The San Francisco call., 1896-05-11

dred planks" had begun to sprout among
the palmettos of the South and the corn
shocked prairies of the West. But Nation
alism had grown up to be lanky. loose
iointed boy, with the down on his up er
iip feebly palpable to the fostering finger
before Burnette G. Haskell, revolutionist
and socialist slckened of the task OF cast
ing pearls before swine, threw down the
red flag at Kaweah, and admitted what
some of his less fiery associates had dis
covered before-that the socialistic temple
could not be built with selfish, thriftless,
shiftless men and women, and that 1t
would require perhaps centuries OF intel
lectual and moral evolution before the
world would be ready for the realization
of the day-dream of Karl Marx and Fer
dinand Lassalle.
He had given socialism, or compulsory
cooperation, fugitive test in the little
settlement in the mountains OF Tulare,
and had found that churches did not make
religion and that lecture-halls did not
make philosophers. He had told in burn
ing words how in the beautiful days to
come man should cease to be master or
man; how poverty should no longer rack
the wearied limbs with pain, or tear the
tatters off the drudge's back and blue him
with the icy gale. He had told how men
and women should be as one family OF
brothers and sisters, as God designed, and
~
gold. when sorrow and want should be no
more. And having told all these things,
he awoke to find on his lips the salt ashes
of disappointment and of wasted opportu-
nifty.
He found that socialistic sisters would
gossip and backbite as well as the
followers of Mammon; that sociailstic men
would evade their common duties and
shirk their common work, and that, ike
wolves, when one of their number Is hurt
or sick unto death he is fallen upon by the
whole pack and torn to pieces. so the dls-
contented, the cranky, the pessimistic,
turned upon Haskell and every one. else
prominently connected with the colony,
and the uproar of their contention was SO
great that the outer world heard it and
scoffed at the reformers.
Sick at heart with the outcome OF the CO.
operative experiment, following so closely
upon the failure of the Topolobampo
scheme, Haskell turned his steps toward
the electric lights of the great city by the
ocean and resumed the practice of the law.
But his old love would not be shaken off
and he Joined the Populists. Their plat
form was not as socialistic as he would
have wished, but there was the Govern
mental ownership and control OF railroads,
the currency question, the referendum and
direct legislation, all true-blue soclalistic
doctrines.
In the meantime, many of his former
associates, now with the Populists, have
their knives barred for him should he at
tempt to take prominent part in the
convention, as he will undoubtedly try to
do. Haskell has the trick of eloquence
and has often carried hostile legions off
their feet by the torrent of forceful words,
but his prestige has waned, and it will be
an uphill fight for him to get up to the
head of the class again, as even the Coast
Seamen's Union, the socialistic constitu-
ton of which Haskell had large share in
making, contains many of his bitterest
foes.
The Haskell episode will be one of the
hot ones of the convention.