Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century

spiritsare boundless in number; matter is scarce. Away with them!"

  I need not tell you, my dear brother, of all the shops and factorieswe visited. It was the same story everywhere. Here we sawexemplified, in its full perfection, that "iron law of wages" whichthe old economists spoke of; that is to say, the reduction, bycompetition, of the wages of the worker to the least sum that willmaintain life and muscular strength enough to do the work required,with such little surplus of vitality as might be necessary toperpetuate the wretched race; so that the world's work should not endwith the death of one starved generation. I do not know if there is ahell in the spiritual universe, but if there is not, one shouldcertainly be created for the souls of the men who originated, orjustified, or enforced that damnable creed. It is enough, if nothingelse, to make one a Christian, when he remembers how diametricallyopposite to the teaching of the grand doctrine of brotherly love,enunciated by the gentle Nazarene, is this devil's creed of crueltyand murder, with all its steadily increasing world-horrors, beforewhich to-day the universe stands appalled.

  Oh! the pitiable scenes, my brother, that I have witnessed! Roomafter room; the endless succession of the stooped, silent toilers;old, young; men, women, children. And most pitiable of all, theleering, shameless looks of invitation cast upon us by the women, asthey saw two well-dressed men pass by them. It was not love, norlicense, nor even lust; it was degradation,--willing to exchangeeverything for a little more bread. And such rooms--garrets,sheds--dark, foul, gloomy; overcrowded; with such a stench in thethick air as made us gasp when entering it; an atmosphere full oflife, hostile to the life of man. Think, my brother, as you sit uponyour mountain side; your gentle sheep feeding around you; breathingthe exquisite air of those elevated regions; and looking off over themysterious, ancient world, and the great river valleys leading downto the marvelous Nile-land afar,--land of temples, ruins,pyramids,--cradle of civilization, grave of buried empires,--think, Isay, of these millions condemned to live their brief, hopeless spanof existence under such awful conditions! See them as they eat theirmid-day meal. No delightful pause from pleasant labor; no brightlyarrayed table; no laughing and loving faces around a plenteous board,with delicacies from all parts of the world; no agreeable interchangeof wisdom and wit and courtesy and merriment. No; none of these.Without stopping in their work, under the eyes of sullentask-masters, they snatch bites out of their hard, dark bread, likewild animals, and devour it ravenously.{fr. 1}

  Toil, toil, toil, from early morn until late at night; then home theyswarm; tumble into their wretched beds; snatch a few hours ofdisturbed sleep, battling with vermin, in a polluted atmosphere; andthen up again and to work; and so on, and on, in endless, mirthless,hopeless round; until, in a few years, consumed with disease, mererotten masses of painful wretchedness, they die, and are wheeled offto the great

  I asked one of the foremen what wages these men and women received.He told me. It seemed impossible that human life could be maintainedupon such a pittance. I then asked whether they ever ate meat. "No,"he said, "except when they had a rat or mouse" "A rat or mouse!" Iexclaimed. "Oh yes," he replied, "the rats and mice were importantarticles of diet,--just as they had been for centuries in China. Thelittle children, not yet able to work, fished for them in the sewers,with hook and line, precisely as they had done a century ago inParis, during the great German siege. A dog," he added, "was a greattreat. When the authorities killed the vagrant hounds there was a bigscramble among the poor for the bodies."

  I was shocked at these statements; and then I remembered that somephilosopher had argued that cannibalism had survived almost to ourown times, in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, because they hadcontained no animals of large size with which the inhabitants couldsatisfy the dreadful craving of the system for flesh-food; and hencethey devoured their captives.

  "Do these people ever marry?" I inquired.

  "Marry!" he exclaimed, with a laugh; "why, they could not afford topay the fee required by law. And why should they marry? There is novirtue among them. No," he said, "they had almost gotten down to thecondition of the Australian savages, who, if not prevented by thepolice, would consummate their animal-like nuptials in the publicstreets."

  Maximilian told me that this man was one of the Brotherhood. I didnot wonder at it.

  From the shops and mills of honest industry, Maximilian led me--itwas still broad daylight--into the criminal quarters. We saw the wildbeasts in their lairs; in the iron cages of circumstance whichcivilization has built around them, from which they too readily breakout to desolate their fellow-creatures. But here, too, were thefruits of misgovernment. If it were possible we might trace back fromyonder robber and murderer--a human hyena--the long ancestral line ofbrutality, until we see it starting from some poor peasant of theMiddle Ages, trampled into crime under the feet of feudalism. Thelittle seed of weakness or wickedness has been carefully nursed bysociety, generation after generation, until it has blossomed at lastin this destructive monster. Civilization has formulated a newvariety of the genus _homo_--and it must inevitably perpetuate itskind.

  The few prey on the many; and in turn a few of the many prey uponall. These are the brutal violators of justice, who go to prison, orto the scaffold, for breaking through a code of laws under whichpeaceful but universal injustice is wrought. If there were enough ofthese outlaws they might establish a system of jurisprudence for theworld under which it would be lawful to rob and murder by the rule ofthe strong right hand, but criminal to reduce millions towretchedness by subtle and cunning arts; and, hoity-toity, theprisons would change their tenants, and the brutal plunderers of thefew would give place to the cultured spoilers of the many.

  And when you come to look at it, my brother, how shall we compare theconditions of the well-to-do-man, who has been merely robbed of hiswatch and purse, even at the cost of a broken head, which will healin a few days, with the awful doom of the poor multitude, who fromthe cradle to the grave work without joy and live without hope? Whois there that would take back his watch and purse at the cost ofchanging places with one of these wretches?

  And who is there that, if the choice were presented to him, would notprefer instant death, which is but a change of conditions, a flightfrom world to world, or at worst annihilation, rather than to behurled into the living tomb which I have depicted, there to groveland writhe, pressed down by the sordid mass around him, until deathcomes to his relief?

  And so it seems to me that, in the final analysis of reason, thegreat criminals of the world are not these wild beasts, who breakthrough all laws, whose selfishness takes the form of the bloodyknife, the firebrand, or the bludgeon; but those who, equallyselfish, corrupt the foundations of government and create laws andconditions by which millions suffer, and out of which these murderersand robbers naturally and unavoidably arise.

  But I must bring this long letter to a conclusion, and subscribemyself, with love to all,

  Your affectionate brother,Gabriel

  CHAPTER V.

  ESTELLA WASHINGTON

  My Dear Heinrich:

  One morning after breakfast, Max and I were seated in the library,enjoying our matutinal cigars, when, the conversation flagging, Iasked Maximilian whether he had noticed the two young ladies who werein the Prince of Cabano's carriage the morning I whipped the driver.He replied that he had not observed them particularly, as he was toomuch excited and alarmed for my safety to pay especial attention toanything else; but he had seen that there were two young women in thebarouche, and his glance had shown him they were both handsome.

  "Have you any idea who they were?" I asked after a pause, for Ishrank from revealing the interest I took in one of them.

  "No," said he, indifferently; "probably a couple of the Prince'smistresses."

  The word stung me like an adder; and I half rose from my chair, myface suffused and my eyes indignant.

  "Why, what is the matter?" asked Maximilian; "I hope I have saidnothing to offend you."
br />   I fell back in my chair, ashamed of the exhibition of feeling intowhich I had been momentarily betrayed, and replied:

  "Oh, no; but I am sure you are wrong. If you had looked, for but amoment, at the younger of the two, you would never have made such aremark."

  "I meant no harm," he answered, "but the Prince is a widower; he hasa perfect harem in his palace; he has his agents at work everywherebuying up handsome women; and when I saw two such in his carriage, Inaturally came to the conclusion that they were of that character."

  "Buying up women!" I exclaimed; "what are you talking about? This isfree America, and the twentieth century. Do you dream that it is aMohammedan land?"

  "It isn't anything half so good," he retorted; "it is enslavedAmerica; and the older we grow the worse for us. There was a goldenage once in