^9 ' The Open Court. A ^VEKKLY .IOLTRNrA.L DEVOTED TO THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. (Vol. ( Two Dollars per Year. No. 312. VII.—33.) CHICAGO, AUGUST- 17, 1893. Single Copies, i 5 Cents. Copyright by The Open Court Publishing Co. —Reprints are permitted only on condition of giving full credit to Author and Publisher. THE LESSON OF OUR FINANCIAL CRISIS. or even hinted at by any o)ie 0/ the three parties whicli presented pres- ' BY HERMANN LIEB. idential candidates. " The finances of the country are completely de- But a change' from this satisfactory state of affairs " was wrought through slavery agitation and a destruc- moralised ; of course they are, as the logic of events, " tive all its demoralising tendencies. It brought for, if they were not the " eternal law of gravitation! war with the " immutable law of justice! " were unmeaning ejac- forth a complete revolution in the economic manage- ' ' for ulations. There is just as much sense in supposing ment of the country ; the old shibboleth by and the that the natural laws underlying the social organisation people" was set aside and the watchword "by the few " can be violated with impunity, as that an individual, and for the few substituted ; an era of jobbery and carrying on a riotous living, can expect to keep his health of wild speculation in and out of congress was inaug- and to live to a green old age. " It is loss of confi- urated. What the outcome of this condition of things dence," says one searcher for the cause of the prevail- would be was prognosticated by President Lincoln, ing "crisis,"—as the symptoms of social and political who, shortl}' before his death, wrote to a friend : " rottenness are politel}' termed ; -'it is the silver says "Yes, we may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is another, "it is the fear of a reduction of the tariff," Hearing to a close. But I see in the near future a crisis arising that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my coun- says Governor McKinley, etc., etc. I may be mis- try. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned : taken, but, in my opinion, it all may be attributed an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money from honest, broad-minded, ethical, to the departure power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working political methods sonie thirty years ago ; a departure upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in from the /aisscz fain-, /aissrz passer -poYicy in the man- a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before." agement of our government and the adoption of the paternalistic in its stead. Have not Lincoln's apprehensions been realised to That this country had a most glorious beginning, the letter, and in a much shorter time, doubtless, than who will deny ; that in the history of mankind there he himself believed? never was a people so favored with endless natural op- Wealth, which in all times has striven for political portunities and possibilities, with political institutions, mastery, is to-day the standard of excellence. To be- admired and envied by the civilised world to this day? come wealthy is to become wise, good, and great ; and For almost seventy years the American people, with in proportion as wealth is exalted, labor is abased. slight interruptions, were enjoying a degree of healthy With want and oppression, however, comes inquiry, prosperity in keeping with the natural growth of the and labor is beginning to show signs of political self- country. Mr. Blaine himself, who can hardly be charged consciousness. Their leaders, who are applying them- with Jeffersonian proclivities, in his " Twenty Years of selves to economic truth, have discovered that the Congress " is constrained to confess that up to the six- original cause of labor's grievances is unwise and ties "the business of the country was in a flourishing vicious legislation. But, owing to want of clearness " " remedies and the personal condition" ; that money was very abundant ; that in the presentation of "large enterprises were undertaken" and that "the schemes of politicians, a Babylonian confusion pre- prosperity of the country was general and apparently vails in the minds of the masses. The most absurd demagogues are seized genuine." He said : fulminations of cranks and corn- "After 1S52 the Democrats had almost undisputed control of upon and formtilated into socialistic, anarchistic, the government, and had gradually become a free-trade party. The crib-loan, greenback, and fifty-four per cent, legal principles involved in the tariff of 1846 seemed for the time to be tender demands, according to location, and circum- so entirely viiiJicated and approved that resistance to it ceased, not stances, until one set of laws are required for the me- only among the people but among the proteitive economists and chanic and laborer in cities, another for rural popula- even among the mamifactitrers to a large extent. So general was states of the West. this acquiescence that in i8j6 a protective tariff raas not suggested tions, and a third for the silver — 3768 THE OPEN COURT. Under such a clamor for contradictory and unscientific that formed a solid phalanx against the great tariff- legislation, vicious laws remain unrepealed and the robbery. robbing of the people goes merrily on. Degradation In this emergency, the Democratic party vividly of labor, destitution and miser}' on the one side, reminds one of Dante's description of indecision and aristocratic tendencies, wasteful extravagance, and failure : brutal indifference on the other; class distinction, " And like the man who unwills what he willed, And for new thought doth change his tirst intent. offensive social disparities, mistrust, and hatred be- So that he cannot anywhere begin. tween the citizens of our country, are the disastrous Such became I upon that slope obscure, Because with thinking I consumed resolve. consequences. That was so ready at the setting out." Es ist der Fluch der bosen That, Dass sie /ortzeugertd THE STORY OF AN OLD LONDON SOCIETY. Bases initss gebtiren. BY MONCURE D. CONWAY. [It is the curse of evil deed That, propagating, III. Evil it must breed.] It is a droll illustration of the Puritanism surviving And what is the remedy offered? The repeal of the in the most liberal Society in England, in 1817, that Sherman free-coinage silver bill to bring this coun- the artistic music used on the occasion of Mr. Fox's try back to its normal condition? The attempted effort welcome gave deep offense to a majority of the con- to arrest the decomposition of a tree, the roots of gregation. The committee passed a resolution : "That which are dying from neglect, by clearing it of some the practice of introducing into the service of this of its decaying branches, could not be more futile. It chapel solos, duetts, and sacred pieces in which the will afford only temporary relief. The remedy, to be congregation cannot unite is quite incompatible with effective, must fit the evil, and its application must be true devotion," etc. Voluntaries on the organ were entrusted to clean hands. There must be a radical forbidden, and it was ordered "that whenever Den- change in the politics of the country ; and those, wholl)' mark is played, the duet in that tune is to be omitted." absorbed in the pursuit of wealth, whose education has But the organist and the choir rebelled, and there was been almost exclusively materialistic and whose highest a tremendous controversy, so prolonged that for fif- aspirations consist in the gratification of physical pleas- teen months no note was heard from the organ at all ! ures, are not the doctors from whom we may expect This in a Society afterwards celebrated for the finest the proper remedy. music in England. So little had Mr. Vidler's liberality One of the two great political parties, the one which extended in a secular direction, that when he was try- never ceases to claim Thomas Jefferson as its political ing to eke out his salary by book-selling he left his patron-saint, and to assert its undying devotion to his partner because the latter published "The British " time-honored principles," would seem to have had a Stage." Mr. Fox became celebrated as the best the- correct conception of the situation by pointing out the atrical critic of his time. protective-tariff policy of its opponent as the imme- For many years Mr. Fox's greatest service was in Unitarians out of their diate cause of our industrial and financial perplexities ; drawing the puritanical and for, in its last national convention, that party declared sectarian narrowness. This he did not by direct as- it to be "a fraud and a robbery of the great majority sault or ridicule, but by interesting them in large pub- of the American people." lic questions, of education and reform. The failure of There was no equivocation and no evasion in this the French Revolution had brought under eclipse the declaration ; it was the carefully prepared Statement high visions that arose with it. The radicals were of a scholar and statesman (the present candidate for mourning their lost leaders — as Coleridge and Words- governor of Ohio), adopted as a substitute for a milder worth—and faith in man was going down. Fox was and less truthful one, by an overwhelming majority of the first to revive those visions, and raise again the the convention and subsequently ratified by the Amer- song of the morning stars.