Brann the Iconoclast Volume 10 Part 14

triumphed. They retained the baby. Then after attempting to sanctify the baby--a ceremony wholly imaginary and described with a s.m.u.tch of revolting coa.r.s.eness--the sisters send the baby packing back to the Protestant Detectoral a.s.sociation.

The Protestants had him, but the Dissenters protested against his being given to an Anglican refuge. The scene at the ma.s.s-meeting to celebrate young Ginx's rescue from the incubus of a delusive superst.i.tion is described with rare appreciation of the foibles of character. The bombast, the cant, the flapdoodle and flubdub, the silly unction of different kinds of preachers are "done to a hair." Five hours the meeting raged, and at last a resolution that the Metropolitan pulpit should take up the subject, and the churches take up a collection for the Baby on the next Sunday having been pa.s.sed, the meeting adjourned--forgetting all about the Baby. A strange woman took the Baby "for the sake of the cause." He had been provided with a splendid layette by an enthusiastic Protestant d.u.c.h.ess.

"Some hours later Ginx's Baby, stripped of the d.u.c.h.ess' beautiful robes was found by a policeman, lying on a door step in one of the narrow streets not a hundred yards" from the meeting place.

"By an ironical chance he was wrapped in a copy of the largest daily paper in the world."

"The Baby was recovered, the preachers "praught." The collections and the donations and subscriptions amounted to thirteen hundred and sixty pounds, ten shillings, and three and one-half pence.

How the money was spent is shown in a deliciously absurd balance-sheet. Not quite 100 pounds were spent upon the Baby. The other money was wasted in various forms and styles of "guff." "In an age of luxury," says the Baby's biographer, "we are grown so luxurious as to be content to pay agents to do our good deeds, but they charge us three hundred per cent. for the privilege."

How the police found and treated the Baby is a chapter full of subtle sarcasm, leading up to the still more sarcastic portrayal of the way the Baby fared in the hands of the Committee appointed to take care of him. He was likely to be torn to pieces between contending divines. The debates in Committee are illuminating expositions of different varieties of bigotry. His body was almost forgotten, while the philanthropists were trying to decide what to do with his soul. Few of the reverend gentlemen "would be content unless they could seize him when his young nature was plastic and try to imprint on immortal clay the trade-mark of some human invention."

Twenty-three meetings of the Committee were held and unity was as far of at the last as at the first. The Secretary asked the Committee to provide money to meet the Baby's liabilities, but the Committee instantly adjourned and no effort afterwards could get a quorum together. The persons who had charge of the foundling began to dun the Secretary and to neglect the child, now thirteen months old. They sold his clothes and absconded from the place where they had been "framing him for Protestantism." As a Protestant question Ginx's Baby vanished from the world.

Wrapped in a potato sack, the baby was found one night, on the pavement exactly over a line dividing two parishes. The finder was a business man. He noted the exact spot where the child lay and took it to--the other parish. He would not be taxed for its support. The parish guardians would not accept the child. As the man who found the child was a guardian of the other parish, he was trying to foist a b.a.s.t.a.r.d,--perhaps his own--upon their parish. A motion was made to "get rid of the brat." "A church warden, who happened to be a gentleman," suggested the services of a lawyer. The brutality of the guardians as they examined and discussed the child is depicted with terrible power. The lawyer says the Board will have to take the Baby, pro tem, or "create an unhappy impression on the minds of the public."

"d.a.m.n the public!" said Mr. Stink, a dog-breeder member of the Board, thus antecedently plagiarizing an American millionaire.

The parish accepts the Baby under protest, and a formal written protest addressed to the Baby, name unknown, is pinned on the potato sack. The two parishes go to law about the child. Neither wishes to take care of it. At Saint Bartemeus's workhouse, a notice was posted forbidding the officials, a.s.sistants and servants to enter the Baby's room, pendente lite, or to render it any service or a.s.sistance on pain of dismissal. The Baby was nigh starvation. The master of the work-house stealthily fed him on pap, saying in a loud voice as he did so, "Now youngster, this is without prejudice, remember! I give you due notice--without prejudice."

The Baby became ill. A n.o.bleman discovered him and laid his case before a magistrate. The papers made a sensation on the Baby's case. There was a terrific hullabaloo. An inquiry was held. The guardians became furious. "The reports of their proceedings read like the vagaries of a lunatic asylum or the deliberations of the American Senate." They discharged the kindly master. The Baby was locked in a room. Food was pa.s.sed to him on a stick. The inquiry was denounced and the bewildered public gnashed its teeth at everybody who had anything to do with, or say of, Ginx's Baby.

"At last St. Bartemeus' parish had to keep him and the guardians, keeping carefully within the law, neglected nothing that could sap little Ginx's vitality, deaden his instincts, derange moral action, cause hope to die within his infant breast almost as soon as it was born." Every pauper was to them an obnoxious charge to be reduced to a MINIMUM or NIL. The Baby's const.i.tution alone prevented his reduction to NIL.

The bill of costs against St. Bartemeus was 1,600 pounds. Just as it was taxed, one of the persons who had deserted Ginx's Baby was arrested for theft. The Baby's clothes, given by the d.u.c.h.ess, were found in this person's possession. She confessed all about the Baby, and so the guardians traced the Baby's father and delivered to Ginx, through an agent, the famous child, with the benediction--"There he is; d.a.m.n him!"

Mrs. Ginx couldn't recognize the Baby. His brothers and sisters would have nothing to do with him. Ginx took the Baby out one night, left it on the steps of a large building in Pall Mall, and slunk away out of the pages of "this strange, eventful history."

The Baby piped. The door of the house, a club, opened and the baby was taken in. It was the Radical Club, but it was as conservative as it could be in its reception of the waif, and it was only in perfunctory kindness that the Club gave him shelter.

The Fogey Club heard of the Baby and bethought itself of making campaign material of him. The Fogies instructed their "organs" to dilate upon the disgraceful apathy of the Radicals toward the foundling. The Fogies kidnapped the Baby; the Radicals stole him back. The Baby was again a great "question." However, other questions supervened, although it was understood that Sir Charles Sterling was "to get a night" to bring up the case of Ginx's Baby in Parliament. a.s.sociations were formed in the metropolis for disposing of Ginx's Baby by expatriation or otherwise. A peer suddenly sprung the matter by proposing to send the Baby to the Antipodes at the expense of the nation. The question was debated with elaborate stilted stult.i.tude and the n.o.ble lord withdrew his motion.

The Baby tired of life at the clubs. He borrowed some clothes, some forks, some spoons, without leave, and then took his leave.

No attempt was made to recover him. He was fifteen. "He pitted his wits against starvation." He found the world terribly full everywhere he went. He went through a career of penury, of honest and dishonest callings, of 'scapes and captures, imprisonments and other punishments.

Midnight on Vauxhall Bridge! The form of a man emerged from the dark and outlined itself against the haze of sky. There was a dull flash of a face in the gloom. The shadow leaped far out into the night. Splash! "Society, which, in the sacred names of Law and Charity, forbade the father to throw his child over Vauxhall Bridge, at a time when he was alike unconscious of life and death, has at last driven him over the parapet into the greedy waters."

The questions of the book I have condensed here are as alive to-day as are thousands of other Ginx's Babies in all our big cities. While philanthropists and politicians, priests and preachers, men and women theorize about the questions, the questions grow "more insoluble." What is to be done? is the first question. How is it to be done is a question which is secondary and its discussion is useless until the first is settled. Too much State drove Ginx's Baby into the Thames. What's everybody's business is n.o.body's business. If the uncountable babies of innumerable Ginx's are to be aided, some one must aid them for the mere pleasure there is in loving-kindness.

A baby is a human being, not a problem. A baby can't be explained away by pure reason, because he didn't come by that route. Love brought him here and only Love can nourish him to the fullness of growth in soul and mind. True many come who, seemingly, were better drowned like surplus puppies or kittens. But who shall select those to survive? Grecian wisdom once attempted to improve on "natural selection" and Greece is the ghost of a vanished glory. Why shouldn't Ginx have drowned his Baby--or himself before the multiplication in the result of which the Baby was a unit?

I don't know why, unless because there is, in every life, even the most successful, apparently, enough of unhappiness and failure and emptiness to justify, at a given moment, a "leap in the dark." This logic of suicide would annihilate the race. The unwelcome Baby may be the best. Life must try us all. Those who do not stand the test disappear. Their own weakness eliminate them. Myriads must fail that a few may succeed a very little.

Ginx at least owed his Baby reparation for bringing about the first misfortune, his birth. Ginx was a sophist. His mercy of murder for the child was regard for himself. His reasoning was right. His heart was full of self and, ergo, wrong. Ginx surrendered before the fight was fought. So did the Baby. There is nothing for it, my good masters, but a fight to a finish. Yes, even though Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, still must we fight, like Macbeth, and all the more valiantly for that we know our sins are heavy upon our heads and hearts. "Courage, my comrades, the devil is dead," said Denys of Burgundy. But there is a greater courage, my comrades: it is fighting the devil who never dies until the devil in us all shall die. This is not the courage of despair, but of hope and faith that by conquest of ourselves shall Evil be slain, though only in a fair, far time, and by scores of deaths of us and of our kind. That is why the book "Ginx's Baby" is false in its demonstration that it had been better if the "hero" had been thrown off the bridge at first. Its philosophy is the philosophy of the "quitter." The only courage is to endure.

And what shall we do for the Ginx's Babies so mult.i.tudinous in their misery? These, too, we must endure. It were well to love them a little, as babies, and not to discuss them so much as "questions." It were well if there were a little more individual charity; a good deal less of the kind described by Boyle O'Reilly as conducted "in the name of a cautious statistical Christ." If every one would do a little good for the poor, the unfortunate, the afflicted, the sum of all our doing would be a great deal of good. Take a penny from every person in the United States and give it to one man and he has seven hundred thousand dollars.

Every Ginx's Baby in any land can be helped somewhat, and Ginx himself must do his share, to the full limit of his capacity for doing. We cannot save them all; cannot make their lives successes. Success is the sum of many failures. A million seeds must die that one rose may bloom. You or I may be the means, in part, of saving one child from the plunge of Vauxhall Bridge or through the gallows-trap. And one is worth while. That is the way to "look out for number one." Individual effort for individuals is the true humanitarianism. Lift up the person nearest you, who needs a.s.sistance. Bend to him and feel your own statue increase by so much as you uplift him. Et voila tout. St. Louis, December 16th, 1897.

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH MISSOURI?

BY WILLIAM MARION REEDY.

The art of politics in Missouri is not more depraved than in most other states, I imagine; but it seems that in Missouri the pract.i.tioners of that art are somewhat coa.r.s.er-grained and smaller-minded than men in the like charlatanry elsewhere. I think I may write of them and their methods in the capacity of critic, without obtruding my prejudices as a gold-bug.

Missouri, like every other Western State, took kindly to the silver theory; indeed, possessing, as one of its chief citizens, Mr. Bland, a champion of silver for thirty years, Missouri was as ready for 16 to 1 as any silver producing State. "Coin's" book found welcome wide and warm when it appeared among a people who admired Mr. Bland, and who had equally admired "Farmer" Hatch.

But while the people of Missouri were for silver it was only partly in deference to popular opinion that the Democratic party declared for that doctrine.

When Col. Chas. H. Jones became editor of the Republic, coming from Jacksonville, Florida, he was taken up by the then Governor David R. Francis, a grain merchant, or speculator, a very rich man and an aristocrat. The two were fast friends until, Col.

Jones having married, the wife of the governor, for reasons sufficient to herself, refused to receive Mrs. Jones. Out of this social episode grew a feud. As the first result of that feud Col.

Jones was forced out of the Republic. He went to the New York World. Ad interim, however, he managed to defeat the plan of President Cleveland to name Mr. Francis as a member of his cabinet in 1893. When Col. Jones fell out with Mr. Francis, the editor made an alliance with Mr. Joel Stone, who succeeded Mr.

Francis as governor of Missouri.

In course of time Col. Jones was sent West to take charge of the Post-Dispatch. When he arrived in St. Louis he conferred with Governor Stone. Col. Jones wanted to destroy Francis, who had control of the Democratic party machinery. Francis had been "mentioned" for president. He was the brilliant, if chilly, leader of the party. He had wealth and he and his friends could "take care of" the visiting rural committeeman. Col. Jones scented the silver sentiment in the State. That sentiment suggested, naturally, antipathy to wealthy bosses and "grain gamblers." Col. Jones declared that the way to destroy Francis was by "taking up silver." And Col. Jones "took it up" with a vengeance. The sentiment had been lurking among the people all the time. For years the party committees warned the speakers to "steer clear of the money question." Col. Jones in print and Governor Stone on the stump, appealed to the people on the very thing the old rulers of the party had hedged on, and the battle was on.

Mr. Francis evaded the fight. He wanted harmony. He was suave and clammy but non-committal. He did not wish to come out for silver.

He did not wish to oppose the silver people. Once or twice he threatened to fight and then he threw up his hands. Missouri declared for silver at 16 to 1, without a dissenting voice in the convention. The State committee was enlarged to render Mr.

Francis' friends innocuous. Col. Jones and Governor Stone voted to support Bland for President at the Chicago convention and the National battle was precipitated. When Missouri declared for silver, with a candidate who represented the silver issue wholly and whose character endeared him especially to the bucolics everywhere, the silver sentiment became a political force to reckon with the stampede that ended with the nomination of Mr.

Bryan was started.

So it seems to me that if Mrs. Francis had swallowed her prejudices and received Mrs. Jones there might have been a great deal of different history. Mrs. Jones was the Helen of the Siege of Wall Street. This incident is important only as showing, once again, how trifling things affect the destinies of Nations.

Had Mr. Francis and Col. Jones never disagreed, Col. Jones never would have left the "Republic." Col. Jones would have stood by Francis' interests as a banker and monied man. Col. Jones never would have obtained control of the "Post-Dispatch." Silver sentiment would have been smothered by the politicians of Missouri and Bland never would have been a candidate. There would have been no Missouri alliance with Mr. Altgeld and the combination of peculiar political ability that was attracted to Stone. Jones and Altgeld never would have dominated the Chicago convention as wholly as they did. To resent an affront to Mrs.

Jones the Democratic party was rent asunder. Mr. Bland was taken up to destroy Mr. Francis and was himself destroyed in due time.

The senators from Missouri, Messrs. Vest and c.o.c.krell, were forced into the anti-Francis movement under threat of defeat by the men who had identified themselves with the popular feeling for their own purposes.

The late Mr. McCullagh of the Globe-Democrat, told me, when Vest became a silver champion that it was because he had to do so to retain his seat, and that Mr. McCullagh was a friend and extravagant admirer of Mr. Vest and his abilities.

Whatever one may think of silver he must admit that the turning down of Mr. Francis was a good thing. Mr. Francis represented the dodging Democracy. He stood for the evasion of a great issue; for intellectual and moral cowardice, for nauseous neutralism. Mr.

Francis was the impersonation of political insincerity. He thought of the party--of keeping the party together, with himself on top--and his stand for what the opponents of silver call "sound money" was a very perfunctory performance. He never declared himself against the Chicago platform until he was offered the Secretaryship of the Interior, vice Hoke Smith, resigned.

In this we have a picture of the man whom I saw alluded to the other day as "the leader of the sound money forces in Missouri."

A leader! Why, he couldn't be induced to come within the borders of the State, during the fight, nor did he come until he came home to vote, when, under the inspiration of a stupendous sound money parade, he declared himself.

When silver was the cry every spoilsman took it up, and the fact is that some of the loudest shouting was done by men who cared not at all for the doctrine. All the politicians got on the popular side. Every fellow that wanted an office became a shrieker for silver. All the men who had truckled to Francis while he was in power left him and went with the crowd. The party in Missouri had been in power for years and the same old gang had controlled the offices. They stayed together and they still retained their grip upon the offices. The gang got together on silver as upon everything else. The elimination of Francis carried out of the party no politicians of note. They remained.

The corporation "attorneys" or lobbyists stood by the regulars.

The fine workers of the Missouri Pacific, the 'Frisco, the Burlington roads were hand in glove with the party which was making war on corporations, with its mouth. Some of the railroads contributed to the support of the men who were "denouncing them in unmeasured terms." No one was more regular than "Bill" Phelps, the Missouri Pacific lobbyist, against whom Governor Stone and Col. Jones made war in connection with the enactment of a fellow-servant law. Col. Spencer of the Burlington was with the regulars too. All the party hacks, the caucus bosses, the township and country and congressional district leaders who had made the ticket for years fell in line. There was made no real change in party management. Mr. Francis and his lieutenant, Mr.

Maffitt, were turned down, but the crowd that had trained with them went over to the opposition. I am not aspersing the silver cause. I mean to say only that the gang that ran things joined the silver cause in order to stay in power. There were no politicians at all in the ranks of the Missouri Gold Democrats.

The politicians seized upon silver, which represented a general desire for change, in order to fasten themselves more thoroughly upon the party.

The result was that the nominations for State offices went to the same old crowd. Mr. Sesueur was nominated for Secretary of State.

Mr. Siebert, who had been auditor, was nominated again. Frank Pitts, an ex-Confederate, who had been a candidate for a dozen things, but who, when defeated, never had done aught but "take his medicine," was nominated for Treasurer. Mr. Lon V. Stephens, who had been Treasurer was nominated for Governor and elected. He had been appointed Treasurer by Francis after the Noland defalcation, had been elected and had changed his allegiance from Francis to Stone. Mr. Stone, a man with somewhat of the scholarly taint to him, inclined to think, but p.r.o.ne to machination, ambitious, vindictive, able, elusive, made Stephens the nominee, and has been "sore at himself" ever since.

Stephens is a National banker. His family is wealthy and his wife's family is said to be the wealthiest in the State. It was the belief that when he was nominated he would "cough up" large "chunks of dough." But he didn't. The necessity for "dough" was evident to the managers of the party. There was no hope for funds from the interests that feared free silver. They wanted an "angel" candidate. Stephens failed to contribute. As an "angel"

he was a "frost."

This National banker made a campaign of extreme rabidity. When Debs was managing the big Chicago strike this man wrote a letter to the Mirror in which he advocated Gatling guns for the suppression of Debs and his like. When he wanted to be Comptroller of the Currency under Cleveland he declared in an interview that Cleveland was "the greatest man since Jesus Christ." He denied that he was a National banker with his name on the bank's stationery. He denounced Cleveland for calling out the troops to suppress Debs. And while in the country he was posing as the enemy of the plutocrats, he was "tipping" them the wink in the cities, that they needn't be afraid he would hurt their interests. This candidate, who was proclaiming honesty had to suppress in Col. Jones' paper, a sensation dealing with his own alleged irregularities in the settlement of his father's estate.

This personal-liberty Democrat had written a letter in favor of Prohibition. Mr. Stephens proclaimed that he was going to purify politics. When elected he appointed as Election Commissioner a man against whom there was a tremendous protest upon the part of the best element of the party. This man was accused of taking $1,200 from Ed Butler, the St. Louis "boss," to give to the members of the St. Louis city committee to boom the charter amendment providing for capital removal, and of putting the money in his own pocket. Ed. Butler entered suit for the money against this man Brady and his friend Higgins, appointed Excise Commissioner by Stephens. The suit was dismissed at Brady's expense. Then the capital movers at Sedalia sued for the money on the ground that the contract was against public polity. In other words he took the money to do something illegal, and, therefore, was ent.i.tled to keep it after failing to do the wrong. As a result of my comment upon this, Mr. Brady and I had a pa.s.sage at fisticuffs on the street the other day, and the day following the Circuit Court here decided that the contract was valid and the suit for $1,200 would have to be tried on the issue of fact.

Mr. Brady was appointed Election Commissioner at the instigation of Mr. Louis C. Nelson, a St. Louis banker, brother-in-law of Governor Stephens. Mr. Brady is interested in a wholesale liquor store. His company rents a building from Mr. Nelson. Mr. Nelson is said to be interested in the company.

Mr. Higgins, the Excise Commissioner, was appointed at Mr.

Nelson's instigation. The Excise Commissioner has charge of the issuance of all saloon licenses in St. Louis, Mr. Higgins is a good friend of Brady's and a protege of Nelson. A whisky drummer told me, and it is a common report around St. Louis, that the relationship of the man controlling the saloon licenses to Brady and Nelson is taken advantage of by the saloon men to ingratiate themselves by buying supplies at Brady's liquor store. I am not adding a word of color to the aspect of the case. The saloons are under tribute to Stephens' brother-in-law and his appointees.

These people may not hold up the saloons, but the saloonists know that it is good policy to stand in with "the powers that be." A daily paper, the "Star," a.s.serts that one of the Police Commissioners, a brewer, uses his position as controller of the police to protect dive-keepers who sell his beer. The paper has not been sued for libel. All this has been done in the name of silver and friendship for the people.