The Pacific Monthly/Volume 14/Number 2/Impressions
IMPRESSIONS
By CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT WOOD
Mutiny on the Battleship Kuiaz Potemkino and Revolution at Odessa
Russia is learning that the strength of a nation is not in powder and battleships, but in the willing patriotism of a people. Willing patriotism and tyranny cannot exist together.
The people of Russia are learning that after all has been said about vested rights, inherited rights, the will of God and the rights of the intelligent few, the real truth is that the laws and policies of a country must be for the mass of the people. It is the many v/ho make every country. It is the toil of the many which supports the privileged few everywhere. The laws of nature are for the many. Only the laws of man create privileges for the few.
Some day the vast masses which make up the armies and navies which go out to be killed, as well as the armies and navies which create all wealth, will realize where justice lies and will meet all argument about governing classes and vested rights with no more respectful argument than, "Pish! A nation is its people, not its overlords, and for the good of the people all things must bend or break."
Still the wonder is of the stupidity of the people. And the marvel is that Nero, Louis, Charles and Nicholas have found armies of loyal peasants willing to die for them, to forge their own chains the stronger.
Truly of any existing order of things, man makes a fetich. He dreads change, yet only by change has he ceased to be a besotted slave. The most patient animal is not the ox nor the ass. It is man.
Chinese Exclusion
We are a highly moral nation. Well, at least, highly respectable! We are a Christian nation in everything but practice. We are a great commercial success, and commerce is too sacred a thing to be mussed up with practical Christianity. Forty or fifty years ago we bawled and wept over the heathen, sitting in darkness, who excluded us from China and Japan. We knocked down these barriers with guns, in the case of China, and with treaties and entreaties, in the case of Japan. Yet, it has never occurred to us that we could not insult and exclude with impunity Chinese citizens. But when Chinese guilds threaten to boycott American products, then the American Christian for the first time sees that his conduct has not only been un-Christian, but ignorant, coarse and vulgar—and also unprofitable. And what shall it profit a man to lose his soul, unless he gain the whole world for a market.
Woman Suffrage
Friday, June 30, I had the honor to address the National Woman's Suffrage Association, and among other things said in substance that missionary work of this righteous cause should be done among women, and especially to promote the economic freedom of woman; that woman suffrage would not come till women themselves demanded it, and women would not demand it while they were in a state of mental and physical servitude to husbands, brothers, fathers; that economic independence would make for mental independence and self-assertion.
The Rev. Anna Shaw, a most eloquent and able woman, commenting on this, said that it was useless to wait until all women wanted the suffrage, because all women never would, just as all men do not now want it; and cited, as example, that the Democratic party gave the suffrage to the laboring man, though all laboring men did not ask it, and the Republican party gave it to negroes, though they did not ask it. But it seems to me that history shows that no government has ever cared for abstract justice. No government has ever instituted a just reform until it became practically expedient to do so—through forcible demand or hope of gain.
Now, the Democratic party gave the suffrage to the laboring men because it knew this would add to the voting strength of the Democratic party—and in this it was correct. The Republican party gave the negroes the suffrage because it knew the negro vote would be Republican, and would give the Republican party hope to control the South, though "justice" was the platform cry in each case, yet abstract justice did not enter into either case.
The cause of woman suffrage depends, at present, wholly on inherent abstract justice. No party has anything to gain from it so neither party will voluntarily hand it to them. If women will become interested, and will, as a body—not, of course, every woman—but if the general mass will make either party feel that practically the solid woman vote will, because of inherent circumstances, go to that party—women will get the suffrage at once. If the great body of women will become so interested as to know their rights and demand them in no uncertain terms, making both parties feel that they will not submit longer to this injustice, but that every home in the land will feel their decided revolt, each party will hasten to be the first to earn the woman gratitude by advocating the woman vote. An aroused popular opinion is all controlling everywhere.
Women are the mothers and instructors of men, and if the general opinion among women was earnestly for the right to vote there would in two or three generations be a body of men voters taught to believe in the justice of woman suffrage.
The existing political powers will not offer the voting franchise to women till they see some selfish gain in it. Women must, and only women can, make them see that gain—the hope of new recruits or the fear of moral revolt.
The women of the land offer neither that hope nor that fear. They are indifferent. Portland is a city of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants and not once was the church, in which the National Association met, filled. Women of national and worldwide reputation were there; eloquent women were there; but apparently there were not five hundred women in Portland who took any interest in this interesting subject and this interesting convention.
Notwithstanding the greater freedom of women today, women, as a whole, are still dependents, still under masculine domination, still idlers or drudges. They do not, as a whole, care anything about the suffrage question; so I remain obstinate in my belief that the work of these leaders in a just and righteous cause should be among the women.
All things come to a vast and united body of the people which knows what it wants and insistently demands it. Women must, as a class, demand the suffrage; women as a class must be economically and mentally free. These, in my belief, are the prerequisites.
Tyranny of Majorities
My own address before the National Woman's Suffrage Association was an endeavor to show that when women do vote, it will be only so many added votes to be used, as now, in the various parties by the real masters of the nation, the professional politicians, to register their will; and this will is registered by a majority vote, and this majority is got honestly, if it can be, but by fraud, purchase and theft, if necessary and possible.
Thus a half of the nation, often the real majority of the nation, have their pockets picked (as in the case of the protective tariff) and their opinions tyrannized over by a mere margin of majority—often corruptly secured. And I said it made little difference in principle whether monopolies were established or opinions obliterated by the edict of a majority or the edict of a czar. Of course, there is always a chance under the ballot system to change the majority, and the ballot saves the use of the bullet in creating a revolution. But the rule by majority is a clumsy and unphilosophical method. The true solution will be to so educate the masses that economic freedom and equality of opportunity (which never have existed) may be reached by withdrawing from the state every function it now has, except to keep peace and order. Leaving all commerce, all industry and all social institutions to be arranged by the free individuals of society, by voluntary co-operation. To this individuals will be urged by the strongest of all natural forces, self-interest, which in such a state of freedom and of non-interference will make each one see that his own best interest, his own best protection is to join in the protection of his neighbor and the recognition of his neighbor's rights.
Nor is this "government" by golden rule, mere idealism. When all the engines of power, coercion, taxation, political grafting and political control over property are abolished and there remains no possibility of state interference or compulsion against the peaceable man who recognizes the equal rights of all other men of peaceable freedom, then there will be true equal opportunity for all, in use of the land and in use of all the institutions of commerce and of society; and the dullest must perceive that to be secure in his own rights he must respect the rights of others. To share in the general benefit, he must voluntarily contribute time and money to the general good. The necessary machinery of society will, of course, exist—courts to settle disputes and police to keep order—but they will be maintained by voluntary co-operation.
A lady in the meeting said to me afterwards, "You are a socialist." "No, madam," I said, "I am at the other extreme of political philosophy. I am an anarchist." "Ah, yes," she said, "substantially the same." And I would doubt if she ought to vote, if it were not that the intelligent voters of this land, and the intelligent press are in the same state of ignorance. Possibly, she thinks I am engaged in the secret manufacture of bombs.
Baseball
Every sport, if kept clean, has a good effect, not only as recreation, but, like the play of puppies and kittens, it helps prepare for the contests of life. There is in every town, not excepting Portland, a tendency to support the home team. This is natural. But there seems to be a growing tendency to support it, fair or foul; to insult and mob the umpire who dares decide against the favorites. This is dirty ball and makes for dirty play and dirty morals. The umpire is the judge. He may be good, he may be very poor, but while he is umpire his decisions should be accepted. That is what he is there for. You cannot show he is a poor umpire by cursing him or jumping on him with spiked shoes. One of the dirtiest exhibitions of a clean sport made dirty, was when McCreedie, of the Portlands, spiked an umpire because he was enraged at his decision.
A man who cannot keep his temper on a public ball field isn't fit to be there, no matter how well he can play. What would be thought of the courts if the lawyers cursed, hooted and abused the judge who decided against them? Yet, I have seen a judge, one who expected his decisions to be quietly acquisieced in, hooting the umpire till the judge was purple in the face. Instead of the public opinion of the grandstand and the bleachers condemning this unfairness, it seems to encourage the man who will put up the biggest bluff and raise the loudest outcry against the umpire. It is not a very healthy sign of American fair play when a whole field of players and spectators start out to mob one small umpire.
I don't care what may be the ignorance or the mistakes of the umpire—and he is bound to make mistakes—such a temper is a cowardly one and makes for cowardice and injustice.
It is refreshing to see the Oregon Journal vindicating the small umpire, and manly enough to print in bold headlines that the Tacomas outplayed the Portlands and deserved their victory. The Tacomas have been kept together three years, I believe, and it is natural that they should be superior in team work. But superior or not, the truth remains that the umpire is part of the game. He is the judge. He does his best, and it is part of the square game to submit to his decisions after fair protests have been decently made. He cannot please every one, and the tendency toward a riot, first by one side, then by the other, when he is obliged to decide against one or the other, is not creditable to any sense of fair play.
It is a pity that in the colleges so few get the benefit of the sports. They have become semi-professional. Instead of the baseball and the football fields and the track and course being open to all for the exercise and for the fun of the thing, all but a few selected ones are barred out, and these few selected ones really become in a sense professionals for their colleges. Instead of the whole college getting the benefit of athletics as a general sport and a manly eexrcise, an athletic department is supported for the benefit and injury of a few, and for the commercial gain and glory of the college.
It seems to me, too, it would be a very original feat if some reporter of sports would learn to write English. I see little superiority either in style or clearness in "Muggsy of the Seals was handed a pass by Juggsy of the home talent, but died on the premier bag when Binks, wielding the stick, lifted the horsehide to center, where it fell into Jones' trap."
Anarchy
James Ford, an old hermit who desired to live alone in the woods and on vegetable diet, has been arrested by the police as a vagrant. He is admittedly harmless, and so far as disclosed is sane; but it shocked the police that a man should live so far from saloons and in such an uncomfortable way. Under the principles of anarchy, this man, so long as he did not steal nor hurt any one, would be allowed to live his own life as he pleased, whether it pleased the police or not. Come to think of it, he would have been allowed to do so in the middle ages.
Ford said in the police court:
I have lived here since Christmas, and have interfered with no one. I lived here because I wanted to get away from men, and live alone, where I could meditate and think of the things of which I wanted to think without molestation and interference. I believe that man should live alone, and that he should live as close to nature as possible. I think that your interference was caused by the church people, who do not like the way I live and the way I worship.
Thank God this is a free country! Poor Thoreau at Walden; if only the Portland police had found him!