The Labor enquirer., 1884-02-09
The Matter of Fact Don Says
a Few Sharp Pointed
Things.
Amid the Quietness Of Country
Life He Hears the Por-
tentiOus
Rumblings Of the Approaching
Engines Of a Terrible
- . Strife.
From John Swinton's Paper.

From John Swinton's Paper.
Ihave not forgotten my promise to
write you, at odd intervals, on the topics
that agitate the public mind, to use the
phraseology of the stump. But l have
been getting in. my ice-huge blocks
from the Mac-o-chee, clear as crystal and
brittle as glass. Should you visit me
next summer l can mix you mintju
such as you. never tasted before. shall
have the ice, and from the grave of
Virginia ancestor there grows the deli
cate mint, while the whisky is present
from cousin of mine in Boone county,
Kentucky. You see I have all under
nv roof to make life content, if not
happy.
have been thinking good deal over
our latest talk, at New York, and l must
say am more firm in,what you call my
cynicism than before.
Human progress is to me humbug.
l believe man to be now precisely what
he was six thousand years ago, and will
be as many thousands hence. The Chris
tan plan of salvation makes the devel-
opment of man into something better
the work of another and better world.
don't know how that is. l have not
been there. l have never met with
man who had, and l find rumors and
revelations very unsatisfying. But this
new doctrine of evolution is the dryest
husk of knowledge ever cribbed. Spen-
GERS apothegm of "a survival of the
ittest" is stuff enough for me, as it is for
and stock breeder. Animals left to them
selves barely hold their own, if indeed
they do not deteriorate. Among the
males the stronger destroys the weaker
but the stronger, thus left ma0ter,
breeds weaklings from excess.
The wild horse of the plains, for ex-
ample, escaped animals from the Span
iards, once regarded as superb specimens,
are now ponies. And so it is with any
other species, left to itself
I need not illustrate. AS I have said,
every horse or animal breeder knows
this. The Durham of England and the
racehorse of Kentucky are what they
are, not through natural selection and
the survival of the fttest, left to the
brutal instincts of the animal, but from
careful selection of the master, man.
If the human race could be subjected
to the same control from the will of
master, we should doubtless have like
result At least, there would be an i'm
provement physically. AS for the mental
and moral nature, that is further along.
We are a nation of phrase feeders. A
few words, condensed into sentence,
make up our brain food, and let the facts
be what they may, we 60 on contentedly
swallowing the canned information,
Of this sort is the cry that with free
speech, free press, free schools, a free
church, everything save free trade, we
have republican form of government
The fact is that, with all these things
free, we live under cast-iron despotism,
more hopelessly despotic than any under
the sun.
We broke up individual tyranny to
substitute that of class, precisely as we
destroyed individual slavery to have
worse form in that of class, again, where
labor is called free because it is left free
to starve.
The fathers-old hook-nosed, shsd-
belly aristocrats- US that in de-
stroying entail of property we would
have no fears from wealth, for the sons
would scatter all the fathers accumu-
lated.
This did not touch the evil for if greed
and cunning are not only left uncon-
trolled, but, as with us, are stimulated
by protective statutes, 1t is no comfort to
the poor and honest to say the class is
continually changing, for the class re-
mains,
The worn fact, however, that pulver-
ICES the choice phrase Is found in the cor
poration that lives, unchanged, forever
Our so-called free government, to-day,
seems to have but one duty, and that is
to found, foster.and stimulate greed. 1t
is called encouraging enterprise.
Under this system all business has
come to be gambling, all property, theft,
and all official life, corruption.
Our prosperity is shown in the growth
OF milIionaires and the. distress of labor.
In all business where cash is handled,
we have tin plates, punches and checks.
When we elect man to Office we COM
mission thief.
More than half the time of our con-
gress is given to what is pleased to call
protection to American labor. Ofcourse
it is lie, or congress would not be 30
busy at it. Now, seven-tenths of the la
Dor of this country is agricultural. Nine
tenths of the labor lies outside this
scheme of protectlon-and the remain
ing tenth is opposed by it. E.
Let me, however, call your attention.
John Swlnton, to my class. am a
farmer. have 500 acres of the best