 Section 13 of Mother Earth, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1906. 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 Chuck Williamson. Mother Earth, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1906. Section 13. And you? By Bolton Hall. What would you do? Ask the idealist. If you was Tsar of Russia. I would first abolish monopoly of land, for that is fundamental, said the reformer, and then resign. What would you do? I would first resign, and then teach the people to abolish monopoly of land. The same is now, answered the idealist. But what would you do, teacher? I would teach the people from the throne that they are oppressed by their system of monopoly. And by their czar. Section 13. Section 14 of Mother Earth, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1906. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Mother Earth, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1906. Section 14. National Atavism by Internationalist. The Jewish circles in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities in America, are aroused over the visit of a specter called nationalism, alias territorialism. Like all specters, it is doing a lot of mischief, and causing much confusion in the heads of the Jewish population. The spirit of our ancestor, Abraham, has come to life again. Like Abraham, when Jehovah commanded him to go on quest of the Promised Land, the Jewish nationalists make themselves and others believe that they long for the moment when, with wife and child and all possessions, they will migrate to that spot on earth, which will represent the Jewish state, where Jewish traits will have a chance to develop an idealic peace. Natural science calls retroaggression of species, which shows signs of a former state already overcome, atavism. The same term may be applied to the advanced section of the Jewish population, which has listened to the call of the nationalists. They have retrogressed, from a universal view of things to a philosophy fenced in by boundary lines, from the glorious conception that the world is my country, to the conception of exclusiveness. They have abridged their wide vision and have made it narrow and superficial. The Zionism of Max Mordau and his followers never was more than a sentimental sport for the well-to-do in the ranks of the Jews. The latter-day nationalists, however, are bent on reaching those circles of the Jewish race. They have so far followed the banner of internationalism and revolution. And this at the moment when revolutionists of all nationalities and races are most in need of unity and solidarity. Encouraging could be more injurious to the Russian Revolution. Nothing prove a lack of confidence in its success, so much as the present nationalistic agitation. The most encouraging and glorious feature of revolutions is that they purify the atmosphere from the thick, poisonous vapors of prejudices and superstition. From time immemorial revolutions have been the only hope and refuge of all the oppressed, from national and social yokes. The radical nationalist elements seems to have forgotten that all their enthusiasm, their faith and hope in the power of a great social change, now falters before the question – will it give us our own territory, where we can surround ourselves with walls and watchtowers? Yes, the very people who once spoke with a divine fire, of the beauty of the solidarity of all individuals and all peoples, now indulge in the shallow phrases that the Jew is powerless, that he is nowhere at home, that he owns no place on earth, where he can do justice to his nature, and that he must first obtain national rights like all nations, ere he can go further. These lamentations contain more fiction than truth, more sentimentality than logic. The Poles have their own territory. Still this fact does not hinder Russia from brutalizing Poland or from flogging and killing her children, neither does it hinder the Prussian government from maltreating her Polish subjects and forcibly obliterating the Polish language. And what avail is native territory to the small nations of the Balkans, with Russian, Turkish and Austrian influences keeping them in a helpless and dependent condition? Various raids and expeditions by the powerful neighboring states forced on them have proven what little protection their territorial independence has given them against brutal coercion. The independent existence of small peoples has ever served powerful states as a pretext for venomous attacks, pillage, and attempts at annexation. Nothing has left them but to bow before the superior powers or to be ever prepared for bitter wars that might in a measure temporarily loosen the tyrannical hold but never end in a complete overthrow of the powerful enemy. Switzerland is often cited as an example of a united nation which is able to maintain itself in peace and neutrality. It might be advisable to consider what circumstances have made this possible. It is an indisputable fact that Switzerland acts as the executive agent of European powers who consider her a foreign detective bureau which watches over a noise and persecutes refugees and the dissatisfied elements. Italian, Russian, and German spies look upon Switzerland as a hunting ground, and the Swiss police are never so happy as when they can render constable service to the governments of surrounding states. It is nothing unusual for the Swiss police to carry out the order of Germany or Italy to arrest political refugees and forcibly take them across the frontier where they are given over into the hands of the German or Italian gendarmes, a very nice and ticing national independence, is it not? It is possible that former revolutionists and enthusiastic fighters for freedom, who are now in the nationalistic field, should long for similar conditions. Those who refuse to be carried away by nationalistic phrases and who would rather follow the broad path of internationalism are accused of indifference to and lack of sympathy with the sufferings of the Jewish race, rather it is far more likely that those who stand for the establishment of a Jewish nation show a serious lack of judgment. Especially the radicals among the nationalists seem to be altogether lost in the thicket of phrases. They are ashamed of the label nationalist because it stands for so much retrogression, for so many memories of hatred, of savage wars and wild persecutions, that it is difficult for one who claims to be advanced and modern to adorn himself with the name, and who does not wish to appear advanced and modern. Moreover the name of nationalist is rejected, and the name of territorialist taken instead, as if that were not the same thing. True to territorialists will have nothing to do with an organized Jewish state, they aim for a free commune, but if it is certain that small states are subordinate to great powers and merely endured by them, it is still more certain that free communes within powerful states built on coercion and land robbery have even less chance for a free existence. Such cuckoo's eggs the ruling powers will not have in their nests. A community in which exploitation and slavery do not reign would have the same effect on those powers as a red rag to a bull. It would stand an everlasting reproach, a nagging accusation, which would have to be destroyed as quickly as possible, or is the national glory of the Jews to begin after the social revolution. If we are to throw into the dust heap our hope that humanity will someday reach a height from which difference of nationality and ancestry will appear but an insignificant speck on earth. Still and good, then let us be patriots and continue to nurse national characteristics. But we ought, at least, not to clothe ourselves in the mantle of Faust, in our pretentious sweep through space. We ought, at least, declare openly that the life of all peoples is never to be anything else but an outrageous mixture of stupid patriotism, national vanities, everlasting antagonism, and a ravenous greed for wealth and supremacy. Might it not be advisable to consider how the idea of a national unity of the Jews can live in the face of the deep social abysses that exist between the various ranks within the Jewish race? Is it not at all a mere accident that the Bund, the strongest organization of the Jewish proletariat, will have nothing to do with the nationalistic agitation? The social and economic motives, for concerted action or separation, are a far more vital influence than the national. The feeling of solidarity of the working people is bound to prove stronger than the nationalistic clue. As to the remainder of the adherence of the nationalistic movement they are recruited from the ranks of the Middle Jewish class, the Jewish banker, for instance, feels much more drawn to the Christian or a Mahemedin banker than to his Jewish factory worker or tenement house dweller, equally so will the Jewish working man, conscious of the revolutionizing effect of the daily struggle between labor and money power, find his brother in a fellow banker, and not in a Jewish banker. True, the Jewish worker suffers twofold. He is exploited, oppressed, and robbed as one of suffering humanity, and despised, hated, trampled upon because he is a Jew. But he would look in vain toward the wealthy Jews for his friends and saviors. The latter have just as great an interest in the maintenance of a system that stands for wage slavery, social subordination, and the economic dependence of the great mass of mankind as the Christian employer and owner of wealth. The Jewish population of the East side has little in common with the dweller of a Fifth Avenue mansion. He has much more in common with the working men of other nationalities of the country. He has sorrows, struggles, indignation and longings for freedom in common with them. His hope is the social reconstruction of society, and not nationalistic scene shifting. His conditions can be ameliorated only through a union with his fellow sufferers, through human brotherhood, and not by means of separation and barriers. In his struggles against humiliating demands, inhumane treatment, economic pressure, he can depend on help from his non-Jewish comrades and not on the assistance of Jewish manufacturers and speculators. How then can he be expected to cooperate with them in the building of a Jewish commonwealth? Certain it is that the battle which is to bring liberty, peace, and well-being to humanity is of a mental, social, economic nature, and not of a nationalistic one. The former brightens and widens the horizon. The latter stupefies the reasoning faculties, cripples and stifles the emotions, and sows hatred and strife instead of love and tenderness in the human soul. All that is big and beautiful in the world has been created by thinkers and artists, whose vision was far beyond the little-aputian sphere of nationalism. Only that which contains the life's pulse of mankind expands and liberates. That is why every attempt to establish a national art, a patriotic literature, a life's philosophy with the seal of the government attached there to, is bound to fall flat and to be insignificant. It were well and wholesome if all works dealing with national glory and victory with national courage and patriotic songs could be used for bonfires. In their place we could have the poems of Shelley and Whitman, essays of Emerson or Thoreau, the Book of the Bees by Maitrelink, the music of Wagner, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, the wonderful art of Eleanor Duce. I can deeply sympathize with the dread of massacres and persecutions of the Jewish people, and I consider it just and fair that they should strain every effort to put a stop to such atrocities as have been witnessed by the civilized world within a few years. And it must be borne in mind that it is the Russian government, the Russian reactionary party, including the Russian church and not the Russian people that are responsible for the slaughter of the Jews. Jewish socialists and anarchists, however, who have joined the ranks of the nationalists, and who have forgotten to emphasize the fundamental distinction between the people of Russia and the reactionary forces of that country, who have fought and are still fighting so bravely for their freedom and for the liberation of all who are oppressed, deserve severe censure. They have thrown the responsibility of the massacres upon the Russian people, and have even blamed the revolutionists for them. Whereas it is an undisputed fact that the agitation against the Jews has been inaugurated and paid for by the ruling clique, and the hope that the hatred and discontent of the Russian people would turn from them, the real criminals, to the Jews. It is said we have no rights in Russia, we are being robbed, hounded, killed. Let the Russian people take care of themselves, we will turn our backs on them. Would it not show deeper insight into the condition of affairs if my Jewish brethren were to say, Our people are being abused, insulted, ill-treated, and killed by the hirelings of Russian despotism. Let us strengthen our union with the intellectuals, the peasants, the rebellious elements of the people, for the overthrow of the abominable tyranny. And when we have accomplished that, let us cooperate in the great work of building a social structure upon which neither the nation nor the race, but humanity, can live and grow in beauty. Prejudices are never overcome by one who shows himself equally narrow and bigoted. To confront one brutal outbreak of national sentiment, with the demand for another form of national sentiment, means only to lay the foundation for a new persecution that is bound to come sooner or later. Were the retrogressive ideas of the Jewish nationalists ever to materialize the world would witness, after a few years, that one Jew is being persecuted by another? In one respect the Jews really are a chosen people, not chosen by the grace of God nor by their national peculiarities, which with every people as well as with the Jews merely prove national narrowness. They are chosen by a necessity which has relieved them of many prejudices, a necessity which has prevented the development of many of those stupidities which have caused other nations great efforts to overcome. Repeated persecution has put the stamp of sorrow on the Jews. They have grown big in their endurance, in their comprehension of human suffering, and in their sympathy with the struggles and longings of the human soul. Driven from country to country, they avenged themselves by producing great thinkers, able theoreticians, heroic leaders of progress. All governments lament the fact that the Jewish people have contributed the bravest fighters to the armies for every liberating war of mankind. According to the lack of a country of their own, they developed, crystallized, and idealized their cosmopolitan reasoning faculty. True they have not their own empire, but many of them are working for the great moment when the earth will become the home for all, without distinction of ancestry or race. That is certainly a greater nobler and sounder ideal to strive for than a petty nationality. It is this ideal that is daily attracting larger numbers of Jews, as well as Gentiles, and all attempts to hinder the realization thereof, like the present nationalistic movement, will be swept away by the storm that precedes the birth of a new era, mankind clasped in universal brotherhood. End of Section 14. Section 15 of Mother Earth, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1906. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Mother Earth, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1906. Section 15, Mine Owners' Revenge, by M.B. Charles H. Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners, William D. Haywood, Secretary of that organization, and G.A. Pettibone, former member of the same, were arrested in Denver, February 17th. They are accused of having participated in the murder of the ex-governor of Idaho, Mr. Stoinenberg. Various other arrests have taken place in Cripple Creek and Haynes, Oregon. The events during and after the arrest leave no doubt that the authorities of Colorado and Idaho are in the most beautiful accord in their attempt to kill the miners' union. This accord and harmony are so apparent that thoughtful citizens cannot fail to see that the governments of Colorado and Idaho are aiding in the conspiracy of mine owners against the miners. Requisition papers and a special train seem to have been prepared in advance, for immediately after the arrest they were expelled and taken to Boise City, Idaho, and within a few moments the whole matter was settled by the authorities of Colorado, not even pretending to show the slightest fairness. Nor did they display the least desire to investigate the grounds upon which requisition papers were granted. This process usually takes several days. In the case of Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone, a few moments suffice to close the whole proceedings. Since the papers were issued before the arrest, it is not at all unlikely that the death sentence has already been decided upon. Optimists in the labour movement maintain that a repetition of the legal murder of 1887 that has caused shame and horror even in the ranks of the upper 10,000 is impossible, that the authorities would shrink from such an outrage, such an awful crime. That which has happened in Colorado and Idaho warrants no such hope. The evidence against the leaders of the Western Federation of Minors consists largely of one individual who is supposed to have known and witnessed everything. The gentleman seems to fairly long for the moment when he can take the witness stand and furnish the material that the district attorney needs to prove the guilt of the accused, an expert perjurer it seems. The governor of Idaho, Mr. Gooding, has already given him a good character. The man acknowledged his firm belief in the existence of a supreme being which touched the governor's heart deeply. Does he not know that it has ever been the mission of the supreme being to serve as impresario to falsehood and wretchedness? The accusation against the three prisoners is the best affidavit of the minor magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of Minors during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything was done to disrupt them, but without results. The latest outrage is a renewed and desperate attack on that labour organization. Are the working people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labour leader, Alapowderly, who will be willing to carry faggots to the stake. Or are they going to awaken from their lethargy ere America becomes thoroughly Russified? End of Section 15 Recording by Stephen Harvey Painting from the good old times represents two peasants wrangling about a cow. One holds on to the horns of the animal, the other tightly clutches its tail, the third figure is in a crouched position underneath. It is the lawyer milking the cow, while the other two are quarrelling. Here we have the beauty of the representative system, while groups are bargaining about their rights, their official advisers and lawmakers are skimming the cream off the milk. Not justice, but social injustice is the incentive of these worthy gentlemen. Human justice and legal representation thereof are two different things. One who seeks for a representation places his rights in the hands of another. He does not struggle for them himself. He must wait for a decision thereupon from such quarters, as are never inspired by love for justice, but by personal gain and profit. The working people are beginning to recognize this. It is also beginning to dawn upon them that they will have to be their own liberators. They have the power to refuse their material support to a society that degrades them into a state of slavery. This power was already recognized in 1789 when, at the French National Convention, Mirabeau thundered, Look out! Do not enrage the common people, who produce everything, who only need to fold their arms to terrify you. The general strike is still at the beginning of its activity. It has gone through the fire in Russia. In Spain and Italy it has helped to demolish the belief in the sovereignty of property and the state. Altogether the general strike idea, though relatively young, has made a deeper impression on friend and foe than several million votes of the working people could have achieved. Indeed it is no joke for the pillars of society. What if the workers, conscious of their economic power, cease to store up great wealth in the warehouses of the privileged? It was not difficult to get along with the would-be labour leaders in the legislative bodies. These worthy ones, experienced through the practice of manufacturing laws to maintain law and disorder, rapidly developed into good supporters of the existing conditions. Now, however, the working men have entered upon the battlefield themselves, refusing their labour, which has always been the foundation of the golden existence of the Ott Volee. They demand the possibility to so organize production and distribution as to make it impossible for the minority to accumulate outrageous wealth and to guarantee to each economic well-being. The expropriateurs are in danger of expropriation. Capitalism has expropriated the human race. The general strike aims to expropriate capitalism. A new and invigorating breath of life is also felt in this country through the formation of the industrial workers of the world. It awakens the hope of a transformation of the present trade union methods. In their present form, they serve the money powers more than the working class. Robert Koch, the world-renowned scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in recognition of his work in the direction of exterminating tuberculosis, delivered a lecture at Stockholm at the time of receiving the mark of distinction. In the course of his speech, he said, We may not conceal the fact that the struggle against tuberculosis requires considerable sums of money. It is really only a question of money. The greater the number of free places for consumptives in well-equipped and well-conducted hospitals, the better the families of these are supported, so that the sick are not prevented from going to these hospitals on account of the care of their relations. And the oftener such places are established, the more rapidly tuberculosis will cease to be a common disease. Where are the governments which are supposed to serve as benefactors of suffering mankind? They have milliards at their disposal, but use most of it for the maintenance of armies, bureaucracies, police forces. With these vast sums which they extort from the people, they increase instead of diminish suffering. On the 27th of January, it was 150 years since Fulfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. A grand master of music, a magician who leads the soul from the depths of life to its sunery heights, Mozart transposed life into music. Wagner and his pupils transposed problems of life. Wagner questions and receives no answer. Mozart affirms life. His Don Juan liberates. Townhoiser leads into the labyrinth of bothersome renunciation. The study of Mozart's biography may be recommended to those who believe that the artistic individuality has freer scope today than it would have with communism. Mozart was always forced to look about for patrons of his art, for he lacked means to put his works before the public. A biographer of him says, Mozart's life makes us feel the tragedy of an artist's life most painfully. In his youth he was fondled and idealized as a wonderchild, but his circumstances deteriorated as he matured in his art, and the more accomplished the works of his fantasy grew. When he died he left a wife and children behind in great poverty. There was not enough money on hand to bury him. The corpse was placed in the potter's field. When his wife, who had been sick at the time of the burial, wanted to look up the grave it could not be exactly designated. The genius of the artist, however, permeates the world on waves of light. The Tsar knows his mission. He addressed the deputation of peasants from the province of Kursk. Thus, my brothers, I am most glad to see you. You must know very well that every right of property is sacred to the State. The owner has the same right to his land as you peasants have to yours. Communicate this to your fellows in the villages. In my solicitude for the country I do not forget the peasants whose needs are dear to me, and I will look after them continually as did my late father. The National Assembly will soon assemble, and in cooperation with me discuss the best measures for your relief. Have confidence in me, I will assist you. But, I repeat, remember always that right of property is holy and inviolable. The commentaries to this fatherly address are furnished by the Tsarist Cossacks who hasten to the peasants' aid with the knout, sword, and incendiarism. End of section 16 Recording by Stephen Harvey Section 17 of Mother Earth, Volume 1, Number 1, March 19, 6. 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 Larry Wilson Mother Earth, Volume 1, Number 1, March 19, 6. Literary Notes Letters of Henrik Ibsen published by Fox DeVille in Company, New York. Price $2.50. These letters do not belong among those of great men which proved to be disappointments. In reading them one is not inclined to ask as of Schopenhauer's letters why a philosophic genius of such depth should be laden with thousands of Philistine trivialities. Ibsen reaches far beyond his surroundings in his letters. What he writes is a continual protest against shallowness and mediocrity. The misery of petty state affairs of patriotism with a board on the forehead bothered him greatly. This is shown on every page. Whatever he expresses he always aims at expanding the horizon. As he himself once remarked, the revolutionizing of brains. His sentiments are European and he must often hear that even the wish for combining the Scandinavian countries borders on treason. Thus he becomes a solitary soul. He has even nothing in common with the radicals. He not only hates the state, the enemy of individuality, but he is averse to all attempts which aim at the drilling of the masses. He loves Bjornsson as a poet, but he wants to have nothing to do with him as a politician. In a letter to Brandus he writes, Bjornsson says, the majority is always right. And as a practical politician he is bound I suppose to say so. I on the contrary must of necessity say the minority is always right. Naturally I am not thinking of that minority as stagnationists who are left behind by the great middle party, but I mean that minority which leads the van and urges on to points which the majority has not yet reached. I mean that man is right who has allied himself most closely with the future. Under the wheel is the title of a German story by Hermann Hesse in which he severely criticizes the incompetency of the present school system to fully develop the youth. The characterization of the teacher's profession as Hesse puts it does not only serve for Germany, but for all modern states in which governments strive to train the young for the purpose of making patient subjects and harass screaming patriots of them. The author says with fine irony of the teacher, it is his duty and vocation entrusted to him by the state to hinder and exterminate the rough forces and passions of nature in the young people and to put in place of them quite moderation and ideals recognized by the state. Many a one who at present is a contented citizen or an ambitious official would have become without these endeavors of the school an unmanageable innovator or a hopeless streamer. There was something in him, something wild, lawless, which first had to be broken, a flame which had to be extinguished. The school must break and forcibly restrict the natural being. It is its duty to make a useful member of society out of him, according to principles approved by the state's authority. The wonderful work is crowned with a careful training in the barracks. End of section 17 End of Mother Earth Volume 1, Number 1, March 19, 6