CHAPTER XIII

NATURAL LAW AND CONDUCT

Many of the crimes fixed by law are purely arbitrary. To commit them or to refrain does not necessarily imply innocence or guilt. Of such a character, for instance, are revenue laws, the observance of holy days and the like. A large number of forbidden acts that are generally supposed to imply moral guilt are also purely arbitrary. Most of the laws governing the taking and obtaining of property, which constitute the great burden of our penal code, are arbitrary acts, whose sole purpose is to keep the great mass of property in the hands of the rulers and exploiters and to send to jail those who help themselves and who have no other means within their power to sustain their lives. Most of the so-called thieves and other offenders against property dimly know this fact. Without being able to analyze or logically realize it, they, after all, feel that they have committed no wrong, and that they took the only road life had left open for their feet.

Nearly our whole criminal code is made up of what may be called property crimes, or crimes against property, if they may be so called. These crimes are burglary, larceny, obtaining property by false pretenses, extortion, and the like. The jails and penitentiaries of every nation in the world are filled to overflowing with men and women who have been charged with committing crimes against property. Probably nine-tenths of all the business of criminal courts come directly from property crimes. A very large proportion of the balance comes indirectly from this cause. Nothing could more completely show the humbuggery, knavery and the absolute hypocrisy of all punishment by the state than the patent facts with reference to these crimes. From first to last these inmates of jail and penitentiary, these suffering outcast men are utterly without property and have ever been. In the penal institutions of the world are confined a motley throng charged with committing assaults upon property, and yet this whole mass of despised and outcast humanity have ever been the propertyless class, have never had aught whereon to lay their heads. But where is all the property that has been the subject of these dire assaults? No matter where you turn your eyes in the world, the whole property is in the hands of a chosen few, and the so-called owners of all this wealth created by the labor of man and the bounty of nature—these so-called owners have committed no crime against property. The statement of the fact is sufficient to show the inequality of the whole system under which the fruits of the earth are kept in the possession of the few. These despised and outcast ones have violated no law of conscience or justice, have committed no unrighteous assault on property. The plain fact that will one day stand clearly forth to explain the whole brutal code which is used to imprison and enslave,—the plain reason and object of these laws is the fact that the rulers who have forcibly seized the earth have made certain rules and regulations to keep possession of the treasures of the world, and when the disinherited have reached out to obtain the means of life, they have been met with these arbitrary rules and lodged in jail.

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The advocates of punishment believe that law controls the natural world. The movement of the earth about the sun, the changes of the moon, the rising and falling of the tide, the change of seasons, all these depend on natural law. It is even known that the distribution of animal life upon the earth is due to natural law. Certain climates and locations produce certain animal life. Particular seasons of the year increase or diminish insect life. The wild fowl flies north in summer and south in winter. The swarming of bees, the homes of ants, in short all the activities, lives and deaths of the brute creation are surely seen to be the subject of natural law. The distribution, growth and decay of plant life is no less within the realm of law, than is the animal life, which depends upon the same powers and forces, the same great source of life.

But when man is reached it would seem that the rule of law is at an end. His life and death, his goings in and out, his myriad acts are due to no rule or system or law, but are the result of capricious will alone. True, in many of his acts man recognizes the great force in whose mighty power he is like the insect, or the grain of sand tossed by the angry sea. Here and there he seems to dimly understand the great laws of necessity, of sequence, of consequence, that govern human life. Every father who takes pains in the rearing of his child, who surrounds it with the influences that build up character and develop judgment and reason, recognizes the law of necessity, the controlling power of environment, the strength of habit and circumstance. The life of tribes and races and nations show that fixed laws control in the actions of men, as everywhere else within the realm of nature. Man is a part of nature, the highest evolution of all, but still a part firmly bound by law to every atom of matter and every particle of force which the wide universe contains. The life and death of man, his distribution over the earth, his permanency as an individual or a tribe, depend upon all other life. Man draws his sustenance from the animate and inanimate world. The lives of bees depend upon the flowers, their number and condition, their coming and going; their birth and death is due to this natural cause outside the control of the individual bee. The life of man depends upon his supply of food and shelter, upon his ability to obtain the necessities of life. It is true that in his progress he is no longer bound so closely to the earth as in his early stages. He has learned something of the laws of nature and is able to take some thought for the morrow; but yet famine destroys him, disease overcomes him; severe droughts, protracted heat, great inundations of flood, all these affect his life, change population, destroy vast numbers, always the weaker, those less able to provide for themselves, those who, from circumstances, have taken the smallest thought for the morrow.

Even in the most civilized, progressive lands man is dependent on nature. The constant thought of much the largest portion of mankind is for the procurement of those things that will sustain, prolong and render their lives more comfortable. The vast majority of men are closely bound to the soil and their whole life is a struggle for the means to live. Even the large majority of those whose condition is the most tolerable, find life an endless struggle and anxiety their constant companion. Such a thing as a free choice of life is out of the question for the vast majority of men born upon the earth; their residence, occupation, hours of labor, method of life, are fixed almost irrevocably in obedience to the demands of their physical being. After those whose conditions of life are the most tolerable, come a great mass whose existence is most precarious, dependent upon the condition of the harvest, the condition of trade, the amount of rain or snow, the quantity of sunshine, and a thousand circumstances far beyond their control.

As a consequence of his desire for life and the means that make it certain and pleasant, man has ever turned his attention toward the conquest of nature, reducing vegetable and animal life to his control. But his conquest does not end here. Not vegetables and animals alone must be his slaves, but man as well. Ever has man enslaved his fellow; from the beginning of his career upon the earth he has sought to make his own existence pleasanter and more certain by compelling others to toil for him. In its more primitive stages slavery was enforced by the ownership of the man. In its later and more refined stages it is carried on by the ownership of the things from which man must live. All life comes primarily from the earth and without access to this great first source of being, man must die. Passing from the ownership of individuals, rulers have found it easier and more certain to own the earth—for to own the earth is to fix the terms on which all must live. More and more does the master seek to control access to land, to coal, to timber, to iron, to water—these prime requisites to life. More and more certainly, as time and civilization move on, do these prime necessities pass to the few. Every new engine of production makes it easier for the few to reduce the earth to their possession. Even land itself is of no value without the railroads, the harbors, the mines and the forest. Everywhere these have passed into the hands of the few. From the private ownership of men, the rulers have passed to the private ownership of the earth and the control of the land. The rulers no longer have the right to buy and sell the man, to send him here and there to suit their will. They simply have the power to dictate the terms upon which he can stand upon the earth. With the mines, the forests, the oil, the harbors, the railroads, and the really valuable productive land in the rulers’ hands, the dominance and power of man over his fellows is absolute and complete. It is not necessary to show that it is the ruling class who own the earth—the owners of the earth must be the ruling class.