CHAPTER XXXV.
WHY THE REVOLUTION WENT SLOW AT FIRST BUT FAST AT LAST.
"So much for the causes of the Revolution in America, both the generalfundamental cause, consisting in the factor newly introduced into socialevolution by the enlightenment of the masses and irresistibly tending toequality, and the immediate local causes peculiar to America, whichaccount for the Revolution having come at the particular time it did andfor its taking the particular course it did. Now, briefly as to thatcourse:
"The pinching of the economic shoe resulting from the concentration ofwealth was naturally first felt by the class with least reserves, thewage-earners, and the Revolution may be said to have begun with theirrevolt. In 1869 the first great labor organization in America was formedto resist the power of capital. Previous to the war the number of strikesthat had taken place in the country could be counted on the fingers.Before the sixties were out they were counted by hundreds, during theseventies by thousands, and during the eighties the labor reportsenumerate nearly ten thousand, involving two or three million workers.Many of these strikes were of continental scope, shaking the wholecommercial fabric and causing general panics.
"Close after the revolt of the wage earners came that of thefarmers--less turbulent in methods but more serious and abiding inresults. This took the form of secret leagues and open political partiesdevoted to resisting what was called the money power. Already in theseventies these organizations threw State and national politics intoconfusion, and later became the nucleus of the revolutionary party.
"Your contemporaries of the thinking classes can not be taxed withindifference to these signs and portents. The public discussion andliterature of the time reflect the confusion and anxiety with which theunprecedented manifestations of popular discontent had affected allserious persons. The old-fashioned Fourth-of-July boastings had ceased tobe heard in the land. All agreed that somehow republican forms ofgovernment had not fulfilled their promise as guarantees of the popularwelfare, but were showing themselves impotent to prevent therecrudescence in the New World of all the Old World's evils, especiallythose of class and caste, which it had been supposed could never exist inthe atmosphere of a republic. It was recognized on all sides that the oldorder was changing for the worse, and that the republic and all it hadbeen thought to stand for was in danger. It was the universal cry thatsomething must be done to check the ruinous tendency. Reform was the wordin everybody's mouth, and the rallying cry, whether in sincerity orpretense, of every party. But indeed, Julian, I need waste no timedescribing this state of affairs to you, for you were a witness of ittill 1887."
"It was all quite as you describe it, the industrial and politicalwarfare and turmoil, the general sense that the country was going wrong,and the universal cry for some sort of reform. But, as I said before, theagitation, while alarming enough, was too confused and purposeless toseem revolutionary. All agreed that something ailed the country, but notwo agreed what it was or how to cure it."
"Just so," said the doctor. "Our historians divide the entirerevolutionary epoch--from the close of the war, or the beginning of theseventies, to the establishment of the present order early in thetwentieth century--into two periods, the incoherent and the rational. Thefirst of these is the period of which we have been talking, and withwhich Storiot deals with in the paragraphs I have read--the period withwhich you were, for the most part, contemporary. As we have seen, and youknow better than we can, it was a time of terror and tumult, of confusedand purposeless agitation, and a Babel of contradictory clamor. Thepeople were blindly kicking in the dark against the pricks of capitalism,without any clear idea of what they were kicking against.
"The two great divisions of the toilers, the wage-earners and thefarmers, were equally far from seeing clear and whole the natureof the situation and the forces of which they were the victims. Thewage-earners' only idea was that by organizing the artisans and manualworkers their wages could be forced up and maintained indefinitely. Theyseem to have had absolutely no more knowledge than children of the effectof the profit system always and inevitably to keep the consuming power ofthe community indefinitely below its producing power and thus to maintaina constant state of more or less aggravated glut in the goods and labormarkets, and that nothing could possibly prevent the constant presence ofthese conditions so long as the profit system was tolerated, or theireffect finally to reduce the wage-earner to the subsistence point orbelow as profits tended downward. Until the wage-earners saw this and nolonger wasted their strength in hopeless or trivial strikes againstindividual capitalists which could not possibly affect the generalresult, and united to overthrow the profit system, the Revolution mustwait, and the capitalists had no reason to disturb themselves.
"As for the farmers, as they were not wage-earners, they took nointerest in the plans of the latter, which aimed merely to benefit thewage-earning class, but devoted themselves to equally futile schemes fortheir class, in which, for the same reason that they were merely classremedies, the wage-earners took no interest. Their aim was to obtain aidfrom the Government to improve their condition as petty capitalistsoppressed by the greater capitalists who controlled the traffic andmarkets of the country; as if any conceivable device, so long as privatecapitalism should be tolerated, would prevent its natural evolution,which was the crushing of the smaller capitalists by the larger.
"Their main idea seems to have been that their troubles as farmers werechiefly if not wholly to be accounted for by certain vicious acts offinancial legislation, the effect of which they held had been to makemoney scarce and dear. What they demanded as the sufficient cure of theexisting evils was the repeal of the vicious legislation and a largerissue of currency. This they believed would be especially beneficial tothe farming class by reducing the interest on their debts and raising theprice of their product.
"Undoubtedly the currency and the coinage and the governmental financialsystem in general had been shamelessly abused by the capitalists tocorner the wealth of the nation in their hands, but their misuse of thispart of the economic machinery had been no worse than their manipulationof the other portions of the system. Their trickery with the currency hadonly helped them to monopolize the wealth of the people a little fasterthan they would have done it had they depended for their enrichment onwhat were called the legitimate operations of rent, interest, andprofits. While a part of their general policy of economic subjugation ofthe people, the manipulation of the currency had not been essential tothat policy, which would have succeeded just as certainly had it beenleft out. The capitalists were under no necessity to juggle with thecoinage had they been content to make a little more leisurely process ofdevouring the lands and effects of the people. For that result noparticular form of currency system was necessary, and no conceivablemonetary system would have prevented it. Gold, silver, paper, dear money,cheap money, hard money, bad money, good money--every form of token fromcowries to guineas--had all answered equally well in different times andcountries for the designs of the capitalist, the details of the gamebeing only slightly modified according to the conditions.
"To have convinced himself of the folly of ascribing the economicdistress to which his class as well as the people at large had beenreduced, to an act of Congress relating to the currency, the Americanfarmer need only have looked abroad to foreign lands, where he would haveseen that the agricultural class everywhere was plunged in a miserygreater than his own, and that, too, without the slightest regard to thenature of the various monetary systems in use.
"Was it indeed a new or strange phenomenon in human affairs that theagriculturists were going to the wall, that the American farmer shouldseek to account for the fact by some new and peculiarly American policy?On the contrary, this had been the fate of the agricultural class in allages, and what was now threatening the American tiller of the soil wasnothing other than the doom which had befallen his kind in every previousgeneration and in every part of the world. Manifestly, then, he shouldseek the explanation not in any particular
or local conjunction ofcircumstances, but in some general and always operative cause. Thisgeneral cause, operative in all lands and times and among all races, hewould presently see when he should interrogate history, was theirresistible tendency by which the capitalist class in the evolution ofany society through rent, interest, and profits absorbs to itself thewhole wealth of the country, and thus reduces the masses of the people toeconomic, social, and political subjection, the most abject class of allbeing invariably the tillers of the soil. For a time the Americanpopulation, including the farmers, had been enabled, thanks to the vastbounty of a virgin and empty continent, to evade the operation of thisuniversal law, but the common fate was now about to overtake them, andnothing would avail to avert it save the overthrow of the system ofprivate capitalism of which it always had been and always must be thenecessary effect.
"Time would fail even to mention the innumerable reform nostrums offeredfor the cure of the nation by smaller bodies of reformers. They rangedfrom the theory of the prohibitionists that the chief cause of theeconomic distress--from which the teetotal farmers of the West were theworst sufferers--was the use of intoxicants, to that of the party whichagreed that the nation was being divinely chastised because there was noformal recognition of the Trinity in the Constitution. Of course, thesewere extravagant persons, but even those who recognized the concentrationof wealth as the cause of the whole trouble quite failed to see that thisconcentration was itself the natural evolution of private capitalism, andthat it was not possible to prevent it or any of its consequences unlessand until private capitalism itself should be put an end to.
"As might be expected, efforts at resistance so ill calculated as thesedemonstrations of the wage-earners and farmers, not to speak of the hostof petty sects of so-called reformers during the first phase of theRevolution, were ineffectual. The great labor organizations which hadsprung up shortly after the war as soon as the wage-earners felt thenecessity of banding themselves to resist the yoke of concentratedcapital, after twenty-five years of fighting, had demonstrated theirutter inability to maintain, much less to improve, the condition of theworkingman. During this period ten or fifteen thousand recorded strikesand lock-outs had taken place, but the net result of the industrial civilwar, protracted through so long a period, had been to prove to thedullest of workingmen the hopelessness of securing any considerableamelioration of their lot by class action or organization, or indeed ofeven maintaining it against encroachments. After all this unexampledsuffering and fighting, the wage-earners found themselves worse off thanever. Nor had the farmers, the other great division of the insurgentmasses, been any more successful in resisting the money power. Theirleagues, although controlling votes by the million, had proved even moreimpotent if possible than the wage-earners' organizations to help theirmembers. Even where they had been apparently successful and succeeded incapturing the political control of states, they found the money powerstill able by a thousand indirect influences to balk their efforts andturn their seeming victories into apples of Sodom, which became ashes inthe hands of those who would pluck them.
"Of the vast, anxious, and anguished volume of public discussion as towhat should be done, what after twenty-five years had been the practicaloutcome? Absolutely nothing. If here and there petty reforms had beenintroduced, on the whole the power of the evils against which thosereforms were directed had vastly increased. If the power of theplutocracy in 1873 had been as the little finger of a man, in 1895 it wasthicker than his loins. Certainly, so far as superficial and materialindications went, it looked as if the battle had been going thus farsteadily, swiftly, and hopelessly against the people, and that theAmerican capitalists who expended their millions in buying titles ofnobility for their children were wiser in their generation than thechildren of light and better judges of the future.
"Nevertheless, no conclusion could possibly have been more mistaken.During these decades of apparently unvaried failure and disaster therevolutionary movement for the complete overthrow of private capitalismhad made a progress which to rational minds should have presaged itscomplete triumph in the near future."
"Where had the progress been?" I said; "I don't see any."
"In the development among, the masses of the people of the necessaryrevolutionary temper," replied the doctor; "in the preparation of thepopular mind by the only process that could have prepared it, to acceptthe programme of a radical reorganization of the economic system from theground up. A great revolution, you must remember, which is to profoundlychange a form of society, must accumulate a tremendous moral force, anoverwhelming weight of justification, so to speak, behind it before itcan start. The processes by which and the period during which thisaccumulation of impulse is effected are by no means so spectacular as theevents of the subsequent period when the revolutionary movement, havingobtained an irresistible momentum, sweeps away like straws the obstaclesthat so long held it back only to swell its force and volume at last. Butto the student the period of preparation is the more truly interestingand critical field of study. It was absolutely necessary that theAmerican people, before they would seriously think of undertaking sotremendous a reformation as was implied in the substitution of public forprivate capitalism, should be fully convinced not by argument only, butby abundant bitter experience and convincing object lessons, that noremedy for the evils of the time less complete or radical would suffice.They must become convinced by numerous experiments that privatecapitalism had evolved to a point where it was impossible to amend itbefore they would listen to the proposition to end it. This painful butnecessary experience the people were gaining during the earlier decadesof the struggle. In this way the innumerable defeats, disappointments,and fiascoes which met their every effort at curbing and reforming themoney power during the seventies, eighties, and early nineties,contributed far more than as many victories would have done to themagnitude and completeness of the final triumph of the people. It wasindeed necessary that all these things should come to pass to make theRevolution possible. It was necessary that the system of private andclass tyranny called private capitalism should fill up the measure of itsiniquities and reveal all it was capable of, as the irreconcilable enemyof democracy, the foe of life and liberty and human happiness, in orderto insure that degree of momentum to the coming uprising against it whichwas necessary to guarantee its complete and final overthrow. Revolutionswhich start too soon stop too soon, and the welfare of the race demandedthat this revolution should not cease, nor pause, until the last vestigeof the system by which men usurped power over the lives and liberties oftheir fellows through economic means was destroyed. Therefore not oneoutrage, not one act of oppression, not one exhibition of consciencelessrapacity, not one prostitution of power on the part of Executive,Legislature, or judiciary, not one tear of patriotic shame over thedegradation of the national name, not one blow of the policeman'sbludgeon, not a single bullet or bayonet thrust of the soldiery, couldhave been spared. Nothing but just this discipline of failure,disappointment, and defeat on the part of the earlier reformers couldhave educated the people to the necessity of attacking the system ofprivate capitalism in its existence instead of merely in its particularmanifestations.
"We reckon the beginning of the second part of the revolutionary movementto which we give the name of the coherent or rational phase, from thetime when there became apparent a clear conception, on the part of atleast a considerable body of the people, of the true nature of the issueas one between the rights of man and the principle of irresponsible powerembodied in private capitalism, and the realization that its outcome, ifthe people were to triumph, must be the establishment of a wholly neweconomic system which should be based upon the public control in thepublic interest of the system of production and distribution hithertoleft to private management."
"At about what date," I asked, "do you consider that the revolutionarymovement began to pass from the incoherent into the logical phase?"
"Of course," replied the doctor, "it was not the case of an immediateo
utright change of character, but only of the beginning of a new spiritand intelligence. The confusion and incoherence and short-sightedness ofthe first period long overlapped the time when the infusion of a morerational spirit and adequate ideal began to appear, but from about thebeginning of the nineties we date the first appearance of an intelligentpurpose in the revolutionary movement and the beginning of itsdevelopment from a mere formless revolt against intolerable conditionsinto a logical and self-conscious evolution toward the order of to-day."
"It seems I barely missed it."
"Yes," replied the doctor, "if you had been able to keep awake only ayear or two longer you would not have been so wholly surprised by ourindustrial system, and especially by the economic equality for and bywhich it exists, for within a couple of years after your supposed demisethe possibility that such a social order might be the outcome of theexisting crisis was being discussed from one end of America to the other.
"Of course," the doctor went on, "the idea of an integrated economicsystem co-ordinating the efforts of all for the common welfare, which isthe basis of the modern state, is as old as philosophy. As a theory itdates back to Plato at least, and nobody knows how much further, for itis a conception of the most natural and obvious order. Not, however,until popular government had been made possible by the diffusion ofintelligence was the world ripe for the realization of such a form ofsociety. Until that time the idea, like the soul waiting for a fitincarnation, must remain without social embodiment. Selfish rulersthought of the masses only as instruments for their own aggrandizement,and if they had interested themselves in a more exact organization ofindustry it would only have been with a view of making that organizationthe means of a more complete tyranny. Not till the masses themselvesbecame competent to rule was a serious agitation possible or desirablefor an economic organization on a co-operative basis. With the firststirrings of the democratic spirit in Europe had come the beginning ofearnest discussion as to the feasibility of such a social order. Already,by the middle of the century, this agitation in the Old World had become,to discerning eyes, one of the signs of the times, but as yet America, ifwe except the brief and abortive social experiments in the forties, hadremained wholly unresponsive to the European movement.
"I need not repeat that the reason, of course, was the fact that theeconomic conditions in America had been more satisfactory to the massesthan ever before, or anywhere else in the world. The individualisticmethod of making a living, every man for himself, had answered thepurpose on the whole so well that the people did not care to discussother methods. The powerful motive necessary to rouse the sluggish andhabit-bound minds of the masses and interest them in a new andrevolutionary set of ideas was lacking. Even during the early stage ofthe revolutionary period it had been found impossible to obtain anyhearing for the notions of a new economic order which were alreadyagitating Europe. It was not till the close of the eighties that thetotal and ridiculous failure of twenty years of desperate efforts toreform the abuses of private capitalism had prepared the American peopleto give serious attention to the idea of dispensing with the capitalistaltogether by a public organization of industry to be administered likeother common affairs in the common interest.
"The two great points of the revolutionary programme--the principle ofeconomic equality and a nationalized industrial system as its means andpledge--the American people were peculiarly adapted to understand andappreciate. The lawyers had made a Constitution of the United States, butthe true American constitution--the one written on the people'shearts--had always remained the immortal Declaration with its assertionof the inalienable equality of all men. As to the nationalization ofindustry, while it involved a set of consequences which would completelytransform society, the principle on which the proposition was based, andto which it appealed for justification, was not new to Americans in anysense, but, on the contrary, was merely a logical development of the ideaof popular self-government on which the American system was founded. Theapplication of this principle to the regulation of the economicadministration was indeed a use of it which was historically new, but itwas one so absolutely and obviously implied in the content of the ideathat, as soon as it was proposed, it was impossible that any sinceredemocrat should not be astonished that so plain and common-sense acorollary of popular government had waited so long for recognition. Theapostles of a collective administration of the economic system in thecommon interest had in Europe a twofold task: first, to teach the generaldoctrine of the absolute right of the people to govern, and then to showthe economic application of that right. To Americans, however, it wasonly necessary to point out an obvious although hitherto overlookedapplication of a principle already fully accepted as an axiom.
"The acceptance of the new ideal did not imply merely a change inspecific programmes, but a total facing about of the revolutionarymovement. It had thus far been an attempt to resist the new economicconditions being imposed by the capitalists by bringing back the formereconomic conditions through the restoration of free competition as it hadexisted before the war. This was an effort of necessity hopeless, seeingthat the economic changes which had taken place were merely the necessaryevolution of any system of private capitalism, and could not besuccessfully resisted while the system was retained.
"'Face about!' was the new word of command. 'Fight forward, not backward!March with the course of economic evolution, not against it. Thecompetitive system can never be restored, neither is it worthy ofrestoration, having been at best an immoral, wasteful, brutal scramblefor existence. New issues demand new answers. It is in vain to pit themoribund system of competition against the young giant of privatemonopoly; it must rather be opposed by the greater giant of publicmonopoly. The consolidation of business in private interests must be metwith greater consolidation in the public interest, the trust and thesyndicate with the city, State, and nation, capitalism with nationalism.The capitalists have destroyed the competitive system. Do not try torestore it, but rather thank them for the work, if not the motive, andset about, not to rebuild the old village of hovels, but to rear on thecleared place the temple humanity so long has waited for.'
"By the light of the new teaching the people began to recognize that thestrait place into which the republic had come was but the narrow andfrowning portal of a future of universal welfare and happiness such asonly the Hebrew prophets had colors strong enough to paint.
"By the new philosophy the issue which had arisen between the people andthe plutocracy was seen not to be a strange and unaccountable ordeplorable event, but a necessary phase in the evolution of a democraticsociety in passing from a lower to an incomparably higher plane, an issuetherefore to be welcomed not shunned, to be forced not evaded, seeingthat its outcome in the existing state of human enlightenment andworld-wide democratic sentiment could not be doubtful. By the road bywhich every republic had toiled upward from the barren lowlands of earlyhardship and poverty, just at the point where the steepness of the hillhad been overcome and a prospect opened of pleasant uplands of wealth andprosperity, a sphinx had ever stood, propounding the riddle, 'How shall astate combine the preservation of democratic equality with the increaseof wealth?' Simple indeed had been the answer, for it was only needfulthat the people should so order their system of economy that wealthshould be equally shared as it increased, in order that, however greatthe increase, it should in no way interfere with the equalities of thepeople; for the great justice of equality is the well of political lifeeverlasting for peoples, whereof if a nation drink it may live forever.Nevertheless, no republic before had been able to answer the riddle, andtherefore their bones whitened the hilltop, and not one had ever survivedto enter on the pleasant land in view. But the time had now come in theevolution of human intelligence when the riddle so often asked and neveranswered was to be answered aright, the sphinx made an end of, and theroad freed forever for all the nations.
"It was this note of perfect assurance, of confident and boundless hope,which distinguished the new propaganda, and was the
more commanding anduplifting from its contrast with the blank pessimism on the one side ofthe capitalist party, and the petty aims, class interests, short vision,and timid spirit of the reformers who had hitherto opposed them.
"With a doctrine to preach of so compelling force and beauty, promisingsuch good things to men in so great want of them, it might seem that itwould require but a brief time to rally the whole people to its support.And so it would doubtless have been if the machinery of publicinformation and direction had been in the hands of the reformers or inany hands that were impartial, instead of being, as it was, almost whollyin those of the capitalists. In previous periods the newspapers had notrepresented large investments of capital, having been quite crudeaffairs. For this very reason, however, they were more likely torepresent the popular feeling. In the latter part of the nineteenthcentury a great newspaper with large circulation necessarily required avast investment of capital, and consequently the important newspapers ofthe country were owned by capitalists and of course carried on in theowners' interests. Except when the capitalists in control chanced to bemen of high principle, the great papers were therefore upon the side ofthe existing order of things and against the revolutionary movement.These papers monopolized the facilities of gathering and disseminatingpublic intelligence and thereby exercised a censorship, almost aseffective as that prevailing at the same time in Russia or Turkey, overthe greater part of the information which reached the people.
"Not only the press but the religious instruction of the people was underthe control of the capitalists. The churches were the pensioners of therich and well-to-do tenth of the people, and abjectly dependent on themfor the means of carrying on and extending their work. The universitiesand institutions of higher learning were in like manner harnessed to theplutocratic chariot by golden chains. Like the churches, they weredependent for support and prosperity upon the benefactions of the rich,and to offend them would have been suicidal. Moreover, the rich andwell-to-do tenth of the population was the only class which could affordto send children to institutions of the secondary education, and theynaturally preferred schools teaching a doctrine comfortable to thepossessing class.
"If the reformers had been put in possession of press, pulpit, anduniversity, which the capitalists controlled, whereby to set home theirdoctrine to the heart and mind and conscience of the nation, they wouldhave converted and carried the country in a month.
"Feeling how quickly the day would be theirs if they could but reach thepeople, it was natural that they should chafe bitterly at the delay,confronted as they were by the spectacle of humanity daily crucifiedafresh and enduring an illimitable anguish which they knew was needless.Who indeed would not have been impatient in their place, and cried asthey did, 'How long, O Lord, how long?' To men so situated, each day'spostponement of the great deliverance might well have seemed like acentury. Involved as they were in the din and dust of innumerable pettycombats, it was as difficult for them as for soldiers in the midst of abattle to obtain an idea of the general course of the conflict and theoperation of the forces which would determine its issue. To us, however,as we look back, the rapidity of the process by which during the ninetiesthe American people were won over to the revolutionary programme seemsalmost miraculous, while as to the ultimate result there was, of course,at no time the slightest ground of question.
"From about the beginning of the second phase of the revolutionarymovement, the literature of the times begins to reflect in the mostextraordinary manner a wholly new spirit of radical protest against theinjustices of the social order. Not only in the serious journals andbooks of public discussion, but in fiction and in belles-lettres, thesubject of social reform becomes prominent and almost commanding. Thefigures that have come down to us of the amazing circulation of some ofthe books devoted to the advocacy of a radical social reorganization arealmost enough in themselves to explain the revolution. The antislaverymovement had one Uncle Tom's Cabin; the anticapitalist movement had many.
"A particularly significant fact was the extraordinary unanimity andenthusiasm with which the purely agricultural communities of the far Westwelcomed the new gospel of a new and equal economic system. In the past,governments had always been prepared for revolutionary agitation amongthe proletarian wage-earners of the cities, and had always counted on thestolid conservatism of the agricultural class for the force to keep theinflammable artisans down. But in this revolution it was theagriculturists who were in the van. This fact alone should havesufficiently foreshadowed the swift course and certain issue of thestruggle. At the beginning of the battle the capitalists had lost theirreserves.
"At about the beginning of the nineties the revolutionary movement firstprominently appears in the political field. For twenty years after theclose of the civil war the surviving animosities between North and Southmainly determined party lines, and this fact, together with the lack ofagreement on a definite policy, had hitherto prevented the forces ofindustrial discontent from making any striking political demonstration.But toward the close of the eighties the diminished bitterness of feelingbetween North and South left the people free to align themselves on thenew issue, which had been steadily looming up ever since the war, as theirrepressible conflict of the near future--the struggle to the deathbetween democracy and plutocracy, between the rights of man and thetyranny of capital in irresponsible hands.
"Although the idea of the public conduct of economic enterprises bypublic agencies had never previously attracted attention or favor inAmerica, yet already in 1890, almost as soon as it began to be talkedabout, political parties favoring its application to important branchesof business had polled heavy votes. In 1892 a party, organized in nearlyevery State in the Union, cast a million votes in favor of nationalizingat least the railroads, telegraphs, banking system, and other monopolizedbusinesses. Two years later the same party showed large gains, and in1896 its platform was substantially adopted by one of the great historicparties of the country, and the nation divided nearly equally on theissue.
"The terror which this demonstration of the strength of the party ofsocial discontent caused among the possessing class seems at thisdistance rather remarkable, seeing that its demands, while attacking manyimportant capitalist abuses, did not as yet directly assail the principleof the private control of capital as the root of the whole social evil.No doubt, what alarmed the capitalists even more than the specificpropositions of the social insurgents were the signs of a settled popularexasperation against them and all their works, which indicated that whatwas now called for was but the beginning of what would be demanded later.The antislavery party had not begun with demanding the abolition ofslavery, but merely its limitation. The slaveholders were not, however,deceived as to the significance of the new political portent, and thecapitalists would have been less wise in their generation than theirpredecessors had they not seen in the political situation the beginningof a confrontation of the people and the capitalists--the masses and theclasses, as the expression of the day was--which threatened an economicand social revolution in the near future."
"It seems to me," I said, "that by this stage of the revolutionarymovement American capitalists capable of a dispassionate view of thesituation ought to have seen the necessity of making concessions if theywere to preserve any part of their advantages."
"If they had," replied the doctor, "they would have been the firstbeneficiaries of a tyranny who in presence of a rising flood ofrevolution ever realized its force or thought of making concessions untilit was hopelessly too late. You see, tyrants are always materialists,while the forces behind great revolutions are moral. That is why thetyrants never foresee their fate till it is too late to avert it."
"We ought to be in our chairs pretty soon," said Edith. "I don't wantJulian to miss the opening scene."
"There are a few minutes yet," said the doctor, "and seeing that I havebeen rather unintentionally led into giving this sort of outline sketchof the course of the Revolution, I want to say a word about theextraordinary acc
ess of popular enthusiasm which made a short story ofits later stages, especially as it is that period with which the playdeals that we are to attend.
"There had been many, you must know, Julian, who, while admitting that asystem of co-operation, must eventually take the place of privatecapitalism in America and everywhere, had expected that the process wouldbe a slow and gradual one, extending over several decades, perhaps half acentury, or even more. Probably that was the more general opinion. Butthose who held it failed to take account of the popular enthusiasm whichwould certainly take possession of the movement and drive it irresistiblyforward from the moment that the prospect of its success became fairlyclear to the masses. Undoubtedly, when the plan of a nationalizedindustrial system, and an equal sharing of results, with its promise ofthe abolition of poverty and the reign of universal comfort, was firstpresented to the people, the very greatness of the salvation it offeredoperated to hinder its acceptance. It seemed too good to be true. Withdifficulty the masses, sodden in misery and inured to hopelessness, hadbeen able to believe that in heaven there would be no poor, but that itwas possible here and now in this everyday America to establish such anearthly paradise was too much to believe.
"But gradually, as the revolutionary propaganda diffused a knowledge ofthe clear and unquestionable grounds on which this great assurancerested, and as the growing majorities of the revolutionary partyconvinced the most doubtful that the hour of its triumph was at hand, thehope of the multitude grew into confidence, and confidence flamed into aresistless enthusiasm. By the very magnitude of the promise which atfirst appalled them they were now transported. An impassioned eagernessseized upon them to enter into the delectable land, so that they foundevery day's, every hour's delay intolerable. The young said, 'Let us makehaste, and go in to the promised land while we are young, that we mayknow what living is': and the old said, 'Let us go in ere we die, that wemay close our eyes in peace, knowing that it will be well with ourchildren after us.' The leaders and pioneers of the Revolution, afterhaving for so many years exhorted and appealed to a people for the mostpart indifferent or incredulous, now found themselves caught up and borneonward by a mighty wave of enthusiasm which it was impossible for them tocheck, and difficult for them to guide, had not the way been so plain.
"Then, to cap the climax, as if the popular mind were not already in asufficiently exalted frame, came 'The Great Revival,' touching thisenthusiasm with religious emotion."
"We used to have what were called revivals of religion in my day," Isaid, "sometimes quite extensive ones. Was this of the same nature?"
"Scarcely," replied the doctor. "The Great Revival was a tide ofenthusiasm for the social, not the personal, salvation, and for theestablishment in brotherly love of the kingdom of God on earth whichChrist bade men hope and work for. It was the general awakening of thepeople of America in the closing years of the last century to theprofoundly ethical and truly religious character and claims of themovement for an industrial system which should guarantee the economicequality of all the people.
"Nothing, surely, could be more self-evident than the strictly Christianinspiration of the idea of this guarantee. It contemplated nothing lessthan a literal fulfillment, on a complete social scale, of Christ'sinculcation that all should feel the same solicitude and make the sameeffort for the welfare of others as for their own. The first effect ofsuch a solicitude must needs be to prompt effort to bring about an equalmaterial provision for all, as the primary condition of welfare. Onewould certainly think that a nominally Christian people having somefamiliarity with the New Testament would have needed no one to tell themthese things, but that they would have recognized on its first statementthat the programme of the revolutionists was simply a paraphrase of thegolden rule expressed in economic and political terms. One would havesaid that whatever other members of the community might do, the Christianbelievers would at once have flocked to the support of such a movementwith their whole heart, soul, mind, and might. That they were so slow todo so must be ascribed to the wrong teaching and non-teaching of a classof persons whose express duty, above all other persons and classes, wasto prompt them to that action--namely, the Christian clergy.
"For many ages--almost, indeed, from the beginning of the Christianera--the churches had turned their backs on Christ's ideal of a kingdomof God to be realized on earth by the adoption of the law of mutualhelpfulness and fraternal love. Giving up the regeneration of humansociety in this world as a hopeless undertaking, the clergy, in the nameof the author of the Lord's Prayer, had taught the people not to expectGod's will to be done on earth. Directly reversing the attitude of Christtoward society as an evil and perverse order of things needing to be madeover, they had made themselves the bulwarks and defenses of existingsocial and political institutions, and exerted their whole influence todiscourage popular aspirations for a more just and equal order. In theOld World they had been the champions and apologists of power andprivilege and vested rights against every movement for freedom andequality. In resisting the upward strivings of their people, the kingsand emperors had always found the clergy more useful servants than thesoldiers and the police. In the New World, when royalty, in the act ofabdication, had passed the scepter behind its back to capitalism, theecclesiastical bodies had transferred their allegiance to the moneypower, and as formerly they had preached the divine right of kings torule their fellow-men, now preached the divine right of ruling and usingothers which inhered in the possession of accumulated or inheritedwealth, and the duty of the people to submit without murmuring to theexclusive appropriation of all good things by the rich.
"The historical attitude of the churches as the champions and apologistsof power and privilege in every controversy with the rights of man andthe idea of equality had always been a prodigious scandal, and in everyrevolutionary crisis had not failed to cost them great losses in publicrespect and popular following. Inasmuch as the now impending crisisbetween the full assertion of human equality and the existence of privatecapitalism was incomparably the most radical issue of the sort that hadever arisen, the attitude of the churches was likely to have a criticaleffect upon their future. Should they make the mistake of placingthemselves upon the unpopular side in this tremendous controversy, itwould be for them a colossal if not a fatal mistake--one that wouldthreaten the loss of their last hold as organizations on the hearts andminds of the people. On the other hand, had the leaders of the churchesbeen able to discern the full significance of the great turning of theworld's heart toward Christ's ideal of human society, which marked theclosing of the nineteenth century, they might have hoped by taking theright side to rehabilitate the churches in the esteem and respect of theworld, as, after all, despite so many mistakes, the faithfulrepresentatives of the spirit and doctrine of Christianity. Some therewere indeed--yes, many, in the aggregate--among the clergy who did seethis and sought desperately to show it to their fellows, but, blinded byclouds of vain traditions, and bent before the tremendous pressure ofcapitalism, the ecclesiastical bodies in general did not, with thesenoble exceptions, awake to their great opportunity until it had passedby. Other bodies of learned men there were which equally failed todiscern the irresistible force and divine sanction of the tidal wave ofhumane enthusiasm that was sweeping over the earth, and to see that itwas destined to leave behind it a transformed and regenerated world. Butthe failure of these others, however lamentable, to discern the nature ofthe crisis, was not like the failure of the Christian clergy, for it wastheir express calling and business to preach and teach the application tohuman relations of the Golden Rule of equal treatment for all which theRevolution came to establish, and to watch for the coming of this verykingdom of brotherly love, whose advent they met with anathemas.
"The reformers of that time were most bitter against the clergy for theirdouble treason to humanity and Christianity, in opposing instead ofsupporting the Revolution; but time has tempered harsh judgments of everysort, and it is rather with deep pity than with indignation that we lookback on the
se unfortunate men, who will ever retain the tragicdistinction of having missed the grandest opportunity of leadership everoffered to men. Why add reproach to the burden of such a failure as that?
"While the influence of ecclesiastical authority in America, on accountof the growth of intelligence, had at this time greatly shrunken fromformer proportions, the generally unfavorable or negative attitude of thechurches toward the programme of equality had told heavily to hold backthe popular support which the movement might reasonably have expectedfrom professedly Christian people. It was, however, only a question oftime, and the educating influence of public discussion, when the peoplewould become acquainted for themselves with the merits of the subject.'The Great Revival' followed, when, in the course of this process ofeducation, the masses of the nation reached the conviction that therevolution against which the clergy had warned them as unchristian was,in fact, the most essentially and intensely Christian movement that hadever appealed to men since Christ called his disciples, and as suchimperatively commanded the strongest support of every believer or admirerof Christ's doctrine.
"The American people appear to have been, on the whole, the mostintelligently religious of the large populations of the world--asreligion was understood at that time--and the most generally influencedby the sentiment of Christianity. When the people came to recognize thatthe ideal of a world of equal welfare, which had been represented to themby the clergy as a dangerous delusion, was no other than the very dreamof Christ; when they realized that the hope which led on the advocates ofthe new order was no baleful _ignis fatuus_, as the churches hadtaught, but nothing less nor other than the Star of Bethlehem, it is notto be wondered at that the impulse which the revolutionary movementreceived should have been overwhelming. From that time on it assumes moreand more the character of a crusade, the first of the many so-calledcrusades of history which had a valid and adequate title to that name andright to make the cross its emblem. As the conviction took hold on thealways religious masses that the plan of an equalized human welfare wasnothing less than the divine design, and that in seeking their ownhighest happiness by its adoption they were also fulfilling God's purposefor the race, the spirit of the Revolution became a religious enthusiasm.As to the preaching of Peter the Hermit, so now once more the massesresponded to the preaching of the reformers with the exultant cry, 'Godwills it!' and none doubted any longer that the vision would come topass. So it was that the Revolution, which had begun its course under theban of the churches, was carried to its consummation upon a wave of moraland religious emotion."
"But what became of the churches and the clergy when the people found outwhat blind guides they had been?" I asked.
"No doubt," replied the doctor, "it must have seemed to them somethinglike the Judgment Day when their flocks challenged them with open Biblesand demanded why they had hid the Gospel all these ages and falsified theoracles of God which they had claimed to interpret. But so far asappears, the joyous exultation of the people over the great discoverythat liberty, equality, and fraternity were nothing less than thepractical meaning and content of Christ's religion seems to have left noroom in their heart for bitterness toward any class. The world hadreceived a crowning demonstration that was to remain conclusive to alltime of the untrustworthiness of ecclesiastical guidance; that was all.The clergy who had failed in their office of guides had not done so, itis needless to say, because they were not as good as other men, but onaccount of the hopeless falsity of their position as the economicdependents of those they assumed to lead. As soon as the great revivalhad fairly begun they threw themselves into it as eagerly as any of thepeople, but not now with any pretensions of leadership. They followed thepeople whom they might have led.
"From the great revival we date the beginning of the era of modernreligion--a religion which has dispensed with the rites and ceremonies,creeds and dogmas, and banished from this life fear and concern for themeaner self; a religion of life and conduct dominated by an impassionedsense of the solidarity of humanity and of man with God; the religion ofa race that knows itself divine and fears no evil, either now orhereafter."
"I need not ask," I said, "as to any subsequent stages of the Revolution,for I fancy its consummation did not tarry long after 'The GreatRevival.'"
"That was indeed the culminating impulse," replied the doctor; "but whileit lent a momentum to the movement for the immediate realization of anequality of welfare which no obstacle could have resisted, it did itswork, in fact, not so much by breaking down opposition as by melting itaway. The capitalists, as you who were one of them scarcely need to betold, were not persons of a more depraved disposition than other people,but merely, like other classes, what the economic system had made them.Having like passions and sensibilities with other men, they were asincapable of standing out against the contagion of the enthusiasm ofhumanity, the passion of pity, and the compulsion of humane tendernesswhich The Great Revival had aroused, as any other class of people. Fromthe time that the sense of the people came generally to recognize thatthe fight of the existing order to prevent the new order was nothing morenor less than a controversy between the almighty dollar and the AlmightyGod, there was substantially but one side to it. A bitter minority of thecapitalist party and its supporters seems indeed to have continued itsoutcry against the Revolution till the end, but it was of littleimportance. The greater and all the better part of the capitalists joinedwith the people in completing the installation of the new order which allhad now come to see was to redound to the benefit of all alike."
"And there was no war?"
"War! Of course not. Who was there to fight on the other side? It is oddhow many of the early reformers seem to have anticipated a war beforeprivate capitalism could be overthrown. They were constantly referring tothe civil war in the United States and to the French Revolution asprecedents which justified their fear, but really those were notanalogous cases. In the controversy over slavery, two geographicalsections, mutually impenetrable to each other's ideas were opposed andwar was inevitable. In the French Revolution there would have been nobloodshed in France but for the interference of the neighboring nationswith their brutal kings and brutish populations. The peaceful outcome ofthe great Revolution in America was, moreover, potently favored by thelack as yet of deep class distinctions, and consequently of rooted classhatred. Their growth was indeed beginning to proceed at an alarming rate,but the process had not yet gone far or deep and was ineffectual toresist the glow of social enthusiasm which in the culminating years ofthe Revolution blended the whole nation in a common faith and purpose.
"You must not fail to bear in mind that the great Revolution, as it camein America, was not a revolution at all in the political sense in whichall former revolutions in the popular interest had been. In all theseinstances the people, after making up their minds what they wantedchanged, had to overthrow the Government and seize the power in order tochange it. But in a democratic state like America the Revolution waspractically done when the people had made up their minds that it was fortheir interest. There was no one to dispute their power and right to dotheir will when once resolved on it. The Revolution as regards Americaand in other countries, in proportion as their governments were popular,was more like the trial of a case in court than a revolution of thetraditional blood-and-thunder sort. The court was the people, and theonly way that either contestant could win was by convincing the court,from which there was no appeal.
"So far as the stage properties of the traditional revolution wereconcerned, plots, conspiracies, powder-smoke, blood and thunder, any oneof the ten thousand squabbles in the mediaeval, Italian, and Flemishtowns, furnishes far more material to the romancer or playwright than didthe great Revolution in America."
"Am I to understand that there was actually no violent doings inconnection with this great transformation?"
"There were a great number of minor disturbances and collisions,involving in the aggregate a considerable amount of violence andbloodshed, but there was nothing like the war
with pitched lines whichthe early reformers looked for. Many a petty dispute, causeless andresultless, between nameless kings in the past, too small for historicalmention, has cost far more violence and bloodshed than, so far as Americais concerned, did the greatest of all revolutions."
"And did the European nations fare as well when they passed through thesame crisis?"
"The conditions of none of them were so favorable to peaceful socialrevolution as were those of the United States, and the experience of mostwas longer and harder, but it may be said that in the case of none of theEuropean peoples were the direful apprehensions of blood and slaughterjustified which the earlier reformers seem to have entertained. All overthe world the Revolution was, as to its main factors, a triumph of moralforces."