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They led him from the platform to prevent him from uttering more heresy. The
newspapers will purge his heresy in the oblivion of silence. The press of the
United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist class.
Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right
well it serves it.
'Let me prophesy. Tomorrow's papers will merely mention that the Bishop is in
poor health, that he has been working too hard, and that he broke down last
night. The next mention, some days hence, will be to the effect that he is
suffering from nervous prostration and has been given a vacation by his
grateful flock. After that, one of two things will happen: either the Bishop
will see the error of his way and return from his vacation a well man in whose
eyes there are no more visions, or else he will persist in his madness, and
then you may expect to see in the papers, couched pathetically and tenderly,
the announcement of his insanity. After that he will be left to gibber his
visions to padded walls.'
'Now there you go too far!' I cried out.
'In the eyes of society it will truly be insanity,' he replied. 'What honest
man, who is not insane, would take lost women and thieves into his house to
dwell with him sisterly and brotherly? True, Christ died between two thieves,
but that is another story. Insanity? The mental processes of the man with whom
one disagrees are always wrong. Therefore the mind of the man is wrong. Where
is the line between wrong mind and insane mind? It is inconceivable that any
sane man can radically disagree with one's most sane conclusions.
'There is a good example of it in this evening's paper. Mary M'Kenna lives
south of Market Street. She is a poor but honest women. She is also patriotic.
But she has erroneous ideas concerning the American flag and the protection it
is supposed to symbolise. And here's what happened to her. Her husband had an
accident and was laid up in hospital three months. In spite of taking in
washing, she got behind in her rent. Yesterday they evicted her. But first,
she hoisted an American flag, and from under its folds she announced that by
virtue of its protection they could not turn her out on to the cold street.
What was done? She was arrested and arraigned for insanity. Today she was
examined by the regular insanity experts. She was found insane. She was
consigned to the Napa Asylum.'
'But that is far-fetched,' I objected. 'Suppose I should disagree with
everybody about the literary style of a book. They wouldn't send me to an
asylum for that.'
'Very true,' he replied. 'But such divergence of opinion would constitute no
menace to society. Therein lies the difference. The divergence of opinion on
the parts of Mary M'Kenna and the Bishop do menace society. What if all the
poor people should refuse to pay rent and shelter themselves under the
American flag? Landlordism would go crumbling. The Bishop's views are just as
perilous to society. Ergo, to the asylum with him.'
But still I refused to believe.
'Wait and see,' Ernest said, and I waited.
Next morning I sent out for all the papers. So far Ernest was right. Not a
word that Bishop Morehouse had uttered was in print. Mention was made in one
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or two of the papers that he had been overcome by his feelings. Yet the
platitudes of the speakers that followed him were reported at length.
Several days later the brief announcement was made that he had gone away on a
vacation to recover from the effects of overwork. So far so good, but there
had been no hint of insanity, nor even of nervous collapse. Little did I dream
the terrible road the Bishop was destined to travel the Gethsemane and
crucifixion that Ernest had pondered about.
1There is no clue to the name of the organisation for which these initials
stand.
2It took but a few minutes to cross by ferry from Berkeley to San Francisco.
These, and the other bay cities, practically composed one community.
3Oscar Wilde, one of the lords of language of the nineteenth century of the
Christian era.
|Go to Contents |
Chapter 8
The Machine-Breakers
IT WAS just before Ernest ran for Congress, on the Socialist ticket, that
father gave what he privately called his 'Profit and Loss' dinner. Ernest
called it the dinner of the Machine Breakers. In point of fact, it was merely
a dinner for business men small business men, of course. I doubt if one of
them was interested in any business the total capitalisation of which exceeded
a couple of hundred thousand dollars. They were truly representative
middle-class business men.
There was Owen, of Silverberg, Owen & Company a large grocery firm with
several branch stores. We bought our groceries from them. There were both
partners of the big drug firm of Kowalt & Washburn, and Mr Asmunsen, the owner
of a large granite quarry in Contra Costa County. And there were many similar
men, owners or part-owners in small factories, small businesses, and small
industries small capitalists, in short.
They were shrewd-faced, interesting men, and they talked with simplicity and
clearness. Their unanimous complaint was against the corporations and trusts.
Their creed was, 'Bust the trusts'. All oppression originated in the trusts,
and one and all told the same tale of woe. They advocated Government ownership
of such trusts as the railroads and telegraphs, and excessive income taxes,
graduated with ferocity, to destroy large accumulations. Likewise they
advocated, as a cure for local ills, municipal ownership of such public
utilities as water, gas, telephones, and street railways.
Especially interesting was Mr Asmunsen's narrative of his tribulations as a
quarry owner. He confessed that he never made any profits out of his quarry,
and this in spite of the enormous volume of business that had been caused by
the destruction of San Francisco by the big earthquake. For six years the
rebuilding of San Francisco had been going on, and his business had quadrupled
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and octupled, and yet he was no better off.
'The railroad knows my business just a little bit better than I do,' he said.
'It knows my operating expenses to a cent, and it knows the terms of my
contracts. How it knows these things I can only guess. It must have spies in
my employ, and it must have access to the parties to all my contracts. For
look you, when I place a big contract, the terms of which favour me a goodly
profit, the freight rate from my quarry to market is promptly raised. No
explanation is made. The railroad gets my profit. Under such circumstances I
have never succeeded in getting the railroad to reconsider its raise. On the
other hand, when there have been accidents, increased expenses of operating,
or contracts with less profitable terms, I have always succeeded in getting
the railroad to lower its rate. What is the result? Large or small, the
railroad always gets my profits.'
'What remains to you over and above,' Ernest interrupted to ask, 'would
roughly be the equivalent of your salary as a manager did the railroad own the
quarry.'
'The very thing,' Mr Asmunsen replied. 'Only a short time ago I had my books
gone through for the past ten years. I discovered that for those ten years my
gain was just equivalent to a manager's salary. The railroad might just as
well have owned my quarry and hired me to run it.'
'But with this difference,' Ernest laughed; 'the railroad would have had to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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