The Commonwealth. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1911-1914, 1913-08-21

| OF the present II Is, moreover re-
buke and challenge to hypocritlcal
laudations of presentday conditions,
as II there were nothing more TO be
done now but TO pile up riches for
the few at the expense of the many
on the same old terms
The overthrow Of kingly rule in
America was great step forward for
the trading class of the United states,
and the abolition of chattel slavery
removed the only great obstacle TO
the Industrial development of the
South, removing at the same time the
economic causes for sectional antago-
nisms The way was clear now for
the full expansion of the capitalist
system. With liberty in matters of
religion assured and political equality
established. the bourgeois ideal of
! Freedom and Democracy was realized.
But was all really done? Were the
toiling masses, white and black, now
free? Chattel slavery had indeed
been abolished, but was not wage
slavery still in full swing? Were not,
still, the MANY sweating, ploughing,
threshing, and then the chaff for pay
ment receiving?' Were not as under
the kings, "a few idly owning, and
they the wheat continually claiming?"
And were the masters themselves
free? Can the mere severing of ma
terial chains free the soul of Man?
Whitman saw that master and man
were alike slaves of a Past that
weighed heavily upon them that the
real rulers of the world were the
Dead. Leaves of Grass" is a bold
defiance of dead kings, priests, law
givers, and philosophs. It's mission is
ito cause changes, growths, removals
greater than the longest and bloodiest
war or the most stupendous merely
political, dynastic, or commercial
overturn." Giving full credit to the
Past for it's contributions to the
Present, regarding it all intently for
a long while-then Diminishing it,"
Whitman stands in his own place,
with his own day here:
"In the name of these states, shall |
scorn the antique?
Why these are the children of the
antique, to justify it,"
Dwelling not too long upon the
Past, crediting the dead with what
they did when alive, Whitman speaks
prophetically:
For the broad beyond us and of us,
For those who belong here, and those
to come,
l., exultant, to be ready for them, will
now shake out carols stronger and
laughter than have ever been
heard upon earth"
The work of today and tomorrow is
not written in cuniform inscriptions,
nor does the live worker of today take
directions or orders from tablets OF
clay. He who would not stumble and
fall must look forward, not backward.
Whitman would lead men away from
antique parchments and lecture
rooms, out into the open air, into the
Here and Now, into New World:
ga world primal again-Vistas of
glory, incessant and branching;
A new race, dominating previous
ones, and grander far, with new
contests,
New politics, new literatures and re-
ligion, new inventions, and arts"
The Democracy and Freedom
dreamed of and celebrated by Whit
man cannot be granted to humanity
as a gift They are conditions to be
struggled for and gained by conquests.
True Democracy can never be created
by pen and parchment nor true Liber-
ty conferred merely by granting votes
to men and women on the same terms.
Religious, political, and even economic
llGtuOIllJ ali ICullACh, iAit'J wv 'NS''
the mind enslaved. Tradition, custom,
habit, all play so large a part in the
life of the average man that his eyes
are constantly turned backwards,
seeking justification for the new by
authority of the old. 81 say" de-
clares the Good Gray Poet, that
democracy can never prove itself be-
yond cavil until it POUNDS and luXur-
iously grows its own form of art,
poems, schools, theology, displacing
all that exists, or that has been pro
duced anywhere in the past, under
opposite influences" prose Works,
loo. cit)
Slave-state traditions, class-rule
sanctions, trading class ideals and
ethics, must all give place to the new
and higher demands of reborn race
before the soul of man can emerge
fully free And what portion of the
rolling earth more suitable for the
birth of the new society than these
| states2" America, with its vast