Media History and Culture, Exam 2 readings
Oscar Wilde "The Soul of Man"
"In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism." ii
"How the Other Half Lives," was published in 1890, Jacob Riis, Scribners
Bayard Street is the high road to Jewtown across the Bowery, picketed from end to end with the outposts of Israel. Hebrew faces, Hebrew signs, and incessant chatter in the queer lingo that passes for Hebrew on the East Side attend the curious wanderer to the very corner of Mulberry Street. But the moment he turns the corner the scene changes abruptly. Before him lies spread out what might better be the market-place in some town in Southern Italy than a street in New York—all but the houses; they are still the same old tenements of the unromantic type. But for once they do not make the foreground in a slum picture from the American metropolis. The interest centres not in them, but in the crowd they shelter only when the street is not preferable, and that with the Italian is only when it rains or he is sick. When the sun shines the entire population seeks the street, carrying on its household work, its bargaining, its love-making on street or sidewalk, or idling there when it has nothing better to do, with the reverse of the impulse that makes the Polish Jew coop himself up in his den with the thermometer at stewing heat. Along the curb women sit in rows, young and old alike with the odd head-covering, pad or turban, that is their badge of servitude—her's to bear the burden as long as she lives—haggling over baskets of frowsy weeds, some sort of salad probably, stale tomatoes, and oranges not above suspicion. Ashbarrels serve them as counters, and not infrequently does the arrival of the official cart en route for the dump cause a temporary suspension of trade until the barrels have been emptied and restored. Hucksters and pedlars' carts make two rows of booths in the street itself, and along the houses is still another—a perpetual market doing a very lively trade in its own queer staples, found nowhere on American ground save in "the Bend." Two old hags, camping on the pavement, are dispensing stale bread, baked not in loaves, but in the shape of big wreaths like exaggerated crullers, out of bags of dirty bed-tick. There is no use disguising the fact: they look like and they probably are old mattresses mustered into service under the pressure of a rush of trade. Stale bread was the one article the health officers, after a raid on the market, once reported as "not unwholesome." It was only disgusting. Here is a brawny butcher, sleeves rolled up above the elbows and clay pipe in mouth, skinning a kid that hangs from his hook. They will tell you with a laugh at the Elizabeth Street police station that only a few days ago when a dead goat had been reported lying in Pell Street it was mysteriously missing by the time the offal-cart came to take it away. It turned out that an Italian had carried it off in his sack to a wake or feast of some sort in one of the back alleys.
Lincoln Steffens, McClures
Because politics is business. That's what's the matter with it. That's what's the matter with everything,—art, literature, religion, journalism, law, medicine,—they're all business, and all—as you see them. Make politics a sport, as they do in England, or a profession, as they do in Germany, and we'll have—well, something else than we have now,—if we want it, which is another question. But don't try to reform politics with the banker, the lawyer, and the dry-goods merchant, for these are business men and there are two great hindrances to their achievement of reform: one is that they are different from, but no better than, the politicians; the other is that politics is not "their line"...The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle. "My business is sacred" says the business man in his heart. "Whatever prospers my business, is good; it must be. Whatever hinders it, is wrong; it must be. A bribe is bad, that is, it is a bad thing to take; but it is not so bad to give one, not if it is necessary to my business." "Business is business" is not a political sentiment, but our politician has caught it. He takes essentially the same view of the bribe, only he saves his self-respect by piling all his contempt upon the bribe-giver and he has the great advantage of candor. "It is wrong, maybe," he says, "but if a rich merchant can afford to do business with me for the sake of a convenience or to increase his already great wealth, I can afford, for the sake of living, to meet him half way. I make no pretensions to virtue, not even on Sunday." And as for giving bad government or good, how about the merchant who gives bad goods or good goods, according to the demand?
William Walker, "The White(?) Man's Burden." Life, March 16, 1899
Cartoon
The Policy of Isolation, Hearst New York Journal Friday March 4, 1898
Ex-Secretary Olney has been delivering a lecture at Harvard University on the "International Isolation" of the United States, in which he attributes the policy of isolation to Washington but says that the Father of His Country only meant it to apply to the period of growth and did not intend that it should be "maintained when the country was in its maturity."
Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law in America, 1900
Finally, for love of country. No American travels abroad without blushing for shame for his country on this subject. And whatever the excuse that passes current in the United States, it avails nothing abroad. With all the powers of government in control; with all laws made by white men, administered by white judges, jurors, prosecuting attorneys, and sheriffs; with every office of the executive department filled by white men--no excuse can be offered for exchanging the orderly administration of justice for barbarous lynchings and "unwritten laws." Our country should be placed speedily above the plane of confessing herself a failure at self-government. This cannot be until Americans of every section, of broadest patriotism and best and wisest citizenship, not only see the defect in our country's armor but take the necessary steps to remedy it. Although lynchings have steadily increased in number and barbarity during the last twenty years, there has been no single effort put forth by the many moral and philanthropic forces of the country to put a stop to this wholesale slaughter. Indeed, the silence and seeming condonation grow more marked as the years go by.
The Death of Rodriguez, The New York Journal, by Richard Harding Davis, January 19, 1897
His execution took place the morning of the 19th of January, at a place a half-mile distant from the hills, beyond which Rodriguez had lived for nineteen years. At the time of his death he was twenty years old. I witnessed his execution, and what follows is an account of the way he went to death. The young man's friends could not be present, for it was impossible to show themselves in that crowd and that place with wisdom or without distress, and I like to think that, although Rodriguez could not know it, there was one person present when he died who felt keenly for him and who was a sympathetic though unwilling spectator.
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
In the line of evolution and historical development, anarchy liberty is next in order. With the destruction of the feudal system, and the birth of commercialism and manufactories in the sixteenth century, a contest long and bitter and bloody, lasting over a hundred years, was waged for mental and religious liberty. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with their sanguinary conflicts, gave to man political equality and civil liberty, based on the monopolization of the resources of life.... All over the world in fact stands undisputed that the political is based upon, and is but the reflex of the economic system, and hence we find that whatever the political form of the government, whether monarchical or republican, the average social status of the wage-workers is in every country identical.
Ida B. Wells, Free Speech and Headlights, Lynch Law in America, 1900
Not only are two hundred men and women put to death annually, on the average, in this country by mobs, but these lives are taken with the greatest publicity. In many instances the leading citizens aid and abet by their presence when they do not participate, and the leading journals inflame the public mind to the lynching point with scare-head articles and offers of rewards. Whenever a burning is advertised to take place, the railroads run excursions, photographs are taken, and the same jubilee is indulged in that characterized the public hangings of one hundred years ago. There is, however, this difference: in those old days the multitude that stood by was permitted only to guy or jeer. The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd. If the leaders of the mob are so minded, coal-oil is poured over the body and the victim is then roasted to death. This has been done in Texarkana and Paris, Tex., in Bardswell, Ky., and in Newman, Ga. In Paris the officers of the law delivered the prisoner to the mob. The mayor gave the school children a holiday and the railroads ran excursion trains so that the people might see a human being burned to death. In Texarkana, the year before, men and boys amused themselves by cutting off strips of flesh and thrusting knives into their helpless victim. At Newman, Ga., of the present year, the mob tried every conceivable torture to compel the victim to cry out and confess, before they set fire to the ******s that burned him. But their trouble was all in vain--he never uttered a cry, and they could not make him confess. This condition of affairs were brutal enough and horrible enough if it were true that lynchings occurred only because of the commission of crimes against women--as is constantly declared by ministers, editors, lawyers, teachers, statesmen, and even by women themselves. It has been to the interest of those who did the lynching to blacken the good name of the helpless and defenseless victims of their hate. For this reason they publish at every possible opportunity this excuse for lynching, hoping thereby not only to palliate their own crime but at the same time to prove the negro a moral monster and unworthy of the respect and sympathy of the civilized world. But this alleged reason adds to the deliberate injustice of the mob's work. Instead of lynchings being caused by assaults upon women, the statistics show that not one-third of the victims of lynchings are even charged with such crimes. The Chicago Tribune, which publishes annually lynching statistics, is authority for the following: In 1892, when lynching reached high-water mark, there were 241 persons lynched. The entire number is divided among the following States: Alabama......... 22 Montana.......... 4 Arkansas........ 25 New York......... 1 California...... 3 North Carolina... 5 Florida......... 11 North Dakota..... 1 Georgia......... 17 Ohio............. 3 Idaho........... 8 South Carolina... 5 Illinois........ 1 Tennessee........ 28 Kansas.......... 3 Texas............ 15 Kentucky........ 9 Virginia......... 7 Louisiana....... 29 West Virginia.... 5 Maryland........ 1 Wyoming.......... 9 Mississippi..... 16 Arizona Ter...... 3 Missouri........ 6 Oklahoma......... 2
The Death of Rodriguez, The New York Journal, by Richard Harding Davis, January 19, 1897
One young soldier caught his foot in a trailing vine, and fell forward just opposite it. He grew very red when his comrades giggled at him for his awkwardness. The crowd of sleepy spectators fell in on either side of the band. They had forgotten it too, and the priests put on their vestments back in the bag and wrapped their heavy cloaks about them, and hurried off after the others. Every one seemed to have forgotten except the two men, who came slowly toward it from the town, driving a bullock cart that bore an unplanned coffin, each with a cigarette between his lips, and with his throat wrapped in a shawl to keep out the morning mists. At that moment the sun, which had shown some promise of its coming in the glow above the hills, shot up suddenly from behind them in all the splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disk of heat, and filled the air with warmth and light.
Holding Up His End
Philadelphia Inquirer, cartoon
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
Socialism is a term, which covers the whole range of human progress and advancement.... I think I have a right to speak of this matter, because I am tried here as a socialist, I am condemned as a socialist.... If you are going to put me to death, then let then people know what it is for. Socialism is defined by Webster as "a theory of society which advocates a more precise, more orderly, and more harmonious arrangement of the social relations of mankind than has hitherto prevailed." Therefore everything in the line of progress, in civilization in fact, is socialistic.
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
The great natural law of power derived alone from association and cooperation will of necessity and from selfishness be applied by the people in the production and distribution of wealth, and what the trades unions and labor organizations seek now to do, but are prevented from doing because of obstructions and coercions, will under perfect liberty—anarchy—come easiest to hand. Anarchy is the extension of the boundaries of liberty until it covers the whole range of the wants and aspirations of man....
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
The right to live, to equality of opportunity, to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is yet to be acquired by the producers of all wealth.... Legalized capital and the state stand or fall together. They are twins. The liberty of labor makes the state not only unnecessary, but impossible. When the people—the whole people—become the state, that is participate equally in governing themselves, the state of necessity ceases to exist....
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
There are two distinct phases of socialism in the labor movement throughout the world today. One is known as anarchism, without political government or authority; the other is known as state socialism or paternalism, or governmental control of everything. The state socialist seeks to ameliorate and emancipate the wage-laborers by means of law, by legislative acts. The state socialists demand the right to choose their own rulers. Anarchists would have neither rulers nor lawmakers of any kind. The anarchists seek the same ends [the abolition of wage-slavery] by the abrogation of law, by the abolition of all government, leaving the people free to unite or disunite as fancy or interest may dictate, coercing no one....
Lincoln Steffens, McClures
There is hardly an office from United States Senator down to Alderman in any part of the country to which the business man has not been elected; yet politics remains corrupt, government pretty bad, and the selfish citizen has to hold himself in readiness like the old volunteer firemen to rush forth at any hour, in any weather, to prevent the fire; and he goes out sometimes and he puts out the fire (after the damage is done) and he goes back to the shop sighing for the business man in politics. The business man has failed in politics as he has in citizenship. Why?
During the second of his three trials in 1895 for sodomy in England, Wilde
"It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name," and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it." iii
President Theodore Roosevelt in a speech in Washington, DC, on April 14, 1906
"Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck." As he continued, he said, "An epidemic in indiscriminate assault upon character does not good, but very great harm. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful." i
Whitelaw Reid's address at Princeton, October 21, 1899
...Again, it is said: "You are depriving them of their freedom." But they never had freedom and could not have it now. Even if they could subdue the other tribes in Luzon, they could not establish such order on the other islands and in the waters of the archipelago as to deprive foreign Powers of the immediate excuse for interference. What we are doing is in the double line of preventing otherwise inevitable foreign seizure and putting a stop to domestic war. "But you cannot fit people for freedom—they must fit themselves, just as we must do our own crawling and stumbling in order to learn to walk." The illustration is unfortunate. Must the crawling baby, then, be abandoned by its natural or accidental guardian and left to itself to grow strong by struggling or to perish, as may happen? Must we turn the Tagals loose on the foreigner in Manila and on their enemies in other tribes, that by following their instincts they may fit themselves for freedom?
Whitelaw Reid's address at Princeton, October 21, 1899
...Is it said that this is imperialism? That implies usurpation of power, and there is absolutely no ground for such a charge against this Administration, at any one stage in these whole transactions. If any complaint on this score is to lie, it must relate to the critical period when we were accepting responsibility for order at Manila and must be for the exercise of too little power, not too much. It is not imperialism to take up honestly the responsibility for order we incurred before the world, and continue under it, even if that should lead us to extend the civil rights of the American Constitution over new regions and strange peoples. It is not imperialism when duty keeps us among these chaotic, warring, distracted tribes, civilized, semi-civilized and barbarous, to help them, as far as their several capacities will permit, toward self-government on the basis of these civil rights.
The Death of Rodriguez, The New York Journal, by Richard Harding Davis, January 19, 1897
...the men fired. At the report the Cuban's head snapped back almost between his shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as though some one had pushed him gently forward from behind and he had stumbled. He sank on his side in the wet grass without a struggle or sound, and did not move again. It was difficult to believe that he meant to lie there, that it could be ended so without a word, that the man in the linen suit would not get on his feet and continue to walk on over the hills, as he apparently had started to do, to his home; that there was not a mistake somewhere, or that at least some one would be sorry or say something or run to pick him up. But, fortunately, he did not need help, and the priests returned—the younger one, with the tears running down his face—and donned their vestments and read a brief requiem for his soul, while the squad stood uncovered, and the men in hollow square shook their accoutrements into place, and shifted their pieces and got ready for the order to march, and the band began again with the same quickstep which the fusillade had interrupted.
Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law in America, 1900
A few months ago the conscience of this country was shocked because, after a two-weeks trial, a French judicial tribunal pronounced Captain Dreyfus guilty. And yet, in our own land and under our own flag, the writer can give day and detail of one thousand men, women, and children who during the last six years were put to death without trial before any tribunal on earth. Humiliating indeed, but altogether unanswerable, was the reply of the French press to our protest: "Stop your lynchings at home before you send your protests abroad."
The Death of Rodriguez, The New York Journal, by Richard Harding Davis, January 19, 1897
Adolfo Rodriguez was the only son of a Cuban farmer, who lives nine miles outside of Santa Clara, beyond the hills that surround the city to the north. When the revolution broke out young Rodriguez joined the insurgents, leaving his father, mother, and two sisters at the farm. He was taken, in December of 1896, by a force of the Guardia Civile, the corps d'elite of the Spanish army, and defended himself when they tried to capture him, wounding three of them with his machete. He was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the government and sentenced to be shot by a fusillade some morning, before sunrise. Pervious to execution, he was confined in the military prison of Santa Clara, with thirty other insurgents, all of whom were sentenced to be shot, one after the other, on mornings following the execution of Rodriguez.
Whitelaw Reid's address at Princeton, October 21, 1899
Again, "It will injure us to exert power over an unwilling people—just as slavery injured the slave holders themselves." Then a community is injured by maintaining a police. Then a court is injured by rendering a just decree and an officer by executing it. Then it is a greater injury, for instance, to stop piracy than to suffer from it. Then the manly exercise of a just responsibility enfeebles instead of developing and strengthening a nation. "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." "No man is good enough to govern another against his will." Great truths from men whose greatness and moral elevation the world admires. But there is a higher authority than Jefferson or Lincoln, who said: "If a man smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Yet he who acted literally on even that divine injunction toward the Malays that attacked our own army in Manila would be a congenital idiot to begin with, and his corpse, while it lasted, would remain the object lesson of how not to deal with the present stage of Malay civilization and Christianity.
Tarbell's series on Standard Oil was published in McClure's in November, 1902
All the competition was causing a problem for Rockefeller. The price of refined oil was steadily falling. This was good for the average American who bought the oil, but bad for these few wheeler-dealers. Mr. Rockefeller and friends looked with dismay on their decreasing profits. In the fall of 1871, certain refiners brought to Rockefeller and friends a scheme, the gist of which was to bring together secretly a large enough body of refiners and shippers - a secret combination -- to persuade all the railroads handling oil to give to the company formed special rebates on oil shipped, and drawbacks (raised rates) on that of other people. If they could get such rates it was evident that those outside of their combination could not compete with them long and that they would become, eventually, the dominant refiners. They could then limit their output to actual demand, and so keep up prices. The railroads went along with the deal so they could stop having to cut each other's throats through their rate wars -- they would stop competing among themselves, keep their rates high, and thereby gouge the unsuspecting public. The railroads, it was agreed, were to receive a regular amount of freight: the Pennsylvania was to have 45 percent of the eastbound shipments, the Erie and the Central each 27.5 percent; the westbound freight was to be divided equally between them -- fixed rates, and freedom from competition amongst themselves.
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
Anarchy is anti-government, anti-rulers, anti-dictators, anti-bosses.... Anarchy is the negation of force; the elimination of all authority in social affairs; it is the denial of the right of domination of one man over another. It is the diffusion of rights, of power, of duties, equally and freely among all the people. But Anarchy, like many other words, is defined in Webster's dictionary as having two meanings. In one place it is defined to mean "without rules or governors." In another place it is defined to mean, "disorder and confusion." This latter meaning is what we call "capitalistic anarchy," such as is now witnessed in all portions of the world and especially in this courtroom; the former, which means without rulers, is what we denominate communistic anarchy, which will be ushered in with the social revolution.
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
Anarchy, therefore, is liberty; is the negation of force, or compulsion, or violence. It is the precise reverse of that which those who hold and love power would have their oppressed victims believe it is.... The great class-conflict now gathering throughout the world is created by our social system of industrial slavery. Capitalists could not if they would, and would not if they could, change it. This alone is to be the work of the proletariat, the disinherited, the wage-slave, the sufferer. Nor can the wage-class avoid this conflict. Neither religion nor politics can solve it or prevent it. It comes as a human, an imperative necessity. Anarchists do not make the social revolution; they prophesy its coming. Shall we then store the prophets?
Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness." North American Review, February, 1901.
And as for the flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one—our States do it; we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones. And we do not need that Civil Commission out there. Having no powers, it has to invent them, and what kind of work cannot be effectively done just by anybody; an expert is required. Mr. Croker can be spared. We do not want the United States represented there, only the Game. By help of these suggested amendments, Progress and Civilization in that country can have a boom, and it will take the Persons who are Sitting in Darkness, and we can resume Business at the old stand.
Ray Stannard Baker, in a series for American Magazine
Before I take up the account of specific cases an analysis of the lynchings for the years 1906 and 1907 will help to show in what states mob rule is most often invoked and for what offences lynchings are most common. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia—the black belt states—are thus seen to have the worst records, and the figures here given do not include the men killed in the Atlanta riot which would add twelve to the Georgia record for 1906: Following is the comparative number of lynchings for the two years. State 1907 1906 Alabama 13 5 Arkansas 3 4 Colorado — 1 Florida — 6 Georgia 6 9 Indian Territory 2 1 Iowa 1 — Kentucky 1 3 Louisiana 8 9 Maryland 2 1 Mississippi 12 13 Missouri — 3 Nebraska 1 — North Carolina — 5 Oklahoma 2 — South Carolina 1 2 Tennessee 1 5 Texas 3 6 Totals 56 73
Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law in America, 1900
But since the world has accepted this false and unjust statement, and the burden of proof has been placed upon the negro to vindicate his race, he is taking steps to do so. The Anti-Lynching Bureau of the National Afro-American Council is arranging to have every lynching investigated and publish the facts to the world, as has been done in the case of Sam Hose, who was burned alive last April at Newman, Ga. The detective's report showed that Hose killed Cranford, his employer, in self-defense, and that, while a mob was organizing to hunt Hose to punish him for killing a white man, not till twenty-four hours after the murder was the charge of rape, embellished with psychological and physical impossibilities, circulated. That gave an impetus to the hunt, and the Atlanta Constitution's reward of $500 keyed the mob to the necessary burning and roasting pitch. Of five hundred newspaper clippings of that horrible affair, nine-tenths of them assumed Hose's guilt--simply because his murderers said so, and because it is the fashion to believe the negro peculiarly addicted to this species of crime. All the negro asks is justice--a fair and impartial trial in the courts of the country. That given, he will abide the result.
Lincoln Steffens, McClures
But there is hope, not alone despair, in the commercialism of our politics. If our political leaders are to be always a lot of political merchants, they will supply any demand we may create. All we have to do is to establish a steady demand for good government. The boss has us split up into parties. To him parties are nothing but means to his corrupt ends. He "bolts" his parry, but we must not; the bribe-giver changes his party, from one election to another, from one county to another, from one city to another, but the honest voter must not. Why? Because if the honest voter cared no more for his party than the politician and the grafter, their the honest vote would govern, and that would be bad—for graft. It is idiotic, this devotion to a machine that is used to take our sovereignty from us. If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation. If we would vote in mass on the more promising ticket, or, if the two are equally bad, would throw out the party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out the other parry that is in—then, I say, the commercial politician would feel a demand for good government and he would supply it. That process would take a generation or more to complete, for the politicians now really do not know what good government is. But it has taken as long to develop bad government, and the politicians know what that is. If it would not "go," they would offer something else, and, if the demand were steady, they, being so commercial, would "deliver the goods."
Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law in America, 1900
But this question affects the entire American nation, and from several points of view: First, on the ground of consistency. Our watchword has been "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense. Neither do brave men or women stand by and see such things done without compunction of conscience, nor read of them without protest. Our nation has been active and outspoken in its endeavors to right the wrongs of the Armenian Christian, the Russian Jew, the Irish Home Ruler, the native women of India, the Siberian exile, and the Cuban patriot. Surely it should be the nation's duty to correct its own evils! Second, on the ground of economy. To those who fail to be convinced from any other point of view touching this momentous question, a consideration of the economic phase might not be amiss. It is generally known that mobs in Louisiana, Colorado, Wyoming, and other States have lynched subjects of other countries. When their different governments demanded satisfaction, our country was forced to confess her inability to protect said subjects in the several States because of our State-rights doctrines, or in turn demand punishment of the lynchers. This confession, while humiliating in the extreme, was not satisfactory; and, while the United States cannot protect, she can pay. This she has done, and it is certain will have to do again in the case of the recent lynching of Italians in Louisiana. The United States already has paid in indemnities for lynching nearly a half million dollars, as follows:
Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness." North American Review, February, 1901.
Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and there is money in it yet, if carefully worked—but not enough, in my judgment, to make any considerable risk advisable. The People that Sit in Darkness are getting to be too scarce—too scarce and too shy. And such darkness as is now left is really of but an indifferent quality and not dark enough for the game. Most of those People that Sit in Darkness have been furnished with more light than was good for them or profitable for us. We have become injudicious. The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it—they have noticed it and they have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization. More, they have begun to examine them. This is not well. The Blessings of Civilization are all right and a good commercial property; there could not be a better one, in dim light. In the right kind of light, and at a proper distance, with the goods a little out of focus, they furnish this desirable exhibit to the Gentlemen who Sit in Darkness: LOVE LAW AND ORDER JUSTICE LIBERTY GENTLENESS EQUALITY CHRISTIANITY HONORABLE DEALING PROTECTION TO THE WEAK MERCY TEMPERANCE EDUCATION, and so on
Tarbell's series on Standard Oil was published in McClure's in November, 1902
Gradually, Rockefeller's competitors began to suspect he was somehow getting better shipping rates from the railroads than they were. Because there was fierce competition between the railroads at the time, other large oil shippers insisted on and got their own special rates. But crafty John Rockefeller seemed to be getting the best rates of all. But the railroads were supposed to be common carriers, and had no right to discriminate between patrons. The railroads had also, as shown by Gustavus Myers in History of the Great American Fortunes, been built largely at the public's expense; huge land grants had been given to them under the premise that the railroads would be a benefit to the people of the United States. These land grants had not been merely narrow strips of land, but vast acreages filled with timber and valuable minerals. The railroad companies had already gulped down a vast fortune, courtesy of the American people via Congressional give-aways. Rockefeller had the advantage of a complete, far-flung organization, even in those early days: buyers in the Oil Region, an exporting agent in New York, refineries in Cleveland, and transportation favoritism. Mr. Rockefeller should have been satisfied in 1870. But Mr. Rockefeller was far from satisfied.
Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness." North American Review, February, 1901.
Having now laid all the historical facts before the Person Sitting in Darkness, we should bring him to again and explain them to him. We should say to him: "They look doubtful, but in reality they are not. There have been lies; yes, but they were told in good cause. We have been treacherous; but that was only in order so that real good might come out of the apparent evil. True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed and ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a Shadow from an enemy that hadn't it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty; we have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit's work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America's honor and blackened her face before the world; but each detail was for the best. We know this. The Head of every State and Sovereignty in Christendom and ninety per cent of every legislative body in Christendom, including our Congress and our fifty State Legislatures, are members not only of the church, but also of the Blessings-of-Civilization Trust. This world-girdling accumulation of trained morals, high principles, and justice, cannot do an unright thing, an unfair thing, an ungenerous thing, an unclean thing. It knows what it is about. Give yourself no uneasiness; it is all right."
Progress of the Englishman Stanley--Fierce Encounters with Arabs--Arrival at the Coast--The Great Explorer Remains Two Years More in Africa. letter "from Stanly" was published in the Times also appeared in the New York Journal on July 2, 1872, Morton Stanly, assigned by James Gordon Bennett of the Hereld
He, smiling, answered yes. He informed me that he started in March 1866 with twelve Sepoys, nine Johanna men, and seven liberated slaves. He travelled (sic) up the bank of the Rouuma; his men got freightened (sic), deserted, and reported Livingston dead, as an excuse for desertion. He crossed the Chambezi and found it not the Portuguese Zambese, but a wholly separate river. He traced it and found that it was called further on Lualaba. He explored seven hundred miles and found that the Chambezi is doubtless the source of the Nile and that the length on the Nile is 2,600 miles. It is not supplied by the Taugauyika. He reached within one hundred eighty miles of the explored ground when he was obliged to return to Ujiji destitute. He here met me. We both left on the 16th of October and arrived at Unyanyembe at the end of November. We spent twenty-eight days exploring the district together. We spent Christmas in Ujiji. I arrived on the coast March 14, leaving Livingston at the Unyanyembe to explore the north of Tanjanyika Lake and the remaining one hundred eighty miles of the Lualoba River. This will occupy the next two years.
Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law in America, 1900
In the case of the boy and girl above referred to, their father, named Hastings, was accused of the murder of a white man. His fourteen-year-old daughter and sixteen-year-old son were hanged and their bodies filled with bullets; then the father was also lynched. This occurred in November, 1892, at Jonesville, La. Indeed, the record for the last twenty years shows exactly the same or a smaller proportion who have been charged with this horrible crime. Quite a number of the one-third alleged cases of assault that have been personally investigated by the writer have shown that there was no foundation in fact for the charges; yet the claim is not made that there were no real culprits among them. The negro has been too long associated with the white man not to have copied his vices as well as his virtues. But the negro resents and utterly repudiates the efforts to blacken his good name by asserting that assaults upon women are peculiar to his race. The negro has suffered far more from the commission of this crime against the women of his race by white men than the white race has ever suffered through his crimes. Very scant notice is taken of the matter when this is the condition of affairs. What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party.
"How the Other Half Lives," was published in 1890, Jacob Riis, Scribners
In the street, where the city wields the broom, there is at least an effort at cleaning up. There has to be, or it would be swamped in filth overrunning from the courts and alleys where the rag-pickers live. It requires more than ordinary courage to explore these on a hot day. The undertaker has to do it then, the police always. Right here, in this tenement on the east side of the street, they found little Antonia Candia, victim of fiendish cruelty, "covered," says the account found in the records of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, "with sores, and her hair matted with dried blood." Abuse is the normal condition of "the Bend," murder its everyday crop, with the tenants not always the criminals. In this block between Bayard, Park, Mulberry, and Baxter Streets, "the Bend" proper, the late Tenement House Commission counted 155 deaths of children in a specimen year (1882). Their per centage of the total mortality in the block was 68.28, while for the whole city the proportion was only 46.20. The infant mortality in any city or place as compared with the whole number of deaths is justly considered a good barometer of its general sanitary condition. Here, in this tenement, No. 59½, next to Bandits' Roost, fourteen persons died that year, and eleven of them were children; in No. 61 eleven, and eight of them not yet five years old. According to the records in the Bureau of Vital Statistics only thirty-nine people lived in No. 59½ in the year 1888, nine of them little children. There were five baby funerals in that house the same year. Out of the alley itself, No. 59, nine dead were carried in 1888, five in baby coffins.
"How the Other Half Lives," was published in 1890, Jacob Riis, Scribners
It is not much more than twenty years since a census of "the Bend" district returned only twenty-four of the six hundred and nine tenements as in decent condition. Three-fourths of the population of the "Bloody Sixth" Ward were then Irish. The army of tramps that grew up after the disbandment of the armies in the field, and has kept up its muster-roll, together with the in-rush of the Italian tide, have ever since opposed a stubborn barrier to all efforts at permanent improvement. The more that has been done, the less it has seemed to accomplish in the way of real relief, until it has at last become clear that nothing short of entire demolition will ever preve of radical benefit. Corruption could not have chosen ground for its stand with better promise of success. The whole district is a maze of narrow, often unsuspected passage ways—necessarily, for there is scarce a lot that has not two, three, or four tenements upon it, swarming with unwholesome crowds. What a birds-eye view of "the Bend" would be like is a matter of bewildering conjecture. Its everyday appearance, as seen from the corner of Bayard Street on a sunny day, is one of the sights of New York.
Progress of the Englishman Stanley--Fierce Encounters with Arabs--Arrival at the Coast--The Great Explorer Remains Two Years More in Africa. letter "from Stanly" was published in the Times also appeared in the New York Journal on July 2, 1872, Morton Stanly, assigned by James Gordon Bennett of the Hereld
LONDON, July 1—Letters from Stanly (sic) have been received, of which the following is a summary: Stanly reached Unyanyembe on September 23, 1871, having lost on the way by illness one white man, two of the armed escort, eight pagagis, two horses, and twenty-seven asses. From thence he intended advancing on Ujiji, but found terrible difficulties in the way. Mirambo, King of Ajowa, declared that no caravan should pass except over his body. The Arabs declared war and anticipated victory. I gave assistance on the first day, in concert with the Arabs; attacked two villages, and captured, killed, and drove away the inhabitants. On the second day I caught a fever. On the third day the Arabs were ambushed and routed with terrific slaughter. On the fourth day there was a general desertion of the Arabs and my own men; all but six Mirambo threatened Unyanyembe. I fortified the houses, collected one hundred fifty fugitives, with five days provisions, and hoisted the American flag. Mirambo retired without attacking. I then started for Ujiji on another road. The Arabs endeavored to dissuade me, and said that death was certain, and frightened my followers. Shaw deserted, but I nevertheless pushed forward over untrodden desert for four hundred miles and reached the suburbs of Ujiri, which I entered firing guns and carrying the American flag at the head of the procession. The astonished natives flocked out in crowds, with deafening shouts. I noticed in the center of a group of Arabs, strongly contrasting their sunburned faces, a hale-looking, grey-bearded white man, wearing a naval cap, with a faded gold band, and red woolen shirt, preserving a demeanor of calmness before the Arabs. I inquired, "Dr. Livingston, I presume?"
Ray Stannard Baker, in a series for American Magazine
Lynch-law reached its height in the late eighties and early nineties. In the sixteen years from 1884 to 1900 the number of persons lynched in the United States was 2,516. Of these 2,080 were in the Southern states and 436 in the North; 1,678 were Negroes and 801 were white men; 2,465 were men and 51 were women. I am here using the accepted (indeed the only) statistics—those collected by the Chicago Tribune. As showing the gradual growth of the sentiment against mob-law I can do no better than to give the record of lynchings for a number of successive years: 1891 192 1900 116 1892 235 1901 135 1893 200 1902 96 1894 190 1903 104 1895 171 1904 87 1896 131 1905 66 1897 166 1906 73 1898 127 1907 56 1899 107
Tarbell's series on Standard Oil was published in McClure's in November, 1902
Most of the independent oil producers in the Oil Region of west-central Pennsylvania were young, and they looked forward to the years ahead. They believed they would solve problems such as railroad discrimination. They would make their towns the most beautiful in the world. There was nothing they did not hope and dare. But suddenly, at the very heyday of this confidence, a big hand reached out from nobody knew where, to steal their conquest and throttle their future. The suddenness and the wickedness of the assault on their business stirred to the bottom their manhood and their sense of fair play, and the whole region arose in a revolt which is scarcely paralleled in the commercial history of the United States. In Cleveland, young John D. Rockefeller was also in the oil business as a refiner. Young Rockefeller was a ruthless bargainer. Said one writer, "The only time I ever saw John Rockefeller enthusiastic was when a report came in from the [Oil Region] that his buyer had secured a cargo of oil at a figure much below the market price. He bounded from his chair with a shout of joy, danced up and down, hugged me, threw up his hat, acted so like a madman that I have never forgotten it."
Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law in America, 1900
Not only are two hundred men and women put to death annually, on the average, in this country by mobs, but these lives are taken with the greatest publicity. In many instances the leading citizens aid and abet by their presence when they do not participate, and the leading journals inflame the public mind to the lynching point with scare-head articles and offers of rewards. Whenever a burning is advertised to take place, the railroads run excursions, photographs are taken, and the same jubilee is indulged in that characterized the public hangings of one hundred years ago. There is, however, this difference: in those old days the multitude that stood by was permitted only to guy or jeer. The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd. If the leaders of the mob are so minded, coal-oil is poured over the body and the victim is then roasted to death. This has been done in Texarkana and Paris, Tex., in Bardswell, Ky., and in Newman, Ga. In Paris the officers of the law delivered the prisoner to the mob. The mayor gave the school children a holiday and the railroads ran excursion trains so that the people might see a human being burned to death. In Texarkana, the year before, men and boys amused themselves by cutting off strips of flesh and thrusting knives into their helpless victim. At Newman, Ga., of the present year, the mob tried every conceivable torture to compel the victim to cry out and confess, before they set fire to the ******s that burned him. But their trouble was all in vain--he never uttered a cry, and they could not make him confess.
Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness." North American Review, February, 1901.
Now then, that will convince the Person. You will see. It will restore the Business. Also, it will elect the Master of the Game to the vacant place in the Trinity of our national gods; and there on their high thrones the Three will sit, age after age, in the people's sight, each bearing the Emblem of his service: Washington, the Sword of the Liberator; Lincoln, the Slave's Broken Chains; the Master, the Chains Repaired. It will give the Business a splendid new start. You will see. Everything is prosperous, now; everything is just as we should wish it. We have got the Archipelago, and we shall never give it up. Also, we have every reason to hope that we shall have an opportunity before very long to slip out of our Congressional contract with Cuba and give her something better in the place of it. It is a rich country and many of us are beginning to see that the contract was a sentimental mistake. But now—right now—is the best time to do some profitable rehabilitating work—work that will set us up and make us comfortable and discourage gossip. We cannot conceal from ourselves that, privately, we are a little troubled about our uniform. It is one of our prides; it is acquainted with honor; it is familiar with great deeds and noble; we love it, we revere it; and so this errand it is on makes us uneasy. And our flag, another pride of ours, our chiefest! We have worshipped it so; and when we have seen it in far lands—glimpsing it unexpectedly in that strange sky, waving its welcome and benediction to us—we have caught our breath, and uncovered our heads, and couldn't speak, for a moment, for the thought of what it was to us and the great ideals it stood for. Indeed, we must do something about these things; we must not have the flag out there and the uniform. They are not needed there; we can manage in some other way. England manages, as regards the uniform, and so can we. We have to send soldiers—we can't get out of that—but we can disguise them. It is the way England does in South Africa. Even Mr. Chamberlain himself takes pride in England's honorable uniform and makes the army down there wear an ugly and odious and appropriate disguise of yellow stuff such as quarantine flags are made of and which are hoisted to warn the healthy away from unclean disease and repulsive death. This cloth is called khaki. We could adopt it. It is light, comfortable, grotesque, and deceives the enemy, for he cannot conceive of a soldier being concealed in it.
Lincoln Steffens, McClures
Now, the typical American citizen is the business man. The typical business man is a bad citizen; he is busy. If he is a "big business man" and very busy, he does not neglect, he is busy with politics, oh, very busy and very businesslike. I found him buying boodlers in St. Louis, defending grafters in Minneapolis, originating corruption in Pittsburgh, sharing with bosses in Philadelphia, deploring reform in Chicago, and beating good government with corruption funds in New York. He is a self-righteous fraud, this big business man. He is the chief source of corruption, and it were a boon if he would neglect politics. But he is not the business man that neglects politics; that worthy is the good citizen, the typical business man. He too is busy, he is the one that has no use and therefore no time for politics. When his neglect has permitted bad government to go so far that he can be stirred to action, he is unhappy, and he looks around for a cure that shall be quick, so that he may hurry back to the shop. Naturally, too, when he talks politics, he talks shop. His patent remedy is quack; it is business. "Give us a business man," he says ("like me," he means). "Let him introduce business methods into politics and government; then I shall be left alone to attend to my business."
Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law in America, 1900
Of this number, 160 were of negro descent. Four of them were lynched in New York, Ohio, and Kansas; the remainder were murdered in the South. Five of this number were females. The charges for which they were lynched cover a wide range. They are as follows: Rape.................. 46 Attempted rape...... 11 Murder................ 58 Suspected robbery... 4 Rioting............... 3 Larceny............. 1 Race Prejudice........ 6 Self-defense........ 1 No cause given........ 4 Insulting women.... 2 Incendiarism.......... 6 Desperadoes......... 6 Robbery............... 6 Fraud............... 1 Assault and battery... 1 Attempted murder.... 2 No offense stated, boy and girl.............. 2
Ray Stannard Baker, in a series for American Magazine
Of those lynched in 1907, 49 were Negro men, three Negro women and four white men. By methods: Hanging 31 Shot to death 17 Hanged and shot 3 Shot and burned 2 Beaten to death 1 Kicked to death 1
"How the Other Half Lives," was published in 1890, Jacob Riis, Scribners
On either side of the narrow entrance to Bandit's Roost, one of the most notorious of these, is a shop that is a fair sample of the sort of invention necessity is the mother of in "the Bend." It is not enough that trucks and ash-barrels have provided four distinct lines of shops that are not down on the insurance maps, to accommodate the crowds. Here have the very hallways been made into shops. Three feet wide by four deep, they have just room for one, the shop-keeper, who, himself within, does his business outside, his wares displayed on a board hung across what was once the hall door. Back of the rear wall of this unique shop a hole has been punched from the hall into the alley and the tenants go that way. One of the shops is a "tobacco bureau," presided over by an unknown saint, done in yellow and red—there is not a shop, a stand, or an ash-barrel doing duty for a counter, that has not its patron saint—the other is a fish-stand full of slimy, odd-looking creatures, fish that never swam in American waters, or if they did, were never seen on an American fish-stand, and snails. Big, awkward sausages, anything but appetizing, hang in the grocer's doorway, knocking against the customer's head as if to remind him that they are there waiting to be bought. What they are I never had the courage to ask. Down the street comes a file of women carrying enormous bundles of fire-wood on their heads, loads of decaying vegetables from the market wagons in their aprons, and each a baby at the breast supported by a sort of sling that prevents it from tumbling down. The women do all the carrying, all the work one sees going on in "the Bend." The men sit or stand in the streets, on trucks, or in the open doors of the saloons smoking black clay pipes, talking and gesticulating as if forever on the point of coming to blows. Near a particularly boisterous group, a really pretty girl with a string of amber beads twisted artlessly in the knot of her raven hair has been bargaining long and earnestly with an old granny, who presides over a wheel-barrow load of second-hand stockings and faded cotton yarn, industriously darning the biggest holes while she extols the virtues of her stock. One of the rude swains, with patched overalls tucked into his boots, to whom the girl's eyes have strayed more than once, steps up and gallantly offers to pick her out the handsomest pair, whereat she laughs and pushes him away with a gesture which he interprets as an invitation to stay; and he does, evidently to the satisfaction of the beldame, who forthwith raises her prices fifty per cents without being detected by the girl.
Ida B. Wells, Free Speech and Headlights, Lynch Law in America, 1900
Paid China for Rock Springs (Wyo.) massacre........... $147,748.74 Paid China for outrages on Pacific Coast.............. 276,619.75 Paid Italy for massacre of Italian prisoners at New Orleans ........................... 24,330.90 Paid Italy for lynchings at Walsenburg, Col ............ 10,000.00 Paid Great Britain for outrages on James Bain and Frederick Dawson ................... 2,800.00 Wells appeals to the dominant values of the day, accepting that protection of women by men is a duty of "Anglo-Saxon civilization" and then suggesting that lynching makes a mockery of this duty:
"Another Attack on Stanley—Colonel Williams Strikes at Him From the Congo Region." New York Daily Tribune, Tuesday, April 14, 1891 George Washington Williams
The agents of your Majesty's Government have misrepresented the Congo country and the Congo railway. Mr. H. M. Stanley, the man who was your chief agent in setting up your authority in the country, has grossly misrepresented the character of the country. Instead of it being fertile and productive, it is sterile and unproductive. The natives can scarcely subsist upon the vegetable life produced in some parts of the country. Not will this condition of affairs change until the native shall have been taught by the European the dignity, utility and blessing of labour. There is no improvement among the natives, because there is an impassable gulf between them and your Majesty's Government, a gulf which can never be bridged. Henry M. Stanley's name produces a shudder among this simple folk when mentioned; they remember his broken promises, his copious profanity, his hot temper, his heavy blows, his severe and rigorous measures, by which they were mulcted of their lands. His last appearance in the Congo produced a profound sensation among them, when he led 500 Zanzibar soldiers with 300 campfollowers on his way to relieve Emin Pasha. They thought it meant complete subjugation, and they fled in confusion. But the only thing they found in the wake of his march was misery. No white man commanded his rear column, and his troops were allowed to straggle, sicken and die; and their bones were scattered over more than two hundred miles of territory.
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
The anarchists are the advance-guard in the impending social revolution. They have discovered the cause of the worldwide discontent which is felt but not yet understood by the toiling millions as a whole. The effort now being made by organized and unorganized labor in all countries to participate in the making of the laws which they are forced to obey will lay bare to them the secret source of their enslavement to capital. Capital is a thing, it is property. Capital is the stored up, accumulated savings of past labor...the resources of life, the means of subsistence. These things are, in a natural state, the common heritage of all for the free use of all, and they were so held until their forcible seizure and appropriation by a few. Thus the common heritage of all, seized by violence and fraud, was afterwards made the property—capital—of the usurpers, who erected a government and enacted laws to perpetuate and maintain their special privileges. The function, the only function of capital is to confiscate the labor-product of the propertyless, non-possessing class, the wage-workers. The origin of government was in violence and murder. Government disinherits and enslaves the governed. Government is for slaves; free men govern themselves....
The Death of Rodriguez, The New York Journal, by Richard Harding Davis, January 19, 1897
The bayonets of the retreating column flashed in it, and at the sight of it a rooster in the farmyard near by crowed vigorously and a dozen bugles answered the challenge with the brisk, cheery notes of the reveille, and from all parts of the city the church bells jangled out the call for early mass, and the whole world of Santa Clara seemed to stir and stretch itself and to wake to welcome the day just begun. But as I fell in at the rear of the procession and looked back the figure of the young Cuban, who was no longer part of the world of Santa Clara, was asleep in the wet grass, with his motionless arms still tightly bound behind him, with the scapula twisted awry across his face and the blood from his breast sinking into the soil he had tried to free.
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
The class struggle of the past century is history repeating itself; it is the evolutionary growth preceding the revolutionary denouement. Through liberty is a growth, it is also a birth, and while it is yet to be, it is also about to be born. Its birth will come through travail and pain, through bloodshed and violence. It cannot be prevented.... An anarchist is a believer in liberty, and as I would control no man against his will, neither shall anyone rule over me with my consent. Government is compulsion; no one freely consents to be governed by another—therefore, there can be no just power of government. Anarchy is perfect liberty, is absolute freedom of the individual. Anarchy has no schemes, no programmes, no systems to offer or to substitute for the existing order of things. Anarchy would strike from humanity every chain that binds it, and say to mankind: "Go forth! you are free! Have all, enjoy all!"
The Death of Rodriguez, The New York Journal, by Richard Harding Davis, January 19, 1897
The figure still lay on the grass untouched, and no one seemed to remember that it had walked there of itself, or noticed that the cigarette still burned, a tiny ring of living fire, at the place where the figure had stood. The figure was a thing of the past, and the squad shook itself like a great snake, and then broke into little pieces and started off jauntily, stumbling in the high grass and striving to keep step to the music. The officers led it past the figure in the linen suit, and so close to it that the file closers had to part with the column to avoid treading on it. Each soldier as he passed turned and looked down on it, some craning their necks curiously, others giving a careless glance, and some without any interest at all, as they would have looked at the house by the roadside or a passing cart or a hole in the road.
Tarbell's series on Standard Oil was published in McClure's in November, 1902
The first thing was to get a charter -- quietly. At a meeting held in Philadelphia in 1871 mention had been made that a certain estate then in liquidation had a charter for sale which gave its owners the right to carry on any kind of business in any country and in any way. This charter was promptly purchased. The name of the charter was the "South Improvement Company." Under the threat of this secret combine, known blandly as the "South Improvement Company," almost the entire independent oil interest of Cleveland collapsed. From a capacity of less than 1,500 barrels of crude per day, the Standard Oil Company rose in three months' time to over 10,000 barrels per day. It had become master of more than one-fifth of the refining capacity of the United States. Its next individual competitor was Sone and Fleming, of New York, whose per day capacity was 1,700 barrels. The transaction by which Standard Oil acquired this power was so stealthy that not even the best-informed newspaper men of Cleveland knew what went on. It had all been accomplished in accordance with one of Mr. Rockefeller's chief business principles -- "Silence is golden."
Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness." North American Review, February, 1901.
The following is from the New York Tribune of Christmas Eve. It comes from the journal's Tokio [sic] correspondent. It has a strange and impudent sound, but the Japanese are but partially civilized as yet. When they become wholly civilized they will not talk so. The missionary question, of course, occupies a foremost place in the discussion. It is now felt as essential that the Western Powers take cognizance of the sentiment here, that religious invasions of Oriental countries by powerful Western organizations are tantamount to filibustering expeditions, and should not only be discountenanced, but that stern measures should be adopted for their suppression. The feeling here is that the missionary organizations constitute a constant menace to peaceful international relations. Shall we? That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness or shall we give those poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way and commit the new century to the game; or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first? Would it not be prudent to get our Civilization tools together and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and the Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade-Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasions) and balance the books and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sell out the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds?
Ray Stannard Baker, in a series for American Magazine
The offences for which these men and woman were lynched range from stealing seventy-five cents and talking with white girls over the telephone, to rape and murder. Here is the list: For being father of boy who jostled white women 1 For being victor over white man in fight 1 Attempted murder 5 Murder of wife 1 Murder of husband and wife 1 Murder of wife and stepson 1 Murder of mistress 1 Manslaughter 10 Accessory to murder 1 Rape 8 Attempted rape 11 Raping own stepdaughter 1 For being wife and son of a raper 2 Protecting fugitive from posse 1 Talking to white girls over telephone 1 Expressing sympathy for mob's victim 3 Three-dollar debt 2 Stealing seventy-five cents 1 Insulting white man 1 Store burglary 3 In making my study I visited four towns where lynchings had taken place, two in the South, Statesboro in Ga. and Huntsville in Ala.; and two in the North, Springfield, O., and Danville, Ill.
Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law in America, 1900
Third, for the honor of Anglo-Saxon civilization. No scoffer at our boasted American civilization could say anything more harsh of it than does the American white man himself who says he is unable to protect the honor of his women without resort to such brutal, inhuman, and degrading exhibitions as characterize "lynching bees." The cannibals of the South Sea Islands roast human beings alive to satisfy hunger. The red Indian of the Western plains tied his prisoner to the stake, tortured him, and danced in fiendish glee while his victim writhed in the flames. His savage, untutored mind suggested no better way than that of wreaking vengeance upon those who had wronged him. These people knew nothing about Christianity and did not profess to follow its teachings; but such primary laws as they had they lived up to. No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders.
Tarbell's series on Standard Oil was published in McClure's in November, 1902
Those twenty-five Cleveland rivals of his -- how could he at once and forever put them out of the game? He and his partners had somehow conceived a great idea -- the advantages of combination. What might they not do if they could buy out and absorb the big refineries now competing with them in Cleveland? The Rockefeller corporation, Standard Oil, began to sound out some of its Cleveland rivals. But there was still a problem: What about their rivals in the Oil Region of Pennsylvania? They could ship to refineries on the eastern sea-coast. And the Pennsylvania Railroad was helping them; they shipped in volume and the railroad gave them a discount. Aligned with the Cleveland crowd were the Lake Shore and New York Central Railroads. If the Oil Region won the developing competition, these railroads would lose business.
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
We are charged with being the enemies of "law and order," as breeders of strife and confusion. Every conceivable bad name and evil design was imputed to us by the lovers of power and haters of freedom and equality. Even the workingmen in some instances caught the infection, and any of them joined in the capitalistic hue and cry against the anarchists. Being satisfied of ourselves that our purpose was a just one, we worked on undismayed, willing to labor and to wait for time and events to justify our cause. We began to allude to ourselves as anarchists and that name, which was at first imputed to us as a dishonor, we came to cherish and defend with pride. What's in a name? But names sometimes express ideas, and ideas are everything.
Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness." North American Review, February, 1901.
We must bring him to, and coax him and coddle him, and assure him that the ways of Providence are best and that it would not become us to find fault with them; and then, to show him that we are only imitators, not originators, we must read the following passage from the letter of an American soldier-lad in the Philippines to his mother, published in Public Opinion, of Decorah, Iowa, describing the finish of a victorious battle: "WE NEVER LEFT ONE ALIVE. IF ONE WAS WOUNDED, WE WOULD RUN OUR BAYONETS THROUGH HIM."
The Alarm, Albert Parsons, 1884
What, then, is our offense, being anarchists? The word anarchy is derived from the two Greeks words an, signifying no, or without, and arche, government; hence anarchy means no government. Consequently anarchy means a condition of society which has no king, emperor, president or ruler of any kind. In other words, anarchy is the social administration of all affairs by the people themselves; that is to say, self-government, individual liberty. Such a condition of society denies the right of majorities to rule over or dictate to minorities. Though every person in the world agree upon a certain plan and only one object thereto, the objector would, under anarchy, be respected in his natural right to go his own way....
"How the Other Half Lives," was published in 1890, Jacob Riis, Scribners
Where Mulberry Street crooks like an elbow within hail of the old depravity of the Five Points, is "the Bend," foul core of New York's slums. Long years ago the cows coming home from the pasture trod a path over this hill. Echoes of tinkling bells linger there still, but they do not call up memories of green meadows and summer fields; they proclaim the home-coming of the rag-picker's cart. In the memory of man the old cow-path has never been other than a vast human pig-sty. There is but one "Bend" in the world, and it is enough. The city authorities, moved by the angry protests of ten years of sanitary reform effort, have decided that it is too much and must come down. Another Paradise Park will take its place and let in sunlight and air to work such transformation as at the Five Points, around the corner of the next block. Never was change more urgently needed. Around "the Bend" cluster the bulk of the tenements that are stamped as altogether bad, even by the optimists of the Health Department. Incessant raids cannot keep down the crowds that make them their home. In the scores of back alleys, of stable lanes and hidden byways, of which the rent collector alone can keep track, they share such shelter as the ramshackle structures afford with every kind of abomination rifled from the dumps and ash-barrels of the city. Here, too, shunning the light, skulks the unclean beast of dishonest idleness. "The Bend" is the home of the tramp as well as the rag-picker.
Whitelaw Reid's address at Princeton, October 21, 1899
Why mourn over the present course as a departure from the policy of the Fathers? For over a hundred years, the uniform policy which they began and their sons continued has been acquisition, expansion, annexation, reaching out to the remote wilderness far more distant than the Philippines are now—to disconnected regions like Alaska—to island regions like Midway, the Guano Islands, the Aleutians, the Sandwich Islands—and even to the quasi-protectorates like Liberia and Samoa. Why mourn because of the precedent we are establishing? The precedent was established before we were born. Why distress ourselves with the thought that this is only the beginning, that it opens the door to unlimited expansion? The door is wide open now and has been ever since Livingston in Paris jumped at Talleyrand's offer to sell him the wilderness west of the Mississippi instead of the settlements eastward to Florida, which we had been trying to get; and Jefferson eagerly sustained him. For the rest, the task that is laid upon us now is not proving so easy as to warrant this fear that we shall soon be seeking unlimited repetitions of it.
Revenge! Workingmen, to Arms!!! by August Spies, Arbeiter-Zeitung May 4, 1866
Your masters sent out their bloodhounds the police they killed six of your brothers at McCormicks the afternoon. They killed the poor wretches, because they, like you, had the courage to disobey the supreme will of your bosses. They killed them, because they dared ask for the shortening of the hours of toil. They killed them to show you, "Free American Citizens" that you must be satisfied and contended with whatever your bosses condescend to allow you, or you will get killed! You have for years endured the most abject humiliations; you have for years suffered unmeasurable iniquities; you have worked yourself to death; you have for years the pangs of want and hunger; your Children you have sacrificed to the factory-lords—in short: You have been miserable and obedient slave[s] all these years: Why? To satisfy the insatiable greed, to fill the coffers of your lazy thieving master? When you ask them now to lessen your burden, he sends his bloodhounds out to shoot you, kill you! If you are men, if you are the sons of your grand sires, who have shed their blood to free you then you will rise in your might, Hercules, and destroy the hideous monster that seeks to destroy you. To arms we call you, to arms! Your Brothers.
