RADIANCIES OF CONTENT AND DISCONTENT

I want to radiate a spirit of content. The dictionary says that to be content is to be "held full." If one is full, that is enough. He is satisfied. He has peace of mind. All this is implied in the word content. I want to radiate this sense of fullness, of satisfaction. I want people to feel that I am full of physical health, full of mental vigor, full of spiritual power, and, with the exceptions that I shall note later on in this chapter, that I am satisfied.

I want to radiate a large-hearted contentment with things as they are. I am content with the world as it is. Its glories, its beauties, its charms, its allurements, its variety, satisfy me. There is nothing in scenery that the mind can conceive that I cannot find; every sort of climate is offered to me. I can surround myself with people or I can dwell in the virgin solitudes. I can live under the gray skies of the East or under the cerulean blue of the West. The snow-covered heights of the Himalayas are mine or the wastes of the Sahara. I can toss on the stormy ocean or bask in the sun-kissed gardens of the South. It is a glorious, beautiful, blessed world.

Yet I hear people complaining on every hand. It is too hot, or they wish it hadn't rained. Why does the wind blow so fiercely? The snow has just come at the wrong time. Then, too, they find fault with the every-day occurrences of life. They are angry because they missed a train, have failed to carry through a business transaction, were delayed and lost an important appointment. The other day I met a young man holding his wrist, and with a look of severe pain on his face. In doing some work in the gymnasium he hurt his hand and wrist. It is hard to radiate contentment under the annoyance and pain of such things as this and the circumstances I have mentioned. Yet in these, as in all other things in life, I believe with Shakspeare:

Many a time it is the best thing in the world to have lost an appointment, to have missed a train, to have sprained one's wrist. The wet weather is as good as the sunshine, and the storm equally beneficent with the calm. Hence I want to be content and to radiate my content with things as they are. Discontent is a burning acid. It eats away the happy, blessed things of life. It destroys the beauty of an otherwise perfect life. It takes away the smile and substitutes a frown. It injects bitterness into words that would otherwise be sweet. It changes the kind word into an angry curse. And it burns and corrodes far deeper than one imagines.

I once had a surgical operation in which a severe corroding substance was injected into a certain part of my body. My physicians, men of wisdom and men who loved me, thought they knew how much that corrosive substance would burn. But it burned far more severely and destroyed much more tissue than they conceived, and my life came near to paying the penalty. Discontent works in exactly the same way, only worse. Its burnings are of the mind, and, therefore, more seriously injurious. Its burns are deep and uncertain. To put it in another way—it sours the milk of human kindness. It turns the butter rancid. It pulls down the shades and shuts out the sunlight. It turns the steam off from the radiator. It shuts out the fresh air. It banishes the fairies of jollity, healthfulness, happiness, and content.

Do not radiate discontent, therefore, but radiate a glorious, buoyant, exuberant contentment. Think of the books we have to-day, as compared with those possessed by people who lived a few hundred years ago—the poems, the dramas, the essays, the histories, the novels, the accounts of adventure and travel, the revelations of science. Think how cheap they are, how easy to obtain. Think of the public libraries established in almost every city, town, and village of the civilized world. In many states they have now established a method by means of which the library systems may become county-wide in their influences instead of confined to the cities and towns. Books are being sent to the remotest farmhouse, to the shack of the lumberman, the moving home of the sheep-herder, the log hut of the miner, anywhere, everywhere that a human hand is seen stretched forth for a book, the new library system seeks to reach.

Think of the music of to-day! The great bands, the marvelous orchestras, the soul-inspiring choruses, the wonderfully equipped opera companies, the cheapness of the organ and piano, the universality of the graphophone, with its records of music of every character that can be heard in the humblest home.

Think of the multiplication of the opportunities for hearing the drama, some good, some indifferent, some bad, but all more or less revealing artistic power and calling forth the satisfaction of the onlookers.

Think of the spread of educational opportunities, the public schools, the colleges, the universities, the correspondence schools, the women's clubs and leagues. I went through a high school the other day that was ten times better equipped for the higher education, as far as it went, than the universities were a hundred years ago.

Think of the ease with which we travel—electric cars, railway trains, automobiles, flying machines.

Think of the annihilation of distance in conversing with our friends, the telephone, the telegraph, the telepost, the wireless.

Think of the opportunities of enjoyment and education offered to the poor in our large cities by means of the parks, the children's playgrounds, the free museums, and the art galleries.

Think of the improvements during late years in the conditions of home life—the application of gas and electricity for lighting, heating, cooking, ironing, and, now, even for sweeping and cleaning up.

Think of the improvements of the condition of lives of our farmers and their laborers in the remote districts. Little by little the conditions of life are being made easier for them. Labor is being lightened and the hours shortened, uncertainties are being eliminated, results made more sure.

Think of the growing spirit of freedom and true democracy, of brotherhood and comradeship that are welding the world together in the bonds of humanitarian brotherhood; treaties between nations, federations of nations, world's fairs, the Red Cross movement, The Hague Peace Tribunal, arbitration instead of war, and agitation for the reduction of armies and navies.[D]

One has but to study the changes that have taken place in our civilization since Dickens began to write, for instance, to see how wonderfully the world has progressed. He wrote Nicholas Nickleby to call attention to the horrible abuses existent in boys' boarding schools, where boys, who for any reason were desired out of the way at home, were put in charge of human fiends in the guise of "schoolmasters." Step-children, heirs who were in the way, natural children, and those whose parents had no natural affection for them, were put into these dens, and so cruelly abused that they often died; and at the best they dragged out their miserable existence afraid of what each hour of the day might bring forth and finding only in their troubled sleep the relief from the active cruelties they were made to bear.

Little Dorrit graphically pictured the horrors of the "prison for debt" system, and in the wonderfully painted character of Little Dorrit's father, Dickens showed how every human trait and feeling, every noble passion and emotion was dwarfed, twisted, distorted, and perverted by the action of this unnatural, cruel, and monstrous law.

Barnaby Rudge called equally vivid attention to the laws which placed political disabilities upon Jews and Roman Catholics, rendering them incapable of voting and holding office throughout the British dominions, and sought to remove the hatred, prejudice, and dissensions which unnatural acts of Parliament always caused.

In A Tale of Two Cities the curse of caste is revealed; the inevitable results of giving special privileges to a so-called aristocratic class, and while its teachings were veiled as being connected with incidents in the French Revolution they were a wonderful help to the forwarding of true ideas of pure democracy and genuine recognition of the doctrine of the brotherhood of man.

In Martin Chuzzlewit the theme is the horrors of the "Circumlocution Office"—that vast, hideous, monstrous juggernaut that rode rough-shod over all justice, truth, honor, right, decency, and sincerity, by its evasions, quibblings, dodgings, twinings, twistings, and deliberate perversions of the truth.

Other writers made their novels the themes of similar crying abuses that needed reform. Henry Cockton wrote his Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist to expose the hideous dealings of private mad-houses, where helpless men and women were confined by law, who were perfectly sane, yet who were in the way of dishonest lawyers, judges, administrators, heirs, or relations. I can never forget the powerful and terrible impression this story made upon me, though it is nearly forty years since I read it, especially where the author described what it is said he himself had had to pass through, when he was driven into temporary insanity by being strapped to his cot while fiends in human form mocked and taunted him and at the same time "tickled his feet" until he was a raging maniac.

To the people of to-day the term "Chartist" means nothing. Nine-tenths of the population of the United States possibly never heard the term. Yet it is only a few generations since men were sentenced to "Botany Bay" and other penal settlements for twenty, thirty, and more years, and sometimes "for life," for joining in this reform which demanded certain rights that we have enjoyed without a thought ever since we were born. One of these grand old warriors for man's greater freedom used to visit at my father's house when I was a lad. He was an intellectual giant who had won the honor and fame the world freely accords to those who do not take it by the throat too severely, and once in a while he could be induced to tell of the days of his earlier conflict;—how that he and his compeers fought for a repeal of the corn laws—laws which made it almost impossible for a poor man to get bread—and for the right of a man to sell the products of his own labor from door to door to save himself from starvation. He was imprisoned and sentenced for a long term of years and while in prison wrote a poem of tremendous power and influence. How my heart burned to the old warrior, and I then and there declared that

Then, too, how I recall the fight for religious freedom in England—some of it before my time, but some of it under my own eyes, and in which I had the joy of bearing a small part. The Lord George Gordon riots, described by Dickens in Barnaby Rudge, were provoked by religious hostility. When I was a boy, no Jew or Catholic could hold office in England—I think I am correct. This act, passed in the reign of Charles II—I write from memory—was thus in operation for two hundred years; two hundred years of injustice, prejudice, fostering of religious hatred and separations. Yet Benjamin Disraeli made a great premier, and was one of the most brilliant statesmen of Europe, and the Howard family, Cardinal Manning, and Cardinal Newman, all of whom were Roman Catholics, were loved and revered on every hand for their enlightened patriotism and the help they gave to everything that had the welfare of England at heart. It was a glad day for England that saw the removal of the disabilities from such good citizens as these, merely because they chose to exercise their perfect God-given right of freedom of choice in religious belief. And still, even as late as the ascension to the throne of George V, son of King Edward, and grandson of that progressive and liberal-minded Queen, Victoria, there remained in the oath a hateful spirit of narrowness and intolerance against Catholic beliefs. Thirty to forty years previously Charles Bradlaugh was refused his seat in the House of Commons because he desired to "affirm" instead of "taking the oath." He was an "unbeliever," and claimed his right to be such, and yet to take his seat as a representative of the people without being compelled to swear to an oath in which he did not believe. He was fought an every hand, and with physical violence; yet he kept resolutely on with the conflict, until I saw him myself, with joy, take his place before the speaker of the House, victorious. Yet I am not an unbeliever, nor do I accept Bradlaugh's conclusions as to God and the making of the universe. Nor is it necessary. Equally so it is not necessary that I should attempt to force my ideas down his throat and if he refuse to say that he swallows them should seek to keep him from exercising his political rights.

To us, living to-day, it seems impossible that a great civil war was necessary ere the shackles were shaken from the limbs of four millions of slaves; it seems incredible that New Englanders as well as Southerners were engaged in fostering the iniquitous slave trade—the murderous trade in human flesh and blood. Grant everything the South claims to-day as to the difficulty of handling the negro problem, that does not alter the fundamental principle of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." To us it seems incredible that honest and honorable men, clear-sighted, clear-brained religious men who knew the value of words and their meaning, could have so befuddled their intellects, let alone their moral nature, as to dare to read these words and at the same time own slaves. Yet it was so, and not until the heroes whose work led ultimately to the Declaration of Independence for the slave, called the Emancipation Proclamation, set their faces against this great iniquity, was anything done to mitigate its evils.

How well do I recall the endeavors of many Englishmen to induce the Government to interfere with the Turks and prevent further infliction of horrible and murderous atrocities upon the Bulgarians and other subject people, because of religious differences. But "politics stood in the way." And yet I heard the words of Cleveland ring around the world when he bade England: "Hands off," from Venezuela. Again was I thrilled when McKinley justified the prophecy of Joaquin Miller, uttered nearly thirty years previously, in his Cuba Libre, where he declared:

The time came when we "flashed her lights of freedom," as we had done before, but this time there was an admixture of personal feeling in which the cry, "Remember the Maine," bore a large part. Yet the main issue was raised, viz., the intervention of a strong power to prevent another strong power from too seriously oppressing a confessedly weak power. This is a step in the right direction. The bully, whether in school, in the street, in business, or among nations, should be taught that his bullying is unsafe, and that if he must fight he must choose a "fellow of his own size."

While I do not close my eyes to the facts that nations are human and liable to err, I hail this as a great forward step, and was filled with rejoicing when the United States Government refused to accept any indemnity from China for its share of the expense of putting down the last great Boxer Rebellion.

In our National and State governments there is a growing spirit of righteous intervention. In his last presidential message, President Taft voiced this spirit in his recommendation of an enlarged measure of protection for railroad employees, and states and cities are moving more rapidly than ever before in the enactment of laws and ordinances for the protection of those least able to protect themselves.

Reforms in law procedure are progressing. In his 1910 message, President Taft thus spoke:

This is a great step in the right direction. The honest and manly recognition of a crying evil is often the beginning of its removal, and I sincerely hope to live to see the day when our laws, and legislative procedure, will truthfully be equally for the poor and the rich.

The activity of the Federal Government in pursuing the nefarious malefactors who are conducting the "white slave traffic," is also a sign of marked improvement in affording protection to those who are helpless and often unable and incompetent to know what to do for their own welfare.

And how I hail with joy the movement so energetically furthered by Mr. Bok, of the Ladies' Home Journal, the Bishop of London, the Physical Culture magazine, Collier's, and others, for the education of the young of both sexes as to the sacred relations of sex and all they imply. The W. C. T. U. has done a little, the magazines and physical culture movement more, and now the better schools—such as the Polytechnic High School of Los Angeles, and the High School in Pasadena, California—are giving definite and specific instruction upon these matters to boys and girls whose parents have been remiss in neglecting this all-important part of their home education and training.

The pure food bill is another step forward in our national progress; the great conservation movement and the work of the United States Reclamation Service, which is providing means for irrigating the soil and thus rendering possible the establishment of thousands of homes on lands that otherwise would be arid and useless—these are gigantic strides of advancement. The postal-savings bank and parcels post are already facts, thus demonstrating that, little by little, the powers that have controlled our Government, for the benefit of the few, instead of for all the people, and especially those who need such benefit the most, are gradually losing their hold. Soon, let us hope, we shall have the "penny postage"—one cent for a letter instead of two, as now. The extension of the eight-hour day law; the honest endeavors now being made to give labor a fair opportunity to state its needs and requirements and thus help bring oppressive employers to time, are also forward steps. Granted that labor often makes unreasonable and unjust demands, let it not be forgotten that it is only within the last few decades that they have been allowed to have a voice at all. For centuries they have been "chained to the wheel of labor,"

What if, now that "whirlwinds of rebellion" are shaking the world and these hitherto "dumb terrors" have found, or are finding, a voice, they speak a little too loudly, or too harshly, or ask more than they ought? Whose fault is it? Who has kept them in bondage so long? They will learn, by and by, to speak more rationally, but this will come only by speaking, so I hail with delight the fact that "the rulers and lords of all lands" are recognizing their right to be heard, and are more or less respectfully listening to what they have to say.

It is another grand sign of universal progress that the owners and landlords of vile tenement houses, of the horrible kennels in which human beings in the past used to be penned as in pigsties, are no longer allowed to reap monetary rewards from such abominable and cursed holes. Boards of health, civic improvement bodies, tenement reform associations are taking upon themselves the work of protecting the poor, helpless, and often unfortunate dwellers in these plague spots and compelling that they be made decent, healthful, and sanitary—often seeing that they are razed and entirely removed. What though oftentimes the people who dwell in these places are brought thither by their own misconduct? Are men, women, and innocent children to be "damned" on this earth—as well as in the future—because morally they have been weak and unfortunate? The greater the weakness and the lower the fall, the greater the cry and need for help. Jacob Riis was a brave and heroic leader in New York, William Booth and his gallant army in London and the thousand and one other cities of the world, and the day is dawning when there will be no "slums" in any decent, self-respecting city, when such books as How the Other Half Lives, The Submerged Tenth, If Christ Came to Chicago, and The People of the Abyss can no longer be written, for the true-hearted, loving, brotherly, and sisterly, will have been aroused to do their plain, simple, and manifest duty and "slums," "abysses," and "plague spots" will cease to exist.

There are many other excellent things I might comment upon that help bring content to the soul. They betoken a glorious and blessed improvement upon the "days of things as they were" and they should lead every man to get into line, to find the step and keep it, marching on with this vanguard of human progress, which seeks the best possible condition of body, mind, and soul for all men.

Yet, in spite of this large-hearted contentment with things as they are, and with the way the world generally is progressing, which I would radiate, I would equally radiate a great discontent with many things as they are. When I look at my own faults and failings, my inadequacies and incompetencies, my blindness and stupidity, my ignorance and willfulness, I find much of my content disappear like the airy visions of a dream. I certainly do not want to be content with these things and so I call up as often as I can a mighty discontent which is a constant urge to the higher, nobler, truer, better life. I am as self-willed as other men, and yet I well know that human will is both ignorant and blind, and that only when it is made subject to the Great Controlling Will of the Universe will it lead me aright and in the paths of ultimate, permanent success. And by success, I do not mean the paltry thing most men regard as success. I certainly wish to radiate discontent with what men generally regard as success. Mere money, fame, honor, social distinction, count for little unless character, divine sympathy with one's needy fellows, and an enlarged conception of the brotherhood of men accompany them.

And how can I do other than radiate a large and tremendous discontent at the suffering and woe of the unfortunates of life? It is little or nothing to me what causes their misfortune. I have learned that the judgment of sociologists, theologists, and reformers generally is of little account in interpreting the causes of things. As a rule, they look only on the surface and see nothing of the hidden springs of action and therefore know little of the movement of hearts of men and women whose condition they so complacently and conceitedly imagine they can change.

Some years ago, Jack London wrote a book entitled, The People of the Abyss. It was severely censured and criticised and some critics went so far as to assert that it was full of untruths. It told of the dismal lives of London's poor, who daily find themselves with nothing but one meal, two meals, three meals between themselves and starvation—poor wretches to whom the "wolf at the door" is an ever present reality, and who tremble every time their employers look towards them with a frown or speak with a voice that threatens dismissal. What a frightful, pitiable, pathetic position for men and women—my brothers and sisters—to be in. I certainly do not wish to radiate contentment at the fact of their unfortunate condition. I want somehow to take some of their burdens upon my life. I want to realize something of the spirit that led Walt Whitman to exclaim, "I will take nothing for myself that cannot be given upon equal terms to all men."

When I read the stories of child labor and learn of the many cruelties practiced upon helpless little ones, in the name of business; when I see those boys and girls of tender age in the cotton mills of the South, owned by wealthy men of the North, plodding back and forth, hour by hour, behind the whirling spindles; when I see them, as I have often done, so utterly weary that when the noon hour came, they would stretch out on the bare floor and try to gain a little snatch of forgetfulness of their weariness in sleep, rather than eat their inadequate lunch, I have certainly felt, as I now feel, that I wish to radiate a tremendous amount of discontent that such inhuman facts can exist. When I see the private palace car owned by the many-times millionaire, and catch glimpses of the extravagant and wasteful luxury in which he and his family live, and realize that this prodigal wastefulness is made possible by the life-destroying labor of poor, anÆmic children in the glass-blowing factories of New Jersey, I wish I had the power to send a great wail of discontent through the country that would thrill the hearts, awaken the senses, and arouse the consciences of every man and woman in the nation.

When I realize the inadequacies of our legal system to do justice alike to all men and women, the poor as well as the rich, the innocent and confiding as well as the crafty and cunning, I feel nothing but discontent and long for the time to come when justice and mercy shall be of higher value in the courts of our land than precedent and legal procedure.

It often takes moral courage to radiate real living discontent with these injustices and crimes against our needy and defenseless fellows. I long to possess this moral courage in fullest measure, and to radiate it on every hand. In view of the need for strong protest against the smug, contented betrayers of the poor and needy, I would radiate a spirit that has not inaptly been termed that of contemporaneous protest and rebellion. By this I mean that present spirit of protest and rebellion against wrongs that exist now, so that my protest will be contemporaneous with the evil.

It is easy enough to line up with the winning side and shout Hurrah! with the victors in any conflict. Even the English of to-day agree that the American Revolution was a good thing and that the acts of George III were indefensible tyranny. But it required considerable courage to join one's forces with those of Washington when money was scarce and men few, when the day seemed dark and gloomy, and the prospects of success were doubtful.

It is easy enough to-day to Hurrah! for the principles of Lincoln, but many a great statesman like Henry Clay felt it was better to compromise than face the fierce antagonism of such men as Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and others who believed in the opposing ideas.

What I desire with all my heart is to radiate not only my readiness and willingness to line up with the unpopular cause, but the fact that I am already lined up. That, without being asked, people will know what my position is sure to be; that I naturally belong on the side of the "under dog," and that in any conflict against entrenched power and wrong, where the weak and oppressed are fighting for rights which are inherently theirs, that as soon as I hear the battle-cry my "Here!" will ring out immediate, bold and clear.

Nor do I always want to wait to be called upon. I may not have either the wisdom and discretion or the ability to be a leader and I have no desire to thrust myself forward as such. At the same time, I do not want to be cowardly and hang back when I see that which I feel is inherently wrong. Even though I stand alone, I want to stand in protest and contemporaneous rebellion against the wrong that I see.

Nay, further, I want to radiate as my habitual attitude of mind that I am ever on the alert to seek out opportunities for rebellion against any and all systems of wrong, no matter how powerful, that I may gladly take upon my shoulders some part of the burden of helping forward the real progress of the entire human race.

James Russell Lowell expressed the passionate desire of my heart in his Present Crisis. In that majestic poem he shows the need for this contemporaneous rebellion:

The whole poem is full of this passionate great-hearted, manly, God-like sympathy, now and here, with the needy, the oppressed, the helpless of today. The crises are here now, those stern winnowers that test and try men's souls, that discover whether they are wheat or chaff, ashes or gold. Oh, for men who have made already the "choice momentous"—while the battle is raging, when there is danger, risk, peril, possible death in the conflict. Is he a true man who waits, pauses, hesitates, wavers in such conflicts, "till the judgment hath passed by"?

I would radiate, again let me say it, my readiness to march at the sound of the drum, to advance with the front ranks, to fight at the first word.

History affords us many noble examples and "beacon lights" of those who have lived in accordance with the principles herein laid down.

Stephen Langton and the barons of England protested against the tyrannical power of King John. They did so at the peril of their heads. Yet they were possessed of this spirit of contemporaneous rebellion, and they fought against John and won from him that great charter of the liberties of men, that has been the basis of all proclamations of freedom ever since.

Cromwell, Hampden, Pym, Milton, and the other great commoners and democrats of England were in a state of contemporaneous protest and rebellion against the undue pretensions of King Charles I. Their protests might have cost them their lives—yet they protested. And they won a victory that has made republics possible throughout all time.

So with the leaders of the French Revolution. There were many awful and bloody events connected with that great act of contemporaneous protest, but that the ultimate outcome upon mankind has been good most true-hearted thinkers agree. Yet the protests were made by the earlier agitators under great danger.

When Patrick Henry, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and the other American revolutionists protested against King George's tyranny, and when the noble band met at Philadelphia and signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew they did it at the peril of their lives—yet they protested and won for mankind the victory that Joaquin Miller calls "Time's burst of Dawn."

Had Langton, Cromwell, the French Revolutionists, Washington, and the signers of the Declaration of Independence failed, they would all have forfeited their lives for their temerity. It was an act of great moral courage to rebel.

When Galileo rebelled against the dictum of the ecclesiastic authorities in regard to the movement of the earth, it meant his imprisonment, yet he rebelled and thus ushered in a new day of advancement in astronomical knowledge. Darwin did the same. Both men required daring and courage, yet they did not hesitate or falter.

There are evils to-day that should be fought; fashions, customs, entrenched wrongs in existence now against which manly men are called to be in contemporaneous rebellion. Those of us who live to-day are reaping great and blessed privileges, freedom, liberties, won for us as the result of the protests, rebellions, warfares of the moral heroes of the past; so should we further the progress of the world by protesting and fighting the existing wrongs, in order that future generations may be freer than we are, and may push on still further the glorious chariot of human progress.

Henry George was a recent heroic example of contemporaneous protest against current evils. Garibaldi, Mazzini, Victor Hugo, Kossuth, were all noble and inspiring examples of the like spirit. Ruskin's life was a perpetual protest against the sacrificing of beauty, peace, harmony, and brotherhood for the rush and show of material prosperity. William Morris's life, work, voice, and pen were ever in active, open, contemporaneous hostility and opposition to the damnable spirit of modern competition, and demoralizing commercialism which destroyed artistic labor, banished fellowship, and substituted therefor the rule of the jungle where the strong devour the weak. Thank God! the ranks of the morally courageous have always found glad and willing recruits; men willing to spend and be spent for the benefit of humanity; willing to be rebels and accounted and treated as such that they might help gain larger victories of freedom for their fellow-men.

We sometimes think that there was more moral heroism in the days gone by than there is to-day. I do not believe it! In this matter of moral heroism and contemporaneous rebellion against entrenched wrong, we have many fine and noble living examples on every hand. I could mention a hundred of them in as many minutes. A few must suffice.

When Edwin Markham wrote The Man with the Hoe, he showed his spirit of contemporaneous protest and rebellion. Here was no reflection upon labor or its dignity, as some thoughtless critics have affirmed, but it was a tremendous and powerful onslaught upon the "Kings and Rulers of All Lands" who permit employers to chain the laborer to the "wheel of labor." Markham's poem is a direct challenge and throwing down of the gauntlet to those who contend that they have a right to purchase labor in the open market at any price, however demoralizing to mankind. It is a contention that manhood is more than money; that the laborer is more than the labor; and that the employers who value the labor done more than the men who do the labor are unworthy the honor and respect of decent men; are unworthy to be called real men because of their tyrannical abuse of their helpless brothers.

William Booth, president of the Salvation Army, Jack London, the socialist novelist, Jacob Riis, the New York newspaper idealist, Maud Ballington Booth, the leader of the Volunteers of America, Charles Montgomery, of San Francisco, the prisoner's friend, and Dana Bartlett, of Los Angeles, the brother of poor "Dagoes," Portuguese and Mexicans, are all more or less widely diverse examples of contemporaneous rebellion and protest against existing social conditions. Each works in his own way to ameliorate these conditions, but the work of each is a protest against those laws of supply and demand, of competition, of worship of material things, that allow it to be possible that some men can gain more wealth than they can ever utilize, even if they lived to be ten thousand years old, and never earn another cent, whilst others can earn barely enough to keep body and soul together and who live every day in dread of the future because they are capable of earning no more than enough to keep them one, two, or three meals away from starvation.

In a copy of his book, The People of the Abyss, which Jack London sent to me, which truthfully portrays the life of the submerged tenth of London, he wrote something like this on the title page: "Dear James—With the facts of these pages before me, I may agree with you in your favorite quotation from Browning, that 'God's in his heaven,' but I cannot agree with you that 'All's right with the world.'"

It is the fashion with certain people to decry Jack London's socialism, but I happen to know that he has personally sacrificed thousands of dollars to his principles in this matter, has lost the friendship of many wealthy people who would have showered their gifts upon him had he been complacent towards what he calls "predatory wealth," hence I hail his acts of contemporaneous rebellion and his taking upon himself of the battle for these, his weaker brothers and sisters, as heroic, and fully worthy of the highest esteem of all good men, whatever they may think of the methods by which he would bring about the desired changes.

All through his life there has been a strong current of contemporaneous rebellion and belligerent sincerity in the work of the poet of the Sierras, Joaquin Miller. He was brought up as a Quaker and taught to believe in non-resistance, hence he preached peace at the beginning of the Civil War until his printing office was wrecked and his life threatened. When the world at large was condemning the Indian, he went and stood by his side, and when he believed him to be in the right, fought battles on his behalf. All through his life he has boldly stood for man's larger freedom, and against entrenched tyranny. When England made war upon the Boers, he denounced the warlike and jingo politicians with a power and strength seldom surpassed in poetry, in spite of the fact that the English had always been his best friends and the largest purchasers of his poems.

While he lived in California, not far from San Francisco, and California was a hotbed of the sentiment that demands the exclusion of the Chinese and Japanese, he ever fearlessly and in unmistakable terms denounced this action as opposed to the fundamental principles of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and demanded of his fellow citizens that they adhere strictly to these never-failing and abiding truths.

These men are but few of the many I might mention, but they will serve as types. They have been and are willing to suffer for the general good of mankind. Therefore, in the presence of their moral heroism and courage, let us cry with George LinnÆus Banks: