REVOLUTION AND OTHER ESSAYS

 BY JACK LONDON

 "History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. "

 HUXLEY. 

 MILLS & BOON, LIMITED 49 RUPERT STREET LONDON, W. 1

 _Copyright in the United States of America_, 1910, _by The Macmillan Company_. 

Contents:

 Revolution The Somnambulists The Dignity of Dollars Goliah The Golden Poppy The Shrinkage of the Planet The House Beautiful The Gold Hunters of the North Foma Gordyeeff These Bones shall Rise Again The Other Animals The Yellow Peril What Life Means to Me

REVOLUTION

 "The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay, wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified for ever. "

I received a letter the other day. It was from a man in Arizona. Itbegan, "Dear Comrade. " It ended, "Yours for the Revolution. " I repliedto the letter, and my letter began, "Dear Comrade. " It ended, "Yours forthe Revolution. " In the United States there are 400, 000 men, of men andwomen nearly 1, 000, 000, who begin their letters "Dear Comrade, " and endthem "Yours for the Revolution. " In Germany there are 3, 000, 000 men whobegin their letters "Dear Comrade" and end them "Yours for theRevolution"; in France, 1, 000, 000 men; in Austria, 800, 000 men; inBelgium, 300, 000 men; in Italy, 250, 000 men; in England, 100, 000 men; inSwitzerland, 100, 000 men; in Denmark, 55, 000 men; in Sweden, 50, 000 men;in Holland, 40, 000 men; in Spain, 30, 000 men--comrades all, andrevolutionists. 

These are numbers which dwarf the grand armies of Napoleon and Xerxes. But they are numbers not of conquest and maintenance of the establishedorder, but of conquest and revolution. They compose, when the roll iscalled, an army of 7, 000, 000 men, who, in accordance with the conditionsof to-day, are fighting with all their might for the conquest of thewealth of the world and for the complete overthrow of existing society. 

There has never been anything like this revolution in the history of theworld. There is nothing analogous between it and the American Revolutionor the French Revolution. It is unique, colossal. Other revolutionscompare with it as asteroids compare with the sun. It is alone of itskind, the first world-revolution in a world whose history is replete withrevolutions. And not only this, for it is the first organized movementof men to become a world movement, limited only by the limits of theplanet. 

This revolution is unlike all other revolutions in many respects. It isnot sporadic. It is not a flame of popular discontent, arising in a dayand dying down in a day. It is older than the present generation. Ithas a history and traditions, and a martyr-roll only less extensivepossibly than the martyr-roll of Christianity. It has also a literaturea myriad times more imposing, scientific, and scholarly than theliterature of any previous revolution. 

They call themselves "comrades, " these men, comrades in the socialistrevolution. Nor is the word empty and meaningless, coined of mere lipservice. It knits men together as brothers, as men should be knittogether who stand shoulder to shoulder under the red banner of revolt. This red banner, by the way, symbolizes the brotherhood of man, and doesnot symbolize the incendiarism that instantly connects itself with thered banner in the affrighted bourgeois mind. The comradeship of therevolutionists is alive and warm. It passes over geographical lines, transcends race prejudice, and has even proved itself mightier than theFourth of July, spread-eagle Americanism of our forefathers. The Frenchsocialist working-men and the German socialist working-men forget Alsaceand Lorraine, and, when war threatens, pass resolutions declaring that asworking-men and comrades they have no quarrel with each other. Only theother day, when Japan and Russia sprang at each other's throats, therevolutionists of Japan addressed the following message to therevolutionists of Russia: "Dear Comrades--Your government and ours haverecently plunged into war to carry out their imperialistic tendencies, but for us socialists there are no boundaries, race, country, ornationality. We are comrades, brothers, and sisters, and have no reasonto fight. Your enemies are not the Japanese people, but our militarismand so-called patriotism. Patriotism and militarism are our mutualenemies. "

In January 1905, throughout the United States the socialists heldmass-meetings to express their sympathy for their struggling comrades, the revolutionists of Russia, and, more to the point, to furnish thesinews of war by collecting money and cabling it to the Russian leaders. The fact of this call for money, and the ready response, and the verywording of the call, make a striking and practical demonstration of theinternational solidarity of this world-revolution:

"Whatever may be the immediate results of the present revolt in Russia, the socialist propaganda in that country has received from it an impetusunparalleled in the history of modern class wars. The heroic battle forfreedom is being fought almost exclusively by the Russian working-classunder the intellectual leadership of Russian socialists, thus once moredemonstrating the fact that the class-conscious working-men have becomethe vanguard of all liberating movements of modern times. "

Here are 7, 000, 000 comrades in an organized, international, world-wide, revolutionary movement. Here is a tremendous human force. It must bereckoned with. Here is power. And here is romance--romance so colossalthat it seems to be beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. Theserevolutionists are swayed by great passion. They have a keen sense ofpersonal right, much of reverence for humanity, but little reverence, ifany at all, for the rule of the dead. They refuse to be ruled by thedead. To the bourgeois mind their unbelief in the dominant conventionsof the established order is startling. They laugh to scorn the sweetideals and dear moralities of bourgeois society. They intend to destroybourgeois society with most of its sweet ideals and dear moralities, andchiefest among these are those that group themselves under such heads asprivate ownership of capital, survival of the fittest, andpatriotism--even patriotism. 

Such an army of revolution, 7, 000, 000 strong, is a thing to make rulersand ruling classes pause and consider. The cry of this army is, "Noquarter! We want all that you possess. We will be content with nothingless than all that you possess. We want in our hands the reins of powerand the destiny of mankind. Here are our hands. They are strong hands. We are going to take your governments, your palaces, and all your purpledease away from you, and in that day you shall work for your bread even asthe peasant in the field or the starved and runty clerk in yourmetropolises. Here are our hands. They are strong hands. "

Well may rulers and ruling classes pause and consider. This isrevolution. And, further, these 7, 000, 000 men are not an army on paper. Their fighting strength in the field is 7, 000, 000. To-day they cast7, 000, 000 votes in the civilized countries of the world. 

Yesterday they were not so strong. To-morrow they will be stillstronger. And they are fighters. They love peace. They are unafraid ofwar. They intend nothing less than to destroy existing capitalistsociety and to take possession of the whole world. If the law of theland permits, they fight for this end peaceably, at the ballot-box. Ifthe law of the land does not permit, and if they have force meted out tothem, they resort to force themselves. They meet violence with violence. Their hands are strong and they are unafraid. In Russia, for instance, there is no suffrage. The government executes the revolutionists. Therevolutionists kill the officers of the government. The revolutionistsmeet legal murder with assassination. 

Now here arises a particularly significant phase which it would be wellfor the rulers to consider. Let me make it concrete. I am arevolutionist. Yet I am a fairly sane and normal individual. I speak, and I _think_, of these assassins in Russia as "my comrades. " So do allthe comrades in America, and all the 7, 000, 000 comrades in the world. Ofwhat worth an organized, international, revolutionary movement if ourcomrades are not backed up the world over! The worth is shown by thefact that we do back up the assassinations by our comrades in Russia. They are not disciples of Tolstoy, nor are we. We are revolutionists. 

Our comrades in Russia have formed what they call "The FightingOrganization. " This Fighting Organization accused, tried, found guilty, and condemned to death, one Sipiaguin, Minister of Interior. On April 2he was shot and killed in the Maryinsky Palace. Two years later theFighting Organization condemned to death and executed another Minister ofInterior, Von Plehve. Having done so, it issued a document, dated July29, 1904, setting forth the counts of its indictment of Von Plehve andits responsibility for the assassination. Now, and to the point, thisdocument was sent out to the socialists of the world, and by them waspublished everywhere in the magazines and newspapers. The point is, notthat the socialists of the world were unafraid to do it, not that theydared to do it, but that they did it as a matter of routine, givingpublication to what may be called an official document of theinternational revolutionary movement. 

These are high lights upon the revolution--granted, but they are alsofacts. And they are given to the rulers and the ruling classes, not inbravado, not to frighten them, but for them to consider more deeply thespirit and nature of this world-revolution. The time has come for therevolution to demand consideration. It has fastened upon every civilizedcountry in the world. As fast as a country becomes civilized, therevolution fastens upon it. With the introduction of the machine intoJapan, socialism was introduced. Socialism marched into the Philippinesshoulder to shoulder with the American soldiers. The echoes of the lastgun had scarcely died away when socialist locals were forming in Cuba andPorto Rico. Vastly more significant is the fact that of all thecountries the revolution has fastened upon, on not one has it relaxed itsgrip. On the contrary, on every country its grip closes tighter year byyear. As an active movement it began obscurely over a generation ago. In 1867, its voting strength in the world was 30, 000. By 1871 its votehad increased to 1, 000, 000. Not till 1884 did it pass the half-millionpoint. By 1889 it had passed the million point, it had then gainedmomentum. In 1892 the socialist vote of the world was 1, 798, 391; in1893, 2, 585, 898; in 1895, 3, 033, 718; in 1898, 4, 515, 591; in 1902, 5, 253, 054; in 1903, 6, 285, 374; and in the year of our Lord 1905 it passedthe seven-million mark. 

Nor has this flame of revolution left the United States untouched. In1888 there were only 2, 068 socialist votes. In 1902 there were 127, 713socialist votes. And in 1904 435, 040 socialist votes were cast. Whatfanned this flame? Not hard times. The first four years of thetwentieth century were considered prosperous years, yet in that time morethan 300, 000 men added themselves to the ranks of the revolutionists, flinging their defiance in the teeth of bourgeois society and takingtheir stand under the blood-red banner. In the state of the writer, California, one man in twelve is an avowed and registered revolutionist. 

One thing must be clearly understood. This is no spontaneous and vagueuprising of a large mass of discontented and miserable people--a blindand instinctive recoil from hurt. On the contrary, the propaganda isintellectual; the movement is based upon economic necessity and is inline with social evolution; while the miserable people have not yetrevolted. The revolutionist is no starved and diseased slave in theshambles at the bottom of the social pit, but is, in the main, a hearty, well-fed working-man, who sees the shambles waiting for him and hischildren and recoils from the descent. The very miserable people are toohelpless to help themselves. But they are being helped, and the day isnot far distant when their numbers will go to swell the ranks of therevolutionists. 

Another thing must be clearly understood. In spite of the fact thatmiddle-class men and professional men are interested in the movement, itis nevertheless a distinctly working-class revolt. The world over, it isa working-class revolt. The workers of the world, as a class, arefighting the capitalists of the world, as a class. The so-called greatmiddle class is a growing anomaly in the social struggle. It is aperishing class (wily statisticians to the contrary), and its historicmission of buffer between the capitalist and working-classes has justabout been fulfilled. Little remains for it but to wail as it passesinto oblivion, as it has already begun to wail in accents Populistic andJeffersonian-Democratic. The fight is on. The revolution is here now, and it is the world's workers that are in revolt. 

Naturally the question arises: Why is this so? No mere whim of thespirit can give rise to a world-revolution. Whim does not conduce tounanimity. There must be a deep-seated cause to make 7, 000, 000 men ofthe one mind, to make them cast off allegiance to the bourgeois gods andlose faith in so fine a thing as patriotism. There are many counts ofthe indictment which the revolutionists bring against the capitalistclass, but for present use only one need be stated, and it is a count towhich capital has never replied and can never reply. 

The capitalist class has managed society, and its management has failed. And not only has it failed in its management, but it has faileddeplorably, ignobly, horribly. The capitalist class had an opportunitysuch as was vouchsafed no previous ruling class in the history of theworld. It broke away from the rule of the old feudal aristocracy andmade modern society. It mastered matter, organized the machinery oflife, and made possible a wonderful era for mankind, wherein no creatureshould cry aloud because it had not enough to eat, and wherein for everychild there would be opportunity for education, for intellectual andspiritual uplift. Matter being mastered, and the machinery of lifeorganized, all this was possible. Here was the chance, God-given, andthe capitalist class failed. It was blind and greedy. It prattled sweetideals and dear moralities, rubbed its eyes not once, nor ceased one whitin its greediness, and smashed down in a failure as tremendous only aswas the opportunity it had ignored. 

But all this is like so much cobwebs to the bourgeois mind. As it wasblind in the past, it is blind now and cannot see nor understand. Well, then, let the indictment be stated more definitely, in terms sharp andunmistakable. In the first place, consider the caveman. He was a verysimple creature. His head slanted back like an orang-outang's, and hehad but little more intelligence. He lived in a hostile environment, theprey of all manner of fierce life. He had no inventions nor artifices. His natural efficiency for food-getting was, say, 1. He did not eventill the soil. With his natural efficiency of 1, he fought off hiscarnivorous enemies and got himself food and shelter. He must have doneall this, else he would not have multiplied and spread over the earth andsent his progeny down, generation by generation, to become even you andme. 

The caveman, with his natural efficiency of 1, got enough to eat most ofthe time, and no caveman went hungry all the time. Also, he lived ahealthy, open-air life, loafed and rested himself, and found plenty oftime in which to exercise his imagination and invent gods. That is tosay, he did not have to work all his waking moments in order to getenough to eat. The child of the caveman (and this is true of thechildren of all savage peoples) had a childhood, and by that is meant ahappy childhood of play and development. 

And now, how fares modern man? Consider the United States, the mostprosperous and most enlightened country of the world. In the UnitedStates there are 10, 000, 000 people living in poverty. By poverty ismeant that condition in life in which, through lack of food and adequateshelter, the mere standard of working efficiency cannot be maintained. In the United States there are 10, 000, 000 people who have not enough toeat. In the United States, because they have not enough to eat, thereare 10, 000, 000 people who cannot keep the ordinary 1 measure of strengthin their bodies. This means that these 10, 000, 000 people are perishing, are dying, body and soul, slowly, because they have not enough to eat. All over this broad, prosperous, enlightened land, are men, women, andchildren who are living miserably. In all the great cities, where theyare segregated in slum ghettos by hundreds of thousands and by millions, their misery becomes beastliness. No caveman ever starved as chronicallyas they starve, ever slept as vilely as they sleep, ever festered withrottenness and disease as they fester, nor ever toiled as hard and for aslong hours as they toil. 

In Chicago there is a woman who toiled sixty hours per week. She was agarment worker. She sewed buttons on clothes. Among the Italian garmentworkers of Chicago, the average weekly wage of the dressmakers is 90cents, but they work every week in the year. The average weekly wage ofthe pants finishers is $1. 31, and the average number of weeks employed inthe year is 27. 85. The average yearly earnings of the dressmakers is$37; of the pants finishers, $42. 41. Such wages means no childhood forthe children, beastliness of living, and starvation for all. 

Unlike the caveman, modern man cannot get food and shelter whenever hefeels like working for it. Modern man has first to find the work, and inthis he is often unsuccessful. Then misery becomes acute. This acutemisery is chronicled daily in the newspapers. Let several of thecountless instances be cited. 

 In New York City lived a woman, Mary Mead. She had three children: Mary, one year old; Johanna, two years old; Alice, four years old. Her husband could find no work. They starved. They were evicted from their shelter at 160 Steuben Street. Mary Mead strangled her baby, Mary, one year old; strangled Alice, four years old; failed to strangle Johanna, two years old, and then herself took poison. Said the father to the police: "Constant poverty had driven my wife insane. We lived at No. 160 Steuben Street until a week ago, when we were dispossessed. I could get no work. I could not even make enough to put food into our mouths. The babies grew ill and weak. My wife cried nearly all the time. "

 "So overwhelmed is the Department of Charities with tens of thousands of applications from men out of work that it finds itself unable to cope with the situation. "--_New York Commercial_, January 11, 1905. 

In a daily paper, because he cannot get work in order to get something toeat, modern man advertises as follows:

 "Young man, good education, unable to obtain employment, will sell to physician and bacteriologist for experimental purposes all right and title to his body. Address for price, box 3466, _Examiner_. "

 "Frank A. Mallin went to the central police station Wednesday night and asked to be locked up on a charge of vagrancy. He said he had been conducting an unsuccessful search for work for so long that he was sure he must be a vagrant. In any event, he was so hungry he must be fed. Police Judge Graham sentenced him to ninety days' imprisonment. "--_San Francisco Examiner_. 

In a room at the Soto House, 32 Fourth Street, San Francisco, was foundthe body of W. G. Robbins. He had turned on the gas. Also was found hisdiary, from which the following extracts are made

 "_March_ 3. --No chance of getting anything here. What will I do?

 "_March_ 7. --Cannot find anything yet. 

 "_March_ 8. --Am living on doughnuts at five cents a day. 

 "_March_ 9. --My last quarter gone for room rent. 

 "_March_ 10. --God help me. Have only five cents left. Can get nothing to do. What next? Starvation or--? I have spent my last nickel to-night. What shall I do? Shall it be steal, beg, or die? I have never stolen, begged, or starved in all my fifty years of life, but now I am on the brink--death seems the only refuge. 

 "_March_ 11. --Sick all day--burning fever this afternoon. Had nothing to eat to-day or since yesterday noon. My head, my head. Good-bye, all. "

How fares the child of modern man in this most prosperous of lands? Inthe city of New York 50, 000 children go hungry to school every morning. From the same city on January 12, a press despatch was sent out over thecountry of a case reported by Dr. A. E. Daniel, of the New York Infirmaryfor Women and Children. The case was that of a babe, eighteen monthsold, who earned by its labour fifty cents per week in a tenementsweat-shop. 

 "On a pile of rags in a room bare of furniture and freezing cold, Mrs. Mary Gallin, dead from starvation, with an emaciated baby four months old crying at her breast, was found this morning at 513 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, by Policeman McConnon of the Flushing Avenue Station. Huddled together for warmth in another part of the room were the father, James Gallin, and three children ranging from two to eight years of age. The children gazed at the policeman much as ravenous animals might have done. They were famished, and there was not a vestige of food in their comfortless home. "--_New York Journal_, January 2, 1902. 

In the United States 80, 000 children are toiling out their lives in thetextile mills alone. In the South they work twelve-hour shifts. Theynever see the day. Those on the night shift are asleep when the sunpours its life and warmth over the world, while those on the day shiftare at the machines before dawn and return to their miserable dens, called "homes, " after dark. Many receive no more than ten cents a day. There are babies who work for five and six cents a day. Those who workon the night shift are often kept awake by having cold water dashed intheir faces. There are children six years of age who have already totheir credit eleven months' work on the night shift. When they becomesick, and are unable to rise from their beds to go to work, there are menemployed to go on horseback from house to house, and cajole and bullythem into arising and going to work. Ten per cent of them contractactive consumption. All are puny wrecks, distorted, stunted, mind andbody. Elbert Hubbard says of the child-labourers of the Southerncotton-mills:

 "I thought to lift one of the little toilers to ascertain his weight. Straightaway through his thirty-five pounds of skin and bones there ran a tremor of fear, and he struggled forward to tie a broken thread. I attracted his attention by a touch, and offered him a silver dime. He looked at me dumbly from a face that might have belonged to a man of sixty, so furrowed, tightly drawn, and full of pain it was. He did not reach for the money--he did not know what it was. There were dozens of such children in this particular mill. A physician who was with me said that they would all be dead probably in two years, and their places filled by others--there were plenty more. Pneumonia carries off most of them. Their systems are ripe for disease, and when it comes there is no rebound--no response. Medicine simply does not act--nature is whipped, beaten, discouraged, and the child sinks into a stupor and dies. "

So fares modern man and the child of modern man in the United States, most prosperous and enlightened of all countries on earth. It must beremembered that the instances given are instances only, but they can bemultiplied myriads of times. It must also be remembered that what istrue of the United States is true of all the civilized world. Suchmisery was not true of the caveman. Then what has happened? Has thehostile environment of the caveman grown more hostile for hisdescendants? Has the caveman's natural efficiency of 1 for food-gettingand shelter-getting diminished in modern man to one-half or one-quarter?

On the contrary, the hostile environment of the caveman has beendestroyed. For modern man it no longer exists. All carnivorous enemies, the daily menace of the younger world, have been killed off. Many of thespecies of prey have become extinct. Here and there, in secludedportions of the world, still linger a few of man's fiercer enemies. Butthey are far from being a menace to mankind. Modern man, when he wantsrecreation and change, goes to the secluded portions of the world for ahunt. Also, in idle moments, he wails regretfully at the passing of the"big game, " which he knows in the not distant future will disappear fromthe earth. 

Nor since the day of the caveman has man's efficiency for food-gettingand shelter-getting diminished. It has increased a thousandfold. Sincethe day of the caveman, matter has been mastered. The secrets of matterhave been discovered. Its laws have been formulated. Wonderfulartifices have been made, and marvellous inventions, all tending toincrease tremendously man's natural efficiency of in every food-getting, shelter-getting exertion, in farming, mining, manufacturing, transportation, and communication. 

From the caveman to the hand-workers of three generations ago, theincrease in efficiency for food- and shelter-getting has been very great. But in this day, by machinery, the efficiency of the hand-worker of threegenerations ago has in turn been increased many times. Formerly itrequired 200 hours of human labour to place 100 tons of ore on a railroadcar. To-day, aided by machinery, but two hours of human labour isrequired to do the same task. The United States Bureau of Labour isresponsible for the following table, showing the comparatively recentincrease in man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency:

 Machine Hours Hand HoursBarley (100 bushels) 9 211Corn (50 bushels 34 228shelled, stalks, husks and blades cutinto fodder)Oats (160 bushels) 28 265Wheat (50 bushels) 7 160Loading ore (loading 2 200100 tons iron ore oncars)Unloading coal 20 240(transferring 200tons from canal-boatsto bins 400 feetdistant)Pitchforks (50 12 200pitchforks, 12-inchtines)Plough (one landside 3 118plough, oak beams andhandles)

According to the same authority, under the best conditions fororganization in farming, labour can produce 20 bushels of wheat for 66cents, or 1 bushel for 3. 5 cents. This was done on a bonanza farm of10, 000 acres in California, and was the average cost of the whole productof the farm. Mr. Carroll D. Wright says that to-day 4, 500, 000 men, aidedby machinery, turn out a product that would require the labour of40, 000, 000 men if produced by hand. Professor Herzog, of Austria, saysthat 5, 000, 000 people with the machinery of to-day, employed at sociallyuseful labour, would be able to supply a population of 20, 000, 000 peoplewith all the necessaries and small luxuries of life by working 1. 5 hoursper day. 

This being so, matter being mastered, man's efficiency for food- andshelter-getting being increased a thousandfold over the efficiency of thecaveman, then why is it that millions of modern men live more miserablythan lived the caveman? This is the question the revolutionist asks, andhe asks it of the managing class, the capitalist class. The capitalistclass does not answer it. The capitalist class cannot answer it. 

If modern man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency is a thousandfoldgreater than that of the caveman, why, then, are there 10, 000, 000 peoplein the United States to-day who are not properly sheltered and properlyfed? If the child of the caveman did not have to work, why, then, to-day, in the United States, are 80, 000 children working out their livesin the textile factories alone? If the child of the caveman did not haveto work, why, then, to-day, in the United States, are there 1, 752, 187child-labourers?

It is a true count in the indictment. The capitalist class hasmismanaged, is to-day mismanaging. In New York City 50, 000 children gohungry to school, and in New York City there are 1, 320 millionaires. Thepoint, however, is not that the mass of mankind is miserable because ofthe wealth the capitalist class has taken to itself. Far from it. Thepoint really is that the mass of mankind is miserable, not for want ofthe wealth taken by the capitalist class, _but for want of the wealththat was never created_. This wealth was never created because thecapitalist class managed too wastefully and irrationally. The capitalistclass, blind and greedy, grasping madly, has not only not made the bestof its management, but made the worst of it. It is a managementprodigiously wasteful. This point cannot be emphasized too strongly. 

In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than thecaveman, and that modern man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency is athousandfold greater than the caveman's, no other solution is possiblethan that the management is prodigiously wasteful. 

With the natural resources of the world, the machinery already invented, a rational organization of production and distribution, and an equallyrational elimination of waste, the able-bodied workers would not have tolabour more than two or three hours per day to feed everybody, clotheeverybody, house everybody, educate everybody, and give a fair measure oflittle luxuries to everybody. There would be no more material want andwretchedness, no more children toiling out their lives, no more men andwomen and babes living like beasts and dying like beasts. Not only wouldmatter be mastered, but the machine would be mastered. In such a dayincentive would be finer and nobler than the incentive of to-day, whichis the incentive of the stomach. No man, woman, or child, would beimpelled to action by an empty stomach. On the contrary, they would beimpelled to action as a child in a spelling match is impelled to action, as boys and girls at games, as scientists formulating law, as inventorsapplying law, as artists and sculptors painting canvases and shapingclay, as poets and statesmen serving humanity by singing and bystatecraft. The spiritual, intellectual, and artistic uplift consequentupon such a condition of society would be tremendous. All the humanworld would surge upward in a mighty wave. 

This was the opportunity vouchsafed the capitalist class. Less blindnesson its part, less greediness, and a rational management, were all thatwas necessary. A wonderful era was possible for the human race. But thecapitalist class failed. It made a shambles of civilization. Nor canthe capitalist class plead not guilty. It knew of the opportunity. Itswise men told of the opportunity, its scholars and its scientists told itof the opportunity. All that they said is there to-day in the books, just so much damning evidence against it. It would not listen. It wastoo greedy. It rose up (as it rises up to-day), shamelessly, in ourlegislative halls, and declared that profits were impossible without thetoil of children and babes. It lulled its conscience to sleep withprattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities, and allowed the sufferingand misery of mankind to continue and to increase, in short, thecapitalist class failed to take advantage of the opportunity. 

But the opportunity is still here. The capitalist class has been triedand found wanting. Remains the working-class to see what it can do withthe opportunity. "But the working-class is incapable, " says thecapitalist class. "What do you know about it?" the working-classreplies. "Because you have failed is no reason that we shall fail. Furthermore, we are going to have a try at it, anyway. Seven millions ofus say so. And what have you to say to that?"

And what can the capitalist class say? Grant the incapacity of theworking-class. Grant that the indictment and the argument of therevolutionists are all wrong. The 7, 000, 000 revolutionists remain. Their existence is a fact. Their belief in their capacity, and in theirindictment and their argument, is a fact. Their constant growth is afact. Their intention to destroy present-day society is a fact, as isalso their intention to take possession of the world with all its wealthand machinery and governments. Moreover, it is a fact that theworking-class is vastly larger than the capitalist class. 

The revolution is a revolution of the working-class. How can thecapitalist class, in the minority, stem this tide of revolution? Whathas it to offer? What does it offer? Employers' associations, injunctions, civil suits for plundering of the treasuries of thelabour-unions, clamour and combination for the open shop, bitter andshameless opposition to the eight-hour day, strong efforts to defeat allreform, child-labour bills, graft in every municipal council, stronglobbies and bribery in every legislature for the purchase of capitalistlegislation, bayonets, machine-guns, policemen's clubs, professionalstrike-breakers and armed Pinkertons--these are the things the capitalistclass is dumping in front of the tide of revolution, as though, forsooth, to hold it back. 

The capitalist class is as blind to-day to the menace of the revolutionas it was blind in the past to its own God-given opportunity. It cannotsee how precarious is its position, cannot comprehend the power and theportent of the revolution. It goes on its placid way, prattling sweetideals and dear moralities, and scrambling sordidly for materialbenefits. 

No overthrown ruler or class in the past ever considered the revolutionthat overthrew it, and so with the capitalist class of to-day. Insteadof compromising, instead of lengthening its lease of life by conciliationand by removal of some of the harsher oppressions of the working-class, it antagonizes the working-class, drives the working-class intorevolution. Every broken strike in recent years, every legally plunderedtrades-union treasury, every closed shop made into an open shop, hasdriven the members of the working-class directly hurt over to socialismby hundreds and thousands. Show a working-man that his union fails, andhe becomes a revolutionist. Break a strike with an injunction orbankrupt a union with a civil suit, and the working-men hurt therebylisten to the siren song of the socialist and are lost for ever to the_political capitalist_ parties. 

Antagonism never lulled revolution, and antagonism is about all thecapitalist class offers. It is true, it offers some few antiquatednotions which were very efficacious in the past, but which are no longerefficacious. Fourth-of-July liberty in terms of the Declaration ofIndependence and of the French Encyclopaedists is scarcely appositeto-day. It does not appeal to the working-man who has had his headbroken by a policeman's club, his union treasury bankrupted by a courtdecision, or his job taken away from him by a labour-saving invention. Nor does the Constitution of the United States appear so glorious andconstitutional to the working-man who has experienced a bull-pen or beenunconstitutionally deported from Colorado. Nor are this particularworking-man's hurt feelings soothed by reading in the newspapers thatboth the bull-pen and the deportation were pre-eminently just, legal, andconstitutional. "To hell, then, with the Constitution!" says he, andanother revolutionist has been made--by the capitalist class. 

In short, so blind is the capitalist class that it does nothing tolengthen its lease of life, while it does everything to shorten it. Thecapitalist class offers nothing that is clean, noble, and alive. Therevolutionists offer everything that is clean, noble, and alive. Theyoffer service, unselfishness, sacrifice, martyrdom--the things that stingawake the imagination of the people, touching their hearts with thefervour that arises out of the impulse toward good and which isessentially religious in its nature. 

But the revolutionists blow hot and blow cold. They offer facts andstatistics, economics and scientific arguments. If the working-man bemerely selfish, the revolutionists show him, mathematically demonstrateto him, that his condition will be bettered by the revolution. If theworking-man be the higher type, moved by impulses toward right conduct, if he have soul and spirit, the revolutionists offer him the things ofthe soul and the spirit, the tremendous things that cannot be measured bydollars and cents, nor be held down by dollars and cents. Therevolutionist cries out upon wrong and injustice, and preachesrighteousness. And, most potent of all, he sings the eternal song ofhuman freedom--a song of all lands and all tongues and all time. 

Few members of the capitalist class see the revolution. Most of them aretoo ignorant, and many are too afraid to see it. It is the same oldstory of every perishing ruling class in the world's history. Fat withpower and possession, drunken with success, and made soft by surfeit andby cessation of struggle, they are like the drones clustered about thehoney vats when the worker-bees spring upon them to end their rotundexistence. 

President Roosevelt vaguely sees the revolution, is frightened by it, andrecoils from seeing it. As he says: "Above all, we need to remember thatany kind of class animosity in the political world is, if possible, evenmore wicked, even more destructive to national welfare, than sectional, race, or religious animosity. "

Class animosity in the political world, President Roosevelt maintains, iswicked. But class animosity in the political world is the preachment ofthe revolutionists. "Let the class wars in the industrial worldcontinue, " they say, "but extend the class war to the political world. "As their leader, Eugene V. Debs says: "So far as this struggle isconcerned, there is no good capitalist and no bad working-man. Everycapitalist is your enemy and every working-man is your friend. "

Here is class animosity in the political world with a vengeance. Andhere is revolution. In 1888 there were only 2, 000 revolutionists of thistype in the United States; in 1900 there were 127, 000 revolutionists; in1904, 435, 000 revolutionists. Wickedness of the President Rooseveltdefinition evidently flourishes and increases in the United States. Quite so, for it is the revolution that flourishes and increases. 

Here and there a member of the capitalist class catches a clear glimpseof the revolution, and raises a warning cry. But his class does notheed. President Eliot of Harvard raised such a cry:

"I am forced to believe there is a present danger of socialism neverbefore so imminent in America in so dangerous a form, because neverbefore imminent in so well organized a form. The danger lies in theobtaining control of the trades-unions by the socialists. " And thecapitalist employers, instead of giving heed to the warnings, areperfecting their strike-breaking organization and combining more stronglythan ever for a general assault upon that dearest of all things to thetrades-unions--the closed shop. In so far as this assault succeeds, byjust that much will the capitalist class shorten its lease of life. Itis the old, old story, over again and over again. The drunken dronesstill cluster greedily about the honey vats. 

Possibly one of the most amusing spectacles of to-day is the attitude ofthe American press toward the revolution. It is also a patheticspectacle. It compels the onlooker to be aware of a distinct loss ofpride in his species. Dogmatic utterance from the mouth of ignorance maymake gods laugh, but it should make men weep. And the American editors(in the general instance) are so impressive about it! The old"divide-up, " "men-are-_not_-born-free-and-equal, " propositions areenunciated gravely and sagely, as things white-hot and new from the forgeof human wisdom. Their feeble vapourings show no more than a schoolboy'scomprehension of the nature of the revolution. Parasites themselves onthe capitalist class, serving the capitalist class by moulding publicopinion, they, too, cluster drunkenly about the honey vats. 

Of course, this is true only of the large majority of American editors. To say that it is true of all of them would be to cast too great obloquyupon the human race. Also, it would be untrue, for here and there anoccasional editor does see clearly--and in his case, ruled bystomach-incentive, is usually afraid to say what he thinks about it. Sofar as the science and the sociology of the revolution are concerned, theaverage editor is a generation or so behind the facts. He isintellectually slothful, accepts no facts until they are accepted by themajority, and prides himself upon his conservatism. He is an instinctiveoptimist, prone to believe that what ought to be, is. The revolutionistgave this up long ago, and believes not that what ought to be, is, butwhat is, is, and that it may not be what it ought to be at all. 

Now and then, rubbing his eyes, vigorously, an editor catches a suddenglimpse of the revolution and breaks out in naive volubility, as, forinstance, the one who wrote the following in the _Chicago Chronicle_:"American socialists are revolutionists. They know that they arerevolutionists. It is high time that other people should appreciate thefact. " A white-hot, brand-new discovery, and he proceeded to shout itout from the housetops that we, forsooth, were revolutionists. Why, itis just what we have been doing all these years--shouting it out from thehousetops that we are revolutionists, and stop us who can. 

The time should be past for the mental attitude: "Revolution isatrocious. Sir, there is no revolution. " Likewise should the time bepast for that other familiar attitude: "Socialism is slavery. Sir, itwill never be. " It is no longer a question of dialectics, theories, anddreams. There is no question about it. The revolution is a fact. It ishere now. Seven million revolutionists, organized, working day andnight, are preaching the revolution--that passionate gospel, theBrotherhood of Man. Not only is it a cold-blooded economic propaganda, but it is in essence a religious propaganda with a fervour in it of Pauland Christ. The capitalist class has been indicted. It has failed inits management and its management is to be taken away from it. Sevenmillion men of the working-class say that they are going to get the restof the working-class to join with them and take the management away. Therevolution is here, now. Stop it who can. 

SACRAMENTO RIVER. _March_ 1905. 

THE SOMNAMBULISTS

 "'Tis only fools speak evil of the clay-- The very stars are made of clay like mine. "

The mightiest and absurdest sleep-walker on the planet! Chained in thecircle of his own imaginings, man is only too keen to forget his originand to shame that flesh of his that bleeds like all flesh and that isgood to eat. Civilization (which is part of the circle of hisimaginings) has spread a veneer over the surface of the soft-shelledanimal known as man. It is a very thin veneer; but so wonderfully is manconstituted that he squirms on his bit of achievement and believes he isgarbed in armour-plate. 

Yet man to-day is the same man that drank from his enemy's skull in thedark German forests, that sacked cities, and stole his women fromneighbouring clans like any howling aborigine. The flesh-and-blood bodyof man has not changed in the last several thousand years. Nor has hismind changed. There is no faculty of the mind of man to-day that did notexist in the minds of the men of long ago. Man has to-day no conceptthat is too wide and deep and abstract for the mind of Plato or Aristotleto grasp. Give to Plato or Aristotle the same fund of knowledge that manto-day has access to, and Plato and Aristotle would reason as profoundlyas the man of to-day and would achieve very similar conclusions. 

It is the same old animal man, smeared over, it is true, with a veneer, thin and magical, that makes him dream drunken dreams of self-exaltationand to sneer at the flesh and the blood of him beneath the smear. Theraw animal crouching within him is like the earthquake monster pent inthe crust of the earth. As he persuades himself against the latter tillit arouses and shakes down a city, so does he persuade himself againstthe former until it shakes him out of his dreaming and he standsundisguised, a brute like any other brute. 

Starve him, let him miss six meals, and see gape through the veneer thehungry maw of the animal beneath. Get between him and the female of hiskind upon whom his mating instinct is bent, and see his eyes blaze likean angry cat's, hear in his throat the scream of wild stallions, andwatch his fists clench like an orang-outang's. Maybe he will even beathis chest. Touch his silly vanity, which he exalts into high-soundingpride--call him a liar, and behold the red animal in him that makes ahand clutching that is quick like the tensing of a tiger's claw, or aneagle's talon, incarnate with desire to rip and tear. 

It is not necessary to call him a liar to touch his vanity. Tell aplains Indian that he has failed to steal horses from the neighbouringtribe, or tell a man living in bourgeois society that he has failed topay his bills at the neighbouring grocer's, and the results are the same. Each, plains Indian and bourgeois, is smeared with a slightly differentveneer, that is all. It requires a slightly different stick to scrape itoff. The raw animals beneath are identical. 

But intrude not violently upon man, leave him alone in his somnambulism, and he kicks out from under his feet the ladder of life up which he hasclimbed, constitutes himself the centre of the universe, dreams sordidlyabout his own particular god, and maunders metaphysically about his ownblessed immortality. 

True, he lives in a real world, breathes real air, eats real food, andsleeps under real blankets, in order to keep real cold away. And there'sthe rub. He has to effect adjustments with the real world and at thesame time maintain the sublimity of his dream. The result of thisadmixture of the real and the unreal is confusion thrice confounded. Theman that walks the real world in his sleep becomes such a tangled mass ofcontradictions, paradoxes, and lies that he has to lie to himself inorder to stay asleep. 

In passing, it may be noted that some men are remarkably constituted inthis matter of self-deception. They excel at deceiving themselves. Theybelieve, and they help others to believe. It becomes their function insociety, and some of them are paid large salaries for helping theirfellow-men to believe, for instance, that they are not as other animals;for helping the king to believe, and his parasites and drudges as well, that he is God's own manager over so many square miles of earth-crust;for helping the merchant and banking classes to believe that societyrests on their shoulders, and that civilization would go to smash if theygot out from under and ceased from their exploitations and pettypilferings. 

Prize-fighting is terrible. This is the dictum of the man who walks inhis sleep. He prates about it, and writes to the papers about it, andworries the legislators about it. There is nothing of the brute about_him_. He is a sublimated soul that treads the heights and breathesrefined ether--in self-comparison with the prize-fighter. The man whowalks in his sleep ignores the flesh and all its wonderful play ofmuscle, joint, and nerve. He feels that there is something godlike inthe mysterious deeps of his being, denies his relationship with thebrute, and proceeds to go forth into the world and express by deeds thatsomething godlike within him. 

He sits at a desk and chases dollars through the weeks and months andyears of his life. To him the life godlike resolves into a problemsomething like this: _Since the great mass of men toil at producingwealth_, _how best can he get between the great mass of men and thewealth they produce_, _and get a slice for himself_? With tremendousexercise of craft, deceit, and guile, he devotes his life godlike to thispurpose. As he succeeds, his somnambulism grows profound. He bribeslegislatures, buys judges, "controls" primaries, and then goes and hiresother men to tell him that it is all glorious and right. And thefunniest thing about it is that this arch-deceiver believes all that theytell him. He reads only the newspapers and magazines that tell him whathe wants to be told, listens only to the biologists who tell him that heis the finest product of the struggle for existence, and herds only withhis own kind, where, like the monkey-folk, they teeter up and down andtell one another how great they are. 

In the course of his life godlike he ignores the flesh--until he gets totable. He raises his hands in horror at the thought of the brutishprize-fighter, and then sits down and gorges himself on roast beef, rareand red, running blood under every sawing thrust of the implement calleda knife. He has a piece of cloth which he calls a napkin, with which hewipes from his lips, and from the hair on his lips, the greasy juices ofthe meat. 

He is fastidiously nauseated at the thought of two prize-fightersbruising each other with their fists; and at the same time, because itwill cost him some money, he will refuse to protect the machines in hisfactory, though he is aware that the lack of such protection every yearmangles, batters, and destroys out of all humanness thousands ofworking-men, women, and children. He will chatter about things refinedand spiritual and godlike like himself, and he and the men who herd withhim will calmly adulterate the commodities they put upon the market andwhich annually kill tens of thousands of babies and young children. 

He will recoil at the suggestion of the horrid spectacle of two menconfronting each other with gloved hands in the roped arena, and at thesame time he will clamour for larger armies and larger navies, for moredestructive war machines, which, with a single discharge, will disruptand rip to pieces more human beings than have died in the whole historyof prize-fighting. He will bribe a city council for a franchise or astate legislature for a commercial privilege; but he has never beenknown, in all his sleep-walking history, to bribe any legislative body inorder to achieve any moral end, such as, for instance, abolition ofprize-fighting, child-labour laws, pure food bills, or old age pensions. 

"Ah, but we do not stand for the commercial life, " object the refined, scholarly, and professional men. They are also sleep-walkers. They donot stand for the commercial life, but neither do they stand against itwith all their strength. They submit to it, to the brutality and carnageof it. They develop classical economists who announce that the onlypossible way for men and women to get food and shelter is by the existingmethod. They produce university professors, men who claim the _role_ ofteachers, and who at the same time claim that the austere ideal oflearning is passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence. They servethe men who lead the commercial life, give to their sons somnambulisticeducations, preach that sleep-walking is the only way to walk, and thatthe persons who walk otherwise are atavisms or anarchists. They paintpictures for the commercial men, write books for them, sing songs forthem, act plays for them, and dose them with various drugs when theirbodies have grown gross or dyspeptic from overeating and lack ofexercise. 

Then there are the good, kind somnambulists who don't prize-fight, whodon't play the commercial game, who don't teach and preach somnambulism, who don't do anything except live on the dividends that are coined out ofthe wan, white fluid that runs in the veins of little children, out ofmothers' tears, the blood of strong men, and the groans and sighs of theold. The receiver is as bad as the thief--ay, and the thief is finerthan the receiver; he at least has the courage to run the risk. But thegood, kind people who don't do anything won't believe this, and theassertion will make them angry--for a moment. They possess several magicphrases, which are like the incantations of a voodoo doctor drivingdevils away. The phrases that the good, kind people repeat to themselvesand to one another sound like "abstinence, " "temperance, " "thrift, ""virtue. " Sometimes they say them backward, when they sound like"prodigality, " "drunkenness, " "wastefulness, " and "immorality. " They donot really know the meaning of these phrases, but they think they do, andthat is all that is necessary for somnambulists. The calm repetition ofsuch phrases invariably drives away the waking devils and lulls toslumber. 

Our statesmen sell themselves and their country for gold. Our municipalservants and state legislators commit countless treasons. The world ofgraft! The world of betrayal! The world of somnambulism, whose exaltedand sensitive citizens are outraged by the knockouts of the prize-ring, and who annually not merely knock out, but kill, thousands of babies andchildren by means of child labour and adulterated food. Far better tohave the front of one's face pushed in by the fist of an honestprize-fighter than to have the lining of one's stomach corroded by theembalmed beef of a dishonest manufacturer. 

In a prize-fight men are classed. A lightweight fights with alight-weight; he never fights with a heavy-weight, and foul blows are notallowed. Yet in the world of the somnambulists, where soar thesublimated spirits, there are no classes, and foul blows are continuallystruck and never disallowed. Only they are not called foul blows. Theworld of claw and fang and fist and club has passed away--so say thesomnambulists. A rebate is not an elongated claw. A Wall Street raid isnot a fang slash. Dummy boards of directors and fake accountings are notfoul blows of the fist under the belt. A present of coal stock by a mineoperator to a railroad official is not a claw rip to the bowels of arival mine operator. The hundred million dollars with which acombination beats down to his knees a man with a million dollars is not aclub. The man who walks in his sleep says it is not a club. So say allof his kind with which he herds. They gather together and solemnly andgloatingly make and repeat certain noises that sound like "discretion, ""acumen, " "initiative, " "enterprise. " These noises are especiallygratifying when they are made backward. They mean the same things, butthey sound different. And in either case, forward or backward, thespirit of the dream is not disturbed. 

When a man strikes a foul blow in the prize-ring the fight is immediatelystopped, he is declared the loser, and he is hissed by the audience as heleaves the ring. But when a man who walks in his sleep strikes a foulblow he is immediately declared the victor and awarded the prize; andamid acclamations he forthwith turns his prize into a seat in the UnitedStates Senate, into a grotesque palace on Fifth Avenue, and into endowedchurches, universities and libraries, to say nothing of subsidizednewspapers, to proclaim his greatness. 

The red animal in the somnambulist will out. He decries the carnalcombat of the prize-ring, and compels the red animal to spiritual combat. The poisoned lie, the nasty, gossiping tongue, the brutality of theunkind epigram, the business and social nastiness and treachery ofto-day--these are the thrusts and scratches of the red animal when thesomnambulist is in charge. They are not the upper cuts and short armjabs and jolts and slugging blows of the spirit. They are the foul blowsof the spirit that have never been disbarred, as the foul blows of theprize-ring have been disbarred. (Would it not be preferable for a man tostrike one full on the mouth with his fist than for him to tell a lieabout one, or malign those that are nearest and dearest?)

For these are the crimes of the spirit, and, alas! they are so much morefrequent than blows on the mouth. And whosoever exalts the spirit overthe flesh, by his own creed avers that a crime of the spirit is vastlymore terrible than a crime of the flesh. Thus stand the somnambulistsconvicted by their own creed--only they are not real men, alive andawake, and they proceed to mutter magic phrases that dispel all doubt asto their undiminished and eternal gloriousness. 

It is well enough to let the ape and tiger die, but it is hardly fair tokill off the natural and courageous apes and tigers and allow the spawnof cowardly apes and tigers to live. The prize-fighting apes and tigerswill die all in good time in the course of natural evolution, but theywill not die so long as the cowardly, somnambulistic apes and tigers cluband scratch and slash. This is not a brief for the prize-fighter. It isa blow of the fist between the eyes of the somnambulists, teetering upand down, muttering magic phrases, and thanking God that they are not asother animals. 

GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA. _June_ 1900. 

THE DIGNITY OF DOLLARS

Man is a blind, helpless creature. He looks back with pride upon hisgoodly heritage of the ages, and yet obeys unwittingly every mandate ofthat heritage; for it is incarnate with him, and in it are embedded thedeepest roots of his soul. Strive as he will, he cannot escapeit--unless he be a genius, one of those rare creations to whom alone isgranted the privilege of doing entirely new and original things inentirely new and original ways. But the common clay-born man, possessingonly talents, may do only what has been done before him. At the best, ifhe work hard, and cherish himself exceedingly, he may duplicate any orall previous performances of his kind; he may even do some of thembetter; but there he stops, the composite hand of his whole ancestrybearing heavily upon him. 

And again, in the matter of his ideas, which have been thrust upon him, and which he has been busily garnering from the great world ever sincethe day when his eyes first focussed and he drew, startled, against thewarm breast of his mother--the tyranny of these he cannot shake off. Servants of his will, they at the same time master him. They may notcoerce genius, but they dictate and sway every action of the clay-born. If he hesitate on the verge of a new departure, they whip him back intothe well-greased groove; if he pause, bewildered, at sight of someunexplored domain, they rise like ubiquitous finger-posts and direct himby the village path to the communal meadow. And he permits these things, and continues to permit them, for he cannot help them, and he is a slave. Out of his ideas he may weave cunning theories, beautiful ideals; but heis working with ropes of sand. At the slightest stress, the last leastbit of cohesion flits away, and each idea flies apart from its fellows, while all clamour that he do this thing, or think this thing, in theancient and time-honoured way. He is only a clay-born; so he bends hisneck. He knows further that the clay-born are a pitiful, pitilessmajority, and that he may do nothing which they do not do. 

It is only in some way such as this that we may understand and explainthe dignity which attaches itself to dollars. In the watches of thenight, we may assure ourselves that there is no such dignity; butjostling with our fellows in the white light of day, we find that it doesexist, and that we ourselves measure ourselves by the dollars we happento possess. They give us confidence and carriage and dignity--ay, apersonal dignity which goes down deeper than the garments with which wehide our nakedness. The world, when it knows nothing else of him, measures a man by his clothes; but the man himself, if he be neither agenius nor a philosopher, but merely a clay-born, measures himself by hispocket-book. He cannot help it, and can no more fling it from him thancan the bashful young man his self-consciousness when crossing a ballroomfloor. 

I remember once absenting myself from civilization for weary months. When I returned, it was to a strange city in another country. The peoplewere but slightly removed from my own breed, and they spoke the sametongue, barring a certain barbarous accent which I learned was far olderthan the one imbibed by me with my mother's milk. A fur cap, soiled andsinged by many camp-fires, half sheltered the shaggy tendrils of my uncuthair. My foot-gear was of walrus hide, cunningly blended with seal gut. The remainder of my dress was as primal and uncouth. I was a sight togive merriment to gods and men. Olympus must have roared at my coming. The world, knowing me not, could judge me by my clothes alone. But Irefused to be so judged. My spiritual backbone stiffened, and I held myhead high, looking all men in the eyes. And I did these things, not thatI was an egotist, not that I was impervious to the critical glances of myfellows, but because of a certain hogskin belt, plethoric andsweat-bewrinkled, which buckled next the skin above the hips. Oh, it'sabsurd, I grant, but had that belt not been so circumstanced, and sosituated, I should have shrunk away into side streets and back alleys, walking humbly and avoiding all gregarious humans except those who werelikewise abroad without belts. Why? I do not know, save that in suchway did my fathers before me. 

Viewed in the light of sober reason, the whole thing was preposterous. But I walked down the gang-plank with the mien of a hero, of a barbarianwho knew himself to be greater than the civilization he invaded. I waspossessed of the arrogance of a Roman governor. At last I knew what itwas to be born to the purple, and I took my seat in the hotel carriage asthough it were my chariot about to proceed with me to the imperialpalace. People discreetly dropped their eyes before my proud gaze, andinto their hearts I know I forced the query, What manner of man can thismortal be? I was superior to convention, and the very garb whichotherwise would have damned me tended toward my elevation. And all thiswas due, not to my royal lineage, nor to the deeds I had done and thechampions I had overthrown, but to a certain hogskin belt buckled nextthe skin. The sweat of months was upon it, toil had defaced it, and itwas not a creation such as would appeal to the aesthetic mind; but it wasplethoric. There was the arcanum; each yellow grain conduced to myexaltation, and the sum of these grains was the sum of my mightiness. Had they been less, just so would have been my stature; more, and Ishould have reached the sky. 

And this was my royal progress through that most loyal city. I purchaseda host of things from the tradespeople, and bought me such pleasures anddiversions as befitted one who had long been denied. I scattered my goldlavishly, nor did I chaffer over prices in mart or exchange. And, because of these things I did, I demanded homage. Nor was it refused. Imoved through wind-swept groves of limber backs; across sunny glades, lighted by the beaming rays from a thousand obsequious eyes; and when Itired of this, basked on the greensward of popular approval. Money wasvery good, I thought, and for the time was content. But there rushedupon me the words of Erasmus, "When I get some money I shall buy me someGreek books, and afterwards some clothes, " and a great shame wrapped mearound. But, luckily for my soul's welfare, I reflected and was saved. By the clearer vision vouchsafed me, I beheld Erasmus, fire-flashing, heaven-born, while I--I was merely a clay-born, a son of earth. For agiddy moment I had forgotten this, and tottered. And I rolled over on mygreensward, caught a glimpse of a regiment of undulating backs, andthanked my particular gods that such moods of madness were passing brief. 

But on another day, receiving with kingly condescension the service of mygood subjects' backs, I remembered the words of another man, long sincelaid away, who was by birth a nobleman, by nature a philosopher and agentleman, and who by circumstance yielded up his head upon the block. "That a man of lead, " he once remarked, "who has no more sense than a logof wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and goodmen to serve him, only because he has a great heap of that metal; andthat if, by some accident or trick of law (which sometimes produces asgreat changes as chance itself), all this wealth should pass from themaster to the meanest varlet of his whole family, he himself would verysoon become one of his servants, as if he were a thing that belonged tohis wealth, and so was bound to follow its fortune. "

And when I had remembered this much, I unwisely failed to pause andreflect. So I gathered my belongings together, cinched my hogskin belttight about me, and went away to my own country. It was a very foolishthing to do. I am sure it was. But when I had recovered my reason, Ifell upon my particular gods and berated them mightily, and as penancefor their watchlessness placed them away amongst dust and cobwebs. Ohno, not for long. They are again enshrined, as bright and polished as ofyore, and my destiny is once more in their keeping. 

It is given that travail and vicissitude mark time to man's footsteps ashe stumbles onward toward the grave; and it is well. Without the bitterone may not know the sweet. The other day--nay, it was but yesterday--Ifell before the rhythm of fortune. The inexorable pendulum had swung thecounter direction, and there was upon me an urgent need. The hogskinbelt was flat as famine, nor did it longer gird my loins. From my windowI could descry, at no great distance, a very ordinary mortal of a man, working industriously among his cabbages. I thought: Here am I, capableof teaching him much concerning the field wherein he labours--thenitrogenic--why of the fertilizer, the alchemy of the sun, themicroscopic cell-structure of the plant, the cryptic chemistry of rootand runner--but thereat he straightened his work-wearied back and rested. His eyes wandered over what he had produced in the sweat of his brow, then on to mine. And as he stood there drearily, he became reproachincarnate. "Unstable as water, " he said (I am sure he did)--"unstable aswater, thou shalt not excel. Man, where are _your_ cabbages?"

I shrank back. Then I waxed rebellious. I refused to answer thequestion. He had no right to ask it, and his presence was an affrontupon the landscape. And a dignity entered into me, and my neck wasstiffened, my head poised. I gathered together certain certificates ofgoods and chattels, pointed my heel towards him and his cabbages, andjourneyed townward. I was yet a man. There was naught in thosecertificates to be ashamed of. But alack-a-day! While my heels thrustthe cabbage-man beyond the horizon, my toes were drawing me, faltering, like a timid old beggar, into a roaring spate of humanity--men, women, and children without end. They had no concern with me, nor I with them. I knew it; I felt it. Like She, after her fire-bath in the womb of theworld, I dwindled in my own sight. My feet were uncertain and heavy, andmy soul became as a meal sack, limp with emptiness and tied in themiddle. People looked upon me scornfully, pitifully, reproachfully. (Ican swear they did. ) In every eye I read the question, Man, where areyour cabbages?

So I avoided their looks, shrinking close to the kerbstone and by furtiveglances directing my progress. At last I came hard by the place, andpeering stealthily to the right and left that none who knew might beholdme, I entered hurriedly, in the manner of one committing an abomination. 'Fore God! I had done no evil, nor had I wronged any man, nor did Icontemplate evil; yet was I aware of evil. Why? I do not know, savethat there goes much dignity with dollars, and being devoid of the one Iwas destitute of the other. The person I sought practised a professionas ancient as the oracles but far more lucrative. It is mentioned inExodus; so it must have been created soon after the foundations of theworld; and despite the thunder of ecclesiastics and the mailed hand ofkings and conquerors, it has endured even to this day. Nor is it unfairto presume that the accounts of this most remarkable business will not beclosed until the Trumps of Doom are sounded and all things brought tofinal balance. 

Wherefore it was in fear and trembling, and with great modesty of spirit, that I entered the Presence. To confess that I was shocked were to do myfeelings an injustice. Perhaps the blame may be shouldered upon Shylock, Fagin, and their ilk; but I had conceived an entirely different type ofindividual. This man--why, he was clean to look at, his eyes were blue, with the tired look of scholarly lucubrations, and his skin had thenormal pallor of sedentary existence. He was reading a book, sober andleather-bound, while on his finely moulded, intellectual head reposed ablack skull-cap. For all the world his look and attitude were those of acollege professor. My heart gave a great leap. Here was hope! But no;he fixed me with a cold and glittering eye, searching with the chill ofspace till my financial status stood before him shivering and ashamed. Icommuned with myself: By his brow he is a thinker, but his intellect hasbeen prostituted to a mercenary exaction of toll from misery. His nervecentres of judgment and will have not been employed in solving theproblems of life, but in maintaining his own solvency by the insolvencyof others. He trades upon sorrow and draws a livelihood from misfortune. He transmutes tears into treasure, and from nakedness and hunger garbshimself in clean linen and develops the round of his belly. He is abloodsucker and a vampire. He lays unholy hands on heaven and hell atcent. Per cent. , and his very existence is a sacrilege and a blasphemy. And yet here am I, wilting before him, an arrant coward, with no respectfor him and less for myself. Why should this shame be? Let me rouse inmy strength and smite him, and, by so doing, wipe clean one offensivepage. 

But no. As I said, he fixed me with a cold and glittering eye, and in itwas the aristocrat's undisguised contempt for the _canaille_. Behind himwas the solid phalanx of a bourgeois society. Law and order upheld him, while I titubated, cabbageless, on the ragged edge. Moreover, he waspossessed of a formula whereby to extract juice from a flattened lemon, and he would do business with me. 

I told him my desires humbly, in quavering syllables. In return, hecraved my antecedents and residence, pried into my private life, insolently demanded how many children had I and did I live in wedlock, and asked divers other unseemly and degrading questions. Ay, I wastreated like a thief convicted before the act, till I produced mycertificates of goods and chattels aforementioned. Never had theyappeared so insignificant and paltry as then, when he sniffed over themwith the air of one disdainfully doing a disagreeable task. It is said, "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury ofvictuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury"; but he evidentlywas not my brother, for he demanded seventy per cent. I put my signatureto certain indentures, received my pottage, and fled from his presence. 

Faugh! I was glad to be quit of it. How good the outside air was! Ionly prayed that neither my best friend nor my worst enemy should everbecome aware of what had just transpired. Ere I had gone a block Inoticed that the sun had brightened perceptibly, the street become lesssordid, the gutter mud less filthy. In people's eyes the cabbagequestion no longer brooded. And there was a spring to my body, anelasticity of step as I covered the pavement. Within me coursed anunwonted sap, and I felt as though I were about to burst out into leavesand buds and green things. My brain was clear and refreshed. There wasa new strength to my arm. My nerves were tingling and I was a-pulse withthe times. All men were my brothers. Save one--yes, save one. I wouldgo back and wreck the establishment. I would disrupt that leather-boundvolume, violate that black skullcap, burn the accounts. But before fancycould father the act, I recollected myself and all which had passed. Nordid I marvel at my new-horn might, at my ancient dignity which hadreturned. There was a tinkling chink as I ran the yellow pieces throughmy fingers, and with the golden music rippling round me I caught a deeperinsight into the mystery of things. 

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. _February_ 1900. 

GOLIAH

In 1924--to be precise, on the morning of January 3--the city of SanFrancisco awoke to read in one of its daily papers a curious letter, which had been received by Walter Bassett and which had evidently beenwritten by some crank. Walter Bassett was the greatest captain ofindustry west of the Rockies, and was one of the small group thatcontrolled the nation in everything but name. As such, he was therecipient of lucubrations from countless cranks; but this particularlucubration was so different from the average ruck of similar lettersthat, instead of putting it into the waste-basket, he had turned it overto a reporter. It was signed "Goliah, " and the superscription gave hisaddress as "Palgrave Island. " The letter was as follows:

 "MR. WALTER BASSETT, "DEAR SIR:

 "I am inviting you, with nine of your fellow-captains of industry, to visit me here on my island for the purpose of considering plans for the reconstruction of society upon a more rational basis. Up to the present, social evolution has been a blind and aimless, blundering thing. The time has come for a change. Man has risen from the vitalized slime of the primeval sea to the mastery of matter; but he has not yet mastered society. Man is to-day as much the slave to his collective stupidity, as a hundred thousand generations ago he was a slave to matter. 

 "There are two theoretical methods whereby man may become the master of society, and make of society an intelligent and efficacious device for the pursuit and capture of happiness and laughter. The first theory advances the proposition that no government can be wiser or better than the people that compose that government; that reform and development must spring from the individual; that in so far as the individuals become wiser and better, by that much will their government become wiser and better; in short, that the majority of individuals must become wiser and better, before their government becomes wiser and better. The mob, the political convention, the abysmal brutality and stupid ignorance of all concourses of people, give the lie to this theory. In a mob the collective intelligence and mercy is that of the least intelligent and most brutal members that compose the mob. On the other hand, a thousand passengers will surrender themselves to the wisdom and discretion of the captain, when their ship is in a storm on the sea. In such matter, he is the wisest and most experienced among them. 

 "The second theory advances the proposition that the majority of the people are not pioneers, that they are weighted down by the inertia of the established; that the government that is representative of them represents only their feebleness, and futility, and brutishness; that this blind thing called government is not the serf of their wills, but that they are the serfs of it; in short, speaking always of the great mass, that they do not make government, but that government makes them, and that government is and has been a stupid and awful monster, misbegotten of the glimmerings of intelligence that come from the inertia-crushed mass. 

 "Personally, I incline to the second theory. Also, I am impatient. For a hundred thousand generations, from the first social groups of our savage forbears, government has remained a monster. To-day, the inertia-crushed mass has less laughter in it than ever before. In spite of man's mastery of matter, human suffering and misery and degradation mar the fair world. 

 "Wherefore I have decided to step in and become captain of this world-ship for a while. I have the intelligence and the wide vision of the skilled expert. Also, I have the power. I shall be obeyed. The men of all the world shall perform my bidding and make governments so that they shall become laughter-producers. These modelled governments I have in mind shall not make the people happy, wise, and noble by decree; but they shall give opportunity for the people to become happy, wise, and noble. 

 "I have spoken. I have invited you, and nine of your fellow-captains, to confer with me. On March third the yacht _Energon_ will sail from San Francisco. You are requested to be on board the night before. This is serious. The affairs of the world must be handled for a time by a strong hand. Mine is that strong hand. If you fail to obey my summons, you will die. Candidly, I do not expect that you will obey. But your death for failure to obey will cause obedience on the part of those I subsequently summon. You will have served a purpose. And please remember that I have no unscientific sentimentality about the value of human life. I carry always in the background of my consciousness the innumerable billions of lives that are to laugh and be happy in future aeons on the earth. 

 "Yours for the reconstruction of society, "GOLIAH. "

The publication of this letter did not cause even local amusement. Menmight have smiled to themselves as they read it, but it was so palpablythe handiwork of a crank that it did not merit discussion. Interest didnot arouse till next morning. An Associated Press despatch to theEastern states, followed by interviews by eager-nosed reporters, hadbrought out the names of the other nine captains of industry who hadreceived similar letters, but who had not thought the matter ofsufficient importance to be made public. But the interest aroused wasmild, and it would have died out quickly had not Gabberton cartooned achronic presidential aspirant as "Goliah. " Then came the song that wassung hilariously from sea to sea, with the refrain, "Goliah will catchyou if you don't watch out. "

The weeks passed and the incident was forgotten. Walter Bassett hadforgotten it likewise; but on the evening of February 22, he was calledto the telephone by the Collector of the Port. "I just wanted to tellyou, " said the latter, "that the yacht _Energon_ has arrived and gone toanchor in the stream off Pier Seven. "

What happened that night Walter Bassett has never divulged. But it isknown that he rode down in his auto to the water front, chartered one ofCrowley's launches, and was put aboard the strange yacht. It is furtherknown that when he returned to the shore, three hours later, heimmediately despatched a sheaf of telegrams to his nine fellow-captainsof industry who had received letters from Goliah. These telegrams weresimilarly worded, and read: "The yacht _Energon_ has arrived. There issomething in this. I advise you to come. "

Bassett was laughed at for his pains. It was a huge laugh that went up(for his telegrams had been made public), and the popular song on Goliahrevived and became more popular than ever. Goliah and Bassett werecartooned and lampooned unmercifully, the former, as the Old Man of theSea, riding on the latter's neck. The laugh tittered and rippled throughclubs and social circles, was restrainedly merry in the editorialcolumns, and broke out in loud guffaws in the comic weeklies. There wasa serious side as well, and Bassett's sanity was gravely questioned bymany, and especially by his business associates. 

Bassett had ever been a short-tempered man, and after he sent the secondsheaf of telegrams to his brother captains, and had been laughed atagain, he remained silent. In this second sheaf he had said: "Come, Iimplore you. As you value your life, come. " He arranged all hisbusiness affairs for an absence, and on the night of March 2 went onboard the _Energon_. The latter, properly cleared, sailed next morning. And next morning the newsboys in every city and town were crying "Extra. "

In the slang of the day, Goliah had delivered the goods. The ninecaptains of industry who had failed to accept his invitation were dead. A sort of violent disintegration of the tissues was the report of thevarious autopsies held on the bodies of the slain millionaires; yet thesurgeons and physicians (the most highly skilled in the land hadparticipated) would not venture the opinion that the men had been slain. Much less would they venture the conclusion, "at the hands of partiesunknown. " It was all too mysterious. They were stunned. Theirscientific credulity broke down. They had no warrant in the whole domainof science for believing that an anonymous person on Palgrave Island hadmurdered the poor gentlemen. 

One thing was quickly learned, however; namely, that Palgrave Island wasno myth. It was charted and well known to all navigators, lying on theline of 160 west longitude, right at its intersection by the tenthparallel north latitude, and only a few miles away from Diana Shoal. Like Midway and Fanning, Palgrave Island was isolated, volcanic and coralin formation. Furthermore, it was uninhabited. A survey ship, in 1887, had visited the place and reported the existence of several springs andof a good harbour that was very dangerous of approach. And that was allthat was known of the tiny speck of land that was soon to have focussedon it the awed attention of the world. 

Goliah remained silent till March 24. On the morning of that day, thenewspapers published his second letter, copies of which had been receivedby the ten chief politicians of the United States--ten leading men in thepolitical world who were conventionally known as "statesmen. " Theletter, with the same superscription as before, was as follows:

 "DEAR SIR:

 "I have spoken in no uncertain tone. I must be obeyed. You may consider this an invitation or a summons; but if you still wish to tread this earth and laugh, you will be aboard the yacht _Energon_, in San Francisco harbour, not later than the evening of April 5. It is my wish and my will that you confer with me here on Palgrave Island in the matter of reconstructing society upon some rational basis. 

 "Do not misunderstand me, when I tell you that I am one with a theory. I want to see that theory work, and therefore I call upon your cooperation. In this theory of mine, lives are but pawns; I deal with quantities of lives. I am after laughter, and those that stand in the way of laughter must perish. The game is big. There are fifteen hundred million human lives to-day on the planet. What is your single life against them? It is as naught, in my theory. And remember that mine is the power. Remember that I am a scientist, and that one life, or one million of lives, mean nothing to me as arrayed against the countless billions of billions of the lives of the generations to come. It is for their laughter that I seek to reconstruct society now; and against them your own meagre little life is a paltry thing indeed. 

 "Whoso has power can command his fellows. By virtue of that military device known as the phalanx, Alexander conquered his bit of the world. By virtue of that chemical device, gunpowder, Cortes with his several hundred cut-throats conquered the empire of the Montezumas. Now I am in possession of a device that is all my own. In the course of a century not more than half a dozen fundamental discoveries or inventions are made. I have made such an invention. The possession of it gives me the mastery of the world. I shall use this invention, not for commercial exploitation, but for the good of humanity. For that purpose I want help--willing agents, obedient hands; and I am strong enough to compel the service. I am taking the shortest way, though I am in no hurry. I shall not clutter my speed with haste. 

 "The incentive of material gain developed man from the savage to the semi-barbarian he is to-day. This incentive has been a useful device for the development of the human; but it has now fulfilled its function and is ready to be cast aside into the scrap-heap of rudimentary vestiges such as gills in the throat and belief in the divine right of kings. Of course you do not think so; but I do not see that that will prevent you from aiding me to fling the anachronism into the scrap-heap. For I tell you now that the time has come when mere food and shelter and similar sordid things shall be automatic, as free and easy and involuntary of access as the air. I shall make them automatic, what of my discovery and the power that discovery gives me. And with food and shelter automatic, the incentive of material gain passes away from the world for ever. With food and shelter automatic, the higher incentives will universally obtain--the spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual incentives that will tend to develop and make beautiful and noble body, mind, and spirit. Then all the world will be dominated by happiness and laughter. It will be the reign of universal laughter. 

 "Yours for that day, "GOLIAH. "

Still the world would not believe. The ten politicians were atWashington, so that they did not have the opportunity of being convincedthat Bassett had had, and not one of them took the trouble to journey outto San Francisco to make the opportunity. As for Goliah, he was hailedby the newspapers as another Tom Lawson with a panacea; and there werespecialists in mental disease who, by analysis of Goliah's letters, proved conclusively that he was a lunatic. 

The yacht _Energon_ arrived in the harbour of San Francisco on theafternoon of April 5, and Bassett came ashore. But the _Energon_ did notsail next day, for not one of the ten summoned politicians had elected tomake the journey to Palgrave Island. The newsboys, however, called"Extra" that day in all the cities. The ten politicians were dead. Theyacht, lying peacefully at anchor in the harbour, became the centre ofexcited interest. She was surrounded by a flotilla of launches androwboats, and many tugs and steamboats ran excursions to her. While therabble was firmly kept off, the proper authorities and even reporterswere permitted to board her. The mayor of San Francisco and the chief ofpolice reported that nothing suspicious was to be seen upon her, and theport authorities announced that her papers were correct and in order inevery detail. Many photographs and columns of descriptive matter wererun in the newspapers. 

The crew was reported to be composed principally ofScandinavians--fair-haired, blue-eyed Swedes, Norwegians afflicted withthe temperamental melancholy of their race, stolid Russian Finns, and aslight sprinkling of Americans and English. It was noted that there wasnothing mercurial and flyaway about them. They seemed weighty men, oppressed by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity. A soberseriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them. Theyappeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by someoverwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand. Thecaptain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was cartooned in thepapers as "Gloomy Gus" (the pessimistic hero of the comic supplement). 

Some sea-captain recognized the _Energon_ as the yacht _Scud_, once ownedby Merrivale of the New York Yacht Club. With this clue it was soonascertained that the _Scud_ had disappeared several years before. Theagent who sold her reported the purchaser to be merely another agent, aman he had seen neither before nor since. The yacht had beenreconstructed at Duffey's Shipyard in New Jersey. The change in her nameand registry occurred at that time and had been legally executed. Thenthe _Energon_ had disappeared in the shroud of mystery. 

In the meantime, Bassett was going crazy--at least his friends andbusiness associates said so. He kept away from his vast businessenterprises and said that he must hold his hands until the other mastersof the world could join with him in the reconstruction of society--proofindubitable that Goliah's bee had entered his bonnet. To reporters hehad little to say. He was not at liberty, he said, to relate what he hadseen on Palgrave Island; but he could assure them that the matter wasserious, the most serious thing that had ever happened. His final wordwas that, the world was on the verge of a turnover, for good or ill hedid not know, but, one way or the other, he was absolutely convinced thatthe turnover was coming. As for business, business could go hang. Hehad seen things, he had, and that was all there was to it. 

There was a great telegraphing, during this period, between the localFederal officials and the state and war departments at Washington. Asecret attempt was made late one afternoon to board the _Energon_ andplace the captain under arrest--the Attorney-General having given theopinion that the captain could be held for the murder of the ten"statesmen. " The government launch was seen to leave Meigg's Wharf andsteer for the _Energon_, and that was the last ever seen of the launchand the men on board of it. The government tried to keep the affairhushed up, but the cat was slipped out of the bag by the families of themissing men, and the papers were filled with monstrous versions of theaffair. 

The government now proceeded to extreme measures. The battleship_Alaska_ was ordered to capture the strange yacht, or, failing that, tosink her. These were secret instructions; but thousands of eyes, fromthe water front and from the shipping in the harbour, witnessed whathappened that afternoon. The battleship got under way and steamed slowlytoward the _Energon_. At half a mile distant the battleship blewup--simply blew up, that was all, her shattered frame sinking to thebottom of the bay, a riff-raff of wreckage and a few survivors strewingthe surface. Among the survivors was a young lieutenant who had hadcharge of the wireless on board the _Alaska_. The reporters got hold ofhim first, and he talked. No sooner had the _Alaska_ got under way, hesaid, than a message was received from the _Energon_. It was in theinternational code, and it was a warning to the _Alaska_ to come nonearer than half a mile. He had sent the message, through the speakingtube, immediately to the captain. He did not know anything more, exceptthat the _Energon_ twice repeated the message and that five minutesafterward the explosion occurred. The captain of the _Alaska_ hadperished with his ship, and nothing more was to be learned. 

The _Energon_, however, promptly hoisted anchor and cleared out to sea. A great clamour was raised by the papers; the government was charged withcowardice and vacillation in its dealings with a mere pleasure yacht anda lunatic who called himself "Goliah, " and immediate and decisive actionwas demanded. Also, a great cry went up about the loss of life, especially the wanton killing of the ten "statesmen. " Goliah promptlyreplied. In fact, so prompt was his reply that the experts in wirelesstelegraphy announced that, since it was impossible to send wirelessmessages so great a distance, Goliah was in their very midst and not onPalgrave Island. Goliah's letter was delivered to the Associated Pressby a messenger boy who had been engaged on the street. The letter was asfollows:

 "What are a few paltry lives? In your insane wars you destroy millions of lives and think nothing of it. In your fratricidal commercial struggle you kill countless babes, women, and men, and you triumphantly call the shambles 'individualism. ' I call it anarchy. I am going to put a stop to your wholesale destruction of human beings. I want laughter, not slaughter. Those of you who stand in the way of laughter will get slaughter. 

 "Your government is trying to delude you into believing that the destruction of the _Alaska_ was an accident. Know here and now that it was by my orders that the _Alaska_ was destroyed. In a few short months, all battleships on all seas will be destroyed or flung to the scrap-heap, and all nations shall disarm; fortresses shall be dismantled, armies disbanded, and warfare shall cease from the earth. Mine is the power. I am the will of God. The whole world shall be in vassalage to me, but it shall be a vassalage of peace. 

 "I am "GOLIAH. "

"Blow Palgrave Island out of the water!" was the head-line retort of thenewspapers. The government was of the same frame of mind, and theassembling of the fleets began. Walter Bassett broke out in ineffectualprotest, but was swiftly silenced by the threat of a lunacy commission. Goliah remained silent. Against Palgrave Island five great fleets werehurled--the Asiatic Squadron, the South Pacific Squadron, the NorthPacific Squadron, the Caribbean Squadron, and half of the North AtlanticSquadron, the two latter coming through the Panama Canal. 

"I have the honour to report that we sighted Palgrave Island on theevening of April 29, " ran the report of Captain Johnson, of thebattleship _North Dakota_, to the Secretary of the Navy. "The AsiaticSquadron was delayed and did not arrive until the morning of April 30. Acouncil of the admirals was held, and it was decided to attack early nextmorning. The destroyer, _Swift VII_, crept in, unmolested, and reportedno warlike preparations on the island. It noted several small merchantsteamers in the harbour, and the existence of a small village in ahopelessly exposed position that could be swept by our fire. 

"It had been decided that all the vessels should rush in, scattered, uponthe island, opening fire at three miles, and continuing to the edge ofthe reef, there to retain loose formation and engage. Palgrave Islandrepeatedly warned us, by wireless, in the international code, to keepoutside the ten-mile limit; but no heed was paid to the warnings. 

"The _North Dakota_ did not take part in the movement of the morning ofMay 1. This was due to a slight accident of the preceding night thattemporarily disabled her steering-gear. The morning of May 1 broke clearand calm. There was a slight breeze from the south-west that quicklydied away. The _North Dakota_ lay twelve miles off the island. At thesignal the squadrons charged in upon the island, from all sides, at fullspeed. Our wireless receiver continued to tick off warnings from theisland. The ten-mile limit was passed, and nothing happened. I watchedthrough my glasses. At five miles nothing happened; at four milesnothing happened; at three miles, the _New York_, in the lead on our sideof the island, opened fire. She fired only one shot. Then she blew up. The rest of the vessels never fired a shot. They began to blow up, everywhere, before our eyes. Several swerved about and started back, butthey failed to escape. The destroyer, _Dart XXX_, nearly made theten-mile limit when she blew up. She was the last survivor. No harmcame to the _North Dakota_, and that night, the steering-gear beingrepaired, I gave orders to sail for San Francisco. "

To say that the United States was stunned is but to expose the inadequacyof language. The whole world was stunned. It confronted that blight ofthe human brain, the unprecedented. Human endeavour was a jest, amonstrous futility, when a lunatic on a lonely island, who owned a yachtand an exposed village, could destroy five of the proudest fleets ofChristendom. And how had he done it? Nobody knew. The scientists laydown in the dust of the common road and wailed and gibbered. They didnot know. Military experts committed suicide by scores. The mightyfabric of warfare they had fashioned was a gossamer veil rent asunder bya miserable lunatic. It was too much for their sanity. Mere humanreason could not withstand the shock. As the savage is crushed by thesleight-of-hand of the witch doctor, so was the world crushed by themagic of Goliah. How did he do it? It was the awful face of the Unknownupon which the world gazed and by which it was frightened out of thememory of its proudest achievements. 

But all the world was not stunned. There was the invariableexception--the Island Empire of Japan. Drunken with the wine of successdeep-quaffed, without superstition and without faith in aught but its ownascendant star, laughing at the wreckage of science and mad with pride ofrace, it went forth upon the way of war. America's fleets had beendestroyed. From the battlements of heaven the multitudinous ancestralshades of Japan leaned down. The opportunity, God-given, had come. TheMikado was in truth a brother to the gods. 

The war-monsters of Japan were loosed in mighty fleets. The Philippineswere gathered in as a child gathers a nosegay. It took longer for thebattleships to travel to Hawaii, to Panama, and to the Pacific Coast. The United States was panic-stricken, and there arose the powerful partyof dishonourable peace. In the midst of the clamour the _Energon_arrived in San Francisco Bay and Goliah spoke once more. There was alittle brush as the _Energon_ came in, and a few explosions of magazinesoccurred along the war-tunnelled hills as the coast defences went tosmash. Also, the blowing up of the submarine mines in the Golden Gatemade a remarkably fine display. Goliah's message to the people of SanFrancisco, dated as usual from Palgrave Island, was published in thepapers. It ran:

 "Peace? Peace be with you. You shall have peace. I have spoken to this purpose before. And give you me peace. Leave my yacht _Energon_ alone. Commit one overt act against her and not one stone in San Francisco shall stand upon another. 

 "To-morrow let all good citizens go out upon the hills that slope down to the sea. Go with music and laughter and garlands. Make festival for the new age that is dawning. Be like children upon your hills, and witness the passing of war. Do not miss the opportunity. It is your last chance to behold what henceforth you will be compelled to seek in museums of antiquities. 

 "I promise you a merry day, "GOLIAH. "

The madness of magic was in the air. With the people it was as if alltheir gods had crashed and the heavens still stood. Order and law hadpassed away from the universe; but the sun still shone, the wind stillblew, the flowers still bloomed--that was the amazing thing about it. That water should continue to run downhill was a miracle. All thestabilities of the human mind and human achievement were crumbling. Theone stable thing that remained was Goliah, a madman on an island. And soit was that the whole population of San Francisco went forth next day incolossal frolic upon the hills that overlooked the sea. Brass bands andbanners went forth, brewery wagons and Sunday-school picnics--all thestrange heterogeneous groupings of swarming metropolitan life. 

On the sea-rim rose the smoke from the funnels of a hundred hostilevessels of war, all converging upon the helpless, undefended Golden Gate. And not all undefended, for out through the Golden Gate moved the_Energon_, a tiny toy of white, rolling like a straw in the stiff sea onthe bar where a strong ebb-tide ran in the teeth of the summersea-breeze. But the Japanese were cautious. Their thirty- andforty-thousand-ton battleships slowed down half a dozen miles offshoreand manoeuvred in ponderous evolutions, while tiny scout-boats (lean, six-funnelled destroyers) ran in, cutting blackly the flashing sea likeso many sharks. But, compared with the _Energon_, they were leviathans. Compared with them, the _Energon_ was as the sword of the arch-angelMichael, and they the forerunners of the hosts of hell. 

But the flashing of the sword, the good people of San Francisco, gatheredon her hills, never saw. Mysterious, invisible, it cleaved the air andsmote the mightiest blows of combat the world had ever witnessed. Thegood people of San Francisco saw little and understood less. They sawonly a million and a half tons of brine-cleaving, thunder-flingingfabrics hurled skyward and smashed back in ruin to sink into the sea. Itwas all over in five minutes. Remained upon the wide expanse of sea onlythe _Energon_, rolling white and toylike on the bar. 

Goliah spoke to the Mikado and the Elder Statesmen. It was only anordinary cable message, despatched from San Francisco by the captain ofthe _Energon_, but it was of sufficient moment to cause the immediatewithdrawal of Japan from the Philippines and of her surviving fleets fromthe sea. Japan the sceptical was converted. She had felt the weight ofGoliah's arm. And meekly she obeyed when Goliah commanded her todismantle her war vessels and to turn the metal into useful appliancesfor the arts of peace. In all the ports, navy-yards, machine-shops, andfoundries of Japan tens of thousands of brown-skinned artisans convertedthe war-monsters into myriads of useful things, such as ploughshares(Goliah insisted on ploughshares), gasolene engines, bridge-trusses, telephone and telegraph wires, steel rails, locomotives, and rollingstock for railways. It was a world-penance for a world to see, andpaltry indeed it made appear that earlier penance, barefooted in thesnow, of an emperor to a pope for daring to squabble over temporal power. 

Goliah's next summons was to the ten leading scientists of the UnitedStates. This time there was no hesitancy in obeying. The savants wereludicrously prompt, some of them waiting in San Francisco for weeks so asnot to miss the scheduled sailing-date. They departed on the _Energon_on June 15; and while they were on the sea, on the way to PalgraveIsland, Goliah performed another spectacular feat. Germany and Francewere preparing to fly at each other's throats. Goliah commanded peace. They ignored the command, tacitly agreeing to fight it out on land whereit seemed safer for the belligerently inclined. Goliah set the date ofJune 19 for the cessation of hostile preparations. Both countriesmobilized their armies on June 18, and hurled them at the commonfrontier. And on June 19, Goliah struck. All generals, war-secretaries, and jingo-leaders in the two countries died on that day; and that day twovast armies, undirected, like strayed sheep, walked over each other'sfrontiers and fraternized. But the great German war lord had escaped--itwas learned, afterward, by hiding in the huge safe where were stored thesecret archives of his empire. And when he emerged he was a verypenitent war lord, and like the Mikado of Japan he was set to workbeating his sword-blades into ploughshares and pruning-hooks. 

But in the escape of the German Emperor was discovered a greatsignificance. The scientists of the world plucked up courage, got backtheir nerve. One thing was conclusively evident--Goliah's power was notmagic. Law still reigned in the universe. Goliah's power hadlimitations, else had the German Emperor not escaped by secretly hidingin a steel safe. Many learned articles on the subject appeared in themagazines. 

The ten scientists arrived back from Palgrave Island on July 6. Heavyplatoons of police protected them from the reporters. No, they had notsee Goliah, they said in the one official interview that was vouchsafed;but they had talked with him, and they had seen things. They were notpermitted to state definitely all that they had seen and heard, but theycould say that the world was about to be revolutionized. Goliah was inthe possession of a tremendous discovery that placed all the world at hismercy, and it was a good thing for the world that Goliah was merciful. The ten scientists proceeded directly to Washington on a special train, where, for days, they were closeted with the heads of government, whilethe nation hung breathless on the outcome. 

But the outcome was a long time in arriving. From Washington thePresident issued commands to the masters and leading figures of thenation. Everything was secret. Day by day deputations of bankers, railway lords, captains of industry, and Supreme Court justices arrived;and when they arrived they remained. The weeks dragged on, and then, onAugust 25, began the famous issuance of proclamations. Congress and theSenate co-operated with the President in this, while the Supreme Courtjustices gave their sanction and the money lords and the captains ofindustry agreed. War was declared upon the capitalist masters of thenation. Martial law was declared over the whole United States. Thesupreme power was vested in the President. 

In one day, child-labour in the whole country was abolished. It was doneby decree, and the United States was prepared with its army to enforceits decrees. In the same day all women factory workers were dismissed totheir homes, and all the sweat-shops were closed. "But we cannot makeprofits!" wailed the petty capitalists. "Fools!" was the retort ofGoliah. "As if the meaning of life were profits! Give up yourbusinesses and your profit-mongering. " "But there is nobody to buy ourbusiness!" they wailed. "Buy and sell--is that all the meaning life hasfor you?" replied Goliah. "You have nothing to sell. Turn over yourlittle cut-throating, anarchistic businesses to the government so thatthey may be rationally organized and operated. " And the next day, bydecree, the government began taking possession of all factories, shops, mines, ships, railroads, and producing lands. 

The nationalization of the means of production and distribution went onapace. Here and there were sceptical capitalists of moment. They weremade prisoners and haled to Palgrave Island, and when they returned theyalways acquiesced in what the government was doing. A little later thejourney to Palgrave Island became unnecessary. When objection was made, the reply of the officials was "Goliah has spoken"--which was another wayof saying, "He must be obeyed. "

The captains of industry became heads of departments. It was found thatcivil engineers, for instance, worked just as well in government employas before, they had worked in private employ. It was found that men ofhigh executive ability could not violate their nature. They could notescape exercising their executive ability, any more than a crab couldescape crawling or a bird could escape flying. And so it was that allthe splendid force of the men who had previously worked for themselveswas now put to work for the good of society. The half-dozen greatrailway chiefs co-operated in the organizing of a national system ofrailways that was amazingly efficacious. Never again was there such athing as a car shortage. These chiefs were not the Wall Street railwaymagnates, but they were the men who formerly had done the real work whilein the employ of the Wall Street magnates. 

Wall Street was dead. There was no more buying and selling andspeculating. Nobody had anything to buy or sell. There was nothing inwhich to speculate. "Put the stock gamblers to work, " said Goliah; "givethose that are young, and that so desire, a chance to learn usefultrades. " "Put the drummers, and salesmen, and advertising agents, andreal estate agents to work, " said Goliah; and by hundreds of thousandsthe erstwhile useless middlemen and parasites went into usefuloccupations. The four hundred thousand idle gentlemen of the country whohad lived upon incomes were likewise put to work. Then there were a lotof helpless men in high places who were cleared out, the remarkable thingabout this being that they were cleared out by their own fellows. Ofthis class were the professional politicians, whose wisdom and powerconsisted of manipulating machine politics and of grafting. There was nolonger any graft. Since there were no private interests to purchasespecial privileges, no bribes were offered to legislators, andlegislators for the first time legislated for the people. The result wasthat men who were efficient, not in corruption, but in direction, foundtheir way into the legislatures. 

With this rational organization of society amazing results were broughtabout. The national day's work was eight hours, and yet productionincreased. In spite of the great permanent improvements and of theimmense amount of energy consumed in systematizing the competitive chaosof society, production doubled and tripled upon itself. The standard ofliving increased, and still consumption could not keep up withproduction. The maximum working age was decreased to fifty years, toforty-nine years, and to forty-eight years. The minimum working age wentup from sixteen years to eighteen years. The eight-hour day became aseven-hour day, and in a few months the national working day was reducedto five hours. 

In the meantime glimmerings were being caught, not of the identity ofGoliah, but of how he had worked and prepared for his assuming control ofthe world. Little things leaked out, clues were followed up, apparentlyunrelated things were pieced together. Strange stories of blacks stolenfrom Africa were remembered, of Chinese and Japanese contract coolies whohad mysteriously disappeared, of lonely South Sea Islands raided andtheir inhabitants carried away; stories of yachts and merchant steamers, mysteriously purchased, that had disappeared and the descriptions ofwhich remotely tallied with the crafts that had carried the Orientals andAfricans and islanders away. Where had Goliah got the sinews of war? wasthe question. And the surmised answer was: By exploiting these stolenlabourers. It was they that lived in the exposed village on PalgraveIsland. It was the product of their toil that had purchased the yachtsand merchant steamers and enabled Goliah's agents to permeate society andcarry out his will. And what was the product of their toil that hadgiven Goliah the wealth necessary to realize his plans? Commercialradium, the newspapers proclaimed; and radiyte, and radiosole, andargatium, and argyte, and the mysterious golyte (that had proved sovaluable in metallurgy). These were the new compounds, discovered in thefirst decade of the twentieth century, the commercial and scientific useof which had become so enormous in the second decade. 

The line of fruit boats that ran from Hawaii to San Francisco wasdeclared to be the property of Goliah. This was a surmise, for no otherowner could be discovered, and the agents who handled the shipments ofthe fruit boats were only agents. Since no one else owned the fruitboats, then Goliah must own them. The point of which is: _that it leakedout that the major portion of the world's supply in these preciouscompounds was brought to San Francisco by those very fruit boats_. Thatthe whole chain of surmise was correct was proved in later years whenGoliah's slaves were liberated and honourably pensioned by theinternational government of the world. It was at that time that the sealof secrecy was lifted from the lips of his agents and higher emissaries, and those that chose revealed much of the mystery of Goliah'sorganization and methods. His destroying angels, however, remained forever dumb. Who the men were who went forth to the high places and killedat his bidding will be unknown to the end of time--for kill they did, bymeans of that very subtle and then-mysterious force that Goliah haddiscovered and named "Energon. "

But at that time Energon, the little giant that was destined to do thework of the world, was unknown and undreamed of. Only Goliah knew, andhe kept his secret well. Even his agents, who were armed with it, andwho, in the case of the yacht _Energon_, destroyed a mighty fleet ofwar-ships by exploding their magazines, knew not what the subtle andpotent force was, nor how it was manufactured. They knew only one of itsmany uses, and in that one use they had been instructed by Goliah. It isnow well known that radium, and radiyte, and radiosole, and all the othercompounds, were by-products of the manufacture of Energon by Goliah fromthe sunlight; but at that time nobody knew what Energon was, and Goliahcontinued to awe and rule the world. 

One of the uses of Energon was in wireless telegraphy. It was by itsmeans that Goliah was able to communicate with his agents all over theworld. At that time the apparatus required by an agent was so clumsythat it could not be packed in anything less than a fair-sized steamertrunk. To-day, thanks to the improvements of Hendsoll, the perfectedapparatus can be carried in a coat pocket. 

It was in December, 1924, that Goliah sent out his famous "ChristmasLetter, " part of the text of which is here given:

 "So far, while I have kept the rest of the nations from each other's throats, I have devoted myself particularly to the United States. Now I have not given to the people of the United States a rational social organization. What I have done has been to compel them to make that organization themselves. There is more laughter in the United States these days, and there is more sense. Food and shelter are no longer obtained by the anarchistic methods of so-called individualism but are now wellnigh automatic. And the beauty of it is that the people of the United States have achieved all this for themselves. I did not achieve it for them. I repeat, they achieved it for themselves. All that I did was to put the fear of death in the hearts of the few that sat in the high places and obstructed the coming of rationality and laughter. The fear of death made those in the high places get out of the way, that was all, and gave the intelligence of man a chance to realize itself socially. 

 "In the year that is to come I shall devote myself to the rest of the world. I shall put the fear of death in the hearts of all that sit in the high places in all the nations. And they will do as they have done in the United States--get down out of the high places and give the intelligence of man a chance for social rationality. All the nations shall tread the path the United States is now on. 

 "And when all the nations are well along on that path, I shall have something else for them. But first they must travel that path for themselves. They must demonstrate that the intelligence of mankind to-day, with the mechanical energy now at its disposal, is capable of organizing society so that food and shelter be made automatic, labour be reduced to a three-hour day, and joy and laughter be made universal. And when that is accomplished, not by me but by the intelligence of mankind, then I shall make a present to the world of a new mechanical energy. This is my discovery. This Energon is nothing more nor less than the cosmic energy that resides in the solar rays. When it is harnessed by mankind it will do the work of the world. There will be no more multitudes of miners slaving out their lives in the bowels of the earth, no more sooty firemen and greasy engineers. All may dress in white if they so will. The work of life will have become play and young and old will be the children of joy, and the business of living will become joy; and they will compete, one with another, in achieving ethical concepts and spiritual heights, in fashioning pictures and songs, and stories, in statecraft and beauty craft, in the sweat and the endeavour of the wrestler and the runner and the player of games--all will compete, not for sordid coin and base material reward, but for the joy that shall be theirs in the development and vigour of flesh and in the development and keenness of spirit. All will be joy-smiths, and their task shall be to beat out laughter from the ringing anvil of life. 

 "And now one word for the immediate future. On New Year's Day all nations shall disarm, all fortresses and war-ships shall be dismantled, and all armies shall be disbanded. 

 "GOLIAH. "

On New Year's Day all the world disarmed. The millions of soldiers andsailors and workmen in the standing armies, in the navies, and in thecountless arsenals, machine-shops, and factories for the manufacture ofwar machinery, were dismissed to their homes. These many millions ofmen, as well as their costly war machinery, had hitherto been supportedon the back of labour. They now went into useful occupations, and thereleased labour giant heaved a mighty sigh of relief. The policing ofthe world was left to the peace officers and was purely social, whereaswar had been distinctly anti-social. 

Ninety per cent. Of the crimes against society had been crimes againstprivate property. With the passing of private property, at least in themeans of production, and with the organization of industry that gaveevery man a chance, the crimes against private property practicallyceased. The police forces everywhere were reduced repeatedly and againand again. Nearly all occasional and habitual criminals ceasedvoluntarily from their depredations. There was no longer any need forthem to commit crime. They merely changed with changing conditions. Asmaller number of criminals was put into hospitals and cured. And theremnant of the hopelessly criminal and degenerate was segregated. Andthe courts in all countries were likewise decreased in number again andagain. Ninety-five per cent. Of all civil cases had been squabbles overproperty, conflicts of property-rights, lawsuits, contests of wills, breaches of contract, bankruptcies, etc. With the passing of privateproperty, this ninety-five per cent. Of the cases that cluttered thecourts also passed. The courts became shadows, attenuated ghosts, rudimentary vestiges of the anarchistic times that had preceded thecoming of Goliah. 

The year 1925 was a lively year in the world's history. Goliah ruled theworld with a strong hand. Kings and emperors journeyed to PalgraveIsland, saw the wonders of Energon, and went away, with the fear of deathin their hearts, to abdicate thrones and crowns and hereditary licenses. When Goliah spoke to politicians (so-called "statesmen"), they obeyed . . . Or died. He dictated universal reforms, dissolved refractoryparliaments, and to the great conspiracy that was formed of mutinousmoney lords and captains of industry he sent his destroying angels. "Thetime is past for fooling, " he told them. "You are anachronisms. Youstand in the way of humanity. To the scrap-heap with you. " To thosethat protested, and they were many, he said: "This is no time forlogomachy. You can argue for centuries. It is what you have done in thepast. I have no time for argument. Get out of the way. "

With the exception of putting a stop to war, and of indicating the broadgeneral plan, Goliah did nothing. By putting the fear of death into thehearts of those that sat in the high places and obstructed progress, Goliah made the opportunity for the unshackled intelligence of the bestsocial thinkers of the world to exert itself. Goliah left all themultitudinous details of reconstruction to these social thinkers. Hewanted them to prove that they were able to do it, and they proved it. It was due to their initiative that the white plague was stamped out fromthe world. It was due to them, and in spite of a deal of protesting fromthe sentimentalists, that all the extreme hereditary inefficients weresegregated and denied marriage. 

Goliah had nothing whatever to do with the instituting of the colleges ofinvention. This idea originated practically simultaneously in the mindsof thousands of social thinkers. The time was ripe for the realizationof the idea, and everywhere arose the splendid institutions of invention. For the first time the ingenuity of man was loosed upon the problem ofsimplifying life, instead of upon the making of money-earning devices. The affairs of life, such as house-cleaning, dish and window-washing, dust-removing, and scrubbing and clothes-washing, and all the endlesssordid and necessary details, were simplified by invention until theybecame automatic. We of to-day cannot realize the barbarously filthy andslavish lives of those that lived prior to 1925. 

The international government of the world was another idea that sprangsimultaneously into the minds of thousands. The successful realizationof this idea was a surprise to many, but as a surprise it was nothing tothat received by the mildly protestant sociologists and biologists whenirrefutable facts exploded the doctrine of Malthus. With leisure and joyin the world; with an immensely higher standard of living; and with theenormous spaciousness of opportunity for recreation, development, andpursuit of beauty and nobility and all the higher attributes, thebirth-rate fell, and fell astoundingly. People ceased breeding likecattle. And better than that, it was immediately noticeable that ahigher average of children was being born. The doctrine of Malthus wasknocked into a cocked hat--or flung to the scrap-heap, as Goliah wouldhave put it. 

All that Goliah had predicted that the intelligence of mankind couldaccomplish with the mechanical energy at its disposal, came to pass. Human dissatisfaction practically disappeared. The elderly people werethe great grumblers; but when they were honourably pensioned by society, as they passed the age limit for work, the great majority ceasedgrumbling. They found themselves better off in their idle old days underthe new regime, enjoying vastly more pleasure and comforts than they hadin their busy and toilsome youth under the old regime. The youngergeneration had easily adapted itself too the changed order, and the veryyoung had never known anything else. The sum of human happiness hadincreased enormously. The world had become gay and sane. Even the oldfogies of professors of sociology, who had opposed with might and mainthe coming of the new regime, made no complaint. They were a score oftimes better remunerated than in the old days, and they were not workednearly so hard. Besides, they were busy revising sociology and writingnew text-books on the subject. Here and there, it is true, there wereatavisms, men who yearned for the flesh-pots and cannibal-feasts of theold alleged "individualism, " creatures long of teeth and savage of clawwho wanted to prey upon their fellow-men; but they were looked upon asdiseased, and were treated in hospitals. A small remnant, however, proved incurable, and was confined in asylums and denied marriage. Thusthere was no progeny to inherit their atavistic tendencies. 

As the years went by, Goliah dropped out of the running of the world. There was nothing for him to run. The world was running itself, anddoing it smoothly and beautifully. In 1937, Goliah made hislong-promised present of Energon to the world. He himself had devised athousand ways in which the little giant should do the work of theworld--all of which he made public at the same time. But instantly thecolleges of invention seized upon Energon and utilized it in a hundredthousand additional ways. In fact, as Goliah confessed in his letter ofMarch 1938, the colleges of invention cleared up several puzzlingfeatures of Energon that had baffled him during the preceding years. With the introduction of the use of Energon the two-hour work-day was cutdown almost to nothing. As Goliah had predicted, work indeed becameplay. And, so tremendous was man's productive capacity, due to Energonand the rational social utilization of it, that the humblest citizenenjoyed leisure and time and opportunity for an immensely greaterabundance of living than had the most favoured under the old anarchisticsystem. 

Nobody had ever seen Goliah, and all peoples began to clamour for theirsaviour to appear. While the world did not minimize his discovery ofEnergon, it was decided that greater than that was his wide socialvision. He was a superman, a scientific superman; and the curiosity ofthe world to see him had become wellnigh unbearable. It was in 1941, after much hesitancy on his part, that he finally emerged from PalgraveIsland. He arrived on June 6 in San Francisco, and for the first time, since his retirement to Palgrave Island, the world looked upon his face. And the world was disappointed. Its imagination had been touched. Anheroic figure had been made out of Goliah. He was the man, or thedemi-god, rather, who had turned the planet over. The deeds ofAlexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon were as the play of babesalongside his colossal achievements. 

And ashore in San Francisco and through its streets stepped and rode alittle old man, sixty-five years of age, well preserved, with apink-and-white complexion and a bald spot on his head the size of anapple. He was short-sighted and wore spectacles. But when thespectacles were removed, his were quizzical blue eyes like a child's, filled with mild wonder at the world. Also his eyes had a way oftwinkling, accompanied by a screwing up of the face, as if he laughed atthe huge joke he had played upon the world, trapping it, in spite ofitself, into happiness and laughter. 

For a scientific superman and world tyrant, he had remarkable weaknesses. He loved sweets, and was inordinately fond of salted almonds and saltedpecans, especially of the latter. He always carried a paper bag of themin his pocket, and he had a way of saying frequently that the chemism ofhis nature demanded such fare. Perhaps his most astonishing failing wascats. He had an ineradicable aversion to that domestic animal. It willbe remembered that he fainted dead away with sudden fright, whilespeaking in Brotherhood Palace, when the janitor's cat walked out uponthe stage and brushed against his legs. 

But no sooner had he revealed himself to the world than he wasidentified. Old-time friends had no difficulty in recognizing him asPercival Stultz, the German-American who, in 1898, had worked in theUnion Iron Works, and who, for two years at that time, had been secretaryof Branch 369 of the International Brotherhood of Machinists. It was in1901, then twenty-five years of age, that he had taken special scientificcourses at the University of California, at the same time supportinghimself by soliciting what was then known as "life insurance. " Hisrecords as a student are preserved in the university museum, and they areunenviable. He is remembered by the professors he sat under chiefly forhis absent-mindedness. Undoubtedly, even then, he was catching glimpsesof the wide visions that later were to be his. 

His naming himself "Goliah" and shrouding himself in mystery was hislittle joke, he later explained. As Goliah, or any other thing likethat, he said, he was able to touch the imagination of the world and turnit over; but as Percival Stultz, wearing side-whiskers and spectacles, and weighing one hundred and eighteen pounds, he would have been unableto turn over a pecan--"not even a salted pecan. "

But the world quickly got over its disappointment in his personalappearance and antecedents. It knew him and revered him as themaster-mind of the ages; and it loved him for himself, for his quizzicalshort-sighted eyes and the inimitable way in which he screwed up his facewhen he laughed; it loved him for his simplicity and comradeship and warmhumanness, and for his fondness for salted pecans and his aversion tocats. And to-day, in the wonder-city of Asgard, rises in awful beautythat monument to him that dwarfs the pyramids and all the monstrousblood-stained monuments of antiquity. And on that monument, as all know, is inscribed in imperishable bronze the prophecy and the fulfilment: "ALLWILL BE JOY-SMITHS, AND THEIR TASK SHALL BE TO BEAT OUT LAUGHTER FROM THERINGING ANVIL OF LIFE. "

[EDITORIAL NOTE. --This remarkable production is the work of HarryBeckwith, a student in the Lowell High School of San Francisco, and it ishere reproduced chiefly because of the youth of its author. Far be itfrom our policy to burden our readers with ancient history; and when itis known that Harry Beckwith was only fifteen when the fore-going waswritten, our motive will be understood. "Goliah" won the Premier forhigh school composition in 2254, and last year Harry Beckwith tookadvantage of the privilege earned, by electing to spend six months inAsgard. The wealth of historical detail, the atmosphere of the times, and the mature style of the composition are especially noteworthy in oneso young. ]

THE GOLDEN POPPY

I have a poppy field. That is, by the grace of God and the good-natureof editors, I am enabled to place each month divers gold pieces into aclerical gentleman's hands, and in return for said gold pieces I am eachmonth reinvested with certain proprietary-rights in a poppy field. Thisfield blazes on the rim of the Piedmont Hills. Beneath lies all theworld. In the distance, across the silver sweep of bay, San Franciscosmokes on her many hills like a second Rome. Not far away, MountTamalpais thrusts a rugged shoulder into the sky; and midway between isthe Golden Gate, where sea mists love to linger. From the poppy field weoften see the shimmering blue of the Pacific beyond, and the busy shipsthat go for ever out and in. 

"We shall have great joy in our poppy field, " said Bess. "Yes, " said I;"how the poor city folk will envy when they come to see us, and how wewill make all well again when we send them off with great goldenarmfuls!"

"But those things will have to come down, " I added, pointing to numerousobtrusive notices (relics of the last tenant) displayed conspicuouslyalong the boundaries, and bearing, each and all, this legend:

 "_Private Grounds_. _No Trespassing_. "

"Why should we refuse the poor city folk a ramble over our field, because, forsooth, they have not the advantage of our acquaintance?"

"How I abhor such things, " said Bess; "the arrogant symbols of power. "

"They disgrace human nature, " said I. 

"They shame the generous landscape, " she said, "and they are abominable. "

"Piggish!" quoth I, hotly. "Down with them!"

We looked forward to the coming of the poppies, did Bess and I, lookedforward as only creatures of the city may look who have been long denied. I have forgotten to mention the existence of a house above the poppyfield, a squat and wandering bungalow in which we had elected to forsaketown traditions and live in fresher and more vigorous ways. The firstpoppies came, orange-yellow and golden in the standing grain, and we wentabout gleefully, as though drunken with their wine, and told each otherthat the poppies were there. We laughed at unexpected moments, in themidst of silences, and at times grew ashamed and stole forth secretly togaze upon our treasury. But when the great wave of poppy-flame finallyspilled itself down the field, we shouted aloud, and danced, and clappedour hands, freely and frankly mad. 

And then came the Goths. My face was in a lather, the time of the firstinvasion, and I suspended my razor in mid-air to gaze out on my belovedfield. At the far end I saw a little girl and a little boy, their armsfilled with yellow spoil. Ah, thought I, an unwonted benevolenceburgeoning, what a delight to me is their delight! It is sweet thatchildren should pick poppies in my field. All summer shall they pickpoppies in my field. But they must be little children, I added as anafterthought, and they must pick from the lower end--this last promptedby a glance at the great golden fellows nodding in the wheat beneath mywindow. Then the razor descended. Shaving was always an absorbing task, and I did not glance out of the window again until the operation wascompleted. And then I was bewildered. Surely this was not my poppyfield. No--and yes, for there were the tall pines clustering austerelytogether on one side, the magnolia tree burdened with bloom, and theJapanese quinces splashing the driveway hedge with blood. Yes, it wasthe field, but no wave of poppy-flame spilled down it, nor did the greatgolden fellows nod in the wheat beneath my window. I rushed into ajacket and out of the house. In the far distance were disappearing twohuge balls of colour, orange and yellow, for all the world likeperambulating poppies of cyclopean breed. 

"Johnny, " said I to the nine-year-old son of my sister, "Johnny, wheneverlittle girls come into our field to pick poppies, you must go down tothem, and in a very quiet and gentlemanly manner, tell them it is notallowed. "

Warm days came, and the sun drew another blaze from the free-bosomedearth. Whereupon a neighbour's little girl, at the behest of her mother, duly craved and received permission from Bess to gather a few poppies fordecorative purposes. But of this I was uninformed, and when I descriedher in the midst of the field I waved my arms like a semaphore againstthe sky. 

"Little girl!" called I. "Little girl!"

The little girl's legs blurred the landscape as she fled, and in highelation I sought Bess to tell of the potency of my voice. Nobly she cameto the rescue, departing forthwith on an expedition of conciliation andexplanation to the little girl's mother. But to this day the little girlseeks cover at sight of me, and I know the mother will never be ascordial as she would otherwise have been. 

Came dark, overcast days, stiff, driving winds, and pelting rains, day onday, without end, and the city folk cowered in their dwelling-places likeflood-beset rats; and like rats, half-drowned and gasping, when theweather cleared they crawled out and up the green Piedmont slopes to baskin the blessed sunshine. And they invaded my field in swarms and droves, crushing the sweet wheat into the earth and with lustful hands rippingthe poppies out by the roots. 

"I shall put up the warnings against trespassing, " I said. 

"Yes, " said Bess, with a sigh. "I'm afraid it is necessary. "

The day was yet young when she sighed again:

"I'm afraid, O Man, that your signs are of no avail. People haveforgotten how to read, these days. "

I went out on the porch. A city nymph, in cool summer gown and picturehat, paused before one of my newly reared warnings and read it throughwith care. Profound deliberation characterized her movements. She wasstatuesquely tall, but with a toss of the head and a flirt of the skirtshe dropped on hands and knees, crawled under the fence, and came to herfeet on the inside with poppies in both her hands. I walked down thedrive and talked ethically to her, and she went away. Then I put up moresigns. 

At one time, years ago, these hills were carpeted with poppies. Asbetween the destructive forces and the will "to live, " the poppiesmaintained an equilibrium with their environment. But the city folkconstituted a new and terrible destructive force, the equilibrium wasoverthrown, and the poppies wellnigh perished. Since the city folkplucked those with the longest stems and biggest bowls, and since it isthe law of kind to procreate kind, the long-stemmed, big-bowled poppiesfailed to go to seed, and a stunted, short-stemmed variety remained tothe hills. And not only was it stunted and short-stemmed, but sparselydistributed as well. Each day and every day, for years and years, thecity folk swarmed over the Piedmont Hills, and only here and there didthe genius of the race survive in the form of miserable little flowers, close-clinging and quick-blooming, like children of the slums draggedhastily and precariously through youth to a shrivelled and futilematurity. 

On the other hand, the poppies had prospered in my field; and not onlyhad they been sheltered from the barbarians, but also from the birds. Long ago the field was sown in wheat, which went to seed unharvested eachyear, and in the cool depths of which the poppy seeds were hidden fromthe keen-eyed songsters. And further, climbing after the sun through thewheat stalks, the poppies grew taller and taller and more royal even thanthe primordial ones of the open. 

So the city folk, gazing from the bare hills to my blazing, burningfield, were sorely tempted, and, it must be told, as sorely fell. But nosorer was their fall than that of my beloved poppies. Where the grainholds the dew and takes the bite from the sun the soil is moist, and insuch soil it is easier to pull the poppies out by the roots than to breakthe stalk. Now the city folk, like other folk, are inclined to movealong the line of least resistance, and for each flower they gathered, there were also gathered many crisp-rolled buds and with them all thepossibilities and future beauties of the plant for all time to come. 

One of the city folk, a middle-aged gentleman, with white hands andshifty eyes, especially made life interesting for me. We called him the"Repeater, " what of his ways. When from the porch we implored him todesist, he was wont slowly and casually to direct his steps toward thefence, simulating finely the actions of a man who had not heard, butwhose walk, instead, had terminated of itself or of his own volition. Toheighten this effect, now and again, still casually and carelessly, hewould stoop and pluck another poppy. Thus did he deceitfully savehimself the indignity of being put out, and rob us of the satisfaction ofputting him out, but he came, and he came often, each time getting awaywith an able-bodied man's share of plunder. 

It is not good to be of the city folk. Of this I am convinced. There issomething in the mode of life that breeds an alarming condition ofblindness and deafness, or so it seems with the city folk that come to mypoppy field. Of the many to whom I have talked ethically not one hasbeen found who ever saw the warnings so conspicuously displayed, while ofthose called out to from the porch, possibly one in fifty has heard. Also, I have discovered that the relation of city folk to country flowersis quite analogous to that of a starving man to food. No more than thestarving man realizes that five pounds of meat is not so good as anounce, do they realize that five hundred poppies crushed and bunched areless beautiful than two or three in a free cluster, where the greenleaves and golden bowls may expand to their full loveliness. 

Less forgivable than the unaesthetic are the mercenary. Hordes of youngrascals plunder me and rob the future that they may stand on streetcorners and retail "California poppies, only five cents a bunch!" Inspite of my precautions some of them made a dollar a day out of my field. One horde do I remember with keen regret. Reconnoitring for a possibledog, they applied at the kitchen door for "a drink of water, please. "While they drank they were besought not to pick any flowers. Theynodded, wiped their mouths, and proceeded to take themselves off by theside of the bungalow. They smote the poppy field beneath my windows, spread out fan-shaped six wide, picking with both hands, and ripped aswath of destruction through the very heart of the field. No cyclonetravelled faster or destroyed more completely. I shouted after them, butthey sped on the wings of the wind, great regal poppies, broken-stalkedand mangled, trailing after them or cluttering their wake--the mosthigh-handed act of piracy, I am confident, ever committed off the highseas. 

One day I went a-fishing, and on that day a woman entered the field. Appeals and remonstrances from the porch having no effect upon her, Bessdespatched a little girl to beg of her to pick no more poppies. Thewoman calmly went on picking. Then Bess herself went down through theheat of the day. But the woman went on picking, and while she picked shediscussed property and proprietary rights, denying Bess's sovereigntyuntil deeds and documents should be produced in proof thereof. And allthe time she went on picking, never once overlooking her hand. She was alarge woman, belligerent of aspect, and Bess was only a woman and notprone to fisticuffs. So the invader picked until she could pick no more, said "Good-day, " and sailed majestically away. 

"People have really grown worse in the last several years, I think, " saidBess to me in a tired sort of voice that night, as we sat in the libraryafter dinner. 

Next day I was inclined to agree with her. "There's a woman and a littlegirl heading straight for the poppies, " said May, a maid about thebungalow. I went out on the porch and waited their advent. They plungedthrough the pine trees and into the fields, and as the roots of the firstpoppies were pulled I called to them. They were about a hundred feetaway. The woman and the little girl turned to the sound of my voice andlooked at me. "Please do not pick the poppies, " I pleaded. Theypondered this for a minute; then the woman said something in an undertoneto the little girl, and both backs jack-knifed as the slaughterrecommenced. I shouted, but they had become suddenly deaf. I screamed, and so fiercely that the little girl wavered dubiously. And while thewoman went on picking I could hear her in low tones heartening the littlegirl. 

I recollected a siren whistle with which I was wont to summon Johnny, theson of my sister. It was a fearsome thing, of a kind to wake the dead, and I blew and blew, but the jack-knifed backs never unclasped. I do notmind with men, but I have never particularly favoured physical encounterswith women; yet this woman, who encouraged a little girl in iniquity, tempted me. 

I went into the bungalow and fetched my rifle. Flourishing it in asanguinary manner and scowling fearsomely, I charged upon the invaders. The little girl fled, screaming, to the shelter of the pines, but thewoman calmly went on picking. She took not the least notice. I hadexpected her to run at sight of me, and it was embarrassing. There wasI, charging down the field like a wild bull upon a woman who would notget out of the way. I could only slow down, supremely conscious of howridiculous it all was. At a distance of ten feet she straightened up anddeigned to look at me. I came to a halt and blushed to the roots of myhair. Perhaps I really did frighten her (I sometimes try to persuademyself that this is so), or perhaps she took pity on me; but, at anyrate, she stalked out of my field with great composure, nay, majesty, herarms brimming with orange and gold. 

Nevertheless, thenceforward I saved my lungs and flourished my rifle. Also, I made fresh generalizations. To commit robbery women takeadvantage of their sex. Men have more respect for property than women. Men are less insistent in crime than women. And women are less afraid ofguns than men. Likewise, we conquer the earth in hazard and battle bythe virtues of our mothers. We are a race of land-robbers andsea-robbers, we Anglo-Saxons, and small wonder, when we suckle at thebreasts of a breed of women such as maraud my poppy field. 

Still the pillage went on. Sirens and gun-flourishings were withoutavail. The city folk were great of heart and undismayed, and I noted thehabit of "repeating" was becoming general. What booted it how often theywere driven forth if each time they were permitted to carry away theirill-gotten plunder? When one has turned the same person away twice andthrice an emotion arises somewhat akin to homicide. And when one hasonce become conscious of this sanguinary feeling his whole destiny seemsto grip hold of him and drag him into the abyss. More than once I foundmyself unconsciously pulling the rifle into position to get a sight onthe miserable trespassers. In my sleep I slew them in manifold ways andthrew their carcasses into the reservoir. Each day the temptation toshoot them in the legs became more luring, and every day I felt my fatecalling to me imperiously. Visions of the gallows rose up before me, andwith the hemp about my neck I saw stretched out the pitiless future of mychildren, dark with disgrace and shame. I became afraid of myself, andBess went about with anxious face, privily beseeching my friends toentice me into taking a vacation. Then, and at the last gasp, came thethought that saved me: _Why not confiscate_? If their forays werebootless, in the nature of things their forays would cease. 

The first to enter my field thereafter was a man. 

I was waiting for him--And, oh joy! it was the "Repeater" himself, smuglycomplacent with knowledge of past success. I dropped the riflenegligently across the hollow of my arm and went down to him. 

"I am sorry to trouble you for those poppies, " I said in my oiliesttones; "but really, you know, I must have them. "

He regarded me speechlessly. It must have made a great picture. Itsurely was dramatic. With the rifle across my arm and my suave requeststill ringing in my ears, I felt like Black Bart, and Jesse James, andJack Sheppard, and Robin Hood, and whole generations of highwaymen. 

"Come, come, " I said, a little sharply and in what I imagined was thetrue fashion; "I am sorry to inconvenience you, believe me, but I musthave those poppies. "

I absently shifted the gun and smiled. That fetched him. Without a wordhe passed them over and turned his toes toward the fence, but no longercasual and careless was his carriage, I nor did he stoop to pick theoccasional poppy by the way. That was the last of the "Repeater. " Icould see by his eyes that he did not like me, and his back reproached meall the way down the field and out of sight. 

From that day the bungalow has been flooded with poppies. Every vase andearthen jar is filled with them. They blaze on every mantel and run riotthrough all the rooms. I present them to my friends in huge bunches, andstill the kind city folk come and gather more for me. "Sit down for amoment, " I say to the departing guest. And there we sit in the shade ofthe porch while aspiring city creatures pluck my poppies and sweat underthe brazen sun. And when their arms are sufficiently weighted with myyellow glories, I go down with the rifle over my arm and disburden them. Thus have I become convinced that every situation has its compensations. 

Confiscation was successful, so far as it went; but I had forgotten onething; namely, the vast number of the city folk. Though the oldtransgressors came no more, new ones arrived every day, and I foundmyself confronted with the titanic task of educating a whole cityful tothe inexpediency of raiding my poppy field. During the process ofdisburdening them I was accustomed to explaining my side of the case, butI soon gave this over. It was a waste of breath. They could notunderstand. To one lady, who insinuated that I was miserly, I said:

"My dear madam, no hardship is worked upon you. Had I not beenparsimonious yesterday and the day before, these poppies would have beenpicked by the city hordes of that day and the day before, and your eyes, which to-day have discovered this field, would have beheld no poppies atall. The poppies you may not pick to-day are the poppies I did notpermit to be picked yesterday and the day before. Therefore, believe me, you are denied nothing. "

"But the poppies are here to-day, " she said, glaring carnivorously upontheir glow and splendour. 

"I will pay you for them, " said a gentleman, at another time. (I hadjust relieved him of an armful. ) I felt a sudden shame, I know not why, unless it be that his words had just made clear to me that a monetary aswell as an aesthetic value was attached to my flowers. The apparentsordidness of my position overwhelmed me, and I said weakly: "I do notsell my poppies. You may have what you have picked. " But before theweek was out I confronted the same gentleman again. "I will pay you forthem, " he said. "Yes, " I said, "you may pay me for them. Twentydollars, please. " He gasped, looked at me searchingly, gasped again, andsilently and sadly put the poppies down. But it remained, as usual, fora woman to attain the sheerest pitch of audacity. When I declinedpayment and demanded my plucked beauties, she refused to give them up. "I picked these poppies, " she said, "and my time is worth money. Whenyou have paid me for my time you may have them. " Her cheeks flamedrebellion, and her face, withal a pretty one, was set and determined. Now, I was a man of the hill tribes, and she a mere woman of the cityfolk, and though it is not my inclination to enter into details, it is mypleasure to state that that bunch of poppies subsequently glorified thebungalow and that the woman departed to the city unpaid. Anyway, theywere my poppies. 

"They are God's poppies, " said the Radiant Young Radical, democraticallyshocked at sight of me turning city folk out of my field. And for twoweeks she hated me with a deathless hatred. I sought her out andexplained. I explained at length. I told the story of the poppy asMaeterlinck has told the life of the bee. I treated the questionbiologically, psychologically, and sociologically, I discussed itethically and aesthetically. I grew warm over it, and impassioned; andwhen I had done, she professed conversion, but in my heart of hearts Iknew it to be compassion. I fled to other friends for consolation. Iretold the story of the poppy. They did not appear supremely interested. I grew excited. They were surprised and pained. They looked at mecuriously. "It ill-befits your dignity to squabble over poppies, " theysaid. "It is unbecoming. "

I fled away to yet other friends. I sought vindication. The thing hadbecome vital, and I needs must put myself right. I felt called upon toexplain, though well knowing that he who explains is lost. I told thestory of the poppy over again. I went into the minutest details. Iadded to it, and expanded. I talked myself hoarse, and when I could talkno more they looked bored. Also, they said insipid things, and soothfulthings, and things concerning other things, and not at all to the point. I was consumed with anger, and there and then I renounced them all. 

At the bungalow I lie in wait for chance visitors. Craftily I broach thesubject, watching their faces closely the while to detect first signs ofdisapprobation, whereupon I empty long-stored vials of wrath upon theirheads. I wrangle for hours with whosoever does not say I am right. I ambecome like Guy de Maupassant's old man who picked up a piece of string. I am incessantly explaining, and nobody will understand. I have becomemore brusque in my treatment of the predatory city folk. No longer do Itake delight in their disburdenment, for it has become an onerous duty, awearisome and distasteful task. My friends look askance and murmurpityingly on the side when we meet in the city. They rarely come to seeme now. They are afraid. I am an embittered and disappointed man, andall the light seems to have gone out of my life and into my blazingfield. So one pays for things. 

PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA. _April_ 1902. 

THE SHRINKAGE OF THE PLANET

What a tremendous affair it was, the world of Homer, with itsindeterminate boundaries, vast regions, and immeasurable distances. TheMediterranean and the Euxine were illimitable stretches of ocean wasteover which years could be spent in endless wandering. On theirmysterious shores were the improbable homes of impossible peoples. TheGreat Sea, the Broad Sea, the Boundless Sea; the Ethiopians, "dwellingfar away, the most distant of men, " and the Cimmerians, "covered withdarkness and cloud, " where "baleful night is spread over timid mortals. "Phoenicia was a sore journey, Egypt simply unattainable, while thePillars of Hercules marked the extreme edge of the universe. Ulysses wasnine days in sailing from Ismarus the city of the Ciconians, to thecountry of the Lotus-eaters--a period of time which to-day would breedanxiety in the hearts of the underwriters should it be occupied by theslowest tramp steamer in traversing the Mediterranean and Black Seas fromGibraltar to Sebastopol. 

Homer's world, restricted to less than a drummer's circuit, wasnevertheless immense, surrounded by a thin veneer of universe--the Streamof Ocean. But how it has shrunk! To-day, precisely charted, weighed, and measured, a thousand times larger than the world of Homer, it isbecome a tiny speck, gyrating to immutable law through a universe thebounds of which have been pushed incalculably back. The light of Algolshines upon it--a light which travels at one hundred and ninety thousandmiles per second, yet requires forty-seven years to reach itsdestination. And the denizens of this puny ball have come to know thatAlgol possesses an invisible companion, three and a quarter millions ofmiles away, and that the twain move in their respective orbits at ratesof fifty-five and twenty-six miles per second. They also know thatbeyond it are great chasms of space, innumerable worlds, and vast starsystems. 

While much of the shrinkage to which the planet has been subjected is dueto the increased knowledge of mathematics and physics, an equal, if notgreater, portion may be ascribed to the perfection of the means oflocomotion and communication. The enlargement of stellar space, demonstrating with stunning force the insignificance of the earth, hasbeen negative in its effect; but the quickening of travel andintercourse, by making the earth's parts accessible and knitting themtogether, has been positive. 

The advantage of the animal over the vegetable kingdom is obvious. Thecabbage, should its environment tend to become worse, must live it out, or die; the rabbit may move on in quest of a better. But, after all, theswift-footed creatures are circumscribed in their wanderings. The firstlarge river almost inevitably bars their way, and certainly the firstsalt sea becomes an impassable obstacle. Better locomotion may beclassed as one of the prime aims of the old natural selection; for inthat primordial day the race was to the swift as surely as the battle tothe strong. But man, already pre-eminent in the common domain because ofother faculties, was not content with the one form of locomotion affordedby his lower limbs. He swam in the sea, and, still better, becomingaware of the buoyant virtues of wood, learned to navigate its surface. Likewise, from among the land animals he chose the more likely to bearhim and his burdens. The next step was the domestication of these usefulaids. Here, in its organic significance, natural selection ceased toconcern itself with locomotion. Man had displayed his impatience at hertedious methods and his own superiority in the hastening of affairs. Thenceforth he must depend upon himself, and faster-swimming orfaster-running men ceased to be bred. The one, half-amphibian, breastingthe water with muscular arms, could not hope to overtake or escape anenemy who propelled a fire-hollowed tree trunk by means of a woodenpaddle; nor could the other, trusting to his own nimbleness, compete witha foe who careered wildly across the plain on the back of a half-brokenstallion. 

So, in that dim day, man took upon himself the task of increasing hisdominion over space and time, and right nobly has he acquitted himself. Because of it he became a road builder and a bridge builder; likewise, hewove clumsy sails of rush and matting. At a very remote period he mustalso have recognized that force moves along the line of least resistance, and in virtue thereof, placed upon his craft rude keels which enabled himto beat to windward in a seaway. As he excelled in these humble arts, just so did he add to his power over his less progressive fellows and laythe foundations for the first glimmering civilizations--crude they werebeyond conception, sporadic and ephemeral, but each formed a necessarypart of the groundwork upon which was to rise the mighty civilization ofour latter-day world. 

Divorced from the general history of man's upward climb, it would seemincredible that so long a time should elapse between the moment of hisfirst improvements over nature in the matter of locomotion and that ofthe radical changes he was ultimately to compass. The principles whichwere his before history was, were his, neither more nor less, even to thepresent century. He utilized improved applications, but the principlesof themselves were ever the same, whether in the war chariots of Achillesand Pharaoh or the mail-coach and diligence of the European traveller, the cavalry of the Huns or of Prince Rupert, the triremes and galleys ofGreece and Rome or the East India-men and clipper ships of the lastcentury. But when the moment came to alter the methods of travel, thechange was so sweeping that it may be safely classed as a revolution. Though the discovery of steam attaches to the honour of the last century, the potency of the new power was not felt till the beginning of this. By1800 small steamers were being used for coasting purposes in England;1830 witnessed the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; whileit was not until 1838 that the Atlantic was first crossed by thesteamships _Great Western_ and _Sirius_. In 1869 the East was madenext-door neighbour to the West. Over almost the same ground where hadtoiled the caravans of a thousand generations, the Suez Canal was dug. Clive, during his first trip, was a year and a half _en route_ fromEngland to India; were he alive to-day he could journey to Calcutta intwenty-two days. After reading De Quincey's hyperbolical description ofthe English mail-coach, one cannot down the desire to place thatremarkable man on the pilot of the White Mail or of the TwentiethCentury. 

But this tremendous change in the means of locomotion meant far more thanthe mere rapid transit of men from place to place. Until then, thoughits influence and worth cannot be overestimated, commerce had eked out aprecarious and costly existence. The fortuitous played too large a partin the trade of men. The mischances by land and sea, the mistakes anddelays, were adverse elements of no mean proportions. But improvedlocomotion meant improved carrying, and commerce received an impetus asremarkable as it was unexpected. In his fondest fancies James Watt couldnot have foreseen even the approximate result of his invention, theHercules which was to spring from the puny child of his brain and hands. An illuminating spectacle, were it possible, would be afforded bysummoning him from among the Shades to a place in the engine-room of anocean greyhound. The humblest trimmer would treat him with theindulgence of a child; while an oiler, a greasy nimbus about his head andin his hand, as sceptre, a long-snouted can, would indeed appear to him ademigod and ruler of forces beyond his ken. 

It has ever been the world's dictum that empire and commerce go hand inhand. In the past the one was impossible without the other. Romegathered to herself the wealth of the Mediterranean nations, and it wasonly by an unwise distribution of it that she became emasculated and lostboth power and trade. With a just system of economics it is highlyprobable that for centuries she could have held back the welling tide ofthe Germanic peoples. When upon her ruins rose the institutions of theconquering Teutons, commerce slipped away, and with it empire. In thepresent, empire and commerce have become interdependent. Such wondershas the industrial revolution wrought in a few swift decades, and sogreat has been the shrinkage of the planet, that the industrial nationshave long since felt the imperative demand for foreign markets. Thefavoured portions of the earth are occupied. From their seats in thetemperate zones the militant commercial nations proceed to theexploitation of the tropics, and for the possession of these they rush towar hot-footed. Like wolves at the end of a gorge, they wrangle over thefragments. There are no more planets, no more fragments, and they areyet hungry. There are no longer Cimmerians and Ethiopians, inwide-stretching lands, awaiting them. On either hand they confront thenaked poles, and they recoil from unnavigable space to an intenserstruggle among themselves. And all the while the planet shrinks beneaththeir grasp. 

Of this struggle one thing may be safely predicated; a commercial powermust be a sea power. Upon the control of the sea depends the control oftrade. Carthage threatened Rome till she lost her navy; and then forthirteen days the smoke of her burning rose to the skies, and the groundwas ploughed and sown with salt on the site of her most splendidedifices. The cities of Italy were the world's merchants till new traderoutes were discovered and the dominion of the sea passed on to the westand fell into other hands. Spain and Portugal, inaugurating an era ofmaritime discovery, divided the new world between them, but gave waybefore a breed of sea-rovers, who, after many generations of attachmentto the soil, had returned to their ancient element. With the destructionof her Armada Spain's colossal dream of colonial empire passed away. Against the new power Holland strove in vain, and when Franceacknowledged the superiority of the Briton upon the sea, she at the sametime relinquished her designs upon the world. Hampered by her feeblenavy, her contest for supremacy upon the land was her last effort andwith the passing of Napoleon she retired within herself to struggle withherself as best she might. For fifty years England held undisputed swayupon the sea, controlled markets, and domineered trade, laying, duringthat period, the foundations of her empire. Since then other navalpowers have arisen, their attitudes bearing significantly upon thefuture; for they have learned that the mastery of the world belongs tothe masters of the sea. 

That many of the phases of this world shrinkage are pathetic, goeswithout question. There is much to condemn in the rise of the economicover the imaginative spirit, much for which the energetic Philistine cannever atone. Perhaps the deepest pathos of all may be found in thespectacle of John Ruskin weeping at the profanation of the world by thevandalism of the age. Steam launches violate the sanctity of theVenetian canals; where Xerxes bridged the Hellespont ply the filthyfunnels of our modern shipping; electric cars run in the shadow of thepyramids; and it was only the other day that Lord Kitchener was in arailroad wreck near the site of ancient Luxor. But there is always theother side. If the economic man has defiled temples and despoilednature, he has also preserved. He has policed the world and parked it, reduced the dangers of life and limb, made the tenure of existence lessprecarious, and rendered a general relapse of society impossible. Therecan never again be an intellectual holocaust, such as the burning of theAlexandrian library. Civilizations may wax and wane, but the totality ofknowledge cannot decrease. With the possible exception of a few tradesecrets, arts and sciences may be discarded, but they can never be lost. And these things must remain true until the end of man's time upon theearth. 

Up to yesterday communication for any distance beyond the sound of thehuman voice or the sight of the human eye was bound up with locomotion. A letter presupposed a carrier. The messenger started with the message, and he could not but avail himself of the prevailing modes of travel. Ifthe voyage to Australia required four months, four months were requiredfor communication; by no known means could this time be lessened. Butwith the advent of the telegraph and telephone, communication andlocomotion were divorced. In a few hours, at most, there could beperformed what by the old way would have required months. In 1837 theneedle telegraph was invented, and nine years later the ElectricTelegraph Company was formed for the purpose of bringing it into generaluse. Government postal systems also came into being, later toconsolidate into an international union and to group the nations of theearth into a local neighbourhood. The effects of all this are obvious, and no fitter illustration may be presented than the fact that to-day, inthe matter of communication, the Klondike is virtually nearer to Bostonthan was Bunker Hill in the time of Warren. 

A contemporaneous and remarkable shrinkage of a vast stretch of territorymay be instanced in the Northland. From its rise at Lake Linderman theYukon runs twenty-five hundred miles to Bering Sea, traversing an almostunknown region, the remote recesses of which had never felt themoccasined foot of the pathfinder. At occasional intervals men wallowedinto its dismal fastnesses, or emerged gaunt and famine-worn. But in thefall of 1896 a great gold strike was made--greater than any since thedays of California and Australia; yet, so rude were the means ofcommunication, nearly a year elapsed before the news of it reached theeager ear of the world. Passionate pilgrims disembarked their outfits atDyea. Over the terrible Chilcoot Pass the trail led to the lakes, thirtymiles away. Carriage was yet in its most primitive stage, the roadbuilder and bridge builder unheard of. With heavy packs upon their backsmen plunged waist-deep into hideous quagmires, bridged mountain torrentsby felling trees across them, toiled against the precipitous slopes ofthe ice-worn mountains, and crossed the dizzy faces of innumerableglaciers. When, after incalculable toil they reached the lakes, theywent into the woods, sawed pine trees into lumber by hand, and built itinto boats. In these, overloaded, unseaworthy, they battled down thelong chain of lakes. Within the memory of the writer there lingers thepicture of a sheltered nook on the shores of Lake Le Barge, in which halfa thousand gold seekers lay storm-bound. Day after day they struggledagainst the seas in the teeth of a northerly gale, and night after nightreturned to their camps, repulsed but not disheartened. At the rapidsthey ran their boats through, hit or miss, and after infinite toil andhardship, on the breast of a jarring ice flood, arrived at the Klondike. From the beach at Dyea to the eddy below the Barracks at Dawson, they hadpaid for their temerity the tax of human life demanded by the elements. A year later, so greatly had the country shrunk, the tourist, ondisembarking from the ocean steamship, took his seat in a modern railwaycoach. A few hours later, at Lake Bennet, he stepped aboard a commodiousriver steamer. At the rapids he rode around on a tramway to take passageon another steamer below. And in a few hours more he was in Dawson, without having once soiled the lustre of his civilized foot-gear. Did hewish to communicate with the outside world, he strolled into thetelegraph office. A few short months before he would have written aletter and deemed himself favoured above mortals were it delivered withinthe year. 

From man's drawing the world closer and closer together, his own affairsand institutions have consolidated. Concentration may typify the chiefmovement of the age--concentration, classification, order; the reductionof friction between the parts of the social organism. The urban tendencyof the rural populations led to terrible congestion in the great cities. There was stifling and impure air, and lo, rapid transit at once attackedthe evil. Every great city has become but the nucleus of a greater citywhich surrounds it; the one the seat of business, the other the seat ofdomestic happiness. Between the two, night and morning, by electricroad, steam railway, and bicycle path, ebbs and flows the middle-classpopulation. And in the same direction lies the remedy for the tenementevil. In the cleansing country air the slum cannot exist. Improvementin road-beds and the means of locomotion, a tremor of altruism, a littlelegislation, and the city by day will sleep in the country by night. 

What a play-ball has this planet of ours become! Steam has made itsparts accessible and drawn them closer together. The telegraphannihilates space and time. Each morning every part knows what everyother part is thinking, contemplating, or doing. A discovery in a Germanlaboratory is being demonstrated in San Francisco within twenty-fourhours. A book written in South Africa is published by simultaneouscopyright in every English-speaking country, and on the following day isin the hands of the translators. The death of an obscure missionary inChina, or of a whisky smuggler in the South Seas, is served up, the worldover, with the morning toast. The wheat output of Argentine or the goldof Klondike is known wherever men meet and trade. Shrinkage orcentralization has been such that the humblest clerk in any metropolismay place his hand on the pulse of the world. And because of all this, everywhere is growing order and organization. The church, the state;men, women, and children; the criminal and the law, the honest man andthe thief, industry and commerce, capital and labour, the trades and theprofessions, the arts and the sciences--all are organizing for pleasure, profit, policy, or intellectual pursuit. They have come to know thestrength of numbers, solidly phalanxed and driving onward with singlenessof purpose. These purposes may be various and many, but one and all, ever discovering new mutual interests and objects, obeying a law which isbeyond them, these petty aggregations draw closer together, forminggreater aggregations and congeries of aggregations. And these, in turn, vaguely merging each into each, present glimmering adumbrations of thecoming human solidarity which shall be man's crowning glory. 

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. _January_ 1900. 

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

Speaking of homes, I am building one now, and I venture to assert thatvery few homes have received more serious thought in the planning. Letme tell you about it. In the first place, there will be no groundswhatever, no fences, lawns, nor flowers. Roughly, the dimensions will beforty-five feet by fifteen. That is, it will be fifteen feet wide at itswidest--and, if you will pardon the bull, it will be narrower than it iswide. 

The details must submit to the general plan of economy. There will be noveranda, no porch entrances, no grand staircases. I'm ashamed to say howsteep the stairways are going to be. The bedrooms will be seven byseven, and one will be even smaller. A bedroom is only good to sleep in, anyway. There will be no hallway, thank goodness. Rooms were made to gothrough. Why a separate passage for traffic?

The bath-room will be a trifle larger than the size of the smallestbath-tub--it won't require so much work to keep in order. The kitchenwon't be very much larger, but this will make it easy for the cook. Inplace of a drawing-room, there will be a large living-room--fourteen bysix. The walls of this room will be covered with books, and it can serveas library and smoking-room as well. Then, the floor-space not beingoccupied, we shall use the room as a dining-room. Incidentally, such aroom not being used after bedtime, the cook and the second boy can sleepin it. One thing that I am temperamentally opposed to is waste, and whyshould all this splendid room be wasted at night when we do not occupyit?

My ideas are cramped, you say?--Oh, I forgot to tell you that this home Iam describing is to be a floating home, and that my wife and I are tojourney around the world in it for the matter of seven years or more. Iforgot also to state that there will be an engine-room in it for aseventy-horse-power engine, a dynamo, storage batteries, etc. ; tanks forwater to last long weeks at sea; space for fifteen hundred gallons ofgasolene, fire extinguishers, and life-preservers; and a great store-roomfor food, spare sails, anchors, hawsers, tackles, and a thousand and oneother things. 

Since I have not yet built my land house, I haven't got beyond a fewgeneral ideas, and in presenting them I feel as cocksure as the unmarriedwoman who writes the column in the Sunday supplement on how to rearchildren. My first idea about a house is that it should be built to livein. Throughout the house, in all the building of it, this should be theparamount idea. It must be granted that this idea is lost sight of bycountless persons who build houses apparently for every purpose under thesun except to live in them. 

Perhaps it is because of the practical life I have lived that I worshiputility and have come to believe that utility and beauty should be one, and that there is no utility that need not be beautiful. What finerbeauty than strength--whether it be airy steel, or massive masonry, or awoman's hand? A plain black leather strap is beautiful. It is allstrength and all utility, and it is beautiful. It efficiently performswork in the world, and it is good to look upon. Perhaps it is because itis useful that it is beautiful. I do not know. I sometimes wonder. 

A boat on the sea is beautiful. Yet it is not built for beauty. Everygraceful line of it is a utility, is designed to perform work. It iscreated for the express purpose of dividing the water in front of it, ofgliding over the water beneath it, of leaving the water behind it--andall with the least possible wastage of stress and friction. It is notcreated for the purpose of filling the eye with beauty. It is createdfor the purpose of moving through the sea and over the sea with thesmallest resistance and the greatest stability; yet, somehow, it doesfill the eye with its beauty. And in so far as a boat fails in itspurpose, by that much does it diminish in beauty. 

I am still a long way from the house I have in my mind some day to build, yet I have arrived somewhere. I have discovered, to my own satisfactionat any rate, that beauty and utility should be one. In applying thisgeneral idea to the building of a house, it may be stated, in another andbetter way; namely, construction and decoration must be one. This ideais more important than the building of the house, for without the ideathe house so built is certain to be an insult to intelligence andbeauty-love. 

I bought a house in a hurry in the city of Oakland some time ago. I donot live in it. I sleep in it half a dozen times a year. I do not lovethe house. I am hurt every time I look at it. No drunken rowdy orpolitical enemy can insult me so deeply as that house does. Let me tellyou why. It is an ordinary two-storey frame house. After it was built, the criminal that constructed it nailed on, at the cornersperpendicularly, some two-inch fluted planks. These planks rise theheight of the house, and to a drunken man have the appearance of flutedcolumns. To complete the illusion in the eyes of the drunken man, theplanks are topped with wooden Ionic capitals, nailed on, and in, I maysay, bas-relief. 

When I analyze the irritation these fluted planks cause in me, I find thereason in the fact that the first rule for building a house has beenviolated. These decorative planks are no part of the construction. Theyhave no use, no work to perform. They are plastered gawds that tell liesthat nobody believes. A column is made for the purpose of supportingweight; this is its use. A column, when it is a utility, is beautiful. The fluted wooden columns nailed on outside my house are not utilities. They are not beautiful. They are nightmares. They not only support noweight, but they themselves are a weight that drags upon the supports ofthe house. Some day, when I get time, one of two things will surelyhappen. Either I'll go forth and murder the man who perpetrated theatrocity, or else I'll take an axe and chop off the lying, fluted planks. 

A thing must be true, or it is not beautiful, any more than a paintedwanton is beautiful, any more than a sky-scraper is beautiful that isintrinsically and structurally light and that has a false massiveness ofpillars plastered on outside. The true sky-scraper _is_ beautiful--andthis is the reluctant admission of a man who dislikes humanity-festeringcities. The true sky-scraper is beautiful, and it is beautiful in so faras it is true. In its construction it is light and airy, therefore inits appearance it must be light and airy. It dare not, if it wishes tobe beautiful, lay claim to what it is not. And it should not bulk on thecity-scape like Leviathan; it should rise and soar, light and airy andfairylike. 

Man is an ethical animal--or, at least, he is more ethical than any otheranimal. Wherefore he has certain yearnings for honesty. And in no waycan these yearnings be more thoroughly satisfied than by the honesty ofthe house in which he lives and passes the greater part of his life. 

They that dwelt in San Francisco were dishonest. They lied and cheatedin their business life (like the dwellers in all cities), and becausethey lied and cheated in their business life, they lied and cheated inthe buildings they erected. Upon the tops of the simple, severe walls oftheir buildings they plastered huge projecting cornices. These corniceswere not part of the construction. They made believe to be part of theconstruction, and they were lies. The earth wrinkled its back fortwenty-eight seconds, and the lying cornices crashed down as all lies aredoomed to crash down. In this particular instance, the lies crashed downupon the heads of the people fleeing from their reeling habitations, andmany were killed. They paid the penalty of dishonesty. 

Not alone should the construction of a house be truthful and honest, butthe material must be honest. They that lived in San Francisco weredishonest in the material they used. They sold one quality of materialand delivered another quality of material. They always delivered aninferior quality. There is not one case recorded in the business historyof San Francisco where a contractor or builder delivered a qualitysuperior to the one sold. A seven-million-dollar city hall became thirtycents in twenty-eight seconds. Because the mortar was not honest, athousand walls crashed down and scores of lives were snuffed out. Thereis something, after all, in the contention of a few religionists that theSan Francisco earthquake was a punishment for sin. It was a punishmentfor sin; but it was not for sin against God. The people of San Franciscosinned against themselves. 

An honest house tells the truth about itself. There is a house here inGlen Ellen. It stands on a corner. It is built of beautiful red stone. Yet it is not beautiful. On three sides the stone is joined and pointed. The fourth side is the rear. It faces the back yard. The stone is notpointed. It is all a smudge of dirty mortar, with here and there bricksworked in when the stone gave out. The house is not what it seems. Itis a lie. All three of the walls spend their time lying about the fourthwall. They keep shouting out that the fourth wall is as beautiful asthey. If I lived long in that house I should not be responsible for mymorals. The house is like a man in purple and fine linen, who hasn't hada bath for a month. If I lived long in that house I should become adandy and cut out bathing--for the same reason, I suppose, that anAfrican is black and that an Eskimo eats whale-blubber. I shall notbuild a house like that house. 

Last year I started to build a barn. A man who was a liar undertook todo the stonework and concrete work for me. He could not tell the truthto my face; he could not tell the truth in his work. I was building forposterity. The concrete foundations were four feet wide and sunk threeand one-half feet into the earth. The stone walls were two feet thickand nine feet high. Upon them were to rest the great beams that were tocarry all the weight of hay and the forty tons of the roof. The man whowas a liar made beautiful stone walls. I used to stand alongside of themand love them. I caressed their massive strength with my hands. Ithought about them in bed, before I went to sheep. And they were lies. 

Came the earthquake. Fortunately the rest of the building of the barnhad been postponed. The beautiful stone walls cracked in all directions. I started, to repair, and discovered the whole enormous lie. The wallswere shells. On each face were beautiful, massive stones--on edge. Theinside was hollow. This hollow in some places was filled with clay andloose gravel. In other places it was filled with air and emptiness, withhere and there a piece of kindling-wood or dry-goods box, to aid in themaking of the shell. The walls were lies. They were beautiful, but theywere not useful. Construction and decoration had been divorced. Thewalls were all decoration. They hadn't any construction in them. "AsGod lets Satan live, " I let that lying man live, but--I have built newwalls from the foundation up. 

And now to my own house beautiful, which I shall build some seven or tenyears from now. I have a few general ideas about it. It must be honestin construction, material, and appearance. If any feature of it, despitemy efforts, shall tell lies, I shall remove that feature. Utility andbeauty must be indissolubly wedded. Construction and decoration must beone. If the particular details keep true to these general ideas, allwill be well. 

I have not thought of many details. But here are a few. Take thebath-room, for instance. It shall be as beautiful as any room in thehouse, just as it will be as useful. The chance is, that it will be themost expensive room in the house. Upon that we are resolved--even if weare compelled to build it first, and to live in a tent till we can getmore money to go on with the rest of the house. In the bath-room nodelights of the bath shall be lacking. Also, a large part of theexpensiveness will be due to the use of material that will make it easyto keep the bathroom clean and in order. Why should a servant toilunduly that my body may be clean? On the other hand, the honesty of myown flesh, and the square dealing I give it, are more important than allthe admiration of my friends for expensive decorative schemes andmagnificent trivialities. More delightful to me is a body that singsthan a stately and costly grand staircase built for show. Not that Ilike grand staircases less, but that I like bath-rooms more. 

I often regret that I was born in this particular period of the world. In the matter of servants, how I wish I were living in the golden futureof the world, where there will be no servants--naught but service oflove. But in the meantime, living here and now, being practical, understanding the rationality and the necessity of the division oflabour, I accept servants. But such acceptance does not justify me inlack of consideration for them. In my house beautiful their rooms shallnot be dens and holes. And on this score I foresee a fight with thearchitect. They shall have bath-rooms, toilet conveniences, and comfortsfor their leisure time and human life--if I have to work Sundays to payfor it. Even under the division of labour I recognize that no man has aright to servants who will not treat them as humans compounded of thesame clay as himself, with similar bundles of nerves and desires, contradictions, irritabilities, and lovablenesses. Heaven in thedrawing-room and hell in the kitchen is not the atmosphere for a growingchild to breathe--nor an adult either. One of the great and selfishobjections to chattel slavery was the effect on the masters themselves. 

And because of the foregoing, one chief aim in the building of my housebeautiful will be to have a house that will require the minimum oftrouble and work to keep clean and orderly. It will be no spick and spanand polished house, with an immaculateness that testifies to the tragedyof drudge. I live in California where the days are warm. I'd preferthat the servants had three hours to go swimming (or hammocking) than becompelled to spend those three hours in keeping the house spick and span. Therefore it devolves upon me to build a house that can be kept clean andorderly without the need of those three hours. 

But underneath the spick and span there is something more dreadful thanthe servitude of the servants. This dreadful thing is the philosophy ofthe spick and span. In Korea the national costume is white. Noblemanand coolie dress alike in white. It is hell on the women who do thewashing, but there is more in it than that. The coolie cannot keep hiswhite clothes clean. He toils and they get dirty. The dirty white ofhis costume is the token of his inferiority. The nobleman's dress isalways spotless white. It means that he doesn't have to work. But itmeans, further, that somebody else has to work for him. His superiorityis not based upon song-craft nor state-craft, upon the foot-races he hasrun nor the wrestlers he has thrown. His superiority is based upon thefact that he doesn't have to work, and that others are compelled to workfor him. And so the Korean drone flaunts his clean white clothes, forthe same reason that the Chinese flaunts his monstrous finger-nails, andthe white man and woman flaunt the spick-and-spanness of their spotlesshouses. 

There will be hardwood floors in my house beautiful. But these floorswill not be polished mirrors nor skating-rinks. They will be just plainand common hardwood floors. Beautiful carpets are not beautiful to themind that knows they are filled with germs and bacilli. They are no morebeautiful than the hectic flush of fever, or the silvery skin of leprosy. Besides, carpets enslave. A thing that enslaves is a monster, andmonsters are not beautiful. 

The fireplaces in my house will be many and large. Small fires and coldweather mean hermetically-sealed rooms and a jealous cherishing of heatedand filth-laden air. With large fire-places and generous heat, somewindows may be open all the time, and without hardship all the windowscan be opened every little while and the rooms flushed with clean pureair. I have nearly died in the stagnant, rotten air of other people'shouses--especially in the Eastern states. In Maine I have slept in aroom with storm-windows immovable, and with one small pane five inches bysix, that could be opened. Did I say slept? I panted with my mouth inthe opening and blasphemed till I ruined all my chances of heaven. 

For countless thousands of years my ancestors have lived and died anddrawn all their breaths in the open air. It is only recently that wehave begun to live in houses. The change is a hardship, especially onthe lungs. I've got only one pair of lungs, and I haven't the address ofany repair-shop. Wherefore I stick by the open air as much as possible. For this reason my house will have large verandas, and, near to thekitchen, there will be a veranda dining-room. Also, there will be averanda fireplace, where we can breathe fresh air and be comfortable whenthe evenings are touched with frost. 

I have a plan for my own bedroom. I spend long hours in bed, reading, studying, and working. I have tried sleeping in the open, but the lampattracts all the creeping, crawling, butting, flying, fluttering thingsto the pages of my book, into my ears and blankets, and down the back ofmy neck. So my bedroom shall be indoors. 

But it will be, not be of, indoors. Three sides of it will be open. Thefourth side will divide it from the rest of the house. The three sideswill be screened against the creeping, fluttering things, but not againstthe good fresh air and all the breezes that blow. For protection againststorm, to keep out the driving rain, there will be a sliding glass, somade that when not in use it will occupy small space and shut out verylittle air. 

There is little more to say about this house. I am to build seven or tenyears from now. There is plenty of time in which to work up all thedetails in accord with the general principles I have laid down. It willbe a usable house and a beautiful house, wherein the aesthetic guest canfind comfort for his eyes as well as for his body. It will be a happyhouse--or else I'll burn it down. It will be a house of air and sunshineand laughter. These three cannot be divorced. Laughter without air andsunshine becomes morbid, decadent, demoniac. I have in me a thousandgenerations. Laughter that is decadent is not good for these thousandgenerations. 

GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA. _July_ 1906. 

THE GOLD HUNTERS OF THE NORTH

 "Where the Northern Lights come down a' nights to dance on the houseless snow. "

"Ivan, I forbid you to go farther in this undertaking. Not a word aboutthis, or we are all undone. Let the Americans and the English know thatwe have gold in these mountains, then we are ruined. They will rush inon us by thousands, and crowd us to the wall--to the death. "

So spoke the old Russian governor, Baranov, at Sitka, in 1804, to one ofhis Slavonian hunters, who had just drawn from his pocket a handful ofgolden nuggets. Full well Baranov, fur trader and autocrat, understoodand feared the coming of the sturdy, indomitable gold hunters ofAnglo-Saxon stock. And thus he suppressed the news, as did the governorsthat followed him, so that when the United States bought Alaska in 1867, she bought it for its furs and fisheries, without a thought of itstreasures underground. 

No sooner, however, had Alaska become American soil than thousands of ouradventurers were afoot and afloat for the north. They were the men of"the days of gold, " the men of California, Fraser, Cassiar, and Cariboo. With the mysterious, infinite faith of the prospector, they believed thatthe gold streak, which ran through the Americas from Cape Horn toCalifornia, did not "peter out" in British Columbia. That it extendedfarther north, was their creed, and "Farther North" became their cry. Notime was lost, and in the early seventies, leaving the Treadwell and theSilver Bow Basin to be discovered by those who came after, they wentplunging on into the white unknown. North, farther north, theystruggled, till their picks rang in the frozen beaches of the ArcticOcean, and they shivered by driftwood fires on the ruby sands of Nome. 

But first, in order that this colossal adventure may be fully grasped, the recentness and the remoteness of Alaska must be emphasized. Theinterior of Alaska and the contiguous Canadian territory was a vastwilderness. Its hundreds of thousands of square miles were as dark andchartless as Darkest Africa. In 1847, when the first Hudson Bay Companyagents crossed over the Rockies from the Mackenzie to poach on thepreserves of the Russian Bear, they thought that the Yukon flowed northand emptied into the Arctic Ocean. Hundreds of miles below, however, were the outposts of the Russian traders. They, in turn, did not knowwhere the Yukon had its source, and it was not till later that Russ andSaxon learned that it was the same mighty stream they were occupying. And a little over ten years later, Frederick Whymper voyaged up the GreatBend to Fort Yukon under the Arctic Circle. 

From fort to fort, from York Factory on Hudson's Bay to Fort Yukon inAlaska, the English traders transported their goods--a round triprequiring from a year to a year and a half. It was one of theirdeserters, in 1867, escaping down the Yukon to Bering Sea, who was thefirst white man to make the North-west Passage by land from the Atlanticto the Pacific. It was at this time that the first accurate descriptionof a fair portion of the Yukon was given by Dr. W. H. Ball, of theSmithsonian Institution. But even he had never seen its source, and itwas not given him to appreciate the marvel of that great natural highway. 

No more remarkable river in this one particular is there in the world;taking its rise in Crater Lake, thirty miles from the ocean, the Yukonflows for twenty-five hundred miles, through the heart of the continent, ere it empties into the sea. A portage of thirty miles, and then ahighway for traffic one tenth the girth of the earth!

As late as 1869, Frederick Whymper, fellow of the Royal GeographicalSociety, stated on hearsay that the Chilcat Indians were believedoccasionally to make a short portage across the Coast Range from saltwater to the head-reaches of the Yukon. But it remained for a goldhunter, questing north, ever north, to be first of all white men to crossthe terrible Chilcoot Pass, and tap the Yukon at its head. This happenedonly the other day, but the man has become a dim legendary hero. Holtwas his name, and already the mists of antiquity have wrapped about thetime of his passage. 1872, 1874, and 1878 are the dates variouslygiven--a confusion which time will never clear. 

Holt penetrated as far as the Hootalinqua, and on his return to the coastreported coarse gold. The next recorded adventurer is one Edward Bean, who in 1880 headed a party of twenty-five miners from Sitka into theuncharted land. And in the same year, other parties (now forgotten, forwho remembers or ever hears the wanderings of the gold hunters?) crossedthe Pass, built boats out of the standing timber, and drifted down theYukon and farther north. 

And then, for a quarter of a century, the unknown and unsung heroesgrappled with the frost, and groped for the gold they were sure laysomewhere among the shadows of the Pole. In the struggle with theterrifying and pitiless natural forces, they returned to the primitive, garmenting themselves in the skins of wild beasts, and covering theirfeet with the walrus _mucluc_ and the moosehide moccasin. They forgotthe world and its ways, as the world had forgotten them; killed theirmeat as they found it; feasted in plenty and starved in famine, andsearched unceasingly for the yellow lure. They crisscrossed the land inevery direction, threaded countless unmapped rivers in precariousbirch-bark canoes, and with snowshoes and dogs broke trail throughthousands of miles of silent white, where man had never been. Theystruggled on, under the aurora borealis or the midnight sun, throughtemperatures that ranged from one hundred degrees above zero to eightydegrees below, living, in the grim humour of the land, on "rabbit tracksand salmon bellies. "

To-day, a man may wander away from the trail for a hundred days, and justas he is congratulating himself that at last he is treading virgin soil, he will come upon some ancient and dilapidated cabin, and forget hisdisappointment in wonder at the man who reared the logs. Still, if onewanders from the trail far enough and deviously enough, he may chanceupon a few thousand square miles which he may have all to himself. Onthe other hand, no matter how far and how deviously he may wander, thepossibility always remains that he may stumble, not alone upon a desertedcabin, but upon an occupied one. 

As an instance of this, and of the vastness of the land, no better caseneed be cited than that of Harry Maxwell. An able seaman, hailing fromNew Bedford, Massachusetts, his ship, the brig _Fannie E. Lee_, waspinched in the Arctic ice. Passing from whaleship to whaleship, heeventually turned up at Point Barrow in the summer of 1880. He was_north_ of the Northland, and from this point of vantage he determined topull south of the interior in search of gold. Across the mountains fromFort Macpherson, and a couple of hundred miles eastward from theMackenzie, he built a cabin and established his headquarters. And here, for nineteen continuous years, he hunted his living and prospected. Heranged from the never opening ice to the north as far south as the GreatSlave Lake. Here he met Warburton Pike, the author and explorer--anincident he now looks back upon as chief among the few incidents of hissolitary life. 

When this sailor-miner had accumulated $20, 000 worth of dust he concludedthat civilization was good enough for him, and proceeded "to pull for theoutside. " From the Mackenzie he went up the Little Peel to itsheadwaters, found a pass through the mountains, nearly starved to deathon his way across to the Porcupine Hills, and eventually came out on theYukon River, where he learned for the first time of the Yukon goldhunters and their discoveries. Yet for twenty years they had beenworking there, his next-door neighbours, virtually, in a land of suchgreat spaces. At Victoria, British Columbia, previous to his going eastover the Canadian Pacific (the existence of which he had just learned), he pregnantly remarked that he had faith in the Mackenzie watershed, andthat he was going back after he had taken in the World's Fair and got awhiff or two of civilization. 

Faith! It may or may not remove mountains, but it has certainly made theNorthland. No Christian martyr ever possessed greater faith than did thepioneers of Alaska. They never doubted the bleak and barren land. Thosewho came remained, and more ever came. They could not leave. They"knew" the gold was there, and they persisted. Somehow, the romance ofthe land and the quest entered into their blood, the spell of it grippedhold of them and would not let them go. Man after man of them, after themost terrible privation and suffering, shook the muck of the country fromhis moccasins and departed for good. But the following spring alwaysfound him drifting down the Yukon on the tail of the ice jams. 

Jack McQuestion aptly vindicates the grip of the North. After aresidence of thirty years he insists that the climate is delightful, anddeclares that whenever he makes a trip to the States he is afflicted withhome-sickness. Needless to say, the North still has him and will keeptight hold of him until he dies. In fact, for him to die elsewhere wouldbe inartistic and insincere. Of three of the "pioneer" pioneers, JackMcQuestion alone survives. In 1871, from one to seven years before Holtwent over Chilcoot, in the company of Al Mayo and Arthur Harper, McQuestion came into the Yukon from the North-west over the Hudson BayCompany route from the Mackenzie to Fort Yukon. The names of these threemen, as their lives, are bound up in the history of the country, and solong as there be histories and charts, that long will the Mayo andMcQuestion rivers and the Harper and Ladue town site of Dawson beremembered. As an agent of the Alaska Commercial Company, in 1873, McQuestion built Fort Reliance, six miles below the Klondike River. In1898 the writer met Jack McQuestion at Minook, on the Lower Yukon. Theold pioneer, though grizzled, was hale and hearty, and as optimistic aswhen he first journeyed into the land along the path of the Circle. Andno man more beloved is there in all the North. There will be greatsadness there when his soul goes questing on over the LastDivide--"farther north, " perhaps--who can tell?

Frank Dinsmore is a fair sample of the men who made the Yukon country. AYankee, born, in Auburn, Maine, the _Wanderlust_ early laid him by theheels, and at sixteen he was heading west on the trail that led "farthernorth. " He prospected in the Black Hills, Montana, and in the Coeurd'Alene, then heard a whisper of the North, and went up to Juneau on theAlaskan Panhandle. But the North still whispered, and more insistently, and he could not rest till he went over Chilcoot, and down into themysterious Silent Land. This was in 1882, and he went down the chain oflakes, down the Yukon, up the Pelly, and tried his luck on the bars ofMcMillan River. In the fall, a perambulating skeleton, he came back overthe Pass in a blizzard, with a rag of shirt, tattered overalls, and ahandful of raw flour. 

But he was unafraid. That winter he worked for a grubstake in Juneau, and the next spring found the heels of his moccasins turned towards saltwater and his face toward Chilcoot. This was repeated the next spring, and the following spring, and the spring after that, until, in 1885, hewent over the Pass for good. There was to be no return for him until hefound the gold he sought. 

The years came and went, but he remained true to his resolve. For elevenlong years, with snow-shoe and canoe, pickaxe and gold-pan, he wrote outhis life on the face of the land. Upper Yukon, Middle Yukon, LowerYukon--he prospected faithfully and well. His bed was anywhere. Winteror summer he carried neither tent nor stove, and his six-poundsleeping-robe of Arctic hare was the warmest covering he was ever knownto possess. Rabbit tracks and salmon bellies were his diet with avengeance, for he depended largely on his rifle and fishing-tackle. Hisendurance equalled his courage. On a wager he lifted thirteenfifty-pound sacks of flour and walked off with them. Winding up aseven-hundred-mile trip on the ice with a forty-mile run, he came intocamp at six o'clock in the evening and found a "squaw dance" under way. He should have been exhausted. Anyway, his _muclucs_ were frozen stiff. But he kicked them off and danced all night in stocking-feet. 

At the last fortune came to him. The quest was ended, and he gathered uphis gold and pulled for the outside. And his own end was as fitting asthat of his quest. Illness came upon him down in San Francisco, and hissplendid life ebbed slowly out as he sat in his big easy-chair, in theCommercial Hotel, the "Yukoner's home. " The doctors came, discussed, consulted, the while he matured more plans of Northland adventure; forthe North still gripped him and would not let him go. He grew weaker dayby day, but each day he said, "To-morrow I'll be all right. " Otherold-timers, "out on furlough, ", came to see him. They wiped their eyesand swore under their breaths, then entered and talked largely andjovially about going in with him over the trail when spring came. Butthere in the big easy-chair it was that his Long Trail ended, and thelife passed out of him still fixed on "farther north. "

From the time of the first white man, famine loomed black and gloomy overthe land. It was chronic with the Indians and Eskimos; it became chronicwith the gold hunters. It was ever present, and so it came about thatlife was commonly expressed in terms of "grub"--was measured by cups offlour. Each winter, eight months long, the heroes of the frost facedstarvation. It became the custom, as fall drew on, for partners to cutthe cards or draw straws to determine which should hit the hazardoustrail for salt water, and which should remain and endure the hazardousdarkness of the Arctic night. 

There was never food enough to winter the whole population. The A. C. Company worked hard to freight up the grub, but the gold hunters camefaster and dared more audaciously. When the A. C. Company added a newstern-wheeler to its fleet, men said, "Now we shall have plenty. " Butmore gold hunters poured in over the passes to the south, more_voyageurs_ and fur traders forced a way through the Rockies from theeast, more seal hunters and coast adventurers poled up from Bering Sea onthe west, more sailors deserted from the whale-ships to the north, andthey all starved together in right brotherly fashion. More steamers wereadded, but the tide of prospectors welled always in advance. Then the N. A. T. & T. Company came upon the scene, and both companies addedsteadily to their fleets. But it was the same old story; famine wouldnot depart. In fact, famine grew with the population, till, in thewinter of 1897-1898, the United States government was forced to equip areindeer relief expedition. As of old, that winter partners cut thecards and drew straws, and remained or pulled for salt water as chancedecided. They were wise of old time, and had learned never to figure onrelief expeditions. They had heard of such things, but no mortal man ofthem had ever laid eyes on one. 

The hard luck of other mining countries pales into insignificance beforethe hard luck of the North. And as for the hardship, it cannot beconveyed by printed page or word of mouth. No man may know who has notundergone. And those who have undergone, out of their knowledge, claimthat in the making of the world God grew tired, and when He came to thelast barrowload, "just dumped it anyhow, " and that was how Alaskahappened to be. While no adequate conception of the life can be given tothe stay-at-home, yet the men themselves sometimes give a clue to itsrigours. One old Minook miner testified thus: "Haven't you noticed theexpression on the faces of us fellows? You can tell a new-comer theminute you see him; he looks alive, enthusiastic, perhaps jolly. We oldminers are always grave, unless were drinking. "

Another old-timer, out of the bitterness of a "home-mood, " imaginedhimself a Martian astronomer explaining to a friend, with the aid of apowerful telescope, the institutions of the earth. "There are thecontinents, " he indicated; "and up there near the polar cap is a country, frigid and burning and lonely and apart, called Alaska. Now, in othercountries and states there are great insane asylums, but, though crowded, they are insufficient; so there is Alaska given over to the worst cases. Now and then some poor insane creature comes to his senses in those awfulsolitudes, and, in wondering joy, escapes from the land and hastens backto his home. But most cases are incurable. They just suffer along, poordevils, forgetting their former life quite, or recalling it like adream. " Again the grip of the North, which will not let one go--for"_most cases are incurable_. "

For a quarter of a century the battle with frost and famine went on. Thevery severity of the struggle with Nature seemed to make the gold hunterskindly toward one another. The latch-string was always out, and the openhand was the order of the day. Distrust was unknown, and it was nohyperbole for a man to take the last shirt off his back for a comrade. Most significant of all, perhaps, in this connection, was the custom ofthe old days, that when August the first came around, the prospectors whohad failed to locate "pay dirt" were permitted to go upon the ground oftheir more fortunate comrades and take out enough for the next year'sgrub-stake. 

In 1885 rich bar-washing was done on the Stewart River, and in 1886Cassiar Bar was struck just below the mouth of the Hootalinqua. It wasat this time that the first moderate strike was made on Forty Mile Creek, so called because it was judged to be that distance below Fort Relianceof Jack McQuestion fame. A prospector named Williams started for theoutside with dogs and Indians to carry the news, but suffered suchhardship on the summit of Chilcoot that he was carried dying into thestore of Captain John Healy at Dyea. But he had brought the newsthrough--_coarse gold_! Within three months more than two hundred minershad passed in over Chilcoot, stampeding for Forty Mile. Find followedfind--Sixty Mile, Miller, Glacier, Birch, Franklin, and the Koyokuk. Butthey were all moderate discoveries, and the miners still dreamed andsearched for the fabled stream, "Too Much Gold, " where gold was soplentiful that gravel had to be shovelled into the sluice-boxes in orderto wash it. 

And all the time the Northland was preparing to play its own huge joke. It was a great joke, albeit an exceeding bitter one, and it has led theold-timers to believe that the land is left in darkness the better partof the year because God goes away and leaves it to itself. After all therisk and toil and faithful endeavour, it was destined that few of theheroes should be in at the finish when Too Much Gold turned itsyellow-treasure to the stars. 

First, there was Robert Henderson--and this is true history. Hendersonhad faith in the Indian River district. For three years, by himself, depending mainly on his rifle, living on straight meat a large portion ofthe time, he prospected many of the Indian River tributaries, just missedfinding the rich creeks, Sulphur and Dominion, and managed to make grub(poor grub) out of Quartz Creek and Australia Creek. Then he crossed thedivide between Indian River and the Klondike, and on one of the "feeders"of the latter found eight cents to the pan. This was consideredexcellent in those simple days. Naming the creek "Gold Bottom, " herecrossed the divide and got three men, Munson, Dalton, and Swanson, toreturn with him. The four took out $750. And be it emphasized, andemphasized again, _that this was the first Klondike gold ever shovelledin and washed out_. And be it also emphasized, _that Robert Hendersonwas the discoverer of Klondike_, _all lies and hearsay tales to thecontrary_. 

Running out of grub, Henderson again recrossed the divide, and went downthe Indian River and up the Yukon to Sixty Mile. Here Joe Ladue ran thetrading post, and here Joe Ladue had originally grub-staked Henderson. Henderson told his tale, and a dozen men (all it contained) deserted thePost for the scene of his find. Also, Henderson persuaded a party ofprospectors bound for Stewart River, to forgo their trip and go down andlocate with him. He loaded his boat with supplies, drifted down theYukon to the mouth of the Klondike, and towed and poled up the Klondiketo Gold Bottom. But at the mouth of the Klondike he met George Carmack, and thereby hangs the tale. 

Carmack was a squawman. He was familiarly known as "Siwash" George--aderogatory term which had arisen out of his affinity for the Indians. Atthe time Henderson encountered him he was catching salmon with his Indianwife and relatives on the site of what was to become Dawson, the GoldenCity of the Snows. Henderson, bubbling over with good-will, open-handed, told Carmack of his discovery. But Carmack was satisfied where he was. He was possessed by no overweening desire for the strenuous life. Salmonwere good enough for him. But Henderson urged him to come on and locate, until, when he yielded, he wanted to take the whole tribe along. Henderson refused to stand for this, said that he must give thepreference over Siwashes to his old Sixty Mile friends, and, it isrumoured, said some things about Siwashes that were not nice. 

The next morning Henderson went on alone up the Klondike to Gold Bottom. Carmack, by this time aroused, took a short cut afoot for the same place. Accompanied by his two Indian brothers-in-law, Skookum Jim and TagishCharley, he went up Rabbit Creek (now Bonanza), crossed into Gold Bottom, and staked near Henderson's discovery. On the way up he had panned a fewshovels on Rabbit Creek, and he showed Henderson "colours" he hadobtained. Henderson made him promise, if he found anything on the wayback, that he would send up one of the Indians with the news. Hendersonalso agreed to pay for his service, for he seemed to feel that they wereon the verge of something big, and he wanted to make sure. 

Carmack returned down Rabbit Creek. While he was taking a sleep on thebank about half a mile below the mouth of what was to be known asEldorado, Skookum Jim tried his luck, and from surface prospects got fromten cents to a dollar to the pan. Carmack and his brother-in-law stakedand hit "the high places" for Forty Mile, where they filed on the claimsbefore Captain Constantine, and renamed the creek Bonanza. And Hendersonwas forgotten. No word of it reached him. Carmack broke his promise. 

Weeks afterward, when Bonanza and Eldorado were staked from end to endand there was no more room, a party of late comers pushed over the divideand down to Gold Bottom, where they found Henderson still at work. Whenthey told him they were from Bonanza, he was nonplussed. He had neverheard of such a place. But when they described it, he recognized it asRabbit Creek. Then they told him of its marvellous richness, and, asTappan Adney relates, when Henderson realized what he had lost throughCarmack's treachery, "he threw down his shovel and went and sat on thebank, so sick at heart that it was some time before he could speak. "

Then there were the rest of the old-timers, the men of Forty Mile andCircle City. At the time of the discovery, nearly all of them were overto the west at work in the old diggings or prospecting for new ones. Asthey said of themselves, they were the kind of men who are always caughtout with forks when it rains soup. In the stampede that followed thenews of Carmack's strike very few old miners took part. They were notthere to take part. But the men who did go on the stampede were mainlythe worthless ones, the new-comers, and the camp hangers on. And whileBob Henderson plugged away to the east, and the heroes plugged away tothe west, the greenhorns and rounders went up and staked Bonanza. 

But the Northland was not yet done with its joke. When fall came on andthe heroes returned to Forty Mile and to Circle City, they listenedcalmly to the up-river tales of Siwash discoveries and loafers'prospects, and shook their heads. They judged by the calibre of the meninterested, and branded it a bunco game. But glowing reports continuedto trickle down the Yukon, and a few of the old-timers went up to see. They looked over the ground--the unlikeliest place for gold in all theirexperience--and they went down the river again, "leaving it to theSwedes. "

Again the Northland turned the tables. The Alaskan gold hunter isproverbial, not so much for his unveracity, as for his inability to tellthe precise truth. In a country of exaggerations, he likewise is proneto hyperbolic description of things actual. But when it came toKlondike, he could not stretch the truth as fast as the truth itselfstretched. Carmack first got a dollar pan. He lied when he said it wastwo dollars and a half. And when those who doubted him did gettwo-and-a-half pans, they said they were getting an ounce, and lo! erethe lie had fairly started on its way, they were getting, not one ounce, but five ounces. This they claimed was six ounces; but when they filleda pan of dirt to prove the lie, they washed out twelve ounces. And so itwent. They continued valiantly to lie, but the truth continued to outrunthem. 

But the Northland's hyperborean laugh was not yet ended. When Bonanzawas staked from mouth to source, those who had failed to "get in, "disgruntled and sore, went up the "pups" and feeders. Eldorado was oneof these feeders, and many men, after locating on it, turned their backsupon their claims and never gave them a second thought. One man sold ahalf-interest in five hundred feet of it for a sack of flour. Otherowners wandered around trying to bunco men into buying them out for asong. And then Eldorado "showed up. " It was far, far richer thanBonanza, with an average value of a thousand dollars a foot to every footof it. 

A Swede named Charley Anderson had been at work on Miller Creek the yearof the strike, and arrived in Dawson with a few hundred dollars. Twominers, who had staked No. 29 Eldorado, decided that he was the properman upon whom to "unload. " He was too canny to approach sober, so atconsiderable expense they got him drunk. Even then it was hard work, butthey kept him befuddled for several days, and finally, inveigled him intobuying No. 29 for $750. When Anderson sobered up, he wept at his folly, and pleaded to have his money back. But the men who had duped him werehard-hearted. They laughed at him, and kicked themselves for not havingtapped him for a couple of hundred more. Nothing remained for Andersonbut to work the worthless ground. This he did, and out of it he tookover three-quarters of a million of dollars. 

It was not till Frank Dinsmore, who already had big holdings on BirchCreek, took a hand, that the old-timers developed faith in the newdiggings. Dinsmore received a letter from a man on the spot, calling it"the biggest thing in the world, " and harnessed his dogs and went up toinvestigate. And when he sent a letter back, saying that he had neverseen "anything like it, " Circle City for the first time believed, and atonce was precipitated one of the wildest stampedes the country had everseen or ever will see. Every dog was taken, many went without dogs, andeven the women and children and weaklings hit the three hundred miles ofice through the long Arctic night for the biggest thing in the world. Itis related that but twenty people, mostly cripples and unable to travel, were left in Circle City when the smoke of the last sled disappeared upthe Yukon. 

Since that time gold has been discovered in all manner of places, underthe grass roots of the hill-side benches, in the bottom of Monte CristoIsland, and in the sands of the sea at Nome. And now the gold hunter whoknows his business shuns the "favourable looking" spots, confident in hishard-won knowledge that he will find the most gold in the least likelyplace. This is sometimes adduced to support the theory that the goldhunters, rather than the explorers, are the men who will ultimately winto the Pole. Who knows? It is in their blood, and they are capable ofit. 

PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA. _February_ 1902. 

FOMA GORDYEEFF

 "What, without asking, hither hurried _Whence_? And, without asking, _Whither_ hurried hence! Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine Must drown the memory of that insolence!"

"Foma Gordyeeff" is a big book--not only is the breadth of Russia in it, but the expanse of life. Yet, though in each land, in this world ofmarts and exchanges, this age of trade and traffic, passionate figuresrise up and demand of life what its fever is, in "Foma Gordyeeff" it is aRussian who so rises up and demands. For Gorky, the Bitter One, isessentially a Russian in his grasp on the facts of life and in histreatment. All the Russian self-analysis and insistent introspection arehis. And, like all his brother Russians, ardent, passionate protestimpregnates his work. There is a purpose to it. He writes because hehas something to say which the world should hear. From that clenchedfist of his, light and airy romances, pretty and sweet and beguiling, donot flow, but realities--yes, big and brutal and repulsive, but real. 

He raises the cry of the miserable and the despised, and in a masterlyarraignment of commercialism, protests against social conditions, againstthe grinding of the faces of the poor and weak, and the self-pollution ofthe rich and strong, in their mad lust for place and power. It is to bedoubted strongly if the average bourgeois, smug and fat and prosperous, can understand this man Foma Gordyeeff. The rebellion in his blood issomething to which their own does not thrill. To them it will beinexplicable that this man, with his health and his millions, could notgo on living as his class lived, keeping regular hours at desk and stockexchange, driving close contracts, underbidding his competitors, andexulting in the business disasters of his fellows. It would appear soeasy, and, after such a life, well appointed and eminently respectable, he could die. "Ah, " Foma will interrupt rudely--he is given to rudeinterruptions--"if to die and disappear is the end of thesemoney-grubbing years, why money-grub?" And the bourgeois whom he rudelyinterrupted will not understand. Nor did Mayakin understand as helaboured holily with his wayward godson. 

"Why do you brag?" Foma, bursts out upon him. "What have you to bragabout? Your son--where is he? Your daughter--what is she? Ekh, youmanager of life! Come, now, you're clever, you know everything--tell me, why do you live? Why do you accumulate money? Aren't you going to die?Well, what then?" And Mayakin finds himself speechless and withoutanswer, but unshaken and unconvinced. 

Receiving by heredity the fierce, bull-like nature of his father plus thepassive indomitableness and groping spirit of his mother, Foma, proud andrebellious, is repelled by the selfish, money-seeking environment intowhich he is born. Ignat, his father, and Mayakin, the godfather, and allthe horde of successful merchants singing the paean of the strong and thepraises of merciless, remorseless _laissez faire_, cannot entice him. Why? he demands. This is a nightmare, this life! It is withoutsignificance! What does it all mean? What is there underneath? What isthe meaning of that which is underneath?

"You do well to pity people, " Ignat tells Foma, the boy, "only you mustuse judgment with your pity. First consider the man, find out what he islike, what use can be made of him; and if you see that he is a strong andcapable man, help him if you like. But if a man is weak, not inclined towork--spit upon him and go your way. And you must know that when a mancomplains about everything, and cries out and groans--he is not worthmore than two kopeks, he is not worthy of pity, and will be of no use toyou if you do help him. "

Such the frank and militant commercialism, bellowed out between glassesof strong liquor. Now comes Mayakin, speaking softly and without satire:

"Eh, my boy, what is a beggar? A beggar is a man who is forced, by fate, to remind us of Christ; he is Christ's brother; he is the bell of theLord, and rings in life for the purpose of awakening our conscience, ofstirring up the satiety of man's flesh. He stands under the window andsings, 'For Christ's sa-ake!' and by that chant he reminds us of Christ, of His holy command to help our neighbour. But men have so ordered theirlives that it is utterly impossible for them to act in accordance withChrist's teaching, and Jesus Christ has become entirely superfluous tous. Not once, but, in all probability, a thousand times, we have givenHim over to be crucified, but still we cannot banish Him from our livesso long as His poor brethren sing His name in the streets and remind usof Him. And so now we have hit upon the idea of shutting up the beggarsin such special buildings, so that they may not roam about the streetsand stir up our consciences. "

But Foma will have none of it. He is neither to be enticed nor cajoled. The cry of his nature is for light. He must have light. And in burningrevolt he goes seeking the meaning of life. "His thoughts embraced allthose petty people who toiled at hard labour. It was strange--why didthey live? What satisfaction was it to them to live on the earth? Allthey did was to perform their dirty, arduous toil, eat poorly; they weremiserably clad, addicted to drunkenness. One was sixty years old, but hestill toiled side by side with young men. And they all presentedthemselves to Foma's imagination as a huge heap of worms, who wereswarming over the earth merely to eat. "

He becomes the living interrogation of life. He cannot begin livinguntil he knows what living means, and he seeks its meaning vainly. "Whyshould I try to live life when I do not know what life is?" he objectswhen Mayakin strives with him to return and manage his business. Whyshould men fetch and carry for him? be slaves to him and his money?

"Work is not everything to a man, " he says; "it is not true thatjustification lies in work . . . Some people never do any work at all, all their lives long--yet they live better than the toilers. Why isthat? And what justification have I? And how will all the people whogive their orders justify themselves? What have they lived for? But myidea is that everybody ought, without fail, to know solidly what he isliving for. Is it possible that a man is born to toil, accumulate money, build a house, beget children, and--die? No; life means something initself. . . . A man has been born, has lived, has died--why? All of usmust consider why we are living, by God, we must! There is no sense inour life--there is no sense at all. Some are rich--they have moneyenough for a thousand men all to themselves--and they live withoutoccupation; others bow their backs in toil all their life, and theyhaven't a penny. "

But Foma can only be destructive. He is not constructive. The dimgroping spirit of his mother and the curse of his environment press tooheavily upon him, and he is crushed to debauchery and madness. He doesnot drink because liquor tastes good in his mouth. In the vilecompanions who purvey to his baser appetites he finds no charm. It isall utterly despicable and sordid, but thither his quest leads him and hefollows the quest. He knows that everything is wrong, but he cannotright it, cannot tell why. He can only attack and demolish. "Whatjustification have you all in the sight of God? Why do you live?" hedemands of the conclave of merchants, of life's successes. "You have notconstructed life--you have made a cesspool! You have disseminated filthand stifling exhalations by your deeds. Have you any conscience? Do youremember God? A five-kopek piece--that is your God! But you haveexpelled your conscience!"

Like the cry of Isaiah, "Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for yourmisfortunes that shall come upon you, " is Foma's: "You blood-suckers!You live on other people's strength; you work with other people's hands!For all this you shall be made to pay! You shall perish--you shall becalled to account for all! For all--to the last little tear-drop!"

Stunned by this puddle of life, unable to make sense of it, Fomaquestions, and questions vainly, whether of Sofya Medynsky in herdrawing-room of beauty, or in the foulest depths of the first chancecourtesan's heart. Linboff, whose books contradict one another, cannothelp him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the verse writersand harlots in dives and boozingkens. And so, wondering, pondering, perplexed, amazed, whirling through the mad whirlpool of life, dancingthe dance of death, groping for the nameless, indefinite something, themagic formula, the essence, the intrinsic fact, the flash of lightthrough the murk and dark--the rational sanction for existence, inshort--Foma Gordyeeff goes down to madness and death. 

It is not a pretty book, but it is a masterful interrogation of life--notof life universal, but of life particular, the social life of to-day. Itis not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays thebook down sick at heart--sick for life with all its "lyings and itslusts. " But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of socialdisease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, thatits tendency cannot but be strongly for good. It is a goad, to pricksleeping human consciences awake and drive them into the battle forhumanity. 

But no story is told, nothing is finished, some one will object. Surely, when Sasha leaped overboard and swam to Foma, something happened. It waspregnant with possibilities. Yet it was not finished, was not decisive. She left him to go with the son of a rich vodka-maker. And all that wasbest in Sofya Medynsky was quickened when she looked upon Foma with thelook of the Mother-Woman. She might have been a power for good in hislife, she might have shed light into it and lifted him up to safety andhonour and understanding. Yet she went away next day, and he never sawher again. No story is told, nothing is finished. 

Ah, but surely the story of Foma Gordyeeff is told; his life is finished, as lives are being finished each day around us. Besides, it is the wayof life, and the art of Gorky is the art of realism. But it is a lesstedious realism than that of Tolstoy or Turgenev. It lives and breathesfrom page to page with a swing and dash and go that they rarely attain. Their mantle has fallen on his young shoulders, and he promises to wearit royally. 

Even so, but so helpless, hopeless, terrible is this life of FomaGordyeeff that we would be filled with profound sorrow for Gorky did wenot know that he has come up out of the Valley of Shadow. That he hopes, we know, else would he not now be festering in a Russian prison becausehe is brave enough to live the hope he feels. He knows life, why and howit should be lived. And in conclusion, this one thing is manifest: FomaGordyeeff is no mere statement of an intellectual problem. For as helived and interrogated living, so in sweat and blood and travail hasGorky lived. 

PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA. _November_ 1901. 

THESE BONES SHALL RISE AGAIN

Rudyard Kipling, "prophet of blood and vulgarity, prince of ephemeralsand idol of the unelect"--as a Chicago critic chortles--is dead. It istrue. He is dead, dead and buried. And a fluttering, chirping host ofmen, little men and unseeing men, have heaped him over with the uncutleaves of _Kim_, wrapped him in _Stalky & Co. _, for winding sheet, andfor headstone reared his unconventional lines, _The Lesson_. It was veryeasy. The simplest thing in the world. And the fluttering, chirpinggentlemen are rubbing their hands in amaze and wondering why they did notdo it long ago, it was so very, very simple. 

But the centuries to come, of which the fluttering, chirping gentlemenare prone to talk largely, will have something to say in the matter. Andwhen they, the future centuries, quest back to the nineteenth century tofind what manner of century it was--to find, not what the people of thenineteenth century thought they thought, but what they really thought, not what they thought they ought to do, but what they really did do, thena certain man, Kipling, will be read--and read with understanding. "Theythought they read him with understanding, those people of the nineteenthcentury, " the future centuries will say; "and then they thought there wasno understanding in him, and after that they did not know what theythought. "

But this is over-severe. It applies only to that class which serves afunction somewhat similar to that served by the populace of old time inRome. This is the unstable, mob-minded mass, which sits on the fence, ever ready to fall this side or that and indecorously clamber back again;which puts a Democratic administration into office one election, and aRepublican the next; which discovers and lifts up a prophet to-day thatit may stone him to-morrow; which clamours for the book everybody else isreading, for no reason under the sun save that everybody else is readingit. This is the class of whim and caprice, of fad and vogue, theunstable, incoherent, mob-mouthed, mob-minded mass, the "monkey-folk, " ifyou please, of these latter days. Now it may be reading _The EternalCity_. Yesterday it was reading _The Master Christian_, and some severaldays before that it was reading Kipling. Yes, almost to his shame be it, these folk were reading him. But it was not his fault. If he dependedupon them he well deserves to be dead and buried and never to rise again. But to them, let us be thankful, he never lived. They thought he lived, but he was as dead then as he is now and as he always will be. 

He could not help it because he became the vogue, and it is easilyunderstood. When he lay ill, fighting with close grapples with death, those who knew him were grieved. They were many, and in many voices, tothe rim of the Seven Seas, they spoke their grief. Whereupon, and withcelerity, the mob-minded mass began to inquire as to this man whom somany mourned. If everybody else mourned, it were fit that they mourntoo. So a vast wail went up. Each was a spur to the other's grief, andeach began privately to read this man they had never read and publicly toproclaim this man they had always read. And straightaway next day theydrowned their grief in a sea of historical romance and forgot all abouthim. The reaction was inevitable. Emerging from the sea into which theyhad plunged, they became aware that they had so soon forgotten him, andwould have been ashamed, had not the fluttering, chirping men said, "Come, let us bury him. " And they put him in a hole, quickly, out oftheir sight. 

And when they have crept into their own little holes, and smugly laidthemselves down in their last long sleep, the future centuries will rollthe stone away and he will come forth again. For be it known: _That manof us is imperishable who makes his century imperishable_. That man ofus who seizes upon the salient facts of our life, who tells what wethought, what we were, and for what we stood--that man shall be themouthpiece to the centuries, and so long as they listen he shall endure. 

We remember the caveman. We remember him because he made his centuryimperishable. But, unhappily, we remember him dimly, in a collectivesort of way, because he memorialized his century dimly, in a collectivesort of way. He had no written speech, so he left us rude scratchings ofbeasts and things, cracked marrow-bones, and weapons of stone. It wasthe best expression of which he was capable. Had he scratched his ownparticular name with the scratchings of beasts and things, stamped hiscracked marrowbones with his own particular seal, trade-marked hisweapons of stone with his own particular device, that particular manwould we remember. But he did the best he could, and we remember him asbest we may. 

Homer takes his place with Achilles and the Greek and Trojan heroes. Because he remembered them, we remember him. Whether he be one or adozen men, or a dozen generations of men, we remember him. And so longas the name of Greece is known on the lips of men, so long will the nameof Homer be known. There are many such names, linked with their times, which have come down to us, many more which will yet go down; and tothem, in token that we have lived, must we add some few of our own. 

Dealing only with the artist, be it understood, only those artists willgo down who have spoken true of us. Their truth must be the deepest andmost significant, their voices clear and strong, definite and coherent. Half-truths and partial-truths will not do, nor will thin piping voicesand quavering lays. There must be the cosmic quality in what they sing. They must seize upon and press into enduring art-forms the vital facts ofour existence. They must tell why we have lived, for without any reasonfor living, depend upon it, in the time to come, it will be as though wehad never lived. Nor are the things that were true of the people athousand years or so ago true of us to-day. The romance of Homer'sGreece is the romance of Homer's Greece. That is undeniable. It is notour romance. And he who in our time sings the romance of Homer's Greececannot expect to sing it so well as Homer did, nor will he be singingabout us or our romance at all. A machine age is something quitedifferent from an heroic age. What is true of rapid-fire guns, stock-exchanges, and electric motors, cannot possibly be true ofhand-flung javelins and whirring chariot wheels. Kipling knows this. Hehas been telling it to us all his life, living it all his life in thework he has done. 

What the Anglo-Saxon has done, he has memorialized. And by Anglo-Saxonis not meant merely the people of that tight little island on the edge ofthe Western Ocean. Anglo-Saxon stands for the English-speaking people ofall the world, who, in forms and institutions and traditions, are morepeculiarly and definitely English than anything else. This peopleKipling has sung. Their sweat and blood and toil have been the motivesof his songs; but underlying all the motives of his songs is the motiveof motives, the sum of them all and something more, which is one withwhat underlies all the Anglo-Saxon sweat and blood and toil; namely, thegenius of the race. And this is the cosmic quality. Both that which istrue of the race for all time, and that which is true of the race for alltime applied to this particular time, he has caught up and pressed intohis art-forms. He has caught the dominant note of the Anglo-Saxon andpressed it into wonderful rhythms which cannot be sung out in a day andwhich will not be sung out in a day. 

The Anglo-Saxon is a pirate, a land robber and a sea robber. Underneathhis thin coating of culture, he is what he was in Morgan's time, inDrake's time, in William's time, in Alfred's time. The blood and thetradition of Hengist and Horsa are in his veins. In battle he is subjectto the blood-lusts of the Berserkers of old. Plunder and booty fascinatehim immeasurably. The schoolboy of to-day dreams the dream of Clive andHastings. The Anglo-Saxon is strong of arm and heavy of hand, and hepossesses a primitive brutality all his own. There is a discontent inhis blood, an unsatisfaction that will not let him rest, but sends himadventuring over the sea and among the lands in the midst of the sea. Hedoes not know when he is beaten, wherefore the term "bulldog" is attachedto him, so that all may know his unreasonableness. He has "some care asto the purity of his ways, does not wish for strange gods, nor jugglewith intellectual phantasmagoria. " He loves freedom, but is dictatorialto others, is self-willed, has boundless energy, and does things forhimself. He is also a master of matter, an organizer of law, and anadministrator of justice. 

And in the nineteenth century he has lived up to his reputation. Beingthe nineteenth century and no other century, and in so far different fromall other centuries, he has expressed himself differently. But bloodwill tell, and in the name of God, the Bible, and Democracy, he has goneout over the earth, possessing himself of broad lands and fat revenues, and conquering by virtue of his sheer pluck and enterprise and superiormachinery. 

Now the future centuries, seeking to find out what the nineteenth centuryAnglo-Saxon was and what were his works, will have small concern withwhat he did not do and what he would have liked to do. These things hedid do, and for these things will he be remembered. His claim onposterity will be that in the nineteenth century he mastered matter; histwentieth-century claim will be, in the highest probability, that heorganized life--but that will be sung by the twentieth-century Kiplingsor the twenty-first-century Kiplings. Rudyard Kipling of the nineteenthcentury has sung of "things as they are. " He has seen life as it is, "taken it up squarely, " in both his hands, and looked upon it. Whatbetter preachment upon the Anglo-Saxon and what he has done can be hadthan _The Bridge Builders_? what better appraisement than _The WhiteMan's Burden_? As for faith and clean ideals--not of "children and gods, but men in a world of men"--who has preached them better than he?

Primarily, Kipling has stood for the doer as opposed to the dreamer--thedoer, who lists not to idle songs of empty days, but who goes forth anddoes things, with bended back and sweated brow and work-hardened hands. The most characteristic thing about Kipling is his lover of actuality, his intense practicality, his proper and necessary respect for thehard-headed, hard-fisted fact. And, above all, he has preached thegospel of work, and as potently as Carlyle ever preached. For he haspreached it not only to those in the high places, but to the common men, to the great sweating thong of common men who hear and understand yetstand agape at Carlyle's turgid utterance. Do the thing to your hand, and do it with all your might. Never mind what the thing is; so long asit is something. Do it. Do it and remember Tomlinson, sexless andsoulless Tomlinson, who was denied at Heaven's gate. 

The blundering centuries have perseveringly pottered and groped throughthe dark; but it remained for Kipling's century to roll in the sun, toformulate, in other words, the reign of law. And of the artists inKipling's century, he of them all has driven the greater measure of lawin the more consummate speech:

 Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience. Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford. Make ye sure to each his own That he reap what he hath sown; By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord. 

--And so it runs, from McAndrew's _Law_, _Order_, _Duty_, _andRestraint_, to his last least line, whether of _The Vampire_ or _TheRecessional_. And no prophet out of Israel has cried out more loudly thesins of the people, nor called them more awfully to repent. 

"But he is vulgar, he stirs the puddle of life, " object the fluttering, chirping gentlemen, the Tomlinsonian men. Well, and isn't life vulgar?Can you divorce the facts of life? Much of good is there, and much ofill; but who may draw aside his garment and say, "I am none of them"?Can you say that the part is greater than the whole? that the whole ismore or less than the sum of the parts? As for the puddle of life, thestench is offensive to you? Well, and what then? Do you not live in it?Why do you not make it clean? Do you clamour for a filter to make cleanonly your own particular portion? And, made clean, are you wroth becauseKipling has stirred it muddy again? At least he has stirred ithealthily, with steady vigour and good-will. He has not brought to thesurface merely its dregs, but its most significant values. He has toldthe centuries to come of our lyings and our lusts, but he has also toldthe centuries to come of the seriousness which is underneath our lyingsand our lusts. And he has told us, too, and always has he told us, to beclean and strong and to walk upright and manlike. 

"But he has no sympathy, " the fluttering gentlemen chirp. "We admire hisart and intellectual brilliancy, we all admire his art and intellectualbrilliancy, his dazzling technique and rare rhythmical sense; but . . . He is totally devoid of sympathy. " Dear! Dear! What is to beunderstood by this? Should he sprinkle his pages with sympatheticadjectives, so many to the paragraph, as the country compositor sprinklescommas? Surely not. The little gentlemen are not quite so infinitesimalas that. There have been many tellers of jokes, and the greater of them, it is recorded, never smiled at their own, not even in the crucial momentwhen the audience wavered between laughter and tears. 

And so with Kipling. Take _The Vampire_, for instance. It has beencomplained that there is no touch of pity in it for the man and his ruin, no sermon on the lesson of it, no compassion for the human weakness, noindignation at the heartlessness. But are we kindergarten children thatthe tale be told to us in words of one syllable? Or are we men andwomen, able to read between the lines what Kipling intended we shouldread between the lines? "For some of him lived, but the most of himdied. " Is there not here all the excitation in the world for our sorrow, our pity, our indignation? And what more is the function of art than toexcite states of consciousness complementary to the thing portrayed? Thecolour of tragedy is red. Must the artist also paint in the watery tearsand wan-faced grief? "For some of him lived, but the most of himdied"--can the heartache of the situation be conveyed more achingly? Orwere it better that the young man, some of him alive but most of himdead, should come out before the curtain and deliver a homily to theweeping audience?

The nineteenth century, so far as the Anglo-Saxon is concerned, wasremarkable for two great developments: the mastery of matter and theexpansion of the race. Three great forces operated in it: nationalism, commercialism, democracy--the marshalling of the races, the merciless, remorseless _laissez faire_ of the dominant bourgeoisie, and thepractical, actual working government of men within a very limitedequality. The democracy of the nineteenth century is not the democracyof which the eighteenth century dreamed. It is not the democracy of theDeclaration, but it is what we have practised and lived that reconcilesit to the fact of the "lesser breeds without the Law. "

It is of these developments and forces of the nineteenth century thatKipling has sung. And the romance of it he has sung, that whichunderlies and transcends objective endeavour, which deals with raceimpulses, race deeds, and race traditions. Even into the steam-ladenspeech of his locomotives has he breathed our life, our spirit, oursignificance. As he is our mouthpiece, so are they his mouthpieces. Andthe romance of the nineteenth-century man as he has thus expressedhimself in the nineteenth century, in shaft and wheel, in steel andsteam, in far journeying and adventuring, Kipling has caught up inwondrous songs for the future centuries to sing. 

If the nineteenth century is the century of the Hooligan, then is Kiplingthe voice of the Hooligan as surely as he is the voice of the nineteenthcentury. Who is more representative? Is _David Harum_ morerepresentative of the nineteenth century? Is Mary Johnston, CharlesMajor, or Winston Churchill? Is Bret Harte? William Dean Howells?Gilbert Parker? Who of them all is as essentially representative ofnineteenth-century life? When Kipling is forgotten, will Robert LouisStevenson be remembered for his _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, his_Kidnapped_ and his _David Balfour_? Not so. His _Treasure Island_ willbe a classic, to go down with _Robinson Crusoe_, _Through theLooking-Glass_, and _The Jungle Books_. He will be remembered for hisessays, for his letters, for his philosophy of life, for himself. Hewill be the well beloved, as he has been the well beloved. But his willbe another claim upon posterity than what we are considering. For eachepoch has its singer. As Scott sang the swan song of chivalry andDickens the burgher-fear of the rising merchant class, so Kipling, as noone else, has sung the hymn of the dominant bourgeoisie, the war march ofthe white man round the world, the triumphant paean of commercialism andimperialism. For that will he be remembered. 

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. _October_ 1901. 

THE OTHER ANIMALS

American journalism has its moments of fantastic hysteria, and when it ison the rampage the only thing for a rational man to do is to climb a treeand let the cataclysm go by. And so, some time ago, when the word_nature-faker_ was coined, I, for one, climbed into my tree and stayedthere. I happened to be in Hawaii at the time, and a Honolulu reporterelicited the sentiment from me that I thanked God I was not an authorityon anything. This sentiment was promptly cabled to America in anAssociated Press despatch, whereupon the American press (possibly annoyedbecause I had not climbed down out of my tree) charged me with paying foradvertising by cable at a dollar per word--the very human way of theAmerican press, which, when a man refuses to come down and be licked, makes faces at him. 

But now that the storm is over, let us come and reason together. I havebeen guilty of writing two animal-stories--two books about dogs. Thewriting of these two stories, on my part, was in truth a protest againstthe "humanizing" of animals, of which it seemed to me several "animalwriters" had been profoundly guilty. Time and again, and many times, inmy narratives, I wrote, speaking of my dog-heroes: "He did not thinkthese things; he merely did them, " etc. And I did this repeatedly, tothe clogging of my narrative and in violation of my artistic canons; andI did it in order to hammer into the average human understanding thatthese dog-heroes of mine were not directed by abstract reasoning, but byinstinct, sensation, and emotion, and by simple reasoning. Also, Iendeavoured to make my stories in line with the facts of evolution; Ihewed them to the mark set by scientific research, and awoke, one day, tofind myself bundled neck and crop into the camp of the nature-fakers. 

President Roosevelt was responsible for this, and he tried to condemn meon two counts. (1) I was guilty of having a big, fighting bull-dog whipa wolf-dog. (2) I was guilty of allowing a lynx to kill a wolf-dog in apitched battle. Regarding the second count, President Roosevelt waswrong in his field observations taken while reading my book. He musthave read it hastily, for in my story I had the wolf-dog kill the lynx. Not only did I have my wolf-dog kill the lynx, but I made him eat thebody of the lynx as well. Remains only the first count on which toconvict me of nature-faking, and the first count does not charge me withdiverging from ascertained facts. It is merely a statement of adifference of opinion. President Roosevelt does not think a bull-dog canlick a wolf-dog. I think a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog. And there weare. Difference of opinion may make, and does make, horse-racing. I canunderstand that difference of opinion can make dog-fighting. But whatgets me is how difference of opinion regarding the relative fightingmerits of a bull-dog and a wolf-dog makes me a nature-faker and PresidentRoosevelt a vindicated and triumphant scientist. 

Then entered John Burroughs to clinch President Roosevelt's judgments. In this alliance there is no difference of opinion. That Roosevelt cando no wrong is Burroughs's opinion; and that Burroughs is always right isRoosevelt's opinion. Both are agreed that animals do not reason. Theyassert that all animals below man are automatons and perform actions onlyof two sorts--mechanical and reflex--and that in such actions noreasoning enters at all. They believe that man is the only animalcapable of reasoning and that ever does reason. This is a view thatmakes the twentieth-century scientist smile. It is not modern at all. It is distinctly mediaeval. President Roosevelt and John Burroughs, inadvancing such a view, are homocentric in the same fashion that thescholastics of earlier and darker centuries were homocentric. Had theworld not been discovered to be round until after the births of PresidentRoosevelt and John Burroughs, they would have been geocentric as well intheir theories of the Cosmos. They could not have believed otherwise. The stuff of their minds is so conditioned. They talk the argot ofevolution, while they no more understand the essence and the import ofevolution than does a South Sea Islander or Sir Oliver Lodge understandthe noumena of radio-activity. 

Now, President Roosevelt is an amateur. He may know something ofstatecraft and of big-game shooting; he may be able to kill a deer whenhe sees it and to measure it and weigh it after he has shot it; he may beable to observe carefully and accurately the actions and antics oftomtits and snipe, and, after he has observed it, definitely andcoherently to convey the information of when the first chipmunk, in acertain year and a certain latitude and longitude, came out in the springand chattered and gambolled--but that he should be able, as an individualobserver, to analyze all animal life and to synthetize and develop allthat is known of the method and significance of evolution, would requirea vaster credulity for you or me to believe than is required for us tobelieve the biggest whopper ever told by an unmitigated nature-faker. No, President Roosevelt does not understand evolution, and he does notseem to have made much of an attempt to understand evolution. 

Remains John Burroughs, who claims to be a thorough-going evolutionist. Now, it is rather hard for a young man to tackle an old man. It is thenature of young men to be more controlled in such matters, and it is thenature of old men, presuming upon the wisdom that is very oftenerroneously associated with age, to do the tackling. In this presentquestion of nature-faking, the old men did the tackling, while I, as oneyoung man, kept quiet a long time. But here goes at last. And first ofall let Mr. Burroughs's position be stated, and stated in his words. 

"Why impute reason to an animal if its behaviour can be explained on thetheory of instinct?" Remember these words, for they will be referred tolater. "A goodly number of persons seem to have persuaded themselvesthat animals do reason. " "But instinct suffices for the animals . . . They get along very well without reason. " "Darwin tried hard to convincehimself that animals do at times reason in a rudimentary way; but Darwinwas also a much greater naturalist than psychologist. " The precedingquotation is tantamount, on Mr. Burroughs's part, to a flat denial thatanimals reason even in a rudimentary way. And when Mr. Burrough deniesthat animals reason even in a rudimentary way, it is equivalent toaffirming, in accord with the first quotation in this paragraph, thatinstinct will explain every animal act that might be confounded withreason by the unskilled or careless observer. 

Having bitten off this large mouthful, Mr. Burroughs proceeds with sereneand beautiful satisfaction to masticate it in the following fashion. Hecites a large number of instances of purely instinctive actions on thepart of animals, and triumphantly demands if they are acts of reason. Hetells of the robin that fought day after day its reflected image in awindow-pane; of the birds in South America that were guilty of drillingclear through a mud wall, which they mistook for a solid clay bank: ofthe beaver that cut down a tree four times because it was held at the topby the branches of other trees; of the cow that licked the skin of herstuffed calf so affectionately that it came apart, whereupon sheproceeded to eat the hay with which it was stuffed. He tells of thephoebe-bird that betrays her nest on the porch by trying to hide it withmoss in similar fashion to the way all phoebe-birds hide their nests whenthey are built among rocks. He tells of the highhole that repeatedlydrills through the clap-boards of an empty house in a vain attempt tofind a thickness of wood deep enough in which to build its nest. Hetells of the migrating lemmings of Norway that plunge into the sea anddrown in vast numbers because of their instinct to swim lakes and riversin the course of their migrations. And, having told a few more instancesof like kidney, he triumphantly demands: "Where now is your much-vauntedreasoning of the lower animals?"

No schoolboy in a class debate could be guilty of unfairer argument. Itis equivalent to replying to the assertion that 2+2=4, by saying: "No;because 12/4=3; I have demonstrated my honourable opponent's error. "When a man attacks your ability as a foot-racer, promptly prove to himthat he was drunk the week before last, and the average man in the crowdof gaping listeners will believe that you have convincingly refuted theslander on your fleetness of foot. On my honour, it will work. Try itsome time. It is done every day. Mr. Burroughs has done it himself, and, I doubt not, pulled the sophistical wool over a great many pairs ofeyes. No, no, Mr. Burroughs; you can't disprove that animals reason byproving that they possess instincts. But the worst of it is that youhave at the same time pulled the wool over your own eyes. You have setup a straw man and knocked the stuffing out of him in the complacentbelief that it was the reasoning of lower animals you were knocking outof the minds of those who disagreed with you. When the highholeperforated the icehouse and let out the sawdust, you called him a lunatic. . . 

But let us be charitable--and serious. What Mr. Burroughs instances asacts of instinct certainly are acts of instincts. By the same method oflogic one could easily adduce a multitude of instinctive acts on the partof man and thereby prove that man is an unreasoning animal. But manperforms actions of both sorts. Between man and the lower animals Mr. Burroughs finds a vast gulf. This gulf divides man from the rest of hiskin by virtue of the power of reason that he alone possesses. Man is avoluntary agent. Animals are automatons. The robin fights itsreflection in the window-pane because it is his instinct to fight andbecause he cannot reason out the physical laws that make this reflectionappear real. An animal is a mechanism that operates according tofore-ordained rules. Wrapped up in its heredity, and determined longbefore it was born, is a certain limited capacity of ganglionic responseto eternal stimuli. These responses have been fixed in the speciesthrough adaptation to environment. Natural selection has compelled theanimal automatically to respond in a fixed manner and a certain way toall the usual external stimuli it encounters in the course of a usuallife. Thus, under usual circumstances, it does the usual thing. Underunusual circumstances it still does the usual thing, wherefore thehighhole perforating the ice-house is guilty of lunacy--of unreason, inshort. To do the unusual thing under unusual circumstances, successfullyto adjust to a strange environment for which his heredity has notautomatically fitted an adjustment, Mr. Burroughs says is impossible. Hesays it is impossible because it would be a non-instinctive act, and, asis well known animals act only through instinct. And right here we catcha glimpse of Mr. Burroughs's cart standing before his horse. He has athesis, and though the heavens fall he will fit the facts to the thesis. Agassiz, in his opposition to evolution, had a similar thesis, thoughneither did he fit the facts to it nor did the heavens fall. Facts arevery disagreeable at times. 

But let us see. Let us test Mr. Burroughs's test of reason and instinct. When I was a small boy I had a dog named Rollo. According to Mr. Burroughs, Rollo was an automaton, responding to external stimulimechanically as directed by his instincts. Now, as is well known, thedevelopment of instinct in animals is a dreadfully slow process. Thereis no known case of the development of a single instinct in domesticanimals in all the history of their domestication. Whatever instinctsthey possess they brought with them from the wild thousands of years ago. Therefore, all Rollo's actions were ganglionic discharges mechanicallydetermined by the instincts that had been developed and fixed in thespecies thousands of years ago. Very well. It is clear, therefore, thatin all his play with me he would act in old-fashioned ways, adjustinghimself to the physical and psychical factors in his environmentaccording to the rules of adjustment which had obtained in the wild andwhich had become part of his heredity. 

Rollo and I did a great deal of rough romping. He chased me and I chasedhim. He nipped my legs, arms, and hands, often so hard that I yelled, while I rolled him and tumbled him and dragged him about, often sostrenuously as to make him yelp. In the course of the play manyvariations arose. I would make believe to sit down and cry. Allrepentance and anxiety, he would wag his tail and lick my face, whereuponI would give him the laugh. He hated to be laughed at, and promptly hewould spring for me with good-natured, menacing jaws, and the wild rompwould go on. I had scored a point. Then he hit upon a trick. Pursuinghim into the woodshed, I would find him in a far corner, pretending tosulk. Now, he dearly loved the play, and never got enough of it. But atfirst he fooled me. I thought I had somehow hurt his feelings and I cameand knelt before him, petting him, and speaking lovingly. Promptly, in awild outburst, he was up and away, tumbling me over on the floor as hedashed out in a mad skurry around the yard. He had scored a point. 

After a time, it became largely a game of wits. I reasoned my acts, ofcourse, while his were instinctive. One day, as he pretended to sulk inthe corner, I glanced out of the woodshed doorway, simulated pleasure inface, voice, and language, and greeted one of my schoolboy friends. Immediately Rollo forgot to sulk, rushed out to see the newcomer, and sawempty space. The laugh was on him, and he knew it, and I gave it to him, too. I fooled him in this way two or three times; then be became wise. One day I worked a variation. Suddenly looking out the door, makingbelieve that my eyes had been attracted by a moving form, I said coldly, as a child educated in turning away bill-collectors would say: "No myfather is not at home. " Like a shot, Rollo was out the door. He evenran down the alley to the front of the house in a vain attempt to findthe man I had addressed. He came back sheepishly to endure the laugh andresume the game. 

And now we come to the test. I fooled Rollo, but how was the foolingmade possible? What precisely went on in that brain of his? Accordingto Mr. Burroughs, who denies even rudimentary reasoning to the loweranimals, Rollo acted instinctively, mechanically responding to theexternal stimulus, furnished by me, which led him to believe that a manwas outside the door. 

Since Rollo acted instinctively, and since all instincts are veryancient, tracing back to the pre-domestication period, we can concludeonly that Rollo's wild ancestors, at the time this particular instinctwas fixed into the heredity of the species, must have been in close, long-continued, and vital contact with man, the voice of man, and theexpressions on the face of man. But since the instinct must have beendeveloped during the pre-domestication period, how under the sun couldhis wild, undomesticated ancestors have experienced the close, long-continued, and vital contact with man?

Mr. Burroughs says that "instinct suffices for the animals, " that "theyget along very well without reason. " But I say, what all the poornature-fakers will say, that Rollo reasoned. He was born into the worlda bundle of instincts and a pinch of brain-stuff, all wrapped around in aframework of bone, meat, and hide. As he adjusted to his environment hegained experiences. He remembered these experiences. He learned that hemustn't chase the cat, kill chickens, nor bite little girls' dresses. Helearned that little boys had little boy playmates. He learned that mencame into back yards. He learned that the animal man, on meeting withhis own kind, was given to verbal and facial greeting. He learned thatwhen a boy greeted a playmate he did it differently from the way hegreeted a man. All these he learned and remembered. They were so manyobservations--so many propositions, if you please. Now, what went onbehind those brown eyes of his, inside that pinch of brain-stuff, when Iturned suddenly to the door and greeted an imaginary person outside?Instantly, out of the thousands of observations stored in his brain, cameto the front of his consciousness the particular observations connectedwith this particular situation. Next, he established a relation betweenthese observations. This relation was his conclusion, achieved, as everypsychologist will agree, by a definite cell-action of his grey matter. From the fact that his master turned suddenly toward the door, and fromthe fact that his master's voice, facial expression, and whole demeanourexpressed surprise and delight, he concluded that a friend was outside. He established a relation between various things, and the act ofestablishing relations between things is an act of reason--of rudimentaryreason, granted, but none the less of reason. 

Of course Rollo was fooled. But that is no call for us to throw chestsabout it. How often has every last one of us been fooled in preciselysimilar fashion by another who turned and suddenly addressed an imaginaryintruder? Here is a case in point that occurred in the West. A robberhad held up a railroad train. He stood in the aisle between the seats, his revolver presented at the head of the conductor, who stood facinghim. The conductor was at his mercy. 

But the conductor suddenly looked over the robber's shoulder, at the sametime saying aloud to an imaginary person standing at the robber's back:"Don't shoot him. " Like a flash the robber whirled about to confrontthis new danger, and like a flash the conductor shot him down. Show me, Mr. Burroughs, where the mental process in the robber's brain was a shadedifferent from the mental processes in Rollo's brain, and I'll quitnature-faking and join the Trappists. Surely, when a man's mentalprocess and a dog's mental process are precisely similar, themuch-vaunted gulf of Mr. Burroughs's fancy has been bridged. 

I had a dog in Oakland. His name was Glen. His father was Brown, awolf-dog that had been brought down from Alaska, and his mother was ahalf-wild mountain shepherd dog. Neither father nor mother had had anyexperience with automobiles. Glen came from the country, a half-grownpuppy, to live in Oakland. Immediately he became infatuated with anautomobile. He reached the culmination of happiness when he waspermitted to sit up in the front seat alongside the chauffeur. He wouldspend a whole day at a time on an automobile debauch, even going withoutfood. Often the machine started directly from inside the barn, dashedout the driveway without stopping, and was gone. Glen got left behindseveral times. The custom was established that whoever was taking themachine out should toot the horn before starting. Glen learned thesignal. No matter where he was or what he was doing, when that horntooted he was off for the barn and up into the front seat. 

One morning, while Glen was on the back porch eating his breakfast ofmush and milk, the chauffeur tooted. Glen rushed down the steps, intothe barn, and took his front seat, the mush and milk dripping down hisexcited and happy chops. In passing, I may point out that in thusforsaking his breakfast for the automobile he was displaying what iscalled the power of choice--a peculiarly lordly attribute that, accordingto Mr. Burroughs, belongs to man alone. Yet Glen made his choice betweenfood and fun. 

It was not that Glen wanted his breakfast less, but that he wanted hisride more. The toot was only a joke. The automobile did not start. Glen waited and watched. Evidently he saw no signs of an immediatestart, for finally he jumped out of the seat and went back to hisbreakfast. He ate with indecent haste, like a man anxious to catch atrain. Again the horn tooted, again he deserted his breakfast, and againhe sat in the seat and waited vainly for the machine to go. 

They came close to spoiling Glen's breakfast for him, for he was kept onthe jump between porch and barn. Then he grew wise. They tooted thehorn loudly and insistently, but he stayed by his breakfast and finishedit. Thus once more did he display power of choice, incidentally ofcontrol, for when that horn tooted it was all he could do to refrain fromrunning for the barn. 

The nature-faker would analyze what went on in Glen's brain somewhat inthe following fashion. He had had, in his short life, experiences thatnot one of all his ancestors had ever had. He had learned thatautomobiles went fast, that once in motion it was impossible for him toget on board, that the toot of the horn was a noise that was peculiar toautomobiles. These were so many propositions. Now reasoning can bedefined as the act or process of the brain by which, from propositionsknown or assumed, new propositions are reached. Out of the propositionswhich I have shown were Glen's, and which had become his through themedium of his own observation of the phenomena of life, he made the newproposition that when the horn tooted it was time for him to get onboard. 

But on the morning I have described, the chauffeur fooled Glen. Somehowand much to his own disgust, his reasoning was erroneous. The machinedid not start after all. But to reason incorrectly is very human. Thegreat trouble in all acts of reasoning is to include all the propositionsin the problem. Glen had included every proposition but one, namely, thehuman proposition, the joke in the brain of the chauffeur. For a numberof times Glen was fooled. Then he performed another mental act. In hisproblem he included the human proposition (the joke in the brain of thechauffeur), and he reached the new conclusion that when the horn tootedthe automobile was _not_ going to start. Basing his action on thisconclusion, he remained on the porch and finished his breakfast. You andI, and even Mr. Burroughs, perform acts of reasoning precisely similar tothis every day in our lives. How Mr. Burroughs will explain Glen'saction by the instinctive theory is beyond me. In wildest fantasy, even, my brain refuses to follow Mr. Burroughs into the primeval forest whereGlen's dim ancestors, to the tooting of automobile horns, were fixinginto the heredity of the breed the particular instinct that would enableGlen, a few thousand years later, capably to cope with automobiles. 

Dr. C. J. Romanes tells of a female chimpanzee who was taught to countstraws up to five. She held the straws in her hand, exposing the ends tothe number requested. If she were asked for three, she held up three. If she were asked for four, she held up four. All this is a mere matterof training. But consider now, Mr. Burroughs, what follows. When shewas asked for five straws and she had only four, she doubled one straw, exposing both its ends and thus making up the required number. She didnot do this only once, and by accident. She did it whenever more strawswere asked for than she possessed. Did she perform a distinctlyreasoning act? or was her action the result of blind, mechanicalinstinct? If Mr. Burroughs cannot answer to his own satisfaction, he maycall Dr. Romanes a nature-faker and dismiss the incident from his mind. 

The foregoing is a trick of erroneous human reasoning that works verysuccessfully in the United States these days. It is certainly a trick ofMr. Burroughs, of which he is guilty with distressing frequency. When apoor devil of a writer records what he has seen, and when what he hasseen does not agree with Mr. Burroughs's mediaeval theory, he calls saidwriter a nature-faker. When a man like Mr. Hornaday comes along, Mr. Burroughs works a variation of the trick on him. Mr. Hornaday has made aclose study of the orang in captivity and of the orang in its nativestate. Also, he has studied closely many other of the higher animaltypes. Also, in the tropics, he has studied the lower types of man. Mr. Hornaday is a man of experience and reputation. When he was asked ifanimals reasoned, out of all his knowledge on the subject he replied thatto ask him such a question was equivalent to asking him if fishes swim. Now Mr. Burroughs has not had much experience in studying the lower humantypes and the higher animal types. Living in a rural district in thestate of New York, and studying principally birds in that limitedhabitat, he has been in contact neither with the higher animal types northe lower human types. But Mr. Hornaday's reply is such a facer to himand his homocentric theory that he has to do something. And he does it. He retorts: "I suspect that Mr. Hornaday is a better naturalist than heis a comparative psychologist. " Exit Mr. Hornaday. Who the devil is Mr. Hornaday, anyway? The sage of Slabsides has spoken. When Darwinconcluded that animals were capable of reasoning in a rudimentary way, Mr. Burroughs laid him out in the same fashion by saying: "But Darwin wasalso a much greater naturalist than psychologist"--and this despiteDarwin's long life of laborious research that was not wholly confined toa rural district such as Mr. Burroughs inhabits in New York. Mr. Burroughs's method of argument is beautiful. It reminds one of the manwhose pronunciation was vile, but who said: "Damn the dictionary; ain't Ihere?"

And now we come to the mental processes of Mr. Burroughs--to thepsychology of the ego, if you please. Mr. Burroughs has troubles of hisown with the dictionary. He violates language from the standpoint bothof logic and science. Language is a tool, and definitions embodied inlanguage should agree with the facts and history of life. But Mr. Burroughs's definitions do not so agree. This, in turn, is not the faultof his education, but of his ego. To him, despite his well-exploited andpatronizing devotion to them, the lower animals are disgustingly low. Tohim, affinity and kinship with the other animals is a repugnant thing. He will have none of it. He is too glorious a personality not to havebetween him and the other animals a vast and impassable gulf. The causeof Mr. Burroughs's mediaeval view of the other animals is to be found, not in his knowledge of those other animals, but in the suggestion of hisself-exalted ego. In short, Mr. Burroughs's homocentric theory has beendeveloped out of his homocentric ego, and by the misuse of language hestrives to make the facts of life agree with his theory. 

After the instances I have cited of actions of animals which areimpossible of explanation as due to instinct, Mr. Burroughs may reply:"Your instances are easily explained by the simple law of association. "To this I reply, first, then why did you deny rudimentary reason toanimals? and why did you state flatly that "instinct suffices for theanimals"? And, second, with great reluctance and with overwhelminghumility, because of my youth, I suggest that you do not know exactlywhat you do mean by that phrase "the simple law of association. " Yourtrouble, I repeat, is with definitions. You have grasped that manperforms what is called _abstract_ reasoning, you have made a definitionof abstract reason, and, betrayed by that great maker of theories, theego, you have come to think that all reasoning is abstract and that whatis not abstract reason is not reason at all. This is your attitudetoward rudimentary reason. Such a process, in one of the other animals, must be either abstract or it is not a reasoning process. Yourintelligence tells you that such a process is not abstract reasoning, andyour homocentric thesis compels you to conclude that it can be only amechanical, instinctive process. 

Definitions must agree, not with egos, but with life. Mr. Burroughs goeson the basis that a definition is something hard and fast, absolute andeternal. He forgets that all the universe is in flux; that definitionsare arbitrary and ephemeral; that they fix, for a fleeting instant oftime, things that in the past were not, that in the future will be not, that out of the past become, and that out of the present pass on to thefuture and become other things. Definitions cannot rule life. Definitions cannot be made to rule life. Life must rule definitions orelse the definitions perish. 

Mr. Burroughs forgets the evolution of reason. He makes a definition ofreason without regard to its history, and that definition is of reasonpurely abstract. Human reason, as we know it to-day, is not a creation, but a growth. Its history goes back to the primordial slime that wasquick with muddy life; its history goes back to the first vitalizedinorganic. And here are the steps of its ascent from the mud to man:simple reflex action, compound reflex action, memory, habit, rudimentaryreason, and abstract reason. In the course of the climb, thanks tonatural selection, instinct was evolved. Habit is a development in theindividual. Instinct is a race-habit. Instinct is blind, unreasoning, mechanical. This was the dividing of the ways in the climb of aspiringlife. The perfect culmination of instinct we find in the ant-heap andthe beehive. Instinct proved a blind alley. But the other path, that ofreason, led on and on even to Mr. Burroughs and you and me. 

There are no impassable gulfs, unless one chooses, as Mr. Burroughs does, to ignore the lower human types and the higher animal types, and tocompare human mind with bird mind. It was impossible for life to reasonabstractly until speech was developed. Equipped with swords, with toolsof thought, in short, the slow development of the power to reason in theabstract went on. The lowest human types do little or no reasoning inthe abstract. With every word, with every increase in the complexity ofthought, with every ascertained fact so gained, went on action andreaction in the grey matter of the speech discoverer, and slowly, step bystep, through hundreds of thousands of years, developed the power ofreason. 

Place a honey-bee in a glass bottle. Turn the bottom of the bottletoward a lighted lamp so that the open mouth is away from the lamp. Vainly, ceaselessly, a thousand times, undeterred by the bafflement andthe pain, the bee will hurl himself against the bottom of the bottle ashe strives to win to the light. That is instinct. Place your dog in aback yard and go away. He is your dog. He loves you. He yearns towardyou as the bee yearns toward the light. He listens to your departingfootsteps. But the fence is too high. Then he turns his back upon thedirection in which you are departing, and runs around the yard. He isfrantic with affection and desire. But he is not blind. He isobservant. He is looking for a hole under the fence, or through thefence, or for a place where the fence is not so high. He sees adry-goods box standing against the fence. Presto! He leaps upon it, goes over the barrier, and tears down the street to overtake you. Isthat instinct?

Here, in the household where I am writing this, is a little Tahitian"feeding-child. " He believes firmly that a tiny dwarf resides in the boxof my talking-machine and that it is the tiny dwarf who does the singingand the talking. Not even Mr. Burroughs will affirm that the child hasreached this conclusion by an instinctive process. Of course, the childreasons the existence of the dwarf in the box. How else could the boxtalk and sing? In that child's limited experience it has neverencountered a single instance where speech and song were producedotherwise than by direct human agency. I doubt not that the dog isconsiderably surprised when he hears his master's voice coming out of abox. 

The adult savage, on his first introduction to a telephone, rushes aroundto the adjoining room to find the man who is talking through thepartition. Is this act instinctive? No. Out of his limited experience, out of his limited knowledge of physics, he reasons that the onlyexplanation possible is that a man is in the other room talking throughthe partition. 

But that savage cannot be fooled by a hand-mirror. We must go lower downin the animal scale, to the monkey. The monkey swiftly learns that themonkey it sees is not in the glass, wherefore it reaches craftily behindthe glass. Is this instinct? No. It is rudimentary reasoning. Lowerthan the monkey in the scale of brain is the robin, and the robin fightsits reflection in the window-pane. Now climb with me for a space. Fromthe robin to the monkey, where is the impassable gulf? and where is theimpassable gulf between the monkey and the feeding-child? between thefeeding-child and the savage who seeks the man behind the partition? ay, and between the savage and the astute financiers Mrs. Chadwick fooled andthe thousands who were fooled by the Keeley Motor swindle?

Let us be very humble. We who are so very human are very animal. Kinship with the other animals is no more repugnant to Mr. Burroughs thanwas the heliocentric theory to the priests who compelled Galileo torecant. Not correct human reason, not the evidence of the ascertainedfact, but pride of ego, was responsible for the repugnance. 

In his stiff-necked pride, Mr. Burroughs runs a hazard more humiliatingto that pride than any amount of kinship with the other animals. When adog exhibits choice, direction, control, and reason; when it is shownthat certain mental processes in that dog's brain are preciselyduplicated in the brain of man; and when Mr. Burroughs convincinglyproves that every action of the dog is mechanical and automatic--then, byprecisely the same arguments, can it be proved that the similar actionsof man are mechanical and automatic. No, Mr. Burroughs, though you standon the top of the ladder of life, you must not kick out that ladder fromunder your feet. You must not deny your relatives, the other animals. Their history is your history, and if you kick them to the bottom of theabyss, to the bottom of the abyss you go yourself. By them you stand orfall. What you repudiate in them you repudiate in yourself--a prettyspectacle, truly, of an exalted animal striving to disown the stuff oflife out of which it is made, striving by use of the very reason that wasdeveloped by evolution to deny the possession of evolution that developedit. This may be good egotism, but it is not good science. 

PAPEETE, TAHITI. _March_ 1908. 

THE YELLOW PERIL

No more marked contrast appears in passing from our Western land to thepaper houses and cherry blossoms of Japan than appears in passing fromKorea to China. To achieve a correct appreciation of the Chinese thetraveller should first sojourn amongst the Koreans for several months, and then, one fine day, cross over the Yalu into Manchuria. It would beof exceptional advantage to the correctness of appreciation did he crossover the Yalu on the heels of a hostile and alien army. 

War is to-day the final arbiter in the affairs of men, and it is as yetthe final test of the worth-whileness of peoples. Tested thus, theKorean fails. He lacks the nerve to remain when a strange army crosseshis land. The few goods and chattels he may have managed to accumulatehe puts on his back, along with his doors and windows, and away he headsfor his mountain fastnesses. Later he may return, sans goods, chattels, doors, and windows, impelled by insatiable curiosity for a "look see. "But it is curiosity merely--a timid, deerlike curiosity. He is preparedto bound away on his long legs at the first hint of danger or trouble. 

Northern Korea was a desolate land when the Japanese passed through. Villages and towns were deserted. The fields lay untouched. There wasno ploughing nor sowing, no green things growing. Little or nothing wasto be purchased. One carried one's own food with him and food for horsesand servants was the anxious problem that waited at the day's end. Inmany a lonely village not an ounce nor a grain of anything could bebought, and yet there might be standing around scores of white-garmented, stalwart Koreans, smoking yard-long pipes and chattering, chattering--ceaselessly chattering. Love, money, or force could notprocure from them a horseshoe or a horseshoe nail. 

"Upso, " was their invariable reply. "Upso, " cursed word, which means"Have not got. "

They had tramped probably forty miles that day, down from theirhiding-places, just for a "look see, " and forty miles back they wouldcheerfully tramp, chattering all the way over what they had seen. Shakea stick at them as they stand chattering about your camp-fire, and thegloom of the landscape will be filled with tall, flitting ghosts, bounding like deer, with great springy strides which one cannot but envy. They have splendid vigour and fine bodies, but they are accustomed tobeing beaten and robbed without protest or resistance by every chanceforeigner who enters their country. 

From this nerveless, forsaken Korean land I rode down upon the sandyislands of the Yalu. For weeks these islands had been the dreadbetween-the-lines of two fighting armies. The air above had been rent byscreaming projectiles. The echoes of the final battle had scarcely diedaway. The trains of Japanese wounded and Japanese dead were trailing by. 

On the conical hill, a quarter of a mile away, the Russian dead werebeing buried in their trenches and in the shell holes made by theJapanese. And here, in the thick of it all, a man was ploughing. Greenthings were growing--young onions--and the man who was weeding thempaused from his labour long enough to sell me a handful. Near by was thesmoke-blackened ruin of the farmhouse, fired by the Russians when theyretreated from the riverbed. Two men were removing the debris, cleaningthe confusion, preparatory to rebuilding. They were clad in blue. Pigtails hung down their backs. I was in China!

I rode to the shore, into the village of Kuelian-Ching. There were nolounging men smoking long pipes and chattering. The previous day theRussians had been there, a bloody battle had been fought, and to-day theJapanese were there--but what was that to talk about? Everybody wasbusy. Men were offering eggs and chickens and fruit for sale upon thestreet, and bread, as I live, bread in small round loaves or buns. Irode on into the country. Everywhere a toiling population was inevidence. The houses and walls were strong and substantial. Stone andbrick replaced the mud walls of the Korean dwellings. Twilight fell anddeepened, and still the ploughs went up and down the fields, the sowersfollowing after. Trains of wheelbarrows, heavily loaded, squeaked by, and Pekin carts, drawn by from four to six cows, horses, mules, ponies, or jackasses--cows even with their newborn calves tottering along on punylegs outside the traces. Everybody worked. Everything worked. I saw aman mending the road. I was in China. 

I came to the city of Antung, and lodged with a merchant. He was a grainmerchant. Corn he had, hundreds of bushels, stored in great bins ofstout matting; peas and beans in sacks, and in the back yard hismillstones went round and round, grinding out meal. Also, in his backyard, were buildings containing vats sunk into the ground, and here thetanners were at work making leather. I bought a measure of corn frommine host for my horses, and he overcharged me thirty cents. I was inChina. Antung was jammed with Japanese troops. It was the thick of war. But it did not matter. The work of Antung went on just the same. Theshops were wide open; the streets were lined with pedlars. One could buyanything; get anything made. I dined at a Chinese restaurant, cleansedmyself at a public bath in a private tub with a small boy to assist inthe scrubbing. I bought condensed milk, bitter, canned vegetables, bread, and cake. I repeat it, cake--good cake. I bought knives, forks, and spoons, granite-ware dishes and mugs. There were horseshoes andhorseshoers. A worker in iron realized for me new designs of mine for mytent poles. My shoes were sent out to be repaired. A barber shampooedmy hair. A servant returned with corn-beef in tins, a bottle of port, another of cognac, and beer, blessed beer, to wash out from my throat thedust of an army. It was the land of Canaan. I was in China. 

The Korean is the perfect type of inefficiency--of utter worthlessness. The Chinese is the perfect type of industry. For sheer work no worker inthe world can compare with him. Work is the breath of his nostrils. Itis his solution of existence. It is to him what wandering and fightingin far lands and spiritual adventure have been to other peoples. Libertyto him epitomizes itself in access to the means of toil. To till thesoil and labour interminably with rude implements and utensils is all heasks of life and of the powers that be. Work is what he desires aboveall things, and he will work at anything for anybody. 

During the taking of the Taku forts he carried scaling ladders at theheads of the storming columns and planted them against the walls. He didthis, not from a sense of patriotism, but for the invading foreign devilsbecause they paid him a daily wage of fifty cents. He is not frightenedby war. He accepts it as he does rain and sunshine, the changing of theseasons, and other natural phenomena. He prepares for it, endures it, and survives it, and when the tide of battle sweeps by, the thunder ofthe guns still reverberating in the distant canyons, he is seen calmlybending to his usual tasks. Nay, war itself bears fruits whereof he maypick. Before the dead are cold or the burial squads have arrived he isout on the field, stripping the mangled bodies, collecting the shrapnel, and ferreting in the shell holes for slivers and fragments of iron. 

The Chinese is no coward. He does not carry away his doors amid windowsto the mountains, but remains to guard them when alien soldiers occupyhis town. He does not hide away his chickens and his eggs, nor any othercommodity he possesses. He proceeds at once to offer them for sale. Noris he to be bullied into lowering his price. What if the purchaser be asoldier and an alien made cocky by victory and confident by overwhelmingforce? He has two large pears saved over from last year which he willsell for five sen, or for the same price three small pears. What if onesoldier persist in taking away with him three large pears? What if therebe twenty other soldiers jostling about him? He turns over his sack offruit to another Chinese and races down the street after his pears andthe soldier responsible for their flight, and he does not return till hehas wrenched away one large pear from that soldier's grasp. 

Nor is the Chinese the type of permanence which he has been so oftendesignated. He is not so ill-disposed toward new ideas and new methodsas his history would seem to indicate. True, his forms, customs, andmethods have been permanent these many centuries, but this has been dueto the fact that his government was in the hands of the learned classes, and that these governing scholars found their salvation lay insuppressing all progressive ideas. The ideas behind the Boxer troublesand the outbreaks over the introduction of railroad and other foreigndevil machinations have emanated from the minds of the literati, and beenspread by their pamphlets and propagandists. 

Originality and enterprise have been suppressed in the Chinese for scoresof generations. Only has remained to him industry, and in this has hefound the supreme expression of his being. On the other hand, hissusceptibility to new ideas has been well demonstrated wherever he hasescaped beyond the restrictions imposed upon him by his government. Sofar as the business man is concerned he has grasped far more clearly theWestern code of business, the Western ethics of business, than has theJapanese. He has learned, as a matter of course, to keep his word or hisbond. As yet, the Japanese business man has failed to understand this. When he has signed a time contract and when changing conditions cause himto lose by it, the Japanese merchant cannot understand why he should liveup to his contract. It is beyond his comprehension and repulsive to hiscommon sense that he should live up to his contract and thereby losemoney. He firmly believes that the changing conditions themselvesabsolve him. And in so far adaptable as he has shown himself to be inother respects, he fails to grasp a radically new idea where the Chinesesucceeds. 

Here we have the Chinese, four hundred millions of him, occupying a vastland of immense natural resources--resources of a twentieth-century age, of a machine age; resources of coal and iron, which are the backbone ofcommercial civilization. He is an indefatigable worker. He is not deadto new ideas, new methods, new systems. Under a capable management hecan be made to do anything. Truly would he of himself constitute themuch-heralded Yellow Peril were it not for his present management. Thismanagement, his government, is set, crystallized. It is what binds himdown to building as his fathers built. The governing class, entrenchedby the precedent and power of centuries and by the stamp it has put uponhis mind, will never free him. It would be the suicide of the governingclass, and the governing class knows it. 

Comes now the Japanese. On the streets of Antung, of Feng-Wang-Chang, orof any other Manchurian city, the following is a familiar scene: One ishurrying home through the dark of the unlighted streets when he comesupon a paper lantern resting on the ground. On one side squats a Chinesecivilian on his hams, on the other side squats a Japanese soldier. Onedips his forefinger in the dust and writes strange, monstrous characters. The other nods understanding, sweeps the dust slate level with his hand, and with his forefinger inscribes similar characters. They are talking. They cannot speak to each other, but they can write. Long ago oneborrowed the other's written language, and long before that, untoldgenerations ago, they diverged from a common root, the ancient Mongolstock. 

There have been changes, differentiations brought about by diverseconditions and infusions of other blood; but down at the bottom of theirbeing, twisted into the fibres of them, is a heritage in common--asameness in kind which time has not obliterated. The infusion of otherblood, Malay, perhaps, has made the Japanese a race of mastery and power, a fighting race through all its history, a race which has always despisedcommerce and exalted fighting. 

To-day, equipped with the finest machines and systems of destruction theCaucasian mind has devised, handling machines and systems with remarkableand deadly accuracy, this rejuvenescent Japanese race has embarked on acourse of conquest the goal of which no man knows. The head men of Japanare dreaming ambitiously, and the people are dreaming blindly, aNapoleonic dream. And to this dream the Japanese clings and will clingwith bull-dog tenacity. The soldier shouting "Nippon, Banzai!" on thewalls of Wiju, the widow at home in her paper house committing suicide sothat her only son, her sole support, may go to the front, are bothexpressing the unanimity of the dream. 

The late disturbance in the Far East marked the clashing of the dreams, for the Slav, too, is dreaming greatly. Granting that the Japanese canhurl back the Slav and that the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxonrace do not despoil him of his spoils, the Japanese dream takes onsubstantiality. Japan's population is no larger because her people havecontinually pressed against the means of subsistence. But given poor, empty Korea for a breeding colony and Manchuria for a granary, and atonce the Japanese begins to increase by leaps and bounds. 

Even so, he would not of himself constitute a Brown Peril. He has notthe time in which to grow and realize the dream. He is only forty-fivemillions, and so fast does the economic exploitation of the planet hurryon the planet's partition amongst the Western peoples that, before hecould attain the stature requisite to menace, he would see the Westerngiants in possession of the very stuff of his dream. 

The menace to the Western world lies, not in the little brown man, but inthe four hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown manundertake their management. The Chinese is not dead to new ideas; he isan efficient worker; makes a good soldier, and is wealthy in theessential materials of a machine age. Under a capable management he willgo far. The Japanese is prepared and fit to undertake this management. Not only has he proved himself an apt imitator of Western materialprogress, a sturdy worker, and a capable organizer, but he is far morefit to manage the Chinese than are we. The baffling enigma of theChinese character is no baffling enigma to him. He understands as wecould never school ourselves nor hope to understand. Their mentalprocesses are largely the same. He thinks with the same thought-symbolsas does the Chinese, and he thinks in the same peculiar grooves. He goeson where we are balked by the obstacles of incomprehension. He takes theturning which we cannot perceive, twists around the obstacle, and, presto! is out of sight in the ramifications of the Chinese mind where wecannot follow. 

The Chinese has been called the type of permanence, and well he hasmerited it, dozing as he has through the ages. And as truly was theJapanese the type of permanence up to a generation ago, when he suddenlyawoke and startled the world with a rejuvenescence the like of which theworld had never seen before. The ideas of the West were the leaven whichquickened the Japanese; and the ideas of the West, transmitted by theJapanese mind into ideas Japanese, may well make the leaven powerfulenough to quicken the Chinese. 

We have had Africa for the Afrikander, and at no distant day we shallhear "Asia for the Asiatic!" Four hundred million indefatigable workers(deft, intelligent, and unafraid to die), aroused and rejuvenescent, managed and guided by forty-five million additional human beings who aresplendid fighting animals, scientific and modern, constitute that menaceto the Western world which has been well named the "Yellow Peril. " Thepossibility of race adventure has not passed away. We are in the midstof our own. The Slav is just girding himself up to begin. Why may notthe yellow and the brown start out on an adventure as tremendous as ourown and more strikingly unique?

The ultimate success of such an adventure the Western mind refuses toconsider. It is not the nature of life to believe itself weak. There issuch a thing as race egotism as well as creature egotism, and a very goodthing it is. In the first place, the Western world will not permit therise of the yellow peril. It is firmly convinced that it will not permitthe yellow and the brown to wax strong and menace its peace and comfort. It advances this idea with persistency, and delivers itself of longarguments showing how and why this menace will not be permitted to arise. To-day, far more voices are engaged in denying the yellow peril than inprophesying it. The Western world is warned, if not armed, against thepossibility of it. 

In the second place, there is a weakness inherent in the brown man whichwill bring his adventure to naught. From the West he has borrowed allour material achievement and passed our ethical achievement by. Ourengines of production and destruction he has made his. What was oncesolely ours he now duplicates, rivalling our merchants in the commerce ofthe East, thrashing the Russian on sea and land. A marvellous imitatortruly, but imitating us only in things material. Things spiritual cannotbe imitated; they must be felt and lived, woven into the very fabric oflife, and here the Japanese fails. 

It required no revolution of his nature to learn to calculate the rangeand fire a field gun or to march the goose-step. It was a mere matter oftraining. Our material achievement is the product of our intellect. Itis knowledge, and knowledge, like coin, is interchangeable. It is notwrapped up in the heredity of the new-born child, but is something to beacquired afterward. Not so with our soul stuff, which is the product ofan evolution which goes back to the raw beginnings of the race. Our soulstuff is not a coin to be pocketed by the first chance comer. TheJapanese cannot pocket it any more than he can thrill to short Saxonwords or we can thrill to Chinese hieroglyphics. The leopard cannotchange its spots, nor can the Japanese, nor can we. We are thumbed bythe ages into what we are, and by no conscious inward effort can we in aday rethumb ourselves. Nor can the Japanese in a day, or a generation, rethumb himself in our image. 

Back of our own great race adventure, back of our robberies by sea andland, our lusts and violences and all the evil things we have done, thereis a certain integrity, a sternness of conscience, a melancholyresponsibility of life, a sympathy and comradeship and warm human feel, which is ours, indubitably ours, and which we cannot teach to theOriental as we would teach logarithms or the trajectory of projectiles. That we have groped for the way of right conduct and agonized over thesoul betokens our spiritual endowment. Though we have strayed often andfar from righteousness, the voices of the seers have always been raised, and we have harked back to the bidding of conscience. The colossal factof our history is that we have made the religion of Jesus Christ ourreligion. No matter how dark in error and deed, ours has been a historyof spiritual struggle and endeavour. We are pre-eminently a religiousrace, which is another way of saying that we are a right-seeking race. 

"What do you think of the Japanese?" was asked an American woman aftershe had lived some time in Japan. "It seems to me that they have nosoul, " was her answer. 

This must not be taken to mean that the Japanese is without soul. But itserves to illustrate the enormous difference between their souls and thiswoman's soul. There was no feel, no speech, no recognition. ThisWestern soul did not dream that the Eastern soul existed, it was sodifferent, so totally different. 

Religion, as a battle for the right in our sense of right, as a yearningand a strife for spiritual good and purity, is unknown to the Japanese. 

Measured by what religion means to us, the Japanese is a race withoutreligion. Yet it has a religion, and who shall say that it is not asgreat a religion as ours, nor as efficacious? As one Japanese haswritten:

"Our reflection brought into prominence not so much the moral as thenational consciousness of the individual. . . . To us the country is morethan land and soil from which to mine gold or reap grain--it is thesacred abode of the gods, the spirit of our forefathers; to us theEmperor is more than the Arch Constable of a Reichsstaat, or even thePatron of a Kulturstaat; he is the bodily representative of heaven onearth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. "

The religion of Japan is practically a worship of the State itself. Patriotism is the expression of this worship. The Japanese mind does notsplit hairs as to whether the Emperor is Heaven incarnate or the Stateincarnate. So far as the Japanese are concerned, the Emperor lives, ishimself deity. The Emperor is the object to live for and to die for. The Japanese is not an individualist. He has developed nationalconsciousness instead of moral consciousness. He is not interested inhis own moral welfare except in so far as it is the welfare of the State. The honour of the individual, _per se_, does not exist. Only exists thehonour of the State, which is his honour. He does not look upon himselfas a free agent, working out his own personal salvation. Spiritualagonizing is unknown to him. He has a "sense of calm trust in fate, aquiet submission to the inevitable, a stoic composure in sight of dangeror calamity, a disdain of life and friendliness with death. " He relateshimself to the State as, amongst bees, the worker is related to the hive;himself nothing, the State everything; his reasons for existence theexaltation and glorification of the State. 

The most admired quality to-day of the Japanese is his patriotism. TheWestern world is in rhapsodies over it, unwittingly measuring theJapanese patriotism by its own conceptions of patriotism. "For God, mycountry, and the Czar!" cries the Russian patriot; but in the Japanesemind there is no differentiation between the three. The Emperor is theEmperor, and God and country as well. The patriotism of the Japanese isblind and unswerving loyalty to what is practically an absolutism. TheEmperor can do no wrong, nor can the five ambitious great men who havehis ear and control the destiny of Japan. 

No great race adventure can go far nor endure long which has no deeperfoundation than material success, no higher prompting than conquest forconquest's sake and mere race glorification. To go far and to endure, itmust have behind it an ethical impulse, a sincerely conceivedrighteousness. But it must be taken into consideration that the abovepostulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism, urged by ourbelief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith in ourselveswhich may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies. So be it. Theworld is whirling faster to-day than ever before. It has gained impetus. Affairs rush to conclusion. The Far East is the point of contact of theadventuring Western people as well as of the Asiatic. We shall not haveto wait for our children's time nor our children's children. We shallourselves see and largely determine the adventure of the Yellow and theBrown. 

FENG-WANG-CHENG, MANCHURIA. _June_ 1904, WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME

I was born in the working-class. Early I discovered enthusiasm, ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of mychild-life. My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had nooutlook, but an uplook rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of theflesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved andtormented. 

Above me towered the colossal edifice of society, and to my mind the onlyway out was up. Into this edifice I early resolved to climb. Up above, men wore black clothes and boiled shirts, and women dressed in beautifulgowns. Also, there were good things to eat, and there was plenty to eat. This much for the flesh. Then there were the things of the spirit. Upabove me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and noblethinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I read"Seaside Library" novels, in which, with the exception of the villainsand adventuresses, all men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke abeautiful tongue, and performed glorious deeds. In short, as I acceptedthe rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fineand noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, allthat made life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail andmisery. 

But it is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of theworking-class--especially if he is handicapped by the possession ofideals and illusions. I lived on a ranch in California, and was hard putto find the ladder whereby to climb. I early inquired the rate ofinterest on invested money, and worried my child's brain into anunderstanding of the virtues and excellences of that remarkable inventionof man, compound interest. Further, I ascertained the current rates ofwages for workers of all ages, and the cost of living. From all thisdata I concluded that if I began immediately and worked and saved until Iwas fifty years of age, I could then stop working and enter intoparticipation in a fair portion of the delights and goodnesses that wouldthen be open to me higher up in society. Of course, I resolutelydetermined not to marry, while I quite forgot to consider at all thatgreat rock of disaster in the working-class world--sickness. 

But the life that was in me demanded more than a meagre existence ofscraping and scrimping. Also, at ten years of age, I became a newsboy onthe streets of a city, and found myself with a changed uplook. All aboutme were still the same sordidness and wretchedness, and up above me wasstill the same paradise waiting to be gained; but the ladder whereby toclimb was a different one. It was now the ladder of business. Why savemy earnings and invest in government bonds, when, by buying twonewspapers for five cents, with a turn of the wrist I could sell them forten cents and double my capital? The business ladder was the ladder forme, and I had a vision of myself becoming a bald-headed and successfulmerchant prince. 

Alas for visions! When I was sixteen I had already earned the title of"prince. " But this title was given me by a gang of cut-throats andthieves, by whom I was called "The Prince of the Oyster Pirates. " And atthat time I had climbed the first rung of the business ladder. I was acapitalist. I owned a boat and a complete oyster-pirating outfit. I hadbegun to exploit my fellow-creatures. I had a crew of one man. Ascaptain and owner I took two-thirds of the spoils, and gave the crewone-third, though the crew worked just as hard as I did and risked justas much his life and liberty. 

This one rung was the height I climbed up the business ladder. One nightI went on a raid amongst the Chinese fishermen. Ropes and nets wereworth dollars and cents. It was robbery, I grant, but it was preciselythe spirit of capitalism. The capitalist takes away the possessions ofhis fellow-creatures by means of a rebate, or of a betrayal of trust, orby the purchase of senators and supreme-court judges. I was merelycrude. That was the only difference. I used a gun. 

But my crew that night was one of those inefficients against whom thecapitalist is wont to fulminate, because, forsooth, such inefficientsincrease expenses and reduce dividends. My crew did both. What of hiscarelessness he set fire to the big mainsail and totally destroyed it. There weren't any dividends that night, and the Chinese fishermen werericher by the nets and ropes we did not get. I was bankrupt, unable justthen to pay sixty-five dollars for a new mainsail. I left my boat atanchor and went off on a bay-pirate boat on a raid up the SacramentoRiver. While away on this trip, another gang of bay pirates raided myboat. They stole everything, even the anchors; and later on, when Irecovered the drifting hulk, I sold it for twenty dollars. I had slippedback the one rung I had climbed, and never again did I attempt thebusiness ladder. 

From then on I was mercilessly exploited by other capitalists. I had themuscle, and they made money out of it while I made but a very indifferentliving out of it. I was a sailor before the mast, a longshoreman, aroustabout; I worked in canneries, and factories, and laundries; I mowedlawns, and cleaned carpets, and washed windows. And I never got the fullproduct of my toil. I looked at the daughter of the cannery owner, inher carriage, and knew that it was my muscle, in part, that helped dragalong that carriage on its rubber tyres. I looked at the son of thefactory owner, going to college, and knew that it was my muscle thathelped, in part, to pay for the wine and good fellowship he enjoyed. 

But I did not resent this. It was all in the game. They were thestrong. Very well, I was strong. I would carve my way to a placeamongst them and make money out of the muscles of other men. I was notafraid of work. I loved hard work. I would pitch in and work harderthan ever and eventually become a pillar of society. 

And just then, as luck would have it, I found an employer that was of thesame mind. I was willing to work, and he was more than willing that Ishould work. I thought I was learning a trade. In reality, I haddisplaced two men. I thought he was making an electrician out of me; asa matter of fact, he was making fifty dollars per month out of me. Thetwo men I had displaced had received forty dollars each per month; I wasdoing the work of both for thirty dollars per month. 

This employer worked me nearly to death. A man may love oysters, but toomany oysters will disincline him toward that particular diet. And sowith me. Too much work sickened me. I did not wish ever to see workagain. I fled from work. I became a tramp, begging my way from door todoor, wandering over the United States and sweating bloody sweats inslums and prisons. 

I had been born in the working-class, and I was now, at the age ofeighteen, beneath the point at which I had started. I was down in thecellar of society, down in the subterranean depths of misery about whichit is neither nice nor proper to speak. I was in the pit, the abyss, thehuman cesspool, the shambles and the charnel-house of our civilization. This is the part of the edifice of society that society chooses toignore. Lack of space compels me here to ignore it, and I shall say onlythat the things I there saw gave me a terrible scare. 

I was scared into thinking. I saw the naked simplicities of thecomplicated civilization in which I lived. Life was a matter of food andshelter. In order to get food and shelter men sold things. The merchantsold shoes, the politician sold his manhood, and the representative ofthe people, with exceptions, of course, sold his trust; while nearly allsold their honour. Women, too, whether on the street or in the holy bondof wedlock, were prone to sell their flesh. All things were commodities, all people bought and sold. The one commodity that labour had to sellwas muscle. The honour of labour had no price in the marketplace. Labour had muscle, and muscle alone, to sell. 

But there was a difference, a vital difference. Shoes and trust andhonour had a way of renewing themselves. They were imperishable stocks. Muscle, on the other hand, did not renew. As the shoe merchant soldshoes, he continued to replenish his stock. But there was no way ofreplenishing the labourer's stock of muscle. The more he sold of hismuscle, the less of it remained to him. It was his one commodity, andeach day his stock of it diminished. In the end, if he did not diebefore, he sold out and put up his shutters. He was a muscle bankrupt, and nothing remained to him but to go down into the cellar of society andperish miserably. 

I learned, further, that brain was likewise a commodity. It, too, wasdifferent from muscle. A brain seller was only at his prime when he wasfifty or sixty years old, and his wares were fetching higher prices thanever. But a labourer was worked out or broken down at forty-five orfifty. I had been in the cellar of society, and I did not like the placeas a habitation. The pipes and drains were unsanitary, and the air wasbad to breathe. If I could not live on the parlour floor of society, Icould, at any rate, have a try at the attic. It was true, the diet therewas slim, but the air at least was pure. So I resolved to sell no moremuscle, and to become a vendor of brains. 

Then began a frantic pursuit of knowledge. I returned to California andopened the books. While thus equipping myself to become a brainmerchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology. There Ifound, in a certain class of books, scientifically formulated, the simplesociological concepts I had already worked out for myself. Other andgreater minds, before I was born, had worked out all that I had thoughtand a vast deal more. I discovered that I was a socialist. 

The socialists were revolutionists, inasmuch as they struggled tooverthrow the society of the present, and out of the material to buildthe society of the future. I, too, was a socialist and a revolutionist. I joined the groups of working-class and intellectual revolutionists, andfor the first time came into intellectual living. Here I foundkeen-flashing intellects and brilliant wits; for here I met strong andalert-brained, withal horny-handed, members of the working-class;unfrocked preachers too wide in their Christianity for any congregationof Mammon-worshippers; professors broken on the wheel of universitysubservience to the ruling class and flung out because they were quickwith knowledge which they strove to apply to the affairs of mankind. 

Here I found, also, warm faith in the human, glowing idealism, sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and martyrdom--all thesplendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life was clean, noble, andalive. Here life rehabilitated itself, became wonderful and glorious;and I was glad to be alive. I was in touch with great souls who exaltedflesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin wail of thestarved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance ofcommercial expansion and world empire. All about me were nobleness ofpurpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine andstarshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning andblazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm human, long-suffering and maltreated, but to be rescued and saved at the last. 

And I, poor foolish I, deemed all this to be a mere foretaste of thedelights of living I should find higher above me in society. I had lostmany illusions since the day I read "Seaside Library" novels on theCalifornia ranch. I was destined to lose many of the illusions I stillretained. 

As a brain merchant I was a success. Society opened its portals to me. I entered right in on the parlour floor, and my disillusionment proceededrapidly. I sat down to dinner with the masters of society, and with thewives and daughters of the masters of society. The women were gownedbeautifully, I admit; but to my naive surprise I discovered that theywere of the same clay as all the rest of the women I had known down belowin the cellar. "The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady were sisters undertheir skins"--and gowns. 

It was not this, however, so much as their materialism, that shocked me. It is true, these beautifully gowned, beautiful women prattled sweetlittle ideals and dear little moralities; but in spite of their prattlethe dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic. And they wereso sentimentally selfish! They assisted in all kinds of sweet littlecharities, and informed one of the fact, while all the time the food theyate and the beautiful clothes they wore were bought out of dividendsstained with the blood of child labour, and sweated labour, and ofprostitution itself. When I mentioned such facts, expecting in myinnocence that these sisters of Judy O'Grady would at once strip offtheir blood-dyed silks and jewels, they became excited and angry, andread me preachments about the lack of thrift, the drink, and the innatedepravity that caused all the misery in society's cellar. When Imentioned that I couldn't quite see that it was the lack of thrift, theintemperance, and the depravity of a half-starved child of six that madeit work twelve hours every night in a Southern cotton mill, these sistersof Judy O'Grady attacked my private life and called me an "agitator"--asthough that, forsooth, settled the argument. 

Nor did I fare better with the masters themselves. I had expected tofind men who were clean, noble, and alive, whose ideals were clean, noble, and alive. I went about amongst the men who sat in the highplaces--the preachers, the politicians, the business men, the professors, and the editors. I ate meat with them, drank wine with them, automobiledwith them, and studied them. It is true, I found many that were cleanand noble; but with rare exceptions, they were not _alive_. I do verilybelieve I could count the exceptions on the fingers of my two hands. Where they were not alive with rottenness, quick with unclean life, therewere merely the unburied dead--clean and noble, like well-preservedmummies, but not alive. In this connection I may especially mention theprofessors I met, the men who live up to that decadent university ideal, "the passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence. "

I met men who invoked the name of the Prince of Peace in their diatribesagainst war, and who put rifles in the hands of Pinkertons with which toshoot down strikers in their own factories. I met men incoherent withindignation at the brutality of prize-fighting, and who, at the sametime, were parties to the adulteration of food that killed each year morebabies than even red-handed Herod had killed. 

I talked in hotels and clubs and homes and Pullmans, and steamer-chairswith captains of industry, and marvelled at how little travelled theywere in the realm of intellect. On the other hand, I discovered thattheir intellect, in the business sense, was abnormally developed. Also, I discovered that their morality, where business was concerned, was nil. 

This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman, was a dummy director anda tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans. Thisgentleman, who collected fine editions and was an especial patron ofliterature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss of amunicipal machine. This editor, who published patent medicineadvertisements and did not dare print the truth in his paper about saidpatent medicines for fear of losing the advertising, called me ascoundrelly demagogue because I told him that his political economy wasantiquated and that his biology was contemporaneous with Pliny. 

This senator was the tool and the slave, the little puppet of a gross, uneducated machine boss; so was this governor and this supreme courtjudge; and all three rode on railroad passes. This man, talking soberlyand earnestly about the beauties of idealism and the goodness of God, hadjust betrayed his comrades in a business deal. This man, a pillar of thechurch and heavy contributor to foreign missions, worked his shop girlsten hours a day on a starvation wage and thereby directly encouragedprostitution. This man, who endowed chairs in universities, perjuredhimself in courts of law over a matter of dollars and cents. And thisrailroad magnate broke his word as a gentleman and a Christian when hegranted a secret rebate to one of two captains of industry lockedtogether in a struggle to the death. 

It was the same everywhere, crime and betrayal, betrayal and crime--menwho were alive, but who were neither clean nor noble, men who were cleanand noble, but who were not alive. Then there was a great, hopelessmass, neither noble nor alive, but merely clean. It did not sinpositively nor deliberately; but it did sin passively and ignorantly byacquiescing in the current immorality and profiting by it. Had it beennoble and alive it would not have been ignorant, and it would haverefused to share in the profits of betrayal and crime. 

I discovered that I did not like to live on the parlour floor of society. Intellectually I was as bored. Morally and spiritually I was sickened. I remembered my intellectuals and idealists, my unfrocked preachers, broken professors, and clean-minded, class-conscious working-men. Iremembered my days and nights of sunshine and starshine, where life wasall a wild sweet wonder, a spiritual paradise of unselfish adventure andethical romance. And I saw before me, ever blazing and burning, the HolyGrail. 

So I went back to the working-class, in which I had been born and where Ibelonged. I care no longer to climb. The imposing edifice of societyabove my head holds no delights for me. It is the foundation of theedifice that interests me. There I am content to labour, crowbar inhand, shoulder to shoulder with intellectuals, idealists, andclass-conscious working-men, getting a solid pry now and again andsetting the whole edifice rocking. Some day, when we get a few morehands and crowbars to work, we'll topple it over, along with all itsrotten life and unburied dead, its monstrous selfishness and soddenmaterialism. Then we'll cleanse the cellar and build a new habitationfor mankind, in which there will be no parlour floor, in which all therooms will be bright and airy, and where the air that is breathed will beclean, noble, and alive. 

Such is my outlook. I look forward to a time when man shall progressupon something worthier and higher than his stomach, when there will be afiner incentive to impel men to action than the incentive of to-day, which is the incentive of the stomach. I retain my belief in thenobility and excellence of the human. I believe that spiritual sweetnessand unselfishness will conquer the gross gluttony of to-day. And last ofall, my faith is in the working-class. As some Frenchman has said, "Thestairway of time is ever echoing with the wooden shoe going up, thepolished boot descending. "

NEWTON, IOWA. _November_ 1905.