The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1901-11-02
The Failure Of Freedom.
James Hoffman Batten In Arena for November.

The eighteenth century produced two
sons OF greatness, strikingly similar In
their primal characteristics and in the
unusual opportunities afforded for their
exercise in the service Of the state: In
the Old World the elder Napoleon; In
the New World George Washington.
Both were brave men: both were true
men; both loved their country and dar-
ed to expose their lives for their coun-
try's cause.
Napoleon was probably the equal Of
Washington in intellect and his super
Tor In education. Both Of them were
successful in serving the state. To
both there came a time that tried their
souls, revealing the weakness of the
one and the strength of the other. Ma
poleon saw the thrones of Europe tot
tering-their scepters in the hands Of
the timid and weak. Ambition prompt
ed him to seize them and distribute
them among his family and friends.
For time he was the autocrat of the
world; but the inevitable change came,
and he died q prisoner on rocky st.
Helena.
Washington, too, was victorious in
war. An unpaid soldiery elamored
against the government; ambitious
friends offered him the dictator's sword.
but his monitor, conscience, stood by
him and told him of the greatness Of
q free people. He himself had crossed
the Alleghanies, had been q surveyor In
A~l L.
on the western wales. It Is said that
Henry Clay, crossing the SUBMITS Of
the Allegheny Mountains, once des-
cended from the stage and stood with
his cloak around him as If in the atti-
tude of listening. Some friends asked
him, Mr.. Clay, for what are you list
ening?" and he replied, II am listening
for the foot steps of the coming mil
hons." So, down the long opening
vista Of national life, Washington saw
the coming millions, and the radiant
glory Of free nation flashed its light
into his great soul. He spurned the
tempter and the temptation, put his
sword in its scabbard, and went to be
q peaceful farmer on the banks of the
Potomac. How great the difference
between Napoleon, whose ambition
sought to make men vassals, and
Washington, whose ambition sought to
make men free! Washington realized
his ideal. An aristocrat by birth, he
laid broad and deep foundations of the
worlds truest democracy. OF the
greatness of his service and the correct
ness of his ideals, there can be no ques-
ton. Would that we might as truth
fully say that there can be no question
Of our adherence to the moral and poll
teal standards that he enunciated and
illustrated.
Not as an alarmist, but as loyal
American, believing that evil must be
recognized and appreciated in order to
be the most quickly and effectually
eradicated, ask: At the close of
century and a quarter Of national life,
do we realize or even approximate the
Democratic Republic Of George Wash:
ington? Have we not shifted the build
ing of our national life from the solid
rock of Washingtonian principle to the
shifting sands of Napoleonic policy?
Principle makes free. Policy enslaves.
Today policy sits king upon the throne
Of American activity, while moral
principle covers in chains at its feet
for financial prosperity's sake.
If we are free only theoretically, in
the mere sense of an empty govern
mental democracy, rather than sons Of
liberty in thought, in speech, in action,
and In the moral qualities that alone
make them effective, then this age will
constitute an epoch upon the page of
the historian of America known by the
significant name Of 1.-The Failure of
Freedom
Democracy is heaven-born. It was
incarnated in Jesus Christ, the first true
social democrat" It's key-word is
freedom, and its concrete expression in
all phases of life is absolutely untram-
meled action. This free life only is
moral life The bound life may run
true, but it perforce is machine action
and immoral. The free life that runs
untrue is immoral. The free life that
plumblines with the straightness Of
God alone is moral. Rule by the aggre-
gate trueness Of that moral life, ex-
pressed in the honest majority of
thought and action, is Democratic.
There is no other.
Do we realize it? Study with me the
existing conditions and answer to your
own conscience. I do not ask, nor
would have to answer to mine. That
would be oligarchic; for the confess
sional, with its strait-jacket ipse-dixit,
personal. political, imperial, or &C.
clesiastical,-is foreign to the ideals of
democracy. Wherever you find it, there
exists "The Failure Of Freedom"
Every sphere of life in this American
democracy stands as warder at its
gates, a. Torquemada Of inquisitoria,
repression. No ''auto da fe" sizzles the
physical organism; but how intellect
dwarfs, and conscience cracks. and
backbone bends, and principle breaks.
as the iron mold grips and twists and
brushes into machine shape and turns
its product out, ready for sale, branded
with the trademark Of slavery!
This creature Of demonry stands at
ecclesiastical gate. We call him Greed.
He Is cast-iron and never bends. About
once In a century some consecrated
democratic iconclast, "a man sent from
God, whose name is Progress" travtals
in the womb Of truth, grows strong
upon the wild honey and locust" food
81 freednrn and u,i%h f1,a co,,rouo -