court as complainant against Patrick Collins, 17 years old, whom she charged with disorderly conduct.

“Well,” said Justice Welde, “what did this boy do?”

“He called my sister and myself ‘two old maids,’ and he said we were ‘two of a kind, and the right kind, too’; and we want him to stop it.”

The prisoner begged hard to be released, but Justice Welde would not listen to him. At the request of the policeman, who said the boy had no home and was a continual source of trouble, Justice Welde committed him to prison for five days.

At the Public Crib.

[New York Sun.]

Paris, Oct. 29. — There was a stormy debate in the Chamber of Deputies today over the accounts of K. Fayette, a high official in the Ministry of Commerce.

In the accounts were included bills for dinners at Voisin’s on 640 occasions, and for six cabs, each for the use of Senator Lourties and K Guerin, Minister of Justice.

Premier Dupuy admitted that these bills were irregular, but thought that there was no circumstance connected with them that would justify the prosecution of the offenders.

Jaures, however, demanded that the persons contracting these bills be prosecuted.

Amid great excitement M. Jaures moved that “the Chamber, being desirous of assuring the regular administration of the funds granted by it, refers the papers in question to the Government.”

The motion was accepted by the Government, and was carried by a vote of 116 to 1.

[That’s all very well, M. Jaures; but let us wait until some of your State Socialist comrades get seats at the official banquet, — say, in this country, Charles Sotheran, for instance. Then indeed shall we witness, in a very literal sense, the inauguration of the regime of “carrots for the donkey,” — to use the phrase by which Bernard Shaw, with his wonted frankness, characterizes the motive to which he and his Fabian friends appeal.]

Punished for Another’s Crime.

[New York Sun.]

Wichita, Oct. 8. — J. T. Holmes, who was post-master here in 1872, was convicted during his term of robbing the mails of registered letters and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary. He was innocent, but could not prove it.

He served two years in jail, and was then released on payment of the shortage. He always suspected a young fellow named King Price, who was a clerk in the office, of being the thief, but Price disappeared and could not be found.

Today Holmes received a letter from Price, who is now serving a sentence in the Michigan Penitentiary for counterfeiting, containing a full confession of his robbery twenty-two years ago, and absolving Holmes from all blame.

The Stupid State Doesn’t See the Paradox.

[New York Times.]

John Prehn, an ex-soldier, forty-two years old, asked Justice Martin in the Tombs Police Court to commit him to prison for life, because he was unable to obtain employment and had stolen a pair of slippers. The slippers were worth 75 cents, and Prehn stole them on Saturday from Leon Herah’s shoe store, 176 Grand street.

After stealing the slippers, Prehn walked about the neighborhood until he found a policeman, to whom he told the story of his crime, and the policeman promptly arrested him.

Prehn told Justice Martin that he was recently discharged from the service, and was too old to earn his living in any other way. Justice Martin held him in default of $300 bail for trial.

Concerning Competition.

To the Editor of Liberty:

Happening to pick up Liberty of August 28, and re-reading your article on the fourth page at the foot of the second column, the argument advanced struck me very forcibly as out of place in an Anarchistic paper. In the first place, I do not advocate that the State shall sell its services below cost and make up the difference by taxation, robbing Peter to pay Paul. In this respect your criticism is indeed unwarranted. But this is not what I now wish to allude to.

You say: Since government can afford to carry on any business at a loss, it can crush any competitor, etc. Since when have the Anarchists flopped over to that absurd Socialistic argument that underselling others and thus “crushing competitors” is a bad thing? It is the prime argument for the suppression of competition, for allowing no one to undersell others, for cursing the inventor of labor-saving machines, for condemning the industrious, for compelling every one to limit his time of labor to eight hours, etc., etc.

But let us examine the effect of such a course as you speak of, applied to the issue of money.

Let us eliminate discussion on risk, simplifying the argument by assuming that risk is totally absent. Let us also assume the current rate of interest (no risk) to be four per cent., and that the government would extend the right of issuing money to all, provided they would pay a tax of four per cent. a year. Under these conditions it can be shown that practically no excess of money would be issued on that plan, since such an increase would at once lower the current rate and make the government charge greater than that of the money-lender. Interest remaining at four per cent., the profit-bearing power of capital (means of production) would continue as now. Next: let us now assume that the government reduces taxes on issues to nothing, charging merely a small fee from issuer to cover expenses, as per my proposition. Capital will then, through the effect of competition, lose its power to return a profit to its owner. Next, go one step further, and let the government give to the issuers one per cent. bonus (representing selling of services below cost). Capital invested in business will then, according to the same law, become a source of loss, wages rising to slightly more than the value of labor’s productions; that which now causes an excess of supply of commodities would then be reversed into an excess of demand with inadequate supply. Would that not be a very desirable lesson to the present school of sophists calling themselves economists? Now, you know very well that I would condemn an undercharge as much as I now condemn the over-charge of government services, but I merely wanted to call your attention to the bearing of your “crushing of competitors” argument. I think it would be more consistent for an Anarchist to steer clear of the most fallacious argument of the Socialistic school.

Fraternally yours,

Hugo Bilgram.

Doesn’t See the Point.

To the Editor of Liberty:

I don’t think I see the point of Mr. Robinson’s figures in Liberty for September 22. He assumes the imaginary case that in a day 1,000 men dig each 400 pounds of coal, and one man digs 500 pounds from another mine, the latter being so much better that 500 pounds of it are equal in price to 4,000 pounds of the other, each being saleable for 10 pounds of lead. He goes on to say: “The value in commodities of one is eight times that of the other. Yet the producer of the costly coal receives only a day’s-work’s worth of wages, the same as the other.” From which he infers that equality is beautifully established. I should say that the man at the small rich mine got enough to amount to 10 pounds of lead a day, while one of the 1,000 at the large poor mine got only the equivalent of I pound of lead; in which I don’t see equality enough to scare a cool headed monopolist. To make sense of the argument I am tempted to suppose a misprint, — 500 for 50 as the daily product of the small mine; but then it will not fairly meet the argument he is answering.

I am here as a student in Oberlin Theological Seminary, having failed to get a place as teacher this year on account of the hard times. I am now trying to find out how much sociological heresy this seminary will stand. I have commuted the customary subscription to a students’ reading-room by lending the room Liberty and other papers in place of cash. As my ’semi-annual part in the “preaching exercises” of the seminary, I was appointed to present a “topic for the times” in ten minutes this afternoon. I took Anarchism as my topic, and gave them as much straight Anarchist doctrine, duly labeled with its name and indorsed with my personal recommendation, as I knew how to put in ten minutes. I had the attention of both students and professors, whether I put anything into their heads or not. One of the professors said, in the usual public criticism of the exercise, that my remarks were at least “thoughtful,” but there was too much novelty in them for him to grasp. If anything notable turns up in this connection, I’ll let you know. At this writing I am still out of jail. Stephen T. Byington.

Mr. Robinson Explains.

To the Editor of Liberty:

It is no wonder that Mr. Byington is puzzled by the incongruities in the figures in my article, “Will Liberty Alone Bring Equality?” By the grace of the devil, — not the typographical, but the theological devil; — an act of faith which should procure indulgence for me at least at Oberlin, — the figures are totally muddled. It should be said that 100 producers extract each 4,000 pounds of inferior coal, while one man extracts 500 pounds of the best coal. The better coal, being harder to get, — eight times harder, — brings eight times as much, yet one man’s product of 4,000 pounds exchanges for the other’s of 500 pounds; that is, each gets day’s wages.

It is impossible for the better coal to be easier of extraction, as proposed by Mr. Shaw, under liberty.

As long as the better coal is easier to get in sufficient abundance, the poorer will not be mined at all. When the poorer coal must be resorted to, the better becomes a luxury for other uses, — grate fires and such, — and does not compete with the steam coal at all. John Beverley Robinson.

The Crusade Against Clothes That Fit.

[George E. Macdonald in the Truth Seeker.]

In the midst of free nature it is only the free — why should we not say it — the nude, beautiful human form that is suitable; all drapery is subject to fashion and change; and human form, as it comes from the hand of nature, is alone fitting to stand in the presence of everlasting nature. — Berthold Auerbach.

The Martin woman, who is superintendent of the Purity in Literature and Art Department of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which is the female member of Comstock’s society, has broken out again. Of course she wants to suppress something else than herself, and has appealed to Superintendent Byrnes of the police to abolish the living pictures shown in the theatres, and also the theatrical posters “portraying actors and actresses in tights.” Taking the ground that one humbug justifies another, she argues: “If Secretary Carlisle can prevent the casting of a medal because of St. Gaudens’s representation on it of a man’s nude form, why shall we not say that our form shall not be exposed?” Indeed, why not? Mrs. Martin’s form is her own; she is at liberty to drape it, and the person who would have it otherwise should swing. Whatever the beauty of her chaste outlines, no one may contemplate them, without her consent, save the one favored man who has purchased from some other man a license to gaze. To be sure, the persons who exhibit the living pictures have bought a license to show them, and the men and women who spectate pay for the privilege; but as the freedom to look once does not carry with it the compulsion to look always, and never elsewhere, perhaps the cases are not parallel.

It is astonishing, as Carlyle pointed out in his “Sartor Resartus,” how much depends upon clothes; and not only upon clothes, but upon the tit of them. Perfect-fitting garments, it appears, are immodest, although the deity, of whose image Mrs. Martin is ashamed, and before whose handiwork she makes an indecent exposure of her mind, has decreed that we shall be created without any at all. By the way, how does she expect to find him apparelled when, as a reward for libelling that which he has made, she is ushered into his presence? Do his clothes fit him? Has she ever thought how she herself will be dressed on that interesting occasion? Does she imagine that as an author, God is pleased with her assurance that his works, especially his likeness, are obscene? Will she inaugurate a Purity in Nature crusade over there, and suggest to the Almighty that henceforth the children of earth be born headed up in a barrel to be opened in the dark? According to her contention, Providence clothes the human form with lewdness only, and it is left to others similarly debauched to make it presentable. In some way the fountain must be compelled to squirt water higher than its source. Indecency concealed becomes purity, while purity revealed becomes indecent. I fail to make it out in that way. I have seen the theatrical posters and the living pictures which Mrs. Martin defames. The former are about as pornographic as the Chinese drawings on a teachest. The living pictures are the draped figures of men, women, and children posed in a handsome gilt frame, with lights and surroundings which make them appear like works of art. You have to go back of the phenomena to discover the lewd, if anything of the kind exists. The prospect pleases; only the man or woman is vile who sees more than appears. If one person touches that which is naturally clean, and imparts no stain to it, and if another — Mrs. Martin, for example — touches it and leaves a smutch, then which is the source of the impurity, the object touched or Mrs. Martin’s fingers? The answer is in the question, and the warning is, Hands off unless they are clean.

Incidentally with this crusade the police of Chicago have committed an outrage that comes under Herr Most’s heading of Propaganda by Deed. These police-men have invaded private property, and not only disfigured bill boards, but torn down the boards upon which the bills were posted. Such an act would rightly subject a private citizen to fine or imprisonment. What makes it worse, the authorities knew they were committing a felony, and like other criminals chose the night for it. Then they have the impudence to ask citizens to respect the law.

Down with the Game Laws.

[Orange County Farmer.]

Increasing interest is being manifested in the discussion of the game-laws, and it is a good sign that the demand for their entire repeal is growing stronger. Those who look into the question the deepest are convinced that the interest of the farmers demand the speedy wiping out of all laws protecting game.

Some, while agreeing with this proposition, still think that the present laws ought to be fully enforced until repealed, the argument being that, so long as the law is on the books, it is the part of good citizenship to aid in their rigid enforcement. This is an error of judgment, founded on the old fallacy that “the king can do no wrong,” because he gets his consent or “right to govern” through divinity, and hence that all laws, being of kingly or divine origin, must of necessity be right, and ought therefore to be enforced. If all these assumed premises were correct, the deductions about the propriety of enforcing all laws would be proper, and no laws would be repealed. But the premises are totally wrong. Kings were robbers, who got their “divine right” simply through killing their fellows and plundering their neighbors and robbing them of lands and accumulations. Such “divinity” as this no man with a spark of true religion in him will accept, it being simply an argument of ambitious, unscrupulous men to enslave and rob their fellow-men by means of mandates issued by the king under the sanctity of being “divine law.” This humbug has been worked very successfully on the people for several centuries, and it was this same logic which contended that the Inquisition was just, that feudalism was right, and that American negro slavery was “a divinely inspired institution.”

A new light, however, is dawning over the mountains of superstition and bigotry. People are beginning to see that laws are human institutions, — some of them very distressingly human, too, — and that they are made generally to aid selfish men in getting the best of their neighbors. It cost a bloody war to convince the American people of this fact in 1861–5, but they learned it quite effectually on the subject of negro slavery, and they are slowly coming to the conclusion that what may have been true of this “divine institution” may be equally true of others that are oppressing the people today. This conclusion brings them to the point of rejecting any alleged sacredness to laws which are found obnoxious and working injury to the great masses.

As to the theory of enforcing an objectionable law and thus causing its repeal, no such thing occurs. It cannot occur. A law that can be easily enforced is not one that the masses are anxious to have repealed, and a law that they are anxious to have repealed they strenuously object to being enforced. The law authorizing negro slavery would never have been repealed had the people and the public officials all concerted in efforts to have it “properly enforced.” The latter point was all the slave-owners asked for, and, had their demand been conceded, slavery would still disgrace our American civilization. But the people openly violated the law, and demanded its repeal. When John Brown was hanged for violating the law, the spirit of every liberty-loving American was aroused at the act, although the hanging was legal, — in fact, was the “enforcing of the law,” not because it was just, but because it was “a law of the land.” This latter superstition gave way very speedily to the truth that no law ought to be tolerated which stands in the way of justice, and so they arose in their might and’swept it off the books by the blood of millions, — a thing the law-makers could have done with a stroke of the pen had not the vicious idea predominated that a law must be enforced simply because it is a law.

Now this “fish and game law” is just as obnoxious in its way, as any oppression ever was, and deserves no respect whatever. It is made to benefit a handful of so-called “sportsmen” who live in the towns and cities; and, in order to keep the farmer, and others who are not likely to be “in the swim,” in ignorance of the full scope of the law, it is changed almost every year. By keeping the masses in the dark as to the points changed, the office of game-warden is found necessary in order to awe the farming community by the sleuth-bounding of suspected violators and bunting down and fining individuals here and there. This awe-inspiring process deters farmers from catching game, when they have time and leisure to do so, and thus the game is all saved for the “sports-men,” who come out in force, with guns and dogs, as soon as they find it convenient to them, the law being made so as to coincide with this convenience.

It is this obnoxious law which the “Farmer” demands shall be repealed in toto. We do not believe it ought to be enforced, and are not going to preach any such sophistry. This law is unjust, and serves no purpose except to gratify the whims of men who want the farmers to propagate and feed game for these selfish, arrogant “sportsmen” to come out and kill. To protect game under these conditions is an act of cruelty to animals, besides being oppressive to the farming community. Game does not need protecting. It is of no benefit to mankind, and serves no useful purpose today, whatever it may have done under more savage conditions of society.

Therefore let the laws be repealed, and let us hear no more about enforcing them, since they will never be repealed so long as they are enforced.

The State and the Country.

[Sydney in La Cocarde.]

There are two classes of people in the country, — those belonging to the State, who serve it in return for wages taken from the whole body of citizens, and the rest of the French people, consisting of rich and poor, exploited and exploiters, peasants, manufacturers, merchants, artists, living by their labor or by the resources of their genius, responsible persons who, as taxpayers, defray the expenses of the State and its personnel.

The bourgeois régime, as established by the Convention, and concreted, augmented, and aggravated by the first Empire and the July monarchy, gives rise to the existence of a governing and administrative society living amid and at the expense of the other, the productive society, almost as the Spartan caste in Greece lived amid the Laconians and the Helots, but with less courage, austerity, and virtue.

In order that this governmental, administrative, bureaucratic, and, in a word, “Stateist” society may exist, it must offer a thoroughgoing resistance to the other society, and must observe discipline and respect for hierarchy, in whatever condition or situation its members may be placed, from the humblest employee to the most favored possessor of a sinecure.

The existence of this governing society!oust be to its members, small and great alike, the superior principle to which every other must be sacrificed. Before considering what may be good, just, moral, patriotic, it must consider what is useful to the State which lives and sustains its personnel only by exploitation of the country. Inflexible logic commands this.

If one wishes to remain independent, to be a man and a citizen, to have a conscience and an opinion, he must not be an official or a magistrate, a paid employee of the State under any head whatever. And when the voters entrust a mission to servants of the State, it is as if the Danes of England had taken Normans for representatives, as if the Gauls had chosen Romans, or as if the inhabitants of Lorraine should elect Germans as their delegates. It is their wish to be subjugated or exploited. Let their will be done.

We may feel a keen sympathy with such employees, officials, or magistrates as perform acts of independence at the risk of disgrace and governmental revenge, but it must be admitted that the government which strikes them for so doing is in the logic of its rôle. There is the same incompatibility between the professional duties of the servant of the State and the duties of the citizen and the freeman that there is between the existence of the State itself and the exercise of popular sovereignty.

Self-Help as a Safeguard.

To the Editor of Liberty:

I was in Syracuse recently, and could not help being struck by the fact that the main line of the New York Central Railroad runs through one of the principal streets, without fences, gates, or flagmen that I could see, except in one place where three or four streets come together. There seem to be few accidents, and I take it to be for the reason that the engine-driver is obliged under the circumstances to be careful to not kill anybody, and that, on the other hand, the people must depend upon themselves to keep out of the way.

What do you think?

W. L. Cheney.

Meriden, Conn., October 23, 1894.

Why There are Social Problems.

[William Fawcas in Newcastle Chronicle.]

You cannot set up a providence to look after the world. It is because you have set up government, as such, that you have any social questions. They are all the creation of government, and the way to get clear of them is, not to set up another or to get some further interference, but to sweep away the legislation that lies at the bottom of them. It is because we have not free trade in land, capital, currency, labor, drink, etc., that we have these questions. It is neither the landowner nor the capitalist nor the laborer that is to blame for the troubles, but the land and game laws, the banking and pawnbroking restrictions, the State currency and post office, and the trades union regulations. It is these that have done all the mischief, and are continuing to do it. Man is given himself to govern, and not his neighbor. It takes him all his time to look after his own morals; and, if he neglect them, we can only pity him, for he will catch it and no mistake. What he has a right to do is to resist anyone who interferes with him in managing himself and his belongings, and, having the right to do this, he has the right to combine for this purpose; but not to do that which he has not personally a right to do, — viz., to look after and regulate his neighbor. Where can you get the intellect and virtue for such a task P You have tried all methods of getting such, but you have not succeeded, for it is not to be got. Your statesmen and leaders have had fine pickings out of the delusion. It is time that it was exposed and their salaries stopped. They are not one whit better than the rainmaker and the medicine man, a mixture of the fool and the knave and the Impostor, getting fat upon the misery they create.

What a set of knaves and scoundrels get into office and power! It is the last resort of a good-for-nothing fellow to get you to vote for him. If a man is any use or worth, he does not want your vote. He is too busy looking after his own morals and his own affairs to bother with you and yours. It is time that the governmental swindle was exposed, and the vile and rotten old idol knocked on the bead and chucked out to be burnt. The impudent imposture wants a slap in the face. It is shocking to talk in that dreadful manner of cabinet ministers, M. P.’s, and labor leaders; look what titles and salaries and positions they get, and what statues are raised to their memory when they are dead, and what authorities they were when they lived! I tell you it is all nonsense; that the only good they ever did was when they happened to undo some of the mischief their predecessors had done, and that there is no good legislation except that of repeal.

Reciprocity.

“Away in the years that used to be

I bled (with talk) for my counteree”

(Said the pensioner, and laughed — he! he!),

“And now my country bleeds for me.”

Anarchist Letter-Writing Corps.

The Secretary wants every reader of Liberty to send in his name for enrolment. Those who do so thereby pledge themselves to write, when possible, a letter every fortnight, on Anarchism or kindred subjects, to the “target” assigned in Liberty for that fortnight. All, whether members or not, are asked to lose no opportunity of informing the secretary of suitable targets. Address, Stephen T. Byington, 38 Council Hall. Oberlin, Ohio.

Target, section A. — The “Cincinnatian,” 12 Moselle building, 63 W. 7th street, Cincinnati, 0., on October 4 published a letter from S. H. Randall, copied in full in the last issue of Liberty, in which he clearly defines his position as a non-resistant Anarchist, and gives an account of his being excused from jury duty on the ground of his statement of his views. The editorial comment, after what was quoted in Liberty’s editorial, goes on: “Now if such a man, because he believes that the individual has inalienable rights, which no other individual, no body of men, no majority, no government, has a right to invade or take away, is unfit for jury service, then what becomes of our boasted rights of freedom? . . . . But if this is not true, if law is reason and right and justice, then Mr. Randall is fit to act as a juror, and no ignorant sarcasm will prove otherwise.”

Section B. — The “Rocky Mountain News,” Denver, Col., on October 14 published an editorial entitled “Anarchy and Socialism,” taking the current view of what Anarchism is, and declaring that both Anarchism and Socialism are the inevitable result of the increasing poverty of the poor, caused by the adoption of the single gold standard.

Section C. — Rev. J. H. Albert, of Grace Church, Chicago, preached a sermon on Anarchism perhaps two months ago. He expressed strong sympathy with laborers, and emphasized the distinction between Anarchism on one side and labor agitation and Socialism on the other. He says: “With all Anarchists the fundamental principles are the same, — no private property, no State, no family, no religion. Their methods and arguments are the same, — powder and lead, dynamite, the dagger, poison, fire, — any and every possible means of destruction of life and property. Not that they destroy either for the sake of destruction, but as the only means of bringing about the revolution they desire. . . . . These are the organized Anarchists, so far as it is possible to organize Anarchy. From these, however, it seems to me, we have net much to fear. Their theories are so wild and chimerical, so subversive of all that mankind holds sacred, that they can never gain much of a foot-hold. . . . . Let us turn now to what I have named “unorganized” anarchy. . . . . But the anarchist of which I now speak recognizes the necessity of government and law, but at the same time violates law, tramples it under his feet, and defies it. This is the worst form of anarchy, and from this we have much to fear. . . . . When the Reading Railroad combined with the coal trust, contrary to the laws of every State through which the road passes, — combined for the sake of forcing coal up, and so causing untold suffering and death among the poor, — that was anarchy of the worst form. . . . . It becomes doubledyed anarchy when these same millionaires buy their way into the legislative halls, to be lawmakers for the people.”

The Parade.

[The Cincinnatian.]

Hear the fifing and the drumming!

Watch the pretty soldiers coming!

See the valiant military

March in valor’s millinery!

Watch the ranks of peacocks strutting,

Heroes proud of shooting, cutting,

Gallant souls for battle pining,

While their gallant boots are shining!

Brighter than their glory’s sonnets

Gleam their trinkets on their bonnets.

Like their buttons, brilliant very,

Are the gaudy military.

Watch them, fired with martial passion,

Each in warfare’s latest fashion,

Stiff and solemn, like a steeple,

Marching past the humble people!

See the lofty men of mettle,

Ye who down to labor settle!

See the gewgaws grandly glaring,

On the dauntless sons of daring!

Terrible as looking-glasses

Shines their steel, to awe the masses;

And at heart the brave are frantic

For a massacre romantic.

Martial hearts are proudly bounding,

Martial heels are proudly pounding,

Ready ev’ry orphan-maker,

Of the foe to mow an acre.

O! how grand, to rage in battle!

Grand, to slaughter other cattle!

Grand, the jewelry of Glory!

And, a bloody name in story!

How sublime the soldier dying,

In the arms of Glory lying!

Butcher, butchered, how poetic!

Butcher, butchered, how pathetic!

And how proud the muster gory,

On the camping-ground of Glory,

Where, on legs that weary never,

Murderers parade forever!

S. H. Randall.

A Hand Contemptuous at a Nose Flippant.

To the Editor of Liberty:

If we really must give up the name of Anarchists, let me suggest that Carlyle has made familiar, as signifying a passion for liberty, the word Eleutheromania.

Let us call ourselves, then, Eleutheromaniacs, which ought, I am sure, to calm the perturbation of any timid capitalists.

As for a flag for those who want one (personally I don’t want any), why not keep the red flag, if it must be, and adorn it with a hand, the fingers outspread and the thumb applied to a nose, and with the motto, “Who’s Afraid?”

Eleutheromantic.

The Force of Habit.

An unconstitutional-thief, while occupied in the practices of his vocation, was accosted and interrogated by an officer-of-the-law:

“I find upon reference that your burglarious acts are not countenanced byrthe McKinley Bill or by previous arrangement with the department which it is my honor to represent. Why do you thus abuse both your reputation for honesty and the privileges of the department?”

To which the unconstitutional-thief replies:

“A blunder on my part, I assure you. I was formerly engaged as a customs-official, and I totally disremembered the necessity for prearrangement in outside work. Here is my check, with apologies — and, by the way, will you help me open this safe? — Thank you; good night.” F.

More power to your arm, John W. Goff,

Get Tammany’s scalp, if you can;

But I’ll thank you then if you’ll turn about

And throw stones at that Parkhurst man.

Don’t keep Liberty to yourself, share it with others!

Liberty’s Library

Leonard E. Read: Accent On The Right: To Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850), who sought for truth rather than outcome and never witnessed the fruits his labor bore. Obedience to conscience was his first rule; we witness the results.

Leonard E. Read: Anything That’s Peaceful: Many favor peace but not many favor the things that make for peace. — Thomas à Kempis

Leonard E. Read: Awake for Freedom’s Sake: Finally, share with others. Forget about “reforming” them! The more we share, the more we learn. This is in the interest of self and freedom!

Leonard E. Read: Castles in the Air: If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. — Henry David Thoreau

Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State: Political philosophy is dominated by a myth, the myth of the necessity of the state. The state is considered necessary for the provision of many things, but primarily for peace and security. In this provocative book, Gerard Casey argues that social order can be spontaneously generated, that such spontaneous order is the norm in human society and that deviations from the ordered norms can be dealt with without recourse to the coercive power of the state.

Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers: Murray Rothbard: Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) was an economist, historian, philosopher, and legal theoretician. His work was unified by a passionate and resolute commitment to a libertarianism that may be characterized as ‘anarcho-capitalism’ and which implied a belief that even the legal system may be provided privately without the need for a coercive collective authority. Hence, anarcho-capitalists envisage a society where the traditional role of government is wholly subsumed by private, profit-making enterprises and all social relationships are ultimately founded upon consent.