 Audience, defined by Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1911. Audience, from Latin audere to hear, the act or state of hearing, the term being therefore transferred to those who hear or listen as in a theatre, at a concert or meeting. In a more technical sense, the term is applied to the right of access to the sovereign enjoyed by the peers of the realm individually and by the House of Commons collectively. For particularly, it means the ceremony of the admission of ambassadors, envoys or others to an interview with a sovereign or an important official for the purpose of presenting their credentials. In France, audience is the term applied to the sitting of a law court for hearing actions. In Spain, Audiencia is the name given to certain tribunals which try appeals from minor courts. The Spanish judges were originally known as oedores, hearers from the Spanish oir to hear, but they are now called ministros or magistrados togados, robed judges, as the gown of the Spanish judges called a toga. The Audiencia Pretorial, i.e. of the Prater, was a court in Spanish America from which there was no appeal to the viceroy, but only to the Council of the Indies in Spain. It is not the custom in Spain to speak of Audiencias reales, royal courts, but of the Audiencias del Reino, courts of the kingdom. In England, the audience court was an ecclesiastical court, held by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, in which they once exercised a considerable part of their jurisdiction, dealing with such matters as they thought fit to reserve for their own hearing. It has been long disused and is now merged in the Court of Arches. End of Audience, a definition by Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition. January 5, 1884, by Anonymous. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Joseph F. Glidden, the Barb Wire Industry, some facts in its early history not generally known, its growth. Joseph Farwell Glidden, the father of the Barb Wire business of this country, is now a hail and hearty man of 71. He was born at Charleston, New Hampshire. When about one year old, the family came west to Clarendon, Orleans, County, New York and engaged in farming. The young lad, besides mastering the usual branches taught in the common schools, gave some time to the higher mathematics in Latin, intending to take a college course, an idea that he finally abandoned. He taught in the district schools for a few terms. In 1842 he came to Illinois and purchased a quarter section of land, a mile west of what is now the site of the pleasant and prosperous town of DeKalb. With the exception of three years, his life since then has been passed upon this farm and at DeKalb. He has, from time to time, added to his homestead, his farm now embracing 800 acres. His land is under excellent cultivation, a considerable portion of it having been thoroughly tiled, and his farm buildings are first class. Mr. Glidden has been twice married. Two children were born of the First Union, both dying in infancy. By his second marriage he has one daughter, now the wife of a Chicago merchant. Mr. Glidden has held several local offices of trust and honor and enjoys in a marked degree the esteem and confidence of the citizens of his neighborhood and county, the rapid accumulation of property of late years, through his barb, wire, patents, and business, give him the means to gratify his feelings of public spirit and in consequence the town of DeKalb has benefited greatly at his hands. Its leading hotel and many other buildings are the work of his enterprise. Mr. Glidden has never lost the simple manners of the farm. He is unostentatious, quiet, genial, and at his hotel makes everybody feel as much at home as though enjoying the hospitality of his private house. His kindly, firm, and intelligent face is well shown in the accompanying portrait, though as is usually the case, the hand of the artist has touched his features more lightly than has the hand of time. New names are now more widely known among the landholders of the country than that of Joseph F. Glidden, the unpretending gentleman whose life we have briefly sketched. It was his fortune to seize upon an idea and push it to development, which has not only given him fame and fortune, but which has enriched many others and saved many millions of dollars to the farmers of America. He has not only founded a mammoth industry, but he has revolutionized an economic system of the world. By his ingenuity and perseverance, the fencing system of a pastoral continent has been reduced to a minimum of expense and simplicity. Not that he individually has accomplished all this, but as the patentee of the first really successful barb wire fence, he laid the solid foundation for it all. The first application for a patent for the Glidden barb was filed October 27, 1873. For some weeks previous to this date, Mr. Glidden had had in his mind the idea of a barb of wire twisted about the main wire of the fence, leaving two projecting points on opposite sides. He made some of these by hand with the aid of pinchers and hammer. He strung two wires between two trees and twisted them together with a stick placed between them. A pair of cutting nippers was the next addition to his kit of tools. His next means for twisting the two wires together was the grindstone, attaching one end of the wire to shaft and crank, the others being fastened to the wall of the barn. And here, as in most things great and small in this world, woman furnished the motor power. The strong arm of the good help-meet Mrs. Glidden turned the grindstone that twisted the first wire that made the first Glidden barb fence that kept stock at bay in Illinois or the world. Then followed a device for twisting and barbing and the application of horse power. Business expanded and steam took the place of the horse and inventive genius modified and improved the entire machinery. It being estimated that at least the sum of one million dollars has been expended in bringing the machinery for barb wire making to its present state of perfection. At about the same time that Mr. Glidden was wrestling with his ideas and devices, Mr. I. L. L. Wood was experimenting to accomplish a like result. With a thin band of metal the barbs cut and curved outward from the strip. In the meantime Mr. Glidden had put up a few rods of his hand-made barb wire along the roadside at his farm, and here again the good genius of woman enters upon the scene. One Sunday Mr. L. Wood and his wife were driving along this road and attracted by the wire fence stopped to examine it. Mrs. L. Wood, much to the chagrin of her husband, remarked, This seems to me a better device than your own, don't it, to you? It did not then, for the remark disappointed and angered him. But it set him to thinking, and before the next morning he was of the same opinion. The two men meeting the next day it did not take long to compromise and unite. Mr. L. Wood dropped his own plans and accepted a half interest in the Glidden patents, and assumed the management of the business end of the concern in which position he developed ability and tact possessed by few businessmen in this country. The barb wire fence met an unexpected and general demand. We know of few things like it in the history of manufacturers. From this small beginning scarce ten years ago more than fifty large establishments are now turning out this wire to meet an ever insatiate demand. The establishment of I.L. L. Wood, making the Glidden wire at DeKalb, is the most complete and extensive of them all. The building is eight hundred feet in length and is supplied with about two hundred machines for twisting and barbing the wire. It gives, when running full force, employment to about four hundred men and turns out a carload of wire each hour for ten hours per day on an average, though this amount is considerably increased at certain times of the year. These figures, though not given us by Mr. L. Wood, we are satisfied do not overstate the production of this one factory. The progress of the barb wire industry of the whole country is shown by the following record of the past nine seasons. In 1874 there were ten thousand pounds made and sold. In 1875 there were six hundred thousand pounds made and sold. 1876 there were two million eight hundred forty thousand pounds made and sold. 1877 there were twelve million eight hundred sixty three thousand pounds made and sold. 1878 there were twenty six million six hundred fifty five thousand pounds made and sold. 1879 there were fifty million three hundred thirty seven thousand pounds made and sold. 1880 there were eighty million five hundred thousand pounds made and sold. 1881 there were one hundred twenty million pounds made and sold. 1882 there were about one hundred eighty million pounds. The record for 1883 is not yet made up but will probably show a corresponding increase. In 1876 Mr. Glidden disposed of his half interest in the concern of Glidden and Elwood to the Washburn and Moan Wire Manufacturing Company of Massachusetts, receiving therefore sixty thousand dollars in cash and a royalty on the future goods manufactured. Mr. Elwood retaining his interest. The new concern began the purchase of prior unused and conflicting patents involving itself in extensive litigation but sustained by the courts soon gained control of almost the entire barb wire business of the country. Nearly all wire making companies are now running under license from the parent concern. The following is a list of the licensees of last year. Pittsburgh Hinge Company Limited, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, H.B. Scott & Company, Buffalo, New York, Hawkeye Steel Barb Fence Company, Burlington, Iowa, James Ayers and Alexander C. Decker, Bushnell, Illinois, Indiana Wire Fence Company, Crawfordsville, Indiana, Cedar Rapids Barb Wire Company, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Cincinnati Barb Wire Fence Company, Cincinnati, Ohio, Cleveland Barb Fence Company, Cleveland, Ohio, Ohio Steel Barb Fence Company, Cleveland, Ohio, Edwin A. Beers and Company, Chicago, Illinois, Crandall Manufacturing Company, Chicago, Illinois, Chicago Galvanized Wire Fence Company, Chicago, Illinois, Lyman Manufacturing Company, Chicago, Illinois, Daniel S. Marsh, Chicago, Illinois, Oscar F. Moore, Chicago, Illinois, National Wire Company, Chicago, Illinois, Herman E. Schnabel, Chicago, Illinois, Aaron K. Stiles and John W. Colkins, Chicago, Illinois, Thorn Wire Hedge Company, Chicago, Illinois, Baker Manufacturing Company, Des Moines, Iowa, Superior Barbed Wire Company, DeKalb, Illinois, Jacob Haish, DeKalb, Illinois, Frentress Barbed Wire Fence Company, East Dubuque, Illinois, Grinnell Manufacturing Company, Grinnell, Iowa, Janesville Barbed Wire Company, Janesville, Wisconsin, Iowa Barbed Wire Company, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, William J. Adam, Juliette, Illinois, Locke Stitch Fence Company, Juliette, Illinois, Lambert and Bishop Wire Fence Company, Juliette, Illinois, Alfred Van Fleet and A. H. Schreffler, Juliette, Illinois, David G. Wells, Juliette, Illinois, Southwestern Barbed Wire Company, Lawrence, Kansas, Arthur H. Dale, Leland, Illinois, Union Barbed Wire Company, Lee, Illinois, Lockport Wire Fence Company, Lockport, Illinois, Norton and DeWitt, Lockport, Illinois, Iowa Barbed Steel Wire Fence Company, Marshalltown, Iowa, Omaha Barbed Wire Company, Omaha, Nebraska, H.B. Scott & Company Limited, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Missouri Wire Fence Company, St. Louis, Missouri, St. Louis Wire Fence Company, St. Louis, Missouri, J.H. Lawrence & Company, Sterling, Illinois, Northwestern Barbed Wire Company, Sterling, Illinois, Novelty Manufacturing Company, Sterling, Illinois, Samwich Enterprise Company, Samwich, Illinois, Robinson & Halliday, San Francisco, California, The Hazard Manufacturing Company, Wilkes Bar, Pennsylvania, Worcester Barbed Fence Company, Worcester, Massachusetts. When Glidden & Elwood first began the sale of the Glidden Fence, which was confined to the vicinity of DeKalb, they received twenty-five cents per pound for the barbed wire. Since then, as production has increased and the facilities for manufacturing have been multiplied and perfected, the price has gradually dropped. Until now, a farm can be well fenced for forty-five cents or less per rod and to the incalculable advantage of the country over fencing by posts and boards, hedges or rails, as anyone may see by a simple dollar and cent comparison of materials at his own door. Barbed Wire has done much for the city of DeKalb. It has built its fine business blocks and residences, and it has peopled it with industrious fifty citizens. It has made a home market for many of the products of the country roundabout. It should give a new name, Barbed City, to the bustling busy town. There are three concerns now making barbed wire at this point. The one spoken of is the largest. Next is that of Jacob Haish, an extensive establishment turning out an excellent wire. And the superior, run by Mr. Hiram Elwood, Mr. Glidden having a considerable interest in it. Mr. I. L. Elwood is the owner of some 2,600 acres of land in the vicinity of DeKalb. Much of this land is naturally low and wet. The proprietor with his accustomed energy and intelligence has set vigorously to work to reclaim it. To this end he has already laid 80 miles of tile. He, last year, expended nearly $15,000 in this work. His poorest land is rapidly becoming his most productive. Mr. Elwood has also turned his attention somewhat to horse breeding, and he is now the owner of a fine stud of draft horses, the equal of many better known establishments of the kind in the State. Of his drainage operations we hope to speak more in detail in a future number. Mr. Glidden told the writer that his first trial of his fence with stock was not undertaken without some misgivings. But he thought to himself, it will stop them at any rate, whether it kills them or not. So he took down an old board fence from one side of his barnyard, and towards night, when his stock came up, turned them into the yard as usual. The first animal to investigate the almost invisible barrier to freedom was a strong, heavy-grade Durham cow. She walked along beside the wires for a little, put her nose out, and touched a barb, withdrew it and took a walk around the yard, approached the wires again, and gave the barbs a lap with her tongue. This settled the matter, and she retired, convinced that the new fangled fence was a success. Barb wire is now sent from this country to Mexico, South America, and Australia. It is also being manufactured in England under American auspices. Mr. Glidden, associating with himself and Mr. Sanborn, a young man of push and enterprise, has opened up an extensive cattle ranch in Potter and Randall Counties, Texas. They have fenced with wire, a tract 30 miles long by about 15 miles broad, and have now, upon it, 14,000 head of cattle. Two twisted, number 11 wires were used for this fence, and the posts are the best that could be procured. The wire was taken 200 miles on wagons. The total cost of the completed fence was about 36,000 dollars. Mazeers, Glidden, and Elwood put up the first barb wire ever used by a railway company, the Northwestern. So great was the caution of the company that the manufacturers built it themselves, agreeing to remove it if it proved unsatisfactory. The railway folks feared it would injure stock, the damages for which they would be forced to pay. It is needless to say that the fence was not removed. More than 100 railway companies are now using the Glidden wire, and it stretches along many thousands of miles of track. End of Joseph Glidden and Barb Wire Fencing from The Prairie Farmer, a weekly journal for the farm, orchard, and fireside, volume 56, number 1, January 5, 1884, by Anonymous. Read for LibriVox by Sue Anderson. Calamity Jane by Lewis R. Freeman. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Calamity Jane, an excerpt from Down the Yellowstone by Lewis R. Freeman. Thrilled with the delights of swift water boating as they had been vouchsafe to May in running the mule through Yankee Jim's Canyon, I hastened to make arrangements to continue my voyage immediately upon arriving in Livingston. A carpenter called Sidney Lamartine agreed to build me a skiff and have it ready at the end of three days. Hour by hour I watched my argacy grow, and then, on the night before it was ready to launch, came Calamity. In every man's life there is one event that transcends all others in the bigness with which it bulks in his memory. This is not necessarily the biggest thing that has really happened to him. Usually, indeed, it is not. It is simply the thing that impresses most deeply the person he happens to be at the time. The thunderbolt of a living, breathing Calamity Jane striking at my feet from a clear sky is my biggest thing. One does his little curtsy to a lot of queens, real and figurative, in the course of 20 years wandering. But not the most regal of them has stirred my pulse like the queen of the planes. Queens of dance, queens of song, and queens of real kingdoms, cannibalistic and otherwise, there have been. But only one queen of the Rockies. And this was not because Calamity Jane was either young or beautiful or good. There may have been a time when she was young, and possibly even good, but beautiful never. So far as my own heart storm was concerned, it was because she had been the heroine of that saffron-hued thriller called The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone, the witch I had devoured in the Hamo in my adolescence. The fragrance of dried alfalfa brings the vision of Calamity Jane before my eyes, even to this day. She is the only flesh-and-blood heroine to come into my life. My initial meeting with Calamity was characteristic. It was a bit after midnight. On my way home, to the old albomoral to bed, I became aware of what I thought was a spurred and chapped cowboy in the act of embracing a lamppost. A gruff voice held me as I came barging by. Short pants, it called. Oh, short pants! Can't you tell a lady where she lives? Show me where the lady is, and I'll try. I replied, edging cautiously in toward the circle of the golden glow. She's me, short pants. Martha Canary, Martha Burke, better known as Calamity Jane. Ah! I breathed, and again. Ah! Then, sure, I'll tell you where you live, only you'll have to tell me first. And thus was ushered in the greatest moment of my life. Calamity, it appeared, had arrived from Boseman that afternoon, taken a room over a saloon, gone out for a convivial evening, and forgotten where she lived. She was only sure that the barkeeper of the saloon was named Patsy, and that there was an outside stairway up to the second story. It was a long and devious search, not so much because there was any great number of saloons with outside stairways and mixologists called Patsy, as because every man in every saloon to which we went to inquire greeted Calamity as a long lost mother and insisted on shouting the house. Then, to the last man, they attached themselves to the search party. When we did locate the proper place, it was only to find that Calamity had lost her room key. After a not too well ordered consultation, we passed her unprotesting anatomy in through a window by means of a fire ladder and reckoned our mission finished. That was the proudest night on which I am able to look back. When, agog with delicious excitement, I went to ask after Mrs. Burke's health the following morning, I found her smoking a cigar and cooking breakfast. She insisted on my sharing both, but I compromised on the ham and eggs. She had no recollection whatever of our meeting the previous evening, yet greeted me as short pants as readily as ever. This name, later contracted to pants, was suggested by my omnipresent checkered knickers, the only nether garment I possessed at the time. The once and never again Calamity Jane was about fifty-five years of age at this time and looked it, or did not look it according to where one looked. Her deeply lined, scowling, suntanned face and the mouth with its missing teeth might have belonged to a hag of seventy. The rest of her, while seeing those leather-clad legs swing by on the other side of a signboard that obscured the wrinkled fizz, one might well have thought they belonged to a thirty-year-old cow-puncher just coming into town for his night to howl. And younger even than her legs was Calamity's heart, apropos of which I recall confiding to Patsy the Barkeep that she had the heart of a young god pan. Maybe so, grunted Patsy doubtfully, not having had a classical education he couldn't be quite sure, of course. In any case, she's got the voice of an old tin pan, which was neither gallant nor quite fair to Calamity. Her voice was a bit cracked, but not so badly as Patsy had tried to make out. Another thing, that black scowl between her brows belied the dear old girl. There was really nothing saddening about her. Hers was the sunniest of souls, and the most generous. She was poor all her life from giving away things, and I have heard that her last illness was contracted in nursing some poor sought she found in a gutter. Naturally, of course, after a decent interval, I blurted out to Calamity that I had come to hear the story of her wonderful life. Right gamely did the old girl come through. Sure, pants, she replied. Just run down and rush a can of suds, and I'll rattle off the whole layout for you. I'll meet you down there in the sunshine by those empty beer barrels. It was May, the month of the brewing of the fragrant dark brown bock. Returning with a gallant tin pail awashed to the gunnels, I found Calamity enthroned on an upended barrel, with her feet comfortably braced against the side of one of its prostrate brothers. Depositing the nectar on a third barrel at her side, I sank to my ease upon a soft patch of lush spring grass and budding dandelions. Calamity blew a mouth hole in the foam, quaffed deeply of the bock, wiped her lips with a sleeve, and began without further preliminary. My maiden name was Martha Canary, was born in Princeton, Missouri, May 1, 1848. Then, in a sort of parenthesis, this must be about my birthday pants, drank to the health of the Queen of Mag, kid. I stopped chewing dandelion, lifted the sud's crown's bucket toward her, muttered, many happy May Times, Queen, and drank deep. Immediately she resumed with, my maiden name was Martha Canary, etc. As a child, I always had a fondness for adventure and a special fondness for horses, which I began to ride in an early age and continued to do so until I became an expert rider, being able to ride the most vicious and stubborn horses. In 1865, we emigrated from our home in Missouri by the overland route to Virginia City, Montana, while on the way the greater part of my time was spent in hunting along with the men. In fact, I was at all times with the men when there was excitement and adventure to be had. We had many exciting times fording streams, for many of the streams on the way were noted for quicksand and buggy places. On occasions of that kind, the men would usually select to the best way to cross the streams, myself on more than one occasion having mounted my pony and swam across the stream several times to amuse myself, and had many narrow escapes. But as pioneers of those days had plenty of carriage, we overcame all obstacles and reached Virginia City in safety. Mother died at Blackfoot in 1866, where we buried her. My father died in Utah in 1867, after which I went to Fort Bridger, remained around Fort Bridger during 1868, then went to Piedmont, Wyoming with UP Railway, joined General Custer as a scout at Fort Russell, Wyoming in 1870. Up to this time, I'd always worn the costume of my sex. When I joined Custer, I donned the uniform of a soldier. It was a bit awkward at first, but I soon got to be perfectly at home in men's clothes. I was a scout in the Nez Perce outbreak in 1872. In that war, Generals Custer, Miles, Terry, and Cook were all engaged. It was in this campaign I was christened Calamity Jane. It was on Goose Creek, Wyoming, where the town of Sheridan is now located. Captain Egan was in command of the post. We were ordered out to quell an uprising of Indians, and were out several days, had numerous skirmishes during which six of the soldiers were killed, and several severely wounded. On returning to the post, we were ambushed about a mile from our destination. When fired upon, Captain Egan was shot. I was riding in advance, and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle, and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle, as though about to fall. I turned my horse, and galloped back with all haste to his side, and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me, and succeeded in getting him safely to the fort. Captain Egan on recovering, laughingly said, I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains. I've borne that name up to the present time. Here, little dreaming what the consequence would be, I interrupted, and for this reason. I had felt the Calamity had been doing herself scant justice all along, but in the christening incident, her matter of factory sidle was so much at variance with the facts as set down in the beautiful white devil of the Yellowstone that I had to protest. Excuse me, Mrs. Burke, I said, but wasn't that officer's name Major Percy Darkley instead of Egan? And didn't you cry for life and love when you caught his reeling form? And didn't you shake your trusty repeater and shout to hell with the redskins as you turned and headed for the fort? And didn't you ride with your reins in your teeth, the Major under your left arm, and your six-shooter in your right hand? And when you had laid the Major safely down inside the fort, didn't he breathe softly? I thanked thee, Jane, from the bottom of a grateful heart. No arm but thine shall ever encircle my waist for while I honor my wife, here Calamity cut in, swearing hard and pointedly, so hard and pointedly, in fact, that her remarks may not be quoted verbatim here. The gist of them was that the beautiful white devil of the Yellowstone was highly colored, was a pack of blankety blank lies, in fact, and of no value whatever is history. I realize now that she was right, of course, but that didn't soften the blow at the time. Trying to resume her story, Calamity, after groping about falteringly for the thread, had to back up again and start with, my maiden name was Martha Canary. She was in a Black Hills campaign against the Sioux in 1875, and in the spring of 1976 was ordered north with General Crook to join Generals Miles, Terry, and Custer at the Bighorn. A ninety-mile ride with dispatches after swimming the plat brought on a severe illness, and she was sent back, in General Crook's ambulance, to Fort Fetterman. This probably saved her from being present at the massacre of the Little Bighorn with Custer and the Seventh Cavalry. During the rest of the summer of 1976, I was a Pony Express rider, carrying the U.S. males between Deadwood and Custer, fifty miles over some of the roughest trails in the Black Hills. As many of the riders before me had been held up and robbed of their packages, it was considered the most dangerous route in the hills. As my reputation as a rider and quick shot were well known, I was molested very little, for the toll-gatherers looked on me as being a good fellow, and I knew I never missed my mark. My friend William Hickock, better known as Wild Bill, who was probably the best revolver shot that ever lived, was in Deadwood that summer. On the second of August, while setting at a gambling table at the Bella Union Saloon, he was shot in the back of the head by the notorious Jack McCall, a Desperado. I was in Deadwood at the time, and on hearing of the killing made my way at once to the scene of the shooting, and found that my best friend had been killed by McCall. I had once started to look for the assassin, and found him at Shurdy's Butcher Shop, and grabbed a meat cleaver and made him throw up his hands, through excitement on hearing Bill's death having left my weapons on the post of my bed. He was then taken to a log cabin and locked up, but he got away, and was afterwards caught at Fagan's Ranch on Horse Creek. He was taken to Yankton, tried, and hung. Here, forgetting myself, I interrupted again in an endeavor to reconcile the facts of Wild Bill's death as just detailed, with the version of that tragic event, as depicted in Jane of the Plane. Calamity's language was again unfit to print. Wild Bill had not expired with his head on her shoulder, muttering brokenly, my heart was yours from the first, O my love. Nor had she snipped off a lock of Bill's yellow hair and sworn to bathe it in the heart blood of his slayer. All blankety-blank lies just like the white devil. Then, as before, in order to get going properly, she had to back up and start all over with, my maiden name was Martha Canary. This time I kept chewing dandelions and let her run to the finish, thereby learning the secret of her somewhat remarkable style of delivery. This is the way the story of her life concluded. We arrived in Deadwood on October 9th, 1895, my return after an absence of so many years to the scene of my most noted exploits caused quite an excitement among my many friends of the past, to such an extent that a vast number of citizens who had heard so much of Calamity Jane and her many adventures were anxious to see me. Among the many whom I met were several gentlemen from Eastern cities who advised me to allow myself to be placed before the public in such a manner as to give the people of the Eastern cities the opportunity of seeing the Lady Scout, who was made so famous during her daring career in the West and Black Hills countries. An agent of Cole and Middleton, the celebrated museum men, came to Deadwood through the solicitation of these gentlemen and arrangements were made to place me before the public in this manner. My first engagement to begin at the Palace Museum Minneapolis January 20th, 1896 under this management. Hoping that this history of my life may interest all readers, I remain as in the older days yours, Mrs. M. Burke, better known as Calamity Jane. Calamity had been delivering to me her museum tour lecture. The witch had also been printed in a little pink-covered leaflet to sell with the door. That was why, like a big locomotive on a slippery track, she had had to back up to get going again every time she was stopped. Oh well, the golden dust from the butterfly wing of romance has to be brushed off sometime. Only it was rather hard luck to have it get such a devastating side swipe all at once. That afternoon for the first time I began to discern that there was a more or less opaque webbing underlying the rainbow bright iridescence of sparkling dust. With Calamity Jane the Heroine vanishing like the blown foam of her loved Bach, there still remained Martha Burke, the human document, the living page of 30 years of the most vivid epoch of Northwestern history. Compared to what I had hoped for my historic researches in the pages of the beautiful white devil of the Yellowstone, this was of comparatively academic, but nonetheless real interest. Reclining among the dandelions the while, Calamity oiled the hinges of her memory with beer. I conned through and between the lines of that record for perhaps a week. Patiently diverting her from her lecture platform delivery, I gradually drew from the strange old character much of intimate and colorful interest. Circulating for three decades through the upper Missouri and Yellowstone valleys, and gravitating like steel to the magnet wherever action was liveliest and trouble the rest, she had known at close range all of the most famous frontier characters of her day. Naturally therefore her unrestrained talk was of Indians and Indian fighters, road agents, desperados, gamblers, and bad men generally, from Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody to Miles and Terry and Custer, to Crazy Horse, Rain in the Face Gaul, and Sitting Bull. She told me a good deal of all of them, not a little indeed which seemed to throw doubt on a number of popularly accepted versions of various, more or less historical events. I made notes of all of her stories on the spot and at some future time of comparative leisure, when there is a chance to cross-check sufficiently with fully established facts from other sources, I should like to make some record of them. These pages are not, of course, the place for controversial matter of that kind. One morning I kept trist among the dandelions in vain. Inquiry at the saloon revealed the fact that Calamity, dressed in her buckskins, had called for her stabled horse at daybreak and ridden off in the direction of Big Timber. She would not pay for her room until she turned up again, Patsy said. It was a perfectly good account, though. She never failed to settle up in the end. I never heard of her again until the papers, a year or two later, had word of her death. End of Calamity Jane by Louis R. Freeman Forgotten Man Further Considered By William Graham Sumner 1840-1910 From his book What Social Classes Ode to Each Other Originally published in 1883 This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The case of The Forgotten Man Further Considered There is a beautiful notion of float in our literature and in the minds of our people that men are born with certain natural rights. If that were true, there would be something on earth which was God for nothing, and this world would not be the place it is at all. The fact is that there is no right whatever inherited by man which has not an equivalent and corresponding duty by the side of it, as the price of it. The rights, advantages, capital, knowledge, and all other goods which we inherit from past generations have been won by the struggles and sufferings of past generations, and the fact that the race lives, though men die, and that the race can by heredity accumulate within some cycle its victories over nature is one of the facts which makes civilization possible. The struggles of the race as a whole produce the possessions of the race as a whole. Something for nothing is not to be found on earth. If there were such things as natural rights the question would arise, against whom are they good? Who has the corresponding obligation to satisfy these rights? There can be no rights against nature except to get out of her whatever we can, which is only the fact of the struggle for existence, stated over again. The common assertion is that the rights are good against society, that is, that society is bound to obtain and secure them for the persons interested. Society however is only the persons interested plus some other persons, and as the persons interested have by the hypothesis failed to win the rights we come to this. That natural rights are the claims which certain persons have by prerogative against some other persons, such as the actual interpretation in practice of natural rights, claims which some people have by prerogative on other people. This theory is a very far reaching one, and of course it is adequate to furnish a foundation for a whole social philosophy. In its widest extension it comes to mean that if any man finds himself uncomfortable in this world it must be somebody else's fault, and that somebody is bound to come and make him comfortable. Now the people who are most uncomfortable in this world for if we should tell all our troubles it would not be found to be a very comfortable world for anybody are those who have neglected their duties and consequently have failed to get their rights. The people who can be called upon to serve the uncomfortable must be those who have done their duty as the world goes tolerably well. Consequently the doctrine which we are discussing turns out to be in practice only a scheme for making injustice prevail in human society by reversing the distribution of rewards and punishments between those who have done their duty and those who have not. We are constantly preached at by our public teachers as if respectable people were to blame because some people are not respectable, as if the man who has done his duty in his own sphere was responsible in some way for another man who has not done his duty in his sphere. There are relations of employer and employee which need to be regulated by compromise and treaty. There are sanitary precautions which need to be taken in factories and houses. There are precautions against fire which are necessary. There is care needed that children be not employed too young and that they have an education. There is a care needed that banks, insurance companies and railroads be well managed and that officers do not abuse their trusts. There is a duty in each case on the interested parties to defend their own interest. The penalty of neglect is suffering. The system of providing for these things by boards and inspectors throws the cost of it not on the interested parties but on the tax payers. Some of them no doubt are the interested parties and they may consider that they are exercising the proper care by paying taxes to support an inspector. If so, they only get their fare desserts when the railroad inspector finds out that a bridge is not safe after it is broken down or when the bank examiner comes in to find out why a bank failed after the cashier has stolen all the funds. The real victim is the forgotten man again. The man who has watched his own investments, made his own machinery safe, attended to his own plumbing, and educated his own children, and who, just when he wants to enjoy the fruits of his care, is told that it is his duty to go and take care of some of his negligent neighbors or, if he does not go, to pay an inspector to go. It is often in his interest to go or to send rather than to have the matter neglected on account of his own connection with the thing neglected and his own secondary peril. But the point now is that if preaching and philosophizing can do any good in the premises it is all wrong to preach to the forgotten man that it is his duty to go and remedy other people's problems. It is not his duty. It is a harsh and unjust burden which is laid upon him, and it is only the more unjust because no one thinks of him when they lay the burden so that it falls on him. The exhortations ought to be expended on the negligent that they take care of themselves. It is an equally vicious extension of the false doctrine above mentioned that criminals have some sort of a right against a claim on society. Many reformatory plans are based on a doctrine of this kind when they are urged upon the public conscience. A criminal is a man who instead of working with and for society has turned against it and become destructive and injurious. His punishment means that society rules him out of its membership and separates him from its association by execution or imprisonment according to the gravity of his offense. He has no claims against society at all. What shall be done with him is a question of expediency to be settled in view of the interests of society, that is of the non-criminals. The French writers of the School of 48 used to represent the badness of the bad men as the fault of society. As the object of this statement was to show that the badness of the bad men was not the fault of the bad men and as society contains only good men and bad men, it follows that the badness of the bad men was the fault of the good men. On that theory, of course, the good men owed a great deal to the bad men who were in prison and at the galleys on their account. If we do not admit that theory it behooves us to remember that any claim which we allow to the criminal against the state is only so much a burden laid upon those who have never cost the state anything for discipline or correction. The punishments of society are just like those of God and nature. They are warnings to the wrong doers to reform himself. When public offices are to be filled numerous candidates at once appear, some are urged on the ground that they are poor or cannot earn a living or want support while getting an education or have female relatives dependent on them or are in poor health belong in a particular district or are related to certain persons or have done meritorious services in some other line of work than that which they apply to do. The abuses of the public service are to be condemned on account of the harm to the public interest. But there is an incidental injustice on the same general character with that which we are discussing. If an office is granted by favoritism or for any other personal reason to A, it cannot be given to B. If an office is filled by a person who is unfit for it, he always keeps out somebody somewhere who is fit for it. That is, the social injustice has a victim in an unknown person the forgotten man. He is some person who has no political influence and who has known no way in which to secure the chances of life except to deserve them. He is passed by for the noisy, pushing, importunate and incompetent. I have said something disparagingly in a previous chapter about the popular rage against combined capital, corporations, corners, selling futures, etc., etc. The popular rage is not without reason, but it is sadly misdirected and the real things which deserve attack are thriving all the time. The greatest social evil with which we have to condemn is jobbery. Whatever there is in legislative charters, watering stocks, etc., etc., which is objectionable come under the head of jobbery. Jobbery is any scheme which aims to gain, not by the legitimate fruits of industry and enterprise, but by extortion from somebody a part of his product under guise of some pretended industrial undertaking. Of course it is only a modification when the undertaking in question has some legitimate character, but the occasion is used to graft upon it devices for obtaining what has not been earned. Jobbery is device of plutocracy and it is the special form under which plutocracy corrupts a democratic and republican form of government. The United States is deeply afflicted with it and the problem of civil liberty here is to conquer it. It affects everything which we really need to have done to such an extent that we have to do it without public objects which we need through fear of jobbery. Our public buildings are jobs, not always, but often. They are not needed or are costly beyond all necessity or even decent luxury. Internal improvements are jobs. They are not made because they are needed to meet which have been experienced. They are made to serve private ends, often incidentally the political interests of the persons who vote the appropriations. Pensions have become jobs. In England pensions used to be given to aristocrats because aristocrats had political influence in order to corrupt them. Here pensions are given to the great democratic because they have political power to corrupt them. Instead of going out where there is plenty of land and making a farm there, some people go down under the Mississippi River to make a farm and then they want to tax all the people in the United States to make dikes to keep the river off their farms. The California gold miners have washed out gold and have washed the dirt down into the rivers and on the farms below. They want the federal government to now clean out the rivers and restore the farms. The silver miners found their product declining in value and they got the federal government to go into the market and buy what the people did not want in order to sustain as they hoped the price of silver. The federal government is called upon to buy or hire unsalable ships to build canels which will not pay to furnish capital for all sorts of experiments and to provide capital for enterprises of which private individuals will win the profits. All this is called developing our resources but it is in truth the great plan of all living on each other. The greatest job of all is a protective tariff. It includes the biggest log rolling and the widest corruption of economic and political ideas. It is said that there would be a rebellion if the taxes were not taken off whiskey and tobacco which taxes were paid into the public treasury. Just then the importations of Sumatra tobacco became important enough to affect the market. The Connecticut tobacco growers at once called for an import duty on tobacco which would keep up the price of their product. So it appears that if the tax on tobacco is paid to the federal treasury there will be a rebellion but if it is paid to the Connecticut tobacco razors there will be no rebellion at all. The farmers have long paid tribute to the manufacturers. Now the manufacturing and other laborers are to pay tribute to the farmers. The system is made more comprehensive and complete and we all are living on each other more than ever. Now the plan of plundering each other produces nothing. It only wastes. All the material over which the protected interest wrangle and grab must be got from somebody outside of their circle. The talk is all about the American laborer and American industry but in every case in which there is not an actual production of wealth by industry there are two laborers and two industries to be considered the one who gets and the one who gives. Every protected industry has to plead as the major premise of its argument that any industry which does not pay ought to be carried on at the expense of the consumers of the product and as its minor premise that the industry in question does not pay that is that it cannot reproduce a capital equal in value to that which it consumes plus the current rate of profit. Hence every such industry must be a parasite on some other industry. What is the other industry? Who is the other man? This, the real question is always overlooked. In all jobbery the case is the same. There is a victim somewhere who is paying for it all. The doors of waste and plants stand open and there seems to be a general agreement to squander and spend. It all belongs to somebody. There is somebody who had to contribute it and who will have to find more. Nothing is ever said about him. Attention is all absorbed by the clamorous interests, the importunate petitioners, the plausible schemers, the boars. Now who is the victim? He is the forgotten man. If we go to find him we shall find him hard at work tilling the soil to get out of it the fund of all the jobbery, the object of all the plunder, the cost of all the economic quackery, and the pay of all the politicians and statesmen who have sacrificed his interests to his enemies. We shall find him an honest, sober, industrious citizen, unknown outside his little circle, paying his debts and his taxes, supporting the church and the school, reading his party newspaper and cheering for his pet politician. We must not overlook the fact that the forgotten man is not frequently a woman. I have before me a newspaper which contains five letters from corset stitchers who complain that they cannot earn more than seventy-five cents a day with a machine and that they have to provide the thread. The tax on the grade of thread used by them is prohibitory as to all importation and it is the corset stitchers who have to pay day by day out of their time and labor the total enhancement of price due to the tax. Women who earn their own living probably earn on an average seventy-five cents per day of ten hours. Twenty-four minutes work ought to buy a spool of thread at the retail price if the American workwoman were allowed to exchange her labor for thread on the best terms that the art and commerce of today would allow. But after she has done twenty-four minutes work for the thread she is forced by the laws of her country to go back and work sixteen minutes longer to pay the tax that is to support the thread mill. The thread mill therefore is not an institution for getting thread for the American people but for making thread harder to get than it would be if there were no such institution. In justification now of an arrangement so monstrously unjust and out of place in a free country it is said that the employees in the thread mill get high wages and that but for the tax American laborers must come down to the low wages of foreign thread makers. It is not true that American thread makers get any more than the market price of wages and they would not get less if the tax were entirely removed because the market rate of wages in the United States would be controlled then as it is now by the supply and demand of laborers under the natural advantages and opportunities of industry in this country. It makes a great impression on the imagination however to go to a manufacturing town and see great mills and a crowd of operatives and such a site is put forward under the special allegation that it would not exist but for a protective tax as a proof that protective taxes are wise but if it be true that the thread mill would not exist but for the tax or that the operatives would not get such good wages but for the tax then how can we form a judgment as to whether the protective system is wise or not unless we call to mind all the seamstresses washer women, servants, factory hands, saleswomen, teachers, and laborers, wives and daughters scattered in the garrets and tenements of great cities and in cottages all over the country who are paying the tax which keeps the mill going and pays the extra wages. If the sewing women teachers, servants, and washer women could once be collected over against the thread mill then some inferences could be drawn which would be worth something. Then some light might be thrown upon the obstinate fallacy of creating an industry and we might begin to understand the difference between wanting thread and wanting a thread mill. Some nations spend capital on great palaces, others on standing armies, others on iron clad ships of war. Those things are all glorious and strike the imagination with great force when they are seen but no one doubts that they make life harder for the scattered insignificant peasants and laborers who have to pay for them all. They support a great many people, they make work, they give employment to other industries. We Americans have no palaces, armies, or iron clads but we spend our earnings on protected industries. A big protected factory if it really needs the protection for its support is a heavier load for the forgotten men and women than an iron clad ship of war in time of peace. It is plain that the forgotten man and the forgotten woman are the real productive strength of the country. The forgotten man works and votes generally he prays but his chief business in life is to pay. His name never gets into the papers except when he marries or dies. He is an obscure man, he may grumble sometimes to his wife but he does not frequent the grocery and he does not talk politics at the tavern so he is forgotten. Yet who is there whom the statesman, economist, and social philosophers ought to think of before this man? If any student of social science comes to appreciate the case of the forgotten man, he will become an unflinching advocate of strict scientific thinking in sociology and a hard-hearted skeptic as regards any scheme of social amelioration. He will always want to know who and where is the forgotten man in this case, who will have to pay for it all. The forgotten man is not a pauper, it belongs to his character to save something, hence he is a capitalist, though never a great one. He is a poor man in the popular sense of the word, but not in a correct sense. In fact, one of the most constant and trustworthy signs that the forgotten man is in danger of a new assault is that the poor man is brought into the discussion. Since the forgotten man has some capital, anyone who cares for his interest will try to make capital secure by securing the inviolability of contracts, the stability of currency, and the firmness of credit. Anyone therefore who cares for the forgotten man will be sure to be considered a friend of the capitalist and an enemy of the poor man. It is the forgotten man who is threatened by every extension of the paternal theory of government. It is he who must work and pay, when therefore the statesmen and social philosophers sit down to think what the state can do or ought to do, they really mean to decide what the forgotten man shall do. What the forgotten man wants, therefore, is a fuller realization of constitutional liberty. He is suffering from the fact that there are yet mixed in our institution's medieval theories of protection, regulation, and authority, and modern theories of independence and individual liberty and responsibility. The consequences of this mixed is that those who are clever enough to get into control use the paternal theory by which to measure their own rights, that is, they assume privileges, and they use the theory of liberty to measure their own duties, that is, when it comes to the duties they want to be let alone. The forgotten man never gets into control. He has to pay both ways. His rights are measured to him by the theory of liberty, that is, he has only such as he can conquer. His duties are measured to him on the paternal theory, that is, he must discharge all which are laid upon him, as is the fortune of parents. In a paternal relation there are always two parties, a father and a child, and when we use the paternal relation metaphorically it is of the first importance to know who is to be the father and who is to be the child. The role of parent falls always to the forgotten man. What he wants, therefore, is that ambiguities in our institutions be cleared up, in that liberty be more fully realized. It behooves any economist or social philosopher, whatever be the grade of his orthodoxy, who proposes to enlarge the sphere of the state, or to take any steps whatever, having in view the welfare of any class whatever, to pursue the analysis of the social effects of his proposition until he finds that other group whose interests must be curtailed, or whose energies must be placed under contribution by the course of action which he proposes. And he cannot maintain his proposition until he has demonstrated that it will be more advantageous, both quantitatively and qualitatively to those who must bear the weight of it, then complete non-interference by the state, with its relations of the parties in question. End of The Case of the Forgotten Man Further Considered by William G. Sumner, 1840 to 1910 Charity from The Shadow on the Dial and Other Essays by Ambrose Beers 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 Dale Grossman Charity by Ambrose Beers The promoter of organized charity protests against the wasteful and mischievous method of undirected relief. He means naturally relief that is not directed by somebody else than the person giving it undirected by him and his kind, professional almaners, philanthropists who deem it more blessed to a lot than the stow. Indubitably much is wasted and some mischief done by indiscriminate giving and individual givers are addicted to the faulty practice. But there is something to be said for undirected relief, quite the same. It blesses not only him who receives when he is worthy and when he is not upon his own head be it, but him who gives to those uncalculating persons who despite the protest of the organized charitable concede a certain moral value to the spontaneous impulse of the heart and read in the word relief a double meaning. The office of the mere distributor is imperfectly sacred. He is even without spiritual authority and lives in the perpetual challenge of a moral quow warrant. Nevertheless he is not without his uses. He is a tapper of tales that do not open automatically. He is an ominer to the uncompassionate who but for him would give no alms. He negotiates unnatural but not censurable relations between selfishness and ingratitude. The good that he does is purely material. He makes two leaves of fat to grow where none grew before. Lessons the sum of gastric pangs and dorsal chills. All of this is something certainly, but it generates warmth and elevated sentiments and does nothing to mitigate the poor's animosity to the rich. Organized charity is a sapid and savorless thing. Its place among the moral agencies is no higher than that of root beer. Christ did not say, sell whatever thou hast and give to the church to give to the poor. He did not mention the associated charities of the period. I do not find the words he have always with you, nor in as much as ye have done it to the least of these dorkest societies, ye have done it unto me. Nowhere do I find myself commanded to enable others to comfort the afflicted and visit the sick and those in prison. Nowhere is recorded God's blessing upon him who makes himself a part of a charity machine. No, not even if he be the guiding lever of the whole mechanism. Organized charity is a delusion and a snare. It enables moneyglut to think himself a good man for paying annual dues and buying transferable meal tickets. Moneyglut is not thereby a good man. On the last great day when he cowers in the ineffable presence and is asked for an account it will not help him to say, hearing that A was in want I gave money for his need to be. Nor will it help B to say, when A was in distressed I asked C to relieve him, and myself allotted the relief according to the resolution of D, E, and F. There are blessings and benefactions that one would willingly forgo, among them the poor. Quack remedies of poverty amuse. A real specific would kindle a noble enthusiasm. Yet the world would lose much by it. Human nature would suffer a change for the worse. Happily and unhappily poverty is not abolishable. The poor he will always have with you is a sentence that can never become unintelligible. Effective a thousand causes, poverty is invincible, eternal. And since we must have it let us thank God for it and avail ourselves of all of its advantages to mind and character. He who is not good to those who are deserving poor, who knows not those of his immediate environment, who goes not among them making inquiry of their personal needs, who does not wish with all his heart and both his hands to relieve them is a fool. The End of Charity by Ambrose Beers Emotion of multitude by W.B. Yates, 1865 to LeBriVox Recording. All LeBriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LeBriVox.org. Recording by Peter Tomlinson I have been thinking a good deal about plays lately and I have been wondering why I dislike the clear and logical construction which seems necessary if one is to succeed on the modern stage. It came into my head the other day that this construction which all the world has learnt from France has everything of high literature except the emotion of multitude. The Greek drama has got the emotion of multitude from its chorus which called up famous sorrows, long legal Troy, much enduring Odysseus and all the gods and sorrows to witness, as it were, some well-ordered fable, some action separated but for this from all but itself. The French play delights in the well-ordered fable but by leaving out the chorus it has created an arc where poetry and imagination always the children of far-off multitudinous things must have necessity grow less important than the mere will. This is why I said to myself French dramatic poetry is so often a little rhetorical for rhetoric is the will trying to do the work of the imagination. The Shakespearean drama gets the emotion of multitude out of the subplot which copies the main plot much as the shadow upon the wall copies one's body in the sunlight. We think of King Lear less as the history of one man and his sorrows than as the history of a whole evil time. Lear shadow is in Gloucester who also has ungrateful children and the mind goes on imagining other shadows, shadow beyond shadow, till it has pictured the world. In Hamlet one hardly notices so subtly is the web woven that the murder of Hamlet's father and the sorrow of Hamlet are shadowed in the lives of Fortinborough and Ophelia and Laertes whose fathers too have been killed. It is so in all the plays or in all but all and very commonly the subplot is the main plot working itself out in more ordinary men and women and so doubly calling up before us the image of multitude. Ibsen and Mitolink have on the other hand created a new form for they get multitude from the wild duck in the attic or from the crown at the bottom of the fountain. Vague symbols that set the mind wandering from idea to idea, emotion to emotion. Indeed all the great masters have understood that there cannot be great art without the little limited life of the fable which is always the better the simpler it is and the rich far wandering many image life of the half-seen world beyond it. There are some who understand that the simple unmysterious things living as in a clear noon light are of the nature of the sun and that vague many image things have in them the strength of the moon. Did not the Egyptian carve it on emerald that all living things have the sun for father and the moon for mother? And has it not been said that a man of genius takes the most after his mother? End of Emotion of Multitude by W. B. Yates Recording by Peter Tomlinson In The Journal of Negro History edited by Carter G. Woodson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Wayne Cook Amidst the infinite variety of moral and political subjects proper for public commendation it is truly surprising that one of the most important and effecting should be so generally neglected. An encroachment on the smallest civil or political privilege shall fan the enthusiastic flames of liberty till it shall extend over vast and distant regions and violently agitate a whole continent. But the cause of humanity shall be basely violated just as shall be wounded to the heart and national honor deeply and distantly polluted. And not a breath or murmur shall arise to disturb the prevailing quiescence or to rouse the feelings of Ignatian against such general, extensive and complicated iniquity. To what cause are we to impute this frigid silence, this torpid indifference, this cold inanimated conduct of the otherwise warm and generous Americans? Why do they remain active amidst the groans of injured humanity, the shrill and distressing complaints of expiring justice and the keen remorse of polluted integrity? Why do they not rise up to assert the cause of God and the world to drive the fiend injustice into remote and distant regions and to exterminate oppression from the face of the fair fields of America? When the United Colonies revolted from Great Britain they did it upon this principle, quote, that all men are by nature and of right ought to be free, end quote. After a long, successful and glorious struggle for liberty during which they manifested the firmest attachment to the rights of mankind, can they so soon forget the principles that then govern their determinations? Can Americans, after the noble contempt they expressed for tyrants, meanly descend to take up the scourge? Blush you revolted colonies for having apostatized from your own principles. Slavery, in whatever point of light it is considered, is repugnant to the feelings of nature and inconsistent with the original rights of man. It ought therefore to be stigmatized or being unnatural and detested for being unjust. Tis an outraged to providence and an affront offered to divine majesty who has given to man his own peculiar image. That the Americans, after considering the subject in this light, after making the most manly of all possible exertions in defense of liberty, after publishing to the world the principle upon which they contended, that is, that all men are by nature and of right ought to be free, should still retain in subjection a numerous tribe of the human race merely for their own private use and a monument. Is, of all things, the strongest inconsistency, the deepest reflection on our conduct and the most abandoned apostasy that ever took place since the Almighty Fiat spoke into existence this habitable world. So flagitious a violation can never escape the notice of a just creator whose vengeance may be now on the wing to disseminate and hurl the arrows of destruction. In what light can the people of Europe consider America after the strange inconsistency of her conduct? Will they not consider her as an abandoned and deceitful country? In the hour of calamity she petitioned heaven to be propitious to her cause. Her prayers were answered. Heaven pitied her distress, smiled on her virtuous exertions, and vanquished all her afflictions. The ungrateful creature forgets this timely assistance, no longer remembers her own sorrows, but basely commences oppression in her turn. Beware America. Pause and consider the difference between the mild effulgence of approving providence and the angry countenance of incensed divinity. The importation of slaves into America ought to be a subject of the deepest regret to every benevolent and thinking mind, and one of the greatest effects in the federal system is the liberty it allows on this head. Venerable and everything else, it is injudicious here, and it has to be much deplored that a system of so much political perfection should be stained with anything that does an human nature. As a door, however, is open to amendment for the sake of distressed humanity, of injured national reputation, and the glory of doing so benevolent a thing, I hope some wise and virtuous patriot will advocate the measure and introduce an alteration in that pernicious part of the government. So far from encouraging the importation of slaves and countenancing that vile traffic in human flesh, the members of the late continental convention should have seized the happy opportunity of prohibiting forever this cruel species of reprobated villainy, that they did not do so will forever diminish the luster of their other proceedings so highly extolled and so justly distinguished for their intrinsic value. Let us for a moment contrast the sentiments and actions of the Europeans in this subject with those of our own countrymen. In France, the warmest and most animated exertions are making in order to introduce the entire abolition of the slave trade, and in England, many of the first characters of the country advocate the same measure with an enthusiastic philanthropy. The prime minister himself is at the head of that society, and nothing can equal the ardor of their endeavors but the glorious goodness of the cause. Will the Americans allow the people of England to get the start of them in acts of humanity? Forbid it, shame! The practice of stealing or bartering for human flesh is pregnant with the most glaring turpitude and the blackest barbarity of disposition. For can any one say that this is doing as he would be done by? Will such a practice stand at the scrutiny of this great rule of moral government? Who can, without the complicated emotions of anger and impatience, suppose himself in the predicament of a slave? Who can bear the thoughts of his relatives being torn from him by a savage enemy carried to distant regions of the habitable globe never more to return, and treated there when happy Africans are in this country? Who can support the reflection of his father, his mother, his sister, or his wife, perhaps his children, being barbarously snatched away by a foreign invader without prospect of ever beholding them again? Who can reflect upon their being afterwards publicly exposed to sale, obliged to labor with unwearyed assiduity, and because all things are not determined by persons so unaccustomed to robust exercise scourged with all the rage and anger of malignity until their unhappy carcasses are covered with ghastly wounds and frightful contusions? Who can reflect on these things when applying the case to himself without being chilled with horror at circumstances so extremely shocking? Yet hideous as this concise and imperfect description is of the suffering sustained by many of our slaves, it is nevertheless true. And so far from being exaggerated falls infinitely short of a thousand circumstances of distress which have been recounted by different writers on the subject, and which contribute to make their situation in this life the most absolutely wretched and completely miserable than can possibly be conceived. In many places in America, the slaves are treated with every circumstance of rigorous inhumanity, accumulated hardship, and enormous cruelty. Yet when we take them from Africa, we deprive them of a country which God has given them for their own, as free as we are and as capable of enjoying that blessing. Like pirates, we go to commit devastation on the coast of an innocent country and among a people who never did us wrong. An insatiable, avarice desire to accumulate riches, cooperating with the spirit of luxury and injustice seems to be the leading cause of this peculiarly degrading and ignominious practice. Being once accustomed to subsist without labor, we become soft and voluptuous, and rather than afterwards forgo the gratification of our habitual indolence and ease, we countenance the infamous violation and sacrifice at the shrine of cruelty, all the finer feelings of elevated humanity. Considering things in this view, there surely can be nothing more justly reprehensible or disgusting than the extravagant finery of many country people's daughters. It hath not been at all uncommon to observe as much gauze, lace, and other trappings on one of those country maidens as hath employed two or three of her father's slaves for twelve months afterwards to raise tobacco to pay for. It is an ungrateful reflection that all this frippery and affected finery can only be supported by the sweat of another person's brow, and consequently only by lawful repine and injustice. If these young females could devote as much time from their amusements as would be necessary for their reflection, or was there any person of humanity at hand who could inculcate the indecency of this kind of extravagance, I am persuaded that they have hearts good enough to reject with disdain the momentary pleasure of making a figure in behalf of the rational and lasting delight of contributing by their forbearance to the happiness of many thousand individuals. In Maryland, where slaves are treated with as much lenity as perhaps they are anywhere, their situation is to the last degree ineligible. They live in wretched cots that scarcely secure them from the inculmency of the weather, sleep in the ashes or on straw, wear the corset's clothing, and subsist on the most ordinary food that the country produces. In all things, they are subject to their master's absolute command, and of course have no will of their own. Thus, circumstanced, they are subject to great brutality and are often treated with it. In particular instances, they may be better provided for in this state, but this suffices for a general description. But, in the Carolinas and the island of Jamaica, the cruelties that have been wantonly exercised on those miserable creatures are without a precedent in any other part of the world. If those who have written on the subjects may be believed, it is not uncommon there to tie a slave up and whip him to death. On all occasions, impartiality in the distribution of justice should be observed. The little state of Rhode Island has been reprobated by other states for refusing to enter into majors respecting a new general government, and so far it is admitted that she is culpable. But if she is worthy of blame in this respect, she is entitled to the highest admiration for the philanthropy, justice, and humanity she hath displayed respecting the subject I am treating on. She hath passed an act prohibiting the importation of slaves into that state and forbidding her citizens to engage in the iniquitous traffic. So striking a proof of her strong attachment to the rights of humanity will rescue her name from oblivion, and bid her live in the good opinion of distant and unborn generations. Slavery unquestionably should be abolished, particularly in this country, because it is inconsistent with the declared principles of the American Revolution. The sooner, therefore, we set about it, the better. Either we should set our slaves at liberty immediately and colonize them in the western territory, or we should immediately take measures for the gradual abolition of it, so that it may become a known and fixed point that ultimately universal liberty in these United States shall triumph. This is the least we can do in order to evince our sense of the irreparable outrages we have committed to wipe off the odium we have incurred, and to give mankind confidence again in the justice, liberality, and honor of our national proceedings. It would not be difficult to show, were it necessary, that America would soon become a richer and a more happy country provided the step was adopted. That corrosive anguish of persevering in anything improper, which now embitters the enjoyments of life, would vanish as the mist of a foggy morn death before the rising sun. And we should find as great a disparity between our present situation, and that which would succeed it, as subsists between a cloudy winter and a radiant spring. Besides, our lands would not then be cut down for the support of a numerous train of useless inhabitants. Useless, I mean, to themselves, and effectually to us by encouraging sloth and voluptuousness among our young farmers and planters who might otherwise know how to take care of their money, as well as how to dissipate it. In all other respects, I conceive them to be as valuable as we are, as capable of worthy purposes and to possess the same dignity that we do in the estimation of providence. Although the value of their work apart for which we are dependent on them, we generally consider them as good for nothing, and accordingly treat them with greatest neglect. But be it remembered that this cause is the cause of heaven, and that the father of them as well as of us will not fail at a future settlement to adjust the account between us with a dreadful attention to justice. What the Negro was thinking during the 18th century essay on Negro slavery, number one, by Othello, a free Negro living in Baltimore, May 10th, 1788 in The Journal of Negro History edited by Carter G. Woodson. What the Negro was thinking during the 18th century essay on Negro slavery, number two, by Othello, a free Negro, May 23rd, 1788 in The Journal of Negro History edited by Carter G. Woodson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Wayne Cook. Upon no better principle do we plunder the coasts of Africa and bring away its wretched inhabitants of slaves than that by which the greater fish swallows up the lesser. Our power seems only to produce superior brutality and that weakness and imbecility which ought to engage our protection and interest the feelings of social benevolence and behalf of the defenseless seems only to provoke us to acts of illiberal outrage and unmanly violence. The practice which has been followed by the English nation since the establishment of the slave trade, I mean that of stirring up the natives of Africa against each other with a view of purchasing the prisoners mutually taken in battle must strike the humane mind with sentiments of the deepest abhorrence and confer on that people a reproach as lasting as time itself. It is surprising that the eastern world did not unite to discourage a custom so diabolical in its tendency and to exterminate a species of oppression which humbles the dignity of all mankind. But this torpid inattention can only be accounted for by adverting to the savage disposition of the times which countenanced cruelties unheard of at this enlightened period. What rudeness of demeanor and brutality of manner which had been introduced into Europe by those swarms of barbarians that overwhelmed it from the north had hardly begun to dissipate before the enlivening sun of civilization when this infernal practice first sprang up into existence. Before this distinguished era of refined barbarity the sons of Africa were in possession of all the mild enjoyments of peace all the pleasing delights of uninterrupted harmony and all the diffusive blessings of profound tranquility. Boundless must be the punishment which irritated providence will inflict on those whose wanton cruelty has prompted them to this fair arrangement of nature, this flowery prospect of human felicity and gulfed in the dark abyss of never ending misery they shall in bitterness atone for the stab thus given to human nature and in anguish unutterable expiate crimes for which nothing less than eternal sufferings can make adequate retribution. Equally iniquitous is the practice of robbing that country of its existence and equally tremendous will be the punishment. The voice of injured thousands who have been violently torn from their native country and carried to distant and inhospitable climes, the bitter lamentations of the wretched helpless female the cruel agonizing sensations of the husband the father and the friend will ascend to the throne of omnipotence and from the elevated heights of heaven cause him with the whole force of almighty vengeance to hurl the guilty perpetrators of those inhuman beings down the steep precipice of inevitable ruin to the bottomless gulf of final irretrievable and endless destruction. O ye sons of America, forbear. Consider the dire consequences that will attend the prosecution against which the all-powerful God of nature holds up his hands and loudly proclaims, desist. In the insolence of self-consequence we are accustomed to esteem ourselves and the Christian powers of Europe the only civilized people on the globe. The rest without distinction we presumptuously denominate barbarians but when the practices above mentioned come to be deliberately considered, when added to these we take a view over the proceedings of the English and the East Indies under the direction of the late Lord Clive and remember what happened in the streets of Bengal and Calcutta when we likewise reflect on our American mode of driving, butchering and exterminating the poor defenseless Indians, the native and lawful proprietors of the soil. We shall acknowledge if we possess the smallest degree of candor that the appellation of barbarian does not belong to them alone. While we continue those practices the term Christian will only be a burlesque expression signifying no more than it ironically denominates the rudest sect of barbarians that ever disgrace the hand of their creator. We have the precepts of the Gospel for the government of our moral deportment in the violation of which those outrageous wrongs are committed but they have no such millerating influence among them and only adhere to the simple dictates of reason and natural religion which they never violate. Might not the inhabitants of Africa with still greater justice on their side than we have on ours cross the Atlantic, seize our citizens, carry them to Africa and make slaves of them provided they were able to do it but should this be really the case every corner of the globe would reverberate with sound of African oppression so loud would be our complaint and so feeling our appeal to the inhabitants of the world at large. We should represent them as a lawless, paradical set of unprincipled robbers plunderers and villains who basely prostituted the superior power and information which God had given them for worthy purposes to the vilest of all ends. We should not hesitate to say that they made use of those advantages only to infringe upon every dictate of justice to trample under foot every suggestion of principle and to spurn with contempt every right of humanity. The Algerians are reprobated all the world over for their unlawful depredations and stigmatizes pirates for their unreasonable exactions from foreign nations but the Algerians are no greater pirates than the Americans nor are they a race more destructive to the happiness of mankind. The depredations of the latter on the coast of Africa and upon the Indians' territory make the truth of this assertion manifest. Paradical depredations of the Algerians appear to be a judgment from heaven upon the nations to punish their perfidy and atrocious violations of justice and never did any people more justly merit the scourge than Americans on whom it seems to fall with peculiar and reiterated violence. When they yoke our citizens to the plow and compel them to labor in that degraded manner they only retaliate on us for similar barbarities. For Algiers is a part of the same country whose helpless inhabitants we are accustomed to carry away. But the English and Americans cautiously avoid engaging with a warlike people whom they fear to attack in a manner so base and unworthy. Whilst the Algerians, more generous and courageous plunderers, are not afraid to make war on brave and well-disciplined enemies who are capable of making a gallant resistance. Whoever examines into the conditions of the slaves in America will find them in a state of most uncultivated rudeness. Not instructed in any kind of learning, they are grossly ignorant of all refinement and have little else about them belonging to the nature-civilized man than mere form. They are strangers to almost every idea that doth not relate to their labor or their food, and though naturally possessed of strong sagacity and lively parts are in all respects in a state of most deplorable brutality. This is owing to the iron hand of oppression, which ever crushes the bud of genius and binds up and chains every expansion of the human mind. Such they are extreme ignorant that they are utterly unacquainted with the laws of the world, the injunctions of religion, their own natural rights and the forms, ceremonies, and privileges of marriage originally established by the Divinity. Accordingly, they lived in an open violation of the precepts of Christianity and with as little formality or restrictions as the brutes of the field unite for the purposes of procreation. Yet this is a civilized country and a most enlightened period of the world. The respendent glory of the Gospel is at hand to conduct us in safety through the labyrinths of life. Science hath grown up to maturity and is discovered to possess not only all the properties of solidity of strength, but likewise every ornament of elegance and embellishment of fancy. Philosophy hath here attained the most exalted height of elevation, and the art of government hath received such refinements among us as hath equally astonished our friends, our enemies, and ourselves. In fine no antles are more brilliant than those of America, nor do any more luxuriously abound with examples of exalted heroism, refined policy, and sympathetic humanity. Yet now the prospect begins to change. And all the splendor of this august assemblage will soon be overcast by sudden and impenetrable clouds, and American greatness will be obliterated and swallowed up by one enormity. Slavery diffuses the gloom and casts around us the deepest shade of approaching darkness. No longer shall the United States of America be famed for liberty. Oppression pervades their bowels, and while they exhibit a fair exterior to the other parts of the world, there are nothing more than painted sepulchres containing within them not but rottenness and corruption. Ye voluptuous, ye opulent and great, who hold in subjection such numbers of your fellow creatures and suffer these things to happen, beware. Reflect on this lamentable change that may, at a future period, take place against you. Arraigned before the almighty sovereign of the universe, how will you answer the charge of such complicated enormity? The presence of these slaves who have been lost for want of your instruction and by means of your oppression shall make you dart deeper into the flames to avoid their just reproaches and seek out for an asylum in the hidden corners of perdition. Many persons of opulence in Virginia and the Carolinas treat their unhappy slaves with every circumstance of coolest neglect and the most deliberate indifference. Surrounded with a numerous train of servants to contribute to their personal ease and wallowing in all the luxurious plentitude of riches, they neglect the rich's source and they draw this profusion. Many of their negroes on distant estates are left to the entire management of inhuman overseers where they suffer for the want of that sustenance which at the proprieture seat of residence is wastefully given to the dogs. It frequently happens on these large estates that they are not clothed till winter is nearly expired and then the most valuable only are attended to. The young and the labor-worn having no other allowance in this respect than the tattered garments thrown off by the more fortunate. A single peck of corn a week or the like-measure of rice is the ordinary quantity of provision for a hard-working slave to which a small quantity of meat is occasionally though rarely added. While those miserable, degraded persons thus scantily subsist, all the produce of their unwearied toil is taken away to satiate the rapacious master. He, devoted wretch, thoughtless of the sweat and toil with which his wearied exhausted dependence procure what he extravagantly dissipates not contented with the ordinary luxuries of life, is perhaps planning at the time some improvement on the voluptuous art. Thus he sets up two carriages instead of one, maintains twenty servants when a fourth part of that number are more than sufficient to discharge the business of personal attendance, makes every animal proper for the purpose, bleed around him in order to supply the gluttonous profusion of his table and generally gives away what his slaves are pining for. Those very slaves whose labor enables him to display this liberality and the common is necessary to expose the peculiar folly and gratitude and infamy of such exicable conduct. But the custom of neglecting those slaves have been worn out in our service is unhappily found to prevail not only among the more opulent but through the more extensive round of the middle and inferior ranks of life. No better reason can be given for this base inattention than that they are no longer able to contribute to our emoluments. With singular dishonor we forget the faithful instrument of past enjoyment and when by length of time it becomes debilitated it is like a withered stalk ungratefully thrown away. Our slaves unquestionably have the strongest of all claims upon us for protection and support. We having compelled them to serve in military servitude and deprived them of every means of protecting or supporting themselves. The injustice of our conduct and barbarity of our neglect when this reflection is allowed to predominate becomes so glaringly conspicuous as even to excite against ourselves the strongest emotion of desestation and abhorrence. To whom are the wretched sons of Africa to apply for redress if their cruel master treats them with unkindness? To whom will they resort for protection if he is base enough to refuse it to them? The law is not their friend, alas too many statutes are enacted against them. The world is not their friend, the iniquity is too general and extensive. No one who hath slaves of his own will protect those of another lest the practice should be retorted. Thus when their masters abandon them their situation is destitute and forlorn and God is their only friend. Let us imitate the conduct of a neighboring state and immediately take measures at least for the gradual abolition of slavery. Justice demands it of us and we ought not to hesitate in obeying its invaluable mandates. All the feelings of pity, compassion, affection and benevolence, all the emotions of tenderness, humanity, philanthropy and goodness, all the sentiments of mercy, probity, honor and integrity unite to solicit for their emancipation. Immortal will be the glory of accomplishing their liberation and eternal the disgrace of keeping them in chains. But if the state of Pennsylvania is to be applauded for her conduct that of South Carolina can never be too strongly execrated, the legislature of that state at no very remote period brought in a bill for prohibiting the use of letters to their slaves and forbidding them the privilege of being taught to read. This was a deliberate attempt to enslave the minds of those unfortunate objects whose persons they already held in arbitrary subjection. Detestable deviation from the becoming rectitude of man. One more peculiarly distressing circumstance remains to be recounted before I take my final leave of the subject. In the ordinary course of the business of the country the punishment of relatives frequently happens on the same farm and in view of each other. The father often sees his beloved son, the son his venerable sire, the mother her much beloved daughter, the daughter her affectionate parent, the husband the wife of his bosom and she the husband of her affection cruelly bound up without delicacy or mercy and punished with all extremity of incensed rage and all the rigor of a relenting severity, whilst these unfortunate wretches dare not even interpose in each other's behalf. Let us reverse the case and suppose it is ours. All this is silent horror. End of What the Negro was thinking during the 18th century. Essay on Negro Slavery Number Two by Othello May 10th 1788 in the Journal of Negro History edited by Carter G. Woodson