Los Angeles herald., 1908-07-07

much dignity ana llttle VIII, ana the
woman of much loneliness and little
love"
Then he proceeds with his summary
in the following strain:
81 have to defend men and women
whose deeds revolt me, whose presence
/ disgusts me; to defend them against
the world and against my own preju-
dice and aversion. For / also have
an heredity and an environment, and
therefore crotchets and passions and
antipathies. Though can defend all
victims of heredity and environment;
though 1 can demand justice for the
worst; yet my nature loathes the bully
and the tyrant, and still more the
mean who barter children's
lives and women's souls and the man
hood of cities for dirty pieces of sill
yer. l am to defend such
from being hated and punished, but
! they are repulsive to me. L am not big
enough. lack grace"
| Experiencing the same difficulty ia
separating the man from his acts, find
| ing 1t equally difficult with the rest of
us to hate and loathe the acts without
hating and loathing the man, Mr..
Blatchford yet recognizes that we
ought TO do so at whatever cost in
effort and despite the old Adam in us
rebelling against the new altruism and
the new reason. 1--WE are, indeed, a
long way behind our ideals"
In disclaiming any intention to flat
ter his readers, Mr.. Blatchford says:
81 know you too well for that There
is a strong family likeness between us.
Your ancestors also had tails. And
then, like Thoreau, I know what mean
and sneaking lives many lead.
Your heroes are too often mere prowl-
ing appetites or solemn vanities.
We are all painfully human,
ishment may count ourselves lucky
If we have not been found out"
1.-THE poor are poor that the rich
may be rich. And the riches and pow
erty are a curse to both" And in a
further passage on what he designates
1.-The apish swagger" and "blazoned
snobbery" of our false ideals, he asks
what they cost in human souls-in
Bottom Dogs?
Verbally, no doubt we all agree with
Mr.. Blatchford that happiness cannot
be stolen nor won by cheating, as
though life were a game of cards. But
our acts voice a different creed, and
common experience is not on the
side of the angels" That, doubtless,
is why there are so many Bottom
live "mean and sneaking lives"
You have now heard (something of
Mr.. Blatchford's case for the Bottom
Dog. He claims to have proved that
all human actions are ruled by hered-
ity and environment, for which man
is not responsible; and that therefore
all blame and punishment are unjust
and Intellectual. He claims to have ex-
planned the so-called mysteries" of
1oa@ ~ 90 4toA
morality comes through natural evo-
luton and not by supernatural revela-
ton. He claims to have proved that the
theory here advocated is based on JUS
tice and reason and that the prosecu-
TONS arguments are mostly n1isrepre-
sensations of the issues and the facts
"It remains for me-" he says. Ito Of
fer few words on the wrongs suffered
by my unfortunate client, and as to
the necessity for so changing the laws
and customs of society as to prevent
the perpetuation of all this cruelty and
injustice, all this waste OF human love
and human beauty and human power"
The author bids US think, not i'm
perially," but universally. He reminds
US that while we think of the dawn
star as something heavenly pure and
OF the earth as gray with sorrow and
sin, yet the earth is "a star, bright
and beautiful as Venus, In a purple
sky" He bids us not forget that
Whitechapel and Chicago are in the
milky way and that all
men are brothers. From the age be-
together" ''All of us had
ancestors with tails" "All
our politics. philosophers and religions
grow one out Of the other"
"All the comparative sciences tell us
the same story of growth, Of evolution
and kinship." And so proceeds our
author, pointing out that the Oldest
nations speak in our language today,
the most primitive races survive in
our bodies the oldest gods have part in
our religious forms and ceremonies,
and the Oldest faults and follies still
obscess our minds and obscure our ac-
lions. "There is but one real family
of flesh and blood, and that reaches
back to the clot OF jelly in the sea,
and we all belong to it."
Pursuing this course of thought on
the universally of all things, Mr..
Blatchford tells us how, when he hears
some honorable member prating In the
house about imperial questions, he
thinks of the famished seamstress, the
unemployed laborer, the match-girl
with "phossy-jaw' whom the honor
able gentleman represents" when
1 hear the angelic voices of the choirs
and see the golden Plate on cathedral
affairs I ask myself questions about
that bridge of signs where London
women drown themselves in their de-
spair.
1T cannot think" says Mr.. Batch
ford, ''of the Bottom Dog apart from
the whole biood-stained, tear stained
tragedy of mans inhumanity to man.
"The trampled and sanguinary field
of history is heaped with the corpses
of the men, women and children slain
by the righteous in the name OF JUS
tice and in Gods name. And though
the vane of justice veered till right
became wrong and wrong right, yet
the horrible mistakes were repeated;
the holy, the noble and the cultivated
still cried for their brothers blood"
What holocausts of crime, says the
author, are not recalled in the words
'heresy," ''witchcraft," idolatry, sac
rifice, precipitation of divine ven
geance''-what seas of blood "And
they were all mistakes born of ig-
norance and superstition" We know
now that heresy is only difference of
witch. And we know that all those
millions wept and bled and died for
nothing; that they were tortured, en-
shaved, degraded and murdered by the
holy through ignorance and fear and
superstition.
In the laws of kings and parliaments
we find the same ignorance, ferocity