Two Thousand Miles on an Automobile Part 24

But government is necessary, and just because it is necessary therefore it cannot be an evil. Hospitals are necessary, and just because they are necessary therefore they cannot be evils. Places for restraining the insane and criminal are necessary, and therefore not evil.

The weaknesses of humanity may occasion these necessities; but the evil, if any, is inherent in the const.i.tution of man and not in the social organization. It is the individual and not society that has need of government, of hospitals, of asylums, of prisons.

Anarchy does not involve, as Huxley suggests, "the highest conceivable grade of perfection of social existence." Not at all.

What it does involve is the highest conceivable grade of individual existence; in fact, of a grade so high that it is quite beyond conception,--in short, it involves human perfectibility.

Anarchy proper involves the complete emanc.i.p.ation of every individual from all restraints and compulsions; it involves a social condition wherein absolutely no authority is imposed upon any individual, where no requirement of any kind is made against the will of any member--man, woman, or child; where everything is left to individual initiation.

So far from such a "state of society" being "the highest conceivable grade of perfection of social existence," it is not conceivable at all, and the farther the mind goes in attempting to grasp it, the more hopelessly dreary does the scheme become.

When men spontaneously do justice and love mercy, as Huxley suggests, and when each individual is mentally, physically, and morally sound, as he must be to support and govern himself, then, and not till then, will it be possible to dispense with government; but even then it is more conceivable than otherwise that these perfect individuals would--as a mere division of labor, as a mere matter of economy--adopt and enforce some rules and regulations for the benefit of all; it would be necessary to do so unless the individuals were not only perfect, but also absolutely of one mind on all subjects relating to their welfare. Can the imagination picture existence more inane?

But regardless of what the mentally, physically, and morally perfect individuals might do after attaining their perfection, anarchy a.s.sumes the millennium,--and the millennium is yet a long way off. If the future of anarchy depends upon the physical, mental, and moral perfection of its advocates, the outlook is gloomy indeed, for a theory never had a following more imperfect in all these respects.

The patent fact that most governments, both national and local, are corruptly, extravagantly, and badly administered tends to obscure our judgment, so that we a.s.sent, without thinking, to the proposition that government is an evil, and then argue that it is a necessary evil. But government is not evil because there are evils incidental to its administration. Every human inst.i.tution partakes of the frailties of the individual; it could not be otherwise; all social inst.i.tutions are human, not superhuman.

With progress it is to be hoped that there will be fewer wars, fewer crimes, fewer wrongs, so that government will have less and less to do and drop many of its functions,--that is the sort of anarchy every one hopes for; that is the sort of anarchy the late Phillips Brooks had in mind when he said, "He is the benefactor of his race who makes it possible to have one law less. He is the enemy of his kind who would lay upon the shoulders of arbitrary government one burden which might be carried by the educated conscience and character of the community."

But a.s.sume that war is no more and armies are disbanded; that crimes are no more and police are dismissed; that wrongs are no more and courts are dissolved,--what then?

My neighbor becomes slightly insane, is very noisy and threatening; my wife and children, who are terrorized, wish him restrained; but his friends do not admit that he is insane, or, admitting his peculiarities, insist my family and I ought to put up with them; the man himself is quite sane enough to appreciate the discussion and object to any restraint. Now, who shall decide?

Suppose the entire community--save the man and one or two sympathizing cranks--is clearly of the opinion the man is insane and should be restrained, who is to decide the matter? and when it is decided, who is to enforce the decision by imposing the authority of the community upon the individual? If the community a.s.serts its authority in any manner or form, that is government.

If every inst.i.tution, including government, were abolished to-morrow, the percentage of births that would turn out blind, crippled, and feeble both mentally and physically, wayward, eccentric, and insane would continue practically the same, and the community would be obliged to provide inst.i.tutions for these unfortunates, the community would be obliged to patrol the streets for them, the community would be obliged to pa.s.s upon their condition and support or restrain them; in short, the abolished inst.i.tutions--including tribunals of some kind, police, prisons, asylums--would be promptly restored.

The anarchist would argue that all this may be done by voluntary a.s.sociation and without compulsion; but the man arrested, or confined in the insane asylum against his will, would be of a contrary opinion. The debate might involve his friends and sympathizers until in every close case--as now--the community would be divided in hostile camps, one side urging release of the accused, the other urging his detention. Who is to hold the scale and decide?

The fundamental error of anarchists, and of most theorists who discuss "government" and "the state," lies in the tacit a.s.sumption that "government" and "the state" are ent.i.ties to be dealt with quite apart from the individual; that both may be modified or abolished by laws or resolutions to that effect.

If anything is clearly demonstrated as true, it is that both "government" and "the state" have been evolved out of our own necessities; neither was imposed from without, but both have been evolved from within; both are forms of co-operation. For the time being the "state" and "government," as well as the "church" and all human inst.i.tutions, may be modified or seemingly abolished, but they come back to serve essentially the same purpose. The French Revolution was an organized attempt to overturn the foundations of society and hasten progress by moving the hands of the clock forward a few centuries,--the net result was a despotism the like of which the world has not known since the days of Rome.

Anarchy as a system is a bubble, the iridescent hues of which attract, but which vanish into thin air on the slightest contact with reality; it is the perpetual motion of sociology; the fourth dimension of economies; the squaring of the political circle.

The apostles of anarchy are a queer lot,--G.o.dwin in England, Proudhon, Grave, and Saurin in France, Schmidt ("Stirner"), Faucher, Hess, and Marr in Germany, Bakunin and Krapotkin in Russia, Reclus in Belgium, with Most and Tucker in America, sum up the princ.i.p.al lights,--with the exception of the geographer Reclus, not a sound and sane man among them; in fact, scarcely any two agree upon a single proposition save the broad generalization that government is an evil which must be eliminated. Until they do agree upon some one measure or proposition of practical importance, the world has little to fear from their discussions and there is no reason why any attempt should be made to suppress the debate. If government is an evil, as so many men who are not anarchists keep repeating, then the sooner we know it and find the remedy the better; but if government is simply one of many human inst.i.tutions developed logically and inevitably to meet conditions created by individual shortcomings, then government will tend to diminish as we correct our own failings, but that it will entirely disappear is hardly likely, since it is inconceivable that men on this earth should ever attain such a condition of perfection that possibility of disagreement is absolutely and forever removed.

Anarchism as a doctrine, as a theory, involves no act of violence any more than communism or socialism.

Between the a.s.sa.s.sination of a ruler and the doctrine of anarchy there is no necessary connection. The philosophic anarchist simply believes anarchy is to be the final result of progress and evolution, just as the communist believes that communism will be the outcome; neither theorist would see the slightest advantage in trying to hasten the slow but sure progress of events by deeds of violence; in fact, both theorists would regret such deeds as certain to prove reactionary and r.e.t.a.r.d the march of events.

The world has nothing to fear from anarchism as a theory, and up to thirty or forty years ago it was nothing but a theory.

The "propaganda of action" came out of Russia about forty years ago, and is the offspring of Russian nihilism.

The "propaganda of action" is the protest of impatience against evolution; it is the effort to hasten progress by deeds of violence.

From the few who, like Bakunin, Brousse, and Krapotkin, have written about the "propaganda of action" with sufficient coherence to make themselves understood, it appears that it is not their hope to destroy government by removing all executive heads,--even their tortured brains recognize the impossibility of that task; nor do they hope to so far terrify rulers as to bring about their abdication. Not at all; but they do hope by deeds of violence to so attract attention to the theory of anarchy as to win followers;--in other words, murders such as those of Humbert, Carnot, and President McKinley were mere advertis.e.m.e.nts of anarchism. In the words of Brousse, "Deeds are talked of on all sides; the indifferent ma.s.ses inquire about their origin, and thus pay attention to the new doctrine and discuss it. Let men once get as far as this, and it is not hard to win over many of them."

Hence, the greater the crime the greater the advertis.e.m.e.nt; from that point of view, the shooting of President McKinley, under circ.u.mstances so atrocious, is so far the greatest achievement of the "propaganda of action."

It is worth noting that the "reign of terror" which the Nihilists sought to and did create in Russia was for a far more practical and immediate purpose. They sought to terrify the government into granting reforms; so far from seeking to annihilate the government, they sought to spur it into activity for the benefit of the ma.s.ses.

The methods of the Nihilists, without the excuse of their object, were borrowed by the more fanatical anarchists, and applied to the advertising of their belief. Since the adoption of the "propaganda of action" by the extremists, anarchism has undergone a great change. It has pa.s.sed from a visionary and harmless theory, as advocated by G.o.dwin, Proudhon, and Reclus, to a very concrete agency of crime and destruction under the teachings of such as Bakunin, Krapotkin, and Most; not forgetting certain women like Louise Michel in France and Emma Goldman in this country who out- Herod Herod;--when a woman goes to the devil she frightens him; his Satanic majesty welcomes a man, but dreads a woman; to a woman the downward path is a toboggan slide, to a man it is a gentle but seductive descent.

It is against the "propaganda of action" that legislation must be directed, not because it is any part of anarchism, but because it is the propaganda of crime.

Laws directed towards the suppression of anarchism might result in more harm than good, but crime is quite another matter. It is one thing to advocate less and less of government, to preach the final disappearance of government and the evolution of anarchy; it is a fundamentally different thing to advocate the destruction of life or property as a means to hasten the end.

The criminal action and the criminal advice must be dissociated entirely from any political or social theory. It does not matter what a man's ultimate purpose may be; he may be a communist or a socialist, a Republican or a Democrat, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian; when he advises, commits, or condones a murder, his conduct is not measured by his convictions,--unless, of course, he is insane; his advice is measured by its probable and actual consequences; his deeds speak for themselves.

A man is not to be punished or silenced for saying he believes in anarchy, his convictions on that point are a matter of indifference to those who believe otherwise. But a man is to be punished for saying or doing things which result in injuring others; and the advice, whether given in person to the individual who commits the deed, or given generally in lecture or print, if it moves the individual to action, is equally criminal.

On August 20, 1886, eight men were found guilty of murder in Chicago, seven were condemned to death and one to the penitentiary; four were afterwards hanged, one killed himself in jail, and three were imprisoned.

These men were convicted of a crime with which, so far as the evidence showed, they had no direct connection; but their speeches, writings, and conduct prior to the actual commission of the crime had been such that they were held guilty of having incited the murder.

During the spring of 1886 there were many strikes and a great deal of excitement growing out of the "eight-hour movement in Chicago."

There was much disorder. On the evening of May 4 a meeting was held in what was known as Haymarket Square, at this meeting three of the condemned made speeches. About ten o'clock a platoon of police marched to the Square, halted a short distance from the wagon where the speakers were, and an officer commanded the meeting to immediately and peaceably disperse. Thereupon a bomb was thrown from near the wagon into the ranks of the policemen, where it exploded, killing and wounding a number.

The man who threw the bomb was never positively identified, but it was probably one Rudolph Schnaubelt, who disappeared. At all events, the condemned were not connected with the actual throwing; they were convicted upon the theory that they were co-conspirators with him by reason of their speeches, writings, and conduct which influenced his conduct.

An even broader doctrine of liability is announced in the following paragraph from the opinion of the Supreme Court of Illinois:

"If the defendants, as a means of bringing about the social revolution and as a part of the larger conspiracy to effect such revolution, also conspired to excite cla.s.ses of workingmen in Chicago into sedition, tumult, and riot, and to the use of deadly weapons and the taking of human life, and for the purpose of producing such tumult, riot, use of weapons and taking of life, advised and encouraged such cla.s.ses by newspaper articles and speeches to murder the authorities of the city, and a murder of a policeman resulted from such advice and encouragement, then defendants are responsible therefor."

It is the logical application of this proposition that will defeat the "propaganda of action." If it be enacted that any man who advocates the commission of any criminal act, or who afterwards condones the crime, shall be deemed guilty of an offence equal to that advocated or condoned and punished accordingly, the "propaganda of action" in all branches of criminal endeavor will be effectually stifled without the doubtful expedient of directing legislation against any particular social or economic theory.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN NEW YORK TO BUFFALO UP THE HILL

It was Sat.u.r.day, the 14th, at nine o'clock, when we left New York for Albany, following the route of the Endurance Contest.

The morning was bright and warm. The roads were perfect for miles.

We pa.s.sed Kings Bridge, Yonkers, Hastings, and Dobbs Ferry flying.

At Tarrytown we dropped the chain. A link had parted. Pushing the machine under the shade of a tree, a half-hour was spent in replacing the chain and riveting in a new link. All the pins showed more or less wear, and a new chain should have been put on in New York, but none that would fit was to be had.

We dined at Peekskill, and had a machinist go over the chain, riveting the heads of the pins so none would come out again.

Nelson Hill, a mile and a half beyond Peekskill, proved all it was said to be,--and more.

In the course of the trip we had mounted hills that were worse, and hills that were steeper, but only in spots or for short distances; for a steady steep climb Nelson Hill surpa.s.sed anything we found in the entire trip. The hill seems one-half to three-quarters of a mile long, a sharp ascent,--somewhat steeper about half-way up than at the beginning or finish. Accurate measurements were made for the Endurance Contest and the results published.

The grade was just a little too much for the machine, with our luggage and ourselves. It was tiresome walking so far beside the machine, and in attempting to bring it to a stop for a moment's rest the machine got started backward, and was well on its way down the hill, gaining speed every fraction of a second. It was a short, sharp chase to catch the lever operating the emergency brake,--which luckily operated by being pushed forward from the seat,--a pull on the lever and the machine was brought to a stop with the rear wheels hanging over the edge of a gulley** at the side. After that experience the machine was allowed to go to the top without any more attempts to rest.

At Fishkill Village we saved a few miles and some bad road by continuing on to Poughkeepsie by the inland road instead of going down to the Landing.

We inquired the way from an old man, who said, "If you want to go to P'keepsie, follow the road just this side the post-office; you will save a good many miles, and have a good road; if you want to follow the other fellers, then keep straight on down to the Landing; but why they went down there, beats me."

It was six-thirty when we arrived at Poughkeepsie. As the next day would be Sunday, we made sure of a supply of gasoline that night.