Brann the Iconoclast Volume 12 Part 19

The awful responsibility of leadership rests upon us.

We have shattered the scepter of the tyrant and broken the shackles of the slave; we have torn the diadem from the prince's brow and placed the fasces of authority in the hands of the people; we have undertaken to lead the human race from the Slough of Despond to the Delectable Mountains, where Justice reigns supreme and every son of Adam may find life worth living. Can we make good our glorious promises? Are we equal to the task to which we have given our hand? Ten thousand times the world has asked this question, but there is neither Dodona Oak nor Delphic Oracle to make reply--the future alone can answer. All eyes are upon us, in hope or fear, in prayer or protest. The fierce light that beats upon a throne were as the firefly's dull flame to the lightning's flash compared with that which illumes the every act of this champion of human progress, this knight par excellence, this Moses of the nations.

It is an important role which G.o.d hath a.s.signed to us in the great drama of life, yet into a part so pregnant with fate we too often inject the levity of the farce.

While preaching equal rights to all and special privileges to none, we pa.s.s laws that divide the people of this land into princes and paupers, into masters and slaves. On July 4th we shout for the old flag, and all the rest of the year we clamor for an appropriation. While boasting that we are sovereigns by right divine and equal unto kings, we hasten to lay our hair beneath the feet of every s...o...b..tic dude who hither drifts,

"Stuck o'er with t.i.tles and hung around with strings."

The soldier who serves the state demands a pension, and every burning patriot wants an office. We boast that the people rule, and office-holders are but public servants; yet more than a moiety of us would hang our crowns on a hickory limb and swim a river to break into official bondage.

Here in Texas seven distinguished citizens are already chasing the governorship like a pack of hungry wolves after a wounded fawn, while the woods are full of brunette equines who have taken for their motto,

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

Yes, our office-holders are indeed our public servants-- and my experience with servants has been that they usually run the whole shebang.

Theoretically we have the best government on the globe, but it is so brutally mismanaged by our blessed public servants that it produces the same evil conditions that have d.a.m.ned the worst. Even Americans whose forefathers dined on faith at Valley Forge, or fought at Lundy's Lane, have become so discouraged by political bossism, so heartsick with hope deferred that they quote approvingly those lines of Pope,

"For forms government let fools contest, Whate'er is best administered is best."

While boasting of popular government, we suffer ourselves to be led about by self-seeking politicians like a blind man by a scurvy poodle; we made partisanship paramount to patriotism--have reserved the poet's line, and now

"All are for a party and none are for the state."

It were well for us to make July 4th less an occasion for self-glorification than for prayerful consideration of the dangers upon which we are drifting in these piping times of peace--dangers that arise, not in foreign courts and camps, but are conceived in sin by the American plutocracy and brought forth in iniquity by our own political bosses. We have no longer aught to fear from the outside world. Uncle Sam can, if need be, marshal forth to battle eight million as intrepid sons as those who crowned old Bunker Hill with flame or bathed the crests of Gettysburg with blood. Upon such a wall of oak and iron the powers of the majestic world would beat in vain. Our altars and our fanes are far beyond the reach of a foreign foe; but the rock that recks not the thunderbolt nor bows to the fierce simoon, is swept from its base by the unconsidered brook.

No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach; no country can be secure, I care not if Moses makes its const.i.tution and Solon frame its laws, when half its people are homeless and brawny giants must beg their bread. As far back as history's dawn the rise of the plutocracy and the impoverishment of the common people have heralded the downfall of the state. Thus fell imperial Rome, that once did rule the world, and Need and Greed are the ballistae and battering-rams that are pounding to-day with tremendous power upon every throne of Europe and rocking the very civilization of the world from turret to foundation stone.

We have achieved liberty, but have yet to learn in this strange new land the true significance of life. We have made the dollar the G.o.d of our idolatry, the Alpha and Omega of our existence, and bow the knee to it with a servility as abject as that of courtiers kissing the hand of Kings. As the old pagans sometimes incorporated their lesser in their greater deities that they might worship all at once, so have we put the G.o.ddess of Liberty and Saving Grace on the silver dollar that we may not forget them.

But before G.o.d, I do believe that this selfish, this Mammon-serving and unpatriotic age will pa.s.s, as pa.s.sed the age of brutish ignorance, as pa.s.sed the age of tyranny. I believe the day will come--oh blessed dawn!--when we'll no longer place the badge of party servitude above the crown of American sovereignty, the ridiculous oriflamme of foolish division above Old Glory's star-gemmed promise of everlasting unity; when Americans will be in spirit and in truth a band of brothers, the wrongs of one the concern of all; when brains and patriotism will take precedence of boodle and partisanship in our national politics; when labor will no longer fear the cormorant nor capital the commune; when every worthy and industrious citizen may spend his declining days, not in some charity ward, but in the grateful shadow of his own vine and fig-tree, the loving lord of a little world hemmed in by the sacred circle of a home. There was a time, we're told, when to be a Roman was greater than to be a King; yet there came a time when to be a Roman was to be the va.s.sal of a slave.

Change is the order of the universe and nothing stands.

We must go forward or we must go backward--we must press on to grander heights, to greater glories, or see the laurels already won turn to ashes on our brow. We may sometimes slip; shadows may obscure our path; the boulders may bruise our feet; there may be months of mourning and days of agony; but however dark the night, Hope, a poising eagle, will ever burn above the unrisen morrow.

Trials we may have and tribulations sore; but I say unto you, oh brothers mine, that while G.o.d reigns and the human race endures, this nation, born of our father's blood and sanctified by our mother's tears, shall never pa.s.s away.

THE LONE STAR.

These balmy days, I often recall my ideas of Texas before I had the pleasure of mingling with its people,--of becoming myself a Texan. I regret to say that I had accepted Phil Sheridan's estimate of the State--an opinion that still prevails in too many portions of our common country.

After living in Texas for ten years I paid a visit to my people beyond the beautiful Ohio. The old gentlemen sized me up critically, evidently expecting to see me wearing war-paint and a brace of bowie-knives.

"So, young man, you're living in Texas?"

"Yes, paw."

"Fell kinder t'hum 'mong them centerpedes, cowboys 'n other varments, I s'pose?"

"Y-y-yes, paw."

"Well, Billy, you allers was a mighty bad boy. I kinder cackalated as how you'd go t'h.e.l.l some day; but, praise G.o.d, I never thought y' was bound fer Texas!"

I a.s.sured him that were I certain h.e.l.l were half as good as Texas, I wouldn't worry so much about my friends who were in politics for their health.

Texas could well afford to spend a million dollars a year for a decade to disabuse the minds of the Northern people--to work it through their hair that the southwest produces something besides hades and hoodlums, jack- rabbits and jays. Were it generally known exactly what Texas is,--what her people, climate and resources--there are not railroads enough running into the state to handle the men and money that would seek homes and investments here. The year 1900 would see ten million prosperous people between the Sabine and Rio Grande; and it would be a people to be proud of,--the young blood of America, the cream of Christendom, the brain and brawn of the Western World.

The light of the Lone Star cannot be much longer hidden; it is breaking even now upon the earth. True knowledge of Texas is spreading,--spreading over the icy North, spreading over the barren East, spreading over crowded Europe--and knowledge of Texas is power unto her salvation.

I was north last summer, and talked Texas, of course.

One day a long, lank, lingering eternity of a gawk sidled up to me, as though he feared I was loaded, and said:

"Great state, that Texas, I 'spose?"

"Rather."

"Purty big, I heer'n tell?"

"Look at the map."

"Gewhillikins, Maria! 'Tis purty dogon gosh-all-fired big, haint she?"

"That's whatever."

" 'Spose you're a gineral, or a corporal, or suthin nuther when you're t'hum?"

"Nop."

"N-no? Jedge, p'haps?"

"No, sir; I am simply a plain, every-day citizen of Texas,--not even a member of the legislature or candidate for congress."

"Hump! Say, Maria, I kinder thought as how that slab-sided galoot was a lyin' when he said he was frum Texas."

He could not conceive of a Texan without a t.i.tle. But Texas will come out all right. I have faith in her future, for many reasons; but chiefly because she has unbounded confidence in herself--because nowhere will you find such local patriotism, such state pride, such love of home as beneath the Lone Star. There are rivalries, but they are not born of bitterness. A Texas is all for Texas.

Within the memory of living men, Oppression's fangs wounded Freedom's snowy breast, and from the ruddy drops Almighty G.o.d did make a star, the brightest that ever blessed the world; but ever have the clouds of calumny and the mists of malice obscured its matchless beauty. Slowly but surely the rank vapors are rolling by, and brighter and ever brighter blazes our astral emblem --born in the field of battle, its lullaby the cannon's thunder, its cradle the hearts of the brave, its nurse necessity, its baptismal rite a rain of blood and tears. May it forever be another beacon of Bethlehem to guide us on to a grander future--a harbinger of hope and happiness, an emblem of love and liberty, and in its deathless splendor go ever shining on.

SLAVE OR SOVEREIGN.

STATUS OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN.

[Synopsis of an address delivered by Mr. Brann, August 10, 1895.]

FELLOW CITIZENS: If I had a million o' money--carefully protected from the income tax by a plutocratic supreme court--I would probably not be here to inquire whether you are Slaves or Sovereigns. And if you could draw your check for seven figures--with any probability of getting it cashed--you would not be here to answer. You'd do just as Dives did: lean back in your luxurious chair and absorb your sangaree, while Lazarus scratched his Populist fleas on your front steps and exploited your garbage barrels for bones. You'd turn up your patrician nose at the lowly proletaire, and if he did but hint that, having created this world's wealth, he was ent.i.tled to something better than hand-outs, you'd have an anti-communistic cat-fit and denounce him as an insolent hoodlum who should be comfortably hanged. That's human nature to a hair, and you are all human,--I suppose--even if the politicians do buy you with gas and sell you for gold.

I tell you frankly that I'm complaining, not because of the other fellow's colossal fortune, but because I can't strike the plutocratic combination. I'm dreadfully anxious to acc.u.mulate a modest fortune--of about fifty millions-- that I may build a comfortable orphan asylum for that vast contingent of Democratic politicians whom the next election will deprive of their "pap."

I'm no philanthropist who's trying to reform the world for the fun of the thing--who's willing to starve to death for the sake of an attractive tombstone. I want to so amend industrial conditions that I won't have to hustle so hard--and so long--between meals; and when they are bettered for me they will be bettered for you, and for every man who--with pick or pen, brain or brawn-- honestly earns his daily bread.