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Title: Henry George, Traitor Author: Benjamin R. Tucker Date: 1896 Language: en Topics: Haymarket, Henry George Source: Retrieved 11/11/2021 from https://books.google.com/books?id=YlfOuv3ZoPMC
The present oft recalls the past, and events of the recent political
campaign forcibly reminded me of the shame of 1887 and the shameful part
therein of one whose infamy shall not be forgotten. To the end that it
may not, I purpose here to link the present to the past by a simple
statement of facts.
In May, 1886, occurred the now historic tragedy of the Chicago
Haymarket, when a bomb was thrown and policemen were killed and wounded.
It is needless to review the details. As a result eight men—Spies,
Parsons, Fischer, Engel, Lingg, Fielden, Schwab, and Neebe—were
arrested, tried, and convicted of murder. All but Neebe were condemned
to death; Neebe was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. The trial
was a long one, and after it months were occupied in attempts to secure
a new one and to save the lives of the condemned. During the spring,
summer, and fall of 1887 the matter filled the public mind. Public
opinion, inflamed by a prostituted press and cowards high in place, was
at fever-pitch against the victims. Efforts were made to secure the
intervention of influential persons in their behalf. But few responded
to the call. Perhaps most notable among the few, because he risked the
most and because his aid was least expected, was William Dean Howells.
However brilliant the literary fame that he may leave behind him, his
fame as a man, resting chiefly on the brave and simple appeal that he
then made for justice, will far outshine it, and I am sure that to him
this act is the most precious of his career. But because he was almost
alone among the mighty his appeal was vain. The supreme court of
Illinois, in a long and labored opinion, sustained the verdict of the
lower court; the Supreme court of the United States gave an adverse
decision regarding the points of law upon which an appeal to that
tribunal had been taken; the governor of Illinois listened with ears of
stone to all prayers for clemency; and on November Eleventh, Eighteen
Hundred and Eighty-Seven, Lingg having previously taken his own life,
Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were hanged, the commutation of the
sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life-imprisonment being the only
crumb of comfort flung to an enlightened minority hungering for justice.
Among the mighty in that day of trial, in that hour of national dishonor
when every individual, especially every individual of prominence, had to
choose between the path of shame and the path of glory, it is not unfair
to include Mr. Henry George. A man of unquestioned ability; a writer of
almost unparalleled lucidity and force; a public speaker whom vast
audiences acclaimed with apparently unquenchable enthusiasm; a reformer
who, in completely winning the love of the masses, had not failed to
attach himself to many men of wealth and power among the classes; and,
withal, a man Whose honesty only a few of the more clearsighted had then
begun to doubt,—to him perhaps more than to any other single person did
lovers of liberty and friends of labor confidently look for willing and
effective aid and leadership through and out of a crisis pregnant with
results beyond all human vision. Less than a year before, he had
astonished New York and the entire nation by rolling up a vote of 68,000
as an independent candidate for the mayoralty of this city. With the
prestige that that event had given him, with his command of popular
attention, and with his wonderful power of advocacy, it was not
impossible that he should turn the tide of opinion, and compel authority
to comply with the demand of a people awakened by his voice to a
realization of the horror that was impending. At the very least he could
have tried. For the hope that he would make the attempt he had given
reason—so it is said, though I cannot vouch for the statement—by sending
a message of encouragement to the men in their cells at Chicago. That at
the time this message is said to have been sent he believed them to be
innocent victims is on record in black and white over his own signature.
At that time he had not been nominated for the office of secretary of
State for New York. This nomination came to him some months later,—in
the summer or early fall of 1887. His remarkable campaign of 1886 had
inspired him with insane hopes of speedy political victory: In January,
1887, he had started his weekly paper, the “Standard,” and by this and
other means he was bending all his energies to the creation of a new
political issue in the Single Tax with himself as standard-bearer of a
new political party. He claimed that he would poll 250,000 votes for
secretary of State, and that with hard work he could be elected. The
month of September, 1887, found him in the thick of this mad campaign.
It was in that month, too, that the Illinois supreme court filed its
opinion sustaining the verdict against Spies and his comrades. The time
for action had arrived. Appeals to Henry George began to pour in upon
him from friends of the condemned men and from readers of the
“Standard.” He was in a dilemma,—one of those embarrassing dilemmas
which men afflicted with the political itch have so often to confront.
What should he do? Should he spring to the side of these innocent
victims, upon whose fate turned the question of free speech in America,
and thereby absolutely ruin his prospect of immediate political
advancement, or should he continue in his mad struggle to attain the
goal of his ambition, and leave the innocent to die? For some weeks he
doggedly maintained a policy of silence. But the demand that he should
take a stand became too loud to be ignored. And it was under this
pressure that at last, in the “Standard” of October 8, 1887, appeared on
its first page, over the signature of the editor himself, the article
that at once damned Henry George forever in the eyes of every decent and
unbiassed man. In substance Mr. George declared that, although he
formerly looked upon the condemned men as innocent, he now believed them
guilty of murder, because the supreme court of Illinois had so
pronounced them, and that settled it. So well-nigh incredible is it that
a man of Henry George’s intelligence and boasted mental independence
should ever have given utterance to a conclusion so foolish and so
slavish that today, nine years after the fact, if you venture to
attribute it to him in talking with one of his admirers, the chances are
ten to one that you will be vehemently told that Mr. George never could
have taken, and never did take, such a position, and that you ought to
be ashamed of yourself for so misrepresenting a noble man. That there
may be no mistake about the matter, then, let me quote his exact words:
There is no ground for asking executive clemency in behalf of the
Chicago Anarchists as a matter of right. An unlawful and murderous deed
was committed in Chicago the penalty of which, by the laws of the State
of Illinois, is death. Seven men were tried on the charge of being
accessory to the crime, and, after a long trial, were convicted. The
case was appealed to the supreme court of the State of Illinois, and
that body, composed of seven judges, removed, both in time and place,
from the excitement which may have been supposed to have affected public
opinion in Chicago during the first trial, have, after an elaborate
examination of the evidence and the law, unanimously confirmed the
sentence.
That seven judges of the highest court of Illinois, men accustomed to
weigh evidence and to pass upon judicial rulings, should, after a full
examination of the testimony and the record, and with the responsibility
of life and death resting upon them, unanimously sustain the verdict and
the sentence, is inconsistent with the idea that the Chicago Anarchists
were condemned on insufficient evidence.
Unmistakable, is it not? No room for misrepresentation here. So clear is
the meaning that every person who read the sentence which I have
italicised, and who was capable of judging its author impartially, in
his inmost heart put Henry George down as a liar and a coward. Some went
farther, I among them, and put him down in print as such. The lamented
William Morris, for instance, who was then editing the “Commonweal,”
found nothing less than capital letters adequate to the branding of
George as TRAITOR, in a pithy paragraph of four or five lines, signed,
if my memory serves, by the poet himself.
Nine years have passed since then, during which the man thus branded has
made no acknowledgment of error, uttered no expression of regret, given
no sign of repentance. But meantime significant things have happened.
Let us move down a little from the remoter past toward the present.
In the fall of 1892, John P. Altgeld was elected governor of Illinois.
In January of 1893 he was inaugurated, and before he had been in office
many months he granted what the law calls a pardon to Fielden, Schwab,
and Neebe. Governor Altgeld is himself a lawyer. He once held the office
of prosecuting attorney, and later was a judge of the superior court of
Illinois for a term of five years. Nevertheless, before deciding on this
pardon, he called to his side, as trusted friend and counsellor, another
judge of one of the high courts of the State. I suppose that I reveal no
secret in naming him,—Judge Samuel P. McConnell, of Chicago. Together
they went over the record of the famous case. At a certain stage in
their examination, or at its end,—I am not sure Which,—Judge McConnell
said to the governor:
“Though I think that these men should be pardoned, and though I ask you
to pardon them, I desire to express to you, as your friend, my
conviction that, if you pardon them‘, you will thereby seriously injure
your political future.”
“Damn it, Sam!” replied Altgeld, “if these men were unjustly convicted,
I’ll set ’em free, though it should prove my political death.”
And so the pardon issued. It was a long, convincing, bold, and scathing
document, probably the most merciless message of mercy ever penned. With
unanswerable evidence and argument Governor Altgeld assailed the guilty
conspirators against free speech, and, far from bowing to the decree of
the Illinois supreme court, he ripped it completely up the back. As a
result he has ever since been a target for the abuse and ridicule of the
entire capitalistic press. Nearly four years have elapsed since the
document was promulgated, during which its author has been careful to
improve every opportunity to intensify the hatred of which he is the
object among the privileged classes. And now we come down to the present
time. On Saturday evening, October 17, 1896, Governor Altgeld made a
notable speech at Cooper Union in this city. The chief objects of this
speech were condemnation of government by injunction and demonstration
of the fallibility of courts of justice. One minute before the opening
of the meeting and the entrance of Governor Altgeld, Henry George
crossed the platform and took a conspicuous seat. The Single Taxers
present rose to their opportunity, and made the hall ring with their
applause. Any other man than Henry George, in a meeting in no sense his,
would have acknowledged the greeting with a bow and then steadfastly
kept his seat. But not he. Rising and crossing the platform with that
pompous strut with which every one who has ever seen him parade before
an admiring audience is familiar, he stood at the desk the incarnation
of egotism, and with characteristic impudence began a speech. Before he
could utter a half-dozen sentences he was cut short in the middle of one
of them by the playing of the band in greeting to Altgeld. I confess
that I do not like the looks of the Illinois governor. He is distinctly
a disappointment to the eye. Yet I could not help contrasting, and
greatly to his advantage, this slight figure of a modest, retiring man,
free from any trace of vanity and plainly bored by the long-kept-up
applause, with the swelling turkey-cock whose strut had just been so
ingloriously cut short.
After some introductory speeches, the hero of the evening rose to
address the audience. And then was witnessed the astounding spectacle of
the man who, nine years before, had given his specific sanction to the
legal murder of innocent men, that he might not damage a political
future which, though in reality the baseless fabric of a dream, was in
his eyes a shining certainty, rising with both hands lifted in honor of
the man who,.four years before, without the slightest hesitation and as
if the most ordinary decency commanded it, had cast into the balance a
political prospect which only the most ambitions of statesmen could have
despised, in order to do all that lay within the bounds of human power
to right the wrongs of persecuted innocence. An astounding spectacle, I
say. Yet it would have been an inspiring one, had those who saw it been
able to look upon it as an honest effort at atonement. But such it
emphatically was not. It was only too evident that the man who had once
endeavored to conceal his infamy behind the extraordinary and
pusillanimous plea that a unanimous court can do no wrong was applauding
the man who holds no court sacred, not to repudiate his past, but to
make the people forget it,—that he had come to Cooper Union not to
confess that he had been a coward, but to exploit in his own behalf the
bravery of another. In vain did I try to imagine what went on in Henry
George’s mind as he sat listening to these rebuking words as they fell
from the lips of a former occupant of the bench:
I say to my countrymen that there cannot be in a republic any
institution exempt from criticism, and that, when any institution is
permitted to assume that attitude, it will destroy republican
government. The judicial branch of the government is just as much
subject to the criticism of the American people as are the legislative
and executive branches .... The judges of our federal courts are as
honest as other men and no more so. They have the same passions and
prejudices that other men have, and are just as liable to make mistakes
and to move in the wrong direction as other men are, and the safety of
the republic not only permits, but actually requires, that the action of
the courts should be honestly and thoroughly scanned and freely
criticised .... The mere fact that the supreme court has all through its
career repeatedly reversed its own decisions shows its fallibility ....
The decision of the supreme court does not in any case become a rule of
political action the correctness of which the voter dare not question.
As Henry George listened to this simple truth, which the most ordinary
mind must accept and which every honest mind openly acknowledges, did he
reflect that he had once declared the supreme court incapable of error
and its decision beyond question? Probably. It is my belief that he
regrets his course in 1887 most bitterly. Not that he is in the least
ashamed of it; not that he would not repeat it, if he felt as sure as he
did then of a political gain in prospect; but simply that he realizes
that he made a fool of himself, not gaining A what he hoped to gain, and
losing what he now would like to have,—the honor which might have been
his, but which another has bravely won.
I have no use for repentance. I regard it a deplorable waste of precious
time and valuable material that any man, no matter who, should don
sackcloth and ashes. But none the less am I certain that no frank and
sincere man, realizing with shame that he has been guilty of an enormous
folly in a matter of vital public interest, will neglect for a moment to
expose his heart to public view. And the fact that during the last nine
years Henry George has sought no opportunity to lay his heart bare
assures me that the liar and coward and traitor of 1887 is, in his
heart, a liar and coward and traitor still. So that which he refuses to
lay bare I strip. The corruption thus made visible is not a pleasant
sight, but it is a useful one, and I am determined that it shall never
vanish by concealment. My hope, rather, is to fan the flame of a
purifying indignation that shall dissipate the pestilence forever.
BENJ. R. TUCKER.
November, 1896.