Part 2

If the dispatches from Hogansville, Ga. be correct, the present federal administration is depriving American citizens of their rights to an extent that suggests the impudence of Germany's swell-head emperor or the petty tyranny of the Turk. It appears that a nigger postmaster was appointed at that place who was persona non grata, and the people employed at their own expense the ex-postmaster to receive their mail for them from the moke. Although a man has an inalienable right to appoint what agent he pleases to receive his money or his mail, the ex-p. m. is to be prosecuted for "conducting a post-office." They then ordered their mail to an adjacent town and sent a private messenger for it, but this was prohibited on the plea that a only government has the right to establish a mail route." To crown the infamy the people were not permitted to mail their letters on postal cars. Here are three flagrant violations of the rights of American citizens, and to compel them to patronize a nigger Republican postmaster. The first agent employed by the people was no more "conducting a post-office" than is the ICONOCLAST, which receives and distributes the mail of a dozen or more people. The messenger sent to the adjacent town was no more running a mail route than is the farmer who brings to town the letters written by his neighbors and carries back those intended for them. The postal department has discharged its entire function when it receives mail, by whosoever presented, and delivers it to those for whom it is intended or to those duly authorized to receive it, and the postmaster-general who permits the department to exceed that simple duty and intermeddle with the rights of the people should not only be impeached and removed from office in one time and two motions, but taken by the slack of the pantalettes and pitched headlong into the penitentiary. It appears that the indignant people assaulted the nigger postmaster. That is indeed to be regretted; still I can but wonder that they do not shoot the whole umbilicus out of every impudent tool of a petty tyranny who attempts to prevent them mailing letters on postal cars while that right is freely accorded to others. The whole affair serves to accentuate the contention of the ICONOCLAST that postmasters should not be appointed by successful politicians, but elected by the people. If the latter can be trusted to choose presidents, congressmen, etc. they can certainly be trusted to select competent men to lick stamps and shuffle postal cards. As matters now stand the wishes of the people, who "pay the freight," are in no wise respected--the pie is shoveled out to a horde of hungry political heelers, not because of services rendered their country, but as payment for their pernicious activity in promoting the interests of a corrupt and conscienceless party. Thus it happens that in about half the cases federal officials are regarded with aversion by the people they are supposed to serve. It is to be hoped that every Southern white man who hereafter votes the Republican ticket will have his billets de amour clapper-clawed and liberally scented by some big fat coon.

. . .

The Buffalo (N.Y.) Distress, commenting on the acquittal of a negro near Barton, Ark., who killed another negro for having criminally assaulted a woman of their own race, wants to know if the law of justification would have held good had the rapist been a white man. Had the Distress but paused to reflect that the white men of Arkansas are free silver Democrats, it would not have indulged in a supposition so far-fetched and foolish. Now in Buffalo, which gave Cleveland to the country, and permits a nigger-loving lazar like the editor of the Distress to run at large, almost anything in petticoats, from old Sycorax to a malodorous coon, might be in some danger of assault by so-called Caucasians.

. . .

There's every indication that another gigantic prize fight fake will soon make a swipe for the long green of the cibarious sucker. Were it not a violation of the law of the land and the canons of the Baptist church to wager money that we should give to the missionaries, I'd risk six-bits that Corbett and Fitzsimmons get together within a year and that the gamblers who are on the inside "make a killing." For six months or more before their last mill these two worthies chewed the rag, making everybody believe that the battle was to be for berlud. The odds were on Corbett, and he got lost in the shuffle as a matter of course--just as Fitz did when he mixed it with Sharkey. Now the rag-chewing has begun over again, and Bob is doing the lordly contempt act just as Jeems did before the late unpleasantness. He has "retired"--wants Corbett to "go get er repertashun"--says "Corbett quit in the last go like er cowardly cur." It will take time to work the thing up, to resuscitate the old excitement, to set fools to betting wildly on their favorite; but when the pippin's ripe it will be pulled. There's not the slightest reason for the existence of any personal ill will between these pugs--it's all in the play, and being bad actors they overdo the part of Termagant, do protest too much. It is quite noticeable that in the "big fights" nowadays nobody gets seriously bruised. It's easy enough to start the claret, and an ounce o' blood well smeared satisfies the crowd as well as a barrel. The result of the "fight" will be determined beforehand--as soon as the managers learn how they can scoop the most money. The best thing you can do with your ducats is to send them to me with instructions to bet them even that Bill McKinley's job will soon fit Bryan. The man who bets on the result of a prize-fight ought to have a guardian appointed.

. . .

A Los Angeles, Cal., correspondent informs me that the editor of the Times of that town, who I trimmed up last month for permitting impudent coons to insult Southern white women through his columns, is named "Col." H. G. Otis, and that during the war he commanded a negro company. He also sends me the following extract from the alleged newspaper published by the ex-captain of the Darktown Paladins:

In considering the crimes of which some negroes are frequently guilty it should not be forgotten that these traits of violent sensuality are undoubtedly inherited from mothers and grandmothers who were subjected to the lust of their masters under the slavery system. In other words, the sins of the fathers are being visited upon their children to the third and fourth generation.

That is a vast improvement over the original statement published by Coon-Captain Otis to the effect that Southern white women seek black paramours, and that most lynchings are caused by the guilty parties getting caught. It is a matter of utter indifference to the ex-slaveholders what this calumnious little fice says about them, if he will but refrain from voiding his fetid rheum upon their families. Doubtless some slaveholders were degraded sensualists, but such were exceptions to the rule. Not one yaller nigger in a hundred is the child of its mother's old master. There were comparatively few mulattoes in the South before the war, most of these were the offspring of white overseers--and it is a notorious fact that a majority of our professional "nigger-drivers" were from the North. This is no reflection on the character of the Northern people--these fellows were simply the feculent scum, the excrementitious offscourings of civilization. And now I remember that a second-cousin of mine in Kentucky has an overseer from Ohio named Otis. A very thrifty and choleric man was my cousin, and considering a yaller nigger less valuable than a black one, he threatened to subject his overseer to a surgical operation if another half-breed pickaninny appeared on the place. I do wonder if this "Col." Otis--who knew so much about the management of coons that he was placed in command of a colored company--can be the same fellow; also what was the result of my relative's ultimatum? Can anybody in Los Angeles tell me what state this "Col." Otis came from, or send me a good picture of the ex-commander of coons?

. . .

While the preachers were hustling out of the fever infected districts of Louisiana, the Sisters of Charity were hurrying in from points as far distant as San Francisco. And what were the A. P. Apes doing? They were standing afar off, pointing the finger of scorn at these angels of mercy and calling them "prostitutes of the priesthood." In this land every man has a perfect right to entertain such religious views as he likes; but those who defame women who cheerfully risk their lives for others' sake should be promptly shot. "By their fruits ye shall know them," says the Good Book; and while the Church of Rome is producing Good Samaritans to wrestle with the plague, the A. P. Ape is filling the penitentiaries. I care nothing for the apostolic pretensions of the Pope or the dogmas of the Priesthood; but I'm strongly tempted to make a few off-hand observations with a six-shooter should these papaphobes speak disrespectfully of the Sisters of Charity in my presence.

. . .

Justice Van Fleet of the supreme court of California recently rendered an opinion which indicates the utter emptiness of our boast that in this land all men are equal before the law. Because of the confusion or ignorance of a new motorman, the young child of a plumber, playing upon the track, was killed by an electric car. The parents sued the company and were awarded damages in the sum of six thousand dollars. Defendant took an appeal, which the supreme court sustained, and the cause was remanded on the ground that the damages awarded were excessive--that the boy would probably have followed his father's occupation, and an embryo workman is not, in Justice Van Fleet's opinion, worth so much money! Measured by this standard, what would have been the average "value" of American presidents when they were boys? Now that Justice Van Fleet is measuring human life solely by the gold standard, perhaps he can tell us what a juvenile Shakespeare or Webster is "worth." I have held to the opinion heretofore that blood could not be measured by boodle, that the children of the common people were of as much importance in the eye of the law as the progeny of the plutocrat--that the anguish of parents did not depend on the length of the purse; but Justice Van Fleet seems to agree with Kernan's weeping Canuck, that the more siller one has the more deeply he feels the loss of a son. He seems to need a powerful cardac for his heart and a hot mush poultice for his head, being as fine a combination of knave and fool, as one can easily find. Had the supreme court declared that the plaintiffs in the case were not entitled to a dollar I would heartily approve the opinion; but to measure the "value" of a son by the gain-getting capacity of its sire is simply monstrous. A statute should be enforced impartially, without regard to persons; but I should like to see the law so amended that people could not trade upon their tears, could not coin the blood of their relatives to fill their pockets. A child should not be considered a piece of property for which the accidental destroyer must PAY, just as a railway company must cough up the cash value of the cow it kills. As not one child in a thousand ever returns to its parents the cost of its rearing it cannot be urged that the plaintiffs in this case were pecuniarily damaged one penny. All they had to sell was "mental anguish," and that should never be made a merchantable commodity. We have criminal courts to deal with those who, through criminal negligence or otherwise occasion death. It may be argued that when the party killed has dependants for whom he or she is providing, the slayer should be compelled to make good the damage in so far as money can do it. I say NO--that if there be blood guiltiness let the offender be punished in accordance with our criminal code; if there be none then is he blameless, and to deprive a person of his property because of a harmless act is a crime. "But the dependants should be provided for." Certainly they should; but not through rank injustice to others. We are carrying entirely too far the theory that the principal is responsible for the acts of his agents. If the agent is guilty of criminal negligence he is punished by one law and his principal by another; if the agent blunders he is found not guilty and discharged, yet his principal is punished for being a co-partner in his innocence. It should not be forgotten that the agent of a private company is also a representative of that larger and more powerful corporation which we call the state. The private company can do no more than outline his duty and discharge him for dereliction; the public corporation not only prescribes his duty but imprisons or hangs him for neglect; the private company is itself but a creation of the state which exercises over it autocratic power while shirking responsibility. If I loosen a rail on the "Katy" road and cause the destruction of $100,000 worth of property the company must pocket the loss, notwithstanding the fact that it is paying the state for protection. If a dozen people are killed in the wreck the relatives of the last one of them will sue for damages and the state compel it to pay for its own failure to afford that protection to which it is clearly entitled. What then? Let the state issue life insurance at cost and compel every person who has dependants to carry a policy payable on the annual installment plan. For 5 or 6 cents a day it can, without loss, issue a policy to every man in America that will provide his family with the necessaries of life for at least ten years after his death, and the man who cannot pay that premium is worth precious little to anybody considered purely from an economic standpoint. If the state wants to bring damage suits for the slaughter of its citizens, well and good; but for God's sake let us get rid of the degrading spectacle of people hawking the corpses of their relatives through the courts.

A KANSAS CITY ARISTOCRAT.

I sometimes rejoice with an exceeding great joy and take something on myself that the ICONOCLAST is read by a million truth-loving Americans, as I am thereby enabled not only to make it uncomfortable for frauds and fakes, but to hold an occasional bypedal puppy up by the subsequent end that Scorn may sight him and stick her cold and clammy finger so far through his miserable carcass that Goliah might hang his helmet on the protruding point. Sometime ago I found America's meanest man in Massachusetts: I have just discovered the most contemptible of all God's creatures in Kansas City. Some may suppose that the first discovery excludes the last; but such forget that there is the same difference between cussedness and contemptibility that exists between the leopard and the louse, between a Cuban hurricane and the crapulous eructations of a chronic hoodlum. I want the world to take an attentive look at one Walter S. Halliwell, to make a labored perscrutation of this priorient social pewee, this arbiter eligantarium of corn-fed aristocracy, this Beau Brummel of the border, for though Argus had a compound microscope glued to his every eye he might never look upon the like again. He resembles a pigmy statue of Priapus carved out of a guano bed with a muck rake and smells like a maison d'joie after an Orange Society celebration of the Battle of the Boyne. Mr. Halliwell evidently has an idea rumbling round in his otherwise tenantless attic room that he's a Brahmin of the Brahmins, an aristocrat dead right, a goo-goo for your Klondyke galways, a Lady Vere de Vere in plug hat and "pants." He's the Ward McAllister of Kay-See, the model of the chappies, and traces his haughty lineage back in an unbroken line to the primordial anthropoid swinging by his prehensile tail to a limb of the Ash tree Ygdrasyl and playfully scratching the back of the hungry behemoth with the jawbone of an erstwhile ichthyosaurian. Walter S. Halliwell was born when quite young, where or why deponent saith not, and had gotten thus far on life's tow-path, absorbing such provender as he could come at, before I chanced to hear of him. As there be tides in the affairs of men which taken at the flood lead on to fortune, so there be waves which straddled at the proper time will bear a Halliwell on their niveous crest to the dizzy heights of fame, quicker'n the nictitation of a thomas-cat. Walter made connection with the climbing wave, and here he is, bumping the macrencephalic end of himself against the milky-way and affrighting the gibbous moon. His opportunity to make an immortal ass of himself, to earn catasterism and be placed among the stars as an equine udder, thus happened to hap: Kay-See was to have a "Karnival" modeled upon the pinchbeck rake with which Waco worked the gullible country folk once upon a time--when she so far forgot herself as to trade on womanly beauty to make it a bunco-steerer for her stores. The chief attraction wass to be a "Kween Karnation" and her maids of honor, the latter consisting of the most beautiful young ladies of the various Missouri towns. I presume that these fair blossoms were (or will be, for I know not the date of the brummagen blowout) paraded through the streets bedized in royal frippery to make a hoodlum holiday while the megalophanous huckster worked the perspiring mob with peanuts and soda pop, and the thrifty merchant marked his shopworn wares up 60 per cent, and sold them to confiding country men "at a tremendous sacrifice." I infer from the dispatches that Halliwell was made lord high executioner of the "Karnival"--at least accorded ample space in which to wildly wave his asinine ears. Miss Edna Whitney, described as being "one of the most beautiful young ladies of Chillicothe," was put forward by her friends as a candidate for the honor of representing that city at the royal court of "Kween Karnation," the citizens to determine the matter by a voting contest. Now Miss Whitney, while dowered with great beauty, popular and of good repute, is a working girl instead of a fashionable butterfly, being employed in a cigar factory. When it appeared certain that she would bear off the honor, the snobocracy of Chillicothe, furious at being "trun down" by a working girl, appealed to Halliwell to exclude her from the contest, and this miserable parody of God's masterpiece promptly wired that her business occupation was an insuperable barrier. How's that for a country boasting of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity"--its press and politicians ever prating of "the dignity of labor"! The contest, I'm told, was open to all "respectable young women"; but a working girl, though pure as the lily and fair as the rose, is not considered "respectable" by the would-be patricians of Corncob Corners and the grand panjandrum of the Kay-See Karnival! Working girls must not presume to be pretty or popular or enter into contests for holiday honors with the high-born daughters of successful swindlers, but will be kindly permitted by the lordly Halliwell to stand on the curb and see beauts who are only by the grace of boodle, roll by like triumphant Sylla on Fortune's bike. During the Saturnalia in ancient Rome the master acknowledged the brotherhood of man by ministering to his slave; but Kansas City, thanks to the omnipotent Halliwell, has cut the working class off from mankind--the hewers of wood and drawers of water are no longer considered human! Surely we are making rapid "progress"--are nearing that point in time when the working people will enter a protest against insult added to injury by tying a few bow-knots in the rubber necks of presumptuous parvenues. If it be a disgrace for a woman to work then is this nation in a very bad way, for few of us are the sons or daughters "of an hundred earls"--can go back more than a generation or two without finding a maternal ancestor blithely swinging the useful sad-iron or taking a vigorous fall out of the wash-tub. The parents of some of the wealthiest people of Kansas City, the bon-ton of the town, smelled of laundry soap, the curry-comb or night-soil cart. Some made themselves useful as hash- slingers in cheap boarding houses or chambermaids in livery stables, nursery maids or barbers, while others kept gambling dens, boozing-kens or even run variety dives. There is now a bright young woman working for a wealthy man in Kansas City for six dollars a week. The wife of her employer was once her mother's servant and laundered her infantile linen. The ex-servant, scarce able to read or write, ugly by nature and gross by instinct, is now a glorious star in Fashion's galaxy, while the child whose diapers she used to deodorize, compelled by poverty to accept employment, is socially ostracized. People of gentle blood--those who for many generations back have been educated men and cultured women, do not act as do Halliwell and the snobocrats of Chillicothe. These are giving a very exact imitation of people who lately came up from the social gutter, and it were interesting to know how far we would have to trace their "genealogical tree" before finding something much worse than a working woman. It is said that "three generations make a gentleman"; and if that be true there is some hope of Halliwell's great-grandsons--granting, of course, that the pusillanimous prig is not too epicene to provide himself with posterity. Day by day it becomes more evident that the purse-proud snobocracy of New York's old rat- catchers and sprat peddlers is fast getting a foothold in the West, that the social gulf between the House of Have and that of Have-Not, is steadily widening and deepening--that we have reached that point in national decay where gold suffices to "gild the straitened forehead of the fool," where WEALTH instead of WORTH" makes the man and want of it the fellow." Of course it is not to be expected that working girls, however worthy, will be generally carried on the visiting list of wealthy women, that their society will be sought by the followers of Fashion. None expect this, and few desire it. King Cophetua's beggar maid would have cut a sorry figure at court ere his favor raised her to fortune. For Cinderella to attend the Bradley-Martin ball clothed in rags would be embarrassing both to herself and the company. The woman who must work for a living has little time for the diversions of the wealthy; and is usually too proud to accept costly social courtesies which she cannot repay in kind. Society divides naturally into classes, dilettantism and pococurantism dawdling luxuriously here, labor at hand-grip with Destiny there. "Birds of a feather flock together," say the old copy-books, and Fortune gives to each such plumage as she pleases. Still, boodle does not map out all the social metes and bounds. It was said of old that every door opens to a golden key, but this is not altogether true. The honest working girl shuns the society of the wealthy wanton, and the stupid ignoramus, whatsoever his fortune, is accorded no seat at the symposiac--is blackballed by the brotherhood of brains. Imagine Goethe giving Richter the "marble heart" or Byron snubbing Burns because of his lowly birth! The world would be quick to rebuke their arrogance, would assure them that a singer was not esteemed for his siller, but for his song. In the carnival case it was a question of beauty not of boodle, of popularity instead of purses, and to exclude from the contest a candidate of the working class was to acknowledge her superiority and avenge defeat with brutal insult that would shame the crassest boor. The King of Syracuse was not ashamed to contend with the humblest for Olympian honors, nor the Emperor of Rome to measure swords with Thracian gladiators to prove his skill at arms. Ever does genius sympathize with folly and the truly learned with the unlettered; but Mammon "least erect of all the angelic host that fell from heaven," puts the mark of the beast on the brazen foreheads of all who bow down to his abominations. When working-girls are treated thus, what wonder that some of them become imbittered, discouraged, and go head-long to the devil--affording the wretched pharisees whose brutality wrought their ruin, an opportunity to "rescue" them and pose before the world as Christian philanthropists! What inducement has a young and beautiful woman to toil early and late for an honest livelihood when by so doing she forfeits the right to be called respectable--is flouted by even the paltry plutocracy of a country town and proclaimed a social pariah by such a headless phthirius pubis as Halliwell! If labor be no longer respectable wherein are our thousands of virtuous working girls superior to prostitutes? Clearly if the dictum of Halliwell be correct it were better for the daughter of poverty to regard her face as her fortune and hasten to sell herself--with approval of law and blessings of holy church--to some old duffer with ducats and be welcomed by the "hupper sukkle" as a bright and shining ornament. Or if no beducated old duffer can be come at, she might marry the first shiftless he-thing that offers itself and pick up a luxurious livelihood for her family among her gentlemen friends, as so many enterprising society women now do, and be "respectable" to her heart's content--even a devout church member and prominent in "rescue" work among fallen women. Somehow I cannot help wondering whether Halliwell's respectability be not due to some ancestor who was too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal. To the grand army of working women I would say, Be not discouraged by such gross affronts, prompted by splenetic hearts and spewed forth by empty heads. You may be flouted on the one hand by a few purse-proud parvenues and pitied on the other hand by bedizened prostitutes, but the great world, which learned long ago that the reptile as well as the eagle can reach the apex of the pyramid, estimates you at your true worth and binds upon your pure brows the victor's wreath, while ringing ever in your ears like a heavenly anthem are the words of Israel's wisest--"A good name is more precious than fine gold."

P.S.--Since the foregoing was put in print I have received Kansas City papers giving a fuller account of the affair, and it is in every way more miserable than I had imagined. Halliwell, who is bossee of the whole business, says he sent the telegram at the request of the board of lady managers of the flower parade--in other words, that, at the solicitation of a lot of snobby old females, he made even a greater ass of himself than nature had originally intended. Mrs. J. K. Cravens, chairman of the aforesaid board, denies that the ladies had anything to do with the matter, then flies into a towering passion "cusses out" the newspapers, figuratively speaking, rips her silk lingerie to ribbons, and otherwise conducts herself like a woman educated in a logging camp. I shall not attempt to decide the question of veracity between Halliwell and Mrs. Cravens, but that one is a mental vacuum and the other a ripsnortin' old virago is established beyond the peradventure of a doubt. Everybody connected with the Karnival is doing the Artful Dodger act to escape the withering storm of indignation which the pitiful episode called forth from the American people. The most encouraging feature of the whole affair is the withdrawal of several of Chillicothe's society girls from the contest because of the gratuitous insult tendered Miss Whitney in the Halliwell telegram, thus indicating that the old town's upper ten is not composed exclusively of pudding heads and parvenues.

* * * A PICTORIAL PAIN KILLER.

Puck is what the erstwhile Artemous Ward would call a "yewmerous" paper, and is published solely for the benefit of bad barbers. When you take your seat in the butcher's shambles he provides you with a copy of Puck because its jokes are so excruciatingly painful that it pulls your piligerous annex out with a stump-extractor and rubbed aqua fortis into your face with a bath brick, the physical ill would be forgotten in the mental agony. I never saw anybody but a barber purchase a copy of Puck not any son of Adam reading it outside a "tonsorial parlor." Should the Populists carry the country and barbers be tabooed Puck's mission on earth would be ended--unless it could persuade dentists to adopts it as an anaesthetic, and sheriffs to read it to condemned criminals to make them yearn for death. The last time I was shaved the razor pulled so dreadfully that I sought refuge in this pictorial pain-killer's editorial page. I there learned, much to my surprise, that the rise in the price of wheat had killed the silver cause; also that W. J. Bryan had "said, in that pose of easy omniscience for which he became remarkable, that 'a bushel of wheat and an ounce of silver were ordained by nature to become equal each to the other'--'wheat cannot rise unless silver rises.' " If W. J. Bryan said that, even in his salad days, he's a hopeless damphool, unfit to be pound-master, much less president; but I'll pay two-bits for incontestable evidence that he ever made such an idiotic remark. My private opinion is that the malice of Puck's mendacity is equalled only by its awkwardness. It is possible that its editor mistakes falsehood for fun. Or he may have heard somewhere the statement he parrots and really supposed it true, for a man capable of conducting so jejune a journal might easily believe anything. Another article in his paper says that Cardinal Wolsey managed all "Bluff King Hal" divorce business, while the fact is that his hostility to that feculent old tub of tallow's matrimonial crimes was the efficient cause of his downfall. As a historian Puck is about as reliable as Mark Twain's acerbic old sea captain; hence his asservations anent Bryan's utterances should be taken with considerable chloride of sodium. Every man who knows as much about political economy as a terrapin does of the Talmud is well aware that a rise in the price of one commodity simultaneous with the decline in price of another commodity has nothing whatever to do with the currency question. Those who cackle about a rise in wheat synchronously with the fall of silver make a very indecent exposure of their own ignorance. If I had a ten-year old boy who was such a hopeless idiot I'd drown him as not worth honest grub, then seek a surgeon and make sure that I'd never again inflict the world with progeny cursed with cretinism. Wheat went up and silver down, as Mr. Bryan recently explained to the satisfaction of every man possessing an ounce of brains, simply because the demand for the one was increased by foreign crop failures, the demand for the other decreased by Anglo-Cleveland skull-duggery. "Law of supply and demand," bawls Puck and all the other journalistic puppets of an impudent plutocracy. You miserable little hiccius doctius, do you expect to deceive an intelligent people with that kind of howl, while the trade in wheat is left untrammeled and the demand for silver arbitrarily limited by law? Suppose that while the world's wheat fields were producing abundantly the leading nations should prohibit their people purchasing any more of that cereal for food production; would any macrocephalous donkey ascribe the decline in the price of wheat to "the immutable law of supply and demand?" When silver is placed on an equality with all other commodities; when the people are permitted to freely employ it as they please, then will the natural law of supply and demand apply to the white metal, and New York editors cease to jabber financial nonsense with the stupid persistence of a poll-parrot praising its own personal pulchritude. The editor of Puck should avoid political economy as a subject a trifle too large for the knot on the end of his neck, and confine himself to his threadbare specialty, that of belittling the Jews with his watery wit and atribilarious art. The only funny thing I find in his paper is its solemn "notice to publishers" that all its raccous rot is copyrighted, that infringement will be "promptly and vigorously prosecuted." The editor who would steal from Puck would walk through Stringfellow's fruit farm to crib a wilted cabbage leaf from a blind cow. The best things in Puck scarce rise to the dignity of Slob Snots' milk-sick drivel in the Gal-Dal, while Texas has a hundred country editors pulling a Washington hand press and building stallion poster, who could write brighter things if they were drunk--or dead. "Promptly and vigorously prosecuted" O the devil! Why don't you say that you'll have any fool who attempts to father your hand-made yermer sent to an insane asylum to be treated for prolapsus of the intellect?

* * * MAN'S GUST FOR GORE.

Hon. Chas. P. Johnson has written for the Globe-Democrat an article that will doubtless receive the careful consideration of every sociologist, for he therein assumes that man's instincts are as brutal and bloody to-day as in those far times when, clad only in his "thick natural fell," and armed with a stone, he struggled for food with the wild beasts of the forest--that the prevalence of lynchings is not due to incompetency of our criminal courts, but to an alarming revival of savagery in man himself. He declares that our courts are more effective than ever before, but that Judge Lynch continues active without other cause than the inability of the people to restrain their murderous proclivities. He assures us that the entire suppression of the savage instinct is impossible by any civilization whatever, and adds that "its control and regulation is as difficult to-day as it has been at any period since the historical birth of man." Why this is so he does not directly say, but the following paragraph is significant:

"Perhaps the statesmanship which looks solely to the development of our material resources and the accumulation of wealth is overlooking the growth and development of many social vices which may yet engulf us in a vortex of anarchical passion or governmental revolution."

Thus Mr. Johnson endorses the position of the ICONOCLAST that the getting of gain should not constitute the sole aim of man; that society cannot long exist with self- interest for "sole nexus," as the French physiocrats would say--that the worship of Mammon is dragging us back to barbarism. It is quite true that man's savage instincts cannot be wholly eradicated; and it is likewise true that could you drain all the Berserker out of his blood he would sink to the level of an emasculated simian. A man in whom there's no latent savagery were equivalent to mint julep in which buttermilk were used as a succedaneum for bourbon. Life, we are told, is "a battle and a march," and an indispensable prerequisite for such stubborn work, call it by what name you will, is but a refinement of the barbaric gust for blood. Whether he be poet or philosopher, priest or prophet, it is the combative man--the man who would find a wild fierce joy in a bayonet charge--who wins new territory from the powers of Darkness and the Devil. Man IS a savage, and civilization but a cloak with which he covers his ferocity as best he can. If the cloak be scant--as with the Turk--or frayed by time--as with the Spaniard--we may expect to catch frequent and shocking glimpses of the predacious animal. But Mr. Johnson is mistaken in supposing that the lynchings of which he complains evidence an abnormal thirst for blood on the part of the American people. He says:

"As the masses of ancient Rome enjoyed the carnage of the amphi-theater; as the populace of Paris crowded with eager avidity around the guillotine to see the blood gush from the heads and trunks of the victims of the revolutionary tribunal; as the Spaniard in holiday attire followed over the plaza the procession and rapturously looked upon the execution of the wretches of the auto da fe; as in all ages the spirit of savagery has made men to enjoy scenes of suffering, brutality and death--so does the modern mob look with frenzied delight upon like exhibitions to-day."

For a man so erudite and earnest, Mr. Johnson comes painfully near being ridiculous. The evidence is ample that never since the first settlement of this country have the people found LESS pleasure in the effusion of blood and scenes of brutality. Instead of the savage instinct becoming dominant, we are fairly open to the charge of effeminacy, of super-estheticism. Our very sports are becoming namby pamby as those of the Bengalese, the element of danger which gave zest to them in auld lang syne being all but eliminated. Bear-baiting, cocking- mains, shin-kicking, bulldog-fighting, etc., all greatly enjoyed by the general public a generation or so ago, are now quite generally tabood. Many of us can remember when pugilism was practiced with bare-knuckles and every fight to a finish; it is practiced now with feather pillows "for points," and under police supervision. About the only game left us that is more dangerous than playing Presbyterian billards with an old maid from Boston is college football, and even that will soon be stripped of its vigor on the plea that it is barbarous. When our fathers quarreled they took a pot-shot at each other at ten paces; now disagreements involving even family honor are carried into the courts--the bloody Code Duello has been relegated to "innocuous desuetude." Texas is supposed by our Northern neighbors to be the "wurst ever," the most bloodthirsty place this side the Ottoman Empire; yet the Houston Post, leading paper of Harris county, is crying its poor self sick because some peripatetic Ananias intimated to an Eastern reporter that our wildest and wooliest cowboys would even think of shooting the pigtail off a Chinaman bowling along on a bike. Our governor earned the title of "heroic young Christian" by calling a special session of the legislature to prevent Prof. Fitzsimmons giving it to Prof. Corbett "in de slats" with a buggy cushion--was re-elected on the proposition that a boxing- match is "brutal"--which proves that our people are not ahunger and athirst for gore, do not yearn for the sickening scenes of the Roman amphitheatre, where holy virgins by turning their thumbs up or down, decided questions of life and death. "Bloodthirsty?" Good Lord! The average American would grow sick at the stomach if required to slaughter a pullet with which to regale the palate of his favorite preacher. During the past two decades we have practically become Quakers, and now suffer foreign powers to vent their rheum upon us and rub it in, because to maintain our dignity might precipitate a war, and bloodshed is so very brutal. Mr. Johnson seems to imagine that the usual method of procedure in Judge Lynch's court is for the mob to trample its victim to death, bray him in a mortar, kerosene him and set him on fire, then dance the carmagnole around his flaming carcass. This, I am pleased to remark, is simply a mid-day nightmare which should be subjected to hydropathic treatment, reinforced with cracked ice and bromo-seltzer. As a rule lynchings are conducted in quite as orderly and humane a manner as legal esecutions. It is true that cases have occurred, when the public patience had become exhausted by repeated offenses, or the crime committed was peculiarly atrocious, wherein respectable God-fearing men were seized with a murderous frenzy, and whole communities noted for their culture, united in torturing or burning at the state the object of their displeasure; but these were usually instances where failure to enforce the law was notorious, or it did not provide an adequate penalty. The courts imprison the man who steals a mule, or even a loaf of bread to feed a starving family. They hang the man who in a fit of rage of jealousy or drunken frenzy commits a homicide: they can do no more to the brutal buck negro who ravishes and murders a white babe--so Judge Lynch takes cognizance of his case and builds for him a beautiful bonfire; but the average lynching appeals no more strongly to the savage instincts of man than does a hanging by the sheriff. Then, it may be asked, why do lynchings occur. I have treated this subject at considerable length in former issues of the ICONOCLAST, hence will but recapitulate here and add a few observations suggested by Mr. Johnson's very able but sadly mistaken article. Lynchings occur because, whatsoever be the efficiency of our courts, they are a trifle shy of public confidence; because there are some offenses for which the statutes do not provide adequate penalties; because the people insist that when a heinous crime is committed punishment follow fast upon the offense instead of being delayed by a costly circumlocution office and perhaps altogether defeated by skillful attorneys--men ready to put their eloquence and tears on tap in the interest of worse criminals. I will not take issue with so distinguished an authority as Mr. Johnson regarding the competency of our courts to deal with criminals in accordance with the laws of the land; but the people see that despite the vigilance of officers, the erudition of judges and the industries of juries, murders multiply, rapes increase and portable property remains at the mercy of the marauder. If my memory of statistics does not mislead me, we have in the United States something like 10,000 homicides per annum, while every newspaper teems with accounts of robbery and rape. When we consider this in connection with the further fact that the courts continue to increase in cost--are already a veritable Old Man of the Sea about the neck of the Industrial Sinbad--can we wonder at the impatience of the people? But there is another feature which Mr. Johnson has quite overlooked in his vision of a brutal mob drunk with blood--like most lawyers, he stands too close to his subject to see more than one side, views it from beneath rather than from above. We set a higher value on human life than did our ancestors of the old dueling days. This may be called the Age of Woman--the era of her apothesis. She occupies a higher intellectual, social and political level than ever before in human history, and as she increases in importance crimes against her person assume more gravity. A generation ago such a thing as the criminal assault of a white woman by a negro was almost unknown, but now it is of every day occurrence; thus as womanhood becomes more sacred in our eyes it is subjected to fouler insult. Nor is this all: The American people are becoming every year more mercurial. The whole trend of our civilization--of our education, our business, even our religion--is to make us neurotic, excitable, impatient. In our cooler moments we enact laws expressive of mistaken mercy rather than of unflinching justice. Some of the states have even abolished capital punishment and in but one can a brute be tied up and whipped for the cowardly crime of wife-beating. We establish courts rather to acquit than to convict by disqualifying intelligence for jury service and enforcing the stupid unit rule. We provide convicts with comforts unknown to millions of honest working men and regard them as poor unfortunates to be "reformed rather than as malefactors to be punished. And when our misguided mercy has borne its legitimate fruit we take fire, curse the laws and the courts, seize and hang the offender, and have the satisfaction of knowing that there's one less monster alive in the land. Mr. Johnson suggests no remedy for what he regards as the evil of the age, and is therefore like unto the doctor who volunteers the entirely superfluous information that you "have a misery in your innards," but provides neither pill nor poultice. As Judge Lynch probably makes fewer mistakes than do the courts; as those he hangs usually deserve hemp and he renders no bill of costs to the country; and as the people are the creators and not the creatures of the courts, I am not particularly interested in his suppression, notwithstanding the fact that he seriously interferes with the material welfare of the professional juror and my lawyer friends. But were I duly ordained to perform that duty I would not begin by creating new deputies or calling out local militia companies to shoot down their neighbors and friends, to protect the miserable carcass of a rape-fiend. I would wipe out our entire penal code and frame a new one in which there would be no comfortable penitentiaries. If a man were found guilty of rape or homicide I'd promptly hang him, if of a less heinous offense I'd give him stripes proportionate to his crime and turn him loose to earn a livelihood and thus prevent his family becoming a public burden. For the second offense in crimes like forgery, perjury, theft, arson, etc., I'd resort to the rope. I would abolish fines in misdemeanor cases, thereby putting the rich and poor on a parity, and set the offenders in the stocks. I'd get rid of the costly delays which are the chief cause of lynchings, by elective jurors and the majority rule, by appointing one man well learned in the law to see that all the evidence was properly placed before the court, and advise the rest of the legal fraternity now making heaven and earth resound with their eloquence and weeping crocodile tears at so much per wope, that it were better to make two fat shoats flourish where one hazel- splitter pined in the hitherto, than to employ their talents and energies securing the conviction of the innocent and the aquittal of the guilty. By such a system almost any criminal case could be fairly tried in a couple of hours. If the defendant desired to appeal from the sentence of the court, instead of sending the case up to a higher tribunal thereby entailing heavy cost and vexatious delay, I would empanel a new jury then and there, composed of reputable citizens of the community, retry the case, and if the first verdict was confirmed, the sentence should be executed within the hour. The quicker the courts "get action" on an offender the more terror they inspire in the criminal classes and the better they please the people. If a murderer or rape-fiend captured at daylight could be fairly tried and executed by sundown Judge Lynch would speedily find himself without an occupation.

* * * A RIGHT ROYAL ROAST. THE ICONOCLAST MADE HARD TO CATCH.

Galveston, Tex., August 12, 1897. MR. W. C. BRANN:

In your editorial on the "Henry George Hoodoo," which appears in the August number of the ICONOCLAST, the following passage occurs: "It seems to me that I have treated the Single Taxers as fairly as they could ask, and if I now proceed to state a few plain truths about them and their faith they will have no just cause to complain." From the tone and tenor of these words it is fair to assume that in the editorial referred to you have discharged against the Single Taxers and their faith the heaviest broadsides of which your ordnance is capable. If, notwithstanding all the time you have wasted "crucifying the economic mooncalf" which has played such sad havoc with the wits of Single Taxers, it should turn out that the monstrous concept, far from being crucified, annihilated, or even "dying of its own accord," only gathers strength, energy, and renewed activity from the healthful exercise with which you provide it, must it not seem the part of prudence for you, even if occasion of regret for us, that you should abandon the war and leave the calf to his fate? Your belated and apparently desperate resolve to "tell some plain truths" about us, Single Taxers, justifies the inquiry, what were you telling before? The fact that it seems to yourself that you have treated Single Taxers fairly is not absolutely irrefragible proof that they have been so treated at least it has not brought conviction of the fact to them. That the offer of your space to Mr. George was courteously declined affords no just ground for refusing it to those "whose matin hymn and vesper prayer reads, there is no God but George," etc. I'll warrant you that if you and the Single Taxers had access on equal terms to a journal which neither controlled, and whose space both were bound to respect, you would not have to go outside the limits of your own state to find a dozen foemen worthy of your steel, and I'd stake my life on it that you'd find not a few to unhorse you. This is not claiming that any one of them, or all of them together, can come anywhere near you in the artistic manipulation of words or the construction of ear-tickling phrases; but it is claiming, and that without any false pretense of modesty, that they have yet seen no reason to fear you in rigidly logical argument when the Single Tax is the question at issue. Their cause is so palpably just, its underlying principle so transparently simple and elementary, its practical application so direct, feasible and efficient that no mere wizardry of words, no thimble-riggery or language, can by any possibility obscure the principle--or confuse the advocates. Of course there are among Single Taxers, as among other enthusiasts, men who indiscreetly use abuse for argument, and of these you may have some reason to complain; but should not your great talents and the immense advantages which the undisputed control of your own journal give you, enable you to rise above their abuse, to ignore it completely, and to grapple with only those who present you with argument? I have no right to expect from you more consideration than has been meted out to better men; still, you can but refuse this rejoinder to your August editorial, which is respectfully offered for publication in your journal. If you are quite sure of your ground, you can only gain strength from exposing my weakness, but even if you are not sure of it, both the requirements of simple justice and the amende honorable to Single Taxers would still plead for the publication of this article.

You say that Mr. George has obtained no standing of consequence in either politics or economics "because his teachings are violative of the public concept of truth." Do you really believe that the fact that he has obtained no standing of consequence in politics is in any way derogatory to his character or his teaching? Do you not know full well that a Bill Sykes, a Jonas Chuzzlewit, or a Mr. Montague Tigg would have a hundred chances to attain that distinction to-day to the one chance that Henry George, Vincent de Paul or even Jesus Christ would have? Don't you know this well, and if you do, why do you use it as an argument against Henry George? As to his standing in economics, that, I submit, is a matter of opinion. You think he has no standing of consequence; I think his teaching is the most active ferment in the economic thought of to-day. We may be both mistaken, but whether we are or not cuts no figure in the truth or falsity of the Single Tax. But it is worth while to point out that the reason you have given for his lack of "standing" lends neither weight nor force to your argument. "Because," you say, "his teachings are violative of the public concept of truth." When did the public concept of truth become the standard by which to test it? The public concept of the best form of money is, and has been for thousands of years, gold and silver coins. I am much mistaken if that be your concept. By the way, why did you not say "violative of truth," instead of "violative of the public concept," etc.? I guess you had an inward consciousness that a thing is not true or false by public concept, but by being inherently so. What Henry George taught was inherently true or false before he ever taught it, and would be so still if he had been never born. The only difference would be that so many of us who now bask in the blessed light of inward, if not of outward, freedom would, in that event, be still barking with the great blind multitude over every false trail along which blinder teachers might be leading them and us.