 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Thomas Paine by Walterine DeClaire To speak of Thomas Paine is to mention in one breath, daring tempered by judgment, courage both mental and physical, foresight and prudence, coupled with unstinted generosity, patience and endurance for the long race, constancy to the unwanted ideal, that superior power over men conferred by no extrinsic dictum. Typified best perhaps by the lodestone which always burst forth in times of revolutions from the unexpected place, the unbought and the unsought glory of the man who is a hero because a hero is required and does not measure his services nor reckon on their reward. Not that he unraids himself, it is as impossible as it is undesirable that a powerful personality should not know itself as such. But simply that in the moment of decisions the value of self is abandoned. So far as any of all these qualities are concerned, Thomas Paine is a name for them all in their highest expression, and for one feels in the approaching him that there is something like treason in paying him any but a perfect tribute. Yet such is the position into which I am forced to say less than I should. Less than I would had not words and the art of using them almost failed. I do not like lecturers who come before the public with apologies nor do I propose to make any. I simply say this to let you know that I shall feel perhaps more keenly than any one of you my failure to do pain justice. For the half century that his history has been unmind from the sale of Calumny and filled that the orthodox had cast upon it, unmind chiefly by small groups of free thinkers scattered here and there and spreading his words among men. Like the legal foxes with the fire bands going in among the corn, the principal endeavor has been to establish Paine's reputation as a great reformer and villager and such he undoubtedly was. Whoever reads his age of reason in anything but a spirit of predisposition against it must feel this. However, much he may disagree with Paine's criticism or consider that he has come short in his constructive philosophy. I notice meat too that the book that cast him most both before and after death should be one of the selected for the defense. Nevertheless, the fact has been rather to lose sight of what appear to me where thoughts and acts. For just as the orthodox had forgotten so many free thinkers forgotten his immense labors in the field of active struggle against the domination of man by man. It is true that his mind did not transcend the mental vesture of the time and it was all the better in one of his marvelous capacities for swinging muscles of men that it did not. The lonely heralds of the opening dawn go upon their paths solitary no matter how much they desire to draw others with them. They cannot and had Paine been one of these that break through the forums of paths such as Copernicus or Kant or Darwin he would have been at constant war with himself. Half his nature would have chosen the lonely path, the other half the zealot the propagandist would have cried out they must go with him. I must do something to make them go with him. Now the secret of Paine's success was that he was so thoroughly at one with himself. He believed so utterly what he preached he had faith he had hoped and so strongly that others were drawn to believe and to hope. For spite of all intellectual pride that this is the man whom we love and admire. This is the man who overcomes us who gets his way the man consistent in himself who has a remedy for world's wrongs and hopes everything from it. From the point of vantage of hundred years experience it is seen that Paine's political creed like his religious ones will no longer fit. But that does not matter neither will ours fit in a hundred years and none of us know not one is great enough to foresee where the misfit will arise. It is not our business to bear the evils of thrice unborn upon our necks nor it was Paine's to bear ours. Yet while not claiming for him the prophetic gift it is still true that he did see the moral patchwork in our constitution the trouble of 1812 brewing and the greater trouble of 61 to 65. When he first came to this country he wrote a number of contributions to the Pennsylvania magazine and one of which he pleaded justice for the Negro. Basing his plea then as always upon the natural equality of man irrespective of color. Afterwards when the constitution was framed he objected that nothing had been done for the Negro and his letters to the American people read and offers imprisonment in France in which the constitution was castically reviewed. He cries out against for this yoked man not yet to be freed for more than half a hundred years. For seeing that nothing good can in the end come from slavery that every evil must bring a compensating evil. The soldiers graves in the national cemeteries the thousands of glimping haggard tatters and rags of white men attest how well Paine foresaw times ranges. In the letter to Washington partially unjust as it is in view of the fact that Governor Morris and not Washington was responsible for the failure to serve Paine from prison and France. As we know thanks to monarchy or convoy but which Paine did not know in this letter I say will be found the most terrible arrangement of the constitution ever pinned. We who are anarchists are called traitors for being calm or talk yet here was the man whose pen had done more than revolution than Washington's sword. As his bitterest enemy declared who believed heart and soul in the public who had given his money and his substance and taken the chance of his life in the battle for it. The man whose devotion to America could not be reinstated. This man declared that the American constitution was mirror of the most vicious features of the British constitution. A fake ensad for monopolies with all their ills. It is we who experience those ills, we who know what a gigantic do of operation the constitution and the cumbersome machinery of the lawmaking power have become. Yet probably even we do not feel so keenly as he the fatal blunder for a while. We know how it grinds us in our flesh and souls, fares its prisons and scarfalls for us. We have had the yoke about our neck always. While we had once seen the country free he had been through all the battle, had fought his fight and won his victory only to see it lost through cowardice of thought. That was indeed bitter and it is that bitter outcry against the sacrifice which marks pain among most of the time for influence of future history. The fact that he was the initiator of the direct movement for political independence in America in the famous meeting where Adams, Franklin and Washington all shrank from uttering the thought heavy upon their souls is a matter of past history. The fact that he was the one man in America to write the right thing at the right time. His voice the wind to sweep the scattering flames of insubordination and revolt into the conflagration of revolution. The fact he proposed and headed with the whole contents of his purse the subscription to save the army when even Washington was in despair at the prospect of mutiny and desertion among the soldiers. The fact that he raised all the feeling possible against the fiction of divine rights and so got himself hunted out of England. The fact that he took the most active part possibly in aiding the work of French revolutionists which he believed would be the beginning of the breakdown of monarchy throughout Europe. And the building up either of one universal continental republic or a confederation of sister republics. The fact that he was the one man in convention who dared to stand for the life of Louis the 16th and thereby got himself suspected thrown into prison and condemned to death. All these facts are of import in reading the character of the man and in comprehending the record of those days when they were making history fast. Yet none of these has so much influence upon character of the man and in comprehending the record of those days when they were making history fast. Yet none of these has so much influence upon the character of the man and the demands of the day as a voice discontent crying for eternal vigilance. But sounds through these almost unknown letters. These are the things which it will pay to reprint in the day when American liberty feels in its own the first hearings of resurrection. Did we like pain, believe in God? You might say pray God it may not be far away. Such are the characters whose historic influence is greatest. They who hew and hew hard to the line laid down for them by the events of their time and yet are not blinded by the stir and roll of things. Who see clearly where the deflection from the line is likely to occur and where it will lead. Who raise the warning travel that goes showing to the future. Startling, waking with its eerie cry custom dull ears and sudden souls who start to ask was it not a ghost of the revolution? In that day which may not be so distant as we fear, pain will be more alive than ever. He will be watching at a million fresh eyes with the old keen strong eyes. While I have deprecated the fact that the religious reformer has been exalted to the neglect of this political one, I cannot omit that part of his life works so well known to all yet never old. The age of reason has long been both exaggerated and despised as an iconolacastic work. But we are indebted to Conway, the greatest of pain students, who out of the many biographies he has written has chosen that of pain to be the masterpiece of his life. And it is a work which any author might be proud to regard his own masterpiece. To him I say we are indebted for a different view of the age of reason. I know not whether Mr. Conway's own unitarian bias may not have influenced him. It is possible. It is possible that his eager search for positivism may have unconsciously determined his attitude towards a great hero and modified his interpretation of pain's word. I believe it has, because I believe that is inevitable. I believe we read our own ideals into other people and must do so if we think at all. But making all allowance for the biographies pre-judgment, Conway has still a magnificent argument for putting pain in the defendant's position. We are no longer to view the book as an attack upon religion but as its defense, the defense of what is beneficial, permanent, necessary in the religious element of human nature against the scribes and farcees on the one hand and Philistines on the other. It was a plea for the redemption of the edifiers from the dirt and cow dubs, the protest against smashing the stones to kill the sprider. The great prerequisite to understanding the age of reason is an acquaintance with the literature of that time, especially French literature. The pamphlets, the periodicals and books are the crystals wherein the zeet geese of the 18th century is preserved. Without this acquaintance, we cannot realize how people continually thought and what was new and what was old and what was acceptable and what unacceptable to them. And we shall find by it that the fashion of sneering popularized by Voltaire and so admirably imbidied by the finacy of the French language, always a language of double meaning and hemidemi-shady-shaded institutions, the still more reprehensible habit of reducing immense journals from the various Catholic particulars or in fact contriving the journals first and then fitting it on serverly waving the particulars all together had so permitted not only French philosophy but the heads of the common people as well that religion had become almost a byword, a baseless superstition unaccounted by and unnecessary according to the all-accepted theory of national law. To defend it, maintain that there was something else in it was equivalent to pleading for the laugh and the king before the convention. That was to maintain that there was no claim to the human and after king had been stripped, this was to say that underneath the gay goss and tinsels of religions, the undying heart of man, the man of all past, had been expressing its noblest aspirations. And pain stripped off the tinsel and said, Put your hands here, it beats, because he told tinsel, the orthodox would have stoned him because he said it beats. The philosopher would have vetted the knife and between the two he stood firm, proclaiming what he believed not counting the cost. We may not believe as he most of us do not, but this and that is the man we love who has something in him superior to the judgments of men who hold steadfast, steadfast even in persecution, even to death. Perhaps there is no more pathetic thing than the last years, the death and the boreal of pain. The world would have been poorer that he died sooner, but to him the man, the gunshot or the jill-tine had been kinder than the unhappy laugh rejected by the nation he had given all to free, shunned by political cowards and persecuted by religious bigots, even on his dead bed. But though so lonely, so pathetically lonely, there is something that sends a fine cold twill along the nerves in that strange procession and boreal. That poor procession, the procession of Hixit Quaker, the two negroes, the widowed Frenchwoman and her son. I wonder what sort of day it was whether the sun is shone on the cloud, lowered over the solitary grave on the little farm when Margaret Bonville said to her child, sand you there at his feet for France and I will hear for America. I do not know where the negroes and the Hixit stood when that aghast corpse was lowered to the depths, but their clothes somewhere stood the unfreed ways for whom he had vainly pled and their clothes somewhere the souls revolved as spiritual masters. And from that tomb there went away the scattering fires of the rising ghost, the 61 living pain, the grand reality and of Thomas Paine. Dyer D. Lum. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Heather Jane Hogan. Dyer D. Lum. By Volterine DeClaire. One of the silent martyrs whose graves are trodden to the level by their fellow's feet almost before it is seen that they have fallen, completed his martyrdom one year ago tonight. There are thousands of such. Then commemorate this one. Let our answer be that in this one we commemorate all the others. And if we have chosen his day and name, it is because his genius, his work, his character was one of those rare gems produced in the great mind of suffering and flashing backward with all its changing lights, the hopes, the fears, the gayities, the griefs, the dreams, the doubts, the loves, the hates, the sum of that which is buried low down there in the human mind. No more modest a man than Dyer D. Lum ever lived. Partly, nay mostly indeed it was inborn, instinctive. But it was also fostered by his conception of life which led him to consider self as the various of soap bubbles, a thing to be dispelled by the merest whiff of wind, so to speak, and therefore personal recognition or personal gain as the most silly as well as unworthy of motives. For this reason his works have often gone where his name did not and thousands of persons have been influenced by his logic and his sentiments who never heard of his personality. Indeed there were some of us who wondered when he died what certain labor leaders would henceforth do for a cheap scribe to furnish them brains. I have often heard him quote as his motto both for organization and for literary effort, the expressive sentence quote, get in your work, unquote. Let fools take the credit if they want it, unquote, was the implication of his tone and I shall never forget the delightful smile with which he repeated Charles McKay's lines most singularly transposing the author's meeting, quote, grub little moles, unquote. He took in a special pleasure in grubbing and smiling when a streak of sunlight fell on someone else. I have said that this distinguishing characteristic of how fruitful in results in his later life was partly instinctive and partly a philosophic conviction. The instinctive side may be best understood by a brief sketch of his ancestry. It is generally complained that the troublesome people who are never satisfied to let society alone must necessarily be foreigners. At least they can never belong to the same nation as we, the good, the respectable. The easy method of layering everything pestilent to the charge of the foreigner will not serve a conservative American against Diardie Lum. The first of the Lums to set foot in this country was Samuel L. Escochman in the year 1732. They rooted in New England soil and at the time of the revolution Diard's great-grandfather was a minute man in the very town Northampton where his own corpse was laid a year ago. On the maternal side, the Tappan family were also revolutionists and back of revolutionists, reformationists in the days of Queen Elizabeth and still back of that, crusaders. All this would be important enough and indeed even distinguishing were I relating it by way of, quote, gilding refined gold, unquote. But they acquire meaning the moment we regard them as data for a character. They are fraught with mysterious symbolism and he himself becomes a symbol of the deep-rooted faith of humanity when we see that subterranean stream of blood running from Jerusalem through Europe and across the sea to America. It shows how profound is the wellspring of devotion to cause in the human heart. Through how many centuries the spirit of rebellion lives. But what, say you, had it to do with his instinctive modesty? This. The devotee of a cause is never the devotee of self. Now as to his philosophic convictions it would be easy to deliver a whole lecture upon them and unfortunately his profoundest work on that subject has not yet been printed. Of course I can present them but briefly. I must preface that as you will no doubt understand what I am saying here on. His beliefs were, in his own case, a plain testimony to their own correctness. It sounds ridiculous to say that a thing can prove itself but you will understand me when I explain that he regarded the conscious life of man which includes, of course, his processes of reasoning and therefore his philosophy as the nearest fragment of him. That this process itself which we are want so fondly to consider as setting us higher than the brute instincts. Man. The race. Man. Psychologically as well as bodily might be likened to a tree which every year adds small new growths whose bright green verdure opens to the sunlight while below and supporting them quivers the great dark green mass of the tree which year after year repeats itself whispering in its shadows the new verdure would represent the conscious life and growth of individuals budding upward in response to the conditions surrounding them and adding what tiny might they may to the experience of the race but beneath and through and all about them rustle the traditions of the dead dead as individuals but living more potently living than ever in the great trunk and branches of unconscious or instinctive life and as the shape of the newly budding leaf the shade of its green the length of its stem its size are determined more by the nature of the tree than by the surrounding circumstances so the philosophy of the individual is determined by the instinctive life of the race the winter of death comes the individual withers like belief but the small item of growth that he has added is there brown and barren though the twig appear from him new buds will shoot though its own leaves here after rustle in the deep green shadows of unconsciousness as time passes away useless bows wither and die and are stricken utterly from the life of the race such are the worthless lives of normal growths which no longer add anything either to the beauty or the service of the whole or to adopt one of comrade Lum's own figures the useless or brutish elements in man slowly sink down like sediment deposited by the moving current now in a case where we are able to trace a strain of blood as far back as this of his and further are able to look at the conscious work of the man the offspring of the other modified of course by circumstances we are able to make the seemingly absurd statement that the belief proves its own correctness let me particularize concerning this belief first he was in all his writings the advocate of resistance the champion of rebellion but long before he had reduced the matter to a syllogism he was a resistant in fact what else could you expect from the crusader the reformationist the revolutionist it might be said by the people who believe in the supreme influence of circumstances that it was his social environment which made him such that given the ideal social order and he would have been as mild a pacificator as Jesus which is equivalent to saying that given the outward circumstances and an ear of wheat will grow from a seed of corn Lum was the resistant the man of action the man who while scarcely more than a boy enlisted as a volunteer in the 125th New York Infantry to fight a cause he then deemed just who being taken prisoner twice affected his escape who sick of the inaction of superiors while a third time prisoner waiting to be exchanged took his exchange in his own hands at the risk of death for desertion and within a month re-enlisted in the cavalry whereby sheer force of daring he rose from private to captain the man who smashed the idol of the greenback movement sooner than let him betray its voters reckless himself of the rebound of hate from the politicians the man who cast all business prospects and journalistic hopes aside as so much chaff when he picked up the fallen banner of the fight in Chicago by editing the paper of Albert Parsons then in prison and doomed to die the man who could say to his well-beloved friend when that friend asked him whether he should petition Governor Oglesby for his life knowing that that petition would be granted quote die Parsons unquote the man who poor, defeated dirty, ragged, hungry could proudly refuse the proffered hand of the then king of the labor movement that king who had kept his kingdom by repudiating the martyrs of Chicago from the limitless height of one soul over another answer quote proudly unquote the man who faced a public audience to defend the shooting of Frick by Alexander Bergman a few days after the occurrence because he felt that when another has done a thing which you approve as leading in the direction of your own aspirations it is your duty to share the effects of the counter blast his action may have provoked the man who seized the unknown monster all of this man was germinating in the child of the pious home who even when a mere boy had dared Jehovah having quote weighed him tried him found him not unquote he threw the Jewish God and cosmogony overboard with as much equanimity as he would have eaten his dinner and said about finding a more reasonable explanation of phenomena in this as in all other matters there is a passage over a pure theorist which is this he plunges immediately into the conflict he throws the gauntlet rashly sometimes but boldly he settles the question at once if there is any suffering attached to the attempt he suffers once and has done with it while the theorist the fellow who walks tiptoe round the edge of the battlefield dies a hundred times and still suffers on what was of this latter sort I never dared God I always tried to propitiate him with prayers and tears even while I was doubting his existence I suffered hell a thousand times while I was wondering where it was located but my teacher winked at the heavens braved hell and then tossed the whole affair aside with a joke nevertheless he did not as nearly all of our modern thinkers have done deny all religions in their entirety because he had run a lance through a stuffed mumbo jumbo indeed the spirit of devotion to something greater than self which will be found as the kernel of every religion was so thoroughly in him or indeed was he himself that whether he fancied himself willing it or not his inclinations directed all his conscious efforts to the channel of Buddhism I do not know whether he ever accepted its peculiarly fanciful side or not but if he did it was early corrected by a no less characteristic trait also an inheritance of the Tappan family that of critical analysis an omnivorous reader he was always abreast of the times in matters of scientific discovery and his inexorable logic never have permitted him to retain a creed which necessitated any doctoring of facts he rather doctored the creed to fit the facts and thus evolved a species of modern Buddhism which he called who's principles may be briefly stated as follows man is the continuation of the process of evolution up to date he is thus united to all other products of evolution by the same laws the two factors which determined form in the organic world are adaptation and inheritance and since evolution is no less a matter of psychology than physiology the soul of man as well as the soul of animals and plants must be molded by these factors that inheritance tends to crystallize existing forms while adaptation of the environment ever tends to modification of forms whether physical or intellectual that mind as much as body is unconscious so far as there is perfect adaptation to surroundings and that only when in harmony of the organism with the environment as the result of change in the latter arises can there be consciousness that this consciousness is a state of pain more or less sharply defined as an increase in intensity until the necessary adaptation is accomplished when as a result of feeling of satisfaction or pleasure will ensue gradually sinking into the blissful unconsciousness of perfect harmony that progress thus demands this stepping constantly up the rough stairway of pain and that not even one step is passed until moistened by the blood of many generations that the path up the mountainside is not laid out by us but for us and that we must travel there whether it pleases us or not that the chances are it will not please us that our whole lives in so far as they are conscious will probably be one record of never achieved struggle and that rest will come only when we descend into the unconsciousness of death thus he was a pessimist of the darkest hue and yet he never wasted a moment's regret on the facts he watched this passing spectre man gliding among the whirling dance of Adams contemplated his final extinction with composure sneered at metaphysicians while he himself was buried in metaphysics and cracked jokes either at his own expense the result of all this speculation was the conclusion that man being a social animal must adapt himself to social ends not determined by him but for him unconsciously that therefore the one who sets himself and his egotistic desires against the social ideal is the supreme trader he had a peculiar power of expressing volumes and the epithet he gave to the egoist was quote dung beetle unquote for the sake of those who may not be familiar with the insect referred to I may explain that a dung beetle is a sort of bug that exhibits its instincts by rolling a ball of dung and who sometimes appears to meditate when he rolls over the ball that the universe has turned bottom up now it is well known that the greater part of the reform camp particularly the anarchistic camp is made up of dung beetles I mean of egoists people who declare that the desire for pleasure is the motive of action who think a great deal of their egos and don't care a rap for society the result was they sharpened their pencils and wrote scathing editorials denouncing him that he answered never a word first because he didn't consider himself worthy fighting about and second if he had he was all together too good a general to do it his opponents were a disputatious sort who liked nothing better than argument he knew what his enemy wanted and didn't do it but when a question worth discussing arose then woe to those who had courted the rapier of his wit or challenged to duel with a diamond tipped dagger of his sarcasm he could answer columns with a paragraph I do not know whether this philosophy of his had crystallized in his own mind before he became an anarchist or not I believe however it had not I think it grew along and broadened and corrected and in turn broadening and correcting his thought in other channels but at any rate fully developed or not it certainly influenced his conclusions on economic subjects greatly true to his instincts he was always at the front of battle and when the war closed his first move was to attach himself to the greenback party the first widespread expression of organized protest particularly of the means of production in America he still had faith in the saving grace of politics and was active enough in the agitation to be nominated for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts with Wendell Phillips for governor the fight which besides being a demand for fiat money embodied a short hour movement took on a national character and dire de l'homme with five others appointed on a committee to push the matter before Congress this was in 1880 six years later time and the tide had driven both of them into the great current of socialism and final repudiation of politics as a means of attaining socialistic ideals and here came in the philosophy of the unconscious the socialization of industry was the next step up the mountainside not because men wished to understand it but the pressure of surroundings made it the only possible move but on the other hand the reactionary system-building socialism advocated by the great master Marx and all his train of little repeaters was seen to be at variance with a no less marked feature of the evolving social ideal this elasticity mobility constantly increasing differentiation which is only possible by the fact that people were left free to adapt themselves to the slightest changes un-forced by the opinions of other people who know nothing of the matters in question but who being in the majority for whereas ignorance not in the majority could suppress the free movements of the minority by enacting their ignorance into laws thus it will be seen that he looked forward to free socialism the requirements of that ideal are laid down in his quote economics of anarchy unquote a few of his caustic sentences may here be quoted quote the status assumes that rights increase in some metaphysical manner and become incarnate in half the whole plus one unquote quote politics discovers wisdom by taking a general poll of the citizens unquote quote every appeal to legislation to do ought but undo is as futile as sending a flag of truth to the enemy for munitions of war unquote quote when Caesar conquered Greece he subjugated Olympus and the gods now measure tape behind counters with Christian decorum unquote he always trusted the people the people that maligned him the people that injured him the people that killed him when I asked him once why he did not get angry at an individual who industriously circulated lies about him he answered with a twinkling laugh quote for the same reason that I don't kick the house cat unquote and yet he had an abiding faith in that man and other similar men to work out the judgments of the human race they let their only honest leaders die in garrets and underneath the speculative philosopher who confused you with long words underneath the cold logician who mercilessly scouted its sentiment underneath the pessimistic poet that sent the mournful cry of the whipper will echoing through the widowed chambers of the heart that hung and sung over the festival walls of life the wreaths and dirges of death underneath the gay joker who delighted to play tricks on politicians police and detectives was the man who took the children on his knees and told them stories while the night was falling the man who gave up a share of his own meager meals to save five blind kittens from drowning the man who lent his arm to a drunken washerwoman whom he did not know and carried her basket for her who might not be arrested and locked up the man who gathered four leafed clovers and sent them to his friends wishing them all the luck which superstition attached to them the man whose heart was beating with the great common heart who was one with the simplest and the poorest Lum held that evolution ethics or anarchist ethics in fact were both the altruistic and egoistic impulses that while determining causes will ever lie in the mysterious realm of the unconscious life consciousness may discern the trend of development and throw in its quota of influence for or against that in its endeavor to comprehend the trend of development it should take fair account of ancient truths however enveloped in superstitious husks should aim to extract the virtue even in the much mistaken altruistic doctrines of vicarious atonement and personal abasement and while emphasizing the negation of human rulership as destructive of the possibilities of true growth at the same time to acknowledge the vain conceit of self as anything more than a temporary grouping of instinct developed in beast in plant in man to acknowledge the individual creature in reflection of the cosmos constantly shifting now scintillant now vague and effervescent now gone forever as death breaks the mirror the notion of immortality which grows from such a conception of self is purged of the old vain conceit it has been most beautifully voiced in George Elliott's quote choir invisible unquote Mr. Lum's favorite poem and in the lines is expressed the last great limitless shadow which engulfs even this immortality the blind tremendous darkness which lies at the end of all the sense of the invincibility of which must have lain upon our teacher soul when after the last searching inexplicable farewell look into a friend's eyes he went out into the April night and took his last walk to the door of the great city he who should soon be so silent most of his comrades were surprised they said quote I never thought Diardie Lum would go alone unquote but I who know how often and how wearily he said quote what's the use unquote I'm sure that the mocking question lay at his heart and paralyzed the will to do like olive Shriners stars in the African farm the soul about to depart sees the earth so coldly all the ages are as one night and like them he watches little helpless creatures of the earth come out and crawl a while upon its skin then go back beneath it and it does not matter nothing matters end of Diardie Lum Francisco Farrah this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Francisco Farrah by Bolterine Declair in all unsuccessful social upheavals there are two terrors the red that is the people the mob the white that is the reprisal when a year ago today a terror shot out of that netherest blackness of social depth the Spanish torture house and laid in the ditch of Montjuice a human being who but a moment before had been the personification of manhood in the flower of life in the strength and pride of a balanced intellect full of the purpose of a great and growing understanding that of the modern schools humanity at large received a blow in the face which it could not understand stunned with gaping with astonishment how to explain it the average individual certainly the average individual in America could not believe it possible that any group of persons calling themselves a government let it be of the worst and most despotic could slay a man for being a teacher a teacher of modern sciences a builder of hygienic schools a publisher of textbooks no they could not believe it their minds staggered back and shook refusal the man was shot that was sure he was dead and there was no raising him out of the ditch to question him the Spanish government had certainly proceeded in an unjustifiable manner in court-martialing him and sentencing him without giving him a chance at defense but surely he had been guilty of something surely he must have rioted or instigated riot or done some desperate act of rebellion for never could it be that in the 20th century a country of Europe could kill a peaceful man whose aim in life and in geography arithmetic, geology physics, chemistry singing and languages no it was not possible and for all that it was possible it was done on the 13th of October one year ago today in the face of Europe standing with tied hands to look on at the murder and from that day on controversy between the awakened who understood the reactionists who likewise understood and their followers on both sides up and down and left confusion pretty badly confounded in the mind of him who did not understand but sought to the men who did him to death and the institutions they represent have done all in their power to create the impression that Farer was a believer in violence a teacher of the principles of violence a doer of acts of violence and an instigator of widespread violence perpetrated by a mass of people in support of the first they have published reports have pretended to reproduce seditious pictures from the walls of his classrooms have declared that he was seen mingling with the rebels during the Catalonian uprising of last year and that upon trial he was found guilty of having conceived and launched the Spanish rebellion against the Moroccan war and that his death was a just act of reprisal on the other hand we have had a storm of indignant voices clamoring in his defense alternately admitting and denying him to be a revolutionist taught social rebellion and that they taught nothing but pure science we have had workmen demonstrating and professors and literatures protesting on very opposite grounds and almost none were able to give definite information for the faith that was in them and indeed it has been very difficult to obtain exact information and still is so after a year's lapse it is not easy to get the facts disentangled from the fancies the truths from the lies and even when we have the truths as to the facts it is still difficult to evaluate them because of American ignorance of Spanish ignorance please understand the phrase America has not too much to boast of in the way of its learning but yet it has that much of common knowledge and common education that it does not enter into our minds to conceive of a population 68% of which are unable to read and write and a good share of the remaining 32% can only read not write and our heads to think that of this 32% of the better informed the most powerful contingent is composed of those whose distinct, avowed and deliberate purpose is to keep the ignorant ignorant whatever may be the sins of government in this country or of the churches and there are plenty of such sins at least they have not saved in the case of Negro slaves constituted themselves a conspiratical force to keep out enlightenment and right or to acquire whatever scientific knowledge their economic circumstances permitted them to what the unconscious conspiracy of economic circumstances done and what conscious manipulations the government school is guilty of to render higher education a privilege of the rich and a maintainer of injustice is another matter but it cannot be charged that the rulers of America seek to render the people illiterate people therefore in the state of education even as a compiler of education do not unless their attention is drawn to the facts conceive of a state of society in which government is a hostile force opposed to the enlightenment of the people its politicians exercising all their ingenuity to sidetrack the demand of the people for schools how much less do they conceive the hostile force and power of a church having behind it an unbroken descent from feudal ages whose direct interest it is and to keep out of general circulation all scientific information which would tend to destroy the superstitions whereby it thrives I say that the American people in general are not informed as to these conditions and therefore the phenomenon of a teacher killed for instituting and maintaining schools staggers their belief and when they read the assertions of those who defend the murder that it was because his schools were instigating the overthrow of social order in Spain they naturally exclaim ah, that explains it the man taught sedition, rebellion, riot in his schools that is the reason now the truth is that what Ferrer was teaching in his schools was really instigating the overthrow of the social order of Spain furthermore it was not only instigating it but it was making it as certain as the still coming of the daylight out of the night of the east but not by the teaching of riot of the use of dagger, bomb or knife but by the teaching of the same sciences which are taught in our public schools through a generally diffused knowledge of which the power of Spain's despotic church must crumble away likewise it was laying the primary foundation for the overthrow of such portions of the state organization as exist by reason of the general ignorance of the people the social order of Spain ought to be overthrown must be overthrown will be overthrown and Ferrer was doing a mighty work in that direction the men who killed him knew and understood it well and they consciously killed him for what he really did but they have left the outside world suppose they did it for what he did not do knowing there are no words so hated by all governments as sedition and rebellion knowing that such words will make the most radical of governments align itself with the most despotic at once knowing there is nothing which so offends the majority of conservative and peace loving people everywhere as the idea of violence unordered by authority they have willfully created the impression in schools where places where children and youths were taught to handle weapons and to make ready for armed attacks on the government they have as I said before created this impression in various ways they have pointed to the fact that the man who in 1906 made the attack on Alfonso's life had acted as a translator of books used by Ferrer in his schools they have scattered over Europe and America pictures purporting to be reproductions of drawings and prominent wall spaces in his schools recommending the violent overthrow of the government as to the first of these accusations I shall consider it later in the lecture but as to the last it should be enough to remind any person with an ordinary amount of reflection that the schools were public places open to anyone as our schools are and that if any such pictures had existed they would have been sufficient cause for shutting up the schools and incarcerating the founder within a day after their appearance on the walls the Spanish government has that much sense of how to preserve its own existence that it would not allow such pictures to hang in a public place for one day nor would books preaching sedition have been permitted to be published or circulated all this is foolish dust sought to be thrown in foolish eyes no the real offense was the real thing that he did and in order to appreciate its enormity from the Spanish ruling forces standpoint let us now consider what that ruling force is in the economic and educational conditions of the Spanish people why and how fairer founded the modern schools and what were the subjects taught therein up to the year 1857 there existed no legal provision for general elementary education in Spain in that year owing to the liberals having gotten into power in Madrid after a bitter contest aroused partially by the general political events of Europe a law making elementary education compulsory passed this was two years before fairer's birth now it is one thing for a political party temporarily in possession of power to pass a law it is quite another thing to make that law effective even when wealth and general sentiment are behind it but when joined to the fact that there is a strong opposition is added to the fact that this opposition is in possession of the greatest wealth of the country that the people to be benefited from enlightenment as those who profit by their ignorance and that those who do ardently desire their own uplift are extremely poor the difficulty of practicalizing this educational law is partially appreciated fairer's own boyhood life is an illustration of how much benefit the children of the peasantry reaped from the educational law his parents were vine-dressers they were eminently orthodox and believed what their priest who was probably the only man to read told them that the liberals were the emissaries of satan and that whatever they did was utterly evil they wanted no such evil thing as popular education about and would not that their children should have it accordingly even at 13 years of age the boy was without education a circumstance which in after years made him more anxious that others should not suffer as he had it is self-understood that if it was difficult to found schools in the cities where there existed a degree of popular clamor for them it was next to impossible in the rural districts where people like fairer's parents were the typical inhabitants the best result obtained by this law in the twenty years from 1857 to 1877 was that out of sixteen million people four million were then able to read and write seventy-five percent remaining illiterate at the end of 1907 the proportion was altered to six million illiterate out of eighteen million hundred thousand population which may be considered as a fairly correct approximate of the present condition one of the very great accounting causes for this situation is the extreme poverty of the mass of the populace in many districts of Spain a laborer's wages are less than one dollar a week and nowhere do they equal the poorest workman's wages in America of course it is understood that the cost of living is likewise low but imagine it as low as you please it is still evident that the income of the workers is too small to permit them to save anything even from the most frugal living the dire struggle to secure food clothing and shelter is such that little energy is left wherewith to aspire to anything to demand anything either for themselves or their children unless therefore the government provided the buildings the books and appliances and paid the teacher's salaries it is easy to see that the people provide it for themselves furthermore the government itself unless it contacts the wealthier classes for it cannot out of such an impoverished source ring sufficient means to provide adequate schools and school equipments now the wealthiest classes are just the religious orders according to the statement of Monsignor Jose Valera de Guanyado these orders now own two thirds of the money of the country and one third of the wealth and property are utterly opposed to all education except such as they themselves furnish a lamentable travesty on learning as a writer who has investigated these conditions personally observes in reply to the question does not the church provide numbers of schools day and night at its own expense it does unhappily for Spain it provides schools whose principal aim is to strengthen superstition follow a medieval curriculum keep out scientific light to strengthen better schools from being established a Spanish educational journal La Escuela Española not Ferrer's Journal declared in 1907 that these schools were largely without light or ventilations dens of death, ignorance and bad training it was estimated that 50,000 children died every year in consequence of the mischievous character of the school rooms and even to schools like these there were half a million children in the schools they are allowed a salary ranging from $50 to $100 a year but this is provided not by the state but through voluntary donations from the parents so that a teacher in addition to his legitimate functions must perform those of a collector of his own salary now conceive that he is endeavoring to collect it from parents whose wages amount to $2 or $3 a week and you will not be surprised at the case reported by a Madrid paper where parents would contribute if he opened a school out of 100 families 3 promised their support is it any wonder that the law of compulsory education is a mockery how could it be anything else now let us look at the products of this popular ignorance and we shall presently understand why the church fosters it why it fights education and also why the Catalonian insurrection of 1909 which began as a strike of workers in mob attacks upon convents, monasteries and churches I have already quoted the statement of a high Spanish prelate that the religious orders of Spain own two thirds of the money of Spain and one third of the wealth and property whether this estimate is precisely correct or not it is sufficiently near correctness to make us aware that at least a great portion of the wealth of the country has passed into their hands a state not widely differing from that existing in France before the insurrection of last year the city of Barcelona alone had 165 convents many of which were exceedingly rich the province of Catalonia maintained 2300 of these institutions aside from these religious orders with their accumulations of wealth the church itself the united body of priests not in orders is immensely wealthy conceive that in the cathedral at Toledo there is an image of the virgin whose wardrobe alone is made of pearls imagine that this doll which is supposed to symbolize the forlorn young woman who in her pain and sorrow and need was driven to seek shelter in a stable whose life was ever lowly and who is called the mother of sorrows imagine that this image of her has become a vulgar coquette sporting a robe where into are sewn 85000 pearls besides as many more sapphires amethysts and diamonds oh what a decoration for the dying eyes on the cross to look forward to what an outcome of the gospel of salvation free to the poor and lowly taught by the poorest and the lowliest that the humble keeper of the humble household of the despised little village of Judea should be imagined forth as a queen of gods bedisoned with a crown worth 25000 dollars and bracelets valued at 10000 dollars more the virgin Mary the daughter of the stable transformed into a diamond merchant's showcase and this in the midst of men and women working for just enough to keep the skin up on the bone in the midst of children who are denied the primary necessities of childhood now I ask you when the fury of these people is burst as under the provocation they received it was inevitable that it should burst was it any wonder that it manifested itself in mob violence against the institutions which mock their suffering by this useless senseless criminal waste of wealth in the face of utter need will someone now whisper in our ears that there are women in America who decorate themselves with more jewels than the virgin of Toledo and throw away the price of a school on a useless decoration in a single night while within a radius of five miles from them are also uneducated children for whom our school boards can provide no place yes it is so let them remember the mobs of Barcelona and let me remember I am talking about Spain the question naturally intrudes to the church how do the religious orders manage to accumulate such wealth remember first that they are old and of unbroken continuance for hundreds of years the various forms of acquisition in operation for centuries would produce immense accumulations even supposing nothing but legitimate purchases and gifts but when we consider the actual means whereby money is daily absorbed from the people by these institutions we receive a shock when we think about it it is almost impossible to realize and yet it is true that the Spanish church still deals in that infamous graft against which Martin Luther hurled the splendid force of his wrath 400 years ago the church of Spain still sells indulgences every Catholic bookstore and every priest has them for sale they are called boulas their prices range from about 15 to 25 cents and they constitute an elastic excuse providing it is not a capital crime for a definitely named period probably there is no one in America so little able to believe this condition to exist as the ordinary well informed Roman Catholic I have myself listened to priests of the Roman faith giving conditions on which pardon for venal offenses might be obtained and they had nothing to do with money they consisted in saying a certain number of prayers at stated periods with specified intent and a logical way of putting things together that have no connection there is nothing in it to offend one's ideas of honesty the enlightened conscious of an entire mass of people has demanded that a spiritual offense be dealt with by spiritual means it would revolt at the idea that such grace could be written out on paper and sold either to the highest bidder or for a fixed price but now conceive what happens where people are illiterate regarding written documents with that superstitious awe those who cannot read always have for the mysterious language of learning regarding them besides with the combination of fear and reverence which the ignorant believer entertains for the visible sign of supernatural power the power which holds over him the threat of eternal punishment and you will have what goes on in Spain add to this that such a condition of fear and gullibility on the side of the people is the great opportunity of the religious grafter whatever number of honest self-sacrificing devoted people may be attracted to the service of the church there will certainly be found also the cheat, the imposter the searcher for ease and power these indulgences which for fifteen or twenty-five cents pardon the buyer for his past sins but are good only till he sins again constitute a species of permission to do what otherwise is forbidden the most expensive one the twenty-five cent one is practically a license to hold stolen property up to a certain amount both the rich and poor by these things the rich of course paying a good deal more than the stipulated some but it hardly requires the statement that an immense number of the very poor by them also and from this horrible traffic the church of Spain annually draws millions there are other sources of income such as the sale of scapulars agnostes, charms and other pieces of trumpery which goes on all over the Catholic world also but naturally to no such extent as in Spain, Portugal and Italy or popular ignorance may be again measured by the materialism of its religion now is it reasonable to suppose that the individuals who are thriving upon these sales want a condition of popular enlightenment do they not know how all this traffic would crumble like the ash of a burnt out fire once the blaze of science were to flame through Spain they educate yes they educate the people to believe in these barbaric relics of a dead time of interest Spain and Portugal are the last resort of the medieval church the monasticism and the Jesuitry which have been expelled from other European countries and compelled to withdraw from Cuba and the Philippines have concentrated there and there they are making their last fight there they will go down into their eternal grave but not till science has invaded the dark corners of the popular intellect the political condition is parallel with the religious condition of the people the church is rich there are some elements in the government which are opposed to the church religiously which nevertheless do not wish to see its power as an institution upset because they foresee that the same people who would overthrow the church would later overthrow them these too wish to see the people kept ignorant nevertheless there have been numerous political rebellions in Spain having for their object the establishment of a republic in 1868 there occurred such a rebellion under the leadership of Ruiz Zoria at that time Farrah was not quite twenty years old he had acquired an education by his own efforts he was a declared republican as it seems that every young, ardent, bright minded youth seeing what the condition of his country was and wishing for its betterment would be Zoria was for a short time minister of public instruction under the new government and very zealous for popular education naturally he became an object of admiration for the new government and for the new government naturally he became an object of admiration and imitation to Farrah in the early eighties after various fluctuations of political power Zoria who had been absent from Spain returned to it and began the labor of converting the soldiers to republicanism Farrah was then a director of railways and of much service to Zoria in the practical work of organization in 1885 this movement culminated in an abortive revolution wherein both Farrah and Zoria and were accordingly compelled to take refuge in France upon the failure of the insurrection it is therefore certain that from his entrance into public agitation to the year 1885 Farrah was an active revolutionary republican believing in the overthrow of Spanish tyranny by violence there is no question that at that time he said and wrote things which whether we shall consider them justifiable or not were openly in favor of forcible rebellion such utterances charged against him and the attempted trial in 1909 which were really his were quotations from this period remember he was then 26 years old when the trial occurred he was 50 years old what had been his mental evolution during those 24 years in Paris where with the exception of a short intermission in 1889 when he visited Spain he remained for about 15 years he naturally drifted into a method of making a living quite common to educated exiles in a foreign land and teaching private lessons in his native language but while this is with most a mere temporary makeshift which they change for something else as soon as they are able to Farrah it revealed what his real business in life should be he found teaching to be his genuine vocation so much so that he took part in several movements for popular education in Paris giving much free service this participation in the labor of training the mind slowly the idea of a Spain regenerated through the storm blasts of revolution mightily and suddenly faded out of his belief being replaced probably almost insensibly by the idea that a thorough educational enlightenment must precede political transformation if that transformation were to be permanent this conviction he voiced with strange power and beauty of expression when he said to his old revolutionary Republican friend Alfred Nacquette which time itself has helped to build Nacquette himself old and sinking man as he is is at this day in our heart and soul for forcible revolution admitting all the evils which engenders and all the dangers of miscarriage which accompany it he still believes to quote his exact words that revolutions are not only the marvellous accousures of society they are also fecundating forces they fructify men's intelligences and if they determine the final realisation of matured evolutions they also become through their action on human minds points of departure for newer evolutions yet he who thus sings the pay-in of the uprisen people with a fire of youth and an ardour of love that sound like the singing of some strong young blacksmith marching at the head of an insurgent column rather than the quavering voice of an old spent man he who was the warm personal friend of Farrah for many years and who would surely have wished that his friends love he expressly declares that Farrah was of those who feel themselves drawn to the field of preparative labour making sure the ground over which the revolution may march to enduring results this then was the ripened condition of his mind especially after the death of Zaria and all his subsequent life in labour is explicable only with this understanding of his mental attitude in the confusion of deafening voices it has been declared that not only did he not take part in last year's manifestations nor instigate them but that he in fact had been a Tolstoyan a non-resistant this is not true he undoubtedly understood that the introduction of popular education into Spain means revolt sooner or later and he would certainly have been glad to see a successful revolt overthrow the monarchy at Madrid he did not wish the people to be submissive it is one of the fundamental teachings of the schools he founded that the assertive spirit of the child has been encouraged that its will is not to be broken that the sin of other schools is the forcing of obedience he had helped to form a young Spain which would not submit which would resist resist consciously, intelligently, steadily he did not wish to enlighten people merely to render them more sensitive to their pains and deprivations but that they might so use their enlightenment as to rid themselves of the system of exploitation by church and state which is responsible for their miseries he used to free themselves he did not make his affair how and when were these schools founded it was during his long sojourn in Paris that he had as a private pupil in Spanish a middle-aged, wealthy, unmarried Catholic lady after much conflict over religion between teacher and pupil the latter modified her orthodoxy greatly and especially after her journeys to Spain where she herself saw the condition of public instruction eventually she became interested in fairer's conceptions of education and his desire to establish schools in his own country and when she died in 1900 she was then somewhat over 50 years old she devised a certain part of her property to fairer to be used as he saw fit feeling assured no doubt that he would see fit to use it not for his personal advantage but for the purpose so dear to his heart which he did the bequest amounted to about $150,000 and the first expenditure was for the establishment in 1901 it should be said that this was not the first of the modern school movement in Spain for previous to that and for several years there had sprung up in various parts of the country a spontaneous movement towards self-education a very heroic effort in a way considering that the teachers were generally working men who had spent their day in the shops and were using the remainder of their exhausted strength to enlighten their fellow workers and the children these were largely night schools and these efforts the buildings in which they were held were of course unsuitable there was no proper plan of work no sufficient equipment and little coordination of labour a considerable percentage of these schools were already on the decline when Ferrer, equipped with his splendid organizing ability his teachers experience and Mademoiselle Mounier's endowment opened the Barcelona school having as pupils 18 boys and 12 girls out of four years earnest activity 50 schools had been established 10 in Barcelona and 40 in the provinces in 1906 that is after five years work a banquet was held on Good Friday at which 1700 pupils were present from 30 to 1700 that is something and a banquet in Catholic Spain on Good Friday a banquet of children who have made goodbye to the salvation of the soul by the punishment of the stomach and the menace which both sides understood I have said that Ferrer brought to his work splendid organizing ability this he speedily put to purpose by enlisting the cooperation of a number of the greatest scientists of Europe in the preparation of textbooks embodying the discoveries of science couched in language comprehensible to young minds so far I am sorry to say I have not succeeded in getting copies of these manuals the Spanish government confiscated still there are some uncaptured sets one is already in the British Museum and I make no doubt that within a year or so we shall have translations of most of them there were 30 of these manuals all told comprising the work of the three sections primary, intermediate and superior into which the pupils were divided from what I have been able to find out about these books I believe the most interesting of them would be the first reading book it was prepared by Dr. Odin de Buen and is said to be at the same time a speller, a grammar and an illustrated manual of evolution the majestic story of the evolution of the cosmos from the atom to the thinking being related in a language simple comprehensible to the child 20,000 copies of this book were rapidly sold imagine what that meant to Catholic schools that the babies of Spain should learn nothing about eternal punishment for their deadly sins and should learn that they are one in a long line of unfolding life in a fully cease-line the books on geography, physics and mineralogy were written in like manner and with like intent by the same author on anthropology Dr. Angurand wrote and on evolution Dr. Lattarno of Paris among the very suggestive works was one on the universal substance a collaborative production of Albert Block and Périf Javel in which the mysteries of existence are resolved into their chemical equivalents so that the foundations for magic are out of the intellectual mind this book was prepared at Ferrer's special request as an antidote to ancestral leanings inherited superstitions the various outside influences counteracting the influences of the school the methods of instruction were modeled after earlier attempts in France and were based on the general idea that physical and intellectual education must continually supplement each other that no one is really educated so long as his knowledge is merely the recollection of what he is read or seen in a book accordingly a lesson often consisted of a visit to a factory a workshop a studio or a laboratory where things were explained and illustrated or in a class journey to the hills or the sea or the open country where the geological or topographical conditions were studied or botanical specimens collected and individual observation encouraged very often even book classes were held out of doors and were continually put in touch with the great pervading influences of nature a touch too often lost or never felt at all in our city environments how different was all this from the incomprehensible theology of the Catholic schools to be learned and believed but not understood the impractical rehearsing of strings of words characteristic of medieval survivals no wonder the modern schools grew and grew and the hatred of the priests waxed hotter and hotter indeed they did not wait long in the year 1906 on the 31st of May not so very long after that Good Friday banquet occurred the event which they seized upon to crush the modern school and its founder I am not here to speak either for or against Matteo Moral he was a wealthy young man of much energy and considerable learning he had helped to enrich the library of the modern school and being an excellent linguist in the books Farer had accepted the offer that is all Moral had to do with the modern school but on the day of royal festivities Moral had it in his head to throw a bomb where it would do some royal hurt he missed his calculations and the hurt intended did not take place but after a short interval finding himself about to be captured he killed himself think of him as you please think that he was a mad man who did a mad man's act of long chafing indignation at his country's condition wanted to strike a blow at a tyrannical monarchy and was willing to give his own life in exchange for the tyrants or better than this reserve your judgment and say that you know not the man nor his personal condition nor the special external conditions that prompted him and that without such knowledge he cannot be judged but whatever you think of Moral pray why was Farer arrested this year why was it sought to railroad him before a court-martial and that attempt failing the civil trial postponed for all that time why, why because Farer taught science to the children of Spain and for no other thing his enemies would have killed him then but having been compelled to yield an open trial by the outcry of Europe they were also compelled to release him but I imagine I hear the rest of the story the day Farer went free go then we shall get you again and then they would do what three years later they did damn him to the ditch of Montjuic yay they shut their lips together like the thin lips of fate and waited the hatred of an order has something superb in it it hates so relentlessly so constantly identical, inexorable it pursues to the end did Farer know this undoubtedly in a general way he did and yet he was so far from conceiving it's appalling remorselessness that even when he found himself in prison again and utterly in their power he could not believe that he would not be freed what was the opportunity for which the Jesuitry of Spain waited with such terrible security the Catalonian uprising how did they know it would come as any sane man not over-optimistic knows that uprising must come in Spain Farer hoped to sap away the foundations of tyranny through peaceful enlightenment he was right but they are also right to say that there are other forces hurling towards those foundations the greatest of these starvation now it was plain and simple starvation that arose to rend its starvers when the Catalonian women rose in mobs to cry against the command that was taking away their fathers and sons the Spanish people did not want the Moroccan war the government in the interest of a number of capitalists did but like all governments and all capitalists it wanted working men to do the dying and they did not want to die and leave their wives and children to die too so they rebelled at first it was the conscious orderly protest of organized working men but starvation no more respects the commands of working men's unions than the commands of governments and other orderly bodies it has nothing to lose and it gets away in its fury from all management and it writes where churches and monasteries are offensively rich and at ease in the face of hunger hunger takes its revenge it has long fangs it wrens and tears and tramples the innocent with the guilty always it is very horrible but remember how much more horrible is the long slow systematic crushing wasting drying of men upon their bones after a century has begotten the monster hunger remember the fifty thousand innocent children annually slaughtered the blinded and the crippled children maimed and forsaken by social power and behind the smoke and flame of the burning convents of July 1909 see the staring of those sightless eyes fairer instigate that mad frenzy oh no it was a mightier than fairer our lady of pain our lady of hunger our lady with uncut nails and wolf-like teeth our lady who bears the man flesh in her body that cannon are to tear our lady the working woman of Spain a-hungered she incarnated the red terror and the enemies of fairer in 1906 as in 1909 knew that such things would come and they bided their time it is one of those pathetic things which destiny deals and it was only for love's sake and most for the love of a little child and moreover that the uprising found fairer in Spain at all he had been in England investigating schools and methods there from April until the middle of June word came that his sister-in-law and his niece were ill so the 19th of June found him at the little girl's bedside he intended soon after to go to Paris but delayed to make some inquiries for a friend concerning the proceedings of the electrical society of Barcelona so the storm caught him as it caught thousands of others at the publishing house as usual making the observations of an interested spectator of events to his friend Nacquette he sent a postal card on the 26th of July in which he spoke of the heroism of the women the lack of coordination in the people's movements and the total absence of leaders as a curious phenomenon hearing soon after that he was to be arrested he secluded himself for five weeks the white terror was in full sway three thousand men women and children had been arrested inhumanely treated then the chief prosecutor issued the statement that Ferrer was the director of the revolutionary movement too indignant to listen to the appeals of his friends he started to Barcelona to give himself up and demand trial he was arrested on the way and they court-martialed him the proceedings were utterly infamous no chance to confront witnesses against him no opportunity to bring witnesses not even the books accused of sedition allowed to offer their mute testimony no opportunity given to his defender to prepare letters sent from England and France to prove what had been the doomed man's purposes and occupations during his stay there lost in transit the old articles of twenty-four years before made to appear as if recent utterances forgeries imposed and with all this nothing but hearsay evidence even from his accusers and yet he was sentenced to death sentenced to death and shot and all modern schools closed the city sequestrated and the virgin of Toledo may wear her gorgeous robes in peace since the shadow of the darkness has stolen back over the circle of light he lit only somewhere somewhere down in the obscurity hovers the menacing figure of her rival our lady of pain she is still now but she is not dead and if all things be taken from her and the light not allowed to come to her nor to her children then someday she will set her own lights in the darkness fairer is with the immortals his work is spreading over the world it will yet return and rid Spain of its tyrants and a Francisco fairer