Chapter IX: Part 9

Whenever a man opposes the plans of the Prohibs he is forthwith denounced as an enemy of morality, a slave of the saloons, a hireling of the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association. Well, I had rather be the emissary of the saloons than the assassin of liberty, the slave of a brewer than the blind peon of ignorant prejudice, while if morality consists in attending to my neighbor's business to the neglect of my own, then I'm ferninst it, first, last and all the time. As a good German friend of mine once remarked: "Dot beoples who lives py stones of mine shouldn't trow some glass houses, haind id?" Who is making money out of this agitation? The Professional Prohibs. Did you ever know of one of these gentry making a Prohibition speech except for filthy lucre--unless he was electioneering for office or taking subscribers for a cold-water journal? They are the cattle who are OUT FOR THE STUFF; they are the mercenaries--the men who pump foul air through their faces for a fee. Did you ever hear of a man getting paid for defending the doctrine of personal liberty? Did you ever see a collection taken up at an anti-prohibition meeting to pay some important spouter for pointing out to the people their political duty? (A voice: "Nix.") And you never will. These prohibition orators have the impudence to denounce me as "the peon of the rum power" while I am fighting the battles of personal liberty at my own cost, yet not a dad-burned one of 'em will open his head unless paid for his wind-power! They are "reformers" for revenue only.

I have noticed that, as a rule, men who speak against Prohibition have never been in the gutter, while those who pick up a precarious livelihood by chasing the "Rum Demon" around a stump have usually been his very humble slaves. I have noticed that the men who oppose Prohibition are usually the solid, well-to-do men of the community, the heavy tax-payers the men upon whom the schools, the churches and the state chiefly depend for support, while those who champion it on the rostrum are usually living in some way upon the industry of others. The man who has brains enough to make money and keep it usually has too much sense to be a Prohibitionist. It is the fellows who have made a failure of life; who live on donations; who weep over the world's wickedness, then take up a collection to enable them to get to the next town; who haven't sufficient moral stamina to stay sober, that are prating of Prohibition. If we required a property franchise you couldn't muster five thousand Prohibition votes between the Sabine and the Rio Grande.

And yet we are told that licensing the saloons is a bad business investment; that it costs more than it comes to; that the way to abolish poverty is to abrogate the liquor license law. Strange that the Prohibs should possess such transcendent business heads and such empty stomachs! Doubtless the drinking of liquor adds to the cost of our judiciary; doubtless it is responsible for some crime; but the question at issue is not one of liquor-drinking vs. teetotalism--it is a question of drinking licensed liquor or Prohibition aquafortis. It is not a question of reducing the cost of our courts, but of making liquor bear its due proportion of the burdens it foists upon the people.

I am neither the friend nor enemy of liquor, any more than I am the enemy or friend of buttermilk. I have drunk both a third of a century and have been unable to see that they did me any especial good or harm. I was never befuddled on the one nor foundered on the other, and have managed to get along very well with both. Whether in eating or drinking, a man should keep his brains above his belt, and if he cannot do that he's a precious poor excuse for an uncrowned King, an American Sovereign.

The statistics furnished by the Prohibition orators are fearfully and wonderfully made. It has been asserted in this campaign that a million Americans die every year of the world from the effects of strong drink--and all this great army goes direct to hell. The man who made that statement is a preacher, and presumably familiar with the Bible; but he has evidently overlooked the story of Ananias and Saphira. I learn from the United States census report, which I hold in my hand, that in the very year in which this Prohibition apostle claims a million Americans were slain by strong drink, the statistical experts could find but 1,592 victims of John Barleycorn. The doctors have ever claimed that more people die of over-eating than of over-drinking, and the census report bears out the assertion, for in the year in which 1,592 people were filed away by "alcoholism," 30,094 deaths are accredited to "diseases of the digestive organs." What causes indigestion? Over-eating, or eating food difficult of digestion. Now I submit that if Brothers Benson, Homan, et al, are trying to save the people of this land from premature graves and bear the stock of the coffin trust, they should direct their crusade against indigestible food,--reduce the people of this Nation by means of statutory law to a diet of cornbread and buttermilk. Let them bring all their ballistae and battering-rams to bear upon the toothsome mince pie, the railway sandwich, the hard-boiled egg and pickled pigs' feet--that pestilence that walks in darkness. Indigestion is indeed a fruitful source of crime. It casts the black shadow of chronic pessimism athwart the sunniest soul and transforms happy homes into dens of despair. It makes men irritable, morose, and prompts them to homicide. Who can tell how much misery and crime the wretched cookery of female Prohibitionists is responsible for? How the cost of our criminal courts might be reduced if these she-reformers would but attend to their kitchens and dish up for their lords and masters grub that would more easily assimilate with the gastric juices! If a man be fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils when loaded with a half a pint of red licker, what must be the condition of his mind and morals when he's full of sodden pie, half baked beans and soda-biscuits that if fired from a cannon would kill a bull?

The theory that strong drink is an unmixed evil that must be abolished, is not in accord with the genius of this government, which would give to the individual untrammeled liberty in matters concerning only himself. Experience has proven Prohibition a rank failure and the customs of mankind from the very dawn of history brand it a rotten fraud. The people of every age and clime have used stimulants, and we may safely conclude that, despite the Prohibs, they will be employed so long as man exists upon the earth. Banish liquor and man will find a substitute even though it be opium, morphine or cocaine. It is said that Thor, the great northern god of war, once tried to lift what he supposed was an old woman, but found to his sorrow that it was a mighty serpent which, in Norse mythology, encircles the world. The Prohibs are warring upon what they foolishly imagine to be frivolous habit of man, but will yet learn that they are running counter to an immutable decree of God--are trying to alter the physical constitution of the human race by means of local option elections.

So far as I am personally concerned, I would care but little if every ounce of liquor was banished from the earth and its method of manufacture forever be forgotten; but I object to having a lot of he-virgins and female wall-flowers sit at my muzzle and dictate how I shall load myself. If I'm an American sovereign I propose to be supreme autocrat of my own stomach. When I want advice regarding what I shall eat and what I shall drink I'll consult a doctor of medicine instead of a doctor of divinity.

I do not oppose Prohibition because I am the friend of liquor, but because I am the friend of liberty. I would rather see a few boozers than a race of bondmen. I am not interested in preserving the liquor traffic, but I am interested in the perpetuation of those principles that ennoble a people and make manly men--men who rely upon themselves for their social salvation rather than upon a public policy which may change with the phases of the moon or the arrival of some new demagogue from distant parts. I have but little use for men who must swing to the apron-strings of a public grand-dame or go to the dogs. Let us reserve the nursery for children. Men whom we cannot trust with the guardianship of their own appetites should not be allowed to run at large. How would you young ladies like to marry "American Sovereigns" who must be tied up, like a lot of mangy cayuses when white clover is in blossom to keep 'em from catching the "slobbers"?

But, the Prohibs inform us, the brightest men of the world are ruined by strong drink. They assure us that "it is not a question of intellect, but of appetite." What was judgment given us for if not to control our appetites? If Appetite be paramount to judgment why do we hang rape-fiends? Let me tell you the idea that the brainiest men of the world die drunkards is the merest moonshine. If only men of genius drank liquor a one-horse still would supply the demand and be idle six months in the year. Take the thousand greatest men the world has produced --the Thousand Immortelles--and not 2 per cent. of them died drunkards, yet 98 per cent. of them drank liquor. If the Prohibs have ever produced an intellect of the first class they must have hidden it under a bushel. Its possessor is probably one of those village Hampdens or mute inglorious Miltons of whom the poet sings. The Prohibs don't run to great men--they run to gab.

Stripped of all its superfluous trappings, the thesis of Prohibition is simply this: "Some men drink to excess; therefore no one should be permitted to drink at all. The human race must reserve its inherent tastes and time-honored habits lest some wild-eyed jay get on a jag." The question at issue, the riddle for us to unravel, is simply this: Can we afford to sacrifice human liberty to save the sots? Is the game worth the candle, and if we burn the candle will we win the game?

The Pros assure you that Prohibition prohibits. It does. It prohibits the sale of liquor and supplies its place with coffin paint. It prohibits the sale of good, ice cold beer and gives us forty-rod bugjuice. Theories are not worth a continental when slammed up against conditions. What I hear I take with a grain of salt; but what I see that I do know. I tell you candidly that next to a pretty woman I love a cocktail. If the liquor is good and the barkeeper understands his business, I consider it a thing to thank God for--occasionally. Like religion, a little of it is an excellent thing, but an overdose will put wheels in your head. I have never yet been in a Prohibition precinct where I needed to go thirsty if I had the price of a pint flask concealed about my person--and my stomach could stand the poison.

When high license prevailed in Hillsboro you had a dozen saloons, each contributing to the revenues of the state, the country, the municipality and the school fund. You voted local option in, and now you've thirty-two unlicensed and unregulated doggeries selling rot-gut to schoolboys and contributing not one cent to the public revenues. The cost of your courts has increased, drunkenness was never so common, brawls never so frequent. It is said that even fools can learn in the bitter school of experience; but there be idiots upon whom even such lessons are lost. But you say, "Vote local option in again and we'll elect officers who will enforce the laws." Have you yet to learn that a law cannot be enforced that is not steadily upheld by public opinion? And do you not know that there's not a considerable town in Texas where public opinion demands at all times a strict enforcement of such a law? If you really desire to have a sober city, raise a purse and hire the operators of your blind tigers to place their booze on the sidewalk in buckets, accompanied by tin dippers and signs, "Help yourself--funerals furnished free." Men would then run away from the very smell of the stuff who now sneak up dirty alleys and pay 15 cents for the privilege of poisoning themselves. On the same principle some men--and they are not all anti-Prohibs either--will leave a beautiful and charming wife to mope at home while they are flirting with some female whose face would frighten a freight-train. Man is just like a dog--only more so. Perhaps a marauding old muley cow would be a better comparison. A muley cow will eat anything on this majestic earth that she can steal, from a hickory shirt to a Prohibition newspaper, and if she can't get it through her neck she will chew it and suck the juice. That's human nature to a hair. Man values most what is hardest to get. And until you reverse the law of nature the legitimate effect of Prohibition will be blind tigers and back-door sneaks, the breeding of spies and the sale and consumption of an infinitely meaner brand of booze.

That liquor has done a vast amount of damage I freely concede; but shall we banish everything that has added to the mighty tide of human ills? Then what have we left? A hole in the atmosphere, God has not bequeathed to man an unmixed blessing since he expelled him from Paradise. Even woman, his last, best gift, hath grievous faults. The very first one brought into this world, according to Pagan legend and Holy Writ, was the author of all our ills. But for her we would be to-day in a blessed state of innocence, where mothers-in-law and millinery bills, political issues and itinerant preachers, mental freaks and professional reformers, jim-jams and jag cure joints disturb us not. Instead of all this toil and trouble we would lie like gods reclining on banks of asphodel, pull the heavenly bell-cord when hungry and live on from age to age, ever young Apollos. Perhaps the Almighty made a mistake when he gave to man a wife, and another when he gave him the vine; but when he corrects 'em I'll crawl off the earth.

Woman has filled the world with war's alarms, and the bacchic revel has ended in the brawl. Troy flamed because Menelaus' wife was false, and Philip's all-conquering son surrendered to the brimming bowl. Ever is our dearest joy wedded to our direst woe. The same air that comes stealing round our pillow, laden with the sensuous perfume of a thousand flowers, rips our towns to pieces and turns our artesian wells inside out. The same rains that fructify the earth pour the destructive flood. The same intellectual power that bends nature's mighty forces to man's imperial will, enables him to trample upon his brethren. The same reckless courage that breaks the tyrant's chain ofttimes stains the hand with a brother's blood. The same longing for woman's sweet companionship that leads these to rear happy homes--sacred shrines from which incense mounts night and day to the throne of Omnipotent God--goads those to lawless love. The empurpled juice that warms the cold heart and stirs the sluggish blood that gives to the orator lips of gold, to the poet promethean fire abused doth breed the hasty quarrel and make the god a beast.

It was said of old that a middle course is safest and best, and the axiom still holds good. All the Utopias thus far inaugurated were greased at the wrong end. The fact that since the dawn of history--aye, so far back that legend itself is lost in the shadows of the centuries--the winecup has circulated about the social board, proves that it supplies a definite, an inherent human want--that it fills a niche in the world's economy. One of the first acts of a people after passing the pale of savagery is to supply itself with stimulants. Why this is so, I do not pretend to know; but so it is, and it argues that the Prohibition apostles have tackled about as big a contract as did Dame Partington--that they had best "pluck a few feathers from the wing of their fancy wherewith to supply the tail of their judgment."

The Prohibs declare that 999 out of every 1,000 crimes are caused by liquor. Suppose this to be true: Does it take the cussedness out of liquor to drive it from the front room into the back alley? Is it not a fact that the worst brand of "fighting booze" is dispensed at the illicit doggery? But the Prohibs are as badly at sea anent their criminal statistics as in the mortuary report. Comparatively few of the great criminals of this country ever drank liquor to excess. But a small per cent. of those in our penitentiaries were confirmed drunkards when accorded the hospitality of the state. When a man is convicted of crime he naturally seeks a scapegoat. Adam threw all the blame of that apple episode on Eve, simply because liquor had not then been invented and he could not plead an Edenic jag in extenuation. I was once interviewing a man who had just been sentenced to the penitentiary for horse-theft. I thought that perhaps a cocktail would cause him to talk freer, and had one smuggled to his cell. He declined it, saying that he had never taken but one drink of liquor in his life, and that made him sick.

"But," said I, "you told the court that you were crazy drunk when you committed the crime."

"Yes," he replied, "I'd rather be thought a drunkard than a natural born d----d thief."

That led me to investigate. I interviewed the recorder of Galveston, the chief of police, the sheriff of the county, the district attorney and several other officials. We went over the records, and the habits of each offender were carefully inquired into. As a matter of course the "drunks and disorderlies" made an imposing list; but we were unable to trace the influence of liquor in more than 3 per cent. of the serious crimes committed in Galveston city and county during five years.

The great cry of the Prohibs is, "Save the boys; remove temptation from their path." Well, that's all right, if you've got a putty boy; but if I had a boy who wanted to go on a whizz and wasn't smart enough to find the means despite all the Prohibs in Christendom, I'd send him to the insane asylum. I was reading the other day of some college youths who were watched so closely that they couldn't obtain liquor, and proceeded to fill up on illuminating gas. If the supply of gas holds out those youngsters are likely to develop into great Prohibition orators. If you want to keep your boy from filling a drunkard's grave, begin by getting a sure-enough boy-- one whose brain-pan lies above instead of below his ears. Then raise him right. Don't tell him that every man who sells liquor is an emissary of hell, and that every man who drinks it is a worthless sot. If you do, he'll soon find out that you are a liar without sufficient intelligence to build a dangerous falsehood, and he'll take off the muzzle. Tell him the truth and thereby retain his confidence. Tell him that liquor is a pretty good thing to let alone, but that millions of better men than his daddy have drank it and lived and died sober and useful citizens.

Prohibition was first tried in the Garden of Eden. It proved a failure there, and it has proven a failure ever since. It is not in accord with the Christian Bible, the fundamental law of the land or the lessons of history. Wine has been used in almost every religious rite except Mohammedanism and devil worship. St. Paul recommends it, Christ made and used it and God saved Noah while letting all the good Prohibitionists drown. The Saviour came eating and drinking. Abraham Lincoln declared Prohibition "a species of intemperance within itself" and "a blow at the very principles on which our government was founded." General Grant, Thomas Jefferson, Horatio Seymour and John Quincy Adams denounced it in unmeasured terms. Who's taking issue with these giants of the intellect? Redlicker Benson of Ingeanny, who has come all the way to Texas to tell us barbarians what to do to be saved--and incidentally pick up enough money to pay for another "jag"; Whoopee Kalamity Homan, the pretty man of Dallas, whose chief argument is that I abuse the churches--which is an infernal falsehood; and Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill, an ex-bum who aspires to the presidency of the United States, but couldn't be elected pound-master in his own precinct.

I have been asked why, if as much liquor is sold under Prohibition as under high license, the saloonists insist upon contributing to the public revenues. The answer's dead easy. The men who engineer blind tigers vote the Prohibition ticket. They contribute to the campaign fund. They help pay the fees of the cold water spouters and sputers. More liquor is sold under local option than under high license, because of man's natural hankering for forbidden fruits; but it is sold by a different class of men and is a different kind of booze. It is sold by chronic law- breakers, by men who have little to lose, by toughs for whom the bat-cage hath no terrors. The man who is capable of straddling an unlicensed keg of bug-juice in a back-room and ladling out liquid hell to little boys, is quite naturally in favor of Prohibition. A man of respectability, and who is financially responsible for offenses, desires to keep within the limits of the law. That's the reason that respectable saloon men are the enemies of Prohibition.

Legalize the sale of liquor and you will have some crime, no doubt. You will have paupers and criminals to provide for, but you'll have a revenue to help bear the burdens. Prohibit it and you'll have the burdens without the revenue. Permit its sale and you will have law-abiding citizens engaged in the traffic, men who will try to make it decent, who will take a pride in the purity of their wares and the orderliness of their places; prohibit it, and you will have a lot of law-breakers on the one hand selling slumgullion made of cheap chemicals and general cussedness, and a gang of spies and informers on the other stirring up strife and entailing costly litigation.

When driven to the wall; when it is clearly demonstrated that their doctrine does not accord with the genius of this government; when it is amply proven that wherever tried it has proven an expensive failure, an arrant fraud, the Prohibs fall back upon the Bible. You may prove five hundred different religious dogmas by the Bible, but Prohibition is not one of them. Bro. Homan declares that the Old Testament prohibits the drinking of wine. It does not; but it does not make circumcision obligatory, and a sin of omission is as bad as a sin of commission. If Bro. Homan proposes to be guided by the Old Testament I beg to suggest that he is overlooking a very important bit. The Old Testament commands no class of people to abstain from wine, except the Jewish priesthood, and they ONLY WHILE PERFORMING THEIR SACRED OFFICES. An angel of the Lord did command the barren Manoah to stay sober awhile and she should conceive and bear a son; and I imagine that something equally as miraculous might happen to Luther Benson under similar circumstances. David recounts as one of God's mercies that he giveth water to the wild ass and wine to make glad the heart of man. Solomon sings to the wine cup with all the ardor of Anacreon, while the prophets kept the morals of Israel toned up by threats that a lapse from virtue would prove disastrous to the vineyards. St. Paul advised bishops and old women to take but little wine. He also suggested to the first that they should not fly into a passion, and to the latter that spreading false reports about their neighbors was not considered good form. The Prohibs, as a last resort, insist that the wine of Biblical days was very different from our own--a kind of circus lemonade; but it seems to have gotten in its graft on old Noah in most elegant shape. If the wine of Biblical times was so harmless why did the sacred writers consider it necessary to caution people against drunkenness, bid them be temperate in all things--while avoiding teetotalism? The only beverage I can find mentioned in the Bible that affected a man like a Prohibition drink, was that given Col. Lot in the cave by his two daughters. It accomplished what medical men assure me was a miracle--and the Prohibs run largely to the miraculous.

* * * OLD GLORY.

(Address at San Antonio, July 4, 1893.)

FELLOW CITIZENS--I have done pretty much everything that a man may do and dodge the penitentiary, except run for office and make Fourth of July speeches. Eulogizing the Goddess of Liberty were much like adding splendor to the sunrise or fragrance to the breath of morn. She needs no encomiast, star-crowned she stands, the glory of America, the admiration of the world.

I shall make a bid for your gratitude by being brief. In July weather the song of an electric fan and the small voice of the soda fount were more grateful to the soul than the grandest eloquence that ever burned on a Grady's lips of gold. It is customary, I believe on July 4th, to "make the eagle scream,"--to fight o'er again all the gory battles of the Republic, from Lexington's defeat to the glorious victory of the last election; but I am no Gov. Waite, and blood to horses' bridles delights me not. I would rather at any time talk of love's encounters than of war's alarums --rather bask in the smiles of beauty than mount barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries. I have ever had a sneaking respect for Grover Cleveland for sending a substitute to remonstrate with the Southern Confederacy while he played progressive euchre with the pretty girls. His patriotism may not have soared above par, but there were no picnic ants on his judgment. Much as I love my country, I would rather be a living president than a dead hero.

I address you as "fellow Americans," for in this land no man of Celtic or of Saxon blood can be an alien. Whether he was born on the banks of the blue Danube or by Killarney's lovely lakes, 'mid Scotia's rugged hills or on the sunny vales of France, he is bound to us with ties of blood; he hath a claim upon our country, countersigned by those brave souls who, in the western wilds, gave to Liberty a habitation and a name--who declared that Columbia should ever be the refuge of the world's oppressed,--that all men, in whatever country born, should be equal before the law wherever falls the shadow of our flag. There has of late arisen a strange new doctrine that we should close our ports against the peoples of other lands, however worthy they may be; but I say unto you that such a policy were to betray a sacred trust confided to us by our fathers,--that every honest man beneath high heaven, every worshipper at Liberty's dear shrine hath an inheritance here, and when, with uplifted hand he pledges his life, his fortune and his sacred honor to the defense of freedom's flag he becomes as much an American as though to the manner born.

On occasions such as this we of America are apt to glorify ourselves too much,--to overlook the origin of those elements that made us great. When exulting over our victories in war and our still more glorious triumphs in peace, our progress and our prosperity, we should not forget that had there been no Europe there would be no great American nation; that all the courage that beats in the blood of Columbia's imperial sons, and all the wondrous beauty with which her daughters are dowered; that all the tireless energy of which she proudly boasts, and all the genius that gilds her name with glory were nurtured for a thousand years at white bosoms beyond the ocean's brine.

The American nation is the fair flower of European civilization, the petted child of the world's old age. Princes may be jealous of her progress and tyrants read in her rise their own downfall; but the great heart of the people of every land and clime is hers; to her they turn their faces as the helianthus to the rising sun,--she is their beacon light, their star of hope, guiding them to the glories of a grander day.

It is natural, it is right that on the nation's natal day we should felicitate ourselves on the sacred privileges we enjoy--should pay the tribute of our respect to those whose courage crowned us with sovereignty and made us masters of our fate; but we should not, as too often happens, make it the occasion for senseless bravado and foolish bluster. We should rather employ it to promote good will among the nations of the earth, to link together in a kindlier brotherhood the various families of the great Caucasian race, to beat the barbarous sword into peaceful plowshares and forever banish strife.

I sometimes dream that God has, in his mercy, raised this nation up unto the world's salvation,--the immediate instrument of His grace to usher in that age of gold,

"When the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flags are furled, In the parliament of man, the federation of the world."

I delight to trace in the rise and fall of nations the finger of God, and strive to read the Almighty's plan in the historic page. In the farthest east appeared the first faint light of civilization's dawn, and westward ever since the star of empire hath ta'en its way, while each succeeding nation that rose in its luminous paths like flowers in the footsteps of our dear Lord, has reached a higher plane and wrought out a grander destiny. The cycle is complete-- the star now blazes in the world's extreme west and by the law of progress which has preserved for forty centuries, here if anywhere, must we look for that millennial dawn of which poets have fondly dreamed and for which philanthropists have prayed.

The awful responsibility of leadership rests upon us. We have shattered the scepter of the tyrant and broken the shackles of the slave; we have torn the diadem from the prince's brow and placed the fasces of authority in the hands of the people; we have undertaken to lead the human race from the Slough of Despond to the Delectable Mountains, where Justice reigns supreme and every son of Adam may find life worth living. Can we make good our glorious promises? Are we equal to the task to which we have given our hand? Ten thousand times the world has asked this question, but there is neither Dodona Oak nor Delphic Oracle to make reply--the future alone can answer. All eyes are upon us, in hope or fear, in prayer or protest. The fierce light that beats upon a throne were as the firefly's dull flame to the lightning's flash compared with that which illumes the every act of this champion of human progress, this knight par excellence, this Moses of the nations.

It is an important role which God hath assigned to us in the great drama of life, yet into a part so pregnant with fate we too often inject the levity of the farce. While preaching equal rights to all and special privileges to none, we pass laws that divide the people of this land into princes and paupers, into masters and slaves. On July 4th we shout for the old flag, and all the rest of the year we clamor for an appropriation. While boasting that we are sovereigns by right divine and equal unto kings, we hasten to lay our hair beneath the feet of every scorbutic dude who hither drifts,

"Stuck o'er with titles and hung around with strings."

The soldier who serves the state demands a pension, and every burning patriot wants an office. We boast that the people rule, and office-holders are but public servants; yet more than a moiety of us would hang our crowns on a hickory limb and swim a river to break into official bondage. Here in Texas seven distinguished citizens are already chasing the governorship like a pack of hungry wolves after a wounded fawn, while the woods are full of brunette equines who have taken for their motto,

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

Yes, our office-holders are indeed our public servants-- and my experience with servants has been that they usually run the whole shebang.

Theoretically we have the best government on the globe, but it is so brutally mismanaged by our blessed public servants that it produces the same evil conditions that have damned the worst. Even Americans whose forefathers dined on faith at Valley Forge, or fought at Lundy's Lane, have become so discouraged by political bossism, so heartsick with hope deferred that they quote approvingly those lines of Pope,

"For forms government let fools contest,
Whate'er is best administered is best."

While boasting of popular government, we suffer ourselves to be led about by self-seeking politicians like a blind man by a scurvy poodle; we made partisanship paramount to patriotism--have reserved the poet's line, and now

"All are for a party and none are for the state."

It were well for us to make July 4th less an occasion for self-glorification than for prayerful consideration of the dangers upon which we are drifting in these piping times of peace--dangers that arise, not in foreign courts and camps, but are conceived in sin by the American plutocracy and brought forth in iniquity by our own political bosses. We have no longer aught to fear from the outside world. Uncle Sam can, if need be, marshal forth to battle eight million as intrepid sons as those who crowned old Bunker Hill with flame or bathed the crests of Gettysburg with blood. Upon such a wall of oak and iron the powers of the majestic world would beat in vain. Our altars and our fanes are far beyond the reach of a foreign foe; but the rock that recks not the thunderbolt nor bows to the fierce simoon, is swept from its base by the unconsidered brook.

No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach; no country can be secure, I care not if Moses makes its constitution and Solon frame its laws, when half its people are homeless and brawny giants must beg their bread. As far back as history's dawn the rise of the plutocracy and the impoverishment of the common people have heralded the downfall of the state. Thus fell imperial Rome, that once did rule the world, and Need and Greed are the ballistae and battering-rams that are pounding to-day with tremendous power upon every throne of Europe and rocking the very civilization of the world from turret to foundation stone.

We have achieved liberty, but have yet to learn in this strange new land the true significance of life. We have made the dollar the god of our idolatry, the Alpha and Omega of our existence, and bow the knee to it with a servility as abject as that of courtiers kissing the hand of Kings. As the old pagans sometimes incorporated their lesser in their greater deities that they might worship all at once, so have we put the Goddess of Liberty and Saving Grace on the silver dollar that we may not forget them.

But before God, I do believe that this selfish, this Mammon-serving and unpatriotic age will pass, as passed the age of brutish ignorance, as passed the age of tyranny. I believe the day will come--oh blessed dawn!--when we'll no longer place the badge of party servitude above the crown of American sovereignty, the ridiculous oriflamme of foolish division above Old Glory's star-gemmed promise of everlasting unity; when Americans will be in spirit and in truth a band of brothers, the wrongs of one the concern of all; when brains and patriotism will take precedence of boodle and partisanship in our national politics; when labor will no longer fear the cormorant nor capital the commune; when every worthy and industrious citizen may spend his declining days, not in some charity ward, but in the grateful shadow of his own vine and fig-tree, the loving lord of a little world hemmed in by the sacred circle of a home. There was a time, we're told, when to be a Roman was greater than to be a King; yet there came a time when to be a Roman was to be the vassal of a slave. Change is the order of the universe and nothing stands. We must go forward or we must go backward--we must press on to grander heights, to greater glories, or see the laurels already won turn to ashes on our brow. We may sometimes slip; shadows may obscure our path; the boulders may bruise our feet; there may be months of mourning and days of agony; but however dark the night, Hope, a poising eagle, will ever burn above the unrisen morrow. Trials we may have and tribulations sore; but I say unto you, oh brothers mine, that while God reigns and the human race endures, this nation, born of our father's blood and sanctified by our mother's tears, shall never pass away.

* * * THE LONE STAR.

These balmy days, I often recall my ideas of Texas before I had the pleasure of mingling with its people,--of becoming myself a Texan. I regret to say that I had accepted Phil Sheridan's estimate of the State--an opinion that still prevails in too many portions of our common country. After living in Texas for ten years I paid a visit to my people beyond the beautiful Ohio. The old gentlemen sized me up critically, evidently expecting to see me wearing war-paint and a brace of bowie-knives.

"So, young man, you're living in Texas?"

"Yes, paw."

"Fell kinder t'hum 'mong them centerpedes, cowboys 'n other varments, I s'pose?"

"Y-y-yes, paw."

"Well, Billy, you allers was a mighty bad boy. I kinder cackalated as how you'd go t'hell some day; but, praise God, I never thought y' was bound fer Texas!"

I assured him that were I certain hell were half as good as Texas, I wouldn't worry so much about my friends who were in politics for their health.

Texas could well afford to spend a million dollars a year for a decade to disabuse the minds of the Northern people--to work it through their hair that the southwest produces something besides hades and hoodlums, jack- rabbits and jays. Were it generally known exactly what Texas is,--what her people, climate and resources--there are not railroads enough running into the state to handle the men and money that would seek homes and investments here. The year 1900 would see ten million prosperous people between the Sabine and Rio Grande; and it would be a people to be proud of,--the young blood of America, the cream of Christendom, the brain and brawn of the Western World.

The light of the Lone Star cannot be much longer hidden; it is breaking even now upon the earth. True knowledge of Texas is spreading,--spreading over the icy North, spreading over the barren East, spreading over crowded Europe--and knowledge of Texas is power unto her salvation.

I was north last summer, and talked Texas, of course. One day a long, lank, lingering eternity of a gawk sidled up to me, as though he feared I was loaded, and said:

"Great state, that Texas, I 'spose?"

"Rather."

"Purty big, I heer'n tell?"

"Look at the map."

"Gewhillikins, Maria! 'Tis purty dogon gosh-all-fired big, haint she?"

"That's whatever."

" 'Spose you're a gineral, or a corporal, or suthin nuther when you're t'hum?"

"Nop."

"N-no? Jedge, p'haps?"

"No, sir; I am simply a plain, every-day citizen of Texas,--not even a member of the legislature or candidate for congress."

"Hump! Say, Maria, I kinder thought as how that slab-sided galoot was a lyin' when he said he was frum Texas."

He could not conceive of a Texan without a title. But Texas will come out all right. I have faith in her future, for many reasons; but chiefly because she has unbounded confidence in herself--because nowhere will you find such local patriotism, such state pride, such love of home as beneath the Lone Star. There are rivalries, but they are not born of bitterness. A Texas is all for Texas.

Within the memory of living men, Oppression's fangs wounded Freedom's snowy breast, and from the ruddy drops Almighty God did make a star, the brightest that ever blessed the world; but ever have the clouds of calumny and the mists of malice obscured its matchless beauty. Slowly but surely the rank vapors are rolling by, and brighter and ever brighter blazes our astral emblem --born in the field of battle, its lullaby the cannon's thunder, its cradle the hearts of the brave, its nurse necessity, its baptismal rite a rain of blood and tears. May it forever be another beacon of Bethlehem to guide us on to a grander future--a harbinger of hope and happiness, an emblem of love and liberty, and in its deathless splendor go ever shining on.

* * * SLAVE OR SOVEREIGN.

STATUS OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN.

[Synopsis of an address delivered by Mr. Brann, August 10, 1895.]

FELLOW CITIZENS: If I had a million o' money--carefully protected from the income tax by a plutocratic supreme court--I would probably not be here to inquire whether you are Slaves or Sovereigns. And if you could draw your check for seven figures--with any probability of getting it cashed--you would not be here to answer. You'd do just as Dives did: lean back in your luxurious chair and absorb your sangaree, while Lazarus scratched his Populist fleas on your front steps and exploited your garbage barrels for bones. You'd turn up your patrician nose at the lowly proletaire, and if he did but hint that, having created this world's wealth, he was entitled to something better than hand-outs, you'd have an anti-communistic cat-fit and denounce him as an insolent hoodlum who should be comfortably hanged. That's human nature to a hair, and you are all human,--I suppose--even if the politicians do buy you with gas and sell you for gold.

I tell you frankly that I'm complaining, not because of the other fellow's colossal fortune, but because I can't strike the plutocratic combination. I'm dreadfully anxious to accumulate a modest fortune--of about fifty millions-- that I may build a comfortable orphan asylum for that vast contingent of Democratic politicians whom the next election will deprive of their "pap."

I'm no philanthropist who's trying to reform the world for the fun of the thing--who's willing to starve to death for the sake of an attractive tombstone. I want to so amend industrial conditions that I won't have to hustle so hard--and so long--between meals; and when they are bettered for me they will be bettered for you, and for every man who--with pick or pen, brain or brawn-- honestly earns his daily bread.

I want more holidays; more time to sit down and reflect that it is good to be alive; more time to go fishing--not fishing for men, but for sure--enough suckers. Here in America if the average mortal aspires to fill a long-felt want with first-class fodder, he's got to chase the almighty dollar on week-days like a hungry coyote camping on the trail of a corpulent jack-rabbit, and spend Sunday figuring how to circumvent his fellow-citizen. Life with the American people is one continental hurry, and rush from the cradle to the grave. We're born in a hurry, live by electricity and die with scientific expedition. Half of us don't take time to become acquainted with our own families. We've even got to courting by telephone, and I expect to see some enterprising firm put up lover's kisses in tablet form, so that they can be carried in the vest pocket and absorbed while we figure cent per cent. or make out a mortgage.

. . .

For a score of years I had been listening to the boast of the American people that they were Sovereigns by right divine, and at last it occurred to me to swear out a search warrant for my crown and go on a still-hunt for my scepter; but soon found that the jewels of my throne-room, the rod of my authority and my purple robe of office were conspicuous by their absence and I wasn't married at the time either. The American citizen is a sovereign, not to the extent of his voice and vote, but to the exact amount of Uncle Sam's illuminated mental anguish plasters at his command. Money is lord paramount, Mammon our prophet, our god the golden calf.

The dollar is indeed "almighty." It's the Archimedean lever that lifts the ill-bred boor into select society and places the ignorant sap-head in the United State Senate. It makes presidents of "stuffed prophets," governors of intellectual geese, philosophers of fools and gilds infamy itself with supernal glory. It wrecks the altars of innocence and pollutes the fanes of the people, breaks the sword of Justice and binds the Goddess of Liberty with chains of gold. It is lord of the land, the uncrowned king of the commonwealth, and its whole religious creed is comprised in the one verse, "To him that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance, while from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath."

"We, the people, rule"--in the conventions; but our delegated lawmakers have a different lord. In 1892 we demanded "tariff reform" with a whoop that shook the imperial rafters of heaven, and declared for the minting of gold and silver without discrimination against either metal. But our so-called "public servants," instead of hastening to obey our behests, spent months manufacturing excuses for disregarding their duty. Placed between the devil of the money power and the deep sea of public opinion, they wobbled in and they wobbled out like a drunken boa-constrictor taking its jag to a gold cure joint. They were like the little boy who put his trousers on t'other side to--we couldn't tell whether they were going to school or coming home. But our doubts were all dispelled last November. They are the fellows who were going to school--to that school of experience where fools are educated.

. . .

Slave or Sovereign? The last is an individual entity, a controlling power, his will is law. The first goes and comes, fetches and carries at the command of a master; creating wealth he may not possess, bound by laws he does not approve, dependent upon the pleasure of others for the privilege of breaking bread. Is not the latter condition that of a majority of the American people to-day? Are they not at the subsequent end of a financial hole, the sides soaped and never a ladder in sight?

In a country so favored--a veritable garden of the gods, where every prospect pleases and not even the politician is wholly vile--the lowliest laborer should be a lord, and each and all find life well worth the living. But it is not so. People starve while sunny savannas, bursting with fatness, yield no food; they wander houseless through summer's heat and winter's cold, while great mountains of granite comb the fleecy clouds and the forest monarch measures strength with the thunderstorm; they flee naked and ashamed from the face of their fellow-men while fabrics molder in the market-place and the song of the spindle is silent: they freeze while beneath their feet are countless tons of coal--incarnate kisses of the sun-god's fiery youth; they have never a spot of earth on which to plant a vine and watch their children play--where they may rear with loving hands lowly roof and rule, lords of a little world hemmed in by the sacred circle of a home; yet the common heritage in the human race lies fair before them and there is room enough.

The people of Texas do not realize how terrible is the industrial condition of the world to-day--how wide the gulf that separates Dives and Lazarus, how pitiful the poverty of millions of their fellowmen. The Texas merchant complains of dull trade, the farmer of low prices, the mechanic of indifferent wages; yet Texas is the most favored spot on the great round earth to-day. I defy you to find another portion of the globe of equal area and population where the wealth is so well distributed, where so few people go hungry to bed without prospect of breakfast. But the grisly gorgon of Greed and the gaunt specter of Need are coming West and South in the wake of the Star of Empire. Already Texas has begun to breed millionaires and mendicants, sovereigns and slaves. Already we have an aristocracy of money, in which WEALTH makes the man and want of it the fellow, and year by year it becomes easier for Dives to add to his hoard and for Lazarus to starve to death.

We appeal to New York for capital with which to develop our resources; and New York has it in abundance-- countless millions she is eager to let out at usury; yet it is estimated that ten thousand children perish in that city every year of the world for lack of food--and how many are kept alive by the bitter bread of a contemptuous charity God only knows. In one year 3,000 children were debarred from the public schools of Chicago because of lack of clothing to cover their nakedness--and Chicago boasts herself "the typical American city." The despised Salvation Army trying to feed a thousand homeless and hungry men on the sandlots of San Francisco proves that already the curse has travelled across the continent.

And people who are not only permitted to run at large, but actually elected to office, prattle of "overproduction" --while people are starving in nakedness; proposes to eliminate pauperism and inaugurate the industrial millennium by placing fiddle-strings on the free-list or increasing the tariff-tax on toothpicks--to relieve the country of the commercial jim-jams by means of the gold cure. And the fool-killer still procrastinates!

. . .

The American citizen is called a sovereign--by those patriots who are preparing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of a nice fat office. And perhaps he is; but I'm free.