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Title: Commercial civilisation
Author: Hinchey, W. (William)
Published: Southland News, Invercargill, N.Z., 1920
Commercial Civilisation.
BY W. HINCHLY.
INVE.RCARGILL:
Southland News Co., Ltd.
1920.
Contents.
Page.
I. The Social Structure
II. The Living Problem 24
III. Trade, Travellers and Liquor 38
IV. The Shop Habit and Progressive Barbarism 54
V. The Freedom of the Subject 65
VI. Domestic Life 80
VII. Money-making 96
VIII. Education 127
IX. Patriotism 171
X. Reformers 186
XI. Parasitical Progress 201
XII. Waste 233
XIII. Reorganisation 251
Vll.
Preface.
This Work is presented to the public free of bias and enmity, and with a full appreciation of the manifold intricacies contained within the system of competitive existence governing the lives of human beings. The mental attitude which I have endeavoured to maintain is that of an interested stranger viewing from a coign of vantage the ebb and flow of the human tide endeavoring to adjust itself by civilised organisation into the ragged and rigid fixtures of nature. The predominating impression conveyed to the mind from an ex-mundane attitude of inspection is the strength of human effort concentrating itself upon constructive principles of organisation based upon the idea of human superiority.
A false conception of his relationship to the planet has led man to set a value upon his own importance not warranted by the delicate spark of life which enables him for a brief period only to be a mobile atom upon its surface. He is an active element in the chemistry of nature not revealed to puny mortals and beyond the understanding of human intelligence, and if he would endeavour to live closer to his parent origin and follow the silent suggestions of nature the vital spark would shine brighter and longer, and the warm glow of pleasant and congenial happiness would rob his fleeting passage of much of the acrimonious bitterness occasioned by the flaunting of his boastful and arrogant superiority.
W. HINCHEY.
The Social Structure.
The government, customs, conditions and trend of modern thought guiding and ordering the public and private life of the Nations of the present day, are the product of the evolution of civilisation, spread over several centuries. It is not necessary to go hack into the dust of the older civilisations, amongst the ruins of buried cities, where we read the lives of the people who lived there by the science of Archaeology. It is sufficient for the present treatise upon our Social System, combining within its limits all the conditions governing the daily lives of the people, to pass under review the conditions arising out of that evolution of our Social System which has been brought into existence mainly by the growth of commercialism. The tremendous progress made within the last century in scientific discovery and its application to manufacture and industry is responsible for the rapid and almost revolutionary changes which are continually following each other with a frequency disconcerting to the rank and file of humanity. With the introduction of scientific method, accompanied by its copartner, mechanical genius, into manufacture and commerce, people began to he drawn into the towns to meet the demand for labour created by the growing factories. The demand for machinery and material in one factory brought about the birth of another, also with its demand for labour. A third, a fourth, a fifth spring into existence in the same way, beginning perhaps in a single room with a proprietor operator who toiled long hours with tenacity and persistence, until the buildings of a
2
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
great factory, humming with industry, held thousands of busy operators within its gates. The descendants of the first generation of operators who were attracted by the higher wages and the pleasures of urban life gradually became artisans and operators in the ever-multiply-ing hives of industry, rearing their chimney stacks like monuments to the genius of Enterprise.
The thousands of people who were thus drawn in the course of a few generations from the peaceful occupation of agriculture and home manufacture were transformed into the City dwellers, comprising their numerous varieties of life and their many grades of affluence and poverty, as we see them to-day.
This transformation of the people, brought about by the almost miraculous growth of commercialism and scientific progress, has not been met by a corresponding forward movement in the framing of laws governing the rapidly altering conditions to which the people were subjected. It is a singular fact that, although giant intellects have been at work forcing Nature to give up bit by bit the secrets of her laboratory, and Napoleons of finance have manipulated the trade of the world in building huge concerns and huge accumulations of wealth, not one wizard has appeared upon the stage of Politics with the genius to expound a system that will give a fair share to each one engaged in the great scheme of progress. Many earnest and conscientious Statesmen, credited with the possession of intellectual power, foresight, business acumen and the perception and force necessary to guide and control the human element, have hopelessly failed in attempting to improve the general condition of the masses and level up the inequalities of society. The failure of our Statesmen to secure a more equitable distribution of
3
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
tlie profits of industry amongst the people, and the unrest caused by that failure, has its root origin imbedded in the artificial conditions produced by the abnormal growth of industrial commercialism. These conditions, operating in contradiction of Nature’s laws, are to be found in every great commercial centre, where dense populations are congregated into the congested areas of large cities. Human enterprise has brought itself into conflict with Nature by hiveing off the human species in a manner intended by the Almighty only for the insect creation. The Chosen of God were not meant in the wonderful structure of creation to work long hours in semi-darkness, to breathe air charged with the fumes of lingering death, to be deprived of the sunshine and the pure air of Heaven, nor to be debarred from sharing in their natural heritage of a portion of the soil from which they sprang. Tet these “man-made conditions” prevail throughout the world at the present time; they are destined to remain, like all things made by man without regard to the governing laws of Creation, just as long as is required to prove that they are a surreptitious union of natural elements, and like all such unions must destroy themselves by their unnatural association.
A Scientist or Inventor who settles down with the full power of his mind concentrated upon unravelling one of the hidden problems, or making a mechanical instrument or machine designed to perform certain duties, first looks around to find the corresponding thing in Nature, and after having found it—for it must be there—his work is half done, and he proceeds to make his ininstrument or machine from the plans and specifications of the Great Architect. The great minds who have contributed most to the building up of the complex system of industrial manufacture are those students of the basic
i
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
principles of the elements in their relation to organic life. The results of their discoveries are woven into the commercial fabric mostly controlled by men whose natural powers of "investigation and analysis" are subservient to their stronger propensities of "acquisition and selfishness"; which drove them to the amassing of wealth, even to the extent of preying upon their fellow men ' And at this point we find the line that divides Scientific and Mechanical development, based upon the laws of Nature, from Commercial, Industrial, and Political development, based upon the laws of man. The scientific investigator is usually a man with a highly-developed mental organism of the reflective type, qualified by nature and training to weigh, balance, separate and mould the elements, treat and blend them according to their various moods and peculiarities, and coax them to hand over to man some important secret in the great architectural structure of creation.
The true searcher in the realms of investigation is not fixed to his task by the hope of personal reward, or the idea of turning his labours to profit with the purpose of amassing a fortune. He finds his true reward in having obtained from the universal laboratory, in return for his labours, an important formula which will assist the progress, and add to the betterment of, his fellow men; and so long as he obtains sufficient to enable him to pursue Ins work of research and meet his daily wants he is content.
The antithesis of the Scientist is the Builder of Factories and Industries; ] IP it is who seldom or never sees anything, nor performs anything, except for the purpose of exammmg its chances of returning a profit; and having satisfied himself of the safety of a return, performs upon it with energy and avidity. The discoveries
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE
18
of Science pas? under his review; if they can be used in the factory j the mill or the mine, to reduce the cost of output or the number of hands employed, they are immediately adopted. These masters of tireless movement in the everyday working's of commercial life, from the bent of their inclinations, are not idealists; they have behind them the propulsion of strong vitality and a vigorous animal nature, and they are specialists in the act of selecting- the things which contribute most to their creature comforts, combined with the force and cunning which enable them to brush aside all the obstacles standing in the way of their acquisitiveness. From the Millionaire Princes of giant trusts on the zenith of industrial organisation, right down the chromatic scale of trade and industry to the bottom-most ring, where the apple-woman vends her wares at the street corner, the application of business principles knows no variation, excepting in the size and extent of the operations. The germ of the Millionaire is present in every trader great great and small, and if the small trader does not become one of the great microbes of Society, it is simply because the natural conditions in which he lived were not favorable to his growth. The Human Element is manifesting- itself in the craft and cunning and mannerisms of business, in the suave oleaginous personality of the Commercial Traveller, in the sagacious sang-froid of the Legal Gentry; the professions of Medicine, Literature and Science have received the taint of commerce from the polluted atmosphere; the workers, not escaping the degradation of the common environment, mimic the employers in the general aurification; and the commission agent, the big spider of the commercial web. sits in his parlour, his windows adorned with a plentiful supply of ',.- coloured fly-papers, and his florid n
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION
6
speaking of the sucking of muck of the blood of the community. The Politician, very often a derelict from the scrap heap of Commerce or the froth boiled over from one of the Professional trypots, crams the few brain cells he possesses with some of the hackneyed phrases from the dry dust of an obsolete Political Economy, sucks sundry everyday ideas from commonplace thinkers on the pavements of a muddled municipality, cultivates an acquaintance with the children of the electors, memorises the names on the roll of suffrage, compliments the mothers upon the health, beauty and intelligence of their offspring, and having smiled and bowed and hand-shook every possible and probable elector, he settles dothe most difficult task of the lot—to find out upon which side of Politics is the greatest number of votes. Having come to a conclusion upon that point, he invites the electors to an intellectual feast upon his hotchpotch of borrowed ideas, scraped from the surface in the byways of mediocrity, scattered to the audience to the accompaniment of much dramatic posing and arm-waving, and clinched with frequent significant references to "Mr Chairman," "Ladies and Gentlemen." Statecraft, built from the designs abundantly provided in the book of Nature, is no part of the equipment of this pseudoApostle of the Cause of the People and the State. His one purpose is to gain the support of sufficient votes to put him at the top of the poll, and he is prepared to do anything, say anything, and promise anything, in order that he may enjoy the privilege of a seat in Parliament. In his flights of oratory at the meetings, he scatters with a prodigal liberality a Post Office into one corner of the Electorate, a Railway Station into another, with a suddenness that almost makes the villagers gasp; he pictures a Railway wandering up a valley and through the
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
20
hills, bringing civilisation and prosperity along its serpentine curves, and terminating in the vicinity of homesteads of McKenzie and Mcßae. McKenzie and Mcßae, listening to this wordpicture fraught with future possibilities, pass from earth to the ethereal, and in fancy they can hear the locomotive puffing up the valley, bringing them nearer to markets and better profits, while the cackle of the engine exhaust sounds almost as sweet as the bagpipes in their heather hills of Home. The heads of the homes along the valley are drawn closer together, and they mutually agree that “he is our man.” Bridges, roads, culverts, parks and public buildings rise in profusion under the mystic wand of the political juggler. The labourer listens in raptures to a story unfolding the perfidy of the capitalist and the cruelty of the rack-renting landlord, and is told with much sympathetic fervour that “if you do me the honour of returning me as your Representative, it will be my first and sacred duty to see that you have better wages, shorter hours, cheaper rents, and at the same time cheaper living.” Having ended the first operation in his burglarious attempt upon the Public Purse, this political leech on the Rational Edifice receives his pre-arranged vote of confidence with much hand-clapping from the members of the pre-arranged gang who will be lying in wait for a share of the swag if the coup comes off. These examples drawn at random from our Civilised Institutions serve to show, upon close and careful thought, that the Human Family has become incrusted with the barnacles of custom and habit to such an extent that the majority have lost the code of proper living and are drawing their sustenance from each other in a form of parasitical cannibalism mostly in the channels of trade. Precedent, Custom and Habit
21
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
form the groundwork of the ordering of the civilised existence of the people. A striking characteristic in the human composition is the tendency, which is to be found in almost every individual, irrespective of rank or position, to draw upon the past for the guidance of the future. While it is an infallible concrete law that the failures of the past should be used to prevent similar failures in the future, it is not an infallible law that what proved a success in the past will prove to be a success under the rapidly changing conditions approaching every day. The hoary head of precedent, draped in the garb of bygone days, obtrudes itself into all our Parliamentary and Legal Institutions. Musty old laws, statutes and customs brown with the age of centuries, are “wigged and gowned” and dignified, and enthroned upon the seats of wisdom like the ghosts of the dead past risen up to awe the living and obtain ‘‘silence in the court.” “Habit,” closely related to “Precedent,” has wormed itself into the marrow of the human bones, and mournful repetition parades itself in the full eye of observation, obscuring with its drab monotony anything that may appear upon the landscape of orig-inality.
“Habit” is one of the venal afflictions of Civilised Humanity; wrapped in tradition it is transmitted along tbe line of Human Reproduction, from our ancestors back in tbe mists of antiquity down to tbe present generation. A father has the business habit and he teaches it to his son, or the professional habit, or the political habit, or the literary habit, to say nothing of the gambling and drink habits, and hundreds of other unmentionables in the catalogue of hereditary transmission. The offspring of even citizen are trained into one of the grooves formed by the habits of Society, and the ever-increasing stream of humanity rushing down these channels of imaginary
22
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
progress Las worn them deeper and narrower as the generations succeed each other. "Customs" are also deep-seated and tap-rooted in the conservative toryism of human nature, which is usually so blind to the malign influences chaining it to the dead past. Is it because of the origin which Darwin—rightly, I believe—gives to the Human Family that it is enthralled in his bondage of mimicry belonging to its primeval ancestors? "Social Democracy" of the extreme kind screams in excited anger about the indignities and slavery imposed upon the masses by the "Plutocracy"; forgetting in its hysteria that the Plutocracy of to-day was the Democracy of two or three generations ago, and that the present-day Democratic leaders when invested with official authority are capable of developing in a few years of legislative experience a patronising offensiveness, more insulting in its domineering arrogance than the slavish cruelties of the Autocrat, perpetrated upon the people through a set of preying agents and emissaries. This lack of imagination and pride of personal originality has written "repetition" in large and conspicuous letters on the face of our civilisation. In the Halls of our Legislatures, from the men selected by the people for their supposedly special mental adaptation in the analysis and construction of conditions and the framing of laws most suitable to the climate, soil and environment of the people, proposals worthy of the men and the dignity of the Parliaments are naturally expected. And what do we find? A huge majority of the proposals made are drawn from Legislative experiments made in other -countries—the more obscure the country the better—and if guiding ideas are not to be found in other countries there is always the Referendum, commonly called the "sheet-anchor of the wob-
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION,
23
Sling Politician," to fall back upon. In every street in the business of the cities noteworthy examples are exhibited of the poverty of human originality and the power of our mimic and cultivated inheritance, manifesting itself in rows of shops vieing with each other in the similarity of their stocks, window dressings, lighting, management and general appearance. If one shopkeeper hits something out of the usual that brings him a run of trade and additional profit, he is immediately singled out for observation, and before he has had time to reap the benefit of his original enterprise, his idea is exploited in all quarters by the pirates of commerce. That the civilised organisation of the progressive peoples admits so many of its members to live and thrive by preying upon society, and at the same time enjoy the full privileges which it offers, together with, as it often happens, positions of honour and trust, without raising a voice or a question, is surely an indication that the mote is still in the eye of civilisation. In no living species forming part of the great Creation is there to be found so many who live on their kind by stealth and plunder and sycophancy as in the Human Family. The Human Hive is full of needless drones consuming the stores of honey gathered by workers in every department of production, and "foul brood" is yearly reducing the energy, efficiency, and numbers of those responsible for replenishing the reserves which Xature intended and provided for in her economy. "False Conception" in "Society" is apparent to the student and observer in every village, town and city, and one need only take a walk through a common thoroughfare of Civilisation to see it flourishing in all its varied forms, particularly in the great centres of commerce and industry which have proved such a splendid medium in its culture. What I term "False Concep-
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
24
tion" in ''Man'* is represented by the thousands of people who have come into being and are unconsciously living, not by assisting in the direct production, manufacture or distribution of human necessities, but by means which they and "Society" consider to be right and proper; whereas in reality they are supported merely by years of precedent resting upon a parasitical growth. Not only are these thousands of members of the Social Organisation expending their lives and labour in nonessential channels, but they are encumbering the essential machinery of production and distribution with their support, and at the same time contributing most towards the physical degeneration of the race. This malignant growth of time-servers, and hangers-on to the superstructure of Social Progress has become so great that we have arrived at a time when, in order to preserve the edifice from collapsing, we must sweep away this superimposed burden of humanity which has accumulated upon the roof, intent upon avoiding their fair share of the work at the foundations.
The rapid growth of Commercialism in the last century has created the opportunities which have encouraged the development of a class of individuals who have drifted from the legitimate course of homogeneous progress and degenerated into groups who live by their wits in some department of human affairs. Everything connected with the organisation of Society has its special group of parasites, clogging with its incrustation and corrosion the free working of the private and public machinery of the State. One of the most astonishing things to the thinker, who from a coign e of vantage views the "Social Civilisation" in calm uiibiassed contemplation, is the benevolent toleration by people engaged in the essential works of life of the hosts of sycophants living on the
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COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
best by their labor in non-essential luxury producing jugglery. I have no wish to condemn to the perdition of deliberate and purposeful robbery the majority of these extraneous members of the corporate organisation. For the most part they are blind to the true position they are filling in their relation to the Community and the State, and they look upon their business or calling in the light of having been established by inalienable right of heredity and custom. I do not feel so charitably disposed towards the members of some of the groups of sycophants, and I will single out for summary conviction and condemnation Usurers, Pawnbrokers, Commission Agents, Canvassers, Commercial Travellers; also spielers of all kinds who, calling themselves sports, rob true sport of its honour and honesty, and prostitute it until the name of "sport" stinks in the nostrils of decent people—these I would treat as the barnacles on the ship of State, to be scraped off and dropped to the bottom. It is necessary, before the rot in our Social System which is threatening Civilisation produces revolutionary eruption, to purge the organisation of the foul excrescences encumbering it, and endeavour to fulfil the destiny of the race in a state of reasonable cleanliness. Those members of Society who by idleness, duplicity, and the pretence of doing something for the public good, by unnecessarily manipulating and juggling with the vital essentials of the People, must be combed and sorted out, shorn of their malicious influence and trained into channels of usefulness leading to the general welfare of progress.
The tendency to go slow and restrict the output, which is becoming part of the policy of labour organisations throughout the Empire and America, is very much to be deplored and regretted. The principle of doing as little work as possible for as much money as possible, is
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
26
one which in the course of a generation will surely leave the mark of deterioration on the British race. It is a deliberate and scientific encouragement of the inherent indolence which is common to every human heing, particularly the young. The malevolent effect upon the impressionable mind of youth produced by the doctrine of "go slow" or "do little." together with the encouragement of the idea that every employer is an enemy, is creating a danger of producing an individual who in his more mature years may become an outlaw of organised society. The extremists of the I.W.W. and kindred societies are the product of these teachings. In many cases they are men capable of better things, but for the baneful influence of anarchical reasoning upon them when their minds were in the absorbent and plastic condition of youth. The principles underlying all actions of hostility and disagreement between workers and employers are the outcome of living under an organised system of society which has become obsolete. By that I mean that our present system based upon the laws of our National and Local Governments conjointly with the laws of trade and commerce operated successfully when civilisation and education were confined to the people of a few countries of the world. These few people were enabled to trade with and exploit the people of less civilised countries, with the result that their internal laws and organisation gave satisfaction, until education and civilisation became general throughout the world. By the universal training of the peoples of all countries in the arts and industries we have arrived at a time when the foundations of society will have to be relaid, and a new structure erected which will more adequately meet the conditions of natural equality brought into being by the general enlightenment of the masses.
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COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION
The ferment in social conditions is making its appearance in many forms of unrest. Anarchy, Unionism, strikes, forcing up wages, reducing hours, reducing output, intimidating workers, and many other remedies have been advocated and put into practice by leaders and reformers in their endeavour to obtain for the masses a more equitable distribution of the fruits of industrialism. Large combinations of employers have pooled their resources to enable them to meet the combination of workers. The employers have the advantage of fewer numbers—which means greater cohesion—control of money and shrewder intelligence. The effect is that the two combinations have been waging an industrial war for many years with the result that whenever the workers' combination obtains an increase in wages, say of 5 per cent,, the more flexible combination of large employers finds an opportunity for increasing- prices seven and a-half per cent., leaving the great body of the workers worse off than before. In between the two great organised bodies of society who are almost continually in conflict is a still larger body, compiled of the small retailers, the professional men, the agriculturists, and the women and children, who are forced to mark time and often to suffer financial loss, inconvenience, misery and even starvation, while they are patiently waiting for the militant organised minority to settle their differences. There is something very much out of order or out of date in the machinery of our National System, when to two belligerent factions representing possibly not more than one per cent, of the population, are permitted the power to bring the private and public affairs of the State to a standstill. A recent example of the kind was the coal strike in New South Wales in 1916, when about a dozen coal owners on one hand, and about 3000 miners on the
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE,
28
other, paralysed the industries of Australasia for several weeks.
The sufferers by these volcanic impediments to progress are not coal-owners and the industrial kings, but the great body representing probably eighty per cent, of the people, of whom the majority belong to no industrial organisation. The strikers themselves with their families, with very few exceptions, have to pay a heavy toll for the folly of having tried to obtain improved conditions by strike methods.
The industrial strike is one of the obsolete parts of our corporate organism. It was born in the infancy of our industrial history; it has grown like a parasite in the hive of manufactories; it is the cancer of industrialism, which has robbed of its life many a promising concern. The form of attack in the industrial conflict which will produce the most dire results for the whole community is undoubtedly the "go slow" policy for the purpose of reducing the output. Restriction of production does not injure the owner of the produce so much as the consumer, for the reason that the law of demand will increase the price, and the purchasers, who are chiefly the working and middle classes, will have to pay it. When a body of workers decides upon reducing the output by twentyfive per cent,, that means an immediate loss to the nation of twenty-five per cent, on that particular product. It also means an increase in price of twenty-five per cent, if the output is just equal to the consumption. If the consumption of coal of one thousand tons per day is suddenly reduced by the "gae canny" weapon to seven hundred and fifty 7 tons, it is not the wealthy classes who will feel the pinch of shortage and increased prices. The workers in other industries may suffer by shorter time, decreased wages, and dearer coal, while in the homes of
29
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
the poor who live on the fringe of society many a child, cold and hungry; will shiver itself to sleep by the side of a cheerless hearth. The misguided miner in the pit does not hear the cry of the child, and rests upon his lump of coal fondly imagining that he is helping the cause of labour.
The operatives in the machine shops, imbued with the same fallacious ideas, slacken up, believing that a smaller output will result in greater demand, bringing with it higher wages, shorter hours, and consequently better living conditions. Instead of this happy result we find dearer tools and machines required in the production of food and clothing, resulting in a natural increase in the prices of the first requirements of life.
Building materials and hardwares, subjected to like conditions, respond with fewer houses, higher rents and less employment for those engaged in the building trade. The more leisurely movement of the slings to and from the ship’s holds by the waterside workers reacts in the form of increased ship’s charges, due to the delay in port, increased freights corresponding with the cost of handling cargo and the numerous incidental expenses inseparable from the delay of a ship. Every other industry will respond in the same way to the same conditions. The inflexible and inexorable law of Nature is that if a man will not bestir himself to produce the means whereby he may maintain his position he will be pushed aside in the race for existence by a more vigorous and less indolent man.
The increased charges created by the "Go Slow" policy, like all charges, must find a resting-place. Increased charges are things that nobody wants and nobody who can find a means of passing tl lem 0 n keeps. Consequently they are continually moved forward until
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
30
they find their last resting-place with the consumer, who in many cases receives them in hunger and blasphemy. The broad resting-place of the increased prices is upon the toilers who represent about eighty per cent, of the consumers. The prices they pay- are those made for them mostly by leaders who are too stupid to understand the first principles of Nature, too short-sighted to anticipate the requirements of to-morrow, and too deaf to hear the cries of misery arising out of the doctrines they have promulgated. And what of the other twenty per cent, of the consumers? They are mostly the members and associates of the employers' organisations; the men of craft and graft, gifted with the power of manipulating the human pawns in the game called Business. Around almost every article necessary for the feeding, clothing, housing and amusing of the people they have formed a ring. They exact a toll from you for admitting you into the first garment that separates you from the savage at your birth, and at your death the Church bells may not sound a note to warn the angels of your coming until you have discharged your obligations to one or other of their multifarious combinations. Throughout life you have been contributing unconsciously through many channels towards the making of millionaires—not necessarily in your own country—but in some part of the world. The industrial war of progress which has been surging for the last century from country to country has gripped the Planet like an octopus, and men have almost forgotten the natural laws which govern their existence. The mad rush of commercial ism has infected the people of every country. Cities, filled with factories crammed with buzzing machinery, have sprung up like mushrooms. Every conceivable thing in Nature that is capable of being tortured into a marketable product is
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION
31
torn through the mills or roasted in the furnaces. The transformed article is canned, bottled or bulked and sent forth upon its commercial mission—for good or ill matters not as long as it returns the necessary dividend to swell the golden god of the manipulating ring. The beasts of the field, whose destiny it is to provide food and clothing for the ever-increasing human family, are more securely fenced in the race leading to the profitbuilding machine of food operators than they are in the pastures of the farmer who toils long hours to bring them to the point where he gets a meagre return for his labour. Operators in the wheat pit watch for the ripening of the golden grain and, like pirates waiting in ambush for their prey, they confiscate a large portion as their ransom and liberate the balance to the struggling multitude. The fishermen who with trawl and seine and hook eke out the thinnest of scanty livings in cold and darkness, threatened with the dangers of the deep, sell their catches for a pittance to the dealers. The dealers of the fish ring, without subjecting themselves to any of the dangers or discomforts attending the taking of the fish, secure comparative ease and luxury on shore. Excepting the sunshine and the fresh air of Heaven, everything necessary to the existence of the human family has been tumbled into the maelstrom of commercialism. The great whirling machine is increasing in size and velocity day by day, and the difficulty of preserving the equilibrium of peaceful existence within its many rings is becoming greater and greater. Even the sunshine and air would be harnessed to the great machine and bottled and labelled for profit had not a higher power placed a limit to the ramifications of the commercial genius.
The selfishness in human nature, termed by Herbert Spencer the “Personal Bias,” is the germ which pro-
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
32
duces the mainspring of progress with all its attendant variations of life. No single individual or company huilds a factory or mill with the benevolent object of finding employment for the workers. While I am prepared to admit that the question of finding work for a number of people may he a factor in the construction of the mill, the predominating idea in the minds of the promoters is the making of profit. In the second place their vanity is appealed to; the success of the enterprise flatters their ability by crediting them with foresight and shrewdness, and by the employment of a large number of people they feel that they are conferring a benefit on the community. A third element contributing to the personal gratification of the industrial captains is the knowledge that the growth of the community, due in a measure, to their enterprise, promotes the value of property and adds considerably to the capital value of their undertakings. Once the initial difficulties of establishing the business on a firm financial basis locally have been mastered, the success attained fires the spirit of ambition to greater things further afield. And so we find the great industries of the present day, almost without exception, have had for their motive power selfishness and personal ambition.
In many instances when commercial success has brought huge profits to its owners, the accumulation of vast fortunes has surfeited the greed for money, and the owners’ ambitions have turned into new channels, often with unfortunate results. Numerous examples are on record of men who, having become millionaires, fondly imagine that the ability to make money, often assisted by good fortune, combines the ability to do everything with equal success. Mushroom have paid large sums for having their ancestry traced to the Aris-
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COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION
tocracy of the Old World. Grocer Kings have made themselves ridiculous by buying their way into the society of Nature's gentlemen and gentlewomen. Others, ignorant of the psychology of the masses, have attempted the perpetuation of their names by getting into Parliament. Recently, when the head of one of the great mushroom concerns of America actually journeyed to Europe with a shipload of associates in the belief that he could settle the great war, we had an example of the unparalleled assurance and impudence to which the force of selfishness and personal ambition will lead a man. The fact that he thought that by dollar-making methods he could bring about peace between the most powerful and advanced Nations of the Earth, locked in the deadly grip of war, proves that his powers of seeing beneath the surface into the working of the mysterious forces of life are dull almost to blindness. Notwithstanding his entire want of knowledge of a great International crisis, he is in his own particular sphere a very excellent man and a leader of marked ability.
The driving force of personal ambition pushing its possessors ever upwards and onwards to the goal of aggrandisement does not confine itself to any particular race, class, business or profession. Nor does it always confine itself to the straight line of moral rectitude. Amongst many of the most successful and enterprising men of the world are to be found those who work in a frenzy of hustling business, with scarcely a moment or a thought to give to anything or anybody incapable of contributing to their success. These men are usually possessed of keen analytical perception; they keep a sharp eye on the civil laws governing their transactions; and having mastered the subtle art of business lying in all its intricacies, they direct their enterprise along the
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
34
channels known as "commercial integrity" and keep •"within the law." They are the aristocrats of the criminal world—not the 33111 Sykes type whose face reveals their identity, but the smooth-visaged, calm, calculating form of respectability, whose tools of trade are not the jemmy and the sandbag, but modern business methods, aided in many cases by the cloak of religious hypocrisy, a regular seat in the Church and a large volume of the Testament. Unlike the operators of the underworld who victimise one or two individuals at a time, they walk not in the darkness and they prey upon the citizens of the universe.
After two thousand years of the teachings of Christianity, what improvement in human morals do we find revealed upon a close and impartial examination? In answer it may be said that capital crimes which are punishable before the courts are fewer. But the general morality of the people as applied to their Parliaments, their management of local government, their commerce, and their training of the young, covering the whole gamut of the Ten Commandments, can only be characterised by saying that the body of the people have become more expert under modern civilisation in practising upon each other the dishonesty and lying which is flagrantly rampant in everything connected with our social organisation. From the manufacturers and producers down to the smallest and meanest assistant in the smallest shop, and from the charwoman in our public offices right up through the multitude of messengers, clerks and heads. to the benches of our Legislators, each and everyone is prepared to improve his or her position by grasping the opportunities in this world and chancing the punishment in the next.
The proofs that truth and honesty belong only to
22
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION
our veneer of civilisation are to be observed in every department of our Social Edifice. The duties of nearly half the clerks of the offices of our public affairs are checking the work of others to prevent leakage from the public purse. Iu every warehouse and store cash registers, checking clerks, shop detectives, and hundreds of mechanical contrivances are to be seen, all for the purpose of counteracting the latent dishonesty of the employees and customers. The Public Audit Office keeps a large and highly-paid staff, trained in the art of detecting fraud, and continually at work examining the public accounts of the country. The habit of transgressing the statutory laws of our Commonwealth in a graceful and unobtrusive manner, to the accompaniment of benevolence and respectability, is not condemned in a manner consistent with the teachings of our Christian Civilisation. It often occurs that a member of the community who has moved in respectable society, and perhaps is also a worker in some Christian Organisation, is found to have committed some breach of the Social Laws, which causes him to be arraigned before a Court of Justice. Do we then find that his friends are thrown into consternation by the discovery that one of their number has been living a life of duplicity? Not so! The most common expression of opinion heard regarding his case will be one of sympathy, unless it happens to be from one of the victims of his fraudulent undertakings. If the case is not too bad a coterie of his frends will get together, pull the strings of influence, have him purified by the process of white-washing, and soon we find him flourishing in a new position with greater success than before.
Beneath the polished veneer of out civilisation, and garbed in the raiment of modern society are still to be
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
36
found in all their vigor and virulence the germs of every crime which make men prey upon each other. And under our present social system—which fortunately is tottering with the rot of senility—the race of avarice has received every cultivation and encouragement, making men victimise their fellows with greater ferocity than at any period of the world's history.
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
24
The Living Problem.
In these days of industrial turmoil when the rumblings of dissatisfaction are to be heard in every quarter where labour is employed, the murmur which strikes the deepest note is the continual rise in the cost of living. The leaders of labour harangue the members of the Unions, and out of the volume of vituperation poured upon the capitalists and the employers, and everyone else suspected of having produced the rise in food prices, they can find only the same old quack nostrum "an increase in wages." The machinery of "Wages Boards" or "Arbitration Courts" is put in motion, valuable time is wasted in quoting figures, making comparisons, examining data, and backing up the whole sordid business with hard swearing, until the finding of the Court results in an increase in wages "made necessary by the all-round rise in the everyday requirements of life." The men who sit in these Institutions of fair dealing, balancing the scales that hold the sovereign and the loaf, and puzzling over the mystery of why the loaf should be continually getting heavier and the sovereign lighter, never seem to be able to drag themselves away from the threadbare and superficial idea that the only way to make the scales balance is to increase the size of the sovereign. No lucid ray of intelligence seems to shed upon them a guiding liplit telling them that the cause of the mystery ha« a deeper and a wider origin, and that the trouble is
THE LIVING PROBLEM
38
not in the sovereign but in a set of scales faked by a thousand malicious influences. I make bold to assert that the increased cost of living is affected only by three causes. First—the production of the necessities of life not being equivalent to the increase in the population; second—the cornering of supplies by speculators who are holding - for a rise in prices; third—the multiplication of the numbers who are required to handle the goods on the lines of communication between the producer and the consumer. If food supplies are short, according to the laws of supply and demand, the prices must rise; that is the first and natural conclusion that everybody arrives at. But if supplies are short and prices rise, how is an increase in wages going to improve the position? The increase in wages does not increase the supplies; it merely adds further to the cost of them and tends to produce a higher percentage in the cost of living than that added to the wages by the wisdom of the Wages Board. After a Commission is satisfied by its investigations that the necessities of life have risen in price, the first question it should ask of the witnesses is "Why has it risen?" This is the fundamental question governing practically the whole of the seething unrest which has been disturbing the Commercial, Industrial and Political systems for some time. Prices cannot rise or fall without a cause, and as the difficulty of securing the things that the masses require becomes greater and as the smooth running of the Social Machine depends, not upon money, but upon the essential requirements of the people in the shape of food, clothing and housing being obtainable in sufficient quantities with a reasonable expenditure of labour, the great problem waiting solution is the "Cause" of the rise in the price of things forming the foundations of Society.
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION
39
That high wages and cheap living cannot be concurrent .is abundantly proved by the experience of all countries where attempts are being made to overcome the difficulties of living by increasing the wages. The United States of America, where probably there exists the highest scale of wages in the world at the present time, has its living problem in a more acute stage than anywhere else, and food riots, exhibiting extreme bitterness against the wealthy classes, are not uncommon.
I said that there were three causes which, either in combination or separately, must affect the living conditions of the people. The first is tbe primary principle of prodtiction; and do we find upon general principles that the production is equivalent to the increase in population ? Without analysing the food statistics of the countries of the world it is quite possible to arrive in a general way at a satisfactory conclusion on the question, and answer it in the negative. The huge populations congregating in the great industrial centres of the Old World and America are increasing more rapidly than the rural populations in their own countries and in the countries supplying them with food, and notwithstanding the fact that food production is being materially increased by scientific and mechanical invention, the demand is outstripping the supply, a fact which is due to commercial and industrial pursuits being more fascinating to the people than agriculture. The demand for food in the Homeland together with the falling off in British agriculture has built up a trade with the overseas Dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in Wool, Meat, Wheat, Cheese, Butter, Babbits, Fruit, etc., and it is a noticeable fact that all these primary products, representing the chief essentials of life, are showing a steady gradual increase in price, both in the
THE LIVING PROBLEM.
40
Country of origin and in the London market. In Australia and New Zealand tlie food export is graded byGovernment inspectors and it is passed on to the dealers at Home with a guarantee of its quality from the Public authorities-. Although Australia and New Zealand are producing countries, they are not free from the discontent caused Ly the rise in prices. The rapid means of communication, represented by the huge cargo vessels earning' away the products of the country, bring the level of prices almost the same in the Home and Colonial markets, the only slight difference being the cost of freight, which in normal times is almost infinitesimal. The natural consequence of the rapid transit of international products is that the accumulation of large populations in industrial cities in England is made possible only by their being able to draw their food supplies from overseas, and the consumers in the producing countries overseas pay higher prices because of the large populations of non food-producing people in England, and their own cities. There is nothing wrong in this situation, as it represents the exchange of goods in legitimate channels of trade; but there is an indisputable truth arising out of the situation and making itself more and more apparent every day, which is that the production of the necessities of life is not keeping pace with industrial expansion, for the reason that there are too many privateers on the industrial side and too many piratical food manipulators on the side of production. That food production and industrial manufacture are not maintaining an even balance is evidenced in many directions. Up till and as late as the end of the nineteenth century America exported large quanties of meat to Britain, and at the present time she is producing barely enough to provide her own wants, as evidenced by the increased prices to
41
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
her own people and the stoppage of exportation. Another proof that in America manufactured goods and industrial progress are disproportionate to the production of food is that America has almost ceased to be an exporter of food and has become a competitor in the world's markets of manufactured articles. England, the pioneer in "Industrial Manufacture," has long since ceased to produce the food requirements of her own people, and has been dependent upon outside supplies to fuel the human motors in her great industries. Every country in the world is moving with the flood of commerce in the same direction. The trend of Public Opinion, which is to be seen in any of the newspaper publications of every city, town and village throughout the Empire, is towards the Factory and the Workshop. The gentle voice of Nature saying "Food First'' is drowned by the raucous and ignorant roars of the advocate saying, "What we want is Factories ! What we want is Industries ! What we want is Workshops ! What we want is means of using up our raw material! What we want is employment for our people! What we want is Population!" These are the sounds of progress vibrating the atmosphere in every budding city where the inhabitants in their imagination and fancy picture a future humming with industrial movement to the accompaniment of luxury and the stateliness of city dignity. The dark shadow on the picture of fancy is unobserved in the flight of imagination, but the shadow will gradually become darker until the picture is obliterated, and the future will put a new scene upon the canvas. The local advocates of Industrial Progress forget that every village like their own throughout the civilised world is actuated by the same thought, and is moving in ilie same direction. What they want is Industrial Development! "Industrial de-
THE LIVING PROBLEM
42
velopment" has Left England unable to feed her people; it has left Germany in less than forty years dependent for her agriculture upon foreign labour, assisted by food importation from abroad; it has left France with her stationary population and the best agricultural system in the world just hare sustenance; it has reduced America in twenty years from a food-exporting country to a position where food riots are not uncommon, and where mad commercialism and the curse of food trusts are sacrificing the Nation for the dollar. Australia, less than a century under civilisation, has already made great strides in manufacture, and nearly half of her five millions of people are congregated in cities. She is already busy laying the foundations of a Society submerged in the smoke and grime and fluff of manufacture, out of which will come the degenerate "anaemic humans" who will beget the lower stature and narrower chest of the Anzacs of the future. Xo country which allows its land's to be clouded with the smokes of industry and its fields to become the sporting grounds of agricultural pests can properly maintain a position of security. In a well-organised, properly-balanced Commonwealth, Agriculture and Industry should go hand in hand, and if any margin of advantage were allowed to exist on either side it should be on the side of primary production. In connection with the present blood-letting struggle which is rocking the foundations of the nations, if England had in the past <jiven proper care and encouragement to agriculture, if she had eradicated the weeds which have been infesting her soil since the Norman Conquest, and by the establishment of hundreds of small holdings of cheap land she had maintained the principle of growing her own food, she would not to-day (April, 1917) be tg the dang< r of starvation by the submarining de-
30
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION
struction of the "Hellish Hun." And if the German people when emerging from the woods of barbarism in pursuit of their "Kultur" and the monkeying of British manufacture had kept the proper proportion of their own kith and kin coaxing the fertility of their fields—to the exclusion of the Russian peasant—the present British blockade would not cause the German waistbands to be girdling the most hellish of all revolutions, "the consuming riot of an empty stomach." In may be said in contradiction of these statements that outside competition brought British Agriculture below the paying point and encouraged Industrial Manufacture! In answer to which I say that the shortsightedness of British Statesmen prevented them from seeing that Britain set the pace in the Commercial race, and she was being followed on the trail of Industry by her food suppliers, who. true to their instincts of mimicry, made the same mistake as she has done and neglected husbandry for the hum of commerce. The result is that the battle of Industry has depleted the ranks of the primary producers in all countries, and the time has come when England, the pace-maker, will be compelled to retrace her steps, pick up the lagging companion of her manufacturing industries, place it on a pedestal of honour beside its great rival, and secure to the people a cheap and plentiful supply of the things which contribute most to their happiness and contentment. Besides the indisputable fact that Industrial Manufacture has outgrown primary production, and thereby contributed largely to the increased : living, there are other malicious causes in the shape of parasitical incrustations engrafted on to Commercial Manufacture, and the distribution of the necessities of life which are retarding with corrosion the free working of production, and industrial progress in rela-
THE LIVING PROBLEM.
44
tion to the well-being of the majority of the members of Society. The knowledge that every handling of a product adds to its cost is common to the most superficial of thinkers, and on almost every occasion when goods are handled or moved from one place to another they also change owners: therefore not only have the goods to pay the cost of handling but they have also to pay a profit to their owners every time they change hands. Finally all these charges are paid by the consumer. Pertinent questions for the consumer to ask under the circumstances are—Why are the lines of communication between myself and the producer blocked by this rabble? "Why are my goods handled and tumbled and tossed and polluted at the hands of a gang of manipulating jugglers and thieves? By what forensic principle are these highwaymen permitted to continue their garrotting on the pathway of distribution ? Who are they? What are they—this black-coated tribe, sleek-skinned in the fullness of their filched luxury. soft-handed in the practice of nefariousness upon the innocent, oily-tongued in the smoothness of their grinning sycophancy, and damnable in the open-eyed lying which veils their red-handed transactions under the name of "business principles? - ' They are the "Middle Men," each and every one of them in a r or greater degree clogging the channels leading to the consumers: living by parasitical absorption upon the community and filling no position of usefulness in the Social Organisation. The first block in the channels of distribution is to be found near the sources of supply in the shape of imposing barricades with the euphonious name of "Stock and Station Agents" gilded in bold relief upon their magnificent "Block Houses." Within these Institutions are to be found a Manager, a staff of
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
45
clerks, typists, assistants, messengers and all the modern instruments and machinery of commerce, housed in the luxury of financial success, practised in arts of "subtle influence" upon the rural mind, equipped with a gang of touts, trained in the science of business lying, and complete in a system of commercial intrigue that would bring the blush of shame to a German Ambassador. These are the houses that the growers of foodstuffs are compelled to deal with. These are the men "that call the tune" to which the agriculturist has to dance. These are the men who keep the agriculture of the country in a state of artificial existence, in which every farmer of the present time has lost his identity as a legitimate fanner, and is unconsciously transformed into a species of gambler on the "rural stockyards," who is prepared at any time or in any place—like "David Harum"—to "make a deal" in anything from an old set of harness to a line of fat bullocks. The Australasian farmer has become a kind of "Commercial-Agricultural Hybrid," a stock-dealer, horse-dealer, land-speculator, and produce broker! The real business of agriculture and the rearing of stock is in reality a secondary consideration, and the farm is used—or I might say abused in a great many cases—as a reserve behind, the saleyards to enable its owner to pursue the fascinating occupation of "stockjobbing." At the present time farmers complain, about the shortage of labour, but the average occupier of the land is as shy of labour or work of any kind as those filling the other duties of life. "A Sale" always provides an excuse for the farmer to shirk his home duties, and if it is being held anywhere within thirty miles of hi* Homi )tead he will be found there with his usual friends, perched like a crow upon the fences of the Saleyards, watching the feast of the Hawks gobbling up
THE LIVING PROBLEM.
46
two and a-half per cent, of liis property with the gluttonous avidity of an insatiable appetite. The fostering influence behind this unstable and speculative system of agriculture is mainly the lead and encouragement given to it by the Mercantile Firms. The touts are ever on the move, keeping alive the growing and iniquitous practice of continually buying and selling, out of which come the fat commissions contributing so largely to the wealth of these sappers of the soil who move the human pawns on the chessboard of Agriculture. The land booming of recent years, partly engineered by the “constellation of agricultural satellites,” finds hundreds of farmers burdened with over-capitalised land, bleeding white in their struggle to reclaim the land from Nature and at the same time live and pay interest and commissions to the “Mercantile Magnates” operating at the roots of the food supplies of the people. There are no influences on this planet, short of plagues, pestilences, droughts or storms—which may be classed as acts of God—that contribute so much towards the increase in the cost of food and clothing as the plague of manipulators who are permitted to thrive in succulent development on the fruits of production. The wheat, oats, maize, rice, wool, cotton, flax, fruit, meat, hides, tallow, potatoes, and every other thing that, by the bounty of God, is put into the world for man to eat, or to protect his body from the elements, must pass through the hands of numbers of these “Tasters” before it is allowed to reach the legitimate consumer, where it arrives robbed of its piquancy and its excellence. The imposing arrogance of architectural effrontery with which the buildings of these individuals blot the landscape sinks into insignificance alongside the individuals themselves, as they strut in the atmosphere of imaginary importance created by the
47
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
egotistical idea that tlie Agricultural Industry depends for its existence upon their patronage and support. When an honest toiler in the fields of husbandry pays a visit to one of these institutions where, unfortunately, the obsolete laws of civilisation compel him to transact his business, he goes hat in hand to receive the "patronage" of the "pirates" who live by the fruits of his labors. Does he feel that he breathes the free air of confidence and honest security within the walls of this place ? No! In his innermost soul he knows that he is looked upon by even the office-boy as a "dull-headed rustic" reekinp of the stable and the stockyard, that he is the subject of jokes and jests and leers from behind the desks of the apprentice "Tout," that from the Head of the Institution to the janitor he is marked down as the subsoil of the superior mould out of which the Lord made Mercantile Food-Manipulators, and that he is tolerated in the office for the same reason as the coal-box, because he is useful. He knows that the red blood of his veins is born of the pure air of the country; that his muscles are taut and tuned to the endurance and necessities of toil; that his body is free from the poisons which breed diseases in the dwellers in the city; that his brain, supported by a healthy constitution, is as good or better than that in the heads around him, but lacking in the craftiness and acumen of business training and oblique dealing; that in the conversations and transactions carried on around him truth is represented by the things left unsaid and honesty is conveniently oblivious to the general business, and not punctilious or over-exacting in the niceties of conscientious requirements. Having been patronised and salivated, he retires from the vicinity of the offices where, by the slavery of custom, he is compelled to come to trade the products of the soil to a gang of food specu-
THE LIVING PROBLEM.
48
lators whom he knows have fleeced him at one end of the transaction, and who will fleece the consumer at the other end. He feels that his manhood has been insulted, and that he is degraded by the fetid atmosphere of the office he has left. He wonders why, while toiling at the springs of life whence comes the nourishment of the race, while Nature has singled him out as a producer of food and entrusted him with the tilling of the soil, while she looks to him for the vigour, health, stature and intelligence of future generations, while being the pillar upon which rests the present and future of humanity, he should be made the impotent tool of avarice and the unwilling instrument of monetary lust. The confidence born of long years of uninterrupted practice of their business and the public acceptance of “Food Dealers” and “Land Sharks” in a mild attitude of passive tolerance has created in the minds of these gentry the false and erroneous idea that they are filling leading and important positions for the general welfare and advancement of the people. In the expansion of their egotistical arrogance, they glorify themselves and their institutions as the “bulwark” of the agricultural industry; they have succeeded in making themselves believe that through their fostering encouragement, the introduction on their advice of the latest and most modem methods, with liberal financial assistance, the industrial settlement of the land has been brought to its present position of productive prosperity, and they lose no opportunity of impressing this upon the farmers and the public. Though clever in artifice and illusion, they are not succeeding in gulling a public,daily growing in enlightenment,that they are the pioneers of agricultural industry. An intelligent public knows that the stock-raisers and agriculturists are the pioneers who blazed the lines and made the trails in
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
49
the introduction of Australia and New Zealand to civilisation, and the "Stock and Station Agents," like the prickly pear, the rabbit, the ragwort and the burr, were uninvited "pests" polluting and obstrucing the virgin fertility of the soil, and sapping alike the vitality of the settler and the products of his energy and enterprise. In her present struggle with savages equipped with science and education, the Nation, strained to the utmost tension in marshalling her latent energies and casting off the obesity of lassitude and indolence, has been compelled to take hold of the liues of communication leading to the food supplies, in order to protect her soldiers and people from the exploiters, the twisters and opportunists, and in order that the stomach of the Army, which is the power of a Nation at war, would not be robbed of its vitality. If it is possible and necssary in time of war for those carrying the responsibility of the Empire to take over for the welfare of the Nation the whole available supply of meat, cheese, wool, hides, etc., in Australasia, and ship them direct from the producer in Australia or New Zealand to the consumers in England or France, without either the assistance or interference of food speculators, it must be right and proper and essential to do the same thing in time of peace. The action of the Imperial Government in commandeering the food of necessity is irrefutable evidence that the dealers in meat, wool, cheese, grain, hides, tallow, etc., are unnecessary encumbrances, burdening the food supplies with the thousands of pounds of profit which they extract from it every year, which is paid by the producers and the consumers. Judged upon the evidence which has been revealed to the people by the destruction of valuable lives upon the battlefields of Europe, the food speculators are an excrescence upon civilised organisa-
THE LIVING PROBLEM.
50
tion. They have been found to be a danger and an obstruction to be put aside with a warning when the nation is in the throes of a life-and-deatb struggle, and if they are a menace worthy of interment in times of war they cannot by any process of reasoning have their existence justified or tolerated in times of peace.
51
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
Trade, Travellers, and Liquor.
Other institutions rearing themselves in the majesty of “established right” and surrounding themselves with the dignity and opulence born of years of self-satisfying justification of their importance in civilised Progress are the Wholesale Warehouses, towering above the pavements of the Cities, the unconscious monuments to the accumulated wealth of their owners, wrung from the masses in the form of excessive profits. These great warehouses, unnecessarily multiplied throughout the country, are equipped with all the internal mechanism for propelling trade, carefully planned and devised, and forcing by the sheer weight of frenzied commercialism the sale and distribution of goods at inflated prices made necessary by the multiplication of wholesale men and the cost of selling goods. The cost of food and all supplies is enormously increased to the consumer by the modern methods of trade and by the encouragement given to merchants by thoughtless retailers placing their orders with bagmen, canvassers, iudenters and other extraneous and pestiferous emissaries of the warehouses.
The Commercial Traveller in his peregrinations cultivates the mannerisms, artifices and histrionic appurtenances best calculated to bring his clients into that frame of mind when it is safe for him to open his book and attempt to sell to the worried retailer something that he does not want, or that he may not be able to sell for months. The retailer, in a great many cases, is annoyed and bored by the visit of this “breezy vendor” of “blue chestnuts,” snatched from the stale atmosphere of “ancient mortuaries, who wishes to waste his time and increase his dead stock of goods, while at the same time
TRADE, TRAVELLERS. AND LIQUOR.
52
adding one more to the number of promissory notes which are already multiplying the silver streaks in his remaining locks, and disturbing the nocturnal restoration of his expended energy by a “dream vigil” of a wolf approaching his door with a bundle of unpaid bills. The “Commercial Traveller,” who would be more appropriately named “Confederate Trader,” trained in the practice of making a swift psychological examination of his intended victim, brings to his aid the instruments of his profession used in “pre mortem” analysis of retail mentality. He brings to his assistance all the commonplace superficialities of the latest gossip, the latest sporting and betting news—if the client is not a “Wowser”— the latest scientific methods of faith and cold-water healing if he is; he will talk books, air his views on the Political situation, discuss the International crisis, with the loftiness and sagacity of a Wilson or a Lloyd George, give the length, breadth and tonnage of the latest attraction at the “Ballet,” tell a drawing-room story with a moral if the client is a “prude,” and if the client is not a prude, the walls will be made to tremble with the vibration of uproarious hilarity as he lets himself into his top gear and reels off the latest club stories until the atmosphere becomes clouded by the sporting of a Commercial Denizen in his native element. During the time that he is making all this byplay, he keeps the cunning of a practised eye upon the client from whom he hopes to land an order, and when he is satisfied that the spirit of comradery is sufficiently promoted by tickling his victim’s risibilities, he launches into the real question of which all the tomfoolery is merely the preliminary, and in ninety per cent, of cases the order is booked. Having secured and posted his order to his head office, his part of the business is complete, and the client is left to do
COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION.
53
the best he can as the buffer between the consumer and the merchant absorbing the shocks of trade. Thousands of pounds yearly are being expended in the support of Commercial Travellers, and these huge sums of money are put on to the price of goods, and are all paid by the consumer. Members of this army of “swagger,” where there are no rankers, and where every man is a captain, throng the steamboats, railways, coaches, and first-class hotels. Their baggage and hampers of “Peeps only” encumber the coaches at concession rates. Their portly forms fill the best seats in the Gentlemen’s cars, and they puff the biggest clouds of suffocating smoke from the best cigars. They demand the best rooms at the hotels, and as “Public Benefactors” get them at “cut rates.” They are privileged to growl more at porters, waiters and carriers than are ordinary “human atoms”; they are connoisseurs in the culinary art, and are loud-voiced in their vulgar condemnation of anything not sufficiently tickling to their greedy palates. They stalk through the crowds of ordinary mortals, clad in external purity, gaited in the step, and spring in the inborn pride of importance; in the loftiness of their gaze, flheir glance does not include even the hats of the passers-by, and on their self-erected cardboard pedestal they, beguiled in complacent security, believe that they are the mighty “Electrical Unit” which sparks the motor of Commerce throughout the Universe. It has never occurred to the minds of these perfervid bummers that their calling is quite unnecessary to commercial progress, that their existence by the permission of custom has bred inchoate and superfluous wholesale men, that these incipient merchants are dependent for their existence upon the drummers they send out to get custom, and that, being tools of the “Merchants’ Association,” they
TRADE, TRAVELLERS, AND LIQUOR.
54
are not competing for business on the old and legitimate basis of quality and prices of goods, but are merely perambulating advertisers using the arts and devices of craft to wheedle customers into the House they represent, the prices having been arranged beforehand by the "Merchants' Eing." The increase in the number of warehouses means the over-capitalising of the wholesale business, the duplication of staffs and working machinery, the multiplication of Travellers, the increase in dead stock and the consequent increase in depreciation. This combination of wasteful circumstances means either that some of the weaker merchants have to succumb by maintaining prices on the level of fair profit, or prices have to be raised to a level which will enable the weakest incipient merchant to live. The latter course is the one which will suit the strong financial firm best, so a Merchants' Association is formed, prices are fixed, and the little merchant is tolerated by the big one because he is a useful tool and buffer between himself and the other big merchant to prevent cutting and to maintain prices at an exorbitantly high level; which prices are to be extracted from the consumers through the instrumentality of the retailers. Not only is the commercial system overburdened with wholesalers and their blatant drummers, compelling their support by increased prices, but an unbiassed glance at the rows of retail shops in any City thoroughfare makes it perfectly clear to a reflective mind that half the number would meet the requirements of the people, and the other half, with their managers, staffs and equipment, are an unnecessary encumbrance being carried on the backs of the people.
The “City habit,” which is the accompaniment of the overgrown Commercial and Industrial progress of modem civilisation, is the germ which has bred this
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multiplicity of retailers. The "Shop habit" is the lineal descendant of this "City habit." Thousands of people born in the cities of parents who themselves knew no other life than that of the factory, the warehouse, or the retail counter, grow up year by year and crowd into the occupations of their fathers and grandfathers. Large numbers of these increasing city populations are legitimately absorbed in the manufacturing industries, and many others having the commercial instinct, either open retail establishments of their own or find places behind the counters or in the offices of others. The result of this retail elbowing is that rows of grocer shops fill the streets and stud the comers and lanes in their varying degrees of excellence and prosperity, from the pretentious edifice stocked with products from the ends of the earth in piles of attractive pyramids which arrest the eye of tempted purchasers, to the little six-by-eight shop with the little window in the dirty lane, kept by a grimy woman with a fierce eye and a face hardened and lined by the tempests of trade which rage around the cold struggle for existence in the slums. Bakers' shops are dotted in the same profusion through the towns, with their obsolete ovens and old-fashioned methods—and in many cases microbe-infected premises—fighting, with the conservative tenacity of established custom, against the introduction of new and scientific principles of making the family loaf in a way that is both cheap and clean. Grocers', Bakers' and Butchers' vans and delivery carts rush and rattle around the towns without system or rhythm in a labyrinth of misdirected and headless disorder, delivering orders first at one end of the town and then at the other, and expending energy with the prodigal and aimless extravagance of lunatics in a padded cell. As energy is a costly thing, the production of
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which has used up more brain fibre than anything attempted by man, this misdirected dissipation of human and animal energy in the distribution of goods must be paid for, and the people who pay for it are the consumers of the goods.
All the other kinds of Business repeat themselves in monotonous frequency along the lines of, streets. Hordes of assistants are engaged dressing and decorating shops and windows, arranging goods in the most picturesque and fascinating manner, expending time, money and ingenuity in creating “flash lights” to dazzle the eye, and “magnetic attractions” to extract the coin from the pockets of loiterers coming under their hypnotic influence. This is again mostly all waste energy, highly paid, and for the most part useless, representing the energy of the moth in its relation to the candle, or the filmy fabrics of silken webbing enmeshing the gailydecorated butterfly.
What a spectacle of immaculate perfection is presented in the modern draper, cuffed and collared and breast-plated in the purity of the silvered snow of laundry science. He is clothed with special care in special cloth; no creases are permitted to disfigure the smooth excellence of his tailoring; any defects which Nature may have left in his anatomy are reviewed by his tailor, who finishes God’s work with additions and subtractions, and presents the shopwalker or the salesman with the outward appearance calculated to excite the envy of the dandies, and advertise the capabilities of the establishment. His hands are carefully tended and manicured in their transparency; no bulging muscles disfigure his tapering fingers which ply the delicate ribbons and laces, weaving them into the most attractive bows and knots with the dexterity of the spider running its silken
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meshes, and playing the glittering and gaudy products of the art looms before the fascinated gaze of a butterfly customer. What a noble occupation for a man!— moving behind a counter in the atmosphere of a boudoir, dressed like Fastidiousness on a wedding morn, tying and undoing parcels of goods for hours at a time to suit the whims of pretending and sight-seeing buyers, talking the small nothings of fashion, unsexing himself in the hypocrisy of “dying to please Madam,” who, on the opposite side of the counter, has changed her mind for the fiftieth time with characteristic feminine persistency, in the hesitancy of her indecision. This costly drama in haberdashery, with its decorated leading artist and elaborate staging, running into many acts, must be paid for, so the goods are taxed and the consumer appreciating the show cheerfully pays. Jewellers’ shops abound, showing the magnetic power of shining trinkets to attract the human eye, and the inherent propensity to decorate the human body which has followed the human family into their civilisation, and is the modern exemplification of the tatooing and fantastic coiffures of their forefathers. Into these gilded windows sparkling with rare gems the wondering gaze of Love looks—and not in vain—the jeweller takes care of that, for a trinket to carry the first message, too delicate for even a glance, and too sacred for anything but a thought—from one heart touched by affinity for another and making the first move in response to Nature’s call to prepare to fulfil their destiny, Reproduction.
There is surely in the unguided wanderings of human whims and fancies into the extravagance of expensive personal decoration something that is out of harmony with intelligent progressive civilisation, something of an inborn vanity linking us with the painted savage
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and marking the over-dressed, gaily bedecked and jewelled fashion-plates perambulating the walks of society as ‘ late arrivals,” who are still uninitiated into the deeper thoughts and higher intelligence indicated by the quiet, unostentatious perfection in dress and deportment of human superiority. While no one wishes to see the world robbed of its beauty and attractiveness or the pleasant blending of colours in a harmony of sweet vision replaced by the drab monotony of sameness, there is a frontier where personal decoration dare not cross without insulting the “Great Artist” and vulgarising propriety. Thousands of people pass that frontier every day; they are of both sexes, and may be seen in the Strand, in Broadway, on the Boulevards, and on the “Block”; they are caricatures of the symmetry and grace of the human form. Laced in the harness of fashion they move, not like living bodies gliding along by the propulsion of muscular elasticity and the perfection of undistorted animation, but like petticoated and trousered automatons they get along by proppy and stilted jerks, more like the mechanical creations of human ingenuity than what God intended them to be—examples of His greatest work. These idlers on the flood-tide of prosperity are to be found in every part of the world in considerable numbers, and it is not only that they are idlers themselves, filling no useful position and doing no useful work in the commonwealth of the people, but they keep thousands of others engaged in unreproductive business and occupations catering to their extravagances and inventing devices whereby they can indulge their fantastic frivolities, the limits of which are not made, in many cases, by the limits of wealth, but by the poverty of human originality and inventiveness to meet the demands of riotous indulgence and silly caprice made upon it by
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the idle rich. I have digressed from the shops in having stopped to notice some of the progeny of commercialism, who are blocking the thoroughfares of progress by everincreasing numbers, and who are free to thrive and fatten surreptitiously, holding as they do a latch-key to the public cupboard. In the blare of the arc lamps and the glitter of the cities, with doors swung wide that the internal luxury may not be lost to view by the passers-by, stand Hotels and Restaurants. The spirit of the business seems to have impregnated the brickwork; the humor of intoxication and reckless abandon of Life's serious business and mortifications laughs in the flood lights of mirthful complacency. Armored with the golden, amber and ruby essence of Nature's vineyards, the dark shadow of dull monotony, the bacilli of morbid thoughts which line the faces of men and women with the entanglements of Life's battles, and the blanch and pallor making visible the struggle of time and mind with a dead sorrow, may not cross the threshold or enter the portals of these citadels of temporary respite from the world of hustle and woe. The Hotels are dotted about the towns and villages in the garb of the stratum of society by which they are used, but their one purpose is the same, and the stream of human element passing in and out of the doors breathes the same air, is led thither by the same thoughts, quenches the same kind of thirst, forgets its sorrows or its debts in the same way, unburdens its mind under the stimulation of the same "brands," tells the same jokes, throws discretion to the winds in voluble outpourings of unguarded opinions about people and politics with the same freedom, and taps the same springs of fraternal love in the sworn brotherhood of the friendly cup.
While these institutions of convivial intercourse are
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represented m numbers out of all proportion to ordinary requirements, and while they are overstaffed by people vho are contributing no useful gifts to the general stock, tkey are a necessity serving a need and a purpose in social life, and reaching psychological influences impossible by any other means. At the same time they are places which lend themselves to much waste and overlapping, and, under the control of not over-scrupulous management, may become the rendezvous of evil influences. The laws governing the sale of intoxicating liquors in all so-called civilised countries are, in their crude and incomprehensible imperfection, a fair indication of the progressive intelligence displayed by the chosen representatives of the people in law-making. It has become a kind of fetish with a certain class of unbalanced, ultra-religious victims of hysteromania to fix upon "Bung'' as an outlet for their erotic delusions, and they shriek about the evils of "drink" from the platforms, the pulpits, and the street corners; the yellow lipht of fanaticism flashes in their eyes; their gaunt faces twitch themselves into the distortion of neurotic deliria; their mouths open and shut, distend and contract in a succession of horrible, ragged semi-circles and triangles with cinema rapidity, in their struggles to discharge the torrent of vapour calculated to "gas" the publicans and fumigate all intoxicating influences. "Bung" stands quietly receiving all this sniping like a bull elephant dosing in the shade of the palms, flapping his ears with an alternating motion, and switching his tail from side to side to drive away the flies which are tickling the folds of skin covering the amplitude of his sleepy carcase. But "Bung," like the bull elephant, is not as sleepy as he looks: he is the antithesis of his attenuated air-beating opponent; in the natural law of con-
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sequences the comfortable glow of his portly rotundity attracts “cool air,” and he emits no burning gases in attempting to destroy his adversary. He has followed the path of fortune through long years of uninterrupted prosperity, notwithstanding the attacks of what he has, up to the present, looked upon not as a foe worthy of his weight and class, but as a pestiferous irritation disturbing the pleasant dreams of his afternoon dose. Like his prototype, he has within his bulky proportions a shrewd and superior intelligence, the power of which is added to by the calm, calculated imperturbability with which he reviews his defences, anticipates the strategy of his attackers, understands the weakness of hysteria, appreciates the power of his purse and, finally, he knows that behind his business he has the greatest power which can be exercised for good or evil on this planet—“THE CRAVING OF THE HUMAN APPETITE.” In the ranks of the proletariat, enfranchised to the equality of position and intelligence, he is aware that there is a power mostly upon his side, because in the bar and the pothouse, when returning from the grime and the grit of the factory, the mine or the mill, with eyes looking through the sweat of the day’s work, and throats dry as the hollow of a bamboo, they find in a glass of his sparkling beer the first pleasure of the day in the gratifying appreciation of natural desire receiving the “cravings of appetite.” In these places the pent-up thoughts of the day, which have been bridled by attention to the duties on hand, burst the bonds of restriction, and the evident pleasure, which is peculiar to human beings, of enjoying the music of their own voices gets free play in liberating floods of incoherent reasonings and opinions to an audience which is more concerned about giving its own opinions than listening to those of others The tern-
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peranee propagandist may come along with all his brilliant illustrations and damning evidence of the evils of recreation of this kind, and his story of wasted youth and aged retribution may be buttressed by the support of Christian fervency, tearful in its supplication; but these beautiful theories, perfect in the imagination, will not spring the valves which hold in bondage in the souls of the proletariat the drab monotony of the daily grind. The Church, backed by centuries of hereditary theological influences, has brought into play the powers which she has used to sway the human mind on so many occasions in the vicissitudes of civilised progress. The results produced up to the present time in winning sobriety, morality, truth, consistency and general selfrespecting improvement in the masses of the people must have a very depressing effect upon the thinkers working within the organisations of Religion. The Kings of the liquor trade understand all these influences, their temporary effects and their failures, and although they have been losing ground and power by the gradual change which is evolving from the continual agitation, they know, as students of natural consequences, that they are safe from sudden destruction, by the controlling and vital power of the "British stomach." The power of appetite has exalted "Bung" to the eminence of the highest gifts of the State. We find "Peers" of "Beer," Lords from the "Whisky Stills," Members of Parliament from the "Breweries" and the "Bonds," deliberating in the halls of wisdom, taking a watch at the wheel on the ship of State, and brushing the cloth of exclusive respectability against the Purple of the Throne. The Brewing and Spirit interests, like the large concerns operating in other commodities, are mostly Trusts and Combines, barren of altruism, frozen to all considera-
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tions of generosity, and dead as Caesar to everything in life but big profits and dividends. No Soul dwells in the registered office of the Brewery Trust to grow, live and pass into Eternity, to stand before the great Tribunal and listen to the reading of the balance sheet, to bear the great Auditor condemn to everlasting perdition the author of a document which has on its debit the skeletons of failure, poverty, emaciation, debauchery, degeneracy, hunger,, disease, and the tiny frame of what Nature intended to be a man; but which instead gave its first and last cry from the tattered rags forming its reception robes, shivered and turned cold for ever at the horror of its ghastly surroundings; and on its credit luxury, extravagance, greed, selfishness, avarice and scornful contempt for the victims of polydipsia from whose sacrificial contributions have been built the huge fortunes that have opened the doors of privilege to individuals whose only claim to distinction is the animalism of aggressive gluttony.
The retail vendor of intoxicating liquors, or as he is called, the Publican,” is the man who receives the abuse and stands the jibes from the fanatical liquor reformer. He is represented in quite unnecessary numbers; he is not acquitted of having a part in the damnable degradation which makes weak intellects weaker, leaves many reflective minds which are not buttressed by nature with effective self-control without any control whatever, makes creatures who are partly animalised already more animal still, loosens the venom and filth which lurks in the hiding of sobriety in the minds of some men and some women, and leaves human beings, as I have seen them more than once, objects for the sympathy and protection of their dogs. But after all he is merely the tool, supplementing the Brewers’ incomes and
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adding to the dividends of the Distillers. He holds his license from the State, the authority of which bind the conduct of himself and his house, and he holds his house from the Brewery Company and Spirit Merchants who bind him body and soul to the slavery of their profitmaking machine, to sell what they, and they only, supply him with, to pay the price of which bondage permits no question, to make just as much for himself as will maintain his value as a serf, to receive the sneers and insults of the prohibitionists, to do the vote-catching and dirty work of elections, to form a bodyguard to protect the carcase and moneybags of "Bung," and to be ignominiously evicted when he is degraded below the requirements of the law and beyond the limits of further usefulness to the gang who brew the toxin of poverty and degeneration.
In these two sections of the people we have examples of injurious and irrational extremes. The liquor interests on one side representing commercialism, in an article which when properly used is useful and beneficial, exercising a vicious influence upon the health, welfare and development of the race, and on the other side we have prohibitionists, religionists, and people of distorted mentality burning with the desire to do something for the betterment of the race, imagining in their ardour that liquor is the one evil influence holding the Nation in thraldom, fondling themselves in the belief that Providence is using them as instruments to guide the erring ones to the paths of higher life and intelligence, mutually idealising each other as the chosen perfection of human infallibility, receiving the smiles and encouragement of the Almighty for the direction and improvement of man. In the blindness of th&ir self-adulation they fail to observe that their
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ranks contain a large percentage of motley oddities, below the standard of requirements in Nature's, perfection, bony and angular females, sallow of complexion, childless, and with the droop of melancholy and disappointment at the corners of their mouths; men of strange physique, dependent upon the clothier's art to make them presentable in public, neurotics and dyspeptics who dare not disregard the warning of their stomachs that their vitality carries no surplus reserve, acclaimers of morality with bulging foreheads and thirteen-inch necks, indicating that their own morality is due to defective construction in their vital forces, and not to thenown efforts. "Nature makes men and women moral or immoral according to the strength or weakness of the cravings of their natural appetites working in conjunction with their personal standard of mental control." The clamorous persistence of these reformers of habits which appear to them as evils and to the doers as pleasures, and their evangelic solicitations for the welfare of others and the care of other people's children, is often the wailing cry of a lost soul, weakened in the vitality and passions necessary to the continuance of its race and generation, and standing on the brink of eternity, the last solitary representative of a race passing out of existence through the atrophy of natural desires slain by the extravagance of the "moral fetish" or hyper-religious fanaticism.
Before leaving the liquor trade I wish to say that it makes huge profits for some, it spells ruin to others; some become lunatics through drinking too much, others through not drinking enough; it makes some immoral who are only waiting for the excuse; some dishonest who are thieves by nature and shelter behind drink when caught; some to live in poverty who were born spend-
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thrifts; some degraded who find it a convenient outlet for the filth of vulgarity in their blood; some to become fools who only wanted the stimulant to loosen their tongues and announce the fact to the world; some to lie aloud who in sober silence shun the truth. Parsons hug it to their bosoms as a gift from Heaven helping to fill the pews and contribute to the stipend. When the dull head of limited experience and hypocritical surroundings flounders in the pulpit with the hopeless intricacies of Theology, they clutch at the liquor trade as certain insomnia for the congregation: it makes the mad, madder; the fanatics, more fanatical; the hysterical, screeching whirlwinds; the supplicating religionists, weeping entreaters; and leaves this heterogeneous mass of seething humanity doing a devil’s dance around the whisky cauldron, the fumes of which leave them drunk and blind to the greater evils of society, these being unnoticed and undisturbed by the wholesale intoxication of the superficial and unreasoning combatants.
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The Shop Habit and Progressive Barbarism.
Let us study the maze of shops of varieties and stocks impossible to mention, where trade in the extremes of hostile competition struggles and fights and advertises to gain from its competing adversaries a share of the customers whose numbers do not appear to be sufficiently great to afford a fair share to each of the greedy tradesmen. Underneath the friendly rivalry which appears to exist between the opposing' tradesmen, there is a deep and bitter battle, bursting at times into open conflict and raging furiously, then sinking suddenly and mysteriously out of sight and giving place once more to the apparent "friendly rivalry" which formerly separated the opposing forces. rSo keen has become this trade rivalry in the retail business in all cities and so numerous have become the retail shops that it has reached a stage where the chances of the retailer making a competency, or even a decent living, are reduced to a minimum. Although the competition for customers is driven with all the force, enterprise, ingenuity and jealousy which can be brought to bear, competition in prices plays a very small part in the struggle, for the reason that the "Merchants' King" watches that there is a uniform standard which will prevent one retailer cutting another without suffering for it, and it leaves the consumer outside as a beneficiary from the number of shops or from the apparent rivalry of trade, and reduces retail trade competition to
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the level of a billingsgatiug jealousy for the goodwill of a customer who is being offered the same terms from each side of the squabble. Common expressions which may be heard every day are “Establishing a Business,” “Making a Trade.” If a man establishes a business in a city or a town where there are already sufficient to supply the wants of the inhabitants, and if he is possessed of the energy and enterprise to build up a trade, it only proves that he has more energy than those who were there before him, and he is using it to rob other people of their trade, is not creating anything new, and is not giving the inhabitants any advantages, as the prices remain the same. In reality he has only brought into the town himself and a few others possessing fresh vigor and using it to tumble the goods about oftener shan they are already being tumbled, and consume more than his share in maintaining the strength necessary to the idiotic practice of handling and rehandling goods to their destruction and cost, and lending no aid to the important factor in life—Production. To what degree of morhid competition this commercial cannibalism is carried, is manifested by the host of people in the cities who are living on each other by absorbing their sustenance from a process of juggling amongst them the necessities of life, and expending their natural powers and the-powers of their trained assistants in contributing nothing to the general store of goods, but encumbering it with their support, and, like vermin, helping to destroy it and adding to the cost. When Napoleon characterised the British as a “Nation of Shopkeepers” he probably had in his mind, being a man of giant intellect and foresight, a picture of the conditions which would exist when the shopkeepers outnumbered the producers, and when the pinch of high prices began to fix its grip upon the city dwellers.
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He knew as well as, or perhaps better than, any man living in his time that the Nation's stomach was its "vital organ," and that a plentiful supply of wholesome food could not reasonably be expected at a cheap price if the majority of the people dressed themselves in a business apron and office coat, and employed their time playing pitch and toss with the products of the soil and the industries.
Amongst all this Town and City litter of shops, shop fittings, advertisements, glitter, tinsel, sham, ledgers and hawk-visaged shopkeepers, watching each other with the furtive glance of hitter jealousy, carefully concealed under the business mask which is impervious to insinuation and which covers the feelings of its possessor like a brazen image, there are some still left wbo, from the nature of their special business and the resemblance they bear to preying creatures in the natural physiognomy, deserve special mention in this place. Pawnbrokers hang out their three golden spheres in a triangle of conspicuous attraction to the derelicts who are drifting towards the rapids of destruction on the tide of human failure. It is not the Cross on the spire standing out against the stars of Heaven that attracts these wretched creatures, degraded by the weakness of their natural powers, cursed with a burden of pre-natal influences, reared in the ruts, the gutters and the mud of the commercial machine, and sunk in the perdition of social ostracism, out of which there is no redemption. When the gnawing grip of cold and hunger is tightened by flip dying fires of life, they turn to search the already naked hovels and shelters which do duty as protectors against the elements for some article or garment which may be accepted by the usurer at the "Three Balls" as a security for a few shillings with which to still the wolfish
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cravings of Nature in extremity. The gaunt spectre with the bundle speeds along the byways and the alleys; quick side glances cover the passers-by; the guilt of adding degradation to the degraded is stirring in the conscience not yet dead, and exhibiting itself in the movements of the body. The pride of self-respect which separates man from the lower animals still lives in this wretched creature, and the flickering spark, dull almost to blackness, glows even in the soul of despair when the last rag is stripped from childhood and lodged with its fellows in the pawnshop. A quick turn and the figure with the bundle disappears into the semi-darkness, where the covetous eye of the eagle-visaged proprietor views with sneering indifference the article that is offered as security for a few shillings, to postpone for a short time the misery of poverty and the cravings of a compulsory fast. The pawnbroker is master of the situation; his position is a complete reversal of the practice and principles of other trades; attractive signs, elaborate window dressings, brilliant illuminations, expensive shopfittings and suave mannerisms are quite unnecessary, and a decided disadvantage to his business. His shop is no promenade of delight, but a litter of the accessories of life, each article, trinket or tool having played some part in the weal or woe of active existence, before being lodged in the musty, clammy atmosphere of the three balls as a bond for the temporary- release of their owners from the agonies of dissipation, want and remorse. This iniquity of civilisation, dignified as a trading concern, stocked with the effects of life below the standard of recognised respectability, where even the threadbare garments, the tarnished utensils and the brassy trinkets afforded more luxury than could be supported in the hovels of the dwellers in the slums. Perched upon the
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doorstep of the outcasts of Society, this degraded business living and thriving on the squalor and dissipation at its back is the zero of commercial enterprise, within which the glow of human sympathy is frozen and stark, and where the preying of human animalism is as impervious to entreaty as is the tiger to the cries of a roe within its claws. In the dingy shop, charged with an atmosphere of stale fustiness and strewn with the emblems of the wreckage of God’s greatest work, lives the usurer who is fattening on the decay and generation of his kind. Two beady black eyes, separated by a crescent-shaped organ, the dimensions of which are so great that it requires a continual movement of the head to keep both eyes focussed on the same object; a swarthy dark skin, greedy lips parted in a ruthless smile, ruddy cheeks hanging as if each contained a gold watch, arms full and round and moist, a sudden expansion in the region of the waistcoat which marks the line of perpendicular several inches beyond any other part of the body, a general vulgar rotundity in keeping with voracity, and assembled into a conscious automaton all the parts of avarice, gluttony, foxyness, unscrupulous callousness and the hundreds of variations of these undesirable accessories of trade, combine in exaggeration to make a Pawnbroker.
The machine of trade and commerce growing in magnitude with the succeeding years have gathered the people with its buzzing attraction from the forests and the hills, from the thrills and adventures of the chase, from the cheery log fires of the cabins and song for the hunter’s return, from the rippling streams and the fields of corn where the horse and the ox in deliberate contentment lent their willing aid in primitive agriculture, appearing to understand that they held a partnership with their
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master in the work, and that they would reap their reward in a share of the golden grain, from the gallops o’er the prairies and the plains, when the lungs were filled with the health-giving oxygen of pure air sending the red stream of life coursing through the veins, from the exhilaration of freedom bubbling over with its fulness of life when the panting steed catching the exultation of hilarious and pleasurable excitement from its rider bounded with distended nostrils until man and horse seemed to lose their separate identity and sweep like an entity transported in ecstasy on the wings of life, from the peace and contentment of the homes among the hills where with plaid and crook and faithful collie the hardy mountaineers tended their flocks and herds with gentle care, where the “guidwife” polished her spinning-wheel with feelings of pride and spun the yarn to be woven into homespuns for the protection of the family from the winter blasts; from the board where sat the hand weaver who with dexterous fingers patterned the tartans of the clans, converted the yams into cloth and interested and amused the family with weird and wonderful tales of the great world beyond; from the shop where the village blacksmith fashioned the crude implements of tillage and home manufacture, made and mended the utensils of the households, introduced the gradual improvements which represented the first flickers of mechanical science leading from primitive life to the light of civilisation, exhibited a wonderful resource and ingenuity in meeting the demands of the villagers for their peaceful requirements, and of the chiefs of the clans for the implements of their tribal wars, prescribed queer and fearful nostrums for restoring the health of sick men and animals, and on his anvil sounded the note of the past which is resounding with a clang through the great mills of the
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world of to-day; from the pit in the forest where the brawny hewers of timber with a crude and heavy saw, with plumb and square and tiller and box and line—the machinery and plant of the manual mill—squared and lined the log, swung their heavy saw in vertical monotony and perspiration as they patiently reduced the monarch of the forest to the shapely planks required in the construction of their homes,, their churches and their boats; from the fields of waving corn the toilers with the sickle come bent to the task of hand-reaping, garnering, sheaving and stacking the rich gifts which faithful Nature promised at the sowing; from the barns where the sound of the flail told of the flying chaff as the dried husks under the steady rhythmic blows of the threshers gave up their wheat, —the living seeds for the reproduction of future crops and wholesome meal for the girdle cakes that built the stalwart frames of the progenitors of whom we proudly read down the pages of history; from every other branch of primitive industry where human life not yet crowded into the rut of specialised concentration allowed free play to the mind to develop its originality, as it gradually disclosed the secrets of science and progress as we understand them to-day. The evolution from life in the community of nature with its health, its freedom, its romance, with its wonder and its mystic superstition, with its confusion of fantastic ideas marking the struggle of reason to discover its origin and define its destiny, has but gradually come about, having groped through the centuries from the darkness of the caves, through the slowly lifting shadows towards the dawn, where the curtain of civilisation began to unfold the scene from the Tree of Knowledge where man, having partially divorced himself from the Garden of Eden, is writhing in the smoke and bustle
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and turmoil of the modern machinery of trade, commerce and industrial progress.
The film of present-day civilisation, kinematographed upon the screen for the benefit of budding knowledge, reveals man building cities and towns, into which he is crowding and multiplying, branching off, building and crowding and multiplying again in a fresh place like microcosmic growths spreading over a planet, falling into the disease and decay of age, spinning through the universe and cooling into frigidity in preparation for ultimate disintegration. The millions of operatives working in the mills and the factories representing the pulsating heart of the cities are the slaves and assistants which Scientific Progress demands as part of the price of her revelations, and the retaining fees which hold her on the stage of civilisation and from a reversion to the oblivion of nature. Scientific Progress also demands the elaborate and gorgeous stage-fittings and dressings of the shops, the machinery, equipment, sanitation and local government; the manipulators, speculators, dealers, traders, shippers, importers, exporters, packers and all the other hosts necessary and unnecessary, honest and dishonest, accessories and supernumeries; the mechanical propulsion which sends thrilling shocks through the nervous system and wrecks the constitutions of the race, the infirmaries where it mends the bodies torn in its machinery, the poorhouses where the aged and infirm derelicts from its scrapheaps linger in cold charity in wait for death to return them to their native earth; the destruction of the beauties of Nature with axe and fire, sweeping away its original plantations, destroying the flora and exterminating the fauna, and baring the soil fqr the production of its special needs with snorting engines and barking tractors, while the horse and the ox
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look on at the change from being willing and loved assistants of man in his labours to creatures in idleness to be fattened and fed into the sausage machines of Progress; the human parasites and vultures who live and thrive by manipulating the food supplies, cornering every other necessity of life, fattening on the sweat of struggling existence, and housing their fellow men in the digested and fetid atmosphere of the slums. The concentration of the whole of her resources is required in emergency in the construction of the damnable implements of destruction and torture which she has dedevised to enable one section of humanity to inflict its special "Kultur" on another—the unspeakable horrors which she perpetrates in the settlement of the family quarrel called War. The hatred and fury of the damned are let loose; the homes of generations are torn and scattered to the dust; the inmates, regardless of age, sex or condition, are made to feel the tortures of hell under the sunlight of heaven before their mutilated bodies are tossed into eternity; husbands are pinned in agony to the wall and made to witness the degradation of their wives to brutal lust; the sacred virtue of budding womanhood is scorned in gross chuckles and made the plaything of instinctive and wanton animalism; the innocence of childhood is mutilated and ruthlessly severed from its race in the chain of reproduction. The face of nature is tin-rowed and scarred by this deviltry of man in the destruction of his fellows. The wan faces of those working in slavery under the fear of death tell the plain tale of the extremity of anguish and poverty. The red stream of life is coagulated in the mud in the roads, and in the pits the effluvia from decaying bodies is offending the nostrils of the living, while death keeps watch to prevent the burial. The black garb and stamp of irre-
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parable sorrow marks the widow and mother far removed from the scenes of agony. The majestic ships, representing the genius of man’s handiwork and laden with the 'ood and necessaries for the support of non-combat-ants, together with their crews and passengers of helpless women and children, are waylaid by skulking cowards in submarines, are torpedoed without warning and given no chance to feud for life, but are sent down, to the accompaniment of jeers and scoffs from the imps of hell making holiday on the earth by the teaching of “Kultur,” into the yawning abyss until the ocean shall give up its dead.
These are some of the scenes that are enacted when Scientific Progress sets man in his qnarrel with man to work out his destiny by methods of civilised war.
Where is the Christian Church while this tragedy of humanity holds the world’s stage F She is looking on in silent and helpless impotency, with dumb horror at the millions of men who were her children reverting to the brutal savagery in which she found them two thousand years ago, with all the destructive devilishness of education and scientific advancement added to the native ferocity of man, which her teachings have failed to subdue or eliminate from the master animal. The lessons of peace and goodwill amongst men, the commandments of God upon which she has built her civilisation, the lessons in the Sunday Schools training the young minds in the ideals of charity and moral rectitude leading the soul to the happiness of the everlasting life beyond, the prayers which men have lisped in childhood at their mothers’ knees, the exhortations from a thousand altars in an atmosphere of sanctity leading men from the wavs of wrong to a conception of the duties of brotherhood—these things she sees broken and shattered by the roar of the
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of modern war. Her preachers and teachers are swept into the vortex in the torrent of blood to play a part iu the orgy of disintegrating the Christian Structure. The Cathedrals which she has reared to the Christian God in past centuries, exemplifying the great gifts of architectural genius ennobled by the call of Christ for its greatest work: the sculptures and paintings adorning with their beauty the interiors of these sacred monuments and telling the tale to succeeding generations of worshippers that the artists abandoned their souls to the works which they placed in the House of God; these majestic and sacred monuments to the faith of the men who built them in the future betterment and happiness of their race on this earth and the everlasting glory and peace in the Almighty Presence in the silver mists of eternal light, she has seen made the targets of modern artillery, their walls and domes and spires pulverised to the dust of the sacred bodies within their vaults, and the work in which the artists of the past brought into combination body, genius and soul under divine guidance, laid under desecration by the fiends of war.
Christianity stands in speechless anguish contemplating the undoing of two thousand years of labour in the enlightenment of men to duty and destiny, and watches the ghastly spectacle of human blood flowing down the valleys to the accompaniment of the groans of the wounded and the thunder of the guns.
And in the corner of the picture stands the leering, oleaginous form of "gluttony"—the Pawnbroker.
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The Freedom of the Subject.
Prince Bismarck once said that "freedom was a luxury that few could afford aud fewer still knew how to use." I apologise for quoting the Father of present-day Hunism, hut the remark is so full of pertinent application and truth that I trust I shall be forgiven for permitting it to pollute these pages. The "freedom of the subject" is a glib phrase which everybody has heard shot from the mouth of crude reason with the raucous voice of blatant intractibility chafing under the law and order of Constitutional Government. It is a phrase which fits, the loud voice of ignorance and connects the incoherent sentences of the stump orator when poverty of language and ideas threatens to leave him beating the air in silence. It stirs to applause the gaping audience when they begin to yawn in disinterested examination of surrounding objects, and it impresses the minds of those living in the shallows of thought and philosophy as the one thing necessary to make them what they were intended to be—the favoured creatures of nature, to have, to give and to do what the impulse of fancy directed, what the appetites asked in the silent language of nature's desire, and to come and go without question or reason, untrammelled by regulations and ungoverned by the laws of society, the manifestation of the law of personal impulse enthroned in the separate bodies of humanity and recognising no law but that of decay and death.
The “freedom of the subject,” lightly phrased by
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numbers of citizens in the discussions of the affairs of the social organisation, is seldom analysed or examined as to its possibility or existence. The only freedom which man can obtain is that granted to him by his fellowmen, which is only a partial liberty, permitted by the regulations of the community to which he belongs and confined within the boundaries of the State to which <he is bound by the ties of birth and race. Greater freedom means the relaxation of the rules which man has framed for the guidance of his family and social life. It means, in its application to present-day conditions, less freedom for those who have been the ruling classes for centuries, and more freedom for the proletariat in the lower walks of life. The freedom of the subject has no existence in the life or affairs of man. It is not included in the organisation of nature, and, in the homogeneous structure of which man forms part, the rigid rule of inexorable nature permits no liberties, no departure, and no relaxation except under the penalty of the disintegiation of the offending part.
Man is born in bondage and protest; he enters into this life not of his own will but by the will of others: the first sound to which he gives utterance is the feeble cry of opposition against the established rules of his progenitors for starting him in the first hour of his existence on the road of law and order to manhood. Childhood finds him hostile to the discipline imposed upon him by the gentle firmness of a tender parent. He is led by force and encouragement through the tedious years of school training by teachers who, understanding his native waywardness, direct his budding reason into the channels of obedience making for order and benefit in society. Apprenticed to his future calling he submits himself to duty and the control of the trained mind of
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the man under whose guidance he is being fitted for his future trade or profession. Having divested himself of the refractory naughtiness of childhood, of the little insubordinations and irritations of educational discipline, of the sarcasm of his superiors during the period of his drudgery in the office or the shop, he arrives at manhood, only to find that the restrictions that he found so irksome in earlier life have disappeared, to be replaced by others infinitely greater, more rigid and insurmountable. If he is an employee he is not free to sport his whims and fancies, but must conform to the regular hours and special duties directed by the organisation of the institution where he is employed. Freedom of the subject is not there ! If he is an employer he is driven by the force of circumstances to do, not what would give him the greatest gratification, but what the exigencies of trade, competition, labour and his financial position compel him to do. Freedom of the subject is not there! If he is a member of a Society he is confined to the rules governing the conduct of its business and its members for its general benefit. Freedom is not there ! If he is a member of a Labour Union he is a slave to the despotism of the glib tongues of a dominant minority; the iron rule of Union regulations grips him with the rugged embrace of muscular labour; no choice or polished language is used to persuade him that he must obey to the letter the findings and decisions of the majority. If a strike is decided upon and his better judgment tells him that it means weeks of enforced idleness, accumulation of debts, disturbing the lives and labour of thousands of his fellows in other industries, cold, want and starvation for himself and his family, contumely and indifference from citizens who formerly treated him with respect, the domineering executive and the threatening epithets of
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liis companions soon convince him that he is only a unit where thousands combine to secure “greater liberty for the multitude” by hilling the “individual liberty of the subject.” Consequently there is no such thing as the “freedom of the subject” in an individual sense. The freedom which man in his struggle with man has been fighting for through the principles of Social Democracy is the breaking of the power of Kings to use the people as the instruments of their personal ambition and aggrandisement; the weakening of the influence of hereditary privilege in directing the affairs of the Nation so as to maintain the control of the aristocracy; the elimination from the Government of the Bureaucratic methods of keeping the people in ignorance and slavery, and the elevation of the proletariat to the power of selecting their own representatives to make laws for the general benefit and progress of the community. This is the “Freedom of the Community” and indirectly the “Freedom of the Subject” in the general acceptation of the term as it is understood to-day. In most civilised countries at the present time there exists some form of Democratic franchise, giving to the people a voice in the framing of the laws under which they live. And do we experience that peace, prosperity, and ease for the multitude which was the dream of the early advocates of our present system ? Do we find that freedom to direct and order our inner lives, to meet the natural desires and fancies gratifying to the impulses and pleasing to our wayward instincts, which we would be led to believe should exist under the comprehensive and enlarged life expressed by the “Freedom of the Subject”? To these questions I may safely answer—Doubtful! For man or any other creature living upon this planet there is no such thing as “Freedom.”
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The Earth responds to the order of the Universe and moves to a time-table infinite in its accuracy and relentless in its continuity. Man, being part of the Earth, cannot separate himself from that system of nature of which the government is so strict and the rules so rigid, where unity and harmony are blended to the perfection that brings the student to the tranquility of a voiceless gaze and leaves his thoughts dissipating themselves in the immensity of universal magnitude. Into this perfection of law and order man is conceived. He is billed to arrive on time, which he does. He makes his debut in the sunlight and perfection of the frictionless machine of which he is part, and immediately begins to perform his duties in the mysterious work, the secret of which is held by the Creator of omnipotent law and the dictator of inexorable obedience. In the democracies which have succeeded in extricating their peoples from the thraldom of the Autocrats and Plutocrats there has followed a system of popular government which grows yearly more and more cumbersome and intricate as the advancement and enlightenment of the people gives them a clearer conception of their natural heritage through the influence of education. The greater the advances of science the greater and more general becomes the knowledge of the masses, the greater appears to become the necessity for increasing the number of legislators and enlarging the already bulky volumes of statutes which are framed for the guidance and regulation of life. The combined intelligence of the people as represented by the hundreds of Members in their Parliament Houses, and the thousands of Members of Local Bodies, all more or less endowed with the voluble propensities of enfolding a grain of common sense in an avalanche of incoherent and meaningless language, and all busily engaged in law-making.
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has succeeded in surrounding the everyday affairs of existence with an entanglement of regulations which should satisfy the most ardent and enthusiastic searcher for the "Freedom of the Subject.''
The natural conclusion which should follow the introduction of Democracy is that the people, having extricated themselves from the oppression of Autocracy, should have greater liberties, fewer regulations and more general prosperity. Instead of these conditions we find that all the pent-up fantasies of fanatical minds are let loose, and a continual procession of new laws, regulations and amendments is surging through the country, altering the land laws, controlling the factories, fixing the hours of labor, regulating the wages, watching the health of the people, supervising the feeding of the babies, following the miners into the bowels of the earth, climbing on to the scaffolds of the builders, watching the entries in the ledgers of the merchants, destroying the woolly aphis and the codlin moth in the orchards, instructing the dairyman how to build his cowbyre and prosecuting him if he does not follow the instructions, examining his milk-cans to see that the dairy herd has not been over-indulging in long draughts at the crystal stream, and at the same time microscopically searching for the übiquitous microbe in case it should be using the milk can as a vehicle for its migratory inclinations, watching that the queen bees in the apiaries are not guilty of clandestinely allying themselves with the degenerate outcasts of other colonics to the detriment of the workers and the flavor of the honey, examining for evidences of disease that might contaminate the human consumers in their purity, health, and perfection, the internal anatomy of the animals slaughtered for food, intruding the olfactory organ of the law into the sanitary
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arrangements of dwellings and apportioning the regulation amount of sunlight and the correct cubic measurement of air, ordering that certain creations of nature, animal, insect and vegetable, are unnecessary encumbrances upon this earth and must, upon pain of prosecution accompanied by costs and penalties, be destroyed by the person upon whose property they congregate, killing the vermin on the domestic animals by forcing their owners to observe that they suffer no unnecessary irritation, enacting that eight hours shall be a day’s work for which a certain sum shall be paid, after which time the exhausted body of the labourer becomes more valuable and he is paid extra for his exhausted energies, making it an offence to allow in a factory a man who is a copper worker to touch an iron rivet—presumably on account of the danger of setting up electrolysis in the workshop—taking stock of the human herd and enumerating the age, qualifications, possessions and incomes of each individual member and reporting them in the common ledger of the State. These and hundreds of other laws and regulations are the requirements of democratic organisation to curtail individual liberty, to protect the weak, to whip the indolent into action, to curb the avarice of the strong and the greedy, to encourage the thriftless in the ways of prudence, to train the minds of the multitude to rise above the hereditary influences of barbarism and to check at every step and turning the freedom of individual desire to batten itself on to others for the purpose of obtaining ease and advantage by the exercise of natural selfishness. The Autocrat having been dethroned, the dominating personality of individual selfishness arises and proceeds to gather under its control through the medium of progressive commercialism the fruits of the labour of the majority; and the fruits
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representing the everyday requirements of life are placed by the limits of price beyond the purchasing power of the people who created them.
Then come the Statesman, the Politician, the Labour Leader, the Unionist and the Inspector with volumes of statutes and sheets of regulations, Judges, Lawyers, Courts, Arbitration Wages Boards, an army of Civil Servants, a host of Inspectors and all the paraphernalia of modern democracy, wrangling, striving and adjusting, checking the avarice of the greedy, curtailing the powers of the ambitious, compelling honesty by the elaboration of Public Audit and the employment of numbers of Police and Detectives, and punishing every transgressor of Democracy's myriad regulations by the penalties provided according to the degree of the offence committed. Thus we find that every Statesman orating upon the progress and advancement of the Nation, every Politician torturing his feeble brain for a new idea to justify his maintenance as a representative, every Labour Leader haranguing the members of his Union with vociferous language and arm-waving emphasis, every fanatical Reformer irate in the crazy fever of propounding a quack regulation for the removal of some of the objectionable habits of the people which have their roots deep-seated in human imperfection, is a maker of "Blue Books" and a weaver of "Red Tape."
Each succeeding year finds the giant Democrat wound more securely in the red tape of his. own spinning, enmeshed in the net of entanglements woven from the strands of self-protection in the struggle for supremacy with his own flesh and blood; and, while he is pouring forth a torrent of burning words upon the "Freedom of the Subject," the machinery which he has created is spinning a web of restrictions that are killing his in-
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dividuality, poisoning tig enterprise, weakening his progress, taming his aggression and threatening him with the impotence of National stagnation brought about by the paralysis of legislative madness placed in the hands of Freedom.
Bound by the mysterious chain of reproduction, man is the unconscious and mostly the unwilling performer in the drama of life with its many varied hues and colorings. He enters the ranks of humanity at the call of nature, and, punctually upon his arrival in the society of living organisms, his work in the chemistry of life begins upon the task of contributing the microscopical item to the structure—the design of which Nature in her reticence keeps secret from the mind of puny man. The part he plays in the affairs of life during his period of activity upon the surface of this planet is not of his own making. If he is a giant of stature and a development of physical perfection, he is as nature made him and, although he may take pride in his powers of superiority and exhibit a certain conceit and contempt for the less favorably endowed members of humanity, he is after all but an atom in the .-Eon and a speck in the stream of life. If he is an example of mental force fired with the desire to bring order, method and regularity into the everyday habits of frail humanity, he merely illustrates another phase of Dame Nature's hidden scheme, whereby she makes myriads of creatures upon the same plan, giving to each a slight variation which makes that separate individuality necessary to produce the spice and the acid of life, and promote those personal differences and competitions making up and fostering the ferment of existence. Out of this wonderful and mysterious power of Nature to produce endless millions of people having no two exactly alike in temperament or appearance comes the multitude
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of variations grading the writhing masses of humanity. The leader leads because some prenatal influences combined under favoured circumstances to produce an individual specially endowed with the necessary qualifications, and the less favoured of his generation place themselves under his leadership by the direction of natural instinct. The variations of face, form and colour provide the fascination and opposite attractions calculated to stir the spark of love, kindle the fires of reproduction, and perpetuate the stream of life without disturbing the rhythm of Nature's intention. The loves, hates and fears, the passions, doubts and disappointments, the crimes, deceits and hypocrisies, the pleasures, dreams and ambitions, the trials, tribulations and remorse, the disease, suffering and death, the failures, successes and conquests, and the hope which springs eternal in the human breast, with all their varied accompaniments and changes as Been through the kaleidoscope of life, are the impositions of Nature placed by the unseen hand upon human conceits and ambitions, restricting man to a course of life which he steers under sealed orders—an impotent navigator to a destiny shrouded in a mist so dense that he knows not whether his frail craft will come to rest in half an hour or half a century. Still he, the creature of a bondage so rigid and unbending that his life has not the value of a five minutes' lease of the sunshine of existence, descants upon the "Freedom of the Subject." The laws and regulations which he makes for the guidance of himself and his fellows and which he fondly imagines arc designed to improve the natural order of things are tolerated by Mother Nature as long as they do not come into conflict with her inflexible will, but, if by inadvertence or intention, man encroaches upon tlie sacred plans with alterations, amendments or addi-
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tions, lie receives his punishment with the same inflexible and relentless precision that marks the order of the Universe. The "Freedom" which he aspires to in lofty language and dark ignorance is so limited and so narrow that he may not frame a rule which will in the smallest degree disturb the natural law as applied to the human family without creating a disturbance which will restore the balance of Nature to the proper order. Man's efforts to obtain freedom are productive of strange results, and the democratic principles of his governments have left him in many queer dilemmas. He is the master and the highest organism in the animal creation. The genus man has many grades of intelligence and many shades of colour, with varying statures and developments of physique, but all belong to the same family, this being proved by the ability of all shades and sizes to unite in the process of reproduction.
Being satisfied that man is the superior of all creatures dwelling upon the planet, and that there is onlyhuman family with its variations, from whom is he seeking freedom ? Obviously there is a family quarrel, and the Freedom and Democracy which we hear lauded every day are merely the spites and jealousies and injured feelings of some members of the family expressing their hostility to the greed, selfishness and indignities heaped upon them by their big brothers. The inequalities which Nature provides in her different species are necessary to give zest to the fight of life, and the moral, mental and physical inequalities in man are the vital elements of his existence without which he would have no ambitions, for there would be no superior to conquer, there would be no competitions, for all would be of equal strength, there would be no advancement, for all would think alike, there would be no likes or dislikes, for all would be of
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the same temperament, and life would be like a stagnant pool grown green with the slime of solitude and sameness, festering in the absence of a ray of sunshine and a rippling breeze to cause a disturbance on its surface. Imagine the dreary monotony of a world where all men were equal, where -Jones and Smith and Brown were the same height, the same weight, the same colour, with the same thoughts and ideas, the same temperaments and tastes, where differences and arguments and controversies were made impossible amongst men stamped like the interchangeable parts of a machine from the same templet, where Murphy's hat might have been moulded on McKenzie's head, where the existence of a Government would not disturb the equanimity of O'Eegan, where Robinson's wife might wander home with Jackson in innocent ignorance that she was with the wrong man, where Smith's baby might be cradled in the bosom of Brown's family and grow up with the wrong name, where a man would not be able to swear whether he was married to Alary Jane or her sister, where Mrs Morel Teecher would live in perpetual dread of mistaking her husband, and where Mrs Spitely would never be quite sure which neighbor she was quarrelling with! Oh! the stagnation of equality, where the dead level of existence permitted no pitfalls into which man could tumble and create a diversion in the community and a joy in the heart of a social reformer in effecting his recovery, where no step existed leading to a higher plane upon which man might find scope for ambition and the accomplishment and development of deeds for personal and public benefit, where no higher intelligence existed or was required because society was placed upon a common level, where the Prime Minister could find relaxation from the strain of the affaivs of State by exchanging
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places for a term with the “boots” at a seaside health resort, or when the Attorney-General found the mustiness of law records clogging his brain he might conveniently call down a sheep musterer from the mountain tops to draft the statutes of the Empire while he restored himself to vigour and good appetite swearing at the sheepdogs, expanding his lungs with deep draughts of mountain air and making his muscles bulge with the exertion of climbing the steeps in the haunts of the bleating lamb! The sordid dulness of a world of interchangeable beings, where equality had standardized the human family to a mathematical representation of one another! Impossible as it is of realisation, the thought of such uninterrupted sameness, unruffled agreement and unvarying peacefulness amongst men palls upon the imagination like a sickening nightmare. The human family should exult that Mother Nature enlivened and made interesting their existence by creating them upon a plan alike in the main but with those varying shades and differences which make for personal individuality, opens the way for the ambitious and leads man on to all aspirations by which the joys and sorrows, the fears and the failures and the feverish energies pursuing success, make up a life which is as tolerable and pleasant as it is reasonable to expect in a system of creation in which man is a mystery to himself. The overstrung neurotic pouring forth the language of liquid fire calculated to burn the inequalities of society to a common level would probably be insulted if it were suggested to him that his theory reduced him to the intellectual standard of one of Nature’s unfortunates who was gaping at him in wondering curiosity from the back of the audience. The advocates of freedom and equality tearing at the structure of society in a frenzy of philanthropic passion are merely giving vent to the pecu-
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liar talents with which Nature has endowed them, and in their innocent, and I might say their ignorant, souls the very things which they are opposing in the community are those which they are striving to possess for themselves. Ambition is driving them to become leaders of their particular doctrine, and should they succeed in obtaining a following they will be found to be masters of that domineering autocracy which permits no freedom of thought or action to its followers and looks upon any aspirant to equality as a presumptuous and arrogant intruder. Reformers of social conditions, aiming at alterations and additions to Nature's laws, actuated by wellintentioned motives, and mostly possessing knowledge confined within the narrow limits of the everyday influences of life, are the living proof that equality is the dream of those circumstanced, either by natural inferiority, humble birth, environment, misfortune or the vicissitudes of chance, in the lower walks of life, for wealth, position, ease and the privileges and pleasures which appear to accompany the possession of the material things of earth. Ambitioii, envy and jealousy are the moving forces behind the dream of equality and, like the "Freedom of the Subject," it is a fantasy playing in the minds of sympathetically disposed people, whose tender humane inclinations are moved to action by the appearance of what they regard as the improper suppression of one section of people by another section whose only claim to superiority is hereditary position, wealth and class-organisation. No law is apparent to those dreamers but the law of man, the influences of climate and environment, the changes brought about in branches of the human family by long separation and isolation in different parts of the planet, the development of singular and special characteristics by consanguinity, the higher
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mental attainments of those who have possessed greater advantages in acquiring education, and the selfishness in man which is the spice of life and the co-partner of the first law of nature—self-preservation. These and numerous other powers exerting themselves from generation to generation, unobserved by the creatures of their influence, are the powers operating in the human organism with silent, patient and persistent perseverance, moulding the dwellers to the varying conditions of the earth, ranking them according to their status by favorable or unfavorable pre-natal combinations, governing them with those whom reproduction has endowed with the greatest gifts, and making impossible the absurdity of human equality or the impracticable ideology of the “Freedom of a Subject” who, chained to the body of humanity by the ties of life, may he separated only by the cold chill of death converting him into a mineral clod.
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Domestic Life.
The budding men and women, bursting with the exuberance of increasing vitality, romp in playful merriment in response to the desire of growth and development to bring into action the bone and tissue which is' each day added to the vital spark, and to train the pliant members in the making to the movements which grace the deportment and knit the frame for the task of running the human machine for three score years and ten. A few short years twixt birth and grave maturity are held in sacred observance by Dame Creation to fill to fullness the casket of her future store, to mould and form the body by the carefree joy of childhood's mirth and start the growing muscles until, like whipcords interlaced, they twine around the human form in plaited beauty and even tension, the silent and finished product from Nature's school of physical development. The brain cells, fresh, young and plastic, greedily absorb from the optic mirrors of mental conveyance the educational instruction in the arts and crafts, the impressions formed for good or evil by the observance of parental habits and language, the picture of some individual or individuals to be emulated and carried in the memory as an ideal to be envied through life, the scenes from the everyday environment comprising the toils and disappointments of their elders in competitive existence, the pleasures and excitements which have burned themselves into the youthful brain when childhood took its first excursion into the glittering halls of elusive melodrama, the secret
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thoughts which circle around the evil side of life with strange and persistent fascination, and the respect or contempt for the moral laws of society imprinted upon the youthful brain before approaching the border line of puberty. These are some of the finger posts which are going to guide the future citizen and parent of the race through the long years of domestic life, when he is putting his imprint of worthiness or dishonour upon posterity. And now the frontier of adolescence is reached, childhood's frank and innocent abandon gives place to a change in form and voice and feature. The toys and games and stories that filled with joyous merriment those sacred play hours wherein grim sorrow dare not show his frozen visage are left to lie in careless neglect, the emblems of the years of sweet imagination before the load of life began to pile its burden on the human shoulders. Then comes the period of strange anticipation, when the nerves begin to vibrate and respond to ethergrams of sex, with shy unconscious blushes flitting over the face, proclaiming by unmistakable illustration the arrival of instructions to stand in readiness to fulfil the destiny of life, with coy and conscious glance where formerly was case, with day dreams leading flights of wandering thoughts to realms of imagination and weaving around the future life of "two"' romantic fantasy wherein the dark shadows of adversity never cross the sunshine of love and happiness. The prentice years of life are filled with interest and revelation, unfolding to the expanding mind the secrets which our forefathers have wrung from silent Nature through centuries of toil and perseverance. Mingled with the tasks in office, factory and shop, the future citizen in the making finds time to think of pleasures and pastimes with friends and companions when the waning day shuts down the hum of industry. The
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tools to win the future bread of serious life are laid aside until to-morrow, and, when refreshed, youth’s unsubdued reserve of vital force hursts forth anew and sends the ball with hoot or hat or club or racket, or bends the oar that speeds the clinker boat, or sports upon the sand or in the surf, or tries conclusions in speed of foot with opponents keen and swift, and nurtures and instils into the plastic care-free youth the noble attributes so dear to sportsmen’s hearts, to “Play the Game” by that unwritten law which holds the Britons to the death if need be, standing for their sportsmen’s instinct and their honour. The pastimes where the sexes blend in harmonious enjoyment of each other’s society, the tennis court and croquet lawns where healthful exercise and interest in the game break down the coy reserve which sometimes ties the tongue and leaves the eyes to speak the thoughts in language old and changeless as the race, and the brilliant halls where strains of entrancing music please the ear and thrill the nerves to that strange motion which moves the feet to the rhythm of the sound in the ecstasy of dance, are the subtle ways of Mother Nature’s artifice in luring to the doom of her designs the youths and maidens whom she enmeshes in the silken web of pleasure, and warms the vital restless spirit in the human breast to burst the bondage of its isolation, and seek that peace and solace not found in crowds, but only in the company of some other yearning soul, when two unite to form the magic circuit linking up the past with the lines of future destiny, and filling up the lives of those upon whom Hymen smiles with such consolation and requital as Nature affords in return for the cares and responsibilities which she places upon her creatures. Then Hymen passes on in grim content, to look no more upon the mated pair as long as death or fickle fancy does not part them in their youth.
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But if by chance they axe parted and one remains in whom the vital spark is still aglow, the god of marriage smiles again, as if in vengeance, to unload a double burden on the foolish yearuer who would seek a second dose of Nature’s consolation. A year or two of blissful peace and freedom serves for introducing by an easy grade the raw recruits who voluntarily take the oath to climb the steeps of love, honour and obedience, those three rugged, trackless mounds bestrewn with fragments of youth’s noblest resolve, and virtue’s vows bestowed with pensive trembling voice in kneeling posture at the Altar.
11l silent Nature's smooth and gradual style she brings along into the climax of romantic realisation perhaps just one from out her store of human irritations, to damp the ardour of love's burning fire, to trim the pinions of romantic flight and dim the colours in the picture of imagination's fantasy, when with grim duty's stern and earthly tasks she clears away young Cupid's silver mists and holds two humans to the bondage of the flesh. And now the serious business of life's responsibility begins. One by one relentless Mother Nature liberates her interruptions and bestrews the path of happiness with the jags and thorns over which the humans in the married state stumble on their way to destiny. Anticipation of approaching events fills many hours with wondering thoughts and castle-building by the youthful pair starting upon life's journey, and the day on which a small plaintive voice heralds the arrival of a new generation marks the time where ends two lives as boy and girl and begins two lives as man and woman. Upon that day convulsed with trembling fear and expectant joy a new life appears, a living link drawn from the flesh of the man and woman and uniting them in a vital, active, separate being, endowed with all their latent and active
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propensities .or good or evil. This living negative made by Nature holds the secrets of the habits of its ancestors and parents, is a pattern of their physical structure and development, a phrenological cast of their cranial genealogy, and an index to their talents and stupidities, to their passions, their pride and their folly, to all their moral, immoral, modest, lewd and licentious taints, and to all the virtue, honour and humanitarian characteristics that have marked its progenitors through several generations. These prints of face and form and mind by which heredity proclaims the family branch and rates it on the scale of civilised advancement are marked upon the tender human link which, when it reaches that maturity where Nature once again demands a repetition by the kinematograph of life, a re-enactment of the process with the additions and subtractions of environment, sends on the complication of human idiosyncrasies to posterity. When Nature puts the seal upon the marriage bond by blending in a living offspring the dual dispositions of the parents, she moves beyond the reach of puny mortals the power, which they often times assume, of dissolving in courts of law with dignity and pomp the marriage union, long after Dame Nature has embodied it in a living casket and attached it to the chain of life. A union bonded with Nature’s living offspring knows no divorce. The parties to the union may find in each other repelling dispositions which rend their lives asunder and cause them to separate and find companions more in harmony with their thoughts and tastes and modes of life, but the offspring is the blend of both, the seal upon their incompatibilities binding them unto the chain of life until eternitv.
The roots of the Nation are buried in the people’s homes, and the Nation, like a tree, tells by its growth,
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strength and splendour the poverty or richness of the soil that mothers its vitality. The harmony, thrift, industry, truth, honour and clean-mindedness, the gifts of health and physical development, the equipment of the mental powers with clear-cut thoughts to be used in straight reasonableness for future guidance that the brain reserves might not be wasted in the winding and devious ways of crookedness, the suppression of the latent passions which bind the human animal to its lower kind, and the encouragement to strengthen that brotherhood within the race upon which rests the loyalty, cohesion and unity which makes a nation, are the bulwarks of an Empire built within the homes by the advice, example and guidance of the parents. The pliant and impressionable human plant, like all things else in animate creation, reflects in its maturity the model of its progenitors, and the harsh or tender treatment which it has received mark it with the indelible traits of its surroundings in the plastic stage of its existence. The father who dishonours himself and degrades his household by putting on posterity the taint of falsehood and lying, or by sowing the seed of theft which germinates and grows and puts his blood upon its trial in a criminal dock, or by besmirching with licentious lust and riotous orgies of the flesh the offspring which he bequeaths to the Nation, or by lowering the physical and mental standard of posterity by leaving behind him children attenuated and stunted by neglect, has marked the tree of genealogy with a ring of dishonour and transmitted the stain of worthlessness and rancidity to be diffused amongst the race to the eternal disgrace of a waster. In this so-called enlightened and progressive age, when reason sits upon the throne of human guidance and knowledge forms the base which upholds reason, honoured and exalted upon a plane
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of animal superiority beyond the reach of instinct, man in the frailty and imperfection of his logic and within the narrow limits of his fleeting life and knowledge is prone to cast aside the warnings and directions which Nature sends vibrating through his senses for the regulation of his life.
The perception and hypersensitiveness of intuition found in the lower uneducated races is dulled and atrophied by contact with civilisation, and the reason which is supposed with the assistance of education to take the place of intuition is often too weak and unresponsive in many individuals to enable them to grasp the true significance of the teachings they receive, and they are left dangling in mid-air between semi-digested knowledge and natural intuition—the creatures of Nature bereft by civilisation of the faculties with which Nature provided them for the guidance of themselves and their offspring. The parents of the present day with few exceptions, even those who have received the advantages of secondary education, who have married before the age of thirty, seem to know little, and have been taught less. about the laws governing their own health and the evil influences the habits of fashion and improper living will have upon themselves and their children to the detriment of tbe race. What a store of excruciating agonies a woman confines within her body, to be liberated on the day she becomes a mother, when she encases in the harness of a steel-bound corset the lithe and supple form which Nature gave her. If the Designer of Nature's masterpiece in form and beauty wished her to have the shape and rigidity of a sn;:d glass he would not have left her to finish his work and alter his curves by endeavoring to remodel her body by encasing it in a mould. The corset may be considered the centre-piece in the
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curse of fashion, with the pinnacle shoe heel a conspicuous second for pride of place. The corset has held within the walls of close confinement almost every member of the human race; it has cramped and twisted and distorted the cradle of humanity and agonised the dawn of life with the torture of deformity; it puts a check upon the natural functions that keeps the future being attenuated and straining for nourishment, and when the human mite enters the world through a hell of agonising nightmares it finds the natural fonts which Nature intended to supply it with nutriment dried, barren and parched by the exertion of the corset upon the lacteal ducts. The mother in her ignorance insults and degrades her offspring on the threshold of life by failing at the crucial point of her greatest duty and feeding her child through the most important months of its life on the product of the cow of commerce. The corset is a money-maker for those who manufacture it and a ready seller for the traders who live and grow rich by the curse of fashion. It has laid more women upon the operating table than any other known cause of disease, and it has brought a rich and steady stream of gold to the medical profession who, as the proper guardians of the health and physique of the race, are held guilty of a crime by the selfish silence they have maintained in enriching themselves at the expense of needless suffering and degeneration. And when the human bud has fought and survived the battle with hordes of microbes in the pestilential bottle and proved by being still alive that its vital tenacity is superior to the destructive powers of the chemical Baby Foods upon which it has been fed by a solicitous and unnatural parent, it begins to stand erect, and the doting and intelligent parent continues to charge the poor little stomach with the vile and mysterious con-
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coctions which a scientific civilisation evolves from its cookery schools, or wraps in glittering tinsel and gaudy labels for the purpose of catching the eye and cheating the digestion. When the poor little body becomes clogged with a devitalising mass, impossible of assimilation, the little sufferer, writhing in agony, is saved from extinction by the good old-fashioned remedy—a dose of castor oil. No Statistician has ever taken up the task of telling us how many lives have been saved to the Nation by castor oil, but it may safely be called the “lubricant of the race,” the anti-friction upon which most of us have run to maturity. It is the viscous liquid which smothers the imperfections of the Pure Food Act, saves the manufacturers of confections from manslaughter and the hangman, enables parents to slumber in blissful ignorance of the laws of health and the feeding of children, and places the medical profession in the happy position of being able to receive with their fees for attendance upon children the smiles of a relieved parent who, but for the oil bottle, might easily have carried with him the inward curse of bereavement.
The hustle of civilisation soon takes hold of the child and at an early age he is rushed off with the rising tide of childhood to the halls of intellect where the begin to cram into the tender brain cells the requirements of modern society, regardless of the injury which may result to the delicate organism or the danger of making a nervous and physical wreck of the future citizen. In the fetid atmosphere of the schools enclosed by drab and dreary walls the children learn the three R’s of necessity, and these are added to and enlarged upon until they reach out into the branches of learning leading to the sciences and professions and into the channels pregnant with the mysteries and jugglery of finance and commerce.
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Iu the process of cramming the youthful head in record time with the necessary intellectual equipment a great deal of valuable nervous energy is wasted by being used up in the absorption of dry rot gathered from the scrap heaps of knowledge. Too much attention is paid to stuffing the brain at the expense and sacrifice of the body. The spectacled, toothless and anaemic specimens which are to be seen playing in every school ground are sufficient proof that there is gross ignorance of fundamental laws running parallel with the curriculum in the teaching profession. Considering that the teaching profession is falling into the hands of women and girls, many of them mere children themselves and absolutely deficient, by virtue of their youth, in the chief education of life—a knowledge of the world gained by time and experience—it is not to be wondered at that such a state of affairs exists. Targe sums of money are spent by the State in qualifying girls for the teaching profession, and before there is time to reap any advantage from the cost of training them a majority enters the marriage state, and the cost of their training is lost. A girl never concentrates her mind upon the work of teaching with the idea of making it the task of her lifetime. Nature is calling her to the more important duty for which she was intended, and she is ready to respond at the first suitable opportunity. When a boy becomes a teacher he usually remains in the profession, and greater encouragement should be given and higher salaries paid in order to secure more male teachers and induce the beat intellects to take up the duties of training the young. The thoughts, ideas and actions of a boy are a reflex of like characteristics in his teacher, and if the teacher is an effeminate, puny-minded milksop the unfortunate boy spends years after he leaves school in getting the slop-
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piness and shallow effeminacy of his teacher out of his system before he can stand up to the world with the feeling and confidence that he is a man. Strong, nobleminded integrity and firmness appeal to the young, and the reason why so many youths of the present day are failures and wasters in the early years of manhood is because they have been deprived by a parsimonious and stupid administration of teachers whom they could simulate and follow in the natural admiration for strength, nobility and justice in their master. A physical weakling is incapable of training an athlete for a boxing contest, and numbers of enfeebled, characterless, languid automatons of both sexes who are to be found in the teaching profession are wholly incapable of training the raw, crude material of childhood and youth and turning it into men and women who will maintain the Nation on the upgrade of strength and intelligence.
The home training which children receive in the present time is deplorable in its laxity and criminal in the injury which it is doing to the children, and consequently to the Nation. It is the outcome of the relaxation of discipline which has been gradually creeping into the homes and the schools for two generations. The present generation of parents are the product of the doctrine of modern thought, which promulgated the idea that the schoolmaster's cane was a barbarous instrument which should be banished from the schoolroom and relegated to the museum of savage weapons and instruments of torture. Having received no proper disciplinary training themselves they are mostly ignorant of the great value which proper discipline and restraint exercise in moulding the character and future lives of the young. Until they have reached the years of discretion children are like animals, and if they arc not guided, controlled.
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properly directed and made amenable to method, order and regulation, it will be impossible for them to govern themselves or assist in governing others when they have reached maturity and should take their place in assisting with calm deliberation to direct the affairs of the State.
In almost every town and township in the Empire at the present time are to be seen examples of children and youths who, having broken through and defied parental control, are wandering about the streets seeking what mischief they can perform, long after the hour at which peaceful slumber should be soothing their brains and expanding their bodies into types of men and women of which Nations are made. In the picture theatres are to be seen crowds of young children, breathing the vitiated and microbe-infested atmosphere, and greedily drinking what are for the most part lewd, immoral and degrading scenes, depicting the vicious elements of life and polluting the impressionable minds with false ideas of what constitute the regular conduct and heroics in the lives of their seniors. It is not an uncommon thing to hear just at the moment that the Prima Donna is sustaining a "high C" the harsh and discordant voice of infancy expanding and exercising its lungs to the disgust of the audience, the chagrin of the singer, and the injury to the disturber through being in such a place at such a time, to say nothing of the overweening frivolity and selfishness which will permit a mother in her ignorance to expose her offspring in infancy to the dangers of such unnatural surroundings. We seem to be living in an age when the seriousness has gone out of life, and thoughts of pleasure, ease and frivolity have grown to such abnormal prominence that they threaten to overshadow the essential duties of life whereby we maintain our existence as individuals and a Nation. Thousands of irre-
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sponsible young couples enter into matrimony thoughtlessly, actuated by the craze for excitement, led by the knowledge of increased freedom of social intercourse, moved by the fallacious imagination that life will be easier and more free from irksome restrictions, and secretly stirred to liberate to freedom the craving for the pleasures banned to those not living within the legal bounds of respectability. The fruits of marriage begin to appear, and in a very few years the children of the pleasure-seeking, volatile, irresponsible parents assume in an exaggerated degree the wilful recklessnss and uncontrollable dispositions which they inherited from their progenitors. The parents, never having been trained themselves in order, method and regularity, are blind to the absence of these qualities in their children, with the result that thousands of young people reach the threshold of maturity as full of wayward viciousness as prairie colts, to be tamed and broken to the ways of orderly society by lawful necessity, to the cost and annoyance of the community. These derelictions of duty and parental authority are not confined to any particular class, but are found pervading society from the highest to the lowest. Matrimonial unions brought about by money considerations, social standing, moral necessities, the artificially engendered attraction of residential contact, and by parental influence, form a large percentage of the marriages of the present day. Animal attractions with the assistance of family and social considerations usually provide a sufficient bond to hold the large majority of couples to the marriage contract, but unnatural affinity with all its variations of taste, temper and incompatibility forms an effectual barrier to the existence of perfect harmony in most homes, and the artificial love with which the wedded pair took up the burden of life
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gradually cools down to indifference and then to positive discord. With many people the hypocrisy of maintaining an outward appearance of happiness is a tax which often drives the human nature in both man and wife to the very edge of the precipice of damnation, and it is only the spirit of tolerance and their loyalty to the scrap of paper that hinds them together that enables them to pass through the fires of youth and middle age in the yoke of marriage. Not always do tolerance and moral considerations hold the matrimonial misfits to their contract. Some live on in shelter of the marriage screen and use it to shroud the sweets and joys of clandestine alliances, made sweeter still by having been surreptitiously obtained; others seek the aid of the Divorce Courts and make copy for the “Gutter Press’ and Sunday reading for the morbidly inclined multitude who love to wallow in a scandal as pigs love a mudhole on a summer’s day; some fight their daily fights and snarl and growl and poison the atmosphere of their homes with the hot breath of passion and the burning epithets of hatred; others keep to the nuptial track until the end, without a trust or confidence ever having passed between them—they come together like the collision of two bodies and, finding it impossible to disentangle themselves from the wreckage of the impact, remain together to the end to their mutual misery. These last live lives of passive resistance; no open rupture takes place between them; their thoughts are sealed to each other with the silence of the grave. Their conversation consists of the interchange of questions and answers absolutely necessary to the affairs of their daily lives and are usually snapped at each other in monosyllables, like the snarl of a cur interrupted while worrying a bone. They brood and ruminate in melancholy silence. Inwardly they curse
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the customs and the fates of which they are the vic'ims. They think about divorce, separation and Mormokisni, which last seems to possess the virtue of making provision for a change from the "Dead Sea Fruit" of barren affinity. They grow wrinkled and grey and tottery looking into the future to the time when the one who has buried the other may rest a short time in peace and sunshine in this world before submitting their case to the grand Court of Arbitration in the Great Beyond. The wondering offspring of these surreptitious unions numbered by tens of thousands carry through life a fearful handicap in the shape of impressions of Imman callousness as exhibited by their parents formed in the years of tenderness when they huddled together in fear and trembling while the periodical storms of matrimonial infelicity raged through their wretched home. The virtues and perfections of honour, justice and humanity, with humour, tact, love and intelligence, with industry and thrift and an inborn integrity enabling people to pursue the needs of life without injuring others, and all the myriad variations of these godly traits, appear to be too much to be contained within the body of a single human being, so Nature distributes a few virtues and a lot of vices to each individual, promoting in the conscience a perpetual conflict between right and wrong. Sometimes vice is winning and hell rejoicing; other times right is in the ascendant and the organs swell in harmony while the angels of Peace soar through the sunshine of Glory. Then clouds again disperse the sunshine, and hell lets loose once more the pent-up viciousness, which lias gained in strength and virulence by a period of rest, to breed another crop of misery and misfortune, and pave the way for sorrow-stricken wretches to bathe each other in the brinv tears of sweet forgiveness, \intil virtue
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swathes them in the warmth of good and proper conduct for another term. Such is the ebb and flow of life in the combination of crude, imperfect reason with the passions and desires of instinct, ebullient in the flesh which goes to make the body of a human being. Virtue, Reason and the Flesh are a surreptitious union made by Nature to form man, and containing the strongest passions, the fiercest hatred, the greatest force, and enabling him to govern the animal creation of the planet, and exercise if necessary the ferocity of a fiend towards his own flesh and blood.
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Money Making.
The desire and ability to accumulate wealth is merely a human manifestation of the canine instinct which leads a dog to tmry a bone. It is not always the best bred or the most noble and intelligent type of dog that exhibits the strongest penchant for burying bones; that instinctive quality of making provision against a depleted larder is mostly to be found in the mongrel cur who is always ready to run off with and hide what has been left by the others who have done the hunting and the killing. The nobler type of animal, feeling his strength, his speed and his prowess, ranges the haunts of adventure, disdaining to bury the leavings of to-day and relying upon his strength for the needs of tomorrow. Likewise it is not always the noblest and most intelligent types of human beings who succeed in making money; as a matter of fact, it is nearly always the opposite. A man must have an overmastering greed and an insatiable desire to acquire and keep before he can become possessed by ordinary trade and speculation of extraordinary wealth. Acquisitiveness, cautiousness and a strong animal nature with plenty of selfishness are the natural characteristics required in a money-maker, and any individual who is fortunate, or unfortunate, in being born into the world with these cranial developments preponderating is certain of cither accumulating considerable wealth or becoming well known to the guardians of the Law and leaving his name upon the criminal records. Cunning and covetousness are also powerful factors found in the composition and make-up
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of money-getters, associated with a smooth, suave, benign and purring manner calculated to allay suspicion and gain the confidence of the intended victim. The strong animal vitality supporting these mental qualifications in the "bone burier" of the human type provides the energy and industry required to gather, hide and protect the accumulations which go on from day to day. It is the character and habit of nearly all animals to go to rest with the fall of darkness and rise with the dawn to prowl over the haunts of their quarry and fossick for the requirements of the daily needs. The money maker, like his prototype, the "canine bone burier," is also an early riser, and his restless energy usually has him astir, keenly seeking the labours of the day, long before the sun has had time to get very high in the Heavens. The sordid passion for pursuing the material things of life, which is the animal equivalent of satisfying the appetite for the purpose of establishing large reserves of fat and tissue, is not conducive to the development of those faculties in the human brain leading to the higher planes of intelligence, where we find the high moral codes and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and science. A young man endowed by nature with the money-making propensities enters upon his career with the fetish of wealth luring him on. Age and acquisition enliven his ambition; success sharpens his appreciation of the worship of Mammon; gradually the selfishness and greed, abnormally large in his disposition to begin with, develop still more; the finer and nobler qualifications which he possessed in the beginning in weak uncertainty become weaker and more uncertain; greed grips him in the tentacles of inhuman avarice; the lust of money has seared his soul; the power of gold makes him callous to entreaty when justice opposes his will; and finally, when
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we find him a millionaire surrounded by all the material comforts that wealth commands, he is only a miserable human atom, hated by those whom he has worsted in the tussle for riches, despised by those acquainted with his methods, ostracised from the communion of men who live to interchange thoughts and ideas above the sordid channels of finance, isolated from the home love and family attachments which cling around the people not deadened to human sympathy by the brutal sacrifice of sentiment to business, and being too busy and too callous to allow himself time to love anybody or anything beyond gratifying his animalism he arrives at the end of his notorious career unloved by his family, and respected only for the power that he holds in the distribution of his accumulated wealth. He has at last become a good business proposition himself, a helpless clod containing the gold gathered by divers means through a life time, and ready to succumb to the law of disintegration and distribute the dross for which he prostituted the nobility of manhood. The doctor who tends him and spurs his failing organs to continued action looks upon him as a profitable patient, one worth visiting regularly, and, as he can afford to pay high fees, one whom it is no crime to charge extortionately. The interests of his professional reputation and, more important, his yearly income demand that his wealthy patient shall be carefully tended and saved from extinction for as long a period a' possible. No human sentiment enters into the pro position. The patient never used it in his affairs, and why should the Doctor use it when the suffering mortal clod is the investment under review. He must be carerally and skilfully treated so that he may serve as an advertisement for professional intelligence, and he must be kept alive as long as possible because he richly enhances
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the professional income. The irony of it! The unscrupulous financier has become a "chattel" in the hands of his doctor. The nurse who ministers to his comfort by smoothing his pillow, cooling his fevered brow, and easing the agonies of the worn body straining to continue the functions of life, has the same feeling towards him as the Doctor. Inwardly she despises the suffering creature in human form who reveals to her through his ravings during the long night watches the red pages of a life spent behind the curtains of respectability by a juggler in finance and a manipulator of men and material, who has succeeded in all his covetous designs, and at the same time preserved an outward appearance of integrity, and kept "within the law." Conscience, that "spark divine that marks the man above the brute," may be crushed, hidden and obliterated for a time while the brute forces maintain the ascendancy, but, when the weight of years and its accompaniment of declining power begin to set the seal of common end upon the body, the smouldering spark of conscience begins to glow and shine until it throws a beam of dazzling light upon the deeds of years gone by, and brings to bold relief, not the good and noble works performed, but the lust and greed and cupidity, the theft and obliquity practised on the weaker units of the race along the trail of life leading up to wealth and fortune. The laws, the statutes, the moral codes of religion, and all the plans of man to hold the scales of justice at even balance amongst his kind are merely "scraps of paper" to be torn and patched, or used or set aside to suit the profit or convenience of the criminal experts who prey upon their fellows. But the law of conscience knows no deviation ! It is no "stain of ink upon a flimsy parchment"; no resolution passed by learned and assembled wisdom, and
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prompted by the gifts of greed and gain; no “fluctuating measure of the market in the rights and souls of men.” It is the unwritten law of justice common to all humanity, and Nature “gives to each the code.” Conscience, so long suppressed and hidden by the Magnate of Finance, begins to live with fury in his dying body. It tortures him with lists of thefts perpetrated in the name of trade. He groans in anguish in his semi-con-scious wanderings as he sees through the mirror of his life the want and misery, the distress, emaciation and degradation, the starvation and disease at which he laughed in his youth and strength, when he was piling up the dross by cornering the foodstuffs of the people. His fevered body seems to be the furnace which provides the lurid light making the hellish “picture show” which has taken possession of his mind. Darkness or light, sleeping or waking, that damnable picture in which the chief actor is the villain—and that villain himself—playing the realities of his past life holds him in the grip of mesmeric torture. He has arrived at that time near the end of animal domination where the laws of puny man no longer serve him. The law of conscience site upon the throne of judgment and, as the evil deeds of life file past in slow and grim procession with each minute detail made clear and plain to add its supporting weight to the conviction, relentless, merciless conscience wreaks upon the weak and helpless victims the accumulated punishment of years, with all its added interest compounded on financial basis, in payment of arrears. The weeks go by, and, as the waning strength of body fades, the light of conscience, clear and clearer grows. That “hellish picture show” with its infamous villain screening the damnation of his soul! He writhes in helpless terror of the lurid light; darkness gives him no
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relief; sleep soothes his aching body, but his mind keeps watch upon the damning proofs that lead to hell; Despair has clutched him with a shivering dread; he tries to think a prayer but his brain is brazened by the thoughts of dross; he curses the money that is powerless to afford him a moment’s relief from his torture. Why can he not bribe the operator of that damnable cinematograph? Why can he not purchase the author of his torment the saxne as he has purchased men a thousand times before ? Where are his friends and partners who helped him in his schemes of robbery? Why do they not come to his assistance ? He begins to realise that he is alone; money, friends and relations are powerless to relieve his misery, or even to understand it. He has arrived at a place in human existence on the border line of neutrality between the world he knows and the unknown destination for which he is bound. The power of earthly dross and the keenest schemes of intellect have failed to spy the faintest light upon the mystery of mortal end, where even honest truth and virtue enter with a quake. The companions of his agony are not the friends who kindly inquire about him daily, nor the friends of memory who shared the swag and gorged themselves with gloat and greed of gain, but the host of injured, helpless men, women and children, many of whom are maimed, broken and emaciated, the dupes and tools the millionaire had used to make his wealth, who envied and hated him because of their dependence on him, and who feared him for the power he held to multiply their misery. These, and all the enemies the lust of gain creates, are crowded in the memories of the past in which he lives. Tn day dreams he hears the bitterness of their remarks and feels the burning scorn of hatred, while nightmares fill the lonely hours of darkness
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with fears of violence from his surging victims searching for revenge. The dawn reveals to the patient watcher by the couch the pale and worn and fearful human shell wherein the battle betwixt the claims and rights of Hell and conscience and repentance has waged all night in deadly conflict. Then follows a few calm hours of cogitation, when the helplessness and isolation of his position becomes more deeply impressed upon his mind. His impotency breeds despair, and the passion of defeat begins to fire his brain and set his nerves and muscles twitching until the white heat of anger explodes in language charged with epithets so rancid and obscene —execrations cast with violence from a vulgar pit,— that eardrums twist in pained contortion at the passage of such filth. The nurse in horror shuts her hearing to the storm of pollution vibrating the atmosphere, and when it is past she looks in pitying disgust upon the “carnal mass” collapsed by the fury of erupting proofs of coarse and vulgar disregard of moral boundaries—a human brute encased within the gloss and sheen of metallic respectability. But the nurse still regards him as a miner looks upon a heap of dirt he knows will pay for washing. Like carrion crows on a gum tree by the bed of a parched “billy bong” in the “Never Never,” waiting for a drought-stricken animal to cease the movements of life before they descend to feast upon the warm carcase, his family and friends and probable beneficiaries keep a callous watch upon the progress of his approaching end. Tradition says the Imps of Hell are also waiting to receive a future Prince of Tophet, and a few degrees of heat are added to fuse the crust upon the gilded spirit whom by “Hellogram” they know is proof against the fire that frizzles up an ordinary sinner. During the century just gone by the lust of greed seems to have
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laid a demoralising infatuation on the human race. A kind of yellow jaundice—a virulent infection—produced by constant thought in a mental haze of gold has gripped the world from Pole to Pole. The nobler instincts and ideals that held the minds of men in days not long gone past are deadened by the virus of the gold disease, which makes men scream aloud for pay, to the pride of accomplishing a purpose regardless of reward. The ugly golden god of greed rules all the kingdoms of the Earth to-day, when life is swift, and when every effort is bent to transmuting into yellow metal the genius and talents, mental and physical powers, labours of mind and body, and all the moving mass of living humanity; the dead, until they sink beneath the surface, the service which brings the minds of mourners standing around into the open grave, the prayers sent up in solemn requiem to save the lost one from the limbo of perdition, and all things else within the reach of man are placed upon the price list of his “Golden Joss,” to be traded without sentiment or pride of worth, and classed upon the scale of human value, not by the standards of nobility found in Nature’s register, but by the weight of gold put to the balance in their favour. The hook-nosed traders and usurers of bygone years and the scavengers who buried all the bones left over by the men of loftier ideals and ambitions have succeeded by their theft and pertinacious insolence in breaking through the barrier of cast that held them for centuries in the sordid ruts of trade, where, by their plenitude of mental meanness and poverty of thought, beyond providing for their animal desires and appetites, they best fitted. Gradually, stealthily and with persistence, from father unto son, and son to son again, adown the genealogical tree of
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lucre-loving fossickers and searchers after wealth, the faculties of “get” and “keep” and “crush,” supported by a robust animalism, have spread out root and branch until they have mixed their blood and grafted their pernicious breed into the finer and nobler specimens of the race. They have pushed and bought and bribed an entrance to associations of intellectual culture and refinement, for centuries barred against the contamination, wordless lying, and unconscious hypocritical deceit inseparable from trade and from the character and dispositions of those who make it a success. In these depraved days, money is a successful introduction and passport providing admittance and safe conduct to the most exclusive circles. Millionaires who have risen from the rut of mediocrity through the fumes, smoke, grime and moral filth of gold extraction from the human flesh and blood would sell their souls—if a soul exists within so vile a crust —to buy a Peerage for themselves, or would trade their daughters for a bauble stamped with lineage and title. In this age so tolerant of money lust, hundreds have succeeded in trading gold and daughters to bankrupt Lords, spendthrift Dukes, and Princes threadbare in respectability too dignified for work; and soon the coarse and dark red stream of animal blood, the source of energy that built the pile of gold, begins to stain the blue and purple in the veins of ancient Aristocracy. The effect produced is similar to that of the blending of good old Port, rich in taste and flavour by its age and choice selection, with “Yodka” brewed in some old pot secreted from the Excise Officers in a cellar or a cave. No swineherd of the ancient times dare dream of mixing his blood with that of hereditary distinction, even though his pigs had brought him wealth in ample share
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to deck his daughter in the gewgaws tinted with the many shades and spangles of bloated ignorance. Some members of the common herd, supported by their weight of yellow metal, have forced the gates which held within the fold the stud flocks of the human race, and the noble mien, the haughty step, the pride of birth and gallant honour of the knight, the steadfast eye of courage and authority, the finely-chiselled features expressive of a mind not tortured out of shape by the strain of crooked thought, and all the points and marks of perfect breeding which, brought about by careful selection and training through successive generations of nobility in Britain, have sunk beneath the skin and through the flesh into the marrow, are gradually but surely disappearing by fusion with the blood of common greed, with souls submerged beneath the gluttony of immature development, and minds and nerves untuned to the appreciation of the cultured tastes and sentiments and lofty moral codes which make the higher types of men the masters of the animal within themselves, and masters in creation.
The eye-glassed “English Johnnie” of caricature is no descendant of a line of gentlemen trained in the steel grooves of British justice and born in the honour of sportsmen, but is the offspring of some mongrel breed who rushed the fold when the burglar bribed the keeper of the gate and picked the lock. The men who made the mother of parliaments the pattern institution of modern civilisation, and trained their sons from childhood in the science of leading the masses of Britain by the example of pride in personal honour and common justice, are reflected in the calm deliberations and unflinching resolution which has held the Nation steadfast to many a bloody path when truth and justice were the goal, and
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brutal arrogance dared to block the way. The standards of refinement, tbe ease and grace and elegant repose, the gentle confidence in self, wliicb by its strength becomes contagion and compels the confidence of others, and all the little tints and shades attractive in the perfect art of making others shine their best, are the unassumed and outward marks of traits bred in the Gentry of England through centuries. The compliment which England has received from all the Nations of the Earth who have modelled their Governments upon the British system and on tbe British pattern of civilisation of radiating justice from a central organ of intelligence, whose nerve strings touch the meanest unit of the people situated at the farthest outpost of the Empire, is seconded by the mushroom Gentry, risen from the spawn of filthy lucre, who ape the “pose ingenuous” of the people bred by England, noble by heredity, native to the lustre of their lives, and free from the gilded polish of hypocrisy, which, in the aristocracy of sudden wealth, needs only a scratch to reveal the coarse material from which it is made. Sometimes the scion of a noble house may miss, and riot in tbe orgies of a spendthrift youth, or spend his later years in menial toil in the lonely bush or plains of some distant outpost of the Empire, but despite the grime of his employment or the rags in which he may be clothed the Nobleman shines through like a diamond in the mud—wash it and you get its brilliance unimpaired. But find a waster son of a mushroom gentleman of accidental wealth, and they are not uncommon, and, although he may be educated in the sense that he is polished with the literature and rules of common knowledge, if he strips himself by spendthrift profligacy of the sheen which money gives him, he is just the common clod, returned and fitting in his place amongst the ordinary
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herd. The growth of money power in recent years has carried with it the money brain, and the universal stampede after riches which has struck the people like a panic, has bred the false idea that superior intelligence is possessed by men who succeed in building huge commercial structures and amassing wealth. The consequence of this mistaken value placed upon the brain power of the most fortunate hunters of the common fetish is that almost every public institution is dominated by the "business intelligence,'' and the Councils of the people, intended to improve the general conditions of existence, have fallen to the conquest of the men of push and get and keep and use, whose every thought and deed and presence on a public Board is acuated and controlled by the selfishness which looks with callous indifference upon every change or innovation not calculated to bring profit either directly or indirectly to themselves. The early mental training these men receive, coupled with the hereditary influence of greed which, by the vast majority of people, has been developed by indulgence through several generations, precludes them from viewing any proposition from a point other than that of profit and loss. The introduction into the management of Public Affairs of a suggestion, by some one not yet submerged beneath the immoral transformation of business expansion and hustling avidity, to keep the Legislation linked to the brotherhood of humanity, is sure of meeting shrugs and sneers and impatient interjections from men whose moral reasoning is blighted by breeding back to the animal desires contributing to the avaricious pleasure of the flesh. The money-maker is of necessity and by instinct an autocrat; from his seat in the luxury of his private office he directs the affairs of a large concernhe has his finger on the pulse of every department; his
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staff of Branch Managers, Accountants, Overseers and Travellers bring him reports, suggestions and plans of the working of the business and the movements of trade; he constantly adjusts the strategy of his organisation to meet the varying changes; he listens to any advice he may receive and uses it according to his own judgment; he is not above sucking the brains of any man in his employ and then turning the stolen knowledge to profit in his business; he brooks no interference or dictation from those under him, and smarts and boils with suppressed fury under any little sting he may receive from those with whom he is in competition; he will bargain, compromise, negotiate, and use all the diplomacy of trade in disputing with an opponent, and at the same time keep the weapons of commerce trained for action immediately the dispute is ended; his trend of thought, bent for years to driving, encouraging and domineering, leaves him a relentless, unbending and petty autocrat, devoid of that moderation which does justice to the opinions of others and enables men to live in harmony, barren of sympathy for those who are compelled by circumstances to labour for him, patronising to those who have failed to attain his power and position, and jealous and envious of others endowed with talents and accomplishments too refined for his coarse and selfish nature. This is the class of men who by the growth of money power have been gradually increasing in numbers in the Legislatures, large and small, throughout the British Empire and the Nations of the Earth during the last fifty years. The learned men of the higher intelligence, with moral ideals unpurchasable by money, with logical minds full and noble by nature and polished by constant use amongst the classics, who graced the Courts, the Parliaments, and the Councils of
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a few years ago with their oratory, their manliness and their unassumed contempt for vulgar ignorance and dishonourable graft, have been slowly superseded by aggressive, bullying selfseekers, who may or may not be educated beyond the requirements of sordid hoarding, but whose primitive instincts are still too strongly attached to the first law of Nature —strong in the coward—to enable them to understand or appreciate the lofty moral intelligence which is capable of placing men above the squalid thought of pecuniary ambition. The logic of "business intelligence" is nearly always clouded by the surroundings of a cunning atmosphere: in the bargainings of commerce, which must by their nature keep truth in the background, the moral faculties become atrophied and demoralised. The pursuance of strenuous business for the greater part of a lifetime dulls to impotence the imagination and the ideals which contribute so much to the sweetness of life, and leaves the unfortunate victim of materialism to gloat in miserly revels over the successful results of his operations, which he fondly assures himself stamp him with the mark of superiority amongst men. This arrogant assurance and conceit in their ability leads many prosperous men of commerce to seek election to the Legislatures, and it is a regrettable and deplorable fact that the people very often take them at their own estimate, and return them. Men who by nature, training, and temperament are drawn by the fascination of hustling commercial turmoil, who love to throw the dice, loaded if necessary, in the game of speculation, are not the men best qualified to assist in making the laws of the people, upon which the welfare, happiness, and continuance of the Nation depend. In these strenuous retrogressive days when civilisation is staggering under the load of brutal ag-
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gressive expansion, mainly caused by tbe preponderance of these “aristocrats of the criminal world’’ in the Houses of Legislature, there is a suspicion abroad among the people that many of these mushroom gentry who are assisting with their basilar intelligence in guiding the destinies of the Empire on its perilous course of war are not above using their positions and the agonies of humanity to add to their wealth, even though the opportunity is steeped in the blood of the youth and innocence of the Nation. Acquisitiveness and cunning, supported by a strong vitality in a base individual, are the usual characteristics outstanding in men who become leaders in commerce and finance. Sometimes it may occur that a Prince of Finance or a King of Commerce is possessed of very high moral intelligence, and he may become a great leader amongst Parliamentarians and Statesmen, but the fact remains that if he is a financier and a money-maker his moral qualifications are dominated and kept in subordination by his vital and animal propensities. Consequently it follows that a man whose sense of honour and justice is held in bondage by an overmastering basilar instinct within himself is a very dangerous man to hold the reins of government and guide the destinies of the people. In the event, which is common enough, of the interests of a leader of this description and the interests of the people being correlative, he may be the very best man they can have, but there is always this absolute certainty about him, that he will give all the power of his energy and resource to improve the conditions of the people and the Country so long as he is improving his social and financial position to his own satisfaction. When the hustling autocrat of commerce, flushed with success and inflated like an air bubble with the importance of what he considers
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his outstanding ability, is elected to Parliament, he takes his seat with that ostentatious sang froid which may be observed in a savage in the presence of Royalty, and arms himself with all kinds of formulae from business methods which he calculates to apply to the affairs of the Country and the remodelling of the Universe. His lack of nervous sensitiveness, indicative of his basal development, makes older Parliamentarians raise their brows in owl-eyed wonder at the audacity of his arrogance. He chafes under what he considers the unbusinesslike indirectness and circumlocution employed in arriving at the settling point of a question in debate. His novice days are belaboured: he hauls on the business end of the Parliamentary rope, sweating in his ignorance of the weight of humanity that is hanging on to the other end of it. The preponderance of his com. mercial intelligence department, and the weakness in his coronal region, preclude him from readily understanding that, unlike a Board of Directors dealing with stocks of coal, iron, cotton, wool or foodstuffs, the Parliament of which he is a Member is a Board dealing with quick and living human beings, each one capable of appreciating or resenting the manner of his grading and disposal. Sometimes we see an example of a newlyelected Legislator from the dead stock department of life smarting under the ridicule and rebuffs of men more experienced and better qualified by Nature for the work of handling public affairs, and the non-plussed monarch of the warehouse, finding his instinctive ignorance incapable of understanding the position, exhibits the animal within him and sulks, hands in his resignation and slinks out, the unreasonableness of his attitude indicating the rank of his intelligence and the fibre of his animal composition. Examples of this kind rarely occur
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in Parliamentary Legislatures, but they are frequently met with in the local Political Institutions which are so numerous all over the world.
It generally takes a considerable time for the man with the business intelligence who has entered into politics and who has been accustomed to the methods of direct action used in commerce to transform his mind to a patient acceptance of the fact that direct action is an utter impossibility where thousands of varying temperaments, supporting all kinds of conflicting propaganda and personal interests, are concerned. He finds that the business of governing a Country contains none of the elements familiar to him in governing a commercial concern, and conclusions are only arrived at by a spirit of compromise, after having traversed the most tortuous channels through a conflict of counter opinions and opposing interests. There are no straight lines leading a proposal to the Statute Book and making it a law of the Country; the way is devious, crooked and precipitous. The chief obstacles in the path are created by men whose wealth and position are likely to be damaged by an alteration of the law. The pull of hostile parties, the ambition of the weaker party to obtain control of the Government, not because they could alter or improve the existing conditions of the Country, but because they are alive to the enormous personal advantages accruing to those in power, spite, envy and vindictiveness, have a greater weight than honest intention. Graft, bribery, intrigue, wire-pulling and the surreptitious operations of powerful outside influences, combine to strangle any new-born proposal showing a resemblance to humanitarianism. The whole atmosphere of Parliament reeks of greed and grab by the hot and fetid breath of selfishness. The few men still to be found
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there, possessed of reason clear and bold under the control of high moral attainments, become contaminated by their association with the mockery of Democratic Legislature under the control of the autocrats of the modern ruler "Money*' and the brute intelligence of his courtiers and worshippers. The raw recruit to the ranks of Legislators, who has already been mentioned, gradually finds his native cunning warming in appreciation of the situation he has discovered, and, being quick to understand the opportunities it affords, enters into the spirit of intrigue with all the zest of appetite fighting for the choicest morsels of the carcase. There is a possibility of finding him, in time, in the Ministry, a finished artist in the sophistries of Political deception, capable of speaking to an audience for ninety minutes on the affairs of the State, and occupying eighty minutes of the time in a "camouflage'' of words, out of which it is impossible to emerge with any knowledge of the situation, and which sends his listeners home in a speechless entanglement of mental sidetracks and dead ends, requiring twelve hours' sleep to restore them to the normal conditions of life. The financial barometer is extremely sensitive to the Political situation, and the men who hold the reins of Government are vested with enormous powers enabling them to cool or warm the atmosphere and control the barometer to suit themselves and their friends. Behind the curtains which screen the intricate machinery of the working minds of men are the Legislators, strong in the position which they hold to make or mar the success of many enterprises by gently exerting or relaxing the pressure on some part of the delicate machinery of the State. The crafty, penetrating business intelligence of the "boosters and hustlers" is fully alive to the importance of this position, and
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"wet nurse" to a Cabinet Minister is not an uncommon role to be filled by the Leader in a spectacular financial drama. The Cabinet Ministers, accustomed to experimenting and juggling with everything in the lives of the people from their conception and entry into the world until they are listed to the angels, are not averse to the special attentions of the "wet nurse/' and they usually thrive like stall-feds on the extra "draught" surreptitiously obtained behind the curtain. The Legislators, weak in resisting temptation to their personal advantage—by the vacuum in their moral region—and strong in the passions and desires of possession—by fulness in their basal development—are naturally victims ready to fall when cunning designers leave opportunities lying ready to their hands. Behind these scenes, hidden from the light of day, many things are done and many transactions are swiftly performed, the effects of which vibrate through the lives of the people to their detriment. These rapid exchanges do not take place through the ordinary legitimate channels commonly used, but by the primeval methods of division existing in a cave, where documents are not used and words are scanty, where language means less than looks and nods, where the telepathy of the gang is common to the nature of each one in the circle, and where common guilt screws down the seal of secrecy. Opportunity and temptation are ever waiting outside the doors of the Legislatures, and the Representatives of the people, being in the majority of cases men in accordance with the trend of the times, strong in aggressive force and selfishness and lacking in moral self-restraint, it is not to be wondered at, nor are they to be blamed, if they frequently succumb to the temptations of the popular idol, by the strength of their own superstitious worship.
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The Parliament of a Country should be composed of men of superior intelligence, wide knowledge and high honour. It should be the heart and centre of the moral code, guiding the public and private life of the Country. It should be an example of disinterested magnanimity and devotion to duty. Tt should be fearless in the suppression of wrong, and rigid as steel in dispensing justice. It should cut the self-seeker and intriguer out of its ranks as if he were a loathsome disease, and it should be the Paternal Institution of the people, understanding the varying moods, dispositions and temperaments of the National Family, and blending them in the harmony of peaceful industry and intellectual ambition, making for National greatness.
The moral depravity of commercialism and mendacity, into which all people are unconsciously sinking, has included Parliamentary Institutions in the general contamination. Parliamentary Legislatures are no longer looked upon by the people in any Country as places where wisdom and dignity combine to frame just laws for improving the conditions of the people and protecting the interests of the Country. Mercantile "hacks," who have failed in the commercial race, "illegal Luminaries," whose dullness made a certainty of professional failure, "fanatical Parsons," whose religion and Christian sentiments become submerged in a political craze to remodel human nature by a Statutory Regulation, "medical quacks," who imagine they can prescribe nostrums for International irregularities, "Utopian Neurotics," whose reason is delicately suspended over the dungeons of insanity, and "crafty adventurers" and "ticket men" form the majority of Representatives who sit in the Parliaments of Democracy. The respect in which Parliaments are held has been slowly fading
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away consequent upon the heterogeneous collection of Political Mountebanks and Grafters who sit there, and men of higher intelligence and personal honour are becoming less and less inclined to offer themselves as Candidates for seats, and targets for garbage from the political gutters. Men of the Platonic school, with minds trained in balancing to even justice the inequalities occurring in the lives of men, and capable of commanding that respect and admiration which rivets itself upon intellectual superiority when in a ruling position, are seldom found hankering after the doubtful honours of I arliament, for the simple reason that the Democratic Mob of to-day, conceived in the womb of industrial progress, and reared in the worshipful atmosphere of money and idleness will not elect men with attainments which are out of fashion in politics and not generally appreciated in the current of modern thought. The men who “catch” the eye and votes of the majority of electors, both for local and National Councils, do not belong to the deep-thinking, broad-minded philosophy of thought, but to the fraternity of “Sports,” perspicuous “Winner Pickers,” oily-tongued “Brain Suckers,” vivacious cunning designers, voluble “Windbags,” “Batteners,” opportunists, gang leaders, and others marked out by modem money-ruled civilisation as natural leaders in these depraved days, when the majority of people are steeped in the fumes, the filth and the fetid breath of molten industry and sordid materialism. The transformation which progressive commercialism has produced in the tastes, habits and sentiments of civilised peoples during the century of its rapid growth, is certainly not tending in the direction of improving the race, either morally, physically, intellectually or in the relationship of human sympathy.
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The aim. object and end of even- movement in life is money. Even the churches are governed by financial considerations; but it may be only coincidence that calls the Parsons to charges that have the wealthiest and largest congregations. Business enterprise and expansion is driven to the last gasp in a frenzy of nervous tension bordering on lunacy. Men, in the mad rush for money, break, collapse, and go under, and come to their first rest beneath a friendly headstone, without having experienced any of the sweets of life which Nature abundantly provides. A false and erroneous mental impression seems to have stamped itself upon the minds of men—that money is inseparable from happiness, and that the command of wealth brings all the desires calculated to appease the appetites, tickle the sensations and keep the warm glow of life constantly fed with a varymg and invigorating variety of pleasure-giving sustenance. Men enter professions according to the financial attractions which are offering, and the personal pride which one time counted for so much in honouring and digmfymg the professions to which they belonged" is more or less subordinated to the making of income! Ihe passions of genius are withering in the glare of the golden gleam; every thought and idea is assessed according to its market value by men who control the markets and who, outside of money-making, are as barren of genius as a grizzly bear. If a man isolates hWlf frQm the worship of the common fetish, and pursues an investigation off the beaten track with that fascination and concentrated love for unravelling things which have been the means of filching many mysteries from Nature he i S l ook e d upon as a « crank; „ or ag a mech ' chemical literary musical, or philosophical pervert to be sympathised with, laughted at, and made the butt of
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the feeble jokes from the shallow brains of people enlightened and exalted by the hypocritical occupation of "Business.'' The vast army of working men and women hived in the great industrial centres and depending for a living on the wages they receive from the sale of their exertions—a state of existence diametrically opposed to the plan of Nature—are governed by exactly the same principles as permeate the commercial and moneymaking systems from root to branch. The average workman of to-day is not fired with a desire to excel either in the quantity or quality of his work. Like the professional man, he has subordinated his pride of skill and excellence and honorable effort to the cunning artifice, which he has learned from his employers, of selling his energies as dearly as possible and making the last farthing out of his job. The commercial evolution which has promoted the growth of selfishness in the leaders of commerce and industry is not confined to one class. Its evil influence, following the governing law, has traced its way through the blood of the race, and the organised worker is no longer the working ox of a few years ago, who sweated and grunted under the lash throughout the day and ruminated over his poor fare and bad stabling during his leisure hours. The wageearners in these times of hustle and progress, through the evolutionary development of "selfish desire" in human nature, are not disposed to allow the men who hold the controlling interests in industry and commerce to monopolise the whole of the fruits derived from the enterprise. They have ceased to look upon themselves as part of the machinery, to be oiled, run under high tension, and thrown upon the scrapheap when they are a little worn or out of date. The soil and atmosphere of wealth production, with its rank growth of selfish arro-
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gance, from which a meagre sustenance has been drawn for several generations, has worked the natural change, and the operators in industrial commerce to-day are the CREATURES or ENVIRONMENT, and exactly what a student of Natural Law would expect them to be.
Manufacturers and Industrial Kings have been accustomed to treating their operatives as slaves, with a measure of freedom, who were compelled by the cravings of appetite to accept without alternative the wages and conditions offered them. Example exercises a powerful influence on people emerging from unlearned and simple innocence into understanding and knowledge, and the example of unscrupulous cupidity, black-coated inhumanity, and lust of money, which has gradually come to the understanding of the masses, has produced a crop of dishonourable infamy, which is flourishing through civilisation under the cloak of what is generally known as "'Business Methods." Capitalists dan no longer set out with the object of establishing industries without taking the Labour question into serious consideration. If speculators see an opportunity of launching an enterprise which is likely to provide a profitable return, and make a move to bring it into active existence, there is a host of the crows and hawks of commerce hovering around and perching in convenient situations in readiness to thieve an easy living from those who are expending brains and energy in subduing crude nature to the needs of progress. The labour of our up-to-date civilisation, which it is necessary to employ, has absorbed all the cunning artifice and insular selfishness of "business methods," and is equally as capable of applying them to the sale of its energies as the employer is in applying them to the sale of his goods. The masses have proved themselves such adepts in the simian art of
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mimicking the methods of those who have climhed the financial ladder that they are rapidly approaching the position where a deadlock must ensue, by reason of the fact that the worker has developed a greed and cunning quite equal to that of the master whom he is successfully emulating. For many years there has been no such thing as the expansion of honest enterprise apart from gambling and jugglery in shares and stocks, and, labour having discovered the fact, there is now no such thing as the sweat of honest toil to be found to-day. Labour does not now sweat without setting a very high value on each drop, and the organised institutions which control the human energies of industry set a very strong opposition to any clamminess in the shape of perspiration interfering with the comfort and pleasure of work. In any properly constituted society of labour it is decidedly "infra dig" for a member to be guilty of sweating, and there is much lifting of eyebrows, and many asides, if etiquette is offended by the odour of perspiration in the workshop or other place where labour is employed. The greed of the money mind is paramount in master and man. Profits and dividends are the all-ab-sorbing subjects of mental attention in the one. and short hours, long holidays, and as much money as possible for as little work as possible, the constant thought of the other. Conscientious effort is rarely met, and is only to be found in a few individuals whose grey hairs and steady gait proclaim their vanishing generation. Legitimate enterprise includes within its field every known method of exploitation which may be applied to dividend building outside the walls of criminal courts. The labour policy, evolved from the environment and atmosphere of greed in which it has been fostered and nurtured by its parent "Enterprise," teaches the work-
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era, in effect, that legitimate labour consists in getting all the money possible, and anything else that is obtainable, not necessarily for the work performed, but simply for being present upon the job. Organised Capital has combined in the strength of millions to defend itself against the threatening attitude of the masses, who feel themselves being squeezed from every quarter by the dividend extractors of controlling corporations. Labour, again following the example and methods of Capital, is using every effort to give its organisation international scope, in order that it may not only free itself from the strangulation of the profit extractor, but that it may destroy the machine altogether, and confiscate to itself the entire plant, property and liberty of its tormentors. Capital, with the smooth-faced solicitude of imposture, endeavours to keep control of the Legislative machinery of the Country by telling the people what thieves and wreckers and incompetent bunglers are comprised within the ranks of Labourites and Democrats, and how the Country must go to the dogs with famine, pestilence and disorder stalking through the land, if Capital takes fright and withdraws, or is deprived of power to rule. The counterblast from Democracy warns the masses, with all the blatant vociferousuess of burning words and nervous arm-waving emphasis, of the treachery and corruption, the graft and robbery, the slavery and misery, the want, hunger and neglect, and all the evils and torments catalogued by ranting visionaries, and kept permanently on the stock sheets of Utopian fanatics to be hurled from the political platform at regular periods on the approach of an election, that must be suffered and endured if Capital is allowed to hold the reins, of Government.
All this bitter turmoil, this lying and hypocrisy, this
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greed, jealousy and deceit, this superficial rioting of paltry and narrow minds, is conducted in a bedlam of competition for personal advantage and position by the people whose souls have sunk to the depths of degradation by the worship and lust of money. If domestic cattle are fed on coarse and rank food the product of the dairy will reek of its pungent origin, and if swine are styed in filth and built into pork and bacon on sweepings and offal and sweltering corruption, it speaks well for the sagacity of the ancient Jews that they struck pork permanently out of their “Menu.” It is similar with the mental food of humanity. The minds of men for several generations have been fed on the literature of commercial expansion, and trained in the schools of progressive enterprise, with their syllabus of selfishness, systematic manipulation of men and material, the system of silent lying, the science of smiling and maintaining personal composure while performing a “confidence trick,” and the diplomatic art of conducting organised business robbery while keeping within the civil law. The deplorable results on the human race of this mental garbage have been the suppression of the higher moral principles making for true manhood, and the development of the money-making brain with all its wealth of knowledge in the artifice and trickery used in the gambling houses of business.
To such a degree has this mental degeneration reduced the civilised peoples, and so universal has the thesis become, that the immorality of the business mind is observable only to the few intellectuals who are still immune from the mental depravity which is gradually but surely dragging the human race back to the level of the animal. The example received in the conduct of business by impressionable minds, and the direction
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given in the training of students in commercial schools, lead to the idea that commerce is a species of occupation which enables clever men to make money and an easy living by preying upon other men whose mental inferiority entitles them to do all the producing and all the drudgery. The whole trend of public thought in the Present time is towards what is commonly called “getting on in the world,” and the full meaning of that, stripped to a naked fact, is “making progress at the expense of some other individual or group of individuals.” National expansion, new markets for manufactured goods, organisation of industry and efficiency, speeding up the output, the control of new territory for the supply of raw material, protective tariffs to strangle opposition, and the whole fabric of National Industry backed by aggressive persistence, and clutching greed of possession both great and small, comprise the thought, education and action of the vast majority of so-called civilised peoples to-day. The consequence of this evolutionary retrogression into animal savagery by the development of brutal and selfish instincts is raging with all its damnable fury at the present moment, when the scythe of death, wielded by the hand of greed, is mowing down in millions the flower and youth of the Nations to satisfy the increasing appetite and lust of gluttony. The moral and intellectual training which should be the foundation of National life has been slowly weakening and giving place to a trend of thought and application which has been playing upon and eneouraging the lower instincts in human nature. Human beings at the best are only animals, and, like any other species, they may, by the influence of training, example and environment, be made docile, tractable and susceptible to good and noble disposition, or cunning, deceit-
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ful, vicious, dishonourable and murderous. The first law of Nature—Self-preservation—is sufficiently strong in human beings to enable them to make all the provision necessary for their welfare on this Planet without encouraging it by the special training of our present system, which is gradually reducing the competition for existence to the level of a universal dog fight. The bent of an animal is towards animal passions and instincts, and it requires steady, constant and firm training of the moral and intellectual faculties in man to enable him to keep the animal within him in proper submission, and make him what a human being should be—"A robust animal under the control of the moral law within himself."
The speed at which man is receding from proper moral and intellectual control and falling under the vicious and criminal habit of living according to the commercial code, is endangering the race to the possibility of arriving at a time in the future, not very far distant, when the “Kultur” of enterprise and expansion will predominate, and when every law, with power behind it, that stands in the way of progress will be a “Scrap of Paper.” The “Dogs of War” of the future will be the human wolves evolved from a hundred generations of training in the science of preying upon one another by methods which each generation makes more dishonourable, more selfish, more viciously greedy, more callously inhuman and more brutally criminal, if that were possible, than the war which, at the present moment, is dragging virtue to lust, and drugging humanity with the poisons of hell. When the curse of greed and avarice has been developed to its full by coddling in the hothouse of commercial civilisation, the world will be peopled by a race so utterly devoid of trust
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and honour towards one another, so regardless of truth and honesty, so ignorant of the principles of moral law and so strong in the belief that might is right, that when they engage one another in war, which they surely will, the animal ferocity of rampant savagery will guide the attack, and the battle-cry of the victors will be “Extermination.” Samples of what the majority of people may become in the parasitical life of dwellers in the cities, where millions congregate, are to he seen in a mild form to-day, when people, lost in the oblivion of urban surroundings, severed by ignorance from the nature wherein they should dwell, watchful of opportunity to obtain their ends irrespective of right or wrong, and cruel even to murder in their unscrupulous pursuit of gain, are to he found, —from the fashion and refinement of society to the footpad in the lane who would send a soul to eternity for the price of a drink, —in everincreasing numbers.
The people of to-day are held fast in the grip of commercial morality. The gamblers, spielers, financial jugglers, lawyers, wire-pullers and opportunists exercise the greatest amount of influence in the framing of laws. The development of the money-making mind, the worship of wealth and the power it holds are stifling the higher intelligence, atrophying nobility of character and destroying the moral principles of mankind. The malignant infection is searching out the dwellers in rural life and peaceful occupations and bringing them under its degrading contamination. The physical standard of the race is being lowered by disturbing the equanimity of the rural population and drawing abnormal numbers, attracted by the festivities and debauchery of the God of Mammon, to the narrower and more vitiating life in the cities. Owing to the drift of people citywards the pro-
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duction of food is not keeping pace with the growth of population, and greater opportunities present themselves to food manipulators to rig the markets and squeeze the consumers. The gambling spirit, being correlative to commercial avarice, is naturally growing apace, and the racecourse is a much more familiar place than the Church, while the gambling hells of the underworld are popular and lucrative institutions. Sport, pastime and frivolity receive greater thought and attention than the serious business of life, and vice and crime, as long as they bear an outward well-dressed appearance and are not openly convicted, are looked upon as a kind of smart accomplishment to be commended.
The hordes of semi-nomad workers who live in the great gamble of Industrial Commerce are becoming restive and threatening and, when they demand a share of the swag, the wreck of the machine is not an impossibility. That lofty moral intelligence which brought the race out of darkness and which should be ever present to guide the destinies of humanity is brushed aside by the force of animalism and the lust of gain, and, by the direction and government of aggressive expansion, the fields of Europe are being fertilised by the bodies and blood of the race, and the curse of greed and arrogance is written across the face of civilisation.
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Education.
Education is a course of training intended to provide the young with a mental and physical equipment calculated to enable them to meet and overcome the difficulties of life, both in their personal interests and in the interests of the Nation. It is also a course of training which should have for its aim the providing of mental equipment for each individual, enabling him to keep in restraint and under proper government the instinctive passions for evil which are inherent in a greater or lesser degree in every human being. The acquiring of knowledge needs no stimulant in the young. It is a natural qualification closely allied to and acting in conjunction with the law of self-preservation, and comes into active existence upon the first dawn of intelligence.
Immediately a child begins to take notice of its surroundings it may be said that its education begins. It enters a wonderland of strange tliin<ars and queer objects, and a field of investigation that gives food for thought and research and the gaining of knowledge through childhood, youth, maturity and the declining years, open before it. The brain cells in the governing chamber of Nature's master animal. Man. lose no time in placing upon record the observations of the conditions of life conveyed to them through the faculties of perception which are the active and natural educators of childhood and youth. Mimicry is the nVst and primary symptom exhibited by Nature in preparing for the protection and guidance of human creatures. The language, accents and mannerisms of parents are conveyed to children who
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reproduce them faithfully in every detail. The everyday duties performed by parents in view of a child are copied by the child and made the subjects of innocent pastime and amusement. The desire for knowledge begins at an early age, and continues through life, ending only when the vital forces are too weak to support any further interest in the surroundings. The varying changes in the social and material conditions of life necessitate adding daily to the education. Consequently it may be said that a man's education begins with the first dawn of intelligence and ends when the shadows of life's gloaming obscure the activities of hustling and vigorous mankind. The day that a man ceases to post to his ledger of knowledge the important occurrences taking place constantly in the world and fails to note the significance of the changes in life's kaleidoscope, that day marks the end of the period to which he belongs; and, during his remaining existence as a living organism on this planet, his body drifts with the tide of current events, while his mind remains stationary in the rapidly disappearing past of which his life is a memory. Every impression which reaches the brain and is capable of being memorised or reproduced, whether it is worthy or unworthy, whether it is knowledge of the highest importance to the welfare of the individual or whether it is a vicious representation of the sordid elements in human nature calculated to fire the passions and stir the animal emotions lurking in readiness to respond, must be considered as knowledge and education. As the storehouse of knowledge in a human being, like everything else, has a limit to its capacity, it should be the paramount desire and anxiety of every parent, gxiardian and government to see that the absorbent minds of the young do not become loaded with matter which may
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endanger the future nobility of manhood by the festering of mental corruption. Although man's education is continuous and life long, it is the thoughts, ideas and impressions which engraft themselves into the expanding minds of childhood and youth that form the unalterable foundation upon which is built the future character and individuality. Mimicry and imitation being such powerful natural instincts in the acquiring of knowledge, and playing as they do a strong part which is inseparable from the lives of young or old, it is important that the examples kept before the keen observation and fertile brain of childhood and youth should as far as possible provide for stimulating the imagination and emulating an ideal which will be elevating and ennobling to the future citizen. The thoughts, actions, language, gait, mental and physical aspirations, and the fervour, industry and devotion exhibited by a people, are a reflex of the generation gone before them. They carry with them, in the active chain of life, the knowledge, thoughts, science and inventions of the silent dead, and transfer them to posterity with those slight improvements or depreciations which evolution is constantly making and recording in the book of life.
One of the primary and eradicable instincts in human beings is a natural admiration for superiority, either mental or physical, in another. The model of manhood daily presented to a child in the person of a teacher is the model which will exercise the greatest influence in moulding the future citizen, and the ideals, sentiments, aspirations, mannerisms and moods possessed by the teacher are reflected in the pupil, and form to a great extent the ground work upon which he builds his life’s career. It is a trite saying that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” This is certainly not true
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Unless the inmates of the cradle, when they emerge from that human chrysalis, are handed over to a capable and of the right type to give them that mental training and development which elevates the man above the animal and equips the people of a Nation with the powers of knowledge, sanity and reason. The Russian people have kept their cradles rocking with a steady rhythm, as their millions show, but their failure in the war and the hopeless chaos, misery and intrigue which are surging in eruption through the land are the resulting consequences of having no schoolmaster to take the children from the cradle and dissipate their ignorance and superstition on the threshold of life.
I am not so much concerned about the syllabus of the schools; there are numerous other writers and speak.is calling out for a reorganisation of the subjects taught which will modernise the education system and bring it parallel with our present scientific civilisation. What I am concerned about is the mental and physical degeneration of the people, which is apparent to any observer who cares to spend an hour watching an average crowd enjoying themselves, and to seriously contemplate the silly, superficial and frivolous tomfooleries that amuse them—the stronger the taint of immorality that pervades the show the better it will draw, and the more it will be appreciated. It is a deplorable indication of public morality that the State is compelled, by the establishment of a censor, to set a limit to the public appetite for immoral pictures, and the proof that the people do appreciate feasting their eyes upon lewd and criminal acts, as represented in pictures, is found in the fact that the purveyors of such "depravity exciters" would not make them if they were not in demand. The peculiar shallow and irresponsible frivolity which during the last
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twenty-five years has made itself apparent amongst the peoples of the British Empire and America is the result of some change which has taken place in the inner lives of the inhabitants. Seriousness and earnest application to duty in the important affairs of life are treated as irritating necessities and inflictions associated with work, and in the minds of the multitude are subsidiary to thoughts of ease, sport, pleasure, frivolity and fashion. This volatile exuberance of character is probably an extraneous growth due to many years of peace and prosperity, to the example of ignorance, suddenly raised to affluence, insulting Nature with the incongruous decorations of fashion, and to the licentiousness of ideas in the invention of amusement. While the people have been carried on the wave of commercial prosperity which has been rolling around the Earth for half a century, they have also been dissipating the nobler and loftier instincts of the race by neglecting the proper training of youth, mainly through the drunkenness of success.
I do not hesitate to say that the most important men in a Nation are the schoolmasters. They are the men who hold in their hands the making of the character and individuality of the future citizens, and, if the schoolmasters are not men of character and strong individuality, from whom are the children to obtain those examples of strength and manhood upon which rest the Empire's greatness ? I do not wish to say that there are not many excellent men in the Teaching Profession, but unfortunately their abilities are cramped and obscured by the humiliating conditions under which they are compelled to work and live. The Teaching Profession as at present constituted affords no encouragement to men of ability to remain in it, and thousands who have started life in the profession have been tempted by the opportunities of
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commerce and tlie greater independenc of more lucrative professions to abandon tbe schools altogether. The public treatment of school teachers is a positive disgrace to society when the vital importance of their work to the welfare of the people is considered. The schoolmaster in most communities has no social standing he is merely the “Dominie.” The miserable poverty of his salary permits no luxury, and he is compelled to pinch and save and scrape in order to live and rear his family and at the same time preserve an appearance of respectability. Although he is an intellectual and charged with the highest and most vital duty to the Nation, his position and prospects are little better than those of an uneducated hodge or a scavenger in the city. He is patronised by commercial magnates and business men, who in many cases are in everything outside of their business as free from knowledge and ideals of the higher order as the African bushman, but, because he teaches their children, they are entitled to afford him a patronising nod. He is referred to generally by the people of the community, whose offspring he is endeavouring to provide with a proper mental equipment, as the “Master,” the “Dominie,” the “Kid Whacker,” the “Old Scold,” and numerous other contemptuous epithets, uttered within the hearing of the children and producing in the youthful mind an antagonism to the teacher, an inward contempt for his authority, and an influence damning to his work and depreciating to the purpose and discipline of the school. The existence of idiotic and obsolete regulations makes the teacher the victim of many indignities, which he is bound to suffer in silence, at the hands of overbearing and ignorant school committees and boards. Boorish parents offer him many gratuitous insults for honestly trying to re-
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claim their semi-barbarous offspring and adapt them to the ways of modern civilisation.
Let us compare the social standing of the Parson with that of the Schoolmaster. The parson has access to the most exclusive and rigidly select homes, where, by virtue of his cloth and profession, he is received as an equal. His intellectual attainments and training are no better than those of the school teacher, but, simply because he is the Spiritual Teacher of unseen, imaginary and intangible things, supposedly leading adults and children alike to the fortress of eternal peace and happiness, he is listened to, respected and vested with a certain amount of authority, and, although he is, by his forced seclusion from common thought, the most ignorant man on temporal affairs in the community, he actually tenders his advice on many things. The school teacher is an architect and builder of character. He teaches tangible and concrete things, frames the structure which holds the knowledge of the past and applies and enlarges upon it for the development and progress of the future. His ability and success are reflected in dignified, honourable independence and progressive greatness in the people. His want of ability and failure result in loss of personal and national self-reliance, moral weakness and superstition, apathy and mental inertia, the loss of the piquancy of competitive ambition, and that indolent degeneracy which is capable of either keeping a nation walled in subjection by ignorance or sending it headlong to disorganisation and decay. Notwithstanding the intellectual knowledge which he must possess, and the vital necessity of his work to the nation, the schoolmaster is merely the "Pedagogue," graded on the social scale about one degree above the navvy or the junior clerk, while the teacher of "exmundane mysteries,"
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who works one day a week, reiterates a time-worn homily, adds a little to the smouldering fire of sectarian hatred, is treated and accepted as a gentleman.
Considering the poverty of the salaries and the accompanying indifference of the public and governing authorities towards the teaching profession, it would be surprising indeed if good men were attracted to it, and those men who are teachers have probably been compelled by the governing force of circumstances to remain in the schools. For more than a decade women have been rapidly invading this profession, and, unless improvements are effected which will raise the status of the profession and make it more attractive to young men of ability, the educating of the children is likely to fall altogether into the hands of women. While I am prepared to admit that a woman is capable of teaching young children successfully, I unhesitatingly affirm that no woman ever lived who was capable of making a “manly man” by the force of example. She may teach him book knowledge with ability equal to a man’s, hut that is only part of his education. She may advise, and illustrate in words, what character, individuality and manliness mean, from a woman’s point of view. She may present historical examples of lofty nobility and physical prowess, and she may produce a smooth, intellectual, sublime temperament, but she will also leave the character of the boy softened and weakened by the influenc of femininity, and a coarse uncouth world will temper, and probably spoil, the character and individuality which she, by virtue of her sex, was unable to guide beyond the boundaries of childhood. Hundreds of people belonging to the respectable working class, and small business people with no special natural ability above the ruck of humanity, encourage their daughters to adopt teach-
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ing as a profession because it is more genteel than domestic service, because it gives greater freedom and independence and a little more money. A large proportion of these girl teachers possess no qualification for their work. They look upon it only as a makeshift occupy tion covering a short period of their lives—the shorter the better—until they can enter their proper and natural sphere, matrimony. Many of them are giddy, babyfaced, characterless damsels with the wheels of romance buzzing in their heads, who find boredom and irritation in the school and the children, and relief in the thought that the work is temporary, and imagination devises a way of escape. A large sum of money is annually spent by the State in training girls for the teaching profession, and no adequate return for the money is ever received; nor is it reasonable to expect it, for the majority of the girls respond to a higher call before they have had time to perform any really useful work in the schools. The consequence is that this tide of immature effeminacy is constantly ebbing and flowing in the schools, to the detriment of efficiency in the education system. If character, individuality, sound knowledge and force are the chief and most important characteristics of a people, and I maintain that they are, it is suicidal for a Nation to leave the moulding of character from childhood to maturity in the hands of weakness and effeminacy. The strongest, noblest and highest types of men should be encouraged to enter the teaching profession in order to keep budding humanity in daily contact with a model to be impressed upon their minds, which they may emulate and remember as the guiding influence of their lives.
An almost universal desire is expressed for a higher standard of education to enable the Empire, in the
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strenuous future which is looming before us, to maintain its position amongst the foremost Nations of the Earth. The Nation which neglects the efficiency that comes through the mental and physical development of its people will reap the fruits of ignorance, which are defeat, subjection and decay. The foundation upon which rests the efficiency and standard of national perfection is the School Teacher, and if the foundation is weak, unstable and of bad material the National superstructure must suffer from the fault}- material upon which it depends for support. If we as a British Race are going to maintain that position of nobility, independence of spirit and manly dignity, which have characterised the AngloSaxon peoples and placed them at the head of the human race for several centuries, we must eliminate that effete submissive placidity and servile effacement which has been imported into the teaching profession during the last two decades. Sordid commercialism has robbed the schools of the men who should be making and strengtheningl the National character, and an imcompetent, parsimonious Department has assisted in the robbery and brought the schools to a state of intellectual and physical poverty through ignorance of the true value of a teacher and through not elevating the profession financially, to prevent it bleeding for less important and more profitable professions and occupations. To teach our children we want men who are capable by mental superiority, force, encouragement and example, of imbuing our boys with the desire and ambition of attaining to true manhood, and our girls with a sense of their duties and responsibilities, sacred to the life of a Nation, and imposed upon them by their sex. We want men in whom the (puck instincts of childhood can find no waverin"- hesitancy of decision, whose authority is firm, yet
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tempered with kindness and justice, whose intellectual attainments and natural abilities elevate them above the sordid pettiness of life's trivialities, who can stand erect and say "Yes" with the unblinking truth of honest intention, and "No" with a decision that disarms the persuasive influences of corrupt desires. We want, in a word, the highest and noblest types of men to train the minds and mould the characters of the young, in order that the future destinies of the Nation, held in the mental and physical strength of its people, may live on and continue to improve the conditions of life under the modern civilisation which the Anglo-Saxon people have given to the world. It may be asked how men of that type are to be secured for the Teaching Profession ? It may easily be done by investing the profession with that dignity and honour which is due to it by virtue of its vital importance to the National welfare, and offering a price for ability, such as we do in sordid commercialism, that will induce youths of promise and intelligence to take up teaching as a profession, and encourage parents to give their brainy sons to a Service, which should be first in importance in the making of an Empire's greatness. It is useless to deny the fact, which is apparent to every observant person, that the moral of the people has suffered a serious depreciation during the last quarter of a century. Truth and honesty are becoming conspicuously absent, and conscientiousness is a barrier to success, in the rank growth of corrupt commercialism—mostly of the Hunnish brand—which has rooted itself into the lives and progress of the people throughout the world. Proof of this state of affairs may be obtained from any business man in any hamlet, township or town, or in the multiplicity of checks, traps, safeguards and detective systems which the ingenuity
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of man has devised to protect himself from the thieving propensities of his fellow man. The tendency of frenzied commercialism in the pursuit of success is to destroy the moral fibre of the people, and sear the conscience against its sensitive and natural sense of propriety. The lowest and worst characteristics in human nature are brought into play in the struggle for riches. Selfishness, conceit, jealous competition, gluttony, animal cunning and covetous acquisition are all developed and kept in active use by the money-makers, and the millionaires and their successful confederates may take to their bosoms the chilling truth that the criminal aristocracy has upon its register some very rich men. The war and all its damnable destruction and world-wide suffering may be traced to the over development of criminal acquisition in the human race, and that criminal development may be traced to the concentration, either directly or indirectly, of all teaching and training upon the one central point of success, as judged by the standard of money value. Virtue and honorable dealing have been overbalanced in the scale of human propensities, and the blood of millions is being poured out in order that we may be apprised of the necessity of restoring the balance and returning to a state of normal humanity. In most human beings the law of self-preservation is sufficiently strong to enable them to make ample provision for their present and future needs and the legitimate needs of progress and increasing population, without submerging the moral laws of humanity beneath the avarice, dishonesty and lying of universal dishonour. While it is essentially vital that the driving forces and natural appetites of men should be strong and vigorous, in the interests of themselevs and the Nation, it is also vital to the Nation that those passions, dangerous as fire when
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uncontrolled, should, under the guidance and direction of moral law, be made the instruments of man’s pleasure and ambition. When an individual or a Nation, which is a collection of individuals, permits the teachings of avarice and the dreams of overriding expansion to stifle the unwritten law of moral right, that individual or Nation is sure to meet the storm of destruction which will certainly ensue when necessity compels a restoration to the balance of natural order. The punishment which will certainly come to Germany out of her war of aggression may he laid at the door of improper teaching* The cult of German superiority, as expressed by her most popular and aggressive writers and preachers in years prior to the war, has permeated her schools through her teachers, and the fetish of her might and excellence has been implanted in the minds of her people to the exclusion of that moral right which recognises the existence of a sympathetic bond uniting all members of the human family. Improper, criminal and immoral teachings, like weeds on a fertile soil, grow rank and rapid, and the German mind, responding to the liberal sowing of the teachers, has produced a crop of infamy so far-reaching and damnable in its influence that it is taking the combined strength of the Nations of the Earth to eradicate it. Arrogance and conceit in their superiority, engrafted into the German people through their schools, have made Germany the burglar and footpad among the Nations, have desecrated and defiled every tenet of honour and proper conduct, and have splashed the face of Civilisation and Christianity with the innocent blood of murdered millions.
The moulding of the human mind is capable of enormous and almost incalculable possibilities for good or evil, and the mischievous and fallacious doctrine which
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has led the German people to believe that force and brutality open the way to progress and expansion has given them a place in history as the exponents of scientific villainy, criminal callousness and sacrilegious righteousness, surpassing all records of the past in savagery, aimed at the extermination of their victims. The example we have of the German people having been changed, through the teaching of improper and vicious doctrines, in two generations from the way and thoughts of average human beings to those of desire for power and position by murder and robbery, should be sufficient warning to us of the vital necessity of training the minds of the young with proper regard to the future life and conduct of the Nation.
Science, mathematics, chemistry, geology, etc., are essential branches of knowledge making for the expansion of progress and meeting the demands of increasing population, but, if the gaining of knowledge means the loss of the proper moral direction of that knowledge, the result is not the elevation of the people to a higher plane of civilisation, but a dangerous weakening of public morality and a lowering of the people, as in the case of Germany, to the level of scientific criminals. The individual receiving education must have a standard of honour and honesty sufficiently high to enable him to appreciate the advantages of knowledge for good and not for evil. In every country examples are to be found of colored peoples and people low in moral self-control using the additional resources which education affords in an entirely vicious and criminal way: hence the records prove that the educated criminal is easily at the top of his profession.
These truths take me back to the point that education,
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to give the best results, must be imparted by men of the highest order, who, by the strength of their individuality, intelligence and high honour, e iorce upon their pupils the rigid principles of truth and proper living, and implant in the minds of the young, by the force of example and encouragement, the vital necessity of maintaining knowledge and moral law upon a common level. Education is intended to place in the hands of the people the power to lift themselves out of barbarism, to improve their conditions of life and enliven their moral sensitiveness to justice and the brotherhood of humanity. A nation which acquires all the knowledge of modern civilisation without at the' same time improving the national code of honour has only exchanged the scalp knife and the hatchet for the weapons of knowledge—the long range guns, the poison gas, and torpedoes of science. The craze of the hour is to speed up and improve the general and technical education of the people, in order that we may meet the national competition, which is anticipated in the near future, with the power of knowledge sufficiently strong to enable us to hold our position in the war of commerce which is sure to come when the war of blood has ended.
The penetration of peaceful trading between Nations, as we understood it a few years ago, has undergone a complete change. Haphazard, easy-going methods no longer meet with success. Method, order and precision, supported by scientific instruments and machinery, must direct the sale and manufacture of goods. Mathematical accuracy in the perfection of competitive progress is becoming more and more necessary every day. Man no longer manufactures articles by the ingenuity and dexterity of his hands. He makes a machine which does
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the manufacturing with speed and precision while he stands by and directs it.
The power of the human brain has exceeded the strength and endurance of the hands, and has brought to the aid of physical fatigue the tireless machine which hums merrily through the long day without sigh or sob or weakening variation of its energy. Man is rapidly becoming the brains controlling and directing a mechanical commerce in an age of mechanical manufacture, in a scientific and mechanical civilisation. The demands made upon man's mental equipment are daily becoming greater, as the scientific development of each succeeding generation is added to that of its predecessor, so that the workman of the immediate future must be possessed not only of stamina and a robust constitution, but he must have a wide range of general and scientific knowledge before he can be considered a qualified and competent member of a workshop engaged in the field of competition for the world's market. The power of knowledge is the force behind the commercial and industrial success of the Nation, and the constitutional and physical fitness of the people are the supports of that power and the vital energies enlivening its activity and at the same time providing for the strength of the Nation as represented by the numbers of its population. Such being the case, we arrive once more at the point that the demand for a better educational equipment of the people in the interests of National welfare calls for the very best teachers that can be procured to give to the children the educational training which modern conditions have made indispensable to their welfare. Raising the educational knowledge to a higher standard means increasing the nervous energy of the people, and increased mental and nervous energy, without a corresponding increase in
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physical ami vital force, only leads to debility and constitutional bankruptcy. Constitutional degeneration has been setting its mark on the British race for two generations. This is amply proved by the numbers of men of military age who have been rejected as unfit to stand the stress of preparation for the rigor of war. The cause of the physical and constitutional degeneration of the people is not far to seek, and is found in the industrial and commercial hives which have drawn millions of the people imo unnatural conditions of living, and deprived them of a fair share of the sunshine and pure air which Providence has so abundantly provided. If the general average of the people show a constitutional weakening, then it follows that they must also show a mental weakening, as it is entirely opposed to the natural order to expect that the mental powers will retain or improve their normal strength in a race declining in stature and increasing in physical and constitutional defects. Industrial commercialism and trade are pregnant with the evils tending towards the demoralisation and deterioration of the race, but, as civilisation and national greatness appear to be dependent upon a system of life full of evils destructive to human beings, the security of posterity depends upon fortifying the people with the defence of knowledge against the destructive influences of an artificial existence. A paradoxical system, which may be called "the ignorance of education," has been manipulating the minds of the pupils, and practically ignoring the fact that they possessed vital organs and bodies requiring the greatest fostering care and development in order that a healthy mind should expand in a healthy body. Until quite recently little or nothing has been done in the direction of making the laws of health the groundwork of education, but I am pleased to see
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that the importance of the bodily development of the children as a national asset is beginning to percolate through the hard skulls of the sordid commeraalists who dominate our Legislatures. Every teacher should have a course of training in Hygiene, and "how to live and be healthy" should have as much, or more, prominence and attention on the Syllabus as mathematics or any other subject. Ignorance of the laws of health is just as prevalent amongst the teaching profession as it is amongst the parents of the children, simply because the teachers and the parents were reared, taught and fed under the same system as guided the thoughts, habits and fashions forming the common practice of their time.
Womanhood in its bloom is marked with the complexion of full and healthy blood and a strong circulation, with a lithe and graceful body and a step which shows the elastic movement of muscles working in the harmony of health, with a reserve of strength holding mastery over the petty annoyances and irritations which grow out of indigestion and anaemia, with a set of regular ivory teeth, placed by nature in a pink setting, and sufficiently strong to perform the work of mastication which makes easy and perfect the process of digestion, and with eyes bright, clear and intelligent, that reflect an appreciation of life, an interest in work, and the expending of energy that makes life happy and the world a pleasant place to live in. I regret to say that the percentage of women of the above type to be seen teaching the children in the schools is very small. The teachers are mostly spectacled, anaemic, languid creatures, lacking in the vital energy which makes for the highest quality of results. They seldom reach maturity with a full set of teeth provided by nature, and are almost con-
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stautly being tortured either by a nerve in a failing: tooth, or a Dental Mechanic ploughing out the decay and endeavouring to stop, plug and patch the mills of digestion, which bad assimilation and impure blood have failed to retain in a healthy state of repair. Male teachers are little better than female. In early youth when the love of sport and games takes precedence over love of study, they are enabled by the demands of their expanding bodies for exercising movement to develop into specimens of manhood well up to the general average, but, when the strain of extra study begins to increase the tax upon their constitutional resources, the tax is seldom met for any length of time, and the lack of substantial "vital reserves," which should have been piled up in childhood by a mother trained in the art of cultivating a healthy human plant in the uncongenial soil of civilisation, soon admits of dyspeptic conditions with their train of nerves, toothache, liver, temper, Doctors, Dentists, Opticians, patent medicines, flannel bandages, and other numerous impedimenta surrounding the victim of indigestion, whose imagination vividly pictures himself as the central figure upon which the diseases of the Universe are operating. Hence we find that many of our male teachers degenerate in a very few years from first-grade footballers, cricket ennis exponents, to pale and flabby-muscled <]<■ Ungentle game of bowls, or other pastime where read and repartee contribute more to the < at of the game than physical exertion. A proper knowledgi the elementary laws of health and how to keep well, instilled into their parents and th< years of life, would have prev< sapping of their vitality v which is a marked feature
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shine and fresh air, the great supporters of life, receive little consideration in the construction of schools, and architects and builders usually get to work as if they were in deadly conflict with these vitalising elements, and build as if they resented their percolating penetrations. It is deplorable to think of the fetid atmosphere in which thousands of children are compelled to spend their school hours, breathing the vitiated and poisonous air expelled from one another’s lungs, and where no beam of purifying light is allowed to disturb the impurity of the microbe-laden fog which fills the schoolroom to the injury of the health of teacher and children alike.
Dental Inspectors are appointed to examine and report upon the teeth of the children, to count and summarise the dead and decaying "molars," to find out why. how, when and at what ages the masticators of the rising generation had failed to assist or take part in the national digestion of the immediate future. The prospect of securing toothsome and luscious joints from all quarters of the Empire appears to be good, but the outlook for teeth, other than the commercial article, to chew with may be looked upon with a good deal of gloomy apprehension by those who think about the future of the race. The examination of the teeth to find out the cause of their early decay is about as valuable as examining l for the cause of its death the bark of a tree that has withered by drought. It is no concern of the teacher if a child is unable to pursue its studies owing to toothache; he merely sympathises and sends the child home. Toothache is not mentioned in the syllabus, so it is not a school affair further than that it interferes with the cramming of the child's brain. The peregrinating inspector never thinks of investigating the contents of the children's lunch bags to find out what kind of un-
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natural packages of inhuman diet are consigned for delivery to the poor little stomachs, struggling under difficulties trying to build healthy men and women out of the mess of chemical concentrations called food. Many of the mysterious confections, gaily coloured and arresting to the eye, that are handed out to children all over the country by slot machines, are more suitable for disintegration with sulphuric acid in a platinum bowl than by gastric juices in the tender stomach of a child.
The tendency of innocence and ignorance is to use newly acquired knowledge more for viciousness than for good, and out of this natural tendency have grown many of the vicious, health-destroying, disease-breeding practices which have been contributing to physical degeneration for several decades.
Thousands of men and women have pursued a course leading by commercial lines to the morbid instincts in human nature, and an incalculable amount of harm has been done by the abuse of knowledge at the hands of people who are ignorant and reckless of the evil consequences of their practices, and look only for the gain they can make out of them. Prudish hypocrisy and a veneer of mock respectability have always stood in gaping horror in the track of education desirable and indispensable to 3'oung people to save them from destructive consequences to themselves and their offspring. Knowledge concerning the evil details of practices indulged in by smart people is surreptitiously obtained, and, in these days of easy morals, the misuse of scientific information enables people to be clever, sociable and respectable, to avoid responsibilities which come in the way of pleasure and friendly intercourse, and to retain the "outward appearance" which is all that is demanded by the moral needs of society. Thousands of children come
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into the world with a fearful handicap of human imperfections and weaknesses, to be struggled with to an early grave, or to keep them in the third grade of humanity through a miserable existence, not because their parents are weak and unhealthy or unfitted to be parents, but because they are not the children of deliberate intention, but the unwelcome accidents of scientific indulgence. Nature's rule of using temptation as a means of fostering reproduction is sufficiently strong to give every incentive to a desire for knowledge of a kind calculated to give free play to temptation, and at the same time provide ;i sufficient margin of safety. Deep and far-reaching injury is being done by indulgences in practices having for their object the cheating of nature; but nature is not cheated without in return exacting a full measure of punishment from those who, even in ignorance, endeavor to set aside her inflexible laws. No proper or adequate steps have been taken to forearm the rising generation with information affording the protection of enlightened instruction upon the abuses which are rampant amongst the people, and at the same time show them the dangers that follow these abuses, in order that the significance of life and the importance of health may be clearly impressed upon them at an early age. Health classes for all children over ten years should be established in the schools, under teachers properly qualified and trained, with the object of illustrating and expounding to the child mind, by simple and detailed explanations of their functions in supporting and promoting life, the complex machinery of the human organs. No narrow prudery or vacillating modesty should be permitted to interfere with this instruction; the use and abuse of every organ should be laid bare in all its naked and revealed activity, just as an instructor would dissect
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and explain the working of a complex machine. Thousands of people, educated to the standard required by the State, who are qualified for ordinary pursuits and are following' in the common rut of citizenship, are as ignorant of their anatomy and the proper care of their own internal and delicate organs as they are of the mechanism of a complicated internal combustion engine. In our present scientific civilisation, when half the food we consume is refined, condensed, preserved, or otherwise chemically treated, a knowledge of the laws of health is more essential than it was when preserved foods were not so commonly used, and the general diet was plain, wholesome and digestible. Commercialism has entered into the present-day supply, distribution and manufacture of all the essential things of life, in such a way that the senses of smell and taste—the natural censors of food—are being constantly cheated and deceived, and, without the assistance of knowledge cannot afford sufficient protection to the body. Medical science has made wonderful progress in overcoming and checking disease, and, although excellent results are shown in the decline of the death-rate per thousand, little or no improvement can be shown in the constitutional strength of the people in offering resistance to disease. The vital resistance to infection in the people of the present generation will not bear comparison with that of their forefathers in withstanding the attacking bacteria. The full and healthy blood produced by the perfect digestion of plain food and by natural living enabled the pioneer settlers in America, Australasia and India to face hardships, dangers and fever beds, solely with the weapon of health, which, without the support and assistance of science, would be impossible to the majority of the people of to-day. Giving my opinion as a layman and stu-
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dent of natural laws, I say that the decline of constitutional strength and the increase of cancer and other dread diseases is due to the failure of the digestive organs to properly assimilate the concocted foods of civilisation under the conditions of living which civilisation provides.
Nature does not permit the premature decay of the teeth, the rotting of the appendix, the obstruction and atrophy of the bowels, or ulcerous growths upon the body in youth or middle age, unless she is being in some way cheated or obstructed in the performance of her functions. Nature neither lies, thieves nor bargains. She has provided man with reason and senses to guide him in ordering his life, and, if he departs from her inflexible rule, he is left to rot and perish to make room for more virile specimens who are following the sacred rule of obedience.
Civilisation is altering the conditions of living more rapidly than the body can accommodate itself to the change without suffering deterioration, even after taking into account the wonderful flexibility of nature in adapting itself to the support and growth of life under the most adverse circumstances. Educational authorities should meet every change which, in the rush of progress, is likely to attack the stamina of the people, with defensive information distributed through the schools for the protection of the victims of rush and hustle, of the fumes and dust of the factory, of the glare and heat of the furnace, of tiie nerves, the anaemia, the dyspepsia, of the body poisons which arise from the office stool, and of the fogs which obscure the sun from the confines of brick and stone in which is earned the daily bread, and which fill the flagged courtyards with the breath of impurity for the human plants growing into material to feed the sys-
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tem of civilisation which is threatening the extermination of the human family. Third-rate men and women with commonplace intelligence who, like phonographs, repeat to the children, without comment, interpretation, or even proper understanding, the lessons and rules which they have themselves learned, cannot be safely entrusted with the control of the schools of the present day, with complex civilisation hourly adding to the destruction of natural conditions. Upon a combination of "physical and mental strength in the people" depends the "strength of the Nation," and to continue the course which education has followed in the past of concentrating almost entirely on the "mental development," mainly in the interests of commercial progress, is to lead to physical degeneration, decreasing birthrate and National weakness. Size, weight and numbers are nature's indications of power, and we can have neither size nor numbers in our people unless we place in their hands the knowledge which will enable them to retain their vitality and physique in the enervating, unnatural surroundings provided by the labour and living of modern conditions. The strain and nervous tension attending the progress and commercial enterprise of the cities uses up the nervous energy of the people at a ruinous rate, and, as the population of the cities and manufacturing centres is yearly showing a preponderating increase over the rural population, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the physical standard and stamina of the people by the natural order of drawing upon the country dwellers for fresh and healthy blood to replenish the waste and deterioration caused by the huddling of multitudes in the vitiating atmosphere of industrial hives.
The time has arrived when it devolves upon the school
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training to produce robust bodies as well as trained minds; one cannot succeed without tbe other in the present race of progress where competition makes the pace, and the weak and incompetent are brushed aside, and tumble by the way. The race of competition is not a peaceful game of friendly rivalry between the individuals of a community, but a stern, earnest and keen battle of commerce and expansion, of international magnitude, where large numbers of uniformly fit and trained people! constitutionally and mentally equipped with health and knowledge parallel with the highest civilisation of the time to which they belong, are required to win out in the international struggle which is becoming keener with each succeeding year.
We must educate our children in a war that will enable them to reach a higher'plane, physically, mentally and morally, than we have succeeded in attaining in the past. Health and physical fitness engender in a man independence and pride in himself; they support and stimulate his mental activity, give him a'true and noble conception of the duties and requirements of life, broaden his outlook, elevate him above the petty trivialities which form the poisons of discord in the home or in the State, and invest him with those characteristics 01 true manhood which enable him to be master of himself and living creation. Too much attention has been given to mental development of a kind which has for its central object the attaining of position and wealth bv the methods of commerce. The all-pervading sp i r jt 0 f hustle and drive and get on and build up and expand and make money, within the Civil law if possible, has in a large degree warped and atrophied the moral sensibilities of the people; and out of the greed and anxitey to get rich a new kind of morality has been evolved, known as "com-
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mercial morality," which permits deception, lying, robbery, blackmail, graft and hypocrisy, and at the same time allows the thousands with blighted consciences who live and prosper by the trickery of trade into society, into the churches and on to the highest pedestals of respectability which the Nation affords. A system of education which expands any particular human characteristic at the expense of the others must of necessity be bad, and it is impossible to deny that health and physique, with moral rectitude and integrity, have suffered a serious deterioration by over-zealous attention to a class of instruction which directs the minds of the pupils to expansion and the duties of citizenship mainly through progress based upon a money value. International jealousies, internal political disorders, industrial unrest, strikes, sabotage, dishonourable practices of employer and employee alike, and the whole surging turmoil of ferment which is furiously working through humanity at the present time, may be traced to the morals and expansion of the commercial mind, and the fictitious value set upon the advantages to the human race of greedily clutching the gold and glitter and tinsel—the shams of civilisation for which men sell their souls and poison the pleasures of life. Many of the customs and practices of civilisation have become obsolete, useless and dangerous, owing to their abnormal growth having thrown the natural conditions of life out of balance and disturbed the harmony which should prevail in normal individuals and in every phase of their existence. In order that people may live under the protection of justice in the form of Constitutional Government, each unit of the Nation must possess a true conception of what justice and fair dealing mean, both to himself and to those with whom he is in immediate contact. The germs of good
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government, in the form of truth, honour, honesty and lofty ideals, with sound, practical, comprehensive knowledge, must exist in each individual unit of the Nation before the “Constitutional System of Democracy’’ can hope to attain the power of governing by “reason and justice,” as against the more barbarous “Autocratic System” of governing by “fear and force,” which happens when the majority of the people are partially or wholly uneducated and live in the darkness of ignorance. Most of the Governments of the present day are a reflex of the trend of thought bending the minds and ideas of the people towards aggressive progression and expansion, and almost criminally forgetful of race welfare. It is only to he expected in an age of fervid huckstering that the tainted code of “commercial morality” must of necessity permeate with all its searching viciousness through the Legislatures. Consequently present-day aspirants for parliamentary honours are seldom actuated by a desire to sacrifice their time and talents, for the welfare and general improvement of the people, hut for selfish reasons and personal advantage, or for the benefit of some clique or special section of the community who are anxious for laws or amendments giving to their trade, professions, or district, a lift, a pull, or a push into prominence of monetary value. They will expend volumes of oratory in non-committal promises, woven in the artifice of cunning design, in order to secure the coveted majority affording the seat in Parliament.
vcicu majuiiiv me ocai ui x aiiiauicm-# This rapacity and vulturism is silently, surely and effectively gathering our Legislative Systems into its maw. The greed passion is so stealthily creeping upon us that in our hustle and hurry we have failed to observe that it is taking hold of our most vital institutions. The whole bearing of our training and mental direction is
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upon get, and have, and hold. Cunning and acquisitiveness are becoming the predominating characteristics of the people. Every thought, action and movement is weighed upon the gold scales and tested by the system of profit and loss. Legislation of a humanitarian kind, based upon moral law, meets with more sarcasm and sneers than support. The moral code is, "Have a respectable, confident outward appearance, and keep within the civil law." If a man possesses money it is a sufficient introduction and passport to admit him anywhere, no matter what shape his head may be, or how much he may resemble Bill Sykes; he is not expected to be respectable; he is only expected to look respectable. Anyone not possessed of a past or a bone chest is considered decidedly uninteresting. And out of this mess of rancid growth which has been slowly but surely changing the true disposition of the people we expect to maintain the National Structure and hand down to posterity the vital tenacity and honour of our forefathers.
“Perish the Nation that sinks the moral laws of humanity beneath the greed of gain!” Before the Nation is completely overwhelmed by this iniquity of avarice showing an ever-increasing dog spirit, we must examine our path of progress, and arrest the abnormal growth and development of the baser instincts in human nature, and make them subservient to the nobler attributes which tend to the better and happier general conditions that remove the man above the animal. If our whole education and training for a few more generations is concentrated, as it is at present, almost entirely upon the point of success as understood by accumulation and expansion even at the expense of others, as exampled by the expansion of Germany over Belgium, the future
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will see, not a race of normal human beings, but a race of human wolves, cunning, greedy and selfish to a degree, and damnable in their crutly and inhumanity to one another.
The cry of reformers, social purity makers and dreamers of Utopia is for the education of the masses. This demand for education is a legitimate and proper desire shared by all classes and all shades of opinion, and aiming at the one central object—the progress of the Nation and improvement in the general condition of the mass of the people. Very few of those who are loudly clamant for education realise the true significance of what it means, or view it as meaning anything else than a weapon of offence or defence to be used in the battle of life which men are constantly waging upon one another. It is possible for a course of training, unvarying in its methods and following through two or three generations, to entirely change the dispositions and temperament or the physical appearance of a race of men. Having regard for the strength of the animal instincts still possessed by the human race, it is an easy matter, by inculcating improper doctrines through three successive generations, to make a race of criminals, capable of any enormity or the most heinous cruelties, and at the same time to calm their consciences and justify their deeds by the teachings they have received.
The rigid moral code and the high value set upon manliness and honour in the British Schools of a century ago and later, and the wholesome view that the teacher’s cane was an instrument of correction, had a powerful influence in making the British Race what they are—the pattern race of the world. With the extension of the franchise and the spread of general knowledge, it would he reasonable to expect that the intel-
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lectual standard of our Legislatures and local Government Institutions would show an improvement, and that, having the whole population to choose from, the people would return the very best men as their Representatives, and that these men would gradually diminish the differences and smooth out the difficulties and inequalities which militate against a perfect cohesion of the people in every State. Such, however, is not the case. A few men who have special ability are to be found in every Legislative Institution, but the intellectual standard of the rank and file of Public Men is on a dead level with the average intelligence of the people, while the debates and discussions illuminating the making of laws are frequently diatribes reeking with insincerity and hypocrisy, and so shallow, superficial and illogical that they are painful to the hearing of honourable, intelligent men. Members of Legislatures are scarcely to blame for this state of affairs, as they are the unconscious victims, or, more properly speaking, products of a system of education and customs which have grown out of modern civilisation. Instead of our education system moulding and directing civilisation for the improvement and uplifting of humanity, modern customs have gripped education and degraded it as an instrument for furthering and developing the latent and most vicious instincts in mankind. The taint of Mammon runs through every course of education from the primary school to the University. The pursuit of knowledge is fostered and encouraged by the lure of ultimate gain. Professions and occupations are chosqn with the one main object of making as much money as possible with the least possible effort or personal inconvenience. Parents train their children, not with the intention of making them better men and women than they are themselves, but with the idea of
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improving their social and financial positions, which frequently results in a lowering of their physical and moral strength, and a pruning of the genealogical tree. An erroneous impression exists that education should divorce a man from manual labour, and permit him to strut about in immaculate linen and fine raiment, living upon the labour of others. Nature makes gentlemen; education only polishes them; and the luminous sparkle of the genuine article may often be seen shining through the black on the face of a coal heaver, while all the polishing of the combined Universities of the Earth would not refine the coarser instincts of some of the people of common clay who sit on the thrones of finance and move in the drawing-rooms of modern society.
At the present time anxiety is felt throughout the civilised world for the security of the future, in consequence of the boiling turmoil of unrest which is keeping the industrial peoples in a liquid state of dissatisfaction. Faction leaders, with quack regulations, fire the brains of their listeners with burning words urging the necessity of returning to Parliament men holding their opinions. Each Faction and Clique does the same thing. Everyone has a grievance or a wrong to be righted. Their Representatives, biassed in their envy, jealousy and suspicion of their opponents, and keenly appreciative of their own personal interests, meet in Parliament. The atmosphere of the House is charged with the passion of opportunity seeking an advantage; no Party ever concedes to the other a moment’s trust in the honesty of their intentions; all laws are made in a spirit of antagonism; the debates seldom reveal the true thoughts of the speakers, being mostly couched in evasive language intended to give a strategical advantage over the enemy. The true intention and purpose of Par-
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Lament as an Institution for making just laws and holding the scales between all men is lost in the execrable intrigue and jobbery which shuffle the laws of the Country into existence. These crude, equivocal regulations are placed upon the Statute Book, to be interpreted and digested by the legal sharks who are lying in wait for the feast of garbage which is annually thrown out by the Ship of State. And out of these institutions, where prevail the spirit and disposition of a canine pack dividing the spoils of the chase, sensible citizens expect to obtain the means, through the honour, honesty, truth, justice and ability of our Legislators, of securing industrial peace and mutual confidence, harmonising with the pleasures of life.
If we breed dispositions of antagonism in the people, and educate the children by inculcating 1 doctrines tending to foster and develop the worst that is in them until it is strong enough to keep the best in submission, it does not require a prophet to foresee that logical and compassionate reason will become a gradually diminishing quality in the commonwealth, and jealousy, suspicion, dissatisfaction and dishonesty, with their following of strikes, industrial obstruction, exploitation, sabotage, the bitterness of hate, and bad government, will grow in intensity until the Nation is brought to the brink of revolution and civil war. Many peaceful citizens wonder in sorrowful regret why it is that the civilised countries are kept almost constantly in a state of industrial upheaval, and why feeling and resentment between employer and employees should suddenly reach a white heat, as it often does, without apparent reason. Few ever get down to bedrock principles in search for the disturbing evil. Everyone expects to find a panacea for the lust of greed in regulations framed in the Legis-
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latures, and written on flimsy, destructible parchments, by men as barren of the salve that heals the human wrongs as those who cause the strife and damn the consequences to the innocent. The real cause of the political and industrial ferment agitating and disturbing the course of progress with interruptions, extortions and hold-ups, which, when viewed from the aspect of living under modern advantages, appear to be idiotic and insane, may be traced to the humane dispositions and moral sensibilities of the people having suffered a serious depreciation through the efforts of high pressure concentration upon success and acquisition as meaning the best that the world has to give, and by glorifying money with the fallacious superstition that it is the material power controlling ease, pleasure and happiness in all things. Conscientious principles, humanitarian feelings, fellow consideration, fraternal ties, love, truth, and a watch upon the honour line that runs through the deeds of men, are looked upon as the bonds of sentimental and primitive peoples, useless in the rush and hustle and frenzied grip of the modern citizen, and cast upon the scrap-heap of present-day sensibilities as things obsolete, hurtful and obstructive to civilised rapacity, to be carefully shut within the four walls of the Church tor six days of the week, and viewed and listened to through a veil of hypocrisy upon the seventh. When the pursuit of gain and dollar worship grows to be a passion and a fetish, and produces in a Nation a state of public mind in which moral atrophy and callous indifference to the rights of others is the predominant centre round which every- private, social and political movement finds activity, then it is to be expected that the elements winch make for continual quarrelling amongst the people arc present in sufficient quantity to keep the Country
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in a continual state of disagreement and unrest. This is the point which we have almost reached at the present time, and the silent and unsuspected growth of these characteristics in the people, due to want of proper balance in our system of training and in our guiding thoughts, is to be found in the canker gnawing at the root of our social system, and making “Scraps of Paper ’ of every code of honour given to man by his Maker.
Any hope of bettering or improving by Legislative experiments tbe unrest and spirit of jealous suspicion arising out of the prevailing antagonism of competitive greed is as remotely impossible as the success of honesty iu the modern system of commerce. The hope of the future in better and happier conditions, animating the forward movement of peaceful progress and elevating the people above the sordid squabbles around the "Flesh Pots" which are degrading to our public and private life, lies in producing, through our Education system, a psychological change in the rising generation, which will give a true and normal balance to the mind, and keep in submission the brutal instincts which are threatening the submergence of everything good and noble in humanity. Ample proof of the weakening of the higher moral sensibilities of the people, and the fixing of all the mental and physical powers intensely upon overcoming obstacles, either material or human, obstructing the path of success, is to be seen every day in the callous and unscrupulous injustices which men holding the advantages will hand out to their fellow men, not with blush or shame or twinge of conscience, but with gloating pride and inward chuckles of satisfaction at having scored a success to the loss and chagrin of an opponent or a victim. The best example existing in the world to-day of the moral depreciation of a people through the aban-
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donment of the principles intended by nature to govern human relationship is the conduct in the present war of the Germans invading neighboring territories, brought into comparison with the conduct of the Germans who invaded France in the war of 1870 and 1871. The Germans of 1870 were gentlemen in comparison with their descendants of 1918, and the evil influence which has changed a normal and placid people of half a century ago into fiendish criminals capable of revelling in the most outrageous atrocities and destruction is found in the damnable doctrines of greed and expansion published by their authors, preached in their pulpits, and taught in their schools, until every nerve and fibre of the Nation began to vibrate and thrill in expectation of the goryfeast of conquest for which they had undergone three generations of mental preparation.
The high code of honour in England, which has been the bulwark of Democracy throughout the world and which is known as "British Honour," has stood the test of many a bitter struggle and has never failed, even without the support of deed or contract, to hold the confidence of those who wanted her assistance—they knew and felt that "Britain's Might was Bight," that her honour sealed the bondage of her promise, and her promise was a thing that rooted in her soul. This code of honour did not have its origin amongst men whose idea of Government cannot rise above the multiplication table, balance sheets, and the treatment of human beings as if they were so many stock to be herded, yarded, and valued according to their separate output, but amongst those who held that Honour was a sacred thing, springing from the wells of life were all men are akin, and holding mastery over the passions and material things which link men to the animal. Britain's code of honour
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is the sinews of her might and the ramparts of her progress and expansion, and while we keep that honour bright and clean, reflecting justice to one another and to those beyond our commonwealth with whom we have communication, the standard of Britain will continue to be the international code holding the scales of justice for humanity.
The opening of the flood-gates of commerce throughout the world and the commercialising of every institution, are threatening our people with contamination, and the lowering of the moral code is making itself manifest to the student in the almost general disregard of the common obligations of life which the inhabitants should extend to one another. Before the taint which is affecting us becomes a rot, we must check the growing corruption, and by beginning at the foundation of our system, which is the school, inaugurate a reorganisation in our methods of training which will produce a higher order of being, mentally, physically and constitutionally, than the schools have been turning out for a number of years. The evils which have become part of present-day commerce cannot be suddenly eliminated, but must be turned to good by doubling them back upon our Education System for the purpose of training, developing, and defending the good and noble that is in us. In other words, we must tickle the passion of avarice by offering sufficient money to purchase the individuality, brains and ability of men capable of lifting our schools out of the rut of mediocrity, and training our boys and girls not only to be enterprising and progressive citizens of a great Nation, but to be noble and honourable in their enterprise and jealous of the justice of their Institutions.
Instinctively our Governing Institutions should be
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“Paternal Institutions,” conducted for the protection and guidance of the people as a whole by tactfully encouraging and controlling the versatile and innumerable temperaments possessed by the National Family. It is impossible for men with strong commercial instincts and business training to become successful Statesmen or Politicians, for the very good reason that the myriad variations in the dispositions and characteristics of the people will not amicably respond to the one hard and fast rule of business principles. The qualities of broadminded unselfishness and elastic sympath yare fatal to the success of business, and the lack of these qualifications is fatal to the success of a Statesman; consequently Business and Statesmanship are diametrically opposed to each other, and whenever the Government of a Country comes under the control of the business element, the pulse of the Nation begins to quicken, and the fever of suspicion and unrest rises to disturb the continuity of labour and the harmony of industrial peace. The truth of that statement is to be found in that great modern republic, America, where hustle and rush and dollar hunting has reached its zenith in the production of millionaires; but notwithstanding the fact that America is the home of the industrial giants, she has never trusted one of them to sit upon the sacred cushion of her “Presidential Chair,” and has religiously elected men with academical brains, the Washingtons, Lincolns, Garfields, and Wilsons—the noblest type of men that ever graced a Ruler’s seat or sat in judgment on a people. When the existence of a Nation is the stake for which the guns of war are shooting, self-preservation compels men to sink their differences and seek the best amongst them to lead and guide and save them from the slavery of defeat. In their distress and dire necessity, men instinc-
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lively find the best, and it is always the men of high ideals, expansive minds, and strong moral courage who meet the gaze of those in extremities. Britain was compelled to put Lloyd George in the position of Prime Minister, where probably commercial interests would never have tolerated him in normal times; America already had Wilson; and the necessities of war found Foch, Haig, Pershing, and other great Generals. Thus we have the highest and noblest guiding the destinies of the Allies—the soldiers and the men —and commerce in its proper place making and finding, under higher direction, the sinews of war. It is pleasant, joyful and consoling to know that, with this perfect, concrete and natural combination, we are winning, and that the damnable doctrine of greed, force and aggression will receive a crushing defeat by the “Majesty of Moral Law.”
If men of the higher order, with academical minds and the moral strength to hold the Nation confident and steadfast and to fight injustice to the death, are necessary in time of war, they are just as necessary, if not more so, in times of peace, to guide the people in the path of justice and keep the wrongs of cowardice in meek submission. Every greedy man is a moral and physical coward and a shirker, if the laws and conditions under which he lives will permit him to follow his natural inclinations. He will take refuge behind any pretext or equivocation to save his precious body from danger, while his moral sensibilities are so callously impervious to shame, scorn or sarcasm, that no possible kind of invective will wound or disturb them.
Under the prevailing system of progress which is gathering the people of the world into its grip, great and wonderful things are being accomplished by the aid of scientific and mechanical knowledge. But notwith-
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standing the victorious march of science which is devastating the face of nature and laying bare her most sacred and long-kept secrets, there is still something which nature is not giving to man's inquisitive peregrinations, and that is the secret enabling man to be happy under the ever-increasing load of knowledge with which he has burdened himself since he forced the lock on Nature's book. The grandeur, luxury, scientific and mechanical aids, conveniences and equipments, and the general application of the most intricate discoveries to the daily lives of almost the whole of the inhabitants seem to have failed to bring the human race even the smallest iota of satisfaction, or a particle of increased contentment or happiness. When we consider that the rapid increase of scientific civilisation makes a corresponding demand upon the people for increased general knowledge in order that they may understand the intricate working of the system surrounding them and in which they live, we must appreciate the fact that there is a corresponding increase in the expenditure of nervous energy, and a mental tension which is almost constant, and which tends also to a corresponding increase in irritableness. bad temper, discontent, unhappiness, and frequently bad health and constitutional break down. Nature made man heir to certain hereditary right?. privileges and concessions, free of cost, but immediately he wants more than his hereditary portion from her infinite stores of reserve, he is compelled to pay a price in some form equivalent to the nature of his demands. Man's most valuable assets are health and happiness, and out of these assets Nature makes him pay the bill of costs for every formula, outside his proper inheritance, which he filches from her great and magnificent laboratory.
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TV e come back once more to our Education System and ask if it is possible to have a bigbly-educated and scientific people, and at tbe same time bave tbem bealthy and bappy. Tbe answer, judging by tbe working of tbe system up to tbe present time, is “No!” But it is impossible to return to primitive barbarism, and as we bave not yet plunged too deeply into tbe maelstrom of mental frenzy, witb nerves quivering in response to tbe scientific surroundings of life, we still bave time, by realising that our system is endangering our most valuable assets, to make such adjustments and alterations as will enable us to proceed witb our scientific knowledge and civilisation, and at tbe same time retain tbe primitive instincts of being able to enjoy tbe pleasures of life in a bealtby and natural way.
All these things are laid at tbe door of Education, and tbe burden of dealing with tbem is upon tbe shoulders of tbe schoolmaster. Upon him rests the momentous problem of training tbe minds and bodies of future citizens to filch from Nature tbe secrets which will keep tbe Nation in tbe forefront of civilised progress, and at tbe same time preserve the stamina, physique and health of the race. He is charged witb the responsibility of making men keen, alert, enterprising, full of intelligence, and fired witb the ambition of making themselves tbe leading men on tbe earth, while living above tbe level of excessive greed. He must instil into tbe character and dispositions of plastic youth the supreme truth that man is a creature possessed of a full complement of the passions and desires of an animal, which are given to him by a Creator to be used, under tbe guidance of proper government within himself, for tbe pleasure of himself and others. Passing through his hands is the human material in the crude and rough state, and the National
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Structure of the future will be a reflex of his skill, either in its perfection as a homogeneous entity, combining and engaging its multitudinous parts in one harmonious whole, or straggling in a detached and ramshackle fashion, without rhythm, direction, community of interest or that cohesive disciplined organisation which,is only possible with a high general intelligence, and without which chaos is eternally threatening the Nation. Nature starts every man from the same mark. No matter what the standard of knowledge possessed by his parents may be, the child is born to the standard of ignorance which is made the common starting point of all humanity. The monotonous drudgery of a teacher's work is impossible of alleviation and unalterable in its application. Every year brings its crop of human plants from the mysterious sources from whence came the "Topsies" of the Universe. Each little crude and plastic mortal, conceived and born under animal direction, and having for the first few years of its life more guidance, so far as its own powers are concerned, from animal instinct than from human reason, passes into the hands of the teacher to be brought step by step up the ladder of knowledge, and imbued with those higher and finer sentiments of which the human mind is capable and which are necessary to the maintenance of man upon his exalted position in Creation. Some ar? alert and active, and reach the topmost rungs of the ladder with speedy alacrity; to those the world is indebted for the links that bind the history and knowledge of the past with the present, and make preparation for the future. Others plod with steady industry and perseverance on and upward, to halfway positions and beyond; those are the body of t)u> Nation, holding the springs of its vitality and energising every movement of its life.
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A large number, dull, flabby, indolent and diseased, remain below the middle and upon the bottom rungs of the ladder, only a few removes from the animal of their origin; those are the “tail of humanity”; thousands of them are the “misfits of parental ignorance and educational darkness; they fill the menial positions of life, not because nature intended them to be menials, but because of the primitive ignorance of their predecessors and contemporaries; they fill the prisons, not because they do not possess the average amount of good as understood and intended by the Creator, but because the bad which is in every “Human,” like a noxious weed has grown and thrived, because the good has received no proper cultivation; they fill the slums, the hovels, and the pestilential areas of the cities, not because they love the slums, the hovels or the pestilence, but because they have been bred within the walls of a civilised system over which grins the curse of greed, and out of which avarice draws the human instruments who guide the machines of profit.
From this medley of talent, ambition, genius, perseverance, indolence, animalism, criminal taint, and hope poisoned by an outlook of continual poverty, the teachers build the national structure. And yet we expect to have a bold, noble and enduring edifice from this raw material, crude and reactionary, with workers composed mostly of girls and women lacking in special ability, and a few men who are sapped of their individuality and constructive independence by a system which recognises neither the value nor the importance of their work to the Nation. When the leaders of the people and the people themselves become fired with the idea that the national character comprising strong and confident personality, clear intelligence and a wide general knowledge of all
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things, and how to be vigorous and strong in themselves and their offspring, is moulded into permanent shape in the schools, and that the Teacher is the national architect who makes the Statesman, the Scientist, the Artisan, the Business Man, the Labourer, and the intelligent Mother of the future generation, then will the Teachers be elevated from the bondage of mediocrity to a position of dignified importance consistent with their vital necessity to the Nation, and surrounded with those priceless attractions alluring to the highest and noblest types of men. When the Teacher's work is recognised as the basis of National greatness, an improvement may be looked for in the national character, and much of the acrimonious bitterness pervading the industrial life, and many of the inequalities which are inhuman and unnatural, will begin to disappear when men have a truer conception of their relationship to one another, and when they realise that Nature provided higher and nobler things for man to do than prey upon his fellow man by polluting the channels of joy and happiness for himself and others by the pursuit of dross.
A system of education in the hands of men of the highest order, which gives to the people a true conception of life, cannot fail in its elevating influence to produce the best and finest that human nature has to give, and result in a national phalanx sufficiently strong, cohesive and tenacious to resist and overcome, if necessity requires it. any other national system which neglects to base the training of its people upon the fundamental principles of natural and moral law.
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Patriotism.
The rumblings of International discontent and the yellow flame of racial jealousy, combined with razoredged commercial competition, flowing outward from a people vigorous and prolific, burst from its crater like a smouldering volcano, and the lurid flame of war shed its withering light over the Planet. The portentous “Declaration” of War, a thing small, puny and unpretentious, but a “seed of damnation” fertilised by the explosive force of all the concentrated enmity of the elements, and growing in rapidity consistent with the inflammatory nature of the soil of its infernal setting, soon spread itself around the world, confining within the shades of its fearful gloom, death, misery, sorrow, pestilence, and all the added excruciations of body and mind which make the human sufferers doubt even the justice of Heaven. The message “War is Declared” brings the Nation to “Attention,” and lightning thoughts pass through the minds of men and women as the various possibilities of loss or gain, or death, or the miseries of defeat, unfold themselves to the thinkers, according to the manner in which it is most likely to affect them individually. The Stock-holder thinks of the wreck of his National Securities. The Ship-owner thinks of his ships and the possibility of their destruction. The Merchant thinks of his stocks and of his business connections with men in other countries who have suddenly become enemies. The Mother with several sons of military age looks at them with outward calm and inwardly trembles at the thoughts of what fate may have in store for them
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when they enter the area where the crash of conflict makes the air scream with fragments of flying death, while before her mind passes a kinematograph of their lives as they unfolded themselves into manhood. She knows the anxious days and pain of mind awaiting her, when her flesh will tingle to the agony of her boy's wounds, and her sleep be disturbed by nightmares of the hellish pandemonium, but she feels that some reward is hers; she has been a "live cell" in the body of the Nation, and as in duty she played her part in the Great Organism, so in duty, if in anguish, she bids her sons "be men" ! She it is and she only who, amongst the many grades and phases of "Patriots," can claim to be a Patriot in the true significance of all that is great and noble.
The men in youth and maturity, upon whom falls the responsibility of proving by courage, resource and endurance, the strength and vitality of the Nation, hear the call of War with feelings varying from fear to indifference, including pride of race, determination, insulted dignity, righteous justice, hatred, protection of the weak, and that inborn "indescribable something" wbich makes men feel that the Illustrious Dead from whom they have descended expect them to uphold their inheritance by steeling themselves to look into the face of Death with stern defiance in defence of the honour of the past and for the protection and security of the future.
In order to stem the threatening avalanche of destruction, men are drawn closer together; social barriers begin to crumble by the force of necessity; petty jealousies and local differences arc forgotten; domestic quarrels are heal in!, and the strife arising out of the struggle for existence in conflict with human selfishness is quelled
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by the overawing menace of defeat and National subjection to the humiliating indignities and cruelties of the Conqueror. Danger dissipates men’s differences and strengthens their unity and cohesion by the natural law of bringing them together for the purpose of presenting a solid front to the common enemy, in the interests of their mutual benefit and protection. The feelings of patriotism by which men are moved to act in defence of their heritage and their honour have an extensive variation, ranging from firm determination to “win honourably or die” in the higher moral orders of men, to the flaccid doubts and shivery waverings of men who form the ‘‘Ambush Brigade” and regard their own precious skins and the skins of their offspring as the greatest assets of the Nation. Some have the spirit of adventure, spurred on by the call of duty, finding in the awful gamble in which their life is the stake and the honours which they may win merely the tawdry drapings of the game, the major excitement which life on this planet affords.
The wonderful adaptation of the human being to all the conditions multiplied in variety which appear to disturb peaceful existence is exemplified in its most marked degree by the grim and silent acceptance by the people of war conditions, with their daily record of horrors and atrocities. In time of peace a catastrophe such as the wreck of the “Titanic,” involving the loss of many lives, causes a shock to be felt by the whole civilised world, whereas in the grim necessities of war the same people whose humane sensibilities were grievously disturbed by an accidental calamity can, when supported by the knowledge that necessity is the law, read columns of war casualties and atrocities with calm and determined composure, and if it happens to be a few thousands of the enemy who are slaughtered the feeling is one of positive
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satisfaction. Such are the sentiments and feelings of human beings when the law of self-preservation is the predominating factor governing the collective and individual interests of the people.
Patriots, like all others, are of assorted kinds and grades. Some are so whole-souled and genuine in the strength of their attachment to their native land and the sacred memories associated with its Institutions that they consider their lives and bodies as National property, to be used to the best advantage in protection of the soil of their inheritance. Next to France, whose people have shown in this war the greatest cohesion, tenacity, endurance and unflinching National sacrifice that the world has ever seen, the British Nation probably possesses the largest percentage of genuine patriots; but the war has shown that throughout the Empire there is more than a sprinkling of flag-wagging, loud-voiced “barrackers,” whose patriotic efforts are chiefly confined to strategical moves lauding the importance of their home work in winning the war. The majority of these spurious patriots belong to the class where one would reasonably expect to find them—amongst the “pettifogging Politicians” and the mercantile and business profiteers who see an opportunity to fatten like leeches upon the blood of the battlefield. It is mournful and distressing to see that men have sunk to such depths of degradation, through the evil influences of commercialism having gripped them in such a stranglehold of grasping lust, that they are capable of posing as patriots, and at the same time perpetrating the most outrageous extortions upon the parents, wives and children of the men who are fighting and dying for the country, and incidentally for the “profiteering patriots” who are gloating over the unholy feast. There is a cannibalistic vulturism in
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the human race, more pronounced in some than in others, which awakes from its latent slumbers when death, affliction, pestilence, or the destruction of war is abroad in ;he world, and affords to those who are abnormally strong in the preying instinct an opportunity of gratifying their wolfish voracity on the helplessness of those who are the victims of the general disorganisation. Examples are not wanting of shipping magnates who have piled up huge profits, running into hundreds of thousands of pounds, by charging excessive and extortionate rates of freight upon the necessities of life re» quired by the soldiers at the front and by the vast home army providing the sinews of war. The pirates of old pursued their nefarious calling upon the open seas, conquering and robbing their victims in fierce conflict full of danger and adventure, and frequently losing their lives in the enterprise; but their descendants of the pre* sent day, comfortably ensconced in the luxury of elaborate offices established on shore, have shifted their field of operations to the land, and instead of thieving the cargoes at sea they allow them to be delivered, and by means of their control of the ships they levy extortionate tribute from the consumers who are starved into receiving the goods.
These present-day "Pirates" are hailed as "Patriots"; they lend, at remunerative rates of interest, the proceeds of their well-protected enterprise to a patronising Government for purposes of war; they direct, guide and advise the Authorities of the hest and most expeditious methods of transportation, and, having an inside knowledge of the National requirements and of the huge and vital business of Shipping, they sail under the flag of personal interest.
The true patriots of the Maritime Empire, who have
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held the supremacy of the sea, are the men confined within the hulls of the ships, who with calm determination have gone to their duty knowing that the seas are infested with the most diabolical instruments of scientific destruction, and that between embarkation and the end of the voyage they have many chances of reaching the silence of eternity. Is it the hope of personal gain that induces these British sailors and men who feed the furnaces below the water-line to step into the hulls which they know may be their common coffin? No lust so tainted and immoral weighs the pride of race within the souls of these rugged sons and sires who on the seven seas breathed for centuries the salted mists of freedom. An upstart race of landlubbers had dared in deadly conflict to dispute their title as the Masters of the Sea, and to drive them from the ocean tracks which have become almost as familiar as the paths and lanes of Merry England, where they gambolled in their childhood and where dwell the sweethearts, wives and children of the “British Tars.” They scorn with swift derision a dastard foe whose cowardly attacks upon the weak and the innocent only steel the determination of the British Seamen to firmer resolve, in showing to a skulking enemy that they are still the accredited sons of Neptune, and that their Island Home is snug and secure within her seamen’s circle which forms her impenetrable bulwark, and shows none of the weaknesses of senility which were anticipated by a miscalculating foe. Their brothers, mates and chums are holding the lines with the Allies; the strength of their resistance depends upon safe and constant communication with the army of shop-workers in the Homeland, and with the sources of food supply at the Empire’s outposts. No flicker of doubt ever enters the mind of a man in that vast land army, even when the strain is
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threatening the crash of the Empire; from General to private they know that their lines of communication with the Nation’s Heart are safe and reliable, that the pulses of the men on the ships from bridge to stokehold are beating in unison with their own, and that the men who breathe the spirit of Drake and Nelson as they sweep the seas of a foe too despicable to defile the clear blue of the ocean will suffer extermination in defence of their heritage, their traditions, the loved ones in their Island Home, and their chums in the Flanders mud. These, in conjunction with the men who are stemming the devastating rush of the Kaiser’s mechanical army, are the heroes, the patriots, and the sufferers. Material reward is not the object which they have in view, and no reward or gain, however great, would be sufficient for a man in youth with all the joys ahead to play his life against. Something more than appears to human vision is in operation, which secretly compels men to offer their lives to sacrifice and their bodies to mutilation, without hope of gain or betterment in this world, and, if they live through the hellish ordeal, with even chances of passing their term of life in pain and misery. That something finds expression in the word “Patriotism,” the link that binds men and women to the associations of the past, and locks them in the bondage of duty to the Illustrious Dead. The sacred soil which holds the dust of those who gave them life by some occult telepathy inspires the deeds which men and women do, and helps them to bear the sufferings and tragedies of war for love of country.
In the stress of war the ties of blood in the National Family are at high tension, and myriad thoughts of encouragement, dread, sympathy, prayers, paternal and fraternal love, are passing in a maze of telepathic communication between the men holding the battle-torn
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frontiers of the Nation and those who are dear to them at the ends of the earth. These high tension vibrations of the cords of human sympathies and anxieties, attuned to their utmost pitch of patriotic fervour and determination by the gigantic concentration of the mind of the Nation upon the object of the Nation’s existence, have bleached the head of many a parent, and sent to their last long sleep many noble patriots whose last thoughts and prayers were for their loved ones at the front, and for the freedom of their native soil, where soon their ashes would be laid. It is fortunate for the Empire that this grand spirit of patriotism pervades the vast majority of the British people, and while that Spirit lives the Nation will live, to hold the scales of justice for mankind and bring to reason and submission the monsters of aggression who are attempting to stalk through the universe by the law of force. But this greatness and noble resolve of the people to tenaciously cling to their birthright is not free from malfeasance on the part of many individuals who are blatantly vociferous in patriotic utterances, and are at the same time, under the shadow of the flag, perpetrating the most infamous outrages upon their fellow citizens by the instruments of commercialism. The lust of greed seems to be awakened to extraordinary activity by the noise of war, and the shameless profiteers, like thieves taking advantage of a din and a rush of excitement, profit by the confusion and reap a rich harvest while the mass of the people are thinking, not of the sacrifice or the gain, but of the salvation of the Nation. Wizards of Finance in the Legislatures of the Empire float war loans free of income tax and at high rates of interest, enabling their friends and themselves to escape their legitimate obligations to the Nation and provide for future substantial incomes,
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which are privileged to exist because of the efforts and sacrifices of those who have only lives to give and no money to lend. No process of reasoning, excepting that found within the commercial code, will justify the mortgaging of posterity for the benefit of those who possess the greatest amount of wealth at the present time, who, in the event of defeat, have the most to lose in worldly goods, who endeavour at all hazards to appear patriotic, and who are succeeding, through the pull and influence which wealth gives to the unscrupulous, in making their patriotism show a handsome profit. When the lust of greed takes hold of men to such an extent that it becomes a disease, they are changed into commercial criminals; their worst instincts of cunning and selfishness are enlivened to the point that enables them to sacrifice even their benefactors, and to, as many of them are doing at the present time, exact the most extortionate profits from the necessaries of life, and pile up huge fortunes while the majority of the people are suffering mental and bodily anguish by the curse of war. While conscription, which is a right and proper thing to compel equality of sacrifice in time of war, is enforced making men bear arms and face death on the battlefield in defence of the Nation, the owners of the money which is required for carrying on and paying for the requirements of the war are offered a bribe, in the form of exemption from income tax and a high rate of interest, to induce them to lend what the Nation is legitimately entitled to demand in the interest of general protection. There is something fearfully wrong in a Legislative System, and damnably rotten in the hearts of the Legislators, which will say to one man, “We want your life!” and to another man, “Please lend us your money and we will not tax you!” If a man’s body is at the call of the Nation
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by paying him sufficient to provide for the sustenance of himself and his dependants, the justice of Heaven says that a man’s property must also be at the call of the Nation, not by begging for it, but by paying him a price proportionate to that paid to the other man for the use of his body. The defence of the Nation demands that the lives of the people and their property should be pooled for the protection of all, and any man who shirks what is a natural duty to fight for his home and his offspring is a coward unworthy of the sacred title of “Father,” and the man who uses his money and position to make extortionate profits out of the advantages offered by turbulent misery and distress is a criminal and an outlaw of society, and should be treated as such, while the Legislators who permit organised gangs of unscrupulous profiteers to impose commercial infamy on the defenceless people are categorically parallel with the common sycophants and obsequious neutrals. Other types of spurious patriots are to be found prominently associated with war work and Red Cross Societies throughout the Empire. The presence of these individuals does not always make for the profit of the Society; they are imbued with the idea that their names and presence give the required tone which is the stamp and seal of humanity, judged by the actions of these patronising hoverers, upon the great work of the Red Cross. The work is usually done by the silent, earnest, anxious members, whose thoughts are ever with the men in the front line, whose hearts are throbbing more rapidly in response to the National strain, and whose fingers are busy in every spare minute fashioning some article which will contribute to the comfort, or allevate the sufferng in hospital, of the men who are covering the present life and shielding the future destiny of the Em-
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pire. The "Orders of the British Empire" which have been lavishly distributed amongst civilian war workers throughout the Empire have not carried to the recipieuts that dignity and honour which His Majesty the King intended should rest upon those who are giving their time, money and talents to the work of helping to win the war. In hundreds of cases those singled out to receive the 0.8. E. honours are the talkers, the makebelieve workers, and the flutterers around the Bed Cross Flag, with the result that, instead of the recipients in many cases being dignified as honoured patriots, they receive the silent, contemptuous sneers of the members of the community who are in a position to estimate their patriotism at its true value. The people who are working in deadly earnest are not looking for honours or reward for their work. They have the silent nobility of patriotic determination to assist to their utmost limit the men who are fighting to win through and enabled us to continue to live as free men and women in a free land, and their reward is in the knowledge that their duty to themselves, their country, and posterity, is being conscientiously performed. The jugglers who are angling for honours, and use the wheedling chicanery of gilded society to secure for their sons —often brainless—commissioned and braided positions of security well out of the danger zone are not marie of the "fight or die*' material which lasts through centuries and records the names of heroes in history. Their patriotism is of that watchful kind which self-preservation directs, and while they are always doing a little, and pretending to do a lot, they are most guarded in word and deed so as not to compromise themselves in the smallest degree with the enemy, in case dire misfortune should overtake the Allies and permit the enemy to win. Victory has'always more
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supporters than defeat, and many of these parading warwinners would make a weak surrender and would become servile and willing tools of Germany if it should happen, which is not likely, that Germany should win. Fortunately the people are not worrying about this residue in the ranks of patriotism, or about the sneak thieves whose degradation is so complete that their seared and blackened souls will permit them to take the advantage of making profit out of the damnable mutilation of human bodies. The true and genuine patirot is going straight on; he knows, understands and feels the value of the veneer on the profiteering patriot who is noising alongside him, and inwardly he is making up his mind that when his German foe is finally dealt with he will have something to say to these sons of Mammon who dare to shelter their infamy under the Union Jack.
The aggressive and defensive characteristics in the British race are better defined than in any other people; they are stronger and more clearly cut, are always directed by logical reasoning and are governed over all, so far as human judgment can direct, by a sense of justice which is almost a common inheritance. In times of peace these dogged propensities lead to many hitter and strenuous conflicts of opinion between different sections of the British people, and it is proof that reason and moral law are the dominant characteristics of the people when the fact is taken into consideration that they can always settle their internal differences and disputes without injuring one another, and on a basis of common justice. The war is showing the great nobility of mind which years of freedom and the encouragement of truth and justice have given to our people; and the magnanimity which has been shown by all classes in making a truce for the suspension of industrial troubles and petty
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differences during the war is a tribute to the people of the present generation which will live through centuries, and will be an example of strength and encouragement to their descendants in the future. As a virile stubborn race, the British are imbued with a proper pride and dignity in the position which they hold amongst the peoples of the Earth. That position has been gained by the bold, fearless and independent spirit of the people; and the far-flung Empire which always has a face to the sun is cemented with good British blood to stand the present shock, and will be doubly reinforced to stand the shocks of the future by the blood that is running to-day. We are not a people possessed of too much of that emotional sentimentalism which is capable of rising in a heat waves of burning fanaticism when success is hurrying to meet us, or sinking to the zero of chill despair when failure casts us into unexepcted shell holes and entanglements, and the shroud of uncertainty is temporarily blotting out the future. The temperament of the race is to meet success with calm acceptance, without that boastful arrogance which fosters and breeds revenge in an adversary, and with that grandeur of subdued sentiment which men feel, but do not express, when they find themselves masters of an enemy, and at the same time masters of themselves, to deal justice and humanity to those whom they find at their mercy. It is in victory that the nobility of men exposes itself in all its grandeur, and if there is one thing in which Britain excels, and in which the nobility of the race stands out beyond all others, it is in the magnanimity of her conquests and the greatness of her soul of justice to the conquered. Xo less in its grandeur is the temperament of the race in adversity, when we find, as we are finding in the present war, that the strain of prepared and con-
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templated aggression has driven us to the extremities of sacrifice and punishment. Do we quake, falter, shrink, or shed a tear? No! We certainly become more silent and thoughtful, but it is the silence of thoughtful resolve and determination to make increased effort until we reach the turning point of mastery. To Britishers, reverses are the spice of life, and it is a historical fact that the race has never been seen to advantage except when in the shadow of impending misfortune. This is a National trait peculiar to Britain, and may be accounted for by the freedom of thought which is enjoyed by the people. When Britain acts, she moves by the direction of the National mind, and not by the direction of a handful of Junkers or Autocrats. Hence it is that she is slower to move, but, once moved, the tremendous weight of the consolidated intentions of the people is the unseen power which has brought disaster to many a foe, and wrecked the schemes of many great ambitions. That great force of National intention, which is the latent power of Britain, seldom called into action, is thoroughly aroused at the present time, and the latest aspirant to world domination, who is letting his ambitions run riot in an orgy of blood, rapine and destruction, will find that that latent force in the British Race which he failed to appreciate or understand, will bring about his complete undoing, and possibly his extinction as a Ruler, and the end of his undesirable Dynasty.
Patriotism is not a business with the British people. In times of Peace it is treated in a loose lipped, semitolerant, laconic manner, and the man who openly boasts of his patriotism usually meets with sufficient sardonic levity to make him hide away his patriotic ardour until an appropriate occasion arises. Patriotism to a Britisher is like the religion of a true and devout Christian; it is
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something which belongs to himself, a sacred thing embedded in his soul; it is the will and testament of his forefathers conveying to him a heritage from the Mighty Dead; it is a sacred trust, not to be paraded or exposed to scorn or ridicule. His sensitive avoidance of patriotic demonstration is evidence of the strength and depth of the sentimental bondage which links him to his native land, and he knows and feels that to him the first law of nature is the preservation of his country, and, if necessity calls, he is bound by the power of that unseen influence to defend it with his life. The petty quarrels and differences which occur amongst the British people are family quarrels with which no outsider must interfere. The Nation is one family, one brotherhood, and has one soul. Many phases of thought centre upon one object, and that object is the welfare of the Nation, its present and future life, the preservation of its traditions, the upholding of the example of freedom and justice which Britain has given to the world and for which many a noble British Son is daily passing to the West, and many a noble British Mother finds consolation in her sorrow, knowing that her son had proved a true and worthy scion of the Race.
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Reformers.
The different mental construction of human beings is the chief feature which the Great Designer has introduced into human architecture to prevent dull monotony and drab sameness from making the period of existence on this planet an uneventful passage of perfect agreement and undisturbed mediocrity. There is no uniformity, no sameness, and no standardisation in the human machine. While the general plan is the same it is subject to a myriad variations, and each individual unit is given one of those variations, which imparts to him a separate characteristic individuality unlike every other member of the human race. The Great Unseen who shapes our destiny has made a safe provision against stagnation in giving to each one an independent mind, which is his and his alone, to wander through the daily vicissitudes and prepare the forecast of immediate events according to the light in which they appear upon the screen of individual reason.
When a man possesses the companionship of an active mind he requires little entertainment, and there is no life so dull as that of him whose thoughts refuse to feed his starving brain with material from flights of fancy, or excursions into practical or romantic surroundings, which will send his blood coursing more rapidly through his veins with fresh desires and ambitions. When mental activity is below the normal in a man he is content to live a passive, semi-bovine, kind of existence, in which his movements are actuated more by animal desires giving a lead to mental suggestion than by mental
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suggestion enlivening liis physical energy and making it the instrument of execution in putting his ideas into action. On the contrary, when mental activity is above the normal, and a man’s brain is of that restless kind that is always working at high pressure, it evolves more suggestions and ideas than his own physical machinery is capable of dealing with, and he keeps giving off and transferring to others the surplus of his consuming energy, with the object of promoting a stream of thought collaborating with his own, and of which he wishes to he the fountain head. From this class comes the Reformer, the Agitator and the Fanatic, and the class against whom he directs his blow-off of mental exciters is mainly the great normal section of the people, whose mental and physical energy remain at even balance, and who are content to move forward by easy and pleasant locomotion, and not by the force of volcanic mentality bursting from the safety valves of a fevered brain.
The tendency of the average human being is to be a conservative adherent to customs and principles which are inherited, and which are familiar and convenient by long establishment and common usage, and, as they are on the line of least resistance, they would soon become worn into ruts and grooves so deep and capacious that they would swallow the whole of the human family, were it not for the reformers and agitators who refuse to follow the beaten tracks of precedent, and blaze the lines leading to new and different routes in the march of progress. The common tendency of people is to become rutted in their habits and ideas, and some move so consistently in the time-worn grooves, generations old, that nothing short of a revolution will break them away from habits which have become instinctive by being engrafted into the very marrow of their bones.
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Reformers, Agitators and Fanatics, though irritating, pestiferous nuisances, are almost as necessary to the welfare of human beings as food and sunlight. They are the scrubbers and burnishers who shift the barnacles and incrustations of stagnation from those who are marooned in the sluggish contentment of retrogression, and brush the cobwebs from the eyes of those whose vision is limited to the horizon of parochialism in which they live. The reforming agitators are the high explosive force of human mentality; they shatter the bulwarks of conservatism, and break down the entanglements blocking the advance to new positions and to better and improved methods created by scientific investigators and inventors. The agitator is a kind of human cultivator; he scarifies and weeds the soil of mental sensibility, where grows the crop of constructive organisation and guidance, making for advancement along the lines of progress. The productive fertility of the mind answers to the same law as all other creative things in nature, in that it gives the best results when kept in a healthy state of cultivation, by scotching the weeds and fogs and rusts of corrosion which are ever active in the chemistry of nature, reducing living creatures and their works to their original elementary level. The agitator is the consuming fire dissipating the clouds from the dullard's brain. He storms the citadels where the dust of ancient routine ifl growing musty in the strongholds of long-established conservatism. His energy creates a whirlwind disturbing to the moths leisurely mouldering in the humid archives of Governmental Institutions. He peers into the pigeon-holes and eagerly scrutinises the writing on the stained and yellow parchments—the laws and statutes of his forefathers which an unprogreaaive administration is applying to himself. He scorches with his eloquence
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what he considers the crude attempts of crude niinds to frame laws based upou equity and justice. He stauds always on humanitarian grounds, and the strength and earnestness of his snetimental fervour is the motive power which he uses to attract attention and move the people. He is the greatest and most advanced democrat in his advocacy, and he is a dictating, unscrupulous autocrat when he finds himself in a position of authority. He is an idealist who deifies the human race, and is sublimely oblivious of the fact that, after all, the animal and animal instincts and passions are largely dominant in man. He is a social uplifter, whose little elevations are always being toppled over by human imperfections which do not appear upon the horoscope of his newborn ideals. He is the tormentor who is constantly goading to action the "stick fasts" of ancient custom, who fiercely resent the intruder with his new ideas. He spies the crumbling habitations where death lends favour to the tottering shell and those who dwell therein, and sniffs the haunts of microbes down the aged drain soaked with the slush of generations. He daringly attacks the cesspools of infamy and human corruption, and creates such a stench by the vigor of his assault on smouldering putrefaction that it is necessary to remove the offending pits in order to purify the surrounding atmosphere. He is the quicklime which is always depositing itself upon the offensive patches in society, and he is the caustic which burns the parasitical excrescenses and warts appearing upon the body politic. He revels in Theology, and many of his species have their strongholds in consecrated surroundings, which offer safe and special advantages for leading an attack upon dogmas having the appearance of rusting into their foundations. He delves into the sarcophagi of ancient priests and medicine men,
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and sifts their doctrines and teachings in his anxious search for material to be used in attacking the weaknesses which he sees in modern Christianity. He disturbs the ashes of the saints and casts them to the four winds of Heaven in his contempt for the dogmas which they handed down as the last word in guiding human conduct in this world and erecting the finger-posts directing people to the next. He fires sectarian bigots with the white heat of religious strife, and keeps alive the damnable feuds which soaked the blood of martyrs into stains which the march of civilisation is powerless to obliterate. He groups the minor fanatics into coteries of surging waves who repeat his wild and wordy vapouring until the resulting calm leaves them without a ripple on the surface. He is the monsoon which brings fresh life and growth to the human oasis, and he is the trade wind which fills the sails of the ships of life and sends them speeding on their way across the ocean. He has sown the seeds of colonisation in many a land, where he and his followers have gone to escape the real or imaginary irksomeness of home conditions, and has established his Commune upon Utopian lines, to find that soon Dame Nature's law has found him out, and she, being no Utopian, lets loose once more within his man-made paradise the common instincts of the race. Agitators and fanatics are übiquitous; they are indigenous to all climes and are voluble in all languages. They rise with the sun and work the live-long day; the gas light lends colour to their lurid language, and the pale moonlight marks the pathway to the dungeons where a spluttering candle casts weird shadows in their uncanny meeting places. Their plots have sent the soul of many a ruler with quick dispatch to the seat of final judgment to receive eternal condemnation or acquittal. The
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weapon of every fanatic is violence; even the most subdued types are • irrepressible, impetuous examples of mental force straining for attack. Gentle persuasion has no domicile on the landscape of fanaticism; he loves to take bis victims by the throat and ram bis nostrums with great avidity into their stomachs, while he, the brutal physician, revels in the agonies of their assimilation. He marks the path of progress with many stains of violence; his history is written with the blood of tyrants, and sealed with the blood of innocents who happened to be in his way. He is like many other things found in the mysterious elements of life; he creates misery, dissension and revolution; he is nearly always a sufferer by the turmoil of his own explosive destruction, and when his detonations and flying fragments have ceased, the resulting calm brings peace with new hopes, desires and ambitions, to those enjoying the pure atmosphere in the wake of the storm.
The dynamic force originating in the burning activity of a fanatical brain follows the same law as any other explosive force, and does least damage when it is kept above ground and allowed plenty of open space in which to dissipate its gases. In Britain and her dominions, agitators and fanatics have never succeeded in becoming anything more than oral demonstrations, whose dins have been thundered into the national ear-drum without doing any damage beyond causing a little local irritation, and in some cases a great deal of diversion and amusement. No capital is required to start an agitation, but it is frequently started and cunningly manipulated for the purpose of extracting money from the impressionable sentimentalists who, like moths and beetles gathering around a spluttering candle, usually get singed for their inquisitivencss. Many of these fanatics recognise
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that their smooth, oleaginous language, and their suave sanctimoniousness, associated, as they frequently are, with calm self assurance, have a commercial value when shrewdly applied to the preaching business, and their methods are usually to avoid all reference to money and collections, and apply themselves ardently to their doctrines and the saving of souls, knowing full well that their impressionable followers, mellowed by the liberal anointing, will be scrupulous in their care of the worldly needs of their newly discovered mentor. Many an innocent church congregation has upon its memory a weeping sore left behind by one of those spurious fanatics who have tainted the profession with commercialism, which goes to show that even fanatics are not immune from the corrupting influences of profit and loss. Fanatics, like prophets, have few honours bestowed upon them in their own land. A display of idiosyncrasies by an individual having a settled residence usually brings upon him the contemptuous sneers of his neighbors, and he very soon finds himself dubbed as a crank, whose impracticable ideas and extravagant expressions have a repelling effect upon his friends; coupled with which the chills of isolation tend to keep his fevered brain at a normal state of temperature. But no amount of chilling sarcasm will quench the burning eloquence of some of the species; by the giant strength of insane effort they disengage themselves from the curbs and disabilities of parochial innuendo and hurl themselves into the arena of social disturbances. Where no disturbances exist they generate a tornado which is soon roaring through the land and scattering to fragments the time-worn impedimenta which have become useless and obsolete in civilisation. America can claim a larger percentage of these cyclonic thinkers than any other Nation. The Puritan
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Fathers who were amongst the early settlers in America hied themselves to the new land to breathe the free air in the full enjoyment of their desires and inclinations in this world, and their anticipated expectations in the next. They have been followed ever since by the malcontents of all Nations, who, fretting and chafing under the hidebound feudalism of the old world, have made their way across the Atlantic to find a haven in the new, where "equality of opportunity" found favour at the birth of a Nation free from the taint of hereditary privilege. The boost which the American Nation has received from this great influx of independent high-pressure thought is manifested in the progress which she has made in the fields of enterprise, and the magnitude and originality of the institutions which she has built within a century. The descendants of these men of restless mind and explorers in virgin thought have inherited the fire of their ancestors, and, through the guiding influences of the mysterious, America is in possession of a reserve stock of mental force and virility which will keep her in the forefront of hustling progress and national experiment for many centuries. This prolific crop of human progress which rooted itself into American soil has been for some time exhibiting the law of reaction, and from the abundant harvests of progressive thinkers garnered in her favourable clime numbers are returning to the lands of their forefathers as emissaries of the cultures which they have established, and which have dereloped such astonishing and rapid growth. Every fanatical sect born of human imagination in any part of the inhabited globe seems to be able to secure in America a voluble, gesticulating exponent of the virtues and benefits which will accrue to humanity by the adop-
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tion of the doctrines which have been suddenly revealed to them by divine inspiration.
Amongst the one hundred odd millions of people in the United States, with their quivering mental energy, advocates are innumerable who will tackle any subject in the whole gamut of 'ologies, and shred it to fragments in their efforts to make it digestible to their hearers. Temperance, quackery, mental healing, or any of the myriad brands of superstition or occult sciences, have for the fanatic a peculiar fascination, offering as they do unlimited and universal grounds for argument, almost entirely based upon supposititious deductions, and wholly beyond the limits of human knowledge to either prove or disprove by the establishment of facts which could be accepted as reliable evidence.
Sometimes, through public opinion being disturbed by some irritating legislation, it happens tbat a few of those trark beaters in the realms of thought find seats in the Houses of Parliament; but their presence in the Legislatures is seldom marked with success, considered from the point of view of assisting practical enactments leading to immediate improvements in the general conditions. I have already said that the weapon of the fanatic is "violence," and he fails in politics through his natural and insurmountable aversion to disciplined authority and leadership. He lives in an atmosphere of opposition, and his effervescent energies can only be displayed when he feels the curb and pressure of resistance. He makes a poor leader because he is erratic and illogical, and intolerant of the opinions and suggestions of his colleagues, and be makes a bad follower because he is restive and unreliable, and is continually chafing and sweating in the yoke, to the annoyance and disturbance of the whole team. He is the antithesis of homogeneous
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conception—a scout, a sniper, a cockshyer. He delights in tearing down the solid structures of antiquity, and replacing thein with the gaudy erections of idealistic fantasy. In the House of Commons at the present time there are some representatives of these abnormal reasonens, whose ideas are constantly in conflict with the commonsense view of the vast majority of the people, and who are so piteously inept in their conclusions regarding the welfare of the Empire, and in their pacifist doctrines and tenderness for the gentle Hun, that, if they were permitted to follow the ways of their devious thoughts, they would wake from their hallucinations to find themselves and the Nation securely in the talons of the German Eagle. These animated reflections upon the intelligence of their constituents are serving no useful purpose at the present time when the national strain can afford no weak links in its main hawser, and no advocates in the Empire's chief tribunal for the brutal aggression which is threatening civilisation with scientific savagery. The patience and magnanimity which Britain has always afforded these ranters hovering on the border-line of insanity is being sorely tried at the present time by the persistence with which these mutual misfits, both in and out of the Houses of Parliament, are using the war as a, fulcrum to lever their theoretical nostrums from obscurity into prominence. Every fanatic, irrespective of the particular brand of lunacy which he has espoused, has in his heart a greater aversion and petty jealousy against his own Government than he has against the Kaiser and his army of destruction. The mulish obstinacy of his ungovernable mind is in revolt against fighting in disciplined organisation for the common protection against a common foe. In his saner moments he knows that he is being compelled to do the right thing, but he is such
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an all-fired porcupine of opposition that in his allconsuming desire to show his disapproval of the methods of authority he will use any safe subterfuge in his resentment against his Country’s organised system. He has more faith in subduing the Kaiser with mental science than with the science of gunnery, and he would use the gas from his mental generator in preference to the poisoned atmosphere which the gentle Hun wafts over No Man’s Land to the discomfiture of the Allied Army. On the landscape of peace he is a harmless and noisy wayfarer, tolerated and accepted by sane people for the quaint variations which he introduces into the daily routine of life; but in a time of war like the present the vibrations from the guns appear to give him increased activity, and he becomes a dangerous lunatic, prepared to sacrifice his Country to the Conqueror and the ravages of war, for the gratification of a theoretical ideal emblazoned upon his lurid imagination.
The freedom of speech given in Britain for many years, which, within certain limits, is a right and proper thing, has been outrageously abused during the war, and the law should certainly be tightened around these daring obstructionists who shelter themselves behind British Freedom for the purpose of promulgating doctrines which would destroy that freedom by making possible the conquest of the Nation by a horde of primitive barbarians armed with the weapons of modern science and knowledge. British 'Statesmen for several generations have had a clear understanding of the mental structure of the fanatic, and they have dealt with him in a way which qualifies them for the admiration and respect of thinkers by disarming him of evil designs and turning him to profitable account as a structural unit of the Nation. They have recognised that the brain of a fana-
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tic is a miniature volcano which must have a vent to prevent it from creating eruptive destruction, and by giving it free play within certain confines to discharge the gases from its internal combustion the poisons would be dissipated by the winds, and purified by exposure to the sunshine and pure air of Heaven.
In the natural order of things all surplus creations and productions must find an outlet, otherwise trouble and disorder will occur in proportion to the nature and magnitude of the created article. The productions of an active brain are amenable to the same law as all other things, and the tongue, being the safety-valve of the mind, must be allowed to give way to the internal pressure of ideas, and liberate them with a rattle of language into the all-subduing immensity of space. It is quite a pleasure to a student of mental explosives to watch the creeping decadence of exhausting power gradually overcoming the violence with which a fanatic launches himself into his subject, and by the time he has reached the point when there is no surplus of ideas to roar through his vocal orifice, he is a sane and normal being, frequently looking flaccid and stupefied, as if he had vomited a mass of something, mystifying and disconcerting to himself, and of which he is rather suspicious and ashamed.
The Fanatical Agitator who has disgorged himself of an accumulation of theoretical nostrums for curing the ills of society, usually has the appearance, when the evacuation is complete, of one lost in the hollow of emptiness of a finished structure where nothing remains to be said and nothing further remains to be done. In some European countries the fanatic has been the sport and especial prey of Detective and Police organisations, and the sleuth-hounds have been ever tracking him down.
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muzzling him, and sealing up the safety-valve of his explosive energy. As he is an extremely vital element, his resourceful activity has given full scope to the mental abilities of the best men to be found in the ranks of the Continental Police. The policy of suppression used by the Continental Nations in subduing the fanatic has not been happy in its results. He has merely been driven underground, and the annual crop of secret societies, all more or less anarchic in their teachings, is the product of attempting to repress the irrepressible. “Good intention’’ is the fundamental basis supporting the ideas of all fanatics, and the active, highly electrified force possessed by these abnormal units of humanity is capable of being turned to good account, if there is sufficient higher intelligence in the Governing Heads to understand the working of the human mind and provide for its direction according to its varying peculiarities. The practice of British Statesmen in permitting freedom of speech to extend to the extreme limit, consistent with law and order, has disarmed the fanatics of their most dangerous characteristics which they display in a tendency to get underground and form secret societies when they are entirely prevented from liberating their ideas and voicing their doctrines. The only part of the Empire in which secret societies have obtained a footing within the last century is Ireland; and if British Statesmen had a true and correct appreciation of the vigorous explosive mentality of the Irish Race and had used directive instead of suppressive measures the splendid fighting material in Ireland’s sons would have been available in all its strength as a vital branch of the Empire in the present struggle.
High explosive mental energy, like any other concentrated force, is capable of an enormous amount of
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useful work if it is harnessed to the proper machinery; but it must be treated as a high explosive, otherwise it is capable of much mischief. Fanatical mentality is probably the most energetic and extravagant power on this planet; where it expects to get a mountain of good, it usually finds that the mountain has shrunk to the size of a peanut by the time it is secured, but the noise and force and energy expended is always in proportion to the mountain of imagination. The fanatic is a bitter fighter, a sneering, supercilious, arrogant winner, and a whimpering, irascible, excuse-finding loser. He is a poor discemer, and seldom succeeds in analysing or understanding the manifold variations of human characteristics. Consequently when he is engaged in a struggle for reform which is decided by popular vote, he is frequently very much astray in his deductions, and very much surprised at the result, and spends a great deal of time, after it is all over, in trying to understand why the result is opposed to his calculations, and why his brain and his ideas are in a maze of entanglement and disorder, where all was clear and plain a few hours before. The fact is that he has been dashed rudely to earth, and the shock has broken his idol and revealed the common clay; sanity has supervened for a period, and while his mind retains the true perspective he sees that human beings are only “Angels in Chrysalis,’’ and that the border-line must be crossed to reach the ideals which imagination’s fancy pictured to his wandering thoughts. After all, the fanatic finds a useful place in the family circle of humanity. He feeds the dullard with ideas and provides a tonic for the phlegmatic. He is the impossible extreme of “progress in theory’’ which the phlegmatic views and examines with diligent, leisurely care; then he carves and whittles the theory
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in search for anything which it may contain of practical use. The phlegmatic individual who is assigned the task of examining the theory is frequently too dull in the imagination to recognise a practical suggestion when it Is passing through his hands; consequently many a bright idea is lost to man in the sludge of ignorance, much to the annoyance and indignation of the discoverer of something new in the realms of unexplored thought.
It cannot he said that nature has been kind to the agitating reformer. In providing him with a propelling mind she has made him an outcast from common thought, and placed him in antagonism to the vast majority of the race. He is always fighting up a steep incline with a small following, and meeting hostile opposition at every step. Habit dies hard in human soil, and the reformer who tries to break people away from established habits usually gets the reception of a thrush on an anthill. He is stung and bitten and mangled and jailed, but the spontaneous energy generated within him is proof against all the laws of suppression, and he fights and fails and fights again, until Nature, feeling satisfied that he has accomplished the part for which he was created, eases him gently down the incline common to all humanity and into the shadows of oblivion and mental rest.
The seed which he has planted is slow to germinate, and it is only when succeeding generations begin to reap the goodly crop that memory takes them back to the sower, whose birth was pre-dated by mysterious nature for the benefit and enlightenment of posterity.
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Parasitical Progress.
Parasitical growth of any kind making its appearance and flourishing either in animal or vegetable life must be taken as an indication of weakness or deterioration in the host. The workings of the living organism are in some way impaired and incapable of performing their proper functions when parasites appear to feed upou the vitality intended for the orderly and normal development of the life which is the victim of the robbery. All forms of life throughout the scale of living things appear to be subject to the attacks of one or more varieties of parasites, and man, in common with the rest, has to suffer one of the penalties which life carries, of paying tribute to some parasitical robbers who single him out as their especial providers. Some parasitical species in the vegetable kingdom exhibit great strength and virility, using their hosts for support and protection against the elements until they are sufficiently rooted to support themselves; then the host is gradually enveloped and destroyed, and the parasite, continuing to thrive and expand, becomes a lordly monarch of the forest. In the animal kingdom it frequently happens that some perverted members of the species depart from the regulation order of life, as intended for them by nature, and succeed in obtaining an easy and comfortable existence by preying upon their fellows. Parasitical robbers who prey upon their own kind may be considered the worst enemies which any particular species has to deal with, from the fact that they live within the code of regulations governing the genus to which they belong-, and
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because they are covered by the common garments which afford a shield to their true identity, and, in the case of man, they can always claim the protection of the law if they are clever enough to evade its penalties.
The rapid growth of civilised progress within the last two or three centuries has been conducive to the development of the human parasite, and he has flourished and multiplied enormously, until the burden has become so great, and the roots have so effectually permeated the industrial and social life of the Nations, that a revolt, moving in the direction of parasitical eradication, is, already vibrating through the fibres of humanity. The human parasite, true to the robber instincts of parasites in general, invades the producers, sapping their best and purest productions, and, by drawing to himself more vital energy than the producers can afford to give, is creating an overburden which is threatening the collapse of the social and industrial system of civilisation. The human inhabitant who luxuriates upon his fellows is neither commensal nor inquilinous, but a pure and thriving specimen of vigorous growth sustained by parasitical absorption.
The millions of industrial workers throughout the world are the hosts who support the human parasite, and, like all hosts encumbered, obstructed and surrounded by pests who levy tribute, they have been, and are at the present time, suffering deterioration by the exactions of an enemy from whom they find it impossible to disengage themselves. The lowered stature, shrunken bodies, weakened intelligence, susceptibility to disease, puerile frivolity, moral weakness, drunken habits, loss of dignity, and the hopelessness of manhood's outlook to reach a share of the bounteous provisions of this beautiful earth—all to be seen in great industrial centres —are the
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huddled multitudes upon which a parasitical system has set the mark of degeneracy, weakness and decay. Although we are too proud and lofty to admit that slavery is permitted to our civilised system, there are millions living in that system who are more effectually corralled by the food rings of parasitical combinations than were the slaves of old working under the compulsion of the lash bound by their rings of iron. The slave of old was fed, and compelled by corporal punishment to work; the slave of civilisation has the freedom and privileges of full citizenship, but, because the parasite controls the supplies of food, he is compelled to work by the most inexorable and damnable tormentor in living creation —the craving of an empty stomach.
It is the natural instinct of man to make, build, explore, and gather the fruits of the earth for his happiness and enjoyment, and the greatest pleasure which he can attain is in contemplating and enjoying the fruits of his labour. His pride in having accomplished success in one direction provides the incentive for further effort, and in thes way he goes forward, slowly but surely, always moving to a higher plane, giving a better account of himself, and becoming, as he should be, the healthy embodiment of moral law governing vigorous muscular action. The man who works with the impetus of pride in accomplishing something that gives him satisfaction, and from which he knows that he is to receive a just reward for his labour, is on the road to progress; but the man who works in the melancholy thought that some other person who is not contributing to the production is going to reap the greatest benefit from his labour is a worker “by compulsion,” careless and in despair, and is certainly on the road to degeneracy.
Energy created by ambition is the only thing which
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is capable of lifting man out of degeneracy and saving him from the sinks of immorality into which he drifts when ambition fails him in the struggle and his energy is created by the cravings of nature. Ambition is the searchlight which beams from the vital spark in man. With it he searches the horizon of investigation, and follows the illumined pathway to success. It lights him into the landscape of the unknown, and marks the pitfalls and dangers of his passage. It develops his mind and body by encouraging him to press on to fresh fields of endeavour, from which it lifts the shadows. It dissipates the fear of failure by enveloping the enterprise of life in a bright and shining optimism. It enables him to overcome all obstacles by permitting his discernment to find the weakness of the obstruction. It shields him from the darkness of despair, keeps his mind in the brilliancy of anticipation, and his body in the springs of action. It leads him to a higher moral plane by suppressing his evil instincts which hate the light. It broadens his outlook and enlarges his mind to the magnificence and grandeur of creation. It enables him to see great and noble things, and lifts him out of the sphere of pettiness and paltry irritations. It has led him from the caves of his ancestors, and guided him down the centuries, clothed him in the garments of civilisation. penetrated the laboratories of nature, and enabled him to draw forth her secrets, and it remains with him, under natural conditions, as long a spark exists in the lamp of life, coming again, like a sunrise, in a new generation to light the way of happiness and prosperity into the future. But when the warm glow of ambition is dimmed and extinguished by the conditions created by parasitical confinement, the unfortunate humans who are deprived of their leading light stand still in the darkness
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of despair, or slide back in their paths to the moral and intellectual inferiority which they had left behind.
The human parasite is not a builder, an explorer, nor a swatter in the lamplight of investigation. He is more properly a waiter and a watcher, who keeps an eagle eye upon the producer and the manufacturer, and, while their mental and physical resources are engaged in producing raw material and perfecting manufactured articles, the parasitical trader and juggler in their creations is free to use the criminal acquisitiveness of his perverted brain to guide him to the best means of cornering and controlling the products of their labour and enterprise. So successful has he been in his nefarious designs to secure command of the output of fertile ambition and honest industry that practically the whole of the world’s production, as represented by the people’s needs, is clutched in the grip of the commercial parasite.
Commercial avarice has thrived and developed so enormously within half a century that it is now sufficiently powerful to sway Governments and manipulate almost every Political Institution or public service in the universe. Distribution of goods by methods of trade is the fundamental origin of commerce, and distribution is a very necessary and important department in civilised progress. But traders through every century have been looked upon with suspicion, and commerce, like many other things which find a place in organised society, has its limits of usefulness, and is capable of becoming an unmitigated curse when those limits are exceeded. The world has reached a period in which civilisation may be said to be commercialised, and natural order is in revolt against systematic brigandage levying extortionate ransom for the delivery of goods to the consumer from the
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producer. The most dishonourable, unscrupulous and selfishly cruel members of the human family are to be found amongst the commercial class, and this is the class which is ruling, through the influence and power of money, the world to-day. We live in a period of money lust, in which the God of Mammon holds the place in the Sun. The doors of all institutions are open to the influence of wealth; society puts her stamp upon its owner and asks no questions. Wealth enables its owner to drive, lead or direct those who do not possess it. It domineers with the arrogance of bullying force those tributaries who are hopelessly enmeshed in the power of its monopolies. It has reached the pedestal of authority from which it governs with unbending relentlessness, and it manipulates the human units to guide the machinery of production and increase the growth of its power and development. The preponderance of wealth has passed out of the hands of the producers and into the possession of parasitical traders, and, as wealth carries with it the power to govern and control the machinery of civilisation, natural order is being overthrown, and the best elements in the race are suffering from the everincreasing multitude of commercial pirates, who are thriving because they are strong enough in every department of the social organisation to legalise the>piracy. When the producers, the workers, and the legitimate retail distributors, who are the three main sections contributing to the needs of existence, are overbalanced in the scales of natural order by huge numbers of their own kind adopting methods of commercial cannibalism, the social system of civilisation is coming perilously near the precipice of destruction and the depths of disruptive misery.
Parasitical domination does not exist in nature; if
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the parasite becomes dominant, the host dies, and, in most oases in lower life, the parasite dies with it. The law of self-preservation which directs living things establishes the balance of natural order in life, and provides for a continuation of the species. It also provides, as part of its formula, for the making of war, either aggressive or defensive, upon any robber, pest, or parasite that is becoming intolerable to its existence. One of the elements in the many causes leading up to the present bloody war is "parasitical domination," in which forced and abnormal growth of a National section of human units sought to destroy and overwhelm other National sections, with the deliberate intention of fattening and expanding by absorbing the vitality of the others. The law of self-preservation has supervened and combined the threatened National sections in a war of resistance, and the balance of natural order will be stored by destroying the attempted domination of the National Parasite. This is an extreme example of a prolific and vigorous Nation having forced, driven, stolen and cajoled an entrance for its commerce and its emissaries into friendly countries, with the secret, deliberate intention, which is always characteristic of insatiable greed, of overcoming the friendly hosts who had permitted it to grow, and robbing or destroying them, as it best suited the appetite of expansion, and gradually absorbing them within the parasitical envelopment of its own system, where they would gradually disappear. Germany, as a huge mechanically perfected commercial organisation complete in every detail, is different from smaller commercial organisations only in the fact that the smaller commercial parasite is limited by the laws of the country or countries in which he operates, while the huge German organisation made scraps
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of paper of the regulations of orderly society, became an outlaw of the unwritten code of humanity, and attempted to establish a material system under the law of commerce. The great and insurmountable error which Germany made is also being made by parasitical commercialism throughout the world, and that is not having a true and correct appreciation of the natural elements combined within the sympathetic affinities, and the impossibility of reducing human units to the level of material and mechanical efficiency. If it were a fact that commercialism and money, in the power which it wields in the social organisation, had in its owners a mental, moral and physical superiority, then it would be justified in assuming the direction and control, which it is endeavoring to arrogate to itself, of governing and manipulating the rank and file of humanity. Such, however, is not the case, as the commercial brain is deficient in the finer and loftier instincts, and the best elements of mental, moral and physical superiority exist among the thinkers, the investigators and the workers, Whose desires for material acquisition are met by having sufficient for their needs, and are not sunk in the moral degradation of avaricious lust.
The comprehensive envelopment of the people of the Earth by peaceful monopoly has met with a calm and appreciative acceptance on the rapid march of industrial and commercial progress of the last century. The envelopment has been slow and gradual, as the field of expansion enlarged, and one country after another has been brought under the system of scientific civilisation. While industrial expansion was crystallizing in the different countries, competitive rivalry spurred the energies and ambitions of the people to increased effort in wresting from nature her hidden secrets, and using them
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by scientific application in converting the abundant raw materials into marketable articles, and placing them by commercial exploration in new markets. The levelling up of industrial manufacture has brought nearly all countries to the position of being able to supply the majority of their own requirements and leave a margin to be placed upon the markets of other countries. This filling of the reservoirs of commercial exploitation has created a reaction, and countries which formerly were the dumping-ground for manufactured articles from those in the van of progress are now in a position to exploit their former suppliers. During this period of industrial expansion which has whirled around the earth like a cyclone, commercial emissaries found ample scope for their enterprise, and as a natural consequence they multiplied in a ratio corresponding with the cyclonic rush of industrial expansion. Having reached out to the ends of the earth and conquered all the available territory on the planet, this vast accumulated army of commercial pilots, always growing in number, have turned their attention to their own people, and are living parasitical lives, by encumbering the industrial activity of the producers with an overburden of commercial institutions. The industrial hive is being overcrowded with drones, who must be driven out if the free and healthy working of the organisation is to continue on a system making for robust and vigorous reproduction of the workers, and a plenitude of material for the supply and equipment of the young. Commerce has its legitimate functions, which are the distribution and feeding of goods to the consumers from the producers and manufacturers. These functions were admirably performed until the different countries competing in the race for industrial expansion reached a common level.
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During the period of expansion, commerce was the instrument and servant of industry, providing an outlet and get away for the goods and produce, but the freedom given to the commercial section has enabled it to grow in power and numbers until it has reached the present state, in which the old order is reversed, and the position now is that industry, production and consumption have become the instruments and servants of commerce. Industrial and commercial progress has reached a state in which, to use a colloquialism, "the tail is wagging the dog," and as no self-respecting canine can maintain his prestige under the government of his caudal appendage, neither can the system of civilised progress give the best results to the people if it is led, bled and fed by its nether end.
Not only has the commercial section of the community secured the master position over industrial production, but it has also commercialised the means of transport, and, as it is directed, controlled, and managed by the most selfish and unscrupulous members of the human family, it bleeds the producers at one end and the consumer at the other, to the utmost limit which which they can stand, consistent with its own welfare and existence. Commercial corporations never relax their grip upon producers or consumers, excepting when the strain is threatening to break down the sources of supply or close up the channels of demand. So steadily and scientifically has the pressure been increased that millions of money have been diverted into the pockets of commercial cormorants, who have never created a usctHi article in their lives, nor given expression to an idea which was not born of the lust of greed. All kinds of cunning devices are used in the modern system of distribution, called "scientific sale." The kev to that
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system is to close all channels but one through which a certain class of goods can pass, and to compel the consumers to get their goods through that channel and pay the price demanded by those in control. The producers of the goods, being compelled to use the same channel as an outlet, must submit to the terms of the commercial block-house and meekly accept the prices that are offered. An army of agents, handlers, accountants advertisers and touts hold the channels of communication along which the goods have to pass, and, as the tentacles of the commercial monster, they are nourished by the circulation of his arterial system. Naturally the enormous commercial organisation requires a vast army of feeders to sustain its huge parasitical body, which has outgrown its usefulness as a beneficial accessory to industrial civilisation, but industrial civilisation continues to exist for the benefit of the commercial parasite. Although trading corporations levy extortionate toll upon every article, either of benefit or pleasure to the members of society, they make foodstuffs and clothing materials the special class of goods which are safest and surest to return handsome contributions to their shameless demands. They are aware that the desire for personal adornment which a purposeful nature has created in woman is sufficiently strong to compel her to make any sacrifice to secure the means of decorating herself, and they madden her with the gewgaws which they control, and reap a rich harvest by degrading the passion which nature had given her for another purpose. Climatic conditions enforce people to garb themselves against the biting elements, and here again the exploiter has the advantage over his victims, who must have clothes to protect their bodies from the cold and heat, and enable them to conform to the rules
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of civilised society. The parasite controls the clothing department—nature and society's rules demand warmth and decency, and the victim squirms and pays the prices.
It is in foodstuffs that the exploiter revels in the depths of commercial degradation. He gloats in the heinousness of the damnable thought that he is able to use starvation—the most dreaded and compelling tormentor known to living creation—as an instrument of extraction, enabling him to squeeze unreasonable profits from millions of people who are divorced by mechanical civilisation from the means of supplying their needs out of the ample provisions which a bounteous earth is prepared to confer upon them. It is not necessary to enumerate any particular kind of food, as every plant nourished in a parent soil, encouraged by the gentle dew, and warmed by the benevolent sunshine, and which man tends for his use and pleasure, is plucked by the grasp of the trader, dumped into the mills of commerce, ground, disintegrated, bagged, warehoused, traded, transported, retraded, cornered in the strongholds of a trust, and finally liberated to the consumer who pays sufficient ransom to get it to satisfy the numerous gang in the commercial camp through which it has passed. The domestic animals, husbanded by the wellintentioned and industrious tillers of the soil, are permitted only a short time to gambol in the fields before they are viewed and examined by scouts, touts and pimps from the mercantile junkers, and their owner is wheedled or cheated into selling them or offering them for sale. Then they are mobilised for the "march of the saleyards." and begin the process of paying commissions to the over-lording mercantile octopus who fattens and expands by the succulence of his agricultural fodder. The
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auctioneer, who is a graduate from the "Mercantile School of Parasites," takes charge of the saleyard and the stock; like a circus clown about to give an exhibition of equestrian evolution. He is charged with the latest joke and stale wit, which he labours in melancholy style, and the tale he relates, intending to reach the risibilities of the crowd and mellow them down to business plasticity, is generally painted blue, probably to bring it into harmony with the aroma arising from the stockyard and fertilising the general wit of the stock dealers. Seated around on the rails of the yard, like a flock of carrion crows, are the dealers, the jobbers, the touts, the pimps and the spies, who are the emissaries of the mercantile house and the suckers on the tentacles of the parasite thriving on the agricultural industry. The auctioneer is versed in the language of raps, finger signs, nods, eyebrow-lifts, squirms, facial contortions, and other mysterious methods of the saleyard code, which he translates into money value, and finally "knocks down" the flock to the successful bidder. Two and a half per cent, on the transaction is netted by his parasitical employer; the flock is driven off to new pastures, and in a few weeks' time the pimps again appear to gather the stock into some other saleyard and repeat the same sordid business, with the transference of another two and a half per cent, to the manipulating agency, which has placed the curse of commerce upon the natural sources of the Nation's health, strength and vitality. Finally, when the flock has completed the march of the saleyards and paid a large percentage of its value in commission, it reaches the slaughter-house and the cool stores, owned and controlled by the parasitical "Trusts." There the carcases are frozen and prepared for their last destination of human consumption. Two processes of
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freezing take place here, one the freezing of the carcases of meat, and the other the freezing of the consumers until they pay the price satisfying to the greed of the hydra-headed, soulless monster whose commercial infamy has reached the stomachs of humanity.
The mercantile parasites who juggle with the produce of the soil and hold in financial bondage the majority of the night and day toilers in this honourable industry, shelter themselves behind the hypocritical pretence of aiding and fostering the industry, but their fostering care is of the kind which will feed and fatten the victim that the future feast may be more fulsome and glorious. Neither has the land escaped the ramifications of the commercial infamy which has plagued the earth and the things therein. It has been lined and marked and mapped and chequered and coloured by laud and estate agents, who are probably the most scientific exponents living of the smiling, open-eyed, unvarnished lying which is used in business, and known as business lies, that never smite the conscience or perjure the civil law. Human units are moved on and off the chequered blocks like pawns on a landscape chessboard; each pawn has the microbe of commerce in his petty brain, and tries to satisfy his money lust by getting more out of the evacuation of the little territory than it cost him to enter it. Thousands of men who are nominally called farmers are a species of agricultural hybrid; they are part farmer, part land speculator, and part saleyard parasite, in which capacity they are valuable feeders to the commission account of the combination. When a succession of owners of the same piece of land each sell it at a profit, their profit, or unearned increment, is represented by a sheaf of dirty paper or a book-entry at a bank, which in reality is a debit against
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the land, that must be paid by the produce taken from it in the future. Then one of two things must happen; either the consumer must pay a price for the produce sufficiently high to enable the occupier of the land to meet the liability created by the withdrawal of the unearned increment, or the occupier must collapse under the weight of the immoral encumbrance, which had no tangible or visible parentage in the realms of production—it simply “growed” and became a parasite.
The wealth of commerce is the nebulous vapour of production; it is inedible and useless in every department of life, and without its parent suppliers and supplies it vanishes and disappears like a morning mist; it is the mirage of civilisation capable of luring humanity on to where millions will bleach their bones on the arid wastes of starvation. I have already said that the largest percentage of money-wealth of the world is held by the commercial section, and, as the wealthy arrogate to themselves a policy of dictation to the rest of mankind, they have flooded the world with propaganda lauding their own prestige, and glorifying the “Kultur of Commerce” as the fostering element in civilised progress. Such an assumption is excusable when the origin of its conception is taken into account. The whole policy of money accumulation rests upon selfishness and arrogant conceit, and naturally when it is at the zenith of its power, as it is at present, It may be expected to plume its own importance and lord it over the rest of creation with ineffable insolence. This assumption of wealth is entirely wrong, and diametrically opposed to the natural and healthy development of civilised progress.
Genuine progress must not have in its constitution a diseased liver, giving it an acrimonious tongue con-
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stantly promoting discord and strife in its organisation; neither must it have upon its body colonies of parasites creating running sores, and bleeding it of its health, energy, vigour and ambition. It must he healthy in all its organs and its body, the power and greatness of its performances depending upon the harmonious working of the myriad parts within its elaborate system. Civilised progress, judged by the discord and strife and industrial bitterness existing throughout the world at the present time, has both the diseased liver and the parasitical sores upon its body in a bad form, and as these two prolific sources of misery have a close affinity in the catalogue of disease, it is safe to say that they have a common origin in the microbe of commerce, which has made septic the whole system of civilisation. The evil of commerce is not peculiar in its operations, as it follows the law operating every other evil found in man’s dominions, which is that it has its origin amongst the worst elements and progresses by contaminating and infecting the better elements until the danger is sufficiently pronounced to cause nervous apprehension in the inhabitants, when combative steps are taken to check it and bring it under control.
The basis of the commercial idea is "to pet something for nothing," and as the gambling inclination, fostered by the uncertainty of life, is strong- in human being's, commerce has a peculiar fascination, as it affords ample scope to live and thrive in the excitement of continual fluctuations and uncertainties. The resulting consequence of this fascination is that millions of people, who might otherwise he living more useful and healthy lives by tilling the soil or contributing to the supplies of the world through industrial manufacture. have been attracted to enter the commercial maelstrom.
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have become commercial cannibals, and are ekeing out a wretched existence by living upon the substance of one another. It is very difficult to say the percentage of the population by which the commercial section is overweighted, but, having regard for the superincumbent profusion of machinery for warehousing and displaying goods, and the acres of plate-glass windows that are polished, decorated and baited, and the army of people who are sorting, handling, weighing, tallying and moving goods from place to place in the cannibal shuffle, and the host of costly, nauseating peregrinators who are the mouth-pieces of commerce and suckers on the tentacles of the parasite—the “Commercial Travellers,’’ —and the thousands of aimless semi-criminals who ruminate in the lanes and shanties of the cities, living by “snatch chance” on the crumbs from the commercial waggon, to say nothing of the cunning men, the spielers, the thieves and the semi-thieves, the thugs, and the, dwellers in the shady atmosphere of the underworld where criminal immorality finds congenial soil to germinate its cultures, — this motley group at the nether end of the commercial sysetm—and the society butterflies of idleness and extravagance associated with the controlling heads of the systems at the other end—may be fairly estimated as representing twenty-five per cent, of the population of the world.
Thus we have arrived at a position in which the abnormal growth of the commercial system has converted twenty-five per cent, of the population into a degenerate residue of semi-criminal parasites, living by absorption upon the producers, the manufacturers, the necessary professional men and investigators, and the legitimate distributors. There is no variation in the operating methods of commerce, from the aristocratic parasite on
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top of the system right down the scale to the costermonger and immoral creature who waits in the shadowy ambush of the slums for the coming of the cowboy or the drunken sailor. The keynote of the system is “gambling and robbery,” and the whole world is “tossing the dice” in a riotous orgy of gambling intoxication, promoted by the infection of money lust, and forecasting a sorry awakening when natural order begins to shed the light of reason upon the wretched debauchery into which modern civilisation has fallen.
“Efficiency Leaguers” throughout the world to-day are crying aloud for speeding up methods designed to meet competition and maintain the pre-war prestige of the different Nations. It is a singular fact that all the leaders in the Efficiency Leagues belong to the commercial section, and practically all the nostrums which they are prescribing for the regenerating of humanity on the return of peace are based upon the commercial idea of exploitation. Efficiency, viewed through the “trading lens,” means increasing the army of peregrinating emissaries, adding to the number hustling the goods in and out of the warehouses, and generally .speeding up the machines, human and mechanical, which provide the material for the great digesters of commerce. The anxiety displayed by these “efficiency profiteers” shows that they have an intuitive suspicion that all things are not well with the economic system, and the nervous movement in the parasitical camp is due to premonitory warning of an impending danger which they can feel but can neither see nor understand. Hence the efficiency cry is raised for the purpose of diverting the thoughts of the people from the suspected rot in the system, and with the object of carrying through the troubled aftermath of war to the secure foundations upon
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which commerce formerly rested. The rot in the economic system is something more than a suspicion. It does not exist in science, industry, nor the production of foodstuffs or raw materials, but it has real existence in the form of a malignant commercial growth, which is ripe for a drastic operation before it saps too much vitality from the system of civilised progress. Greater efficiency at the present time is of paramount necessity throughout the Empire, but it is not of the kind aimed at by the commercial section, whose humanitarian instincts are sunk in moral atrophy, and who are incapable of seeing anything beyond the horizon of profit and loss. Genuine efficiency can only be obtained by having an examining overhaul of the lives, conditions, mentality, character, physique, imagination, ambition, energy and moral fibre of the people, casting upon the scrap-head of obnoxious and useless things every deterrent found in the social organisation. An efficiency overhaul of this kind would return a profit to the Nation of greater magnitude and more lasting benefit than could be obtained by starting at the point of profit and loss, in a vain endeavour to make more speedy progress, without taking into consideration the all-embracing fact that it is the efficiency of the individual human units that make for "National Greatness." Such an examination would make for healthier and happier living conditions, stronger mentality—by moulding the intellect with the firm hands of strong men, noble and determined character—by example and encouragement, stronger and more enduring physique—by the provision of wholesome food, sunlight and pure air, more lively imagination—by affording opportunities to the eye of resting upon the beauties of nature, greater ambition—by preventing effort being robbed of its just reward, more energy—by
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giving it a liberal share of what it produces, and it would tend to the elevating of the moral tone by making conditions leading to personal independence and selfrespect, and encourage men to be single-minded, active units directed by moral law, and not brooding creatures dissipating their latent talents in viciousness, drunkenness and loafing, in the slavery of a system which is crystallized in commerce and iron-bound with a set of civil regulations. Commercialism means "Cityfication"; "cityfication" means the production of the extremes of arrogant wealth and crying poverty; these extremes mean enmity, bitterness, hatred and discord in the social organisation; social discord stultifies sane progress, depreciates production, replaces bright thoughts with evil ones, sours the temperament and lowers the individual and National force by poisoning the incentive to aspiration. ''Cityfication" also means congestion and slums, the two most powerful agents in the social organisation for destroying the best and cultivating the worst inclinations in human nature. Slums may be considered as the dirty back yard of commerce, where the human residue of the system is cast, to live upon the offal in unsavoury atmospheres, surrounded by walls seeping green mould, and huddling in sunless cribs, where the conflict with misery, ceaseless and unending, puts its indelible mark on the faces and bodies of the wretched creatures endeavouring to defend life in the continuous and unequal contest.
It is one of the wise provisions of nature that human relationship is inalienable and indestructible. If it were possible for the aristocracy of money, whose sensibilities are offended by the sight of their brothers and sisters of the slums, to ban them, by the power of money, as a different species, it is probably one of the first things
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they would set about doing. Fortunately this is one of the things which money cannot do, and the slum-dwellers continue as blood relations of the family, outcast and degraded by systematic inequity in the distribution of their natural patrimony. This systematic inequity is having a reactionary effect upon the mental, physical and moral development of the race. The “fertility of the unfit” is a phrase which is commonly heard, and all statistics prove that poverty and ignorance are the parents of large families, scantily clothed, and miserably housed and fed, and which are increasing out of all proportion to the increase of the middle and intellectual classes, with the consequent result that civilised progress is in danger of being swamped by the fecundity of the multitude who are the victims of a commercial civilisation.
The devotees of commerce are strong believers in a scrap-heap, considering that the heap of ideas and things rendered obsolete annually by the rapid march of progress represents a pile of evidence in favour of the increased pace which civilisation is making in the forward movement. What the ultimate destiny of the rapid march is going to he does not seem to enter into the plans or calculations, and whether it is going to reach the millennium, or the chaos of entangled and hopeless destruction, by the machinery of its own creation, are things which never find a place in the commercial brains of our present civilisation. As the material scrap-heap is inseparable from the system, so also is the human scrap-heap, the difference between the two being that the human scrap-heap grows in a compound ratio to the other, indicating a possible danger, in the not very distant future, of having to re-sort the millions of supposed human derelicts to find the true elements of civil-
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isation, represented by the moral sentiments in juxtaposition with sane development and the intelligent appreciation of the value of the human unit as against material dross, at present being submerged by the hustle and the rush. Civilised progress may be likened to a huge mining claim, being torn down and sluiced away by giant nozzles in a violent hurry to get the gold, of which the best, purest and richest is lost in the sludge and the tailings by crude and ignorant methods in the hands of greedy, incompetent management. Future generations will sort over the tailings and recover the fine metal which is being lost at the present time, in the coarse and extravagant scramble for the few rough specimens contained in the wash.
It is not necessary to look for physical deterioration beyond the records of the medical profession secured by the examinations of the Nation’s manhood to fill the ranks of the army for the present struggle. The deplorable fact revealed that sixty per cent, of the men examined in England were below “Class A” is sufficient cause for apprehensive thought by those comprehensive minded men who desire to secure the future of the Nation as well as the present. The proof exists that we are physically degenerating, and the natural sequence is that we must be either mentally stagnating or undergoing a psychological change weakening the noblex aspirations of the mind and strengthening the more crafty and vicious inclinations, as a counterpoise against the physical loss. It will undoubtedly be admitted by all thinking men that both the physical loss and the psychological change are in marked evidence, particularly in the large populations of the cities, where human beings are more completely divorced from the elevating imagination derived from broad nature than are those
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living in rural settlements. Proof of the psychological change exists in the restless, dissatisfied, cynical indifference exhibited by the wage-earning classes towards legitimate authority and direction in the important industries of the Nation, and of the general desire of all classes to secure every possible advantage, not by honest and honourable endeavour, but by crafty design and the return of the smallest possible equivalent. These slowly creeping changes in human characteristics are the evolutionary movements constantly operating in all living things, including man, and fitting them into the conditions by which they are surrounded. Man having reached a high state in evolutionary developemnt is capable, within certain limits, of regulating his surroundings so that he can advance, or at least retain, the superior position he has reached amongst living organisms.
The general tendency of living creatures is to obtain the means of sustenance by the easiest and simplest methods, and no species is free from the natural inclination to thieve and rob from its fellows, if it can procure fuller and better supplies by that means without incurring undue risk. This robber instinct is created as one of the supports of the law of self-preservation, and is kept within proper limits by the opposing force of combativeness, which is also a support of the same law. When the looting habit becomes so generally prevalent that large numbers live and thrive by that means alone, a corresponding number must have lost their combative force, and are reduced to a form of slavery in which they provide liberally for the marauders and miserably for themselves. The growth of the commercial system of civilisation has carried with it an evolutionary change in the inhabitants, corresponding with, and accountable
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for, the universal desire of living by the trading habit, which, when stripped to the bare nakedness of visible reality, is a clear manifestation of the primitive thieving instinct having developed abnormally by the encouragement of favourable surroundings. So universally strong and so generally respectable has the parasitical form of life become, that the combative resistance which preserved the primitive moral code has been destroyed, and living by the science of commercial appropriation has received the approval and admiration of modem civilisation. The rank growth of the commercial system is indefensible, on the ground that it affords too much scope for the expansion of the vicious instincts, destroys the moral code, decoys man from his natural avocations, where his mind is purified by imagination and ennobled by the grandeur of his domain, brings him down by physical degeneration, and distorts his body until it is a caricature of the masterpiece which the Creator made him, and intended him to remain.
The German Nation is a staggering example of the moral destruction which can take place in a people in a comparatively short time by a highly organised system of progress, built for expansion upon a basis of frenzied commerce, and backed by an armed organisation to drive and support the intended robbery. Such a sudden reversion to the methods of barbarism as Germany is showing, with the accompaniment of the highest education and scientific knowledge attainable, is a sure and certain indication that the conditions of life, in the frenzy of progressive development and success along commercial lines, have produced a change in the German people—to which they are specially susceptible—that has weakened them in moral fibre, and strengthened them in the primitive viciousness which is always lying dormant and
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ready to spring into activity when the surrounding conditions are favourable. Higher civilisation is attainable only by keeping the moral code predominant, and using it as the guiding control of education and science; commercial civilisation of the German kind dislikes the moral code, brings it into submission, and places education and science under the control of greedy exploitation and avaricious lust. A great many commercial trusts are in operation throughout the world whose constitutions recognise no moral code, and whose soulless infamy is so degradingly complete that they would not hesitate to use the methods of Germany, if they were backed with sufficient force to overthrow the civil law of the countries by which they are governed. But in perfect German style they use an army of peregrinating emissaries encouraged to cajole, squeeze, buy, bribe, or bluff themselves into positions enabling them to control supplies, rig the markets, and, most important of all, corrupt the laws, and secure their damnable infamy in the respectability of legal protection. The “Trust System” represents the highest order of parasitical development evolving from the immoral retrogression which is collateral with commercial advancement, and the more fevered and rapid becomes the rush of enterprising commerce the more feeble grows the moral code, and the stronger and more far-reaching become the tentacles of the parasite. The big trust systems, having had uninterrupted opportunities covering many years, have in devious ways secured the control of the bulk of the productions included in the list of things commonly known as the “necessaries of life,” and having thus secured control they are enabled by their globe encircling tentacles to exert pressure right along the line of distributors, and extract the utmost price they can levy
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consistent with their own safety. The “Trust” is a pure, unadulterated manifestation of parasitical dominance, whereby the hosts are compelled to pay the utmost amount that they can afford without weakening, and pay it, as far as possible, in ignorance of the extortion that is being practised upon them. The minor distributors, smarting under the pressing indignities put upon them of compulsorily squeezing the consumers, and feeling that they are merely the tools of extraction used to do the dirty work of the over-riding parasites, have been wriggling and squirming in a vain endeavour to free themselves from the ever-tightening grip in order to get a fair and reasonable share of the labour of distribution. The only remedy which has presented itself to the dissatisfied retailers is to follow the example of the tentacled combine, and “hold up” the consumer for higher prices by means of retail organisations. Thus the large trusts have compelled the necessity for the lesser ones, and commercial civilisation has resolved itself into a series of trusts, combines, rings, associations, corporations, limited liability companies, and societies, all more or less parasitical in their nature, and carrying on in a regular conflict of confiscation and petty larceny, held together by the honour that exists among thieves and protected by the general guilt which compels brigands to support one another in the presence of a higher court.
This sordid mass of immoral and unhealthy trading overlying civilised progress is due to the opportunities and encouragement which rank commercialism has given to the primitive thieving instincts to grow and develop, and by the improper use of educational enlightenment become what it is to-day “an irritation of parasitical absorption on the body of civilisation.” Although the
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trading and commission parasites live to a certain extent upon one another, and are always on the watch in the general shuffle of goods to corner and flay one of their own kind, the industrial and agricultural producers are the people who have to carry the leeches of commerce, and groan louder every year under the weight of increasing- millions who are flocking into the cities and adding their numbers to the already unwieldly army of commerce. What are termed "industrial troubles" are the groans, the enmity, the bitterness and the seething rancour of the multitude producing and distributing the world's necessities, who are being driven to madness by a system which encourages the aggregation of unnecessary numbers in futile and non-essential departments in the social organisation. A large proportion of the rancorous element is the labour used and manipulated by the big trading corporations, whose willingness and amiability may be compared to a team of dogs in a polar sleigh when "the food is dog." All these producers, manufacturers, and small men are as helpless and as powerless to resist the driving forces of our commercial civilisation as the "sleigh dog," and the growls and snarls and sullen broodings are the leading characacteristics in the human disposition of the workers in an inhuman civilisation. The antagonism, the bitterness and the hostility which have been imported into what should be peaceful and pleasant occupations in a bounteous world are the products of a social system in which thieving by business methods has received the "hall mark" of respectability from the civil law, and the moral code is confined within the four walls of the Church, where its feeble voice, growing more feeble with each succeeding year, gets an inattentive hearing on the
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seventh day of the week from a scanty and a drowsy audience.
The whole world is in wonder and alarm at the acrimonious upheavals disturbing and interrupting peaceful progress, and these upheavals may be expected to become more vicious and violently destructive as long as the system of civilisation continues in which the numbers living parasitically upon production are increasing disproportionately to those actively engaged in providing for the whole. The contesting elements of strife have their most active centre, not amongst the real producers, but amongst the multitude who have been attracted like moths to the glow and glitter of the artificial life, and, finding the conditions uncongenial, the canker worm of spiteful vindictiveness and jealous dissatisfaction settles in their hearts, and the industrial upheavals are the goadings of silent nature compelling them to active conflict in an endeavour to extricate themselves from their unnatural surroundings.
This continual poisoning of the wells of human agreement and industrious effort is cultivating a general disposition of unreasoning pugnacity, that refuses to be conciliated or brought into harmonious working by any terms capable of evolving from the present social system, and out of the ferment of eruptive humanity is coming the vast majority of the evils engaging the attention of the guardians of the civil law. Dishonesty is rampant because the moral code of commerce is based upon surreptitious acquisition, and the whole population has become infected with it. Truthfulness is diminishing because deceit is a business necessity; truth is represented by the things left unsaid, and lying has become a habit. Energy is relaxing because of the growing tendency to shirk the troublesome responsibilities of life,
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and live by tbe wits upon the labour of others. Gambling is increasing because it is the essence of commerce, which is the predominating influence of civilisation, and banker for a universe of losing players. Immorality is increasing because respectability demands only a respectable appearance, and the common sensibilities are not offended by unseen things. Honour and nobility are disappearing because money is the measure of integrity; it is capable of whitewashing the blackest villain, and polishing him to the satisfaction of society. Mental inclinations have changed for the worse because huge numbers have weakened in imagination and ambition, and lofty aspirations have given way to the sordid practice of turning brains into money. Higher intellectuality is suffering because inter-communication with the people who have mentally changed for the worse, by the continual exercise of their brains for sordid ends, is bringing it under the general contamination. Physical degeneracy is setting its mark upon the people, because commercial civilisation crowds millions of human beings into congested hovels, deprives them of the sunlight, gives them impure air in its factories, and feeds them poorly upon too little natural food and too much of the preserved and chemically prepared mysteries concocted for purposes of sale by deceiving the palate and profiting at the expense of physical deterioration. Frivolity and the craze for excitement are increasing because the rush and hustle and mental strain engendered by the greed of gain are disturbing the placidity of the mind, and producing a nervous restlessness requiring the constant stimulation of diverting change. Drunkenness and debauchery exist because ambition is practically dead in the working classes, and, hope dying with it, the unfortunate humans who are deprived of the two
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main invectives to progress and self-respect resort to indulgence in liquor as the only thing within their reach which affords a temporary diversion from the sordid squalor of an aimless existence. From these derelicts amongst the increasing residue of the parasitical system come most of the evil-doers who offend against the civil law; they are hunted down hy its guardians, brought before the courts, tried and convicted, hardened and embittered a little more by their prison experience, and liberated at the end of their term of incarceration, to pass on to posterity a stronger taint of criminal inclination than they possess themselves.
Criminal statistics are compiled and comparisons made showing the annual rise and fall of the barometer of wrongdoing, and social uplifters, reformers, efficiency speeders and moral suasionists, all steeped unknowingly in the evils and crooked ways of the system themselves and incapable of avoiding the superficial aspect by following the crimes back to their root origin, howl from the housetops for enactments, restrictions and curtailments, all dealing with material things, and hoping to improve human nature and strengthen the moral code by the application of the rotten and corrupt code of commerce. The mind of humainty is in burning activity, and growing hotter with each succeeding year; the consuming element is driving men into rancorous discussion and acrimonious debate; wherever people congregate in knots or groups or meetings the eternal question of wages, prices and supplies obtrudes its hydraheaded presence to stir dissension and encourage the growing hostility and mulish pugnacity which are in constant evidence, provoking and anticipating turmoil in every phase of industrial life. Few men take the trouble to analyse their inner sensibilities, and ask
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themselves why the canker of spiteful vindictiveness and jealousy has taken possession of their hearts; neither do they seem to observe that nearly all men are similarly affected, and that the spirit of the times is not to concede even justice on terms of equity to all, but to obtain by brutal aggression, cleverly cloaked with subtle design, all the advantages over one another which are afforded by a system abounding in the intricacy of exploitation and deceit.
The universal growth of this dog spirit bodes evil consequences for the future of the race. It is contrary to the humanitarian instincts found in the natural order, and bom of a common origin. It indicates a weakening of the bonds that hold men together in adversity, and seals their friendship and happiness in prosperity. It destroys the innocence of childhood, opens to the exuberance of youth numerous avenues for expanding irrepressible mischief into established vice, keeps middle life in constant tension by the perverse malignity of fate, sours the resignation of old age with memories of deeds that were clever and smart in the bloom of life, but which, seen through the memory from the brink of the grave, are tortures for the conscience and damning evidence for perdition. The generous words spoken by a magnanimous parson when the human clod passes through the last act of life’s drama into the shadows are, in thousands of cases, more kindly and considerate than any expression he ever received from his contemporaries; the friends standing around knew the man, and also know the truth; the solemnity makes them magnanimous like the parson, and they draw the curtain and pass on.
Why this spirit amongst men, and from whence does it come? I have no hesitation in answering that it is the evolutionary development of abnormal selfishness
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and greed, fostered and sustained by a civilised system in wbicb commerce has ceased to be the hand-maiden of industrial production, and, having assumed parasitical dominance, is a curse to the peace and goodwill of mankind.
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Waste.
The headlong stampede of civilised progress during the last century has heen so rapid, so electric, and so brilliantly dynamic and original in all its encompassing possession of the planet and the things therein, that the mind is staggered at the immensity of the accomplishments, and the intricacy and ingenuity of the discoveries which have heen brought into everyday use, in what is merely a flicker of time in planetary life. The century’s progress in the arts, sciences, and mechanics, which has burst with such disconcerting suddenness upon the world, is like a grand spectacular demonstration by the whole of humanity, with materials, ideas and preparations that the pioneers of civilisation have been collecting and making ready for assembling for two thousand years. The display is on a scale of magnitude and magnificence beyond anything recorded in man’s history during the known period of his existence on the planet as a living organism. Man has multiplied and filled the earth; he has travelled like a virulent microbe scattered by the winds and borne by the waves to deposit the toxin of his civilisation in the valleys and plains and woodlands of this hurrying speck in the Solar Constellation; and he bids fair, if his mother earth does not treat him with an anti-toxin, to reproduce himself in myriad city congregations, to score and burrow into the earth, to strip it of the covering of its native growth and leave it brown and bare with sunburnt patches, like the ragged uneven coat of an animal ravaged by a skin disease.
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Man, in the profligacy of unbridled progress, has abandoned himself to an orgy of riotous waste and destruction. He resembles a spendthrift son in possession of a huge and carefully invested fortune, who is liquidating one investment after another and scattering the proceeds in reckless debauchery, heedless of the consequences to himself, callous to the injury and injustice that he is inflicting upon his offspring, and blind to the poverty and want and vitiated constitutions which his foolishness is likely to bequeath to posterity. He is like a stupid and ignorant aboriginal who has strayed promiscuously into a vast storehouse of rich viands, where he is able to give full scope to licentious gluttony, gorging himself until surfeited, and wasting and destroying ten times more than he can eat, in trying to encourage his appetite with samples from the extensive variety at hand. The storehouse of nature is being ravaged, and the valuable stocks which man discovered in bulk are being broken up, used with prodigal extravagance, and scattered over the earth in a manner which is likely to cause posterity to think of their progenitors as "forefathers of debauchery," who wasted the family estate and destroyed many of the chief assets beyond all hope of recovery or restoration. All the minerals and metals are being mined and extracted with the utmost speed, and without any proper regard to the available world's supply, or forethought for the needs and requirements of the future. They are treated and valued according to present-day practices, by subjecting' them to the commercial process of using them as quickly as possible. with an utter disregard of every consideration but profit. Although Geologists tell us that about the year Three Thousand, at the present rate of consumption, the coal supplies of the world will be exhausted, our Politicians
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and so-called Statesmen have to be driven by public indignation to move towards a system that will conserve this rapidly diminishing human necessity, which has made possible the present civilised progress. A thousand years seems a long span ahead, and few people worry themselves about those who will be the active members of the human family at that time, but with the history of a thousand years gone by, exposing every detail in the lives, conditions and aspirations of our predecessors, it is easy to feel that they have not been gone so very long, that we have not changed nor improved very much in that time, and that ten centuries is after all merely “one shift” in the laborious process of civilisation in which man is part of the raw material. Man can reproduce many things in this world, but when he tears the minerals and the metals which he finds in bulk from their resting places in the earth, and treats them to combustion, corrosion and disintegration, and scatters them broadcast, chemically changed and distributed in fragments so small as to put them beyond the power of future men to collect or use again, he is not exercising proper economy with the natural assets, which are incapable of reproduction in a world that has reached a state of temperature capable of promoting and supporting life. The practice of the times is to hurry everything into the mills of commerce, and convert it into profit and wealth according to present-day demands and ideas, without any thought or concern for the material, or whether it is being manufactured to give its best and most lasting results, after being converted to the service of mankind. Probably fifty per cent, of the wealth created from the non-recurring assets of mankind, as represented by .the minerals and metals, exists in buildings, docks, ships, machinery, and the multitudinous
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appurtenances associated with civilisation, which are all perishable, and are as little use to posterity, without the means of repairing and replacing them, as the Pyramids of Egypt are to the Egyptians.
The hustle of commercial civilisation aims at nothing but profit; it concerns itself very little about the future, or the effect of present conditions upon future people. It is on the alert for changing conditions, but only in so far as they affect the earnings; how the earnings affect the present people or posterity does not matter—“the race is to the fastest and the devil take the hindmost.” Commercial civilisation is flimsy, shoddy, superficial, hypocritical, and selfish to a degree. A few centuries ago when men erected a building it was a monument of endurance, creditable to themselves and an example to future generations of the honesty and thoroughness of the builders; when they made a machine it was made with the deliberate intention of enabling it to perform effective service until the materials of which it was constructed had returned full value by a long life of usefulness; when they weaved a tapestry or a garment they did not make an emblem of their own disfavour, to be sold to someone who, while it lasted, would parade their infamy; when they made an article of diet it had truth in the label, and was not a villainous stomach-cheater out to evade the Food Act and health inspector, and make profit at the expense of injured constitutions and physical deterioration. Men no longer strive to put the best efforts they possess into their work. Commerce has changed the methods, and it has also changed the men. Honest intention and the desire to excel in perfect workmanship have given place to a desire to sacrifice everything for the accumulation of elusive and demoralising wealth. It is not in the interest of present-day progress,
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with wealth as the goal of success, to make or build anything to last too long. The policy of commercial manufacture is to make things to wear out in a given time, so that the consumer or user will require the article or machine replaced by a new one, and thereby keep the manufacturer busy using up much valuable material, with the deliberate intention of having it wasted and destroyed long before it has reached that state of decay where its usefulness would have ended.
Ships are built at present to last, without accident, from twenty to thirty years. Thousands of tons of coal are consumed in converting ores into the finished structure of an up-to-date “Liner,” and thousands of tons of metal and valuable material are assembled in harmonious combination in an ocean monarch. These thousands of tons of coal which are consumed before the ship steams out upon her trial trip no longer exist upon this planet as coal; they are so much of an exhaustible stock, the property of the human family, recklessly used in building a ship to last thirty years, which could, with the honest intention of bygone times have been built just as easily to last sixty or seventy years. The coal is used, and posterity is robbed of part of a fixed asset, in order that the profit, largely represented by paper, shoddy buildings, and the tinsel and tawdry drapings of fleeting fancj, may be built up to appease the gratification of selfish passions, and glorify the money craze of modern ambition. The iron and other metals used in the construction of ships and machinery are treated in the same manner. The metals are certainly not such rapidly diminishing assets as coal, but the reckless waste of metals that is in evidence throughout the world at the present time cannot continue indefinitely without materially affecting the supplies of future generations.
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Each generation is entitled to its share of the fixed assets which nature has provided, which are incapable of reproduction in bulk by man, and are, as far as human foresight is capable of forecasting, likely to be essential to him for all time. This fact has no significance in the prodigal civilisation of the present progenitors cf future generations. Durability” is a word seldom used and not encouraged in tbe commercial vocabulary, but the ‘‘scrap heap,” which represents the wanton destruction of good materials, is pointed to with pride as a monument of evidence supporting the speed of progress and the development of modern methods. Thousands of machines of every kind and description required in contributing to the needs of our modern civilisation are made annually. These machines are made to sell and wear out. Durability does not enter seriously into the minds of either the manufacturer or the purchaser. The purchaser wants a machine at a nominal price to do certain work, and the manufacturer endeavours to give him a machine as near that price as possible, being pleased to do so for the reason that in all probability the lowgrade and short-lived machine will show the highest percentage of profit, and the purchaser will return for another as soon as the first one gives trouble by calling for constant repairs. The good material badly manufactured in this machine of commerce is cast aside, not worn out, but merely sacrificed to corrosion and decay in the interests of commercial manufacture. The manufacturer and purchaser have acted in collusion and in ignorance against posterity by consuming tons of coal and tons of metal in making machines deliberately designed to stop work through faulty construction before they have given a fraction of their value as the disappearing assets of mankind. Huge factories exist employing
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huge numbers of operatives making all kinds of glittering articles that stock the shops and filter into the homes of the people. The only honest work put into these myriad articles is the effort to make them sell by the fascination of their appearance. The success and continuance of the factory depend upon a repetition of the orders, consequently everyone connected with it, from, the owners to the humblest workman, is imbued with the one idea of making things so that they will tumble to pieces with as little service as possible, without offending the purchasing sensibilities of the consumers. In these departments the same policy of destruction obtains. Coal pours into the furnaces in a constant stream to run the machinery of manufacture, and good raw materials are converted into commercial shoddy, with millions of hours of labour, with no regard to the waste of coal, materials, and energy, and upon the sliameless pretext of being an honourable and honest industry. Children's toys are manufactured in quantities represented by shiploads, and although the expanding mind of childhood demands constant change and fresh interests, that should not be taken as excuse for making toys that will scarcely withstand the preliminary examination of a child without tumbling to pieces. "Santa Claus" has become the most extensive purveyor of shoddy goods in the Universe, and, in the interests of trade, fostered and fed by waste and spoliation, "Father Christmas" has been degraded to a venerable effigy of tradition appealing to childhood's fancy. In every home that shelters a child, whether it is cot or mansion, and upon every rubbish heap in the world, the wreckage of childhood's joys, in the form of broken toys is to be found scattered amongst the things that life finds useless and offensive. It is naturally proper and fitting that this
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should be their last resting-place, but the deplorable and shocking fact remains that the coal and materials used in making them are sacrificed in manufacturing articles deliberately intended to reach the scrap heap, tae rubbish tip and the destructor, in the shortest possible time. It is not reasonable to expect toys to last too long in the hands of childhood, nor is it reasonable to expect children to appreciate them when their understanding gets beyond the toy, but it is reasonable to expect that there should be a conscience and some honesty in the factory in which they are made, when the materials are the property of the human race, and should only be converted to active use with the intention of getting as high a percentage of wear as possible from them in return for their destruction.
The earth is being denuded of forests much more rapidly than they are being replaced. Huge lumber mills are in operation all over the world, and thousands of saws are singing through the trunks of forest giants older than civilisation. The products of these mills are distributed to house factories, furniture factories, shipyards, toy factories, and to almost every place where the constructive genius of man is in operation, moulding, planning and fashioning the multitudinous requirements of life under modern conditions. The manner in which trees that have taken from five hundred to a thousand years to mature are felled and sliced into lumber suggests to a thoughtful onlooker that they are being cut and Hitched with as much reckless disregard for their value, calculated upon the time that it took them to grow, as if they sprang into existence like mushrooms between sunset and sunrise. These forest trees are a valuable asset that patient nature has carefully cultivated through centuries, but the “get-rich-quick”
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system of commercial civilisation only sees them as something ready to hand, to be used up as rapidly as possible for a minimum of service to humanity and a maximum of profit to the roaring mills of destruction through which they pass. Some of the finest woods in the world are passing out of existence because they cannot be grown to maturity until they count their age in centuries, and as the hustle and hurry of present-day commerce cannot wait months, much less centuries, for anything, no thought is given to conserving these trees, and no serious effort is made to replant them and provide for future generations having a bountiful supply of good timber such as we enjoy at the present time. Millions of acres of forest lands have had the axe and torch applied to them for the purpose of bringing them under cultivation. This has occurred particularly in America and the British Colonies, when settlement was in the pioneer stage, and the experience of many who destroyed these forests on their lands is that before the land was cleared sufficiently to afford a profitable return timber had enhanced in value, and the natural asset that they had desroyed represened greater value than the land could replace by cultivation in a generation. The same policy of destruction for profit that is characteristic of commercial civilisation in dealing with other natural assets applies to the woodware industry. Shoddy houses, shoddy furniture, shoddy fixtures and fittings, and the using of large quantities of valuable timber in the construction of wharves, bridges, and structures exposed to the elements and encouragement of decay in timber, are in evidence throughout the world, but the popular craze of converting everything into "Bank Credits" is propelled by the selfishness of prevailing custom, and cares little for the effects of its wreckage upon the future.
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Coal is the asset which has enabled man to build his present civilisation. Without it the metals would have remained unsmelted, and it is unlikely that the mechanical science of the present day would have come into existence. Notwithstanding the fact that it is limited in quantity, and that it cannot be reproduced, it is probably the element amongst all those useful to man which is subjected to the most reckless and wasteful extravagance. Science has shown how coal can be used with economy, and made to give up the innumerable useful and indispensable things that are contained in it, but because it does not suit the methods of commerce to sacrifice profit for economy thousands of chimneys continue to emit their black smoke, poisoning the atmosphere and returning by crude combustion only a fraction of what should be obtained as an equivalent for the present destruction of the coal. Thousands of tons of coal dust and small coal, some of it from the best seams in existence, have been dumped into gullies, rivers, and convenient places because it could not be sold at a payable price, and because the hurry and bustle are so great that the eyes are picked out of the mine to get the lumps, and the dust, which has all the virtues of the coarser coal, is neglected in the general economy because the habit of extravagance has not yet reached the pinch of shortage. It is certainly the duty of the Government of a Country to see that every ounce of coal mined is used in the most profitable manner, and that the human energy expended in hewing it is not suffering a high percentage of loss by the destruction of a large proportion of its production. The commercial system of working from the basis of profit does not concern itself about materials that cannot be converted into an immediate return. Consequently it only uses those portions of the
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material which enable it to make a profit from day to day in each particular industry, and what it cannot use is cast aside as waste. The commercial system may be described as a "hand-to-mouth" system; it must have its profit every day or it cannot live, like an aboriginal feast, revelling in the luxury of abundant supplies today, to-morrow picking the bones, and the following day chewing them over again and extracting the marrow.
Millions of skilled and unskilled labourers are engaged in the factories of the world, producing tlie shoddy articles that feed the commercial institutions, and millions more are employed packing, transporting, and unpacking the goods and distributing them amongst the people. The labour of making a good article is certainly greater than that of making an inferior one, but the same materials can be used to much better effect, and can be made to give a much higher percentage of useful service if they are honestly dealt with and manufactured with the intention of making articles of qtiality, and not profit by a repetition of orders and the destruction of material. The labour and cost of packing and transporting inferior goods are the same as those involved in handling goods of high quality. Consequently the annual loss of labour and energy in handling goods which are deliberately intended to be "shortlived repeat-order goods" is almost incalculable, and if it was concentrated upon the work of honest production, its influence would be felt in alleviating the industrial complications that are constantly disturbing the world.
It is claimed that the demand is for low-priced goods, but the popular demand is not a sufficient excuse for the wholesale destruction of good material; neither is it
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a sufficient excuse for the waste of millions of hours of labour. The popular demand for cheap and shoddy goods is not the outcome of natural or spontaneous inclination on the part of the people, and its origin is not to be found in the manufacturer or the factory. It is something that has been cultivated and promulgated by commerce. Commerce endeavours to lure trade by the fascination of cheapness, and tempts the manufacturer to betray his natural inclination to turn out good work, in order that it may tempt the purchaser with the shoddy and tinsel that it has obtained by corrupting the manufacturer. “Good Quality” is the virtue of ingenuity, and commerce has corrupted ingenuity to satisfy the lustful desires of its avaricious appetite. Natural intuition compels every human being to associate good quality with ingenuity; it is always looked for in a manufactured article, and if it is not found the feeling, almost without exception, is disappointment. This fact proves that the popular demand is not for shoddy goods, but for goods that have as much honesty in their invisible construction as they have attractiveness in their appearance. The tendency of everyone is to purchase the best quality of goods that they can afford, and if the quality was of a uniformly higher standard the purchasing power of the people would not be in any way interfered with, because the higher percentage of lasting qualities would prevent the necessity of such frequent renewals, and the cost of repairs would decrease proportionately. Another enormous advantage that would accrue from a general improvement in the standard of goods is that more honest effort infused into combining and assembling material into manufactured articles would enable them to give useful service until the value of the coal and labour passed out of existence in
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making and handling them was compensated for by lasting and efficient service.
It is not exaggerating the position to say that the lasting qualities of all manufactured goods, other than foodstuffs, that are on the markets of the world at the present time could be increased from ten to twenty per cent., with the same quality of materials as they have been made from. That would mean an enormous saving of coal, material and labour; it would mean that the efficiency of labour was increased up to twenty per cent., that twenty per cent, of commercial fraud had been eliminated, and that the same production was giving twenty per cent, better results; it would mean that a large percentage of the labour now employed in making and moving “commercial shoddy” could be used in producing raw materials and foodstuffs, and a consequent reduction in the cost of living; it would mean restoring honesty by twenty per cent, and strengthening the mutual confidence which is on the wane; it means that the increased efficiency of labour would increase production, and the increased production would tend to remove the present turmoil of industrial unrest, and further increase the production; it would mean that if men were employed in making, packing, handling and distributing honest articles they would be spending their lives in useful labour, when every movement would be a gain to the present, and not a robbery of the future; and most important of all, it would mean that we, as trustees of the assets of the human family in our generation, were honest to posterity, by exercising economy, and would not expose ourselves to posthumous condemnation for wasteful extravagance and destruction.
The invention of the steam engine in England a little over a century ago was the spark from the human in-
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tellect that started Che furnace fires, and set in motion the wheels of industry which have been increasing in numbers and size ever since. When man discovered the means of converting the latent heat of coal into power, industrial and commercial activity began to move very fast. It was like unlocking the stronghold of Nature’s secrets, and the simple and abundant power enabled men to unfold one invention after another, and to delve into the huge, undisturbed stores that had lain dormant through the centuries, waiting until they had discovered the secret of their usefulness. So keenly exultant has man become in the novelty and variety of his new discoveries that he has had neither time nor inclination to take stock of his material; the over-mastering fascination of the buzzing wheels drives him on and on; the coal fires have warmed his enthusiasm, and the hum of whirling machinery has enlivened his genius; his natural bent of construction is revelling in the abundance of unrestricted opportunity. So rapidly is he moving that the wonder and greatness of his discoveries of a year ago are rendered primitive and obsolete by the discoveries of to-day. He is the mature child of nature in the fairyland of the gods; everything is fresh and new and novel; the magic wand of science enables him to change the crude and dull materials into the most gorgeous and fascinating toys; he is making, making, making, and breaking, breaking, breaking; his fancies are quick and passionate and short-lived, and the wreckage of his castoff joys is a mountain of evidence of the fickleness of his destructive tastes. He had lived for thousands of years in the garden of nature, wandering through its mystic paths, expanding his imagination in its beauty and grandeur, and finding ample for his sustenance, even luxury, in the abundant fruits which the Great
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Gardener has provided. He was merely one of the creatures in the "Great Zoo," where the "Master Keeper" organised his myriad collection in the perfection of automatic continuance, fed them by the automatic system of reproduction, and culled them and retained the most beautiful specimens by the law of the "survival of the fittest."
Man, by some unaccountable mystery around whicb imagination and superstition have woven numerous theories, developed a superior intelligence, brought himself to an erect position, and thenceforward assumed domination over the other creatures in the "Great Zoo," their habitations and their haunts, to use them for his own benefit and pleasure. They have all fallen under the spell of his civilisation. Gradually but surely he has multiplied and extended his dominance to the most remote and secluded spots—jungle, wilderness and desert, oceans, seas and ice-fields. He has made himself übiquitous alike to the blistering torrid zone and the frigid severity of the Arctic Circle. Man's dominion is the planet, and no spot remains where a living creature may find security from the tribute which he levies for the privilege of occupying a place in his domain. "To live is to pay, and the ruthless collector and landlord is Man. Under his domination and the requirements of his civilised system many species are disappearing. Those that are docile and tractable and lend themselves to profitable participation he has brought under his complete control. Their existence and propagation are subject to his will, and his will is that they exist for the purpose of contributing to his benefit and desire. Those species whose untameable native ferocity compels them to remain in rebellion against man continue to retreat to the ever-narrowing fastnesses. They are killed and
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destroyed for curiosity and amusement. As rebels they are useless in his civilisation, and the wild instincts which have been their natural protection through centuries will, under man’s organisation, bring about their ultimate and certain extermination.
Man is the most ferocious and destructive animal that has come into existence upon the planet. All living creation has an instinctive dread of him. His first appearance in the haunts of forest denizens arouses fear and suspicion. Instinct is a true character reader, and they know that his presence bodes evil. His superiority is so overwhelming that battle is useless and flight affords only a temporary respite. He grants no armistice and offers no terms. His invasion means submission or extermination. He is the true and perfect exemplification of the fittest in creation multiplying and surviving by the destruction of every other species which he finds valueless to him in his march of expansion. It is in quarrels with his own kind that his ferocity exhibits itself in the full power of his destructive vengeance. All the skill and genius which the passing centuries have enabled him to develop are brought into action and used in making instruments of destruction with which he deals out death to his fellows, until the blood of millions makes a crimson patch upon the earth, and the red glare of the morning sun begins to decompose the bodies and pass them back again into their native elements. Phrenologists tell us that to possess the faculty of destructiveness well developed is to possess the main element of success. Everything points to the conclusion that man’s destructiveness, and with it bis selfishness and ferocity, are developing much more rapidly than his moral propensities. Consequently his self-government is weakening through his commercial civilisation giving
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every encouragement to the expansion of his baser instincts. We see that all the untameable, ferocious land creatures on the planet that refuse to become docile and tractable in man's system are destined to certain extermination by man because of their intractability. The questions then arise—Will man observe the growth of his baser instincts in time to check them and regenerate himself, or is he doomed to extermination as a result of his destruction and the ferocity of his quarrels with his own kind ? Intractability means extermination to the lower animals. Will it mean the same thing to man ? These questions I will not attempt to answer, but leave them as food for thoughts that wander back into the past and search into the future for the destiny of the race.
Man cannot be credited with any display of superior foresight in the pursuit of his progress. There is a thriftless improvidence exhibited in all hie works, and an absence of serious and thoughtful effort to stay the hand of time from crumbling them to dust even before they have served his purpose. What he makes to-day requires repairing to-morrow and renewing the following day. He talks eternally about the "turn over" of his business; everything is niade and intended to "turn over"; his profit which is his life and his existence depends upon a constant supply of things that he can "turn over"; his buildings, railways, ships, bridges, docks, machinery, tools, and everything large and small in the huge catalogue of life's essentials are made to "turn over": if they last too long the recurring profit which they are expected to yield is too slow in returning, and the want of breakage and decay causes a shortage in the "turn over" and a loss to the commercial system of destruction. He never troubles himself about
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the waste of material that occurs in keeping up the stocks that are having such a fleeting passage through his hands, and whether they end hy honest wear or tumble to pieces through deceitful and dishonest workmanship is no concern of his. He handles them for profit, and, as long as he sees a profit accruing, he is happy in his prosperity and stupidly ignorant of the fact that his prosperity is due iu a large measure to the destruction of assets that can never he replaced, and that he is assisting to produce the poverty of the future.
If the millions of hours of labor that are expended in supporting the parasitical system of cannibal commerce could be diverted to the production of foodstuffs and the more essential things of life there would be more peace and contentment and less poverty in the world. There would be less acrimonious bitterness and more harmony amongst men. There would always be a balance on the side of production, and the conditions of life would be made easier. More people would be on the land and fewer in the cities breeding degeneration and disease. There would be less drudgery and more time to devote to aspirations which make life worth living and tend to the elevation of the race. The hosts of parasitical sharks and thieves and pests that thrive in the commercial system upon the labour of others would be reduced and perhaps turned to useful purpose. The waste of the present commercial system would disappear, and commerce would assume its legitimate functions as a necessary part of civilisation, and cease to be what it is—a parasitical curse sapping the vitality of society and producing moral atrophy in the noblest attributes of humanity.
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Reorganisation.
The unrest that is disturbing the world at the present time is not a thing which has come into existence in a few months or a few years. Class jealousies, social bitterness, industrial unrest, strikes, and the development of the anarchical disposition are temperamental expressions of disapproval, having their origin in the commercial system of civilisation, and growing louder and stronger as progress continues upon the present lines.
These temperamental expressions are not only growing louder, but there is an antagonism in their tone which threatens, when a few more years of commercial cultivation have fully developed the genius of selfishness in humanity, to change disapproval by passive opposition into something more violently destructive. The conflicts between man and man are yearly growing in strength and numbers, and the time has arrived, if the human race is to benefit by the enlightenment attained, to seriously consider whether the present system of civilisation is capable of supporting man upon the path of progress for an extended period without producing dire consequences. The seething of constant unrest and dissatisfaction is an indication that something is wrong with the social system, and the course to pursue is to find the cause of the trouble and endeavour to remove it.
The class antagonism which causes a constant parade of irritations to interrupt the harmony of the social organisation is deep seated and firmly rooted. Its origin is back in man’s primeval haunts. It is something that
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is inseparable from bis nature. It has accompanied him in all his wanderings. It has grown in parallel with his civilisation, and its bitterness and violence have been multiplied by the infection of deceit, greed, and selfishness from the commercial system which has enveloped him. When man is in constant conflict with his own kind as he is at present, that is a sure and certain sign that his “Social Organisation” is in conflict with the “Natural Law” which is the basis and constitution of the regulations by which he lives. That law is a welldefined and pre-ordained Constitution. Every law that man makes to regulate the social order of his civilisation is merely a “By-law” and must be kept within the constitution drafted by the Great Designer of universal order. Any breach of the constitution, however small, meets sure and certain punishment, whether it is an individual, a community, or a nation that commits the breach. The inexorable law that gives, supports and ends life demands the strictest obedience. Ignorance is no excuse, and, although nature has not erected fingerposts, sign-boards and leading-lights to guide man along the path of progress, she has given him senses, which are like delicate and finely balanced instruments enabling him to instantly feel when he is straying from the path which she intended him to follow, and, above all, she has given him a conscience, which is a Court of Justice within himself, clearly interpreting her laws, defining the duties imposed for his own welfare, and imposing the justice she demands from him for his fellows.
The natural question to ask is: “What is the ‘ Basic Law ’ governing the general conditions of human life in what we call the ‘ Social Organisation,’ and upon which civilisation should be built?” And the answer
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is. in absolute certainty: ' Proportional ownership based upon Natural Ability.' Proportional ownership is the natural order under which every species on the planet is compelled to live, and Man, being nothing more than an intelligent animal, holds no special privilege to separate himself from it. In primitive life man is always a proportionate owner; the hunting grounds, the fishing waters, the native fruits, the canoes and the herds are tribal property, and INDIVIDUAL POSSESSION STOPS AT THE POLNT WHERE RE HAS SECURED SUFFICIENT FOR HIS REQUEELEMENTS BY THE EFFORTS OF HIS OWN LABOUE. THE LAW OF "NATURAL SELECTION" BETWEEN THE SEXES IS SOMETHING APART FROM THE BASIC LAW OF PROPERTY THAT MAKES SACRED THE PERSONAL RIGHTS OF FAMITY AND HEREDITY WITHIN THE DOMAIN; and under natural conditions this law is rigidly supported by almost all species in Creation. This is the only rule in the natural order which the commercial civilisation of man has not violated, and it remains intact in its primitive simplicity only because human sentiments and passions are strong enough to resist interference by the signed and sealed and fluctuating regulations of society.
Man has been in conflict with the “Basic Law” since the dawn of his intelligence right down through the centuries. The co-operative instinct is the latent element that has fought every individualistic innovation which he has introduced into his social organisation. Leaders of robber tribes have fallen and perished by the renewed vigour which it brings into new generations. Autocrats have felt the power of its resistance and have succumbed to its persistent opposition. Slave owners have fought it for years, and meekly ended the unequal
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battle by banding freedom to tbe enslaved. It bas brought revolution to many lands, and destroyed millions as a punishment for transgressing its code. For more than twenty centuries man has endeavored by reason, negotiation, arbitration, conciliation, democratic expansion, and liberal wages to bring harmony into his organisation, but old nature is as hostile and jealous as ever for her code, and the surging turmoil of unrest that is disturbing the people of the world at present is merely the warning that the principles of the Basic Law are being violated, and man is forgetting the conditions under which he holds the Charter of his existence. The Basic Law maintains the balance of justice between the dominant, aggressive and selfish members of the race and those who are weak and submissive. The dominant members are the minority; consequently it is impossible for them to frame regulations which will enable their selfishness to prevail for a lengthy period over the majority. It it were possible for the dominant and aggressive members to keep continually adding to their power, slavery would not have gone out of existence, and the world would be peopled by two classes—the slaves and the slave-owners. The dominant and aggressive members of the race who have been mainly responsible for the advance and progress of civilisation, have been wholly unconscious of the fact that their methods would ultimately lead to the enslaving of their weaker and more submissive brethren, if it were not for the working of some “unseen influence.” They have also been unconscious of that “unseen influence” in the presence of the “Basic Law,” but they have been fully conscious of the fact that the building of progressive civilisation required a large majority of the human race to give their labor under the command and direction of
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force and energy in the captains of industry. To obtain command of the necessary labor is the great problem that has troubled the progressive leaders of industry throughout history. When the dawn of intelligence revealed to man the vast stores that nature had provided for him, he began to establish individual ownership and break away from the Basic Law. That was the beginning of the trouble that has followed him right through his civilisation to the present time. In the exultation of his newly discovered powers, it did not occur to him that it was unlikely that nature would change the Basic Law simply because her most perfect automaton had undergone an evolutionary change. Evolution is the method which nature uses to fit the living species into the slowlychanging conditions that increasing age is making in the Planet, and the abundant field which is open to the Biologist is ample proof of the close attention that nature has given to changing the varieties of life while the years have been piling themselves into countless centuries.
The Constitution of a Nation is sufficiently flexible to enable minor governing bodies to make by-laws expressing the smaller details in the regulations required by their organisations, but they are rigidly compelled to keep within the four corners of the Constitution of the Country. In the same way the Constitution of the Country must be framed so that it is kept within the four corners of the Basic Law, and nature is rigidly severe in compelling observance of that point, and most unrelenting in the punishment which she inflicts for a violation of her code.
Being satisfied that there is a Basic Law, that it forms the ’’Constitution” of man’s organised existence, and that it is impossible for him to build a stable civilisation
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by ignoring it, and also being satisfied that the basis of the Social Organisation is proportional ownership, we may proceed to find in what way man’s civilisation has transgressed the code of his “Natural Charter.” The fundamental error of his civilisation is in allowing the land, the hunting grounds of his primitive past and the source of his food supplies, to be treated as an article of commerce. Individual ownership of land is not repugnant to the Basie Law as long as the land is used for the production of food, but the law is broken immediately the land is commercialised and a portion of the unearned increment extracted from it. The extraction of a portion of the unearned increment is a form of robbery from the land, enabling the robber to live in idleness upon its future production, without giving his labour to assist that production. This is repugnant to nature because it is an “overdraft,” and overdrafts are not to be found in nature’s economy. The second great outrage which man committed against the Basic Law was when the code of his social organisation permitted the dominant and aggressive members to compel the weak and submissive to give their labour in various form of slavery for the benefit of their masters. When nature caused a revolt and destroyed all forms of bondage by revolutionary upheavals, man gradually commercialised his system, and applied it to the labour which serfdom was no longer able to control, and the dominant and aggressive still continued by commercial machinery to benefit by the production resulting from the labour of their docile brethren. The Basic Law is not outraged by the strongest and most aggressive members of the community organising and directing the labour of the others for the purpose of increasing the production, but immediately the organisers begin to take more than their
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proportionate share of that production, then the Basic Constitution is violated and a breach is committed. Neither is it repugnant to the Basic Law for one individual to live upon the labour of another, provided that affinity, paternal duty, humanitarianism, or any of the numerous valuations of these sentiments, move the giver to voluntary action, but, if the receiver by compulsion, cunning or design, endeavours to exceed the voluntary action of the giver, an offence occurs, and the conscience of the giver, which is his legal interpreter of the Basic Law, immediately informs him, and resentment germinates a seed of trouble.
Land being the source of production, and Labour being the force that stimulates production and brings it into tangible existence, these two may be considered the main principles in which man’s existence and his civilisation are involved. Every variation which is introduced into the social organisation leads back to the two main principles, and if these are out of harmony there is discord in the whole organisation. Labour is something more than “the force that stimulates production.”
It is a penalty which nature imposes for the pleasure and enjoyment of living. Nature imposes another drastic exaction upon labour—it must be linked by usefulness to production, or essential in one of the numerous Arteries of Distribution. Besides coming into conflict with the Basic Law by commercialising labour, Commercial Civilisation is guilty of another serious breach by affording inducement to millions of people to perform labour that contributes to parasitical growths upon the social organisation. Labour of this kind is decidedly repugnant to nature, because it is productive of disease in the Social Organisation which eventually leads to eruptive
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outbreaks. Probably ninety-nine per cent, of these workers in the parasitical departments of commercial civilisation are unconscious of the fact that they are temporarily severed from the Basic Law, because the connecting link of usefulness is missing, because they are a burden upon those who are doing the essential work of the social organisation, and, worst of all, nature uses them as the explosive elements of humanity to create an industrial storm and restore the balance of order when the position becomes intolerable. When the balance of nature is disturbed by too much pressure in one direction, or too much relaxation in another, the offending elements are brought into conflict, a storm occurs, and order is restored. This is the “storm law”; violence is its method, and man, like everything else in creation, is subject to it.
Hundreds of men throughout the world, chosen representatives of the people, are continually engaged framing regulations intended to improve the conditions of life and promote the enlightenment and progress of mankind. How many of these men, when framing and advocating a new law, ask themselves whether it is within the constitution of the Basic Law ? Such a thought will never enter the “deliberating box” of a Commercial Legislator! The Act is framed upon commercial lines, debated from a commercial standpoint, amended to suit commercial conditions, passed and added to the code of commercial civilisation applied to the people, and expected to be a success, in face of the fact that the people owe their origin, their existence, and their welfare to their observance of the Basic Law, and it is purely misadventure accident or ignorance on the part of Commercial Legislators when their enact-
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ments happen to come within the four corners of nature's constitution.
The land laws of almost every civilised country may be cited as laws which are the pent-up elements accumulating force for human storms. When one man is given the sole right to a large area of land, and exercises that right improperly by either using it for his own pleasure and preventing its proper cultivation, or by excluding other men from occupying and cultivating it except by paying him excessively for the privilege, the law that gave him that right has violated the basic principle of life by unduly penalising large numbers for reaching their hereditary means of sustenance, and the justice of nature is certain to abolish it, frequently with the punishment of much suffering and misery. The laws governing the mineral deposits are closely allied to the land laws. The minerals are the necessary media of man's equipment, enabling him to expand his production and meet the requirements of his rapidly increasing numbers. Consequently they are the common and indispensable property of all, and the Basic Law is vehemently insulted when a few individuals are enabled to corner and manipulate the supplies, receiving more than their reasonable share by the methods of commercial exploitation. A law that was recently passed in many parts of the British Empire to assist in financing the war, offered a bribe to the wealthy to lend their money to the Nation by freeing them from taxation on the incomes received from that money. These lenders are placed by law on a pedestal of privilege above their less fortunate brethren, not because they have more patriotism; not because they are better fighters—they are probably worse; not because their natural endowments enable them-to prevent disaster to the National Organisa-
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tiou, nor because they are benefactors to their fellow men, but because the “wizards of finance” and “high priests of Mammon worship” who enacted these laws are steeped in the code of commercial civilisation, long since divorced from its parent origin, and they have hurled them as a bomb of discord into the next generation to scatter the gall of enmity between the classes. These “wizard legislators” are like the code in which they live—divorced from the “Natural Charter.” They have ceased to revel in the chase, and feel the pleasure of its great and second joy—handing a share of the “Kill” to a fellow hunter who has missed the game. They have materialised as experts in the code that man has set against the Basic Law, and fondly believe that they have mastered the science of life by the manipulation of soiled and insanitary “Bank Notes.” These “Free of Income Tax” War Loan Laws may be accepted as the greatest masterpiece of infamy ever directed against the basic law by the commercially controlled Legislatures. A law that will enable a man who has made a huge fortune mainly by violating the natural laws of life to step into a position of special privilege, and draw an income from the Nation without being taxed for it, while other men are bleeding, maimed and dying, to protect him and his wealth, is something which I trust will not pass the justice of Heaven for a lengthy period. I think it may safely be said that this law contains more of the explosive elements which provoke the discord leading to social upheavals than any other statutory experiment that has been perpetrated by the Commercial Legislators within a century.
The industrial unrest which has become a continual storm disturbing the settled habits of the people throughout the world is ample proof that man is in conflict with
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something greater than his own kind, and, when he recognises that that “greater something” is the “Law of Nature,” and realises the insignificance of his puny impotence to oppose the Law, he will begin to make such alterations as will restore the balance of order and return a little harmony to his organisation. The Code of Civilisation may be described as “Abiogenetic,” or an artificial and unnatural production, and it is only by making it “Biogenetic,” or producing it in accordance with nature, that it will sustain the human race in reasonable peace in the intricate complication of its nerve-racking surroundings.
Being satisfied that the Code of Civilisation is in conflict with the Basic Law, and that the Basic Law is proportional ownership, and also being satisfied that the only way to secure the maximum amount of human contentment is to bring Civilisation into harmony with nature, I propose to show some ways by which that very desirable result might be achieved.
The Co-operative Constitution of Nature, under which man is entitled to make “By-laws” regulating the details or minor adjustments necessary in the constantly changing conditions of his life occasioned by the progress of civilisation, is sufficiently elastic to enable him to fit in all these changes without violating the Constitution. The first and most important thing to be done in reorganising society with the object of calming the continually increasing unrest and class antagonism is to remodel the Land Laws and bring the source of all the essentials of life within the code which recognises the “right to live” as pre-emptive. In the primitive corporation the land is the common domain and hunting ground of the tribe. The evolution of the tribe from primitive to civilised conditions alters the system by
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which the means of living are obtained, but does not alter the .source from which they come. If civilisation in evolving from savagery has not at the same time discovered a new source from which to draw the essentials of life then the primitive law remains, and man has no other option than to fit his civilisation into it, and nature's attitude towards him on this point is one of compulsion. It is not reasonable to expect that the conditions of Co-operative Savagery would meet the requirements of modern civilisation, but, like the thread of life, it must lead through the whole system back to its origin. The kernal of the industrial troubles which are disturbing the world at present is the scarcity and cost of the essentials of life which are the products of the land, and the evil that has produced the kernal of the trouble exists in using the land as a medium of commercial speculation. Private ownership of the land is not a transgression of the Basic Law, but the temporary possessor of it must reap all his profit from legitimate production, and nothing from land speculation. Practically the whole of the land in civilised countries is mortgaged to the speculators, who have withdrawn the value of many years' production in unearned increment, and it is the interest upon this huge sum which has to be paid by the products of the land that is increasing the cost of living. and creating the enmity, bitterness and turmoil with which the present industrial life is impregnated. Every legislative experiment of man dealing with the necessaries of life is doomed to absolute failure until trading in land as a commercial enterprise is made impossible. It should be made a criminal offence for any man to buy or sell land for profit, because that man is interfering with the natural rights of the people. He has commit-
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ted a breach of the Basie Law, and his punishment should be drastic and severe.
It may be asked how it is possible to reconcile the private ownership of land to the Basic Law of Proportional Ownership, and the answer is that no offence is committed against nature by a man having exclusive control of an area of land, as long as he uses it in the way nature intended, producing the essentials of life and making what profit he can out of that production. If a man wishes to dispose of his land he should not be permitted to draw from it the unearned increment of ten or twenty years. The value of all land, other than town land, and the improvements upon it should be fixed by the State. THE VALUE OF THE LAND SHOULD BE THE NET VALUE OF WHAT IT IS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING PER ACRE IN ONE YEAR, AND THAT SHOULD BE THE FIXED PRICE AT "WHICH THE LAND SHOULD CHANGE OWNERSHIP, PLUS THE VALUE OF THE IMPROVEMENTS WHICH THE OWNER HAS PUT UPON IT, AND NO GOODWILL SHOULD BE ALLOWED IN THE SALE OF A LEASE. In the case of land leased either by the State or by a private owner, THE RENT CHARGED SHOULD BE FIXED BY LAW, AND SHOULD NOT EXCEED FIVE PER CENT. PER ANNUM OF THE NET VALUE OF THE ANNUAL PRODUCTION PER ACRE. The value of Town Land should he regulated by the amount of rates which the Municipality finds it necessary to collect for providing and supporting the modern requirements of civilisation, AND THE PRICE FIXED BY LAW AT WHICH TOWN LAND COULD CHANGE OWNERS SHOULD BE THE MUNICIPAL VALUATION FOR RATABLE PURPOSES, PLUS THE MUNICIPAL VALUE OF THE BUILDINGS
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ERECTED UPON IT. THE MAXIMUM RENT WHICH SHOULD BE ALLOWED FOR TOWN PROPERTIES SHOULD BE FIVE PER CENT. UPON THE VALUE OF THE LAND AND EIGHT PER CENT. UPON THE VALUE OF THE BUILDINGS, PLUS RATES.
Land Laws fixed upon a basis of this kind would not be repugnant in advanced civilisation to the Natural Constitution which gives man the pre-emptive right to secure the essentials of life without having insurmountable difficulties placed in his way by the dominant and greedy members of the race. They would sweep- away millions in mortgages from the land, and ensure a cheaper and more plentiful food supply. They would draw large numbers of people from the cities, make a healthier Nation, and a happier and more contented peasantry. They would restore the balance of numbers between the city and the agricultural population, and improve the efficiency of the industries by the contentment which comes with cheap and abundant supplies, enabling the industrial workers to have a margin for providing themselves with better living conditions. They would banish to more useful occupations the hosts of parasitical land agents, speculators, mercantile cormorants, and usury men, who fatten on the land by the labour of those who perform the drudgery of cultivation, and of those who find it difficult to make the proceeds of their labour return them a reasonable share of the cultivated products. And finally it would make farming a legitimate pursuit followed for the purpose of living and prospering by the products of the soil, and not. as it is in many places at present, a preliminary preparation in readiness for a big scoop of unearned increment when
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an opportunity presents itself for making a successful sale.
Tlie requirements of modern civilisation demand that large numbers of people shall be employed in the manufacturing industries. These people are severed from the source of production from which they draw their essential supplies, and they obtain these supplies in an indirect way, by selling their labour on the commercial system and buying their requirements with the proceeds of the sale. This system is in conflict with the natural law, because industrial workers, who receive fixed wages and have no personal interest in the industries in which they work, are merely “floating units” of the race. The links connecting them with the origin of life’s essentials are severed by reason of the fact that labour is their only asset, and, if there is no sale for it or if through illness or physical weakness they have none to sell, they are helpless. The owners of the factories and industries and the industries themselves are linked to the natural sources through the materials which they use. The factory and the production of raw materials are so closely related that one cannot flourish or languish without a corresponding movement in the other, and both are subject to the fluctuations occurring in the supplies through natural conditions. The labour of the manufacturing industries is the living machinery of the industries, having its origin and coming into existence in a natural way, but when it reaches the point when it is commercialised it lives in an artificial or mechanical way. Commercialised labour may be likened to an infant whose mother has failed to supply it with nourishment from the fonts of nature and who has resorted to the rubber tube, the bottle, and the cow of commerce to supply by artificial means what the weakness in her own system has failed
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to provide in a natural way. This is the point at which commercialised labour comes into conflict with the Basic Law, and may be described as the “cross roads” of civilisation, where progress begins to lose itself in an endless quarrel about the way leading into the future.
I have outlined concisely now Land Laws may be framed to meet the requirements of the Basic Law without materially affecting the established regulations of commercial civilisation, and the industrial labour of the world that is agonising the whole system at the present time, through its defective connection with the font of life, can, through the flexibility of the Basic Constitution, be brought to a state of peaceful and prolific production, without any drastic or revolutionary reforms being applied to the social system as it is established at present. I have said that the owner of the factory or the industry is intimately connected with nature through the raw materials that he uses, AND THE WHOLE DIFFICULTY OF THE INDUSTRIAL TROUBLE IS .SOLVED BY GIVING EACH WORKER A SHARE IN THE OWNERSHIP, AND WIRING HIM, AS IT WERE, ON TO THE GREAT DYNAMO OF LIFE. There are numerous ways of providing for workers to have an interest in the industry or business in which they are employed while drawing a fixed wage from it. and many of these systems are evolving into practical existence with good effects in many countries.
The system which appears to harmonise most effectually with the manifold intricacies of modern civilisation in relation to the natural law is “profit-sharing.” This system is the most flexible and the least irksome to the natural inclinations of young and ambitious workers who, feeling the call of the larger world, respond to the
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desire to move from their native village or town, and enlarge their ideas by seeing different methods, people, and conditions, from their own, and possibly settling where they think the opportunities are favourable and the surroundings congenial. x\.ll labour must be provided with an incentive to obtain the best results, and an incentive, to he effectual, must have in it an element of uncertainty. Life itself is uncertain, and certainties are obnoxious to human sensibilities. No sane man would care to know the day and hour upon which he was going to die, and, if he did know, towards his approaching end his value as an effective unit in the advance of progress would be very small. A fixed wage, which enables a worker to calculate in one minute how much he will have earned at the end of the year, provides no incentive; the certainty of it destroys his imagination, and, even if it is a large salary, the knowledge that it is coming removes all the joy and excitement of receiving it. Giving a worker a share in the profits of the concern in which he is employed, over and above his wages, gives him an incentive to increase his effort. It provides the element of uncertainty that stimulates his imagination. It makes him feel that he is a live and integral part of the machinery, that he is not an automaton separated from the source of vitality every time he draws his wages, and that if prosperity results from his energies the end of the year will bring him a just reward. In connection with the system of profit-sharing, where passible “payment by results,” in lieu of fixed wages, should be the basis upon which all labour is employed. The price fixed should be high enough to enable an inferior worker to earn a living wage. This keeps the incentive constantly present and provides the stimulant of uncertainty which has its origin
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in the fickleness of life and finds expression in the gamble of every human enterprise. Nature has no monotony, no sameness and no perfect equality in her system; no two men are physically or mentally equal, and the practice of rating men on a common level in the payment of wages is an attempt to stultify nature in her masterly display of myriad variations. The payment of a uniform wage to a thousand men in a factory means that the natural genius and superiority of a large percentage of them is curbed and atrophied through the lack of encouragement and opportunity to turn their genius to profitable account. Nature responds with increased production under the stimulus of cultivation and encouragement, and man applies both to the animals and plants that he requires to meet his manifold necessities, but when dealing with his own kind he forgets that the same law applies and uses methods which tend to put men in a position that decreases production by compelling the most capable to accept the same wage as the incapable, instead of cultivating human productiveness by paying energy and ability in accordance with its output. Although the Basic Law is Proportional Ownership, and is most rigid and exacting in demanding the rights of the weak as well as those of the strong, it gives every freedom and encouragement to energy and ability to develop the expansion of progress in order that the increasing population may be provided for by the better organisation and increased production accruing from the enterprise of the forceful and aggressive leaders of the race.
Man enjoys a freedom and individual scope in the scheme of Proportional Ownership, which is a privilege giving him personal advantages, within certain limits, hy which he is enabled to attain a position in the Social
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Organisation corresponding with the attainments possessed by him as a natural gift. When nature distributed ability unequally amongst men she did not intend those whom she endowed most liberally to abuse her superior gifts by using them exclusively for personal advantage over the weaker and less capable members of the race. The intention of nature is that the men of superior talents should be the pioneers, the investigators, the builders and leaders who search out and develop her bidden resources and make them available to the increasing millions, who guide and instruct the rank and file of humanity how to use these resources for the general benefit, and who build and guide the organisation in equity and justice within the “Basic Constitution.” When nature endows a man with a fifteen, twenty or one hundred per cent, superiority in ability over an average man she does not mean that he shall increase that superiority in a compound ratio by a “commercial invention” which man has introduced into his Social Organisation, and deprive the rank and file of proportional rights corresponding with their natural ability. IF A MAN POSSESSES A ONE HUNDRED PER CENT. SUPERIORITY IN ABILITY OYER HIS FELLOW MEN THE “GREAT NATURAL COURT OF EQUITY” ALLOWS HIM THAT ONE HUNDRED PER CENT. IN “SIMPLE INTEREST,” BUT EXPECTS THAT THE “COMPOUND INTEREST” WILL GO INTO THE COMMON FUND FOE THE GOOD OF HUMANITY. This is where the great failure of Commercial Civilisation comes in. The men whom nature endowed for the purpose of developing her resources are drawing BOTH THE SIMPLE AND THE COMPOUND INTEREST, with the result that the social organisation is getting out of balance and falling into
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disorder, and the rank and file of humanity, feeling the instability, are the elements which are threatening to restore the balance of order by the “Storm Law.”
The Basic Law encourages the division of the world, which is man’s domain, into subdivisions, and the necessity for continually increasing the subdivisions follows the growth of population, and prevents an “incoherent unwieldiness,” interfering seriously with the progressive movement of the great corporation. These subdivisions are continued under one constitution and one relationship down through the family to the single human unit. Each subdivision enjoys the privilege of perfect freedom to develop its individuality, and nature affords every encouragement and opportunity for the strengthening of individual resources, in order that man may win the requirements of life from the smaller subdivisions of his domain made necessary by increasing population.
Just here we arrive at a point where it is necessary to consider a movement that is attracting attention throughout the world at the present time—the nationalising of industries. We see that nature subdivides her corporation in order to prevent “incoherent unwieldiness” and develop resourceful individuality, and if a Nation comprising millions of people nationalises her big industries, she is certainly going to promote “incoherent unwieldiness” and put a check upon the development of individual resource. There are certain things vital to the Nation that should be brought exclusively under National management. Coal should be nationalised, because it is a diminishing and nonrecurring asset; the strictest economy should be exercised in its use, and no consideration of profit must be permitted to interfere with the extraction of the last
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ton from the mine, and the last pennyworth of value from it when it is mined. Railways, through their value in the system of National Defence, should be the property of the State, and they also possess National value higher and more important than profit earning, in that they provide the inter-communication which enables people to broaden their minds and receive the stimulus of enterprise by the freedom of movement given to themselves and their productions. They are the internal arteries of the State circulating the elements of enterprise and progress. For the same reasons Post and Telegraph Systems in all their branches, on account of their close relationship to the Railways, should be National property. The Liquor Trade should be controlled by the State. Intoxicating liquor is easily made and has been used by man for centuries, but because it is something that is useful, and at the same time a source of injury to those who abuse it, and because it is impossible, on account of the simplicity of its manufacture, to remove it, the State should control its manufacture and distribution. All drugs tending to lead people with mental peculiarities into demoralising habits should be treated in the same way. But it is neither necessary nor wise for the State to enter into industrial or productive enterprise on a large scale in order to secure the justice and equity which is demanded by the “Basic Law.” The Basie Law does not impose upon the paternal head of the co-operative organisation the responsibility of establishing and conducting the productive enterprise necessary for the progress and welfare of the inhabitants. We see that Nature subdivides her domain and imposes as much responsibility as possible an each subdivision, in regard to its own welfare, right down to the single individual; and by
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no other system can progress and individual resource be encouraged to give the best results.
The civilised organisation is based upou this system, and we see it in operation in everything, even to the Armies, and it is impossible to depart from it without creating disorder in the system. A large State-owned enterprise mnst of necessity become bureaucratic. It cannot have the same adaptable flexibility as a privatelyowned concern. It cannot offer to its numerous employees the. same inducements to expand their talents by straining their endeavours in order to secure extra for themselves by increased effort; bureaucratic methods incline towards discouraging individual effort. It cannot provide the incentive which stimulates the genius of originality, and it cannot exist or progress without continually drawing to its assistance the genius and knowledge which have been developed and promoted by individual effort in private enterprise. A continual cry which is heard in these times of stress and trouble is—"We want good business men to run the Country." This is a fallacy ! What we want are men whose moral responsibilities and integrity are above the sordid channels flowing with the contaminating influences of business, men who are capable of framing laws based upon equity, who will guide and encourage individual effort to assist the general prosperity by bettering itself, and who will fearlessly hold the scales of justice in the Court of Nature. Parliament is a paternal institution blending the millions of different temperaments comprised in the National Family to the concord of harmonious unity, punishing the dishonest and unruly, checking the greedy and covetous, spurring the lazy and indolent, encouraging and assisting the weak, fostering the young and carefully providing for their ply-
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sical ana mental equipment, preventing waste and extravagance in the natural assets, balancing taxation evenly in the scales of justice and affording to genius, energy and enterprise every assistance and encouragement to develop the latent resources of the Nation in a manner that will lead to general benefit.
Industrial unrest has its origin in the spirit of com. petition which is a natural spur to the rivalry of life, Jealousy, spite, vindictiveness and the multitude of hostile variations which are latent elements in all competition are present in the rivalry of existence. These acrimonious ingredients in natural rivalry seldom come into play when the competition is fair and honourable, but if one competitor departs from the unwritten rule dictated by conscience, healthy competition is destroyed and violent antagonism takes its place and paralyses the organisation. Industrial unrest in a country is not an unhealthy sign as it indicates a strength and virility capable of exercising aggressive measures in competitive existence. The industrial unrest which is exhibiting violent antagonism at the present time is due to the introduction of dishonourable methods into the rivalry of life. These dishonourable methods are found in the advantages which the commercial system gives to those who live by commerce over those who live by the sale of their physical labour. Industrial unrest may be summed up in one short sentence —"Disproportionate Possession of Production."
We see that there is no perfect equality in nature, and, as the abilities of no two men are equal, there can be no perfect equality in the possession of the world’s goods. But nature fixes a minimum of possession, and that minimum is—“ Sufficient of the essential things of life to make life tolerable.” If a man has the physical
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power and insufficient energy to provide himself with minimum essentials it is the duty of the State to compel him to do so. If on the other hand he has neither the physical nor mental ability to provide for himself the State must provide adequately for him from the possession of those whom nature has more liberally endowed. The problem confronting the Legislative Institutions of the world is to "proportion the possession of production" in accordance with the natural abilities of the producers. The scientific manipulation of the medium of exchange, giving money and those who own it greater power and importance than production and those who create it, is a flagrant cause of industrial unrest arising out of "disproportionate ownership." Millions of monied people who never create anything live in luxury, and their existence depends upon production, by other people, in sufficient quantities to maintain the value of their money. Nothing is found in nature which gives a normal adult the right to hold a mortgage upon future production, and nature give* no man a legal right to live upon the excuse that he is a "consumer of what other men produce" without producing something in exchange or doing some useful work in distribution. The greater the wealth of a country as represented by its "dead assets" in the buildings and modern conveniences of its cities, the greater will be the strain upon its production to pay the interest upon these "dead assets," and idleness and poverty increase in proportion to the growth and wealth of the cities. The largest proportion of the wealth of the "idle rich" is represented by "dead assets," and the rich idlers may be aptly described as "Passive existers sustained bv inanimate substance."
These things cannot be entirely eliminated from
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civilised conditions, but they can be considerably alleviated by the State taking hold of the Banking Business and preventing commercial enterprise from juggling with the medium of exchange and from having a fearfully busy and industrious activity creating phantom wealth. The medium of exchange whether it is gold, paper, pebbles or nuts is the property of the Nation. The Nation establishes and guarantees it for the benefit and convenience of the people. It exists for the purpose of facilitating the easy exchange of the necessities and pleasures of life and, if there is any profit to be derived from the business of Banking, that profit before all others should be the property of the State and the People. No government of a country is in a position to establish a system approximating to the proportioning of wealth according to individual abilities until it takes complete control of its currency. Any attempt to regulate incomes, profits and exchanges can, at the very best, be only a partial success, while private enterprise is enabled, with the freedom it possesses under existing conditions, to keep its finger upon the pulse of public finance, and create phantom wealth by regulating the beat to the requirements of the ring. Rates of interest for all public and private loans should be fixed by the State and should remain stationary unless the fluctuations in natural conditions governing production or international complications demand an alteration. This would put parasitical usury out of existence, and drive the “Stock Gamblers’’ into more useful and legitimate occupations. Income Tax should start at a point where the Income, having regard to the value of the medium of exchange, is sufficiently high to make life pleasant and tolerable. It should then be increased upon a graduated scale until the individual income reaches a
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vanishing point "at a maximum fixed by the State." The maximum income should be sufficiently high to afford ample scope for enterprise and ambition. "Millionaires" are neither useful nor desirable citizens of uny country; extremes of wealth and extremes of poverty are blood relations, and they are always near neighbors. Death Duties should be much higher than they are. Nature gives no man the power to will his abilities to his son, and the Government is outside the Basic Constitution when it gives him full power to will the product of his abilities. The "Public Conscience" gives a man full power through his humanitarian instincts to make ample provision for his family, but his family has no right to start life with an unreasonable advantage over others through parental abilities. "Hereditary privilege" seldom makes #ood citizens, and the "freak intelligence" of gennis, which is commonly associated with worldly success, is frequently feeble and eccentric in reproduction, and rarely prolific in vigorous numbers of standard manhood. Although nature makes no two men equal, the difference which she makes between maximum and minimum ability bears no comparison to the difference which commercial civilisation makes by the influence of money and society customs. Positions of wealth and power are largely due to opportunity and choice of occupation. Two men of equal ability may attend the University together and meet with equal success in their studies; one chooses Law and the other Teaching; Law offers the greatest opportunities, and the Law student may eventually become the Lord Chief Justice and a Baronet; the Student who has entered the Teaching Profession, and who was equal witli his friend at the University, would have to develop a much superior ability to reach a Baranetcy
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through the channels offered by his chosen occupation. An M.A. of ordinary ability in the Medical Profession may earn five thousand pounds a year, while an M.A. in Chemistry, Dentistry or Accountancy may consider himself well paid when he is earning five hundred per year. An energetic trader whose chief ability manifests itself in the bulging selfishness of the baser instincts in his skull, and whose general knowledge never exceeded the three R.'s, may be earning ten thousand pounds per year from business, while a man in his employ, who is a perfect physical specimen with normal and well-balanced intelligence and who is the father of a large family promising to be a credit to the race, may be earning one hundred pounds a year. These examples of position and wealth coming to individualn through opportunity and accident in the choice of occupation might be multiplied indefinitely, and we are not likely to have industrial peace while men with intelligence and ability equal to that of the Managing Directors of the Companies are in the stokeholds, in the mines, and at the furnaces.
With these anomalies in commercial civilisation it is not easy to solve the problem of "Proportionate Distribution of Wealth," and it is made more difficult still by the fact that nature and civilisation are largely in opposition in the methods of grading the ability of human beings. Nature grades men purely upon a combination of mental and physical ability, while civilisation allows social position and hereditary advantage based upon a money value to bulk largely in the choice of the men filling the most important positions, and a man who is not possessed of these special levers to position must have extra ability before he will receive recognition. This means that civilised progress is suffer-
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ing through inability to use a vast resource of ability which cannot be brought into action for lack of opportunity. It is quite possible to solve the problem of "Proportionate Distribution" if we can find Statesmen sufficiently honourable and honest, with lofty intelligence and a true sense of justice, and with moral sensibilities above the contaminating evils of commerce, to—first—raise the standard of the Teaching Profession and make the Education System equally available to all, so that natural ability irrespective of money will receive its proper opportunity; second—by taxing their incomes down to the level of the incomes of their equals in the less remunerative professions; punish the professional men in the lucrative professions who charge exorbitantly for their services: third—audit the books of the mercantile and commercial concerns that have fallen from grace and dwell in the infamous surroundings of avaricious lust, and allow them a fair and reasonable profit for their energy and enterprise; fourth—stop all speculation in land by fixing the value per acre at the value per acre of the last preceding year's production, and fix the price of farm produce sufficiently high to enable farmers to make their profits by legitimate farming, and not by mortgaging future production by the withdrawal of unearned increment, and at the same time put a criminal stain upon land speculators and all parasitica] satellites associated with them.
The criminal selfishness that has set its mark upon men through long years of development under Commercial Civilisation has manifested itself in no uncertain manner during the War. When we see men, who are looked upon as good citizens and who are supposed to be possessed of humanitarian instincts, calmly and deliberately shirking their national obligations and using the
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miseries of War and the blood and mangled bodies of their own people as instruments for making profit through the machinery of commerce, it is time to seriously analyse our Social Organisation and put a check upon the evil that is producing the evolutionary change in human temperament, and submerging the nobility of manhood beneath the greed and selfishness and callous brutality of animalism.
In considering reorganisation, trade, commerce, manufacture and production are secondary tilings resulting from human activity, and need not be given first place as they are at present. Tf human activity is maintained everything else that goes to make a Nation's greatness is certain to come into existence. It is the human element that counts, and the Nation whose Statesmen are first to devise a reorganised civilisation which will improve its people mentally and physically and at the same time promote healthy and harmonious rivalry in the national family by the strictest justice in the distribution of the national estate, that Nation is certain to lead all others by the strength and individuality of its single units, cemented by independence and national pride into the most perfect organisation that it is possible to build from the frail and fluctuating material comprised in the human element. Commercial civilisation has passed the zenith of its perfection. It is crumbling because it develops the worst and destroys the best instincts of the race. It lowers the stature and produces physical degeneracy by creating unnatural conditions of living. It has weakened the higher intellectuality by cultivating the baser propensities of cunning and deceit, which are inseparable from commercial success, and the brutal ferocity, which would bring the blush of shame to savages, displayed in
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this war of civilised peoples is sufficiently proof of the evolutionary change which has reduced the “rivalry of life’’ under normal guidance to a brutal competition under the criminal aggression of Commercial Civilisation.
THE SOUTHLAND NEWS CO.. LTD., PRINTERS. INVERCARGILL. N.Z
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/books/ALMA1920-9917502153502836-Commercial-civilisation
Bibliographic details
APA: Hinchey, W. (William). (1920). Commercial civilisation. Southland News.
Chicago: Hinchey, W. (William). Commercial civilisation. Invercargill, N.Z.: Southland News, 1920.
MLA: Hinchey, W. (William). Commercial civilisation. Southland News, 1920.
Word Count
83,879
Commercial civilisation Hinchey, W. (William), Southland News, Invercargill, N.Z., 1920
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