about for his diversion, is primarily quite other than amus-
ing, and, though exhibiting himself at less than the "half
. price " at which children are elsewhere admitted to the spec-
tacle, attracts no curious children of Adam to any exhibition
but that of tlieir o^vn heels. The waterfall that propels the
civilizee's mill arrests the savage's canoe. In short. Nature,
though complaisant at seasons, is yet, in the larger view,
ffrudffin'T and stern toward our race, until transformed and
vivified by Labor and Science.
Man, therefore, is by primal necessity a Transformer, ā in
other words, a Reformer. He must first, by resolute effort,
fix his bit in the mouth of Nature, his saddle on her back,
and his spurs in her sides, ere he is prepared to run his no-
bler race and achieve his higher destiny. Though mental
development and moral culture be the admitted ends of his
mundane existence, yet to hcgin with the pursuit of these is
to court and insure defeat, by invoking frost and starvation.
If the philosopher or divine were to visit the pioneer just
REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 499
slashing together his log hut in the wilderness, and accost
him with, " Wliy wear out your life in such sordid, grovel-
ling, material drudgery, when the gorgeous canopy of heaven
overarches you, the glad sun irradiates and warms you, and
all Nature, ministering gratuitously to your gross, bodily
wants, invites to meditation and elevating seK-communion ? "
the squatter's proper answer, should he deign to give any an-
swer at all, would be : " Sir, I pro\dde first for my bodily
needs, and against the fitful inclemencies of the now genial
skies, in order that I may by and by have leisure and oppor-
tunity for those loftier pursuits you eulogize so justly, though
inappositely. I could not fitly meditate on God, the Uni-
verse, and Human Destiny, with a shivering ā s\'ife looking me
sadly in the face, nor with the cries of hungry children ring-
ing in my ears. Nay : I could not so meditate this balmy
June morning, in full view of the truth that, if I were con-
tent with meditation to-day, such would he the appeals of
those dependent on me ere June should greet us again.
^^^lat you suggest, then, is excellent in its time and place ;
but I must hew and delve to-day, in order that my season for
contemplation and culture may ultimately come."
Now, this obvious response of the pioneer to the phi-
losopher is in essence the material or circumstantial Re-
former's answer to the Stoic and the Saint. " Wealth is dross ;
Power is anxiety, ā is care ; Luxury enervates the body and
debases the soul," these remonstrate in chorus : " Ivnow
thyself, and be truly wise ; chasten your appetites, and be
rich in the moderation of your physical wants," adds the
Stoic ; " Know God, and find happiness in adoring and
ser^dng Hinl," echoes the -Saint. " True, Plato ! true,
'divinest Cecilia ! but everything in its order. To render
fasting meritorious, one should have meat at command ; and
great spiritual exaltation springs not naturally from a body
gaunt with enforced hunger. Let me surround myself with
what is needful for me and mine in the way of food, and
clothing, and shelter; not forgetting meantime the nobler
ends of my existence, but looking also to these ; thus will I
o(_)0 MISCELLANIES.
achieve for myself Opportunity for that loftier plane of being
whereto you so justly invite me. I am not forgetting nor
disobeying the injunction to ' Seek first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness " ; I am only affirming that, until the
legitimate physical needs of those dependent on my exertions
are provided for, it would not be righteous in me to surrender
myself to contemplation, nor even to devotion." And this is
substantially the answer of the Reformer of Man's external
circumstances to those who insist that the end he meditates
is to be attained from luithm, rather than from without, ā in
the apt phrase of Charles Lane, by improvement, not of this
or that cz?'czimstance, but of the vital cc?i^rc-stance. We
readily admit this ; but what then ? Tlie question still recurs,
" How is the desired end to be attained ? " and we hold
that there is no practical cure for the vital woes of the
pitiable which does not involve a preliminary change in their
outward conditions. You may shower precepts and admoni-
tions, tracts and Bibles, on the squalid, filthy, destitute
thousands who tenant, thick as knotted adders, the cellars
and rookeries of our great cities, and all will run off them
Hke water from a duck's back, leaving them exactly as it
found them. But first take them out of these lairs and lazar-
houses, wash them, clothe them decently, and place them
where they may, by honest, useful labor, earn a fair subsist-
ence ; now you may ply them with catechisms and exhorta-
tions \\\\X\ a rational hope of advantage. To attempt it sooner,
even with seeming success, is only to cover their filthiness
with a tenacious varnisli of hypocrisy, rendering it less hate-
ful to the eye, but more profound and ineradicable.
But not* the Worker oidy ā the robust, earnest Thinker
also ā is of necessity a Piadical. He sees his less fortunate
brethren oppressed and degraded, debased and enslaved,
through the malign influences of selfish Cunning and despotic
Force ; and his very soul is stirred within him as was that of
Moses by the spectacle of his people's sufferings under the
rule of their Egyptian taslouasters. No matter what is
tlie extent or nature of Man's abstract, inherent depra^itj;,
REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 501
he cannot fail to see that men are actually better or worse as
they have better or worse instructors, rulers, and institutions.
Before condemning Human I^[ature as incorrigiljle, and there-
upon justifying those wlio nevertheless contri\'e to make its
guidance and government a gainful trade, he inquires whether
this same abused Nature has not done better under other
auspices, and becomes satisfied that it has. Then he says to
the banded decriers of Human Nature and to the con-
servatives of old abuses who take slielter under tlieir wing :
" You say that Man cannot walk erect ; remove your bandages
from his feet, your shackles from his limbs, and let us see !
You say that he cannot take care of himself ; then why com-
pel him, m addition, to take such generous care of you ?
You say he is naturally dishonest and thievish ; but how
could he be otherwise, when he cannot fail to perceive that
you, who set yourselves up for his guides and exemplars, are
per^^etually and enormously robbing him ? Begin by giving
back to him the earth which you have taken from imder
his feet, the knowledge you have monopolized, the privi-
leges you have engrossed ; and we can better determine
whether he needs anything, and what, from your charity,
after he shall have recovered what is rightfrJly his own."
It is a fearful gift, this of moral prescience, ā the ability
and the will to look straight into and through all traditions,
usages, beliefs, conventionahties, garnitures, and ask : What
is this for ? What does it signify ? If it were swept away,
what would be really lost to mankind ? This bajjtism, or
whatever may be the appliance, ā does it really cleanse ?
Does it even tend to the desiderated result ? or does it not
rather fortify with a varnisli of hypocrisy and a crust of con-
ceit the preexisting impurity and vice ? Is there the old
unrighteousness left, with only self-righteousness superadded ?
Well does a deep thinker speak of the spirit of reform as
walking up and down, " paving the world with eyes," ā eyes
which not merely inquire and pierce, but challenge, accuse,
arraign also. Happily was the prophet of old named a seer ;
for he who rightly and deeply sees thence foresees. Your
502 MISCELLANIES.
brawling demagogue is a very empty and harmless personage,
ā "a voice, and nothing more " ; but a silent, unimpassioned
thinker, though uttering only the most obvious and uni-
versal truths, sets the social caldron furiously seething and
bubbling. " Think not that I am come to send peace on
earth," says the Prince of Peace ; " I am not come to send
peace, but a sword." All the rebels, conspirators. Messianic
impostors, of that turbulent age, were not half so formidable
to Judean conservatism, Eoman despotism, as the Sermon
on the Mount. And so in our day, a genuine, earnest re-
former, no matter in what manger cradled, in what Shaker
garb invested, sets all things spinning and tilting around
him.
The true Eeformer turns his eyes first inward, scrutinizing
himself, liis habits, purposes, efforts, enjoyments, asking,
What signifies this ? and this ? and wdierein is its justifica-
tion ? This daily provision of meat and drink, ā is its end
nourishment and its incident enjoyment ? or are the poles
reversed, and do I eat and drink for the gratification of appe-
tite, hoping, or trusting, or blindly guessing, that, since it sa-
tiates my desires, it must satisfy also my needs ? Is it requi-
site that all the zones and continents should be ransacked to
build up the fleeting earthly tabernacle of this immortal
spirit ? Is not the soul rather submerged, stifled, drowned,
in this incessant idolizing, feasting, pampering of the body ?
These sumptuous entertainments, wherein the palate has
everything, the soul nothing, ā what faculty, whether of body
or mind, do they brighten or strengthen ? Why shoidd a
score of animals render up their lives to furnish forth my
day's dinner, if my own life is thereby rendered neither surer
nor nobler ? Why gorge myself with dainties which cloud
the brain and clog the step, if the common grains and fiiiits
and roots and water afford precisely the same sustenance in
simpler and less cloying guise, and are far more conducive to
health, strength, elasticity, longevity ? Can a man worthily
surrender his life to the mere acquiring and absorbing of
food, thus alternating only from the state of a beast of burden
REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 503
to that of a beast of prey ? Above all, why should I fire my
blood and sear my brain with liquors which give a temporary
exhilaration to the spirits at the cost of permanent depra-
vation and disorder to the whole physical frame ? In short,
why should I live for and in my appetites, if these were Di-
vinely created to serve and sustain, not master and dethrone,
the spirit to which this earthly frame is but a husk, a tent, a
halting-place, in an exalted, deathless career ? If the life be
indeed more than meat, why shall not the meat recognize and
attest that fact ? And thus the sincere Eeformer, in the very
outset of his course, becomes a "tee-total" fanatic, repre-
sented by the knavish' and regarded by the vulgar as a foe to
all enjoyment and cheer, insisting that mankind shall con-
form to his crotchets, and Kve on bran-bread and blue cold
water.
Turning his eyes away from himself, he scans the relations
of man with man, under which labor is performed and service
secured, and finds, not absolute Justice, much less Love, but
Necessity on the one hand. Advantage on the other, presiding
over the general interchange of good offices among mankind.
In the market, on the exchange, we meet no recognition of
the brotherhood of the human race. A famine in one coim-
try is a godsend to the grain-growers and flour-speculators of
another. An excess of immigration enhances the cost of food
while depressing the wages of labor, adding in both ways to
the wealth of the forehanded, who find their only drawback
in the increased burdens of pauperism. Thus the mansion
and the hovel rise side by side, and where sheriffs are abun-
dant is hanging most frequent. One man's necessity being
another's opportunity, we have no right to be surprised or in-
dignant that the general system cxilminates, by an inexorably
logical process, in the existence and stubborn maintenance of
Human Slavery.
Yes, I insist that Slavery is a logical deduction from prin-
ciples generally accepted, and almost universally accounted
sound and laudable. For, once admit the premises that I
504 MISCELLANIES.
have a right to seek profit from my neighbor's privations and
calamities ; that I have a right to consume in idleness the
products or earnings of half a dozen workers, if my income
will justify the outlay; and that it is better to live indo-
lently on others' earnings than industriously from the pro-
ceeds of my own, ā and the riglitfidness of Slavery is a log-
ical deduction, as plain as that two and two make four.
Hence the gambler, the swindler, the pander for gain to oth-
ers' vices, is always pro-Slavery, or is only withheld from
that side by fear of being himself enslaved. You would not
on three continents find a pirate or gaming-house bully who
would not gladly tramp five miles on a dark, stormy night, to
help lynch an Abolitionist. And thus not only have all Ee-
forms a sympathetic, even if ill-understood, relationship, but
the enemies of reforms are united by a free-masonry equally
potent and comprehensive. The negro-trader of Charleston
or New Orleans would always help to mob a Temperance lec-
turer, even though he did not himself drink; for he hated
and dreaded the application of ethical laws to practical life.
This particular reform did not interfere with his pursuits or
his gains ; but he felt instinctively that all other reforms were
just behind it, ā that they were peering over its shoidder,
and ready to rusli in if this one succeeded in opening the
door. So he put his shoulder against it, and held fast, ā not
that he objected specially to this, but that he would make
seasonable resistance to the crowd that came trooping in its
train.
It was very common, of old, for the members of diverse
parties and sects to protest that they were not Abolitionists,
ā a most superfluous assurance. Essentially, radically, there
are just so many Abolitionists as comprehend that it is bet-
ter for themselves, better also for their children, to earn their
subsistence by fair, honest service to their kind, than to have
it supplied them for nothing. He only is truly, inflexibly
an Abolitionist who realizes that the faculty of producing or
earning bread is as much an element of man's happiness as
the ability to consume and relish it. He who idly wishes
REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 505
that Providence had made him heir of a fortune, so that he
might have fared sumptuously and lived idly, might just as
well sigh outright for John Mitchell's coveted Alabama plan-
tation and fat negroes.
Whether it shall ever be found practicable to substitute a
more trustful and beneficent social order for that which now
prevails, the sceptics are fully justified in doubting. So
many experiments ā fairly tried, so far as they can see ā
have resulted in so many failures, that they quite rationally
conclude that the Family is the only, or at least the highest,
social organization whereof poor, depraved human nature is
capable. It is all very well, they fairly say, to talk of the
great economies of some theoretic social system, ā how much
could be saved in fences and fuel, stowage and lights, produc-
tion and distribution, by uniting five hundred families in one
household, on a common domain, rather than scattering them
over twice as many acres or twenty-score farms ; but, since
it is proved that families cannot or will not live and labor in
this way, what use in commending it ? You might as well
talk of the superior pavement of the New Jerusalem seen
in St. John's vision to that of Broadway or Chestnut Street,
and insist that our cities shall henceforth use the former
exclusively.
There is much force in this view ; but there is more
force in one higher and nobler. It is true that men and
women educated in the selfish isolation and antagonism of
our current households are not qualified ā at least, the great
mass of them are not ā for any better form of society. It
is true that this knowledge has been attained through years
of patient exertion and sacrifice, ā attained by earnest,
ardent, self-denying men and women, who would have given
their lives to perfect conclusively a contrary demonstration.
And, though it is truly urged that these demonstrations were
made under very imperfect and unfavorable circumstances,
it is equally true that they were the most favorable that
could be, and better than can now be, obtained.
We stand, then, in the presence of this state of facts :
506 MISCELLANIES.
Ou the one hand, it is proved difficult to create and main-
tain a more trustful and harmonious social structure out of
such materials as the old social machinery has formed, ā
or rather, we may say practically, out of such materials as the
old machinery has expelled and rejected ; yet we know, on
the other hand, that a more ā yes, I will say it ā Christian
Social Order is not impossible. For it is more than half
a century since the first associations of the gentle ascetics
contemptuously termed Shakers were formed ; and no one
will pretend that they have failed. No : they have steadily
and eminently expanded and increased in wealth, and every
element of material prosperity, until they are at this day just
objects of envy to their neighbors. They produce no paupers ;
they excrete no beggars ; they have no idlers, rich or poor ;
no purse-proud nabobs, no cringing slaves. So far are they
from . pecuniary failure, that they alone have known no such
word as fail since, amid . poverty and odium, they laid the
foundations of their social edifice, and inscribed " HoUness to
the Lord " above their gates. They may not have attempted
the highest nor the wisest achievement ; but what they
attempted they have accomplished. And, if there were no
other success akin to theirs, ā but there is, ā it would still
be a demonstrated truth that men and women can live and
labor for general, not selfish, good, ā can banish pauperism,
servitude, and idleness, and secure general thrift and plenty,
by moderate cooperative labor and a complete identity of
interests. Of this truth, each year offers added demonstra-
tions ; but, if all were to cease to-morrow, the fact that it had
been proved would remain. Perhaps no Plato, no Scipio,
no Columbus, no Milton, now exists ; but the capacity of the
Eace is still measured and assured by the great men and
great deeds that have been. Man cmi work for his brother's
good as well as his own : an unbroken, triumphant experience
of half a century has established the fact, so that fifty cen-
turies of contrary experience would not disprove it.
But we are not required to prove the capacity, the adapta-
bility, of Man to a social accord so extreme as Communism.
REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 507
The practicability of tliis involves that of every social recon-
struction less radical, just as a bushel of grain contains e very-
lesser measure thereof; but the trutli of the reverse does not
follow. A bank on which every human being, or even every
stockholder, ā might fill up and draw checks at discretion,
would soon be broken ; but it does not follow that a well-
managed joint-stock bank must inevitably fail. Man may
yet, in far distant ages, become wise enough, good enough, to
realize that Labor is needful to him as food, and that frugal-
ity and temperance are essential to long life and sustained
enjoyment. But, far this side of that, he may become con-
vinced that he wars on himself in seeking a selfish good, and
that only in conjunction with others' haj)piness can his own
be secured. It needs not that he be willing to share his earn-
ings with others, in order that he may reahze that every in-
voluntary idler saps the general well-being, and that it is the
interest of each to see that there is work and fair recompense
for aU.
I MTite in sad and chiU iSTovember. The skies are sullen
and weeping ; the ground is reeking mire ; and the fierce
northwester lingers just behind the Highlands, ready to rush
upon the tattered and thin-clad like a pack of famished
wolves. Adown the street pace crowds of weary seekers, ā
seekers once of fame, perhaps, or power, or wealth ; but now
of food and raiment, ā of work and wages. The shop- win-
dows and doors are choked with ship-loads of wares adapted
to their urgent physical needs, ā everything requisite to eat,
and burn, and wear. All these were produced by laljor ; and
the needy are most wilhng to give labor in exchange for them.
The o^^'ners, on the other hand, want to sell them, ā bought
them for that purpose, and must break if the end is not
attained. Yet here the two classes stand facing, eyeing each
other, ā a thin plate of glass dividing them, ā the man with-
in anxious to sell, and he without eager to buy, ā yet some
malignant spell seems to keep them still blankly, helplessly
staring at each other. Perhaps a mere combination of the
hun-ry, thin-clad thousands who wishfully, fruitlessly gaze
508 MISCELLANIES.
into those windows, would secure the desired result ; for here
are persons of all kinds as well as grades of ability anxiously
seeking work, ā that is, seeking opportunity to coin their own
exertions into the bread and clothes and shelter they so press-
ingly need. Say there is no work for them, and their own
hunger and rags give you the lie : they themselves collec-
tively afford that very market for their labor for want of wdiich
they severally shiver and famish. But the carpenter cannot
live on timber, even if he had it ; he cannot even build him-
self the dwelling for want of which his children shiver in
some damp basement ; and thu.s the seedy tailor grows daily
more ragged, and the unemployed shoemaker despairingly
sees his own feet come more and more fully in contact with
the frosty, flinty pavement ; while the seamstress out of work
creeps to her bare garret and prays God tliat starvation, rather
than infamy, may end her long battle, now so nearly lost, for
the coarsest and scantiest bread. Legislators ! philanthro-
pists ! statesmen ! there must be some way out of this social
labyrinth ; for God is good, and has not created men and avo-
men to starve for want of work. The precept " Six days shalt
thou labor" implies and predicts work for all; where is it?
and what shall supply it ? If you cannot or will not solve
this problem, at least do not defame or impede those who
earnestly seek its solution !
The great, the all-embracing Eeform of our age is therefore
the Social Eeform, ā that which seeks to lift the Laboring
Class, as such, ā not out of labor, by any means, ā but out of
ignorance, inefficiency, dependence, and want, and place them
in a position of partnership and recognized mutual helpful-
ness with the suppliers of the Capital which they render
fruitful and eflicient. It is easily said that this is the case
now ; but, practically, the fact is otherwise. The man who
has only labor to barter for wages or bread looks vij) to the
buyer of his sole commodity as a benefactor ; the master and
journeyman, farmer and hired man, lender and borrower,
mistress and servant, do not stand on a recognized footing of
reciprocal benefaction. True, seK-interest is the acknowl-
REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 509
edged impulse of either party ; the lender, the employer,
parts with his money only to increase it, and so, it would
seem, is entitled to prompt payment or faithful service, ā
not, specially, to gratitude. He who pays a bushel of fair
wheat for a day's work at sowing for next year's harvest has
simply exchanged a modicum of his property for other prop-
erty, to him of greater value ; and so has no sort of claim to
an unreciprocated obeisance from the other party to the bar-
gain. But so long as there shall be ten who would gladly
borrow to one disposed and able to lend, and many more
anxious to be hired than others able and willing to employ
them, there always will be a natural eagerness of comjjetition
for loans, advances, employment, and a resulting deference of
borrower to lender, employed to employer. He who may
hire or not, as to him shall seem profitable, is independent ;
while he who must be hired or starve exists at others' mercy.
Not till Society shall be so adjusted, so organized, that who-
ever is willing to work shall assuredly have work, and fair
recompense for doing it, as readily as he who has gold may
exchange it for more portable notes, will the laborer be placed
on a footing of justice and rightful independence. He who
is able and willing to give work for bread is not essentially a
pauper; he does not desire to abstract without recompense
from the aggregate of the world's goods and chattels ; he is