Etc. [pp. 282-286]

Etc.
and you and the girls along with me, I suppose. Now, don't they know that the four
hundred is principally made up of trust men?
To be sure, there are a few clergymen, and a
few physicians, and a few journalists, and
a few artists, and so on, but the majority
are capitalists, and the capitalists are all
catching on about this matter of trusts and
are thronging our trust offices every day to
get blocks of our stock. Turn us out
indeed! Why, they might as well talk of
turning the Czar out of Russia, or of getting
the peers of England to snub Queen Victoria! "
The only recourse left is to the common
people. Let them try a hand in this fine
game of social ostracism. If the village
blacksmith is outraged by rising quotations
in iron and steel, let him see that his
daughter sends no invitation to Carnegie for
her birthday party. If the fruit-grower discovers that a railroad trust is raising his
shipping rates, he must certainly not ask
Mr. Huntington in to dinner. And in all
similar instances of trust aggression, let all
the common people, the craftsmen, the
tradesmen, the day-laborers, and John Doe
and Richard Roe, and Tom and Dick and
Harry, and the rest of us, be very careful
not to countenance or encourage the pro moters of these economic and commercial
villainies by any courteous attentions of the
social life or genialities of manner when we
chance to meet them. If we are persistently
and consistently icy toward all such, we may
convince them that the social temperature of
America is making very cold weather for
trusts.
But now, if none of these suggestions are
deemed practicable, we move to refer the
whole matter back to President Hadley, to
see if he still thinks that this is a society
question rather than an economic and politi cal problem.
IN OUR November number we commented
on the martial inspirations which the Muse
Problems of seemed to be breathing into
the nostrils of the poets on
both sides of the Atlantic, in
Morals view of the South African
war. We quoted from Joaquin Miller's
strong verses, beginning: "The sword of Gideon, sword of God."
The Whitaker & Ray Company, of San
, rancisco, have now gathered and published
the series of ten or twelve poems in which
our California poet has sturdily championed
the Boer cause and challenged England to
render account before the conscience of the
world. It is to be noted, however, that the
poet adopts that old device of the theologians
who proclaimed that retributive wrath is
aimed against the sin rather than against the
sinner. In the preface we are given assurance thus: Find here not one ill word for brave old
England; my first, best friends were English. But for her policy, her politicians, her
speculators, what man with a heart in him
can but hate and abhor them? England's best
friends to-day are those who deplore this assault on the farmer Boers, so like ourselves
a century back. Could any man be found
strong enough to stay her hand with sword
or pen in this mad hour, that man would deserve her lasting gratitude.
It will probably be somewhat difficult for
the average Englishman to accept Mr.
Miller's discriminate analysis of his own
feelings; but undoubtedly a good many
Americans are disposed to make the same
distinction between the policy and procedure
of composite and national England and the
general spirit and character of her common
people. Indeed, it is unquestionably true that
a nation, in its corporate action, will often
do that which hardly one of its citizens,
if acting separately, would do or approve;
and this, not as a mob will go furiously to
its unmeditated deed, but deliberately. De liberation, in fact, or at least discussion,
the sophistic argument and special pleading,
often prepare the way for questionable and
much questioned national policies. We even
have a species of moral philosophy which
explains, with all the force and speciousness
of the Socratic academy, how different a
national conscience is and must ever be from
an individual conscience, and how God him self-forsooth!-discriminates in his judg ment between state action and personal
action. Salisbury and Chamberlain, then, if
dealing for themselves with half a dozen
Boer farmers, might feel themselves amen able to a principle of right which they need
not or cannot regard as leaders of England.
President McKinley also, and Secretary Hay,
according to this moral theory, may be doing
and may be justified in doing very differently
with the Filipinos from what they would do
as individuals.
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