THE GALVESTON FOLLY. 339 honesty. It has something to conserve. What is it? Butchery, as of striking workers, hitherto. Gattling guns will come into play to put down uprisings; for the people will no longer see their ancient liberties destroyed by "Galveston plans" (plutocratic rule) or the centralization of power in the hands of an autocrat and legislatures of cities or states made "advisory bodies," as the Czar would have of the Douma, nor will they see murderers shielded from just punishment by the dollar. Hands off! O, rich man! touch not to destroy the blood-bought prerogatives of the people-the rule of the many by your greed of gain or lust of power! Government of the people, by the people, for the people must not perish from the earth! Go not to Europe to bring hence for our enslavement "Galveston plans" or Russian autocracy. Our fathers fled from autocratic rule to the wilds of America and fought the Tories of that day who tried to perpetuate the same order of tyranny that the Tories of today are endeavoring to reinstate, destructive of our democratic polity. Not so long as the lofty obelisk dedicated to the memory of Washington, the father of his country, stands on its granite foundation near the capitol of the nation, pointing skyward, or the monument on Bunker Hill holds its apex aloft, shall we assent to the subversion of our form of government as outlined in the Constitution of 1787 and of the state Constitutions and of the time-honored legislaive systems for cities, except to broaden them, giving greater power and more efficient control into the hands of the common people by means of the recall and initiative and referendum. The American people will submit no longer to be governed by the fraternity of lawyers, the commercial class and the incorporated trusts the hungry worshippers of the dollar. But the toilers in workshop, factory, mine and the holders of the plow will say what shall be the civil polity of America-of cities, states and nation. The love of liberty and of our ancient rights is paramount in the popular heart to the love of money and will make a speedy end of the dollar's damnable doings-of robbery and enslavement of the many. The "Galveston plan YE 257TH LESSON. The Galveston Folly. (so-called) of city government is a barefaced attempt to substitute oligarchic for democratic rule. Section 8 of the Galveston charter provides as follows: "The said board of commissioners shall by a majority vote of all the members thereof have the power to appoint all officers and subordinates in all the departments of said city." So this committee of five casts the only vote for "all of the officers and subordinates in all the departments of said city" and does every act of legislation-the people disfranchised and without a voice, except the five into whose hands they have surrendered their power. What then is left to them? "The selection of this commission," do you say? Let us see. I copy from the Topeka Report: "The men who secured the passage of the Galveston and Houston charters by the Texas legislature fully realized that the commission system of city government would not be a success unless they could secure the services of able men. To meet this need, a few of the leading citizens of Galveston organized what is known as "The City Club;" the same kind of an organization also was perfected in Houston. The City Club made it their business to secure able men to run for mayor and commissioners and organized the city government along non-partisan lines. The City Club also attempted and has been successful for five years in eliminating politics from city government in 340 EVOLUTION AND THE GALVESTON PLAN. Galveston. Independent nominations are made by the City Club." Here is something worth thinking about-the "City Club," making it "their business to secure able men to run for mayor and commissioners and organize the city government along non-partisan lines.” Where do the people come in? This "Tammany Club" is made up of "business men" that represent plutocracy. Class rule comes in, the people dethroned. All of this "non-partisan" class, like the knownothings of old, have a secret understanding and vote as one, and by chicanery and "many nominations" they place the opposition in a "hole." The employers, the press, the money all on the side of the club the people are "clubbed" out of a voice. The commission once enthroned it cannot be dethroned by the toilers; for they, like a flock of sheep are left to bleat for salt, as in Europe. And this commission system once brought in will not stop with cities. It is preparing for the states and the nation. They, too, will be defined "business corporations." The Topeka Report says: "The ground plan of the commission form of city government is that a board of five directors, four of whom are the heads of various departments, while the fifth, the mayor, is president of all boards and has supervision over all the departments of city government. Or a commission form of city government may be likened to an executive committee of five members managing a great railroad corporation." And why did not the report include insurance corporations,— "fine examples of 'commission' rule!" These madmen, crazed with the rage of commercialism forget that the city has always been the unit or model of free governments, and freedom first began in cities-as of Greece and Rome and cities, when once enslaved are the last to regain their liberty—as in Europe today the cities are generally under oligarchic rule. And the Topeka committee of office seekers turn to Europe to bolster up their contention! They say: "Berlin, Breslau, Cologne, Magdeburg, Stuttgart, Munich, Leipsic, and many other German cities are governed upon the Galveston plan." Yes might they not as truly have added that every city of Russia and Russia herself are governed upon the "Galveston plan?" And since it is admitted that most European cities are governed upon the Galveston plan, the plan is no new thing. The movement is not reform. It is reaction-going backward to mediaevalism. Let us adopt the "Galveston" (European) plan and we may look for congratulations from the Czar and Kaiser. The city of Paris was governed by a commission during the French revolution. It worked, with Robespierre at its head, sanguinarily if not salutarily. A commission of good men, or a good king, or a good emperor, like Marcus Aurelius, may govern satisfactorily. Rome had but one Marcus Aurelius-but one good emperor in all her history. All others were like Nero-tyrants. We, the descendants of men who fled to America -driven into the wilderness by autocratic and oligarchic tyrannyneed not be told that monarchy and oligarchy are inimical to popular rights and liberty. This "Galveston" movement is backwards and revolutionary and will fail. It is a serious matter. It is a boomerang. It will return to strike the men who throw it. YE 258TH LESSON. Evolution and the Galveston Plan. Great consequences flow often from seeming trifles. The kicking over of a lamp by a cow destroyed a city; a little nail-wound in the sole of the foot may produce lock-jaw; a little scratch on the finger EVOLUTION AND THE GALVESTON PLAN. 341 give rise to blood poison-both ending in death. So say I of cities, states and nation: The life of one's the life of all, too; Soon will the states and nation fall, too; O Liberty! Thy race is run, then! A logical sequence. There can be no lasting governmental incongruity. It must be "all slave or all free," or become so, as Lincoln and Seward said-not a part autocratic and a part democratic; but all will be or become the one or the other-a positive law of evolution fixed and invariable. "Whatever exists has all of its constituent parts arranged in order, ascending from the lowest to the highest in an unbroken logical sequence-an arrangement skillfully and consistently constructed forming an harmonious whole"-words of Nordau in his great work, "Conventional Lies of Our Civilization." -a unit Now the American commonwealth is one as God is onecomposed of many parts: (1) the national government, (2) the state governments, (3) the county governments, (4) the township governments and (5) the city governments-all republics or democracies. But if the city, or any other part or division, becomes monarchial all the other parts or divisions will become the same. There can be, I repeat, no lasting incongruity. In nature the living body, plant and animal, is made up of primordial cells. It is so, too of our American government. Its primordial cell is the ward or township; hence the declaration of Thomas Jefferson that he would have the nation divided into little wards, the people in each directly legislating, as in New England. This direct control by the people is the unit of liberty. But the initiative, referendum and recall made practical is the realization of democracy-the town meeting on a large scale. The Des Moines plan of city government has joined to it these; but in such an impracticable form as to render them nil, and, I belive, intentionally so (like prohibition by the drug-store leak), and in the end upopular. No enemy to a cause can be trusted to legislate favorably for that cause. The war amendments, passed by a congress favorable to enfranchisement, have been rendered nil in the ex-confederate states. Now I say positively, the class of men who formed the Galveston plan is not devoted to the emancipation of labor; but it is devoted to its exploitation and it is no more favorable to the initiative, referendum and recall, which would place the lawmaking power positively and directly in the hands of the common people, than the old-time slaveholders were favorable to schools for the education of their negro slaves. "Mine enemy hath written a book," said the Hebrew sage. "Mine enemy hath written a law," the toilers may truthfully say of the Galveston plan of government set up for Des Moines. The trades unionists in Texas that have been inveigled into giving support to government not republican in form, have made the greatest mistake of their lives. They will discover that no centralized power can with safety be engrafted upon popular forms. Under Augustus Caesar popular forms were kept in vogue. But after him Nero had his horse elected consul. The autocratic commission, obedient to a city club (in Des Moines the "300" club) will ignore every popular feature grafted upon the Galveston system in order to deceive the workingmen and secure their support of this plan of tyranny, as has been done by the "300" club. The people ought to know that the governor of the state of Iowa would be required to appoint a majority of the commission, if it could be done legally. They do know that it was the original form of the Galveston commission system and would now be its form and requirement had not the supreme court of Texas intervened to annul that feature of the act. No, no; "Grapes do not grow on thorns nor figs on thistles;" neither do the exploiters of labor legislate in the interest of the workingmen. "Beware! Beware! They are fooling you," O toilers, with the accursed, anti-democratic, anti-republican Galveston plan of government born in Hell! I say "government," not alone city government; for it is meant to apply to state and nation as well as to cities and fits them as well. It is as far romoved from being American as hell is from heaven, and the men behind the Galveston movement are, in its attempted inauguration in Iowa, committing a sin and a crime unparalleled in the category of wrongs on the earth-plane, and only paralleled by the rebellion of Satan and his archangels against God in heaven for which they were "hurled headlong down to bottomless perdition." YE 259TH LESSON. Birthright and Pottage. Let Des Moines cling to her birthright and not exchange it for a mess of pottage. The pottage is the will o' the wisp of "business administration;" her birthright is popular control. Than to surrender our birthright better the city be destroyed by earthquake and fire, as was San Francisco. It may soon be rebuilt and the new city be grander than the old; but popular rights once relinquished-how long till they be regained? It is two thousand years since Rome came under the domination of the Caesars. How many times has she striven in vain to regain government of the people and be released from that of "Feudal despots-lords-rich in some dozen paltry villages." Must the gulf between the few and the many be farther widened? Instead of sixteen thousand voters to elect city officials will a commission of five do the work better? Who is pushing forward the change? Not the toilers. It is moneybags-the "business men." They would have the city a "business corporation," conducted on "business principles." It will, they say, "save money to the tax-payers." How about the nontax-paying many, will it be to their advantage? Wages reduced, how readily will the commissioners call upon the regulars to put down the strike! This is "business-like." Business is war, and according to General Sherman, "war is hell." The earnings of the wage-slaves go into the pockets of the slave-master, the employer. By this means he is enriched. When the wage-slave, for any cause, cannot work, who feeds him and his dependent wife and little ones? Not the slave-master as of old in Dixie. The city a "business corporation" is not conducted in the interests of the many. It is only in that of a few. Centralization of power means chains and fetters,For whom? For moneybags? Not so. The riddle is easily guessed. With the increase of millionaires democracy declines. This is a truism. Why? Because democracy is equality. Inequality is democracy's antipode-its opposite. Jefferson rode alone on horseback to the Capitol and hitched his horse to a post and then took his stand before the multitude to deliver his first inaugural address. Andrew Jackson smoked a cob pipe of his own manufacture. This while President. But now "petty lords"-made rich by the labor of men and women, boys and girls and of little children-ride to and from their places of business in automobiles that they paid thousands of dollars for, while the weekly wage they pay their employees will not afford meat for their tables hardly once a week. And the employer smokes a seafoam pipe that cost him a hundred dollars wrung from the hard hands of his employees. This is business. Why do these work like beavers to cram the Galveston plan of city government down the throats of the many? They think not of THE PRIMORDIAL CELL OF LIBERTY. 343 popular rights, but of money as did the slave-holders who fought and died in the last ditch in a vain attempt to set up a slave Confederacy. This is the rich man's law as the Confederacy was the rich man's government. Good men they were-as the world calls good. But the Great Teacher rather discounted their qualification for his kingdom. Yes, this Galveston plan was the work of a club of rich men and their dependent attorneys and clergymen. They hatched out the stork-not a harmless chick, this king of frogs. And what will the stork do? Eat up the frogs of course, as Aesop has shown. They prayed Jupiter for a king-a "live King"- -a "business administration." They got it as will the people of Des Moines be rewarded if they depart from the path of the fathers and cast democracy to the dogs by their votes. The commission of five will "exercise lordship over them" as did the stork over the frogs. We are on the eve of a mighty struggle of the people against the trust magnates. It has already begun. The rottenness of commission rule has been laid bare. We see it in the management of insurance and bank corporations and in that of the meat trust exposed lately by Uncle Sam as it was previously, by Upton Sinclair, like Harriett Beecher Stowe exposed the rottenness of the institution of chattel slavery in the South. The Roosevelt and Harriman squabble is picket firing. But the rich men are intrenching. The "300" will rule the city. That is the purpose and that the Galveston plan if adopted, assures. YE 260TH LESSON. The Primordial Cell of Liberty. My contention is that to elect at large three or five men to rule the eighty thousand of the city, we holding aloof from ward representation, reach autocracy as in China and Russia. Thus abandoning popular government, we open a break in the dyke of liberty that will widen more and more until both states and nation will be buried deep beneath the waves of plutocratic tyranny under commission rule of cities and states with a dictator at Washington. I see it coming as war was perceived by the Athenians "approaching with gigantic strides from the Peloponesus." Says the author of "Anglo-Saxon Freedom," James K. Hosmer: "The proper primordial cell of an Anglo-Saxon body-politic is self-government by a concensus of individual freemen, the primary democracy where the individual rules, no man's voice weighing more than another's, except in so far as ability and character give him weight-a far more embarrassing matter for cities than for rural population." Says Thomas Jefferson: "Those wards called townships in New England are the vital principle of their governments and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and its preservation. As Cato concluded every speech with the words: Carthago delenda est,' so do I every opinion with the injunction: 'Divide the counties into wards.' Said Lewis Cass: "In proportion as government recedes from the people it becomes liable to abuse." Hon. Seth Low, president of Columbia College, and late mayor of the city of Brooklyn, was the first to say that cities were not so much little states as large corporations. But he says the ideal city charter "should be founded on the theory of separation of legislative functions; that the board of aldermen should have no more power of interference with the executive than the house of representatives has." And this I hold to be true and, vice versa, the executive should have no law-making power. And the right of the people to elect all officials, with very few exceptions, should be made sure. To do away with the |