Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1878-05-18
COMMUNISM I'm AMERICA.

that at Chicago and Cincinnati con-
siderable bodies of men connected
with what is called the International
Commune have been engaged in
military drill, and recently we no
tice a rumor of similar things in st.
Louis. We have not the means,
nor for our present purpose do we
need them, of estimating the proba-
BILE magnitude of this movement.
The number of armed men thus
organized for military training is
stated at anything from two thous-
and to a hundred or two. We only |
know that secret military drill is
practised in those two cities and |
probably elsewhere by bodies of
men not enrolled by either Federal,
State or municipal authorities as
militia.
We avail ourselves of the occasion
to give few paragraphs to the sub
iect of communism in America.
The international cOmmunistic sOci-
cites in this country are believed to
be chiefly organized and Influenced
by certain Frenchmen in New York
who are refugees from justice on
account of their participation in the
communistic insurrectiOn which
took place in Paris when the Prus-
sian troops evacuated that city after
the close of the FrancO-Prussian
war in 1870. These men are utterly
detestable characters; their leader
boasts that he was one of the gang
who devised and perpetrated the
assassination of the Archbishop of
Paris and some twenty of his clergy;
who applied the torch indiscrimi-
nately to churches and palaces,
halls of legislature and museums Of
art as well as hundreds of private
houses; who desired to re-establish
the guillotine in the Place de Greve
for the execution without trial of
men who were guilty of holding
property or of going to church, and
would have done so but that the
very mob whom they appealed to
rose against the barbarism and
burned the Ioathed instrument be-
fore it was put to work. These men
hold their nightly meetings in New
York, where they utter obscene and
blasphemous denunciations against
property, marriage and religion.
They speak of property as robbery,
married women as legalized prOsti-
tutes, the clergy as banded cOnspir-
atOrs against the well-being of sOci-
ETY.; they have openly proclaimed
it as one of their first purposes to
make the same example of members
of our Protestant clergy as they
did in Paris of Archbishop DarbOy
and his clergy. Laws, legislative
and municipal institutions they at
tack as the terms and charter of the
anti-social league against which
they are banded. In Chicago, Gin
cinnati and st. Louis they have
military organizations armed with
Springfield rifles. In San Francisco
they have made a league with the
tramps and hOodlums who throng
that city and openly defy the laws
and threaten with violence and
slaughter all existing organization
for their VindicatiOn; and where
they do not have the Springfield
musket and the drilled regiments,
they boast that the torch for mid
night incendiarism is always ready
to hand. We have purpOsely omit
ted any computation of numbers,
because the conflicting rumOrs on
this head make it evident that no
one has accurate information about
them, but it is an indisputable fact
that these organizations do exist in
the cities alluded to as a standing
menace against property, law and
society.
And to what purpose have we
made these statements? We imag-
ineapractical reader asking whether
we have any apprehension lest these
insane rawlings should ever impose
upon such numbers of our practical,
thrifty American population as to
give them predOminance in our
social and political system. Assur-
edly not; they are essentially exotic
in their origin and require a soil for
their development utterly different
from anything hitherto found on
this continent. But this is equally
true of France, and in France the
commune has been found a perilOus
element spite of that. We desire to
call attention to the similarity in
some respects of the two nations, as
possessing features adverse to the
ultimate predOminance of the COM
mune, in order that our readers may
appreciate the fact that the organ
lied assertion of such principles may
be very dangerous even where sOci-
ETY. is so constructed as to be a bar
30 their permanent establishment.
The larger the number of property
holders in Il community the less the
danger of communism as a perma-
nently predominant force. Now,
there are no two countries in the
world in which the number of prop
erty-hOlders is so large in proportion
to the whole population As in France
and the United States. In the
former country, the one relique of
the first revolution which has re-
manned unimpaired through all the
countless changes of government
that have interviewed is the law of
the equal division of real property
at the death of the proprietor. In
France a man cannot make a will
SOl the disposal of his real property;
he cannot even dispose of it during
his life to the detriment of his legal