Part 4

This is why the United States are not unanimously in sympathy with the oppressed people of all other countries—the reason why the people of this country are not unanimously in sympathy with the toilers of our own land—the difference between loving the world’s wealth, and the world’s people. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” is possible only where worldly interests are mutual and agreeable. Where two men are striving for the dirty dollar in sight, love is sure to dodge out of sight and silently steal away.

Even where men love the world for humanity’s sake, there is a difference in the intensity of that love. Some men love with a hopeful optimistical fervor, dreaming of a day when there shall be no oppression or plundering of the weak by the powerful. They see the millennium of earthly tranquillity and peace in the near future, when all men shall be brothers, and co-operation shall take the place of bitter competition, and motherhood and childhood shall be the great care and protection of the nation, and no one shall go to bed and cry themselves to sleep to forget the pangs of hunger and drown the memory of personal wrongs.

In most cases these hopeful altruists never suffered real hunger or bitter wrongs. They have always had enough of the world’s material wealth to drive the wolf of hunger away from their door, and only see the real poor through their dreams. Once in my life I cried for bread when there was not a crumb in my mother’s house, nor even a single penny to buy bread. It was only for one day, but the horror of that one day pictured poverty to my youthful mind in all its horrible and unrelenting want and squalor. And the old gloom-blistered memory of that one day of unsatisfied hunger haunts me still, like the recollections of the most poignant pain.

I firmly believe that that recollection of absolute poverty in my childhood days is what makes my love for humanity so hopeless and moist with despondent tears. I can not even dream of a day when love and justice will rule the world. Greed, greater than all else, human greed predominates over all the world. “For what will a man not give in exchange for his own life?” This can be carried still lower and made to read, “For what will a man not sacrifice for his own comfort?” And when it comes to a sacrifice, who so easy to offer up as the “helpless poor?”

Abraham hadn’t the remotest idea of offering himself up on the altar he had built. Helpless Isaac would have been the victim, had not the more helpless ram appeared tangled in the bushes, and was substituted for the lad.

The primitive originators of the sacrificial altar had only the weak and helpless and defenseless in mind as the intended sacrifice to their God. The innocence of the lamb and the dove did not appeal to their calloused hearts. They were intent on saving themselves, even though the whole world must be sacrificed.

That spirit is still prevailing where the weak and the strong meet in the struggle for existence, and the weak and innocent do not appeal to sympathetic hearts when they ask for mercy. The business and commercial altars must have a sacrifice for the benefit of the strong. This picture is always before me. My love for the world is like the love of a despondent mother for her sick child.

LOST IN THE SNOW

No one who has never lived near an Indian school has any idea of the loneliness and homesickness that fills the poor little hearts of the Indian youths who have been torn away from the rude Indian home and herded together between gloomy brick walls, so different from the teepee of their semi-savage parents. The government department in charge of these schools talk of abolishing the schools located at a distance from the reservations, and building school houses right in the village, retaining only four such schools as that of Carlisle, Pa., to serve as high schools for the larger youths.

I believe there is much sense and good judgment in this. Civilization should not force painful conditions upon the children of our copper-skinned wards.

I recall to mind the desertion of five little Indian boys from a school near which the writer spent several years, and a more pathetic tale never was told. Like the instinct of bees and animals, these Indian boys knew that their native village lay to the southwest of the school, and when homesickness felt so unbearable that it could not be endured, they stole from their dormitory one dark night in November, swam the river and started to climb the rugged side of the great Rocky Mountains.

Little Jake Hargison was but six years old, and the baby of the deserters, but he struggled through the dark and up the rocky side of the towering mountain with courage stimulated by the hope of seeing home and parents within a few days. Being only boys, they had not provided food for the journey, each lad carrying only a small lunch in his pockets.

At daylight they were far up on the mountain side, half frozen; for they had come to an impassable cliff and so were obliged to wait until the daylight came, not daring to build a fire lest it be seen from the valley where the school buildings were located.

It was past noon when they finally reached the top of the mountain and struck out boldly to cross the broad mesa extending far to the southwest. Far in the distance they could see the mountain range at whose foot nestled the Indian village they called home. They knew it was seventy-five long miles away, but they never flinched or thought of turning back.

Late in the afternoon the sky grew gray with bleak clouds, and the northeast wind chilled them to the bone. There were already four inches of snow on the mesa, and the eldest of the boys knew instinctively that another snow storm was in the air. But they had on stout government shoes, and did not fear the snow.

By dark the snow storm burst on them in all the fury of a Rocky Mountain blizzard, and the boys began to search for a sheltering rock. Fortunately they came to the brow of a great range of mountains, and down below the rim rock they knew there would be shelter from the storm and the winds. Slowly and tortuously the boys climbed down through a crevice in the great rim rock, and 200 feet below they came to a level plateau, where they gathered wood and built a fire close up to the perpendicular wall.

Sitting by the warm fire they ate their lunch, having saved it all through the weary day, and they could hear the storm king howling through the spruce trees and shrieking through the canyons on either side.

And where they had camped the snow was drifting over the cliff and falling upon them very fast. They knew the history of these snow drifts—knew that the snow sometimes stacked up to the depth of fifty feet on the lee side of the rim rock, but it was too late to retreat now.

At midnight their fuel became exhausted, and the snow drift was so deep that they could not get more. Little Jake complained of being sleepy, and his older brother sang an Indian song to keep him awake. The little fellow began to repeat the prayer his teacher taught him, and fell asleep with the words still on his lips. The others soon followed him into dreamland, and all night long the merciless snow drifted over the tall rock and buried them under many feet of spotless robes. The winds howled, the storm shrieked and groaned and higher the snow drift grew upon them.

Late in July a prospecting party found them, the elder brother holding little Jake in his stiffened arms.

A PLEA FOR CHILDHOOD

In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, and in the name of Him who died for men, I would make a plea for the little children who are born into the world to be landless and homeless through life. Does it seem possible to the thickest headed thinker that a just God would send children into a world already privately owned by previous generations? Are God’s laws similar to the European laws of primogeniture, giving the best of all to the first born—to the first generations, and to be handed down from father to son, to hold and own forever?

I can’t believe that there is any priority handed down to a special few from the God of All. Every sense of common justice rebels at such an idea. If it is our God, and our heaven, and our eternity, it must then surely be our earth, our land, and our oceans, and our mountains, and our air. Will a higher civilization recognize this picture of simple justice? And will we reach a higher state of civilization without giving all an equal share in God and the earth?

I do not know. It might create serious complications to remove the priority claim of the selected few who now claim the natural wealth of the world. The present state and condition of the social world and the industrial world may be exactly as God wishes it to be. Every one must answer this question for himself; for while it is true that God created man, every individual creature has a peculiar way of forming the character and attributes of his God. Men still quote scripture to prove that God believed in human slavery. If this is true, then God surely allowed little innocent babes to be born into slavery, and to be driven by the lash from the cradle to the grave.

If this is true, then child labor in our mills and factories for wages, is not nearly so horrible as chattel slavery, and God must look with approbation at the little consumptive boy or girl dying by inches while watching the shuttles fly back and forth in the loom, of which they are part of the machinery.

These questions each one must settle for himself; but doesn’t it seem more natural and human to decide in favor of the children? When you look into the innocent eyes of the child sitting in its mother’s arms, can you consign that child to the slavery of the factories and mills, and then wash your conscience clean with the wet sponge of tearful prayer? Sit right up straight in your chair at this very minute and decide the case between yourself and the children and your God—did God, or did he not send these helpless and dependent children into the world to become mere slaves, and to live landless and homeless until he calls them hence? Yes?

Within the eyes of each trusting child That look straight into mine, There is a plea, so meek and mild, So humble and supine— A plea for mercy and human love, For justice and for right, For a share in the earth and the God above, And all the blessings in sight.

Perhaps it was God who planted there This plea, ere they were born; This innate plea for an equal share Of all the meat and corn, How can men rob them of their right? And hear their loud demands, When they see the wealth of the world in sight, And their father’s empty hands.

I know the sigh of each full grown breast For a home and an acre of soil; A vine and a fig tree; to sit and rest, When weary of work and toil. Did the God of Nature plant that sigh In the babe, long ere it smiled? And this plea, like a rainbow, in the eye Of the trusting, yearning child?

May the God of heaven pity us all! But pity the children now! Let us kiss the spot hurt in each fall And smooth the troubled brow; For how shall we, as a little child, Win back a place in heaven, If the child is robbed, long ere it smiled Of the part Great God has given?

THOUGHTS ON IMMORTALITY

I do not know; yet the longings and yearnings of my soul cry out always for immortality. I seem to hope always that somewhere in the universe there is stored away a great pity that responds to the longings and yearnings of my soul, and stands ready to help me when the earth fades away from sight and the shadows fall thick and deep around me. I do not know. The desire in my soul is father to my trembling hope, and hope may pass away when life goes out into the unknown and my body of clay is left to crumble and decay and disintegrate and go back to the original elements.

There will be a physical change, the light and heat and movement will go out of my body, like the light blown out in a vacant house when the inhabitants move away. But whither goes the inhabitants that now dwell within me when the lights are blown out and the doors locked and sealed with the eternal lock that will not open to the key of time, I do not know.

In my sober contemplation of all that lies before, it seems to me that love and justice and mercy and hope are of ephemeral existence if they last only while the light is in the body. And I ask myself: “Is there no life and light and mercy and hope and pity beyond these things we feel and hear and see? Are we to suffer injustice during life that will never be righted for us? Are we to love, and lose the object of our love, and never find it again? Are these bright minds of ours, so capable of dreaming such beautiful dreams, to be brought to the very highest possible heights of intelligence, and then suddenly be snuffed out, like blowing the lighted flame from a candle, leaving all in darkness and gloom?”

I do not know. The prophets and philosophers were only men, with yearnings and longings like my own, and as weak and helpless to pull aside the curtains and peep into the future as I find myself. And yet I am not satisfied to die forever; for I do know that there is an eternity for all these things existing in space. Space is eternity itself. The human mind can not picture a condition when worlds and planets and space will be no more. Nothing can come from nothing, neither can matter pass into nothing and leave no trace behind. The length of the universe is eternity, and so is the width and the breadth. It can not pass away and leave but a hole, for even a hole must have sides and dimensions.

I do not know; perhaps the ox in the field knows more about immortality than man, perhaps less, perhaps nothing at all. It would not need to know much about it to outstrip me in knowledge on this one particular subject. He may have longings and yearnings, the same as me, for how shall the ox receive his share of justice and equity if he passes away with this life and is known no more?

I do not know; justice must surely mean the same rewards for the ox as it means for man, for how can simple justice discriminate between animals, and still remain simple justice? And the man who is willing to grasp an immortality that discriminates between him and the ox, is neither merciful, charitable, nor just. Immortality must surely embrace all the living creatures, or part of life would be left behind, and immortality would be incomplete and imperfect. God must be the God of all. If the ox is an inferior creature, the fault lies with the creator and not with the created thing. If there is no justice and mercy for the ox, then justice and mercy have limits, and God is not so powerful to save his creatures as he is to create them.

I do not know; my faith in immortality may be the child of my hopes and longings. If I am always to be I always was in existence somewhere. I am positively certain that I know of no evidence to prove a past existence, for hope does not lead backward. Hope points always ahead, from where the winds of the future are always blowing. I know that I desire to live always, to think always, to hope always, to love on and on forever and ever.

TEACH SENTIMENT

Sentiment is a creature of education. A child will naturally imitate its parents. If they are unfeeling and cruel, the child will be the same, at least until it falls under a different influence. Sentiment is not inherited. The average child is cruel and heartless until old enough to imitate the sentimental spirit of old people. Therefore, it should be the first lesson impressed upon the child mind that cruelty and wanton heartlessness is brutal, and does not belong to civilized man.

In my own case I have always been opposed to keeping pet animals or birds confined in a cage—no, not always: When a boy I was always catching birds and squirrels and rabbits to start a menagerie. I remember one time of keeping a red squirrel in a cage for two years. I hadn’t then learned that kindness to the weakest of God’s creatures shows a largeness of the human heart. I was then a lad of fifteen years.

But one day while watching the red squirrel leaping from one side of the cage to the bottom, then bounding to the other side and back again, and on to the opposite side and back again, over and over again, all through the day, and day after day, for the exercise it needed to keep its health—one day while watching the poor imprisoned animal at its daily exercise, the thought came to me that the little animal would be so much happier outside the cage. Then it dawned on me that I was simply keeping the poor thing imprisoned to gratify my own selfish pleasure. Simply to look at and enjoy its efforts to make life tolerable under such distressing conditions. I had actually been enjoying the restless efforts of the squirrel to make prison life healthful; for had the animal sat down to mourn and pout and sorrow for the freedom it once enjoyed, it would have died in a few weeks.

My heart smote me. I saw what a cruel jailor I had been. It’s bad enough to imprison bad men and shut them away from the sunlight and flowers and the smiles of good women and children, just as though darkness and heartaches and misery would make a human being better. But here I was imprisoning an innocent animal simply for the selfish pleasure that comes from the possession of things not justly my own. Like the millionaire who gets a monopoly on the necessaries of life, and forces the people to pay tribute into his coffers for the sole and only pleasure of possessing more dollars than his neighbors.

If he has sentiment enough to use those dollars for the benefit of civilization and to relieve the distress of the people, it is not so bad, but hoarding up for the pleasure that comes from sheer possession, is worse than brutal—it is maniacal.

Well, my conscience smote me on the educated end of my sentiment, and one day I opened the cage and let the squirrel go back to the woods. I had learned a lesson I never forgot. The awakened sentiment in my soul never slumbered again.

Sentiment is contagious. My boy caught the happy mental disorder much earlier than his father did. A few weeks ago, he, too, started a menagerie. He caught two mice and put them in a cage. At the end of two weeks his young heart felt the sentimental pangs of conscience, and he liberated his unwilling prisoners.

The world is growing better. The boy’s sentiment did as much for him in two weeks as mine did for me in two years. The two liberated mice may do me a trifle of damage while at large, but when I consider that the boy let his heart out at the same time he liberated the mice, I knew the world would be the gainer in the end.

THE SOUL OF SORROW

Sorrow is not always gruesome and heart-breaking. It has a lifetime influence, providing the fiber of the soul is strong enough to withstand the strain. Not long ago there was a musical contest in a Pennsylvania city, and one of the young ladies to take part in it had given up the thought of going into the contest, because her mother lay at the point of death the day previous to the departure of the companies who were going to the distant city to show what their town could do in a musical way.

But during the night the mother’s condition changed for the better, and she urged her daughter to go; for on her the town depended to bring back some of the prizes to be given to the sweetest singers of the state.

And so she went, her heart very much lighter since the happy change in her mother’s condition. Anyhow, going out into the world to compete for a prize, with some hope of winning, has a buoyant effect on the heart. Oh, if all the world could but feel a slight hope of winning a prize when starting out in the world, how much happier the world would be! But to most of the average people the world’s prizes are hanging up so distressingly high that only the well prepared have any chance of winning them.

The parents who carelessly or helplessly send their children out into the world uneducated, to compete with college graduates, are sending them into a hard proposition. And the state government that will sleep while one portion of the people are being educated to take care of themselves, and a larger number are growing up in helpless ignorance and sent out into the world to compete with the few educated ones—the state or public that can sleep while such an injustice is being perpetrated on the weakest and most helpless of its subjects, needs to have its conscience touched with the awakening finger of justice. The boasting cry that in this country everybody’s child has an equal opportunity to gain a livelihood, is as false as hell. There are colleges in our so-called free land where the son of a ditch digger or a washerwoman could no more enter than a miserly rich man can enter the kingdom of heaven.

But I have drifted. I can’t help but drift. Every time I try to paint a picture, the injustice of the unjust crowd in and fill the distant perspective, and get painted into the sunset and change the gold into blackened lead.