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Show ; I The World' 4: Struggle jfior Equality. " My considerate opponent, "an optomist," deserves de-serves to be answered in no frivolous vein, since lie seems to feel seriously, even loftily, the views , he entertains. Naturally his indisposition to con-'( con-'( troversy induces a spirit of tolerance; but he can r hardly hope that his utterances shall pass unno-? unno-? ticed. For the future he can protect himself by I silenco or acqulesence at his option or he may 5 retreat from his position of non-combatant while 1 1 still combatting. it : It is self-evident that the subject of man's de-1 de-1 j velopment, or retrogression, is viewable from 1 ' various aspects. Otherwise, we should see eye to eye and the possibility of a difference of opin-, opin-, ! ion concerning the question would cease to exist. ; ; j1 Beyond cavil there has been a distinct develop- H ment of the race since the stone age and suc-j suc-j cdeding ages. Yet there are those who capably '.' question whether the present artificial environ-Ij environ-Ij j nients of man compensate for the freedom that il , is the reward of a natural state. Issue may also II j$ be taken with "Optomist" as to which of us judges H J'j man from a near point or takes in the wider range Bf i " of vision and encompasses with the mind's eye II A longer periods of time. Archologists have dis-1 dis-1 3 I 1 1 covered in countries inhabited by races inferior 1 I " to our own, and inferior to those today heading 1 j t jj f the soil above theni evidences of a civilization and I ! 1 l development now buried beneath the sands and WM ii . i dusts of ages. No plainer truth is disclosed by 11 i ' the records of a misty past than that the condl-H condl-H I ' tion of the human race is not always upward and H j ' ; ' onward. The verient school boy knows that nail na-il ' 1 L tions like individuals, have their periods of in-H in-H ! I ,.i fancy, maturity and dissolution. Illustrations are WM ? - $ ' so numerous and so well known that one need 1 p I ! not refer to any particular instance, and these I ij witliin times of our records the accuracy of 1 , which no one doubts and which may be rated as j I within our own period of civilization. The Chris-j Chris-j I tian era has seen the disappearance of Rome as mmw I Ul Sreat worla" power, the submission of Spain II j J I to the Mohammedans, the dark ages, and the II ' ; 'j i birth and growth of our own land and some II j ' J j hold the beginning of its end. B' 1 ; I It would be instructive for "Optomist" or some H j I of his school to disclose the process by which they H ; 3- reason themselves into the conviction that man-H man-H ! j 1 1 kind is now reproaching on a road toward a civ-H civ-H ih ilization that has no turning, and which leads on H 'I I eternally to higher and higher planes. If past rec-H rec-H ; g 1 ords teach anything, they declare that man -will R If again descend to the sloughs and conditions from Hi I . j I which he sprang; and that eternal time, work-IB work-IB ;l ig ceaselessly ad irresistably, its iron determinant determina-nt 1 ' h tion will moulder into dust the edifices that de-E de-E " ji light our eyes today and of which we so proudly IS M boast, even as it has done with the labors of those H ; ! t I who ambitiously toiled to rear structures that are H . J the wonder of the archeologist who has viewed K kj K the discouraging havoc that time has made of toil-H toil-H I ers in that part of the earth we now call Yucatan. W 1 t, 1 No doubt, in past days, even as we do now, those IB. I who directed aud those who toiled In the erec-Db erec-Db & tion of the structures that cause the admiration HBf. and wonder of anthropologists boasted of their t ! 1 works and their high intellectual estate, of their IS superiority, of their immortality and of the unci un-ci ending duration of the product of their labors. And what remains! Crumbling ruins, overgrown HB H with rank vegetation, valuless to mankind, and Hf j of interest only to the begoggled individual who R J satisfies himself by delving into the mysteries of HB t races that have passed away and left behind ab-S ab-S Si H solute1" nothing of the remotest advantage to the ilR m m races t exist today. But from their history Si mm t"6 rav y may sain Uie assuranc aU our IB 11 efforts ana all our boastings, and all our acts and IB WtM civilization will fade away and become as "the B baseless fabric of a dream." In the ages to come Bb W o4 when the dusts and sands of time shall have BHBpa11i., buried the results of our efforts as it has hidden in its depths the labors of others, the earth will be inhabited by other generations, who will swell to the point of bursting with self-conscious and loudly acclaimed pride at their high intellectual and moral development; and among these will be certain curious ones as to the manner of human life existing on the earth ages before; and these may perhaps find, to their surprise, that there were civilized races before them, the works of whom crumbled into the earth while they themselves them-selves perished and "their names were no more remembered." A Swedish explorer, Swen Hadin, discovered in the sand desert of northern Asia evidences of a civilization contemporaneous with and equal to that of Pompeii prior to its destruction by volcanic eruption. Here was a city resting beneath sands that, atom by atom, had buried the vaulted works of man and made of them a thing of as little value as if they had never been. It had been a city vast in proportions, with favorable environments, and a few modern comforts. Beyond doubt it had been surrounded by vast stretches of smiling lands, watered by refreshing streams that gladdened the eye, limbered the atmosphere, and yielded for the maintenance of the body and the satisfaction of the desires of those who built it and their offspring. off-spring. Why may we not assert that the builders of this city and there may be many such lying beneath these well nigh impassable sand wastes looked at themselves with satisfaction, gazed on their own handiwork, declared it good, and rejoiced that there was a civilization that would not pass from the face of man, but should be builded upon for all times and that future generations genera-tions should rise up and call them blessed? Why not? And the result? The smiling valleys and the painful work of man have vanished. The streams are dried up and their courses turned elsewhere. Where once was smiling plenty, now desolation broods and weary and impressable wastes of sand, with a few evidences of human, life buried beneath them, are all that are left to justify justi-fy man's boast of an imperishable civilization and an unceasing continuity of his works. It was a contest between man, with his boasted reason, his vaunted prescience, his command of nature and the resistless law of decay and change. A little wind, the rolling of infinitessimal grains of sand against the highly civilized, far-seeing, ever advancing ad-vancing animal called man. But the winds were untiring and sands unconquerable, and they beat in resistless and persisting waves upon the shores of that civilization. Little by little the rational being receded, but in the ages that are as nothing to nature and are as all in all to man, the winds and sands prevailed and the boasted civilization became only a wide, weary wast eand desolation. It has been so always. It will be so always, and only the vanity of man who cannot tolerate the idea that he and his works are not eternal in their nature prevents the race from conceding the fact. So much for your interview of the life of man. It is not pleasant, confers but it is true. Now for the nearer view: The desire for equality with others is the one enduring characteristic of mankind. Since the dawn of history, in one form or another, he has striven to become environed by such a condition, to the securing of political rights in later days he has pinned his faith, and to this faith, in political quality is due that which resulted in the French slaughter, called a revolution. The "Rights of Man," was their crying demand. Since those days various other methods have been tried, but the blood letting of those, as well as of earlier and of later times, has left the race relatively where it was when the contest began. Gains they have made in some respects, but they have sustained losses in others to counterbalance the gains. Even conceding this condition of civilized races has been generally improved, it has not kept pace with the luxuries and power that are possessed by those who do not recognize their fellow men as equals so where is the gain? The hours of labor are as long, the reward less if we consider the proportion of the product of the toiler, which is given him as a return for the thing produced, compared with the proportion paid him formerly. So long as a smaller and smaller portion of the product of the producer is retained by him in payment of the article produces, so long will the distance between the producer and the non-producer become greater and greater and the com-Imon com-Imon interests that find mankind together as a race, grow fewer and weaker. It is the boast of this age that the power of life and death is no' longer in the hands of one man, or of a few men, as in the past. God, what a boast! The form of this power has been changed and we, therefore, say it no longer exists. While the truth is that never was there a time when fewer men had greater power over the lives of their fellows or exercised more hideous cruelty in inflicting the death penalty. Time was when the great man preserved the lesser ones for his profit. His interest and their welfare ran together hand in hand. Now your great man is the capitalist. cap-italist. Him the laborer looks to for employment to sustain life for himself and his family. The interest of the capitalist is to get the greatest labor for the least return herein his interst and the welfare of the laborer do not join hands. At his pleasure the capitalist discharges the laborer. If his interests would seem to be advanced by the change, he removes his manufactory from the point at which it has been operated for years, (where his employes were born, where they have made roads, built churches and schools and es- Itablished rude homes), to some remote point; thus leaving those where labor has made him wealthy to beg and starve. The law gives him this right. Our boasted civilization laments the cruel loss to our death from starvation of the laborer and his children, but it extends a warm hand to the assassin as-sassin and commends him for business prudence and foresight; while the new community to which the industry has been removed, bows to the ground, or lifts its cap on high at the advent of "the captain of industry." Now I don't blame the capitalist. Like the laborer he is the inevitable product of the economic systems that prevail, just as much as rulers were the products of the habits and thoughts of the people of other times. But the power of life and death in the hands of a few men is greater today than it has ever been in so-called civilized nations. And this is the result of 6.000 years' struggle for equality! I want my friend, the "optomist," to tell me frankly if he thinks men are anywhere as close to equality in any form as they were when they dwelt in caves or beneath overhanging rocks and lived upon raw-flesh, raw-flesh, and I want an answer, as Ingersoll would have put in on his "Honer Bright!" In view of all these facts, and countless others I III M tnat could be advanced, where do optomists find ground for the faith that is in them? Unless It arise from the vain hope that we are too good to-" perish and that our works, as the offspring of our toil, should partake of our immortality for the purpose of declaring to the unborn: "So and SB lived at such and such a time. He was considered some pumpkins in his day." Where will be yonr vanity when you join the "innumerable caravan," that has journeyed through death and whose mighty works, swallowed up by the earth, leave no more vestige of your existence than does your body when it has been absorbed by the dmt and returned to the elements whence it oamef It is in the power of man to change the conditions condi-tions that bend and bind him to the chariot wheels of customs that make out of a few, rulers of the many. Yet man he has tried it and has always failed. With unerring persistency and certainty. "as the dog bites varmit," he has returned to the customs that, fundamentally, in one form or another, have prevailed since Cain killed Abel for an advantage he hoped to gain from the assassination. as-sassination. Man is as far from the realization of his dream as ever perhaps farther, because tradition tra-dition and piejudice and custom, unlike other things, gain in strength as their years increase. History and archeology teach that races rise and fall even as trees grow and decay and that man lifts himself to a higher plain for a brief period only to sink back to the original level, while his works are swallowed up by the waiting earth which in time will yield forth another crop ol men whom, because they will simply follow their progenitors and ha controlled by the same customs cus-toms and superstitions we may compliment by, calling "monkeys." THE PESSIMIST. |