The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1873-12-26
The Commune in New York.

evil that humanity can suffer. This
is a condition of things that goads
men to desperation, and prepares
them to receive the widest theories
or the most monstrous and imprac-
ticable scheme, provided it but
promise immediate relief. 1t Is
vain to reason with them, or at
tempt it. They are in no condition
to reason, or hear, or understand
reason. The matter is too serious
for that. Wives and children, to
say nothing of themselves, are starv-
ing and freezing, and their plaint of
suffering addresses the heart and not
the head alone of those helpless
men, and they earnestly look about
them for the means of relief, and
in the desperate circumstances of
the time, are not disposed to be
over scrupulous as to the constitu-
tionality of their project, provided
it bring the relief sought.
Hence the alarming growth of
Communistic ideas, and the rapid
spread of the kindred follies of the
international Society, in New York
in the last few months. Commun-
ism is one of the worst developments
of French infernalism. The doc
trines of the International Society
are no better, for they are not only
French, but intensely French
Like every other French heresy,
these systems, or schemes, or
organizations, are powerful only
for evil, impotent for good
Theyare strong to destroy, to
overturn law and social order,
disintegrate society, and give over
the nations to be ravaged by law
lessness or exterminated by civil
wars. But they are powerless for
good. They reform nothing, and new
er win. They can strew the earth
with ruin and wreck, but never re-
build the desolated homes of the
multitude; never restore order and
and security for person and prop
erty, and without this civiliza-
ton is impossible and life itselfa a ca
lamity to all but the strong.
Yet these movements are signif-
cant. They are evidence that some
thing is deeply and radically wrong
in society as organized now. Thirty
thousand people almost starving in
the midst of wealth and abundance:
in sight and reach of food, and
clothing, and shelter, which they
dare not touch; wasting away mis-
erably for but a portion of that
which others hold, but need not for
their own necessities: doomed to
perish of destitution, while others
are protected in the possession of
enormous superAuities, is certainly
a state of affairs that even the wisest
might contemplate with serious
question as to the right of it all:
positive suspicion of an abnormal
constitution of things.
And much more might ignorant,
uncultured men, themselves the suf-
ferers, and not without show of very
solid reason, claim that what labor
had created almost wholly, labor
might rightfully enjoy, in very large
and liberal measure, at any rate
And close upon such conclusion
would press the other: that the law is
wrong that gave to labor but pit
tance, and not that all the time, and
secured the whole product to capi-
tai.
These conclusions may be very
unreasonable, and doubtless are, as
could easily enough be shown by
fair logic, but starving laborers have
never been conspicuous for their ap-
probation of the reasonableness of
distasteful propositions. Specious
and sophistical as these conclusions
may be, they are just such as most
exactly accord with the temper of
the thirty thousand in New York,
the other thousands of like kind, in
like condition, In other cities, and
the millions of the same class and
equally destitute in Europe. And
these millions, in America and Eu-
rope, are all in communication
One idea pervades all: that the re-
lations of capital to labor are al
wrong and always have been, and
must be readjusted, ON an equitable
basis. That is the central idea, and
may be true, but the question of re-
adjustment is another matter. So
far the problem has been too much
for the statesmen and philosophers
of all time. While very generally
admitting the radical defects Of ex-
isting systems, no sage has arisen to
frame the true policy.
But trouble is certainly at hand
on both sides of the Atlantic. Re-
publican institutions and universal
suffrage are not all that men want.
Emancipation from the endless toll
for mere subsistence, and that mea-
gre and poor, and cut off entirely at
times, which was in all time
past, the condition of the
masses who struOcle under the