St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-08-27
SOME CAUSES OF ANARCHIsNI.


All its causes root in paternalsm, and
paternalism is Graded in legislation.
Paternalism Is the opposite pole of alb
stract anarehsm. Its essence is that
men are incapable of directing their
own affairs; that governments are
wiser than men, and are endow ed with
the wisdom to direct them and the
falherly interest in them which will
help them and shield them from harm.
1t is the same in spirit whether 1t take
the form of the absolutism OF the Rus
slams little father. the benignity OF
Bellamy, or the hypocrisy OF McKin-
leyism. 1t sets at defiance the laws OF
nature, the memorable laws Of human
nature, and assumes to mould habits
and form character. 1t substitutes for
the play of the natural forces those Of
legislation, ignorant that it can only
disarrange and disturb, and that its
only effect ever is to reinforce the sell
fiShness of men with the power of gov
eminent.
You, gentlemen of past congresses,
have prepared with diligent hands seed
beds for concrete anarchy. When you
diverted the powers in your care to
building up industries in this nation
yon made the lot of all harder by max
ing all bear the cost of building up and
maintaining the industries you favored.
When the building pretext became too
threadbare to hide the gross seitishness
behind it. you shifted the pretext to one
of a desire to maintain the higher wages
of American labor caused, not by legis-
lation, but by the competition of free
lands with their greater opportunities.
You gave to employers in the industries
you favored power to make consumer
pay more. for their wares, so that the
employer might be able to pay his
workmen and workwomen more wages.
Tina employer did not do 1t, and labor
organized to get Its share, and strikes
and lockouts and boycotts followed in
logical sequence.
The Industries you favored, taught by
you that foreign competition was in
furious, combined to prevent internal
competition; and. to cure the disorder
you had created. you enacted law
against combinations in restraint of
openly defyyour mandate, they adjusted
their outward form to it and continued
their operations. One court, when the
law was attempted to be enforced, bel d
that 1t did not apply to trust which has
'grappled the nation by its throat"
and in another case court has decided
that the law did not apply to CON-
binatiOn O. railways formed to hold
freight rates above competitive level.
When, however, an organization of
workingmen in the employ of railway
company decided thai they would not
handle the cars Of another company
whose employees were resisting re-
duction of their wages, this law was
found to fit their case, and il was applied
to them vigorously. Later it has been
made the basis of an injunction which
not only prescribed the employees from
using force. but was stretched to pre-
vent them from the use of that freedom
of speech guaranteed them in the con-
stitution when employed to persuade
their fellow workmen from defeating
them by engaging in the work they had
quit.
And you, gentlemen who manage the
railways of the country,a are not guiltless
of acts which create the conditions
in which anarchy breeds; the convic-
ton that there is one law for one man
and another for others; that one law
shelters you in unjust exactions and
witholds its shelter from those you op-
press. You have made use of con-
crosses and legislatures to obtain special
privileges and unjust advantage. You
have not hesitated to add to the persua-
tiveness of speech the lure of brides.
Your lobbyists infest every legislative
hall from congress to the councils of our
cities. You form your combinations to
maintain rates of freightage and travel
above competitive level land coolly ask
shippers and travellers what they will
do about it. When your men. applying
the lessons you teacn them, form their
organizations for the same purpose, you
use all your powers to crush their or.
CARNATIONS. If they strike against
wrongs. real or imaginary, you find the
law ready to aid you. and your men find
it helpless to aid them.
Here are conditions inevitably breed =
ing that discomfort in which the mi
crobes of anarchy find fertile spawning
ground. When men feel that law is
against them, that legislation robs and
Expresses them. and that, turn where
they will. there is no escape from the
meshes that bind them helpless to the
social fabric, there comes feeling OF
desperation which urges them to strike
out and hit and destroy. 1t makes them
| feel that government and society are
their enemies, to be resisted and fought
as men will resist and fight when self.
| preservation furnishes the motive.
SENATOR WAsHBURN brings proml-
month";, to tho ErnInt Tim idna thnt tI,I