5 Proletariat. Derived originally from the Latin proletarii, the name given in the census of Servius Tullius to those who were of value to the state only as the rearers of offspring (proles); in other words, they were of no importance either for wealth, or position, or exceptional ability.
6 Candidate for Governor of California on the Socialist ticket in the fall election of 1906 Christian Era. An Englishman by birth, a writer of many books on political economy and philosophy, and one of the socialist leaders of the times.
7 There is no more horrible page in history than the treatment of the child and women slaves in the English factories in the latter half of the eighteenth century of the Christian Era. In such industrial hells arose some of the proudest fortunes of that day.
8 Everhard might had drawn a better illustration from the Southern Church’s outspoken defence of chattel slavery prior to what is known as the ‘War of the Rebellion.’ Several such illustrations, culled from the documents of the times, are here appended. In A.D. 1835, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church resolved that ‘slavery is recognised in both the Old and New Testaments, and is not condemned by the authority of God.’ The Charleston Baptist Association issued the following, in an address in AD. 1835: ‘The right of masters to dispose of the time of their slaves has been distinctly recognised by the Creator of all things, who is surely at liberty to vest the right of property over any object whomsoever He pleases.’ The Rev. E. D. Simon, Doctor of Divinity and professor in the Randolph-Macon Methodist College of Virginia, wrote: ‘Extracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of property in slaves, together with the usual incidents to that right. The right to buy and sell is clearly stated. Upon the whole, then, whether we consult the Jewish policy instituted by God Himself, or the uniform opinion and practice of mankind in all ages, or the injunctions of the New Testament and the moral law, we are brought to the conclusion that slavery is not immoral. Having established the point that the first African slaves were legally brought into bondage, the right to detain their children in bondage follows as an indispensable consequence. Thus we see that the slavery that exists in America was founded in right.’
It is not at all remarkable that this same note should have been struck by the Church a generation or so later in relation to the defence of capitalistic property. In the great museum at Asgard there is a book entitled ‘Essays in Application,’ written by Henry Van Dyke. The book was published in 1905 of the Christian Era. From what we can make out, Van Dyke must have been a Churchman. The book is a good example of what Everhard would have called bourgeois thinking. Note the similarity between the utterance of the Charleston Baptist Association quoted above, and the following utterance of Van Dyke seventy years later: ‘
The Bible teaches that God owns the world. He distributes to every man according to His own good pleasure, conformably to general laws.’
9 In that day there were many thousands of those poor merchants called pedlars. They carried their whole stock in trade from door to door. It was a most wasteful expenditure of energy. Distribution was as confused and irrational as the whole general system of society.
Chapter 3
Jackson’s Arm
LITTLE DID I dream the fateful part Jackson’s arm was to play in my life. Jackson himself did not impress me when I hunted him out. I found him in a crazy ramshackle1 house down near the bay on the edge of the marsh. Pools of stagnant water stood around the house, their surfaces covered with a green and putrid-looking scum, while the stench that arose from them was intolerable.
I found Jackson the meek and lowly man he had been described. He was making some sort of rattan-work, and he toiled on stolidly while I talked with him. But in spite of his meekness and lowliness, I fancied I caught the first note of a nascent bitterness in him when he said:
‘They might a-given me a job as watchman,2 anyway.’
I got little out of him. He struck me as stupid, and yet the deftness with which he worked with his one hand seemed to belie his stupidity. This suggested an idea to me.
‘How did you happen to get your arm caught in the machine?’ I asked.
He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It just happened.’
‘Carelessness?’ I prompted.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘I ain’t for callin’ it that. I was workin’ overtime, an’ I guess I was tired out some. I worked seventeen years in them mills, an’ I’ve took notice that most of the accidents happens just before whistle-blow.3 I’m willin’ to bet that more accidents happens in the hour before whistle-blow than in all the rest of the day. A man ain’t so quick after workin’ steady for hours. I’ve seen too many of ’em cut up an’ gouged an’ chawed not to know.’
‘Many of them?’ I queried.
‘Hundreds an’ hundreds, an’ children, too.’
With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson’s story of his accident was the same as that I had already heard. When I asked him if he had broken some rule of working the machinery, he shook his head.
‘I chucked off the belt with my right hand,’ he said, ‘an’ made a reach for the flint with my left, I didn’t stop to see if the belt was off. I thought my right hand had done it—only it didn’t. I reached quick, and the belt wasn’t all the way off. And then my arm was chewed off.’
‘It must have been painful,’ I said sympathetically.
‘The crunchin’ of the bones wasn’t nice,’ was his answer.
His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit. Only one thing was clear to him, and that was that he had not got any damages. He had a feeling that the testimony of the foreman and the superintendent had brought about the adverse decision of the court. Their testimony, as he put it, ‘wasn’t what it ought to have ben.’ And to them I resolved to go.
One thing was plain. Jackson’s situation was wretched. His wife was in ill health, and he was unable to earn, by his rattan-work and peddling, sufficient food for the family. He was back in his rent, and the oldest boy, a lad of eleven, had started to work in the mills.
‘They might a-given me that watchman’s job,’ were his last words as I went away.
By the time I had seen the lawyer who had handled Jackson’s case, and the two foremen and the superintendent at the mills who had testified, I began to feel that there was something after all in Ernest’s contention.
He was a weak and inefficient-looking man, the lawyer, and at sight of him I did not wonder that Jackson’s case had been lost. My first thought was that it had served Jackson right for getting such a lawyer. But the next moment two of Ernest’s statements came flashing into my consciousness: ‘The company employs very efficient lawyers,’ and ‘Colonel Ingram is a shrewd lawyer.’ I did some rapid thinking. It dawned upon me that of course the company could afford finer legal talent than could a working man like Jackson. But this was merely a minor detail. There was some very good reason, I was sure, why Jackson’s case had gone against him. ‘Why did you lose the case?’ I asked.
The lawyer was perplexed and worried for a moment, and I found it in my heart to pity the wretched little creature. Then he began to whine. I do believe his whine was congenital. He was a man beaten at birth. He whined about the testimony. The witnesses had given only the evidence that helped the other side. Not one word could he get out of them that would have helped Jackson. They knew which side their bread was buttered on. Jackson was a fool. He had been brow-beaten and confused by Colonel Ingram. Colonel Ingram was brilliant at cross-examination. He had made Jackson answer damaging questions.
‘How could his answers be damaging if he had the right on his side?’ I demanded.
‘What’s right got to do with it?’ he demanded back. ‘You see all those books.’ He moved his hand over the array of volumes on the walls of his tiny office. ‘All my reading and studying of them has taught me that law is one thing and right is another thing. Ask any lawyer. You go to Sunday-school to learn what is right. But you go to those books to learn…law.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that Jackson had the right on his side and yet was beaten?’ I queried tentatively. ‘Do you mean to tell me that there is no justice in Judge Caldwell’s court?’