RADIANCIES OF CONTENT AND DISCONTENT
I want to radiate a spirit of content. The
dictionary says that to be content is to be "held
full." If one is full, that is enough. He is satisfied.
He has peace of mind. All this is implied
in the word content. I want to radiate this sense
of fullness, of satisfaction. I want people to feel
that I am full of physical health, full of mental
vigor, full of spiritual power, and, with the exceptions
that I shall note later on in this chapter,
that I am satisfied.
I want to radiate a large-hearted contentment
with things as they are. I am content with the
world as it is. Its glories, its beauties, its charms,
its allurements, its variety, satisfy me. There is
nothing in scenery that the mind can conceive that
I cannot find; every sort of climate is offered to
me. I can surround myself with people or I can
dwell in the virgin solitudes. I can live under the
gray skies of the East or under the cerulean blue
of the West. The snow-covered heights of the
Himalayas are mine or the wastes of the Sahara.
I can toss on the stormy ocean or bask in the sun-kissed
gardens of the South. It is a glorious,
beautiful, blessed world.
Yet I hear people complaining on every hand.
It is too hot, or they wish it hadn't rained. Why
does the wind blow so fiercely? The snow has just
come at the wrong time. Then, too, they find
fault with the every-day occurrences of life. They
are angry because they missed a train, have failed
to carry through a business transaction, were delayed
and lost an important appointment. The
other day I met a young man holding his wrist,
and with a look of severe pain on his face. In
doing some work in the gymnasium he hurt his
hand and wrist. It is hard to radiate contentment
under the annoyance and pain of such things as
this and the circumstances I have mentioned. Yet
in these, as in all other things in life, I believe with
Shakspeare:
There is a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them as we may.
Many a time it is the best thing in the world
to have lost an appointment, to have missed a
train, to have sprained one's wrist. The wet
weather is as good as the sunshine, and the storm
equally beneficent with the calm. Hence I want
to be content and to radiate my content with
things as they are. Discontent is a burning acid.
It eats away the happy, blessed things of life. It
destroys the beauty of an otherwise perfect life.
It takes away the smile and substitutes a frown.
It injects bitterness into words that would otherwise
be sweet. It changes the kind word into an
angry curse. And it burns and corrodes far
deeper than one imagines.
I once had a surgical operation in which a severe
corroding substance was injected into a certain
part of my body. My physicians, men of
wisdom and men who loved me, thought they knew
how much that corrosive substance would burn.
But it burned far more severely and destroyed
much more tissue than they conceived, and my life
came near to paying the penalty. Discontent
works in exactly the same way, only worse. Its
burnings are of the mind, and, therefore, more seriously
injurious. Its burns are deep and uncertain.
To put it in another way—it sours the
milk of human kindness. It turns the butter
rancid. It pulls down the shades and shuts out
the sunlight. It turns the steam off from the radiator.
It shuts out the fresh air. It banishes the
fairies of jollity, healthfulness, happiness, and
content.
Do not radiate discontent, therefore, but radiate
a glorious, buoyant, exuberant contentment.
Think of the books we have to-day, as compared
with those possessed by people who lived a few
hundred years ago—the poems, the dramas, the
essays, the histories, the novels, the accounts of
adventure and travel, the revelations of science.
Think how cheap they are, how easy to obtain.
Think of the public libraries established in almost
every city, town, and village of the civilized world.
In many states they have now established a method
by means of which the library systems may become
county-wide in their influences instead of confined
to the cities and towns. Books are being sent to
the remotest farmhouse, to the shack of the lumberman,
the moving home of the sheep-herder, the
log hut of the miner, anywhere, everywhere that a
human hand is seen stretched forth for a book, the
new library system seeks to reach.
Think of the music of to-day! The great
bands, the marvelous orchestras, the soul-inspiring
choruses, the wonderfully equipped opera companies,
the cheapness of the organ and piano, the
universality of the graphophone, with its records
of music of every character that can be heard in
the humblest home.
Think of the multiplication of the opportunities
for hearing the drama, some good, some indifferent,
some bad, but all more or less revealing artistic
power and calling forth the satisfaction of the
onlookers.
Think of the spread of educational opportunities,
the public schools, the colleges, the universities,
the correspondence schools, the women's clubs
and leagues. I went through a high school the
other day that was ten times better equipped for
the higher education, as far as it went, than the
universities were a hundred years ago.
Think of the ease with which we travel—electric
cars, railway trains, automobiles, flying machines.
Think of the annihilation of distance in conversing
with our friends, the telephone, the telegraph,
the telepost, the wireless.
Think of the opportunities of enjoyment and
education offered to the poor in our large cities by
means of the parks, the children's playgrounds,
the free museums, and the art galleries.
Think of the improvements during late years in
the conditions of home life—the application of
gas and electricity for lighting, heating, cooking,
ironing, and, now, even for sweeping and cleaning
up.
Think of the improvements of the condition of
lives of our farmers and their laborers in the remote
districts. Little by little the conditions of
life are being made easier for them. Labor is
being lightened and the hours shortened, uncertainties
are being eliminated, results made more
sure.
Think of the growing spirit of freedom and
true democracy, of brotherhood and comradeship
that are welding the world together in the bonds
of humanitarian brotherhood; treaties between nations,
federations of nations, world's fairs, the
Red Cross movement, The Hague Peace Tribunal,
arbitration instead of war, and agitation for the
reduction of armies and navies.[D]
One has but to study the changes that have
taken place in our civilization since Dickens began
to write, for instance, to see how wonderfully
the world has progressed. He wrote Nicholas
Nickleby to call attention to the horrible abuses
existent in boys' boarding schools, where boys,
who for any reason were desired out of the way at
home, were put in charge of human fiends in the
guise of "schoolmasters." Step-children, heirs
who were in the way, natural children, and those
whose parents had no natural affection for them,
were put into these dens, and so cruelly abused
that they often died; and at the best they dragged
out their miserable existence afraid of what each
hour of the day might bring forth and finding
only in their troubled sleep the relief from the
active cruelties they were made to bear.
Little Dorrit graphically pictured the horrors
of the "prison for debt" system, and in the
wonderfully painted character of Little Dorrit's
father, Dickens showed how every human trait and
feeling, every noble passion and emotion was
dwarfed, twisted, distorted, and perverted by the
action of this unnatural, cruel, and monstrous law.
Barnaby Rudge called equally vivid attention
to the laws which placed political disabilities upon
Jews and Roman Catholics, rendering them incapable
of voting and holding office throughout
the British dominions, and sought to remove the
hatred, prejudice, and dissensions which unnatural
acts of Parliament always caused.
In A Tale of Two Cities the curse of caste is
revealed; the inevitable results of giving special
privileges to a so-called aristocratic class, and
while its teachings were veiled as being connected
with incidents in the French Revolution they were
a wonderful help to the forwarding of true ideas
of pure democracy and genuine recognition of the
doctrine of the brotherhood of man.
In Martin Chuzzlewit the theme is the horrors
of the "Circumlocution Office"—that vast, hideous,
monstrous juggernaut that rode rough-shod
over all justice, truth, honor, right, decency, and
sincerity, by its evasions, quibblings, dodgings,
twinings, twistings, and deliberate perversions of
the truth.
Other writers made their novels the themes of
similar crying abuses that needed reform. Henry
Cockton wrote his Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist
to expose the hideous dealings of private mad-houses,
where helpless men and women were confined
by law, who were perfectly sane, yet who
were in the way of dishonest lawyers, judges, administrators,
heirs, or relations. I can never forget
the powerful and terrible impression this
story made upon me, though it is nearly forty
years since I read it, especially where the author
described what it is said he himself had had to
pass through, when he was driven into temporary
insanity by being strapped to his cot while fiends
in human form mocked and taunted him and at the
same time "tickled his feet" until he was a raging
maniac.
To the people of to-day the term "Chartist"
means nothing. Nine-tenths of the population of
the United States possibly never heard the term.
Yet it is only a few generations since men were sentenced
to "Botany Bay" and other penal settlements
for twenty, thirty, and more years, and
sometimes "for life," for joining in this reform
which demanded certain rights that we have enjoyed
without a thought ever since we were born.
One of these grand old warriors for man's greater
freedom used to visit at my father's house when I
was a lad. He was an intellectual giant who had
won the honor and fame the world freely accords
to those who do not take it by the throat too severely,
and once in a while he could be induced
to tell of the days of his earlier conflict;—how
that he and his compeers fought for a repeal of the
corn laws—laws which made it almost impossible
for a poor man to get bread—and for the right of
a man to sell the products of his own labor from
door to door to save himself from starvation.
He was imprisoned and sentenced for a long term
of years and while in prison wrote a poem of tremendous
power and influence. How my heart
burned to the old warrior, and I then and there
declared that
I live to learn their story
Who've suffered for my sake,
To emulate their glory,
And to follow in their wake:
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance.
Then, too, how I recall the fight for religious
freedom in England—some of it before my time,
but some of it under my own eyes, and in which
I had the joy of bearing a small part. The Lord
George Gordon riots, described by Dickens in
Barnaby Rudge, were provoked by religious hostility.
When I was a boy, no Jew or Catholic
could hold office in England—I think I am correct.
This act, passed in the reign of Charles II—I
write from memory—was thus in operation
for two hundred years; two hundred years of injustice,
prejudice, fostering of religious hatred
and separations. Yet Benjamin Disraeli made a
great premier, and was one of the most brilliant
statesmen of Europe, and the Howard family, Cardinal
Manning, and Cardinal Newman, all of whom
were Roman Catholics, were loved and revered on
every hand for their enlightened patriotism and
the help they gave to everything that had the welfare
of England at heart. It was a glad day for
England that saw the removal of the disabilities
from such good citizens as these, merely because
they chose to exercise their perfect God-given right
of freedom of choice in religious belief. And still,
even as late as the ascension to the throne of
George V, son of King Edward, and grandson of
that progressive and liberal-minded Queen, Victoria,
there remained in the oath a hateful spirit
of narrowness and intolerance against Catholic
beliefs. Thirty to forty years previously Charles
Bradlaugh was refused his seat in the House of
Commons because he desired to "affirm" instead
of "taking the oath." He was an "unbeliever,"
and claimed his right to be such, and yet to take
his seat as a representative of the people without
being compelled to swear to an oath in which he
did not believe. He was fought an every hand,
and with physical violence; yet he kept resolutely
on with the conflict, until I saw him myself, with
joy, take his place before the speaker of the House,
victorious. Yet I am not an unbeliever, nor do I
accept Bradlaugh's conclusions as to God and the
making of the universe. Nor is it necessary.
Equally so it is not necessary that I should attempt
to force my ideas down his throat and if
he refuse to say that he swallows them should seek
to keep him from exercising his political rights.
To us, living to-day, it seems impossible that a
great civil war was necessary ere the shackles
were shaken from the limbs of four millions of
slaves; it seems incredible that New Englanders as
well as Southerners were engaged in fostering the
iniquitous slave trade—the murderous trade in
human flesh and blood. Grant everything the
South claims to-day as to the difficulty of handling
the negro problem, that does not alter the fundamental
principle of the Declaration of Independence
that "all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness." To us it seems incredible
that honest and honorable men, clear-sighted,
clear-brained religious men who knew the value of
words and their meaning, could have so befuddled
their intellects, let alone their moral nature, as
to dare to read these words and at the same time
own slaves. Yet it was so, and not until the heroes
whose work led ultimately to the Declaration
of Independence for the slave, called the Emancipation
Proclamation, set their faces against this
great iniquity, was anything done to mitigate its
evils.
How well do I recall the endeavors of many
Englishmen to induce the Government to interfere
with the Turks and prevent further infliction of
horrible and murderous atrocities upon the Bulgarians
and other subject people, because of religious
differences. But "politics stood in the
way." And yet I heard the words of Cleveland
ring around the world when he bade England:
"Hands off," from Venezuela. Again was I
thrilled when McKinley justified the prophecy of
Joaquin Miller, uttered nearly thirty years previously,
in his Cuba Libre, where he declared:
She shall rise, by all that's holy!
She shall live and she shall last;
She shall rise as rose Columbus,
From his chains, from shame and wrong—
Rise as Morning, matchless, wondrous—
Rise as some rich morning song—
Rise a ringing song, and story,
Valor, Love personified.
Stars and stripes espouse her glory,
Love and Liberty allied.
The time came when we "flashed her lights of
freedom," as we had done before, but this time
there was an admixture of personal feeling in
which the cry, "Remember the Maine," bore a
large part. Yet the main issue was raised, viz.,
the intervention of a strong power to prevent another
strong power from too seriously oppressing
a confessedly weak power. This is a step in the
right direction. The bully, whether in school, in
the street, in business, or among nations, should
be taught that his bullying is unsafe, and that if
he must fight he must choose a "fellow of his own
size."
While I do not close my eyes to the facts that
nations are human and liable to err, I hail this as
a great forward step, and was filled with rejoicing
when the United States Government refused to
accept any indemnity from China for its share of
the expense of putting down the last great Boxer
Rebellion.
In our National and State governments there is
a growing spirit of righteous intervention. In his
last presidential message, President Taft voiced
this spirit in his recommendation of an enlarged
measure of protection for railroad employees, and
states and cities are moving more rapidly than ever
before in the enactment of laws and ordinances for
the protection of those least able to protect themselves.
Reforms in law procedure are progressing. In
his 1910 message, President Taft thus spoke:
One great crying need in the United States is cheapening
the cost of litigation by simplifying judicial procedure and
expediting final judgment. Under present conditions the
poor man is at a woeful disadvantage in a legal contest
with a corporation or a rich opponent. The necessity for
this reform exists both in United States courts and in all
state courts. In order to bring it about, however, it naturally
falls to the general government by its example to
furnish a model to all States.
This is a great step in the right direction. The
honest and manly recognition of a crying evil is
often the beginning of its removal, and I sincerely
hope to live to see the day when our laws, and legislative
procedure, will truthfully be equally for the
poor and the rich.
The activity of the Federal Government in pursuing
the nefarious malefactors who are conducting
the "white slave traffic," is also a sign of
marked improvement in affording protection to
those who are helpless and often unable and incompetent
to know what to do for their own welfare.
And how I hail with joy the movement so energetically
furthered by Mr. Bok, of the Ladies'
Home Journal, the Bishop of London, the Physical
Culture magazine, Collier's, and others, for the
education of the young of both sexes as to the
sacred relations of sex and all they imply. The
W. C. T. U. has done a little, the magazines and
physical culture movement more, and now the better
schools—such as the Polytechnic High School
of Los Angeles, and the High School in Pasadena,
California—are giving definite and specific instruction
upon these matters to boys and girls
whose parents have been remiss in neglecting this
all-important part of their home education and
training.
The pure food bill is another step forward in
our national progress; the great conservation
movement and the work of the United States
Reclamation Service, which is providing means for
irrigating the soil and thus rendering possible the
establishment of thousands of homes on lands that
otherwise would be arid and useless—these are
gigantic strides of advancement. The postal-savings
bank and parcels post are already facts,
thus demonstrating that, little by little, the powers
that have controlled our Government, for the benefit
of the few, instead of for all the people, and
especially those who need such benefit the most,
are gradually losing their hold. Soon, let us
hope, we shall have the "penny postage"—one
cent for a letter instead of two, as now. The extension
of the eight-hour day law; the honest endeavors
now being made to give labor a fair opportunity
to state its needs and requirements and thus
help bring oppressive employers to time, are also
forward steps. Granted that labor often makes
unreasonable and unjust demands, let it not be forgotten
that it is only within the last few decades
that they have been allowed to have a voice at all.
For centuries they have been "chained to the wheel
of labor,"
The emptiness of ages in their face,
And on their back the burden of the world.
What if, now that "whirlwinds of rebellion"
are shaking the world and these hitherto "dumb
terrors" have found, or are finding, a voice, they
speak a little too loudly, or too harshly, or ask
more than they ought? Whose fault is it? Who
has kept them in bondage so long? They will
learn, by and by, to speak more rationally, but
this will come only by speaking, so I hail with delight
the fact that "the rulers and lords of all
lands" are recognizing their right to be heard,
and are more or less respectfully listening to what
they have to say.
It is another grand sign of universal progress
that the owners and landlords of vile tenement
houses, of the horrible kennels in which human
beings in the past used to be penned as in pigsties,
are no longer allowed to reap monetary rewards
from such abominable and cursed holes.
Boards of health, civic improvement bodies, tenement
reform associations are taking upon themselves
the work of protecting the poor, helpless,
and often unfortunate dwellers in these plague
spots and compelling that they be made decent,
healthful, and sanitary—often seeing that they
are razed and entirely removed. What though
oftentimes the people who dwell in these places are
brought thither by their own misconduct? Are
men, women, and innocent children to be
"damned" on this earth—as well as in the future—because
morally they have been weak and
unfortunate? The greater the weakness and the
lower the fall, the greater the cry and need for
help. Jacob Riis was a brave and heroic leader in
New York, William Booth and his gallant army
in London and the thousand and one other cities
of the world, and the day is dawning when there
will be no "slums" in any decent, self-respecting
city, when such books as How the Other Half
Lives, The Submerged Tenth, If Christ Came to
Chicago, and The People of the Abyss can no
longer be written, for the true-hearted, loving,
brotherly, and sisterly, will have been aroused to
do their plain, simple, and manifest duty and
"slums," "abysses," and "plague spots" will
cease to exist.
There are many other excellent things I might
comment upon that help bring content to the soul.
They betoken a glorious and blessed improvement
upon the "days of things as they were" and
they should lead every man to get into line, to
find the step and keep it, marching on with this
vanguard of human progress, which seeks the best
possible condition of body, mind, and soul for all
men.
Yet, in spite of this large-hearted contentment
with things as they are, and with the way the
world generally is progressing, which I would radiate,
I would equally radiate a great discontent
with many things as they are. When I look at
my own faults and failings, my inadequacies and
incompetencies, my blindness and stupidity, my
ignorance and willfulness, I find much of my content
disappear like the airy visions of a dream. I
certainly do not want to be content with these
things and so I call up as often as I can a mighty
discontent which is a constant urge to the higher,
nobler, truer, better life. I am as self-willed as
other men, and yet I well know that human will is
both ignorant and blind, and that only when it is
made subject to the Great Controlling Will of
the Universe will it lead me aright and in the
paths of ultimate, permanent success. And by
success, I do not mean the paltry thing most men
regard as success. I certainly wish to radiate
discontent with what men generally regard as success.
Mere money, fame, honor, social distinction,
count for little unless character, divine sympathy
with one's needy fellows, and an enlarged
conception of the brotherhood of men accompany
them.
And how can I do other than radiate a large
and tremendous discontent at the suffering and
woe of the unfortunates of life? It is little or
nothing to me what causes their misfortune. I
have learned that the judgment of sociologists,
theologists, and reformers generally is of little
account in interpreting the causes of things. As
a rule, they look only on the surface and see nothing
of the hidden springs of action and therefore
know little of the movement of hearts of men and
women whose condition they so complacently and
conceitedly imagine they can change.
Some years ago, Jack London wrote a book entitled,
The People of the Abyss. It was severely
censured and criticised and some critics went so
far as to assert that it was full of untruths. It
told of the dismal lives of London's poor, who
daily find themselves with nothing but one meal,
two meals, three meals between themselves and
starvation—poor wretches to whom the "wolf at
the door" is an ever present reality, and who
tremble every time their employers look towards
them with a frown or speak with a voice that
threatens dismissal. What a frightful, pitiable,
pathetic position for men and women—my brothers
and sisters—to be in. I certainly do not
wish to radiate contentment at the fact of their
unfortunate condition. I want somehow to take
some of their burdens upon my life. I want to
realize something of the spirit that led Walt Whitman
to exclaim, "I will take nothing for myself
that cannot be given upon equal terms to all men."
When I read the stories of child labor and learn
of the many cruelties practiced upon helpless little
ones, in the name of business; when I see those
boys and girls of tender age in the cotton mills of
the South, owned by wealthy men of the North,
plodding back and forth, hour by hour, behind the
whirling spindles; when I see them, as I have often
done, so utterly weary that when the noon hour
came, they would stretch out on the bare floor and
try to gain a little snatch of forgetfulness of their
weariness in sleep, rather than eat their inadequate
lunch, I have certainly felt, as I now feel, that I
wish to radiate a tremendous amount of discontent
that such inhuman facts can exist. When I see
the private palace car owned by the many-times
millionaire, and catch glimpses of the extravagant
and wasteful luxury in which he and his family
live, and realize that this prodigal wastefulness is
made possible by the life-destroying labor of poor,
anæmic children in the glass-blowing factories of
New Jersey, I wish I had the power to send a great
wail of discontent through the country that would
thrill the hearts, awaken the senses, and arouse
the consciences of every man and woman in the
nation.
When I realize the inadequacies of our legal system
to do justice alike to all men and women, the
poor as well as the rich, the innocent and confiding
as well as the crafty and cunning, I feel nothing
but discontent and long for the time to come when
justice and mercy shall be of higher value in the
courts of our land than precedent and legal procedure.
It often takes moral courage to radiate real living
discontent with these injustices and crimes
against our needy and defenseless fellows. I long
to possess this moral courage in fullest measure,
and to radiate it on every hand. In view of the
need for strong protest against the smug, contented
betrayers of the poor and needy, I would
radiate a spirit that has not inaptly been termed
that of contemporaneous protest and rebellion.
By this I mean that present spirit of protest and
rebellion against wrongs that exist now, so that
my protest will be contemporaneous with the evil.
It is easy enough to line up with the winning
side and shout Hurrah! with the victors in any
conflict. Even the English of to-day agree that
the American Revolution was a good thing and
that the acts of George III were indefensible
tyranny. But it required considerable courage
to join one's forces with those of Washington
when money was scarce and men few, when the
day seemed dark and gloomy, and the prospects
of success were doubtful.
It is easy enough to-day to Hurrah! for the
principles of Lincoln, but many a great statesman
like Henry Clay felt it was better to compromise
than face the fierce antagonism of such men as
Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and others who believed
in the opposing ideas.
What I desire with all my heart is to radiate not
only my readiness and willingness to line up with
the unpopular cause, but the fact that I am already
lined up. That, without being asked, people
will know what my position is sure to be; that
I naturally belong on the side of the "under dog,"
and that in any conflict against entrenched power
and wrong, where the weak and oppressed are
fighting for rights which are inherently theirs,
that as soon as I hear the battle-cry my "Here!"
will ring out immediate, bold and clear.
Nor do I always want to wait to be called upon.
I may not have either the wisdom and discretion
or the ability to be a leader and I have no desire
to thrust myself forward as such. At the same
time, I do not want to be cowardly and hang back
when I see that which I feel is inherently wrong.
Even though I stand alone, I want to stand in protest
and contemporaneous rebellion against the
wrong that I see.
Nay, further, I want to radiate as my habitual
attitude of mind that I am ever on the alert to
seek out opportunities for rebellion against any
and all systems of wrong, no matter how powerful,
that I may gladly take upon my shoulders some
part of the burden of helping forward the real
progress of the entire human race.
James Russell Lowell expressed the passionate
desire of my heart in his Present Crisis. In that
majestic poem he shows the need for this contemporaneous
rebellion:
Backward look across the ages, and the beacon-movements see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's Sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet Earth's chaff must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.
Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.
The whole poem is full of this passionate great-hearted,
manly, God-like sympathy, now and here,
with the needy, the oppressed, the helpless of today.
The crises are here now, those stern winnowers
that test and try men's souls, that discover
whether they are wheat or chaff, ashes or gold.
Oh, for men who have made already the "choice
momentous"—while the battle is raging, when
there is danger, risk, peril, possible death in the
conflict. Is he a true man who waits, pauses, hesitates,
wavers in such conflicts, "till the judgment
hath passed by"?
I would radiate, again let me say it, my readiness
to march at the sound of the drum, to advance
with the front ranks, to fight at the first word.
History affords us many noble examples and
"beacon lights" of those who have lived in accordance
with the principles herein laid down.
Stephen Langton and the barons of England
protested against the tyrannical power of King
John. They did so at the peril of their heads.
Yet they were possessed of this spirit of contemporaneous
rebellion, and they fought against
John and won from him that great charter of the
liberties of men, that has been the basis of all
proclamations of freedom ever since.
Cromwell, Hampden, Pym, Milton, and the
other great commoners and democrats of England
were in a state of contemporaneous protest
and rebellion against the undue pretensions of
King Charles I. Their protests might have cost
them their lives—yet they protested. And they
won a victory that has made republics possible
throughout all time.
So with the leaders of the French Revolution.
There were many awful and bloody events connected
with that great act of contemporaneous
protest, but that the ultimate outcome upon mankind
has been good most true-hearted thinkers
agree. Yet the protests were made by the earlier
agitators under great danger.
When Patrick Henry, Franklin, Jefferson,
Adams, Washington, and the other American revolutionists
protested against King George's tyranny,
and when the noble band met at Philadelphia
and signed the Declaration of Independence,
they knew they did it at the peril of their lives—yet
they protested and won for mankind the victory
that Joaquin Miller calls "Time's burst of
Dawn."
Had Langton, Cromwell, the French Revolutionists,
Washington, and the signers of the
Declaration of Independence failed, they would all
have forfeited their lives for their temerity. It
was an act of great moral courage to rebel.
When Galileo rebelled against the dictum of the
ecclesiastic authorities in regard to the movement
of the earth, it meant his imprisonment, yet he
rebelled and thus ushered in a new day of advancement
in astronomical knowledge. Darwin did the
same. Both men required daring and courage,
yet they did not hesitate or falter.
There are evils to-day that should be fought;
fashions, customs, entrenched wrongs in existence
now against which manly men are called to be in
contemporaneous rebellion. Those of us who live
to-day are reaping great and blessed privileges,
freedom, liberties, won for us as the result of the
protests, rebellions, warfares of the moral heroes
of the past; so should we further the progress of
the world by protesting and fighting the existing
wrongs, in order that future generations may be
freer than we are, and may push on still further
the glorious chariot of human progress.
Henry George was a recent heroic example of
contemporaneous protest against current evils.
Garibaldi, Mazzini, Victor Hugo, Kossuth, were
all noble and inspiring examples of the like spirit.
Ruskin's life was a perpetual protest against the
sacrificing of beauty, peace, harmony, and brotherhood
for the rush and show of material prosperity.
William Morris's life, work, voice, and pen were
ever in active, open, contemporaneous hostility and
opposition to the damnable spirit of modern competition,
and demoralizing commercialism which
destroyed artistic labor, banished fellowship, and
substituted therefor the rule of the jungle where
the strong devour the weak. Thank God! the
ranks of the morally courageous have always
found glad and willing recruits; men willing to
spend and be spent for the benefit of humanity;
willing to be rebels and accounted and treated as
such that they might help gain larger victories of
freedom for their fellow-men.
We sometimes think that there was more moral
heroism in the days gone by than there is to-day.
I do not believe it! In this matter of moral heroism
and contemporaneous rebellion against entrenched
wrong, we have many fine and noble living
examples on every hand. I could mention a hundred
of them in as many minutes. A few must
suffice.
When Edwin Markham wrote The Man with
the Hoe, he showed his spirit of contemporaneous
protest and rebellion. Here was no reflection
upon labor or its dignity, as some thoughtless
critics have affirmed, but it was a tremendous and
powerful onslaught upon the "Kings and Rulers
of All Lands" who permit employers to chain the
laborer to the "wheel of labor." Markham's
poem is a direct challenge and throwing down of
the gauntlet to those who contend that they have
a right to purchase labor in the open market at
any price, however demoralizing to mankind. It
is a contention that manhood is more than money;
that the laborer is more than the labor; and that
the employers who value the labor done more than
the men who do the labor are unworthy the honor
and respect of decent men; are unworthy to be
called real men because of their tyrannical abuse of
their helpless brothers.
William Booth, president of the Salvation
Army, Jack London, the socialist novelist, Jacob
Riis, the New York newspaper idealist, Maud Ballington
Booth, the leader of the Volunteers of
America, Charles Montgomery, of San Francisco,
the prisoner's friend, and Dana Bartlett, of Los
Angeles, the brother of poor "Dagoes," Portuguese
and Mexicans, are all more or less widely
diverse examples of contemporaneous rebellion and
protest against existing social conditions. Each
works in his own way to ameliorate these conditions,
but the work of each is a protest against
those laws of supply and demand, of competition,
of worship of material things, that allow it to be
possible that some men can gain more wealth than
they can ever utilize, even if they lived to be ten
thousand years old, and never earn another cent,
whilst others can earn barely enough to keep body
and soul together and who live every day in dread
of the future because they are capable of earning
no more than enough to keep them one, two, or
three meals away from starvation.
In a copy of his book, The People of the Abyss,
which Jack London sent to me, which truthfully
portrays the life of the submerged tenth of London,
he wrote something like this on the title page:
"Dear James—With the facts of these pages
before me, I may agree with you in your favorite
quotation from Browning, that 'God's in his
heaven,' but I cannot agree with you that 'All's
right with the world.'"
It is the fashion with certain people to decry
Jack London's socialism, but I happen to know
that he has personally sacrificed thousands of
dollars to his principles in this matter, has lost
the friendship of many wealthy people who would
have showered their gifts upon him had he been
complacent towards what he calls "predatory
wealth," hence I hail his acts of contemporaneous
rebellion and his taking upon himself of the battle
for these, his weaker brothers and sisters, as heroic,
and fully worthy of the highest esteem of all good
men, whatever they may think of the methods by
which he would bring about the desired changes.
All through his life there has been a strong current
of contemporaneous rebellion and belligerent
sincerity in the work of the poet of the Sierras,
Joaquin Miller. He was brought up as a Quaker
and taught to believe in non-resistance, hence he
preached peace at the beginning of the Civil War
until his printing office was wrecked and his life
threatened. When the world at large was condemning
the Indian, he went and stood by his side,
and when he believed him to be in the right, fought
battles on his behalf. All through his life he has
boldly stood for man's larger freedom, and against
entrenched tyranny. When England made war
upon the Boers, he denounced the warlike and
jingo politicians with a power and strength seldom
surpassed in poetry, in spite of the fact that the
English had always been his best friends and the
largest purchasers of his poems.
While he lived in California, not far from San
Francisco, and California was a hotbed of the sentiment
that demands the exclusion of the Chinese
and Japanese, he ever fearlessly and in unmistakable
terms denounced this action as opposed to the
fundamental principles of the fatherhood of God
and the brotherhood of man, and demanded of his
fellow citizens that they adhere strictly to these
never-failing and abiding truths.
These men are but few of the many I might mention,
but they will serve as types. They have
been and are willing to suffer for the general good
of mankind. Therefore, in the presence of their
moral heroism and courage, let us cry with George
Linnæus Banks:
I live to learn their story
Who've suffered for my sake,
To emulate their glory,
And to follow in their wake;
Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,
The noble of all ages,
Whose deeds crowd history's pages
And Time's great volume make.
I live ...
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do.
