The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-12-13

A Distinguished Litterateur En-.
lists his Pen in the Cause
of the People,

OF the People,
We publish below number of ex-
cerptS from an article by William
Dean Howels. The article appeared
in the November number of the Cos
MOPOLITAN, under the caption "Let-
tiers of an Altrurian Traveller" We
regret our inability to republish the
letters in full. The introduction of
reform thought to the minds of the
great middle class of the people by
the distinguished literati of the
nation through the medium of great
periodicals like the COsMOPOLITAN,
is a hopeful promise of the ultimate
rescue Of the republic from the
hands of the plutocracy.-THE Ed
TOR.
l had hardly been in the county
a week before an illustration of the
facility with which human nature adj
justs itself to bad conditions and
makes them tcleraa5lc BY its patience,
eclipsed all the little instances that
were every moment offering them
selves to my notice. The great event
at Homestead, which our Altrurian
papers have given you some account
of, occurred little over a year ago, but
it is already forgotten. TO the Amer
cans it was not astounding that a
force of armed workmen should
bloodily fight cut their quarrel with
the mercenaries of their masters. x
In many states no change of the laws
in respect to the incident has taken
place to prevent it's repetition on any
larger or smaller scale: but the
Americans are SO used to these pri-
vate wars between the banded forces
of labor and the hirelings of capital
that they accept it as something al
most natural, or as disease inherent
in the nature of things, and having
it's own laws and limita tions. The
outbreak at Homestead, as you know,
was followed by something like civ
ic CONFUSION among the miners in
Tennessee and in Idaho, and by a
strike of railroad employees at Buffa-
10, which destroyed immense values,
delayed traffic, and shed blood on
both sides. In this last strike it was
thought great gain that the rail
road managers, instead of employing
mercenaries to shoot down the strik-
ers appealed to the state for .protec-
ton; and it was somehow felt to be
fine effect of patriotism that the mi
litia should occupy the scene of the
riot in force, and bear themselves to-
ward the strikers like the invaders of
an enemy's country.
If it had not all been so tragical in
other aspects the observer must have
been amused by the attitude of most
Americans toward these affairs. They
seemed to regard them as proofs of
the superiority of the plutocracy
they call republic, and to feel
kind of pride in the promptness and
ferocity of civil and military officials
in suppressing symptoms which
ought to have appealed to every sane
person as signs of the gravest organ
ic disorder. To my mind nothing
seemss SO conclusive against their pre-
tensions to civilization as the fact
that these terrible occurrences are
accepted as the necessary Incl dents
of civilization. <"
Just at present there is no violent
outbreak in the economic world, no
bloody collision between labor and
no private war to be fought
out IN the face of the aohole acqoliesce,u na-
ton, till the Inconvenience forces the
government to interfere and put
down the weaker party. But though
there is now an interval of quiet, no
one can say how long it will last. and
many feel that there is even some
thing omnibus in it,-that it is some
thing like the calm in the heart of
the cyclone. The cyclone is financial.
The question of money is the
prime question of American life, and
ov,1l ~ %l,o lei