THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
BR ANN
THE ICONOCLAST
VOLUME VI
THE BRANN PUBLISHERS, INC.
NEW YORK CITY
Copyrighted, 1898, by
MRS. W. C. BRANN
Copyrighted, 1919, by
THE BRANN PUBLISHERS, INC.
Att right* reserved
FEB 11 1960
CONTENTS
PAGE
SPEAKING OF NIGGER BABIES . 1
EDITORIAL ETCHINGS 4
SALMAGUNDI 20
POLITICAL POINTERS 29
BRANNAN vs. SEASHOLES 33
PAT DONAN'S PROGNOSTICATIONS 43
FREE COINAGE OF INTERVIEWS 48
BAILEY AND THE DAL-GAL 52
POLITICAL POT-POURRI 55
A BRASS COLLAR DEMOCRAT 57
THE THIRD TERM CONSPIRACY 59
BEHIND THE SMOKESTACK 60
A CRUSADE OF CALUMNY 78
Is BRYAN A BOODLER? 85
GEORGIE CLARK'S COMPOSITION 95
THE ISLE OF CHANEPH 107
SALMAGUNDI 112
THE TEIXEIRA AFFIDAVIT 125
POLITICAL POT-POURRI 132
A REMARKABLE PUBLIC EDUCATOR 140
"Too MUCH WORLD" 144
THE APOSTLE'S RAG BABY 154
EDITORIAL ETCHINGS 159
POLITICS IN THE PULPIT . 174
THE MCKINLEY AID SOCIETY 177
A MODERN SIMON MAGUS 186
EGYPT vs. ARKANSAS 188
DAVID AND BATH-SHEBA 193
A VERY BAD BREAK 202
POOR OLD TEXAS 205
"SASSIETY" IN NEW YORK CITY 211
OUR HEROIC YOUNG CHRISTIAN Gov 215
SHEAL TO PAY AT PARIS 229
As TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH 232
CONTENTS
PAGE
SALMAGUNDI 234
THE MOUTH OF HELL 244
MAYOR CAMPBELL'S MENDACITY 247
LES ENFANTS TEBBIBLES 260
A PLAGUE OF POETS 266
SOME MILLIONAIRE MENDICANTS 277
WHO is MARK HANNA? 279
ARE SECOND MARRIAGES LAWFUL? 284
THE LOST TRIAD 288
EDITORIAL ETCHINGS . . . 293
A CARNIVAL OF CRIME 301
"JOYS OF THE JAG" 305
A BRYAN PANIC PENDING 308
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 312
SPEAKING OF NIGGER BABIES.
THERE is probably nothing on earth " cuter " than a
nigger baby ; but, like other varieties of the genus " coon,"
they are not considered very valuable additions to society.
In ante-bellum times nigger babies had a market value,
and certain planters employed Kansas or Massachusetts
overseers with a view to their multiplication ; but under the
new regime the advent of these young simians is regarded
with unconcern. It was thought for a time after Sher-
man's march to the sea that the nigger baby would
furnish a more or less happy solution of the much vexed
" race problem " ; that the blacks would, in a few genera-
tions, be faded out by fornication; but as the Caucasian
became more fastidious in his tastes and substituted bike-
ing for coon-hunting, the hope of getting rid of Sambo by
gradual absorption died a lingering death. We are not
asked to believe that a renaissance of the old idea has been
inaugurated under the auspices of the Baptist Missionary
Society due to the enterprise and industry of the Texas
Superintendent. The ICONOCLAST devoutly hopes that
such is not the case it were mixing religion and politics
and clearly unconstitutional. A very young cullud ladah
who moves in the huper suckles of Waco's Senegambian
society, " found " a cute little " coon " to which she was
not legally entitled, and when required to name its sire,
startled the entire state by declaring it the unhappy result
of a criminal assault by the Rev. M. D. Early, that mighty
pillar in Zion, who weeps out loud because a wicked and
perverse generation buys the ICONOCLAST instead of put-
1
2 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ting all its spare change in the missionary-box. Of course
Dr. Early resents the soft impeachment damns the
woman and denies the apple. What else could he do?
After a casual glance at the alleged victim of his lust, I
think I'd be tempted to lie out of such a situation myself.
Confession would prevent me looking even a church choir
in the face. The woman in the case resembles an elon-
gated tar-barrel and smells like the moral character of
New York's upper tendom. Dr. Early may be innocent as
a ewe lamb for aught I know may be a second Joseph or
St. Anthony. Or he may draw the color line, as is cus-
tomary in this country. The case resolves itself into a
question of veracity between the big Baptist and the girl
with the baby, and it is not my province to say which is
most worthy belief. Frankly, I do not know it looks
like a standoff. Most nigger girls will lie, while the phil-
ogyny of Baptist preachers is proverbial and there you
are! Although Dr. Early declares the ICONOCLAST a
great evil, while admitting that he never read it, persists
in passing judgment on a question anent which he con-
fessedly knows nothing I shall not be so uncharitable
and unchristian as to accuse him of crim. con. with a
" coon " on no better warrant than the word of a wench.
Were I officiating as judge in the case I would compromise
with my conscience by rendering a Scotch verdict of " not
proven," instead of sending the distinguished defendant
to the pen for criminal assault. True, many a man who
would scorn to work the contemptible missionary fake, and
fatten on a fund wrung from the chubby hand of child-
hood, has forsaken " the lilies and languors of virtue "
for " the roses and raptures of vice." True, a few white
men, who would have scorned to serve the Lord for the
loaves and fishes, have so far forgotten their racial pride
in the flood of unholy passion as to mix their blood with
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 3
that of lousy squaws and black beasts. True, the kid is
here, and its complexion argues that its father was a
Caucasian. True, Dr. Early and the mother of the sad-
dle-colored stranger resided under the same roof and
Shakespeare lays all sexual sins upon the shoulders of
Opportunity; but even this does not argue the guilt of
Early. The testimony direct and the evidence circum-
stantial are not sufficient to convict him. It may be a
case of blackmail, as urged by Early's friends or a second
edition of Mrs. Potiphar. Hell hath no fury like a bad
she-nigger who wants a dollar and cannot work a white
man for the " dough." Probably Bro. Early undertook
to convert the miserable creature to the Baptist faith, and
she misinterpreted his attentions. He may have chucked
her under the chin and bade her come to Jesus, and she
got the personalities mixed. I prefer to think that if he
ever " wrassled " with her it was in prayer. True, she
didn't charge her kid up to me, nor to " our heroic young
Chistian governor," for which kindly consideration she
will please accept our thanks and draw on us for the price
of a nursing-bottle with a snow-white nipple. She didn't
charge Dr. Jehovah Boanerges CranfiH or Rev. S. L.
Morris with its paternity; but that may have been be-
cause she was a trifle particular. We have it on good
authority that Rev. Seasholes of Dallas, and Rev. Riddle,
the purty preacher of Waxahachie, can establish an alibi.
Ex-Priest Slattery, " Baptist minister in good standing,'*
was in Waco about the time the calamity occurred; but
the distinguished " Ape " is not so much as mentioned
by the dusky maiden. But even that doesn't prove that
Early's the young pickaninny's author. It seems, how-
ever, that as a good Christian, he should be willing to be
a father to the fatherless. If he will not, it becomes our
duty, as Baptist ministers, to collectively assume the
4 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
responsibility. We might adopt the kid as " the ward of
the Baptist church " in lieu of Antonia Tiexeira, and edu-
cate it for missionary work in darkest Africa. After con-
sidering the matter in all its phases, I am inclined to ex-
onerate Dr. Early to consider it a curious case of mis-
taken identity. I cannot imagine him pausing long enough
in his collection of pennies, for the ostensible conversion
of the " coons " abroad, to dally with one at home.
Furthermore, he couldn't afford it. A little philandering
with colored cooks might not prevent him drawing his
salary of $2,500 per annum from the mission fund, but he
couldn't hold his job under such circumstances as general
advertising agent of the ICONOCLAST. Both Dr. Early
and Evangelist Collard have strict instructions to be very
particular with whom they associate while representing
this great religious journal, and should they so far forget
themselves as to add to the black-and-tan population, Dr.
Rufus C. Burleson, as general manager of this magazine,
would immediately request their resignation.
* *
EDITORIAL ETCHINGS.
A FEW weeks ago the A.P.A. had the world by the tail, and
a down-hill pull was going to dictate who should be
president. If the old parties refused to incorporate
Knownothing planks in their platforms and desecrate the
grave of every " Papist " who signed the Declaration of
American Independence, it would put a ticket of its own
in the field and sweep the country like a prairie fire. It
represented * steen million voters, and when it said to a
candidate " come," he had to advance in a lope ; when
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 5
It said to him " go," he went over the garden wall. It
decided the fate of political gladiators by turning its
thumbs up or turning them down. The " Ape " was cock
of the walk and bull of the woods. It was awful as a
besom of destruction, terrible as an army with banners.
Its membership was as the sands of the sea for number
more frequent than eunuchs in Kansas or fleas on a
brindle fice. It came down on obstreperous parties like
a wolf on the fold, or a hungry coyote on a yaller hen.
It was going to rally round the little red school-house
and protect it from such " Romish myrmidons " as Rosen-
crans, such " Popish hirelings as Sherman and Sherdian."
Candidates trembled before its frown and hunted up their
Protestant pedigrees. No man should be president who
declined to mix religion with his politics. Catholics should
be rigidly excluded from office lest they turn the national
capital into a cathedral ; convents were to be made loung-
ing places for curious fools and meddlesome fanatics.
Father Marquette's statue should be dragged with a
halter about its neck from the galaxy of our civic gods.
The various conventions met and the tail of the " Ape "
was mashed. It developed that this modern Caesar " was
rich in some dozen villages, strong in some hundred spear-
men " that it had been " bluffing the bank " with a wad
of brown paper rolled in one-dollar bills. The A.P.A.
was a Jonah's gourd that came up in a night; but its
root was wormy, and the sun of truth shone upon and
withered it. It was a long-eared ass masquerading in
the skin of a lion. Its name is Ichabod alias Mud. The
politicians who cringed before this politico-religio-pros-
criptive party are now driving their boots so far under
its coat-tails that it will taste leather all the rest of its life,
The Protestant preachers who affiliated with it are holding
their noses and using disinfectants. Its wind-blown organs
6 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
are " bustin," like painted bladders or Chinese stinkpots.
The last of its dailies has turned its little pink toes to the
daisies. The editor of its leading magazine is in the
penitentiary for a crime beside which murder were honor-
able and rape respectable. Occasionally a little " Ape '*
sheet crawls out of its hole like a moribund rattle-snake
taking the sun, or a sick prairie dog driven to the surface
to die. In a few months the erstwhile flamboyant " Ape "
will have passed into the erstwhile, and Uncle Sam be left
to " rassle " as best he may with Rome. We should stuff
its mangy hide and place it on a pedestal of stinkweed in
the Valley of Hinnom as companion piece to the wolfish
skull of the old Knownothing party. And grouped about
them in this gallery of the unclean gods, this pantheon of
putridity, should be guano busts of all its high-priests and
apostles, each with appropriate inscription. They would
read as follows: Rev. Benjamin Hudelson: Ex-procurer
for houses of protitution, and now professional boodler.
Editor Price, of the leading A.P.A. organ : In the peniten-
tiary for selling obscene pictures to school-children. Rev.
Koehler: In the penitentiary for stealing and selling a
workingman's clothes and getting drunk on the money.
"Ex-Nun" Margaret Shepherd: Self-confessed court-
esan, adventurer and thief. " Bishop " McNamara : Ar-
rested for hoodlumism and sentenced to a year's imprison-
ment for slander. Ex-President Traylor alias " Whisky
Bill " : Like lago, he ever made his fool his purse. Ex-
Priest Slattery: Unfrocked for habitual drunkenness and
expelled from a Baptist college for immorality. " Ex-
Nun " Ellen Golding : Denounced by her Protestant sister
as an incorrigible liar. Rev. G. M. Thorp : In a Wyoming
prison for bigamy. Ex- Priest Chiniquy: Unfrocked for
immorality, and expelled by the Presbyterian Synod of
Chicago, " for fraud and gross swindling." " Ex-Nun
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 7
Maria Monk : Paramour of an A.P. A. preacher who found
her in a fourth-rate maison d'joie at Montreal. But I
have not space to catalogue all the A.P.A. celebrities the
protectors of the morals and self-constituted guardians of
the liberties of Uncle Sam. No wonder the " Ape " is
passing; it should have been suppressed by the sanitary
inspector before the advent of warm weather.
The female suffragist is still suffering. At every na-
tional convention of every party she is on hand with her
little " plank " rises to remark that life for her is
scarce worth the living until emancipated from the tyrant
man. For six thousand years or more she has been trod-
den beneath the iron heel of this pitiless monster, and it
makes her tired. She is all aweary of fiddling on the
humble but useful washboard and propelling the sizzling
sad-iron, while the old man is whooping for " our party "
at conventions, and saving the country. She wants to
widen her " sphere," to grasp the reins of government.
She rises in all the glory of her tailor-made bloomers and
demands the ballot. The ICONOCLAST is distinctively the
ladies' paper. It believes in the superiority of the sex.
It is in favor of giving woman not only everything she
wants, but everything she thinks she wants. Give her
the ballot and the box ; the earth and the fullness there
of. Give her the moon for a parasol and the stars where-
with to bedeck her bodice and emblazon her garters
then give her me. Let her enjoy all the rights, privileges
and prerogatives of the proudest American citizen that
wears " pants." Let her parade in torch-light proces-
sions, exhibit her 4 best bonnet on the hustings, run for
office and buy votes in blocks-of-five. She could scarce
make a worse mess of representative government than
have the men. It is urged that young and beautiful
8 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
women do not want the ballot that they are satisfied with
beaux ; that it is only those of uncertain age who become
suffrage shriekers. What then? Are not age and exper-
ience parents of wisdom? Shall the great she-world be
held in shackles while callow youth giggles, flirts and chews
gum? Doesn't the aged matron understand man better
than does the maid? Doesn't she know that instead of
being a demi-god with a triple-plated halo, as her fond
fancy once painted him, he contanis more of the Devil
than the deity? Doesn't she know that the woman who
can live with one of those pig-headed animals for forty
years without getting up some night and pouring hot
lead in his ear, is fit for empire? True, the experiment
of universal suffrage would contain an element of danger.
Woman, we are told, is in the majority. That is because
she doesn't fool with the six-shooter and blow into the
gallon jug to see if it is loaded. When given the ballot
may she not disfranchise we miserable he-things and set
us to manipulating the mangle? Think of the country
for which that sturdy patriot, Grover Cleveland, fought
and bled by proxy being turned into a gyneocracy, a
she-male government like Kansas, where the men wear ruf-
fles on the bottom of their panties and elect their wives
to office 1 But might it not be best? Woman is parti-
cularly adapted to modern politics she can talk from
the cradle to grave without getting tired. Unlike Major
McKinley, she has always something to say. Sessions of
congress would be short, for the members would fire
off their speeches all at once and with just as much
effect. Instead of squandering the public treasury on
pension steals and harbor jobs, they would blow it in
at the bargain counter and the " crisis " would be over,
the agony at an end. But great reforms move slowly.
For long years yet the female suffragist who wants pro-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 9
tection from the sterner sex will have to depend on her
face.
Schrader, " the divine healer " who is said to resemble
the pictures of our Lord, has reached Gainesville, Texas,
where he is " working miracles " and curing people of
every complaint, from cross-eyes to cramps. According
to reports, Schrader is in very deed a "wonder-worker,"
else Gainesville and the territory thereunto appertaining
has gone mad. I am not one of those Smart Alecks who
refuse to believe whatsoever they do not understand. The
wisest man born of woman cannot comprehend himself.
The evidence is overwhelming that such men as Schlatter,
Don Pedrito and Schrader sometimes effect cures, as do
even the regular physicians on rare occasions. Whether
this be a " dispensation of providence," or sheer bull luck,
I shall not presume to determine. If we cannot accept
the testimony of our neighbors, whom we know to be
men of average intellect, and with no incentive to bear
false witness, why should we place implicit confidence in
the still more wonderful tales related of another divine
healer by illiterate and superstitious people who died
nineteen centuries before we could be introduced. I trust
that my Baptist congregation will not consider me hetero-
dox if I indulge in a little mild wonder anent our religious
whereabouts had Schrader and Jesus been transposed,
both as to place and time. Would the former be wor-
shipped as a God and their later denounced by the om-
niscient daily press as an impudent impostor? During
his entire ministry Jesus did not win the confidence of
so many of the educated class as does Schrader in a
single day; yet that was an age of credulity, this of
doubt. Supposing the transposition of the two healers
that Schrader had claimed a divine origin when the
10 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Jews were looking most anxiously for a Messiah ; that his
body had been stolen by friends or secretly destroyed by
foes, and the story of his miracles lived only in the mouth
of imaginative Rumor for a century or so after his sup-
posed ascension: Would we not be Schraderians instead
of Christiana to-day? It is not my intention to raise
any question regarding the divine origin of Christ: I
simply desire to point out to my orthodox friends how
thankful we should all be that we were not humbugged
by some early Schrader or Schlatter masquerading as a
divine healer, and winning the confidence of the elite of
the land as well as that of ignorant farmers and fisher-
men. I sometimes think that we, who have builded our
faith upon so sure a foundation, do not estimate our own
wisdom at its true worth.
Is Hon. Garrett A. Hobart, or his niece, running for
the vice-presidency on the Republican ticket? We hear
very little of the former ; but that self-styled " public
educator," the daily press, will not suffer us to overlook
the latter. Miss Margot Hobart is, we are told, a " beau-
tiful, talented and wealthy " young woman, who poses as
a model for artists not disdaining " the altogether "
and hacks around the country with cheap theatrical
parts, exhibiting her pulchritude in " tightly fitting
pants." The Post-Dispatch prints her portrait and the
foreman who evidently has a better eye for the eternal
fitness of things than has the editor puts it on the
" freak page." If Miss Hobart be really pretty she
should lay violent hands upon the hirsute pride of the
Post-Dispatch should give Whiskerandum Jones an In-
dian shave. She is discovered " posing " but for what is
beyond human comprehension. Perhaps it is for the
" Amazon," for arms, neck and shoulders suggested Bob
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 11
Fitzsimmons filling his steam chest with Mexican ozone.
The Amazons of antiquity seared one breast off with a
hot iron, to give free play to the sword arm; but Miss
Hobart retains both hers in all their plethoric plentitude,
and the artist puts them in evidence. The expression of
her face suggests an intimate acquaintance with the
" growler." It is decidedly blase and her ensemble is
beefy. Some kind of a rag is wound around her more
than ample waist, and hangs about her with the graceful
abandon of a wet dishclout embracing a current bush.
Her exposed underpinning might be mistaken for square
mill-posts resting on Milwaukee pies. The picture sug-
gests that she may have gone in swimming, forgotten her
clothes, and is making her way home through a briar-
patch, disguised in a horse-blanket. If that was the idea
the " artist " had in his head, it must be conceded that
the picture is a success. Still I can but wonder that he
had the courage to paint it without police protection.
What good purpose can be served in exploiting this young
woman who, without the goal of poverty or the excuse
of ignorance bares her alleged charms to a dozen different
artists recklessly treads in the path of Trilby ? We can
scarce suppose that Mr. Hobart accepted the vice-presi-
dential nomination for the purpose of advertising the
doubtful beauty and suspicious associations of his niece.
Most of us have relatives, more or less distant, of whom
we are not particularly proud ; and the daily press might
be in better business than raking through the family
closets of public men and dragging forth their skeletons
for the delectation of a prurient public. The manager
who has signed Miss Hobart for the coming season, doubt-
less called the attention of the press to the relationship
existing between the meaty queen of the coryphees and'
McKinley's running mate, and it readily lent itself to
12 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the brutal scheme to pull boodle into the box-office by
humiliating her family.
Not even the grave is sacred from these journalistic
ghouls. They have just succeeded in photographing the
crumbling skeletons of a French King and Queen who
died before Columbus sailed in search of far Cathay, and
are now making these ghastly relics of mortality dance for
the delectation of the mob. It is enough to pry into the
family affairs of our public men; to listen at their key-
holes and blazon the result on the housetops ; to interview
their servants; to predict the date on which their con-
sorts will give birth to babes and proclaim the number
and texture of the diapers ; to discover undesirable rela-
tives and unearth long forgotten excapades ; the press is
not through with them when they are inurned must pry
into their coffins, measure their skulls, count their teeth
and advise the world what appearance they make when
the worms have wearied of them. Verily greatness hath
its penalties no less than poverty. A pauper can at
least catch the itch without attracting the attenion of
the universe, and rest quietly in the sepulchre which
charity hath provided.
V ' '
In one of his Pecksniffian moods such as he is wont
to indulge in after having brutally despoiled a weaker
power John Bull did something decent, for which he
has ever since been almost insanely sorry. He passed a
law which compels him to be, in a measure, respectable.
He prohibited his marriage with his mother. While the
spirit of self-sacrifice was strong upon him, he also re-
nounced the legal right to marry his grandmother, mother-
in-law or deceased wife's sister. But so soon as his mind
returned to the normal he began to grievously regret his
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 13
own goodness. For forty years he has been striving to
break down the barrier which separates him from the
brute. He demands the privilege of selecting his subse-
quent wives from the same family that supplied the first
of marrying a whole bevy of sisters in regular rotation,
then winding up his hymenic felicity wjfth the old woman.
Oscar Wildeism having been sprung too suddenly to suit
the English conservatism, the old man is still safe. An-
thropologically considered, there is no reason why an
enterprising Englishman should not marry a widow with
a dozen daughters, and transfer them to his bed as fast as
it is emptied by the grim destroyer; but to every man of
gentlemanly instincts such a picture must be appalling.
Such was the convenient custom in biblical days, 'tis true ;
and even the deceased husband's brother was much in
evidence was intrusted with the pleasant duty of provid-
ing the unfortunate with a posthumous family ; but people
supposedly civilized have abandoned such barbarisms, as
they have polygamy and slavery. A n.an who will wed the
sister of a dead wife is but little above the brute level
is eminently worthy the second woman. Really, there
is something uncanny about a second marriage of any
kind. It is no offense against the law of the land, no
violation of the social code, and many worthy men and
women have taken unto themselves second mates ; still
the act grates upon the finer sensibilities like a false note
in a celestial symphony. It is a brutally frank confession
that the fondest affections of the human heart are marked
" transf errable ; " that marriage is neither more nor less
than a civil contract a sexual license. It gives the lie
to poets who sing of undying love. It is a proclamation
that the affections stop at the tomb, instead of follow-
ing on through all eternity; for dare any man admit,
even to himself, that he regrets the bolt that made him
wifeless, when he hath taken another woman into his
14 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
heart and home ? Dare any woman admit, even to her own
soul, when she is pregnant by another? Is not the living
entitled to all her love? Perhaps the world is not yet 1
ripe for such suggestions. It was but yesterday, as God
measures time, that we mated as do the beasts and birds
but yesterday that we conceived the idea of the im-
mortality of the soul; and how could love be deathless to
those who dreamed not of eternal life? We are crass bar-
barians as yet, the finer feelings of which we prate, but
a mad poet's fancy snaky phosphorescence masquerad-
ing as Promethean fire! The funeral baked meats will
continue to furnish forth the wedding feast for some ages
yet. Perhaps it's best. It enables mankind to utilize all
its energy and this is an eminently practical age! Let
the marriage service continue to read, " Until death do
us part." What's a dead wife good for, anyhow? She
cannot boil cabbage, skin eels and sew on shirt buttons !
Of what use is a dead husband? Let him rot and on
with the dance ! It were dreadful indeed if widows weeds
should go unhusbanded, monstrous that a man who has
buried a wife, who worshipped him, should not inspect the
available stock and select another mate. Of course the
dead do never " revisit the pale glimpses of the moon "
and it's just as well they don't. They would take one look
into the boudoirs of their former mates and fly shrieking
into the great inane would understand why there's
neither marrying nor giving in marriage in that Heaven
builded for barbarians. I don't know so much about the
henceforth as to the preachers; but I sometimes imagine
that the first heaven is reserved exclusively for good old
ante-bellum niggers, the second for saints from Kansas,
the third for dogs, the next three for various grades of
alleged white people, and the seventh for those whose sole
law is the right, regardless of custom or creed, and
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 15
for whom love is deathless as the stars, eternal as the
living God.
The ICON is asked " why most of the big dailies support
McKinley, while the weekly press is so generally for
Bryan." The answer is dead easy. McKinley is the
candidate of the trusts, monopolies and combines, Bryan
is the candidate of the people. The big dailies enjoy the
most profitable monopoly in America, while the weekly
publisher stands on a parity with the masses. If you had
a million dollars you could not establish a morning paper
in any Texas city where one already exists, for the simple
reason that you could not secure a satisfactory press
service. The publishers of the large morning dailies are
members of a powerful combine known as the " Associated
Press." It is a close corporation, its object being to sup-
ply its members with telegraphic news and secure to each
a monopoly of his trade territory. The latter it accom-
plishes by crushing out rivals exactly as the Standard
Oil Company does its competitors and refusing " fran-
chises " to independent newspapers. In cities like Dallas
and San Antonio but one morning paper is permitted, but
in those like St. Louis and Chicago the soft snap is divided
among two or more members. This monopoly enables a
publisher to clear more money on a $50,000 investment
than can the merchant on five times that amount. The
people must take his paper or do without, the advertiser
pay whatever the autocrat may see fit to ask. I wouldn't
give the Dallas News $30,000 for its entire mechanical
outfit with its editor thrown in; yet it pays the presi-
dent of the company a salary of $25,000 per annum and
yields perhaps double that sum in dividends mostly the
fruits of monopoly. Here and there public opinion is suf-
ficiently powerful to compel a creature of this combine to
16 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
support the people's candidate ; but it is looked upon by
its fellows as crooks regard a pal who turns state's evi-
dence. The cry, so frequently raised, that the big dailies
are " bought up " is usually groundless. They don't have
to be bribed to fight the battles of monopoly to protect
their own boodle.
'"
There are monopolies and monopolies, and the great
dailies haven't got 'em all grabbed. There's Tex&sSifter,
f'instance, which has succeeded in getting a corner on all
the humor and art, wit and wisdom, of the great South-
west. The Sifter scintillates like a diamond ring at a
nigger dance. Its humor is subtile as a dose of salts*
Its art would put to shame a Beardsley poster is more
weirdly original than the cyclorame which John of Patmos
saw with his eyes shut. The Sifter, from imprimis to
finis, is the intellectual jag of unfettered genius. On
the day of publication the Dallas police force has to be
doubled to keep back the crowd. But Col. Sweet bears his
honors with becoming modesty wears his halo only on
holidays. With that naivete which so well becomes a child
of genius, the creator of " Johnny Chaffie " admits that,
in the short space of eight months, the Sifter "has
bounded into a national popularity that has never been
equalled in the history of American journalism "; that it
" is the only periodical published in the south that enjoys
a national circulation." I humbly lift my last summer's
sombrero to the Sifter. We little fellows, who work off
an edition on a Washington handpress and send it to
the postoffice in a flour sack, rejoice in the multifarious
glory and ebullient greatness of Col. Sweet. All we ask
is the blessed privilege of reposing in the shadow of the
Sifter, of playing hide-and-seek about the huge legs of
our Journalistic Caesar. But in the purest pleasure there
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 17
always lurks a pain. Ever is our dearest joy wedded to
our direst woe. The dull, dumb fear creeps on apace
that when the Sifter's circulation has passed the hundred
million mark it will hunt an Eastern home. We fear that
Col. Sweet will forget us as he sips his Samian wine and
absorbs French souffles in his gilded palace, or floats over
the dreamy Mediterranean's cerulean bosom, while Paphian
zephyrs belly his silken sails and wheedling naiads tangle
their taper fingers in his multitudinous whiskers. Ah me !
When his golden cornucopia is full to overflowing, and
even Fame can offer nothing further, will he pine for the
land of the circulation liar where he was " so happy and
so pore ? "
I rather like a cheerful liar, but the Christian Courier,
of Dallas, persists in foundering my affections. The
Courier is, if I mistake not, edited by Rev. Bill Homan,
professional Prohibition spouter and Campbellite 'sputer.
Bill is hydrocephalous his brain is water-soaked. Dagon
is his deity. All his angels wear fins instead of feathers.
He preaches temporal salvation through water taken in-
ternally, and spiritual redemption through applications
of it externally. He deposeth in a recent issue that " the
testimony of judges and prosecuting attorneys is to the
effect that the liquor traffic is responsible for 75 per cent,
of the cases on our criminal dockets." This statement is
intended to convey and does convey the idea that, in
the opinion of a great majority of the judges and prose-
cuting attorneys of Texas, the volume of crime would be
reduced 75 per cent, by the adoption of Prohibition. If
any body of men be qualified to speak ex-cathedra on this
important question, it is certainly the officials Rev. Mr.
Homan mentions. The ICONOCLAST desires to advocate
only what is for the best interest of the country. If
18 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Homan will produce the signatures of a majority of Texas*
judiciary to a statement that a prohibitory law would
reduce the number of crimes 75, or even 25 per cent., this
paper will thenceforth exert all its energies to secure the
repeal of the liquor license law. For years past the
advocates of Prohibition have been making such asser-
tions ; but their truth is generally doubted and frequently
denied. I insist that it is a duty they owe to society and
themselves to come to a " showdown." The ICONOCLAST
will cheerfully furnish the Rev. Mr. Homan sufficient
stamps and stationery to communicate with every member
of the Texas judiciary, and freely pledges itself to accept
their decision as final. There is not a man of any respect-
ability in the state who would oppose Prohibition on the
hustings, not an editor between the Sabine and the Rio
Grande who would dare defend a liquor license law if
Homan demonstrates beyond the peradventure of a doubt
that he's telling the truth. If the Prohibs really believe
their oft repeated statements, they have only to do as
I have here suggested to secure an everlasting " cinch " on
the situation. They are continually denouncing as "peons
of the rum power " all those who dissent from their doc-
trine. They are suffering from Prohibition mania a potu,
are intoxicated with their own mistaken zeal >as irre-
sponsible for their acts and utterances as though
"jagged" with beer or "loaded" with bourbon. The
crying need of the hour is a " Keely cure " for intem-
perate reform cranks. The " rum demon " hasn't a friend
in America who's worth the price of a hair halter. The
opponents of Prohibition realize that strong drink is
responsible for much crime and poverty and wretchedness.
I would rather see a son of mine dead than drunk. The
roan who will strike the shackles of the accursed habit
from every sot and banish intemperance from the earth,
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 19
will have done more for mankind than have all the states-
men since the dawn of time, than all the prophets and
preachers from Melchizadek to the present day. I have
often wished that I could summon the youth of the whole
world before me and implore them, in the name of the
living God, to let liquor alone ; that I could paint for them
all the horror and the heartache that spring from this
pernicious habit the blasted hopes and ruined homes
the deep damnation of the besotted slave to drink. I some-
times wonder that Almighty God doesn't blazon a warning
in letters of fire across the firmament. Yet I have been
denounced from a thousand platforms as " the friend of
the saloon." I regard the saloon much as I do the under-
taking establishment. Man will drink and man will die.
No law ever devised by human brain has banished drunken-
ness or abolished death. Prohibition but makes a bad
matter worse. It were giving aconite to an invalid. It
does not make sober men, but it does make lawbreakers,
sneaks and hypocrites. It does not overthrow the " rum
demon," but turns loose upon the land a coterie of un-
clean harpies, even more dangerous than himself.
We now have it over his own signature that Sir Walter
Scott did not write the Waverley novels. The genuine-
ness of the letter cannot be doubted, and his denial of
their authorship is plain as language could make it. Bryan
says it is sixteen to one that Bacon wrote the Shake-
spearean plays. The critics assure us that Homer is a
myth, and that Christ never preached the Sermon on the
Mount. The scraps from " burning Sappho's " pen have
been pronounced bogus, and it has been demonstrated that
if Moses wrote the Pentateuch he did so long after he was
dead. Mrs. Cleveland stands accused of writing her hus-
band's messages, while the speeches of the Queen emanate
20 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
from her prime minister. We cannot even be sure, in re-
ferring to the Chicago convention, that " Jones he writ
the platform." Whither are we drifting? In this wild
wreck of literary worlds, this wholesale iconoclasm of
authors, can we lay our hand upon our heart and say,
for a surety, that Rebecca Merlindy Johnson wrote
"Beautiful Snow!"
5K ?K /K
SALMAGUNDI.
THE female dress reformer, or deformer, appeared to be
losing her grip until the bike came to her aid ; now she is
going forth, like the angel of the Apocalypse, conquering
and to conquer. She is not altogether an unmixed evil.
If she shortens skirt, she lengthens corsages. If she dis-
plays rather too much leg, she conceals the bust, which,
from the standpoint of either medicine or modesty, is no
inconsiderable gain. A pair of gaudily gartered stockings
is scarce so suggestive as a broad expanse of naked back,
arms and bust, and the party on exhibition not nearly so
apt to catch pneumonia. From an ethical standpoint, a
maid adjusting her garter on the seashore is preferable
to one spilling herself out of her corsage in a heated ball-
room. The reformer has persuaded gentle woman to lay
aside her barbaric corset, her torture shoes and disgraceful
toumure at least long enough to take a full breath,
wiggle her deformed toes in ecstacy and demonstrate to
the world that she isn't humped like a dromedary that
the bustle is a work of art instead of a mistake of nature.
The freedom of dress which accompanies the bike is being
carried into other outdoor exercises woman's terms of
emancipation from the damnable torture implements of
Dame Fashion is being gradually extended. This is some
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 21
gain, and we may hope that in time the hurtful follies
of feminine apparel will be abolished altogether. The
Lord placed eternal enmity between the seed of the Edenic
serpent and that of Mother Eve, and the corset is one of
the devices of Satan for the fair sex's destruction. A
wasp waist is violative of all the laws of health and every
canon of beauty. Greece in her physical perfection knew
it now. The Aphrodites and Heras of ancient Hellas, the
Dianas and Hebes who graced the courts of the Caesars,
were not built like the modern society belle. In all the
matchless models left us by the old masters there is never
a V-shaped torso rising from ebullient hips. The waist is
invariably ample every line a graceful, sensuous curve.
Even to this good day an exceptionally small waist or
foot is drawn only by anatomists to illustrate a hideous
abnormality. Imagine the Venus of Milo with an 18-inch
waist the Greek Slave sporting a bustle protruding two
feet beyond a line drawn from head to heel! Where the
dress reformers have succeeded in abating the tortures of
the corset and tight shoe and abolishing that challenge to
libidinousity, the bustle, they deserve the world's grati-
tude but when they assail the skirt they invade the sanc-
tuary of both modesty and beauty. A woman in a short
skirt that displays her underpinning is an apparition
equalled in ugliness only by a man in his " shirt tail,'*
while one in bloomers were enough to make the Almighty
repent him that he gave to Adam a mate. A hebe in a
skirt that displays her knees were suggestive of a dowdy
country wench who had been pulled too soon. The dis-
play of dainty instep, well-turned ankle and voluptuously
rounded limb does not compensate the eye for loss of that
graceful garment which makes of woman a sacred mystery,
a living poem, a symphony of modesty and motion. The
trouble with the dress reformers as with most others
22 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
is that they are too radical. They would transform the
Castle Beautiful into a mere Utilitaria ; would eliminate all
the charm of mystery. They are apostles of that dis-
enchantment which is the death of love and chivalry.
Clothes may not make a man, but they do much to make
or unmake a woman. By all means let the gentler sex
dress for comfort; but let them not forget that woman's
highest mission on earth is to be graceful, modest, beauti-
ful. A mannish woman is an abomination in the sight of
gods and men. She is intellectually androgynous, neither
male nor female, as outre as a two-headed calf, as useless
in the plan of things as a blasted fig-tree or a dumb
mocking-bird; and it must be confessed that it is the
mannish women who are most active in dress " reform "
who want to abolish the flowing skirt which " half con-
ceals and half reveals " the lissome limb, and go straddling
about in garments that parody those worn by their big
brothers.
While discussing woman and her ways it may not be
amiss to allude to the practice that has come into vogue
with the bike, of young ladies and gentlemen taking long
evening rides together, and calling at road-houses for re-
freshments, or loitering in secluded byways to rest at
hours when modest maids are supposed to be at home with
their mothers. Mount a wheel of a pleasant evening be-
tween the hours of 9 and 11 p.m. or later and ride
into the suburbs of any American city, and you will sur-
prise not a few society damosels taking their ease with
gay gallants in unfrequented places sometimes lolling on
the grass resting for the spin home. If there be a party
it is well scattered, for on our drowsy summer nights
" two's company and three's a crowd." This may be all
right ; but it is strongly suggestive of that " f rollicksome
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 23
spirit of camaraderie " which made Trilby so popular with
upper-tendom. It may be all right, I say, and I hardly
think that the careful reader has ever accused me of the
vice of prudery; still such scenes recall to mind with
something like a shock the dictum of those St. Louis doc-
tors that the bike is provocative of nymphomania, as well
as the declaration of a prominent preacher that it is a
powerful recruiting agent for the bagnio. I have great
confidence in the ability of the American girl to take care
of herself under all circumstances; still, I could scarce
blame a man of the world for demanding before conferring
his name upon a young lady so careless of appearances, a
doctor's certificate that she was worthy to become a
gentleman's wife.
An Illinois exchange appears to think the ICONOCLAST
guilty of lese majeste in presuming to criticize President
Cleveland, that eminent American who hired a substitute
in time of war and increased the national debt in time of
peace. Shakespeare makes old Casca say that the un-
thinking Roman rabble would have commended Caesar had
he stabbed their mothers. We have in America a few fool
editors who would cry " cuckoo " when G. Cleveland's
clock strikes if they had to board at a free soup joint and
hang up their whiskey bills.
In looking over an old file of the daily press I find the
following item : " Mrs. Wm. K. Vanderbilt has purchased
at a cost of $300,000 a crown once worn by Empress
Eugenie. It measures twelve inches in diameter."
That was not quite so expensive as her purchase of the
Duke of Marlborough ; still I am a trifle curious to know
whether such ostentatious waste of wealth had a ten-
dency to make the half-starved laborers of New York
24* BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
more contented with their lot. Did it serve to bridge
the chasm between Dives and Lazarus? The purchase
price of this utterly useless trinket would keep 20,000
people in comfort for a month. The workingman is told
that " economy is the road to wealth " that if he would
be well-to-do all that is necessary is to be industrious and
saving. Economists assure him that wealth is the result
of self-denial and that if he be poor it is his own fault.
That is a very pretty theory, and it contains some grains
of truth ; but how long would the average man have to toil
and save to accumulate a sum of money equal to that
wasted by a New York woman on the cast-off jewelry of
European royalty? If he toiled faithfully, went naked
and lived on wind he couldn't do it in a thousand years !
Some of these days plutocracy will hear something drop.
It may be a $300,000 bauble bought for display ; and then,
again, it may be a brick. The ostentatious flaunting of
such wicked waste in the face of angry want is what builds
dynamite bombs. As the crown measures twelve inches
in circumference it is entirely too large for the head of
the Queen of the Plutocracy. But perhaps she utilized
it for a garter while going that dizzy gait in London which
ended in a quiet divorce.
A correspondent wants to know what I think of
preachers who visit the " dives " of great cities in search
of material for sensational sermons. I do not know that it
is any worse for preachers than for laymen to tour the
redlight district. There are times in the lives of the best
of us when we long to get away from home and plunge into
a dizzy round of dissipation. Some of us manage by an
heroic effort, to sidetrack this evil impulse and thereby
add another feather to our white wings; but most of us
make a sneak, OL some pretext or otkr, to distant city,
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 25
and hobnob more or less openly with the world, the flesh
and the devil, until nature files a protest or our pocket
books resemble a Populist boom that has collided with a
good crop year. We usually make a reasonable effort to
keep our slumming experiences out of both the police
courts and the papers. When a layman gets caught he
has no alternative but to 'fess up and be forgiven ; but a
preacher can plead that he made the rounds from a sense
of religious duty that it were impossible to successfully
fight the devil unless familiar with the alignment of his
forces.
A little editor over in East Texas declares that
" Apostle Brann drifted into journalism after having
made a complete failure as a legal practitioner." That
is eminently correct. I lost the only case I ever had in
court. It was when I first began to wear split-tail coats
and pay tributes to barbers that I spent a winter in
Oshkosh, Wis., then the wildest and wooliest city in the
world. The business men of Chicago and Milwaukee would
frequently run up to Oshkosh " to have a little fun with
the boys," on which occasions the police and prohibition-
ists would hide and joy be unconfined. About 2 g.m.
one frosty morning I was pulled out of my virtuous couch
to plead the cause of a friend who had been accused before
a moot court of putting water in his liquor, and was in
imminent danger of being stuck for the drinks. I was
hurried into court en deshabille, and found a gray-bearded
judge seated upon the bench, dimly visible by the light of
a sputtering tallow dip. More than a hundred people
were assembled, and the prisoner looked as anxious and
uneasy as a horse-thief at an impromptu necktie party.
Attired in a pair of red sox and a boarding-house sheet, I
waltzed into the case. I went back to the very inception
26 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of Roman jurisprudence and raked history for precedents,
the Code Napoleon and Justinian Pandects for funda-
mental law. My oration fairly reeked with pathos, bathos
and blue fire, and the room was filled with the sniffling of
strong men. I submitted my case and asked for a verdict
for the defendant, but the judge said never a word. I
waited and shivered in the frosty atmosphere and drew
the sheet about me, seeking comfort and finding none.
Everybody looked solemn as the grave. I arose and de-
manded a verdict, but still the court held its peace. I
picked up the candle and set fire to the judge's whiskers,
but he did not stir. .He was a clothing store dummy. I
" drifted into journalism after having made a complete
failure as a legal practitioner."
'jt_ ,
The Fort Worth Gazette has succumbed to the inevi-
table, turned its subscription books over to the Dallas
News and passed peacefully to the great beyond. The
publishers of the Gazette have abundant pluck ; but pluck
backed by neither money nor newspaper ability will not
build up a profitable diurnal in the territory of the Dai-
Gal. Another year will probably see the Houston Post
surrender to the Galveston News and quietly crawl off the
earth. It has caught and squeezed all the suckers that
can be enticed into its net, and its days are numbered.
There has never been an earthly excuse for its existence.
It would have perished of financial cramps years ago but
for its fake voting contests, its putrid personal column
and infamous lies to gullible advertisers regarding its cir-
culation. Its greatest windfall came when that pink-
haired ass, Epictetus Paregoric Hill, concluded that he
was a journalistic genius. He " projecked with the Post
until he had blown in all his spare boodle and the Southern
Pacific gave him the bounce. Then he turned the white
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 27
elephant over to a nigger chippy-chaser, an ex-book-
peddler with a penchant for private bawds, and a young
sneak whom the manager once employed to eavesdrop on
the editorial rooms. It is a great combine, and will flour-
ish like a green bay horse until ninety-day notes fall
due. The ICON is not in love with the Old Lady, alias the
Dai-Gal it has caught her in a compromising position
with too many people; still, candor compels the admission
that the Gal and the Dal are the only morning papers
in Texas worth a tinker's dam. If the Old Lady would but
drown that incorrigible pupply known as Slob Snots,
and have her political editorials built at the Insane Asylum
instead of the Idiot's Home, the double-ender would be a
paper of which even Texas might be proud.
"What is heresy?" The question is propounded to
the ICONOCLAST by a gentleman who confesses that he is
only an " occasional reader." An heretic, my dear sir,
is a fellow who disagrees with you regarding something
which neither of you know anything about. The term,
however, is usually applied to a member of a dissenting
minority in matters religious. Thus the Presbyterian
General Assembly decided by a vote of 295 to 256 that Dr.
Briggs was a heretic. I suppose that it is all right to
settle matters of faith religious as we do matters of faith
political, by majority votes; still, I cannot help wonder-
ing what would have happened had the ballot in the Briggs
case been reversed. It seems that we were saved by the
merest accident that the elect were preserved by the skin
of their teeth. It is a trifle startling to reflect that the
most heretical portion of Briggs' doctrine was his in-
sistence that reason should be ever paramount in the de-
termination of truth. The General Assembly voted its
condemnation of that thesis after listening to labored
28 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
argument pro and con every mother's son of 'em em-
ployed their reason to determine that Dr. Briggs dared
damnation in using his. Perhaps it may be urged that
the General Assembly was inspired. Then the question
arises: Why were 256 members inspired to vote against
sustaining the charges ? It is a most perplexing question.
Perhaps, now that we are officially informed just how to
escape damnation, we should not inquire too curiously
into the means of our salvation ; but a little reflection will
serve to show that had this great labor of love been de-
layed a year it would have failed of its object utterly.
Two years previously the Briggsites were but three score
strong in the General Assembly. A year later they num-
bered four score, and when it came to the final showdown
lacked but little of a majority. We just escaped being
Briggsites delivered to the devil body and breeches!
Brethren, let us give thanks for our miraculous deliver-
ance. Verily does God move in a mysterious way his
wonders to perform. Did he not get the children of Israel
between the Red Sea and the Egyptian horse before open-
ing an avenue of escape for the terrorstricken people. Did
he not suffer Goliath to run a bluff on the whole Hebrew
nation for forty days before sending a shepherd boy with
his little sling to slang him? Did not the fiery serpents
make sad havoc among the Chosen People before Moses
founded the original Keeley cure, with the same material
upon which it still does business a liberal supply of
brass?
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 29
POLITICAL POINTERS.
SENATOR TELLER'S presidential boom carried too much
tariff ballast.
When Cleveland was first nominated he declared against
a second term. So did Bryan. Bryan will keep his word :
Cleveland didn't. The first is a gentleman; the latter is
Grover Cleveland.
As might have been expected, John Bull does not ap-
prove the Chicago platform. Sorry, very sorry; but the
Democracy had to choose between the best interest of
John Bull and that of Uncle Sam. " Ye cannot serve two
masters."
A correspondent wants to know why Europe takes such
an active interest in American politics. Well, it owns
more than a moiety of the $6,000,000,000 for which Ameri-
can realty is mortgaged. That's one reason. There are
others.
During Grant's second term it required 40,000 bushels
of wheat to pay his $50,000 salary. Nominally, Cleve-
land's salary is no more ; but it requires 90,000 bushels of
wheat to pay it. Yet he has the immaculate nerve to
prattle of " repudiation.'*
Congressman Bailey is trying to play the sulking
Achilles to Bryan's Agamemnon. The trouble with him
is that he is an ambitious young man who was afraid to
bet his political hand, and has retired to his tent to chew
the rag and kick himself.
30 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
The A. P. Apes opposed the nomination of Bland be-
cause his wife is a Catholic, but instead of getting on his
knees to this unclean order of Anti-Americans, " Silver
Dick " politely told them to go to the Devil. Bland's an
independent American sovereign, and McKinley is a whin-
ing hypocrite with the heart of a slave.
Sir Charles Dilke predicts that Great Britain will soon
have to fight the combined forces of Germany, Russia
and| France, and the London Spectator wants to know
" what role the United States will play in such a struggle."
Our compliments to John Bull, Mr. Spectator, and please
say to him that Uncle Sam will sit on the fence, not to
umpire the game, but to see that none of the combatants
trample American grass.
" There was no special car," says the dispatches, " pro-
vided for the man upon whom the Democratic party thrust
the greatest honor within its power." He did not even
ride on a pass when visiting his old home in Illinois, but
" bought tickets for himself and wife." Mr. Bryan is not
the candidate of the big railway magnates and trusts,
which flourish by pulling Uncle Sam's leg ; he is the candi-
date of the people. Cleveland has not paid a dollar of
railway fare in twelve years from the day of his first
nomination private cars have been placed at his disposal.
Ditto McKinley. Corporate capital is very kind to those
whom it knows it can use.
The goldbugs tell us in one breath that free coinage
of silver will enable the miner to trade 50 cents worth
of white metal for 100 cents at the mint that it is " the
most radical kind of protection " ; in the next, that under
free coinage the silver dollar that the miner receives will
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 31
be worth but fifty cents. In one breath they assure us
that silver will contract the currency by expelling gold;
in the next that under free coinage we will have so much
money that its purchasing power will decline 50 per cent.
They should put a bicycle bell on their logical sequence to
prevent its getting lost.
Every little while the world is startled by the informa-
tion that some daily paper has announced that it will not
support the Demoratic nominees. At least a dozen, great
and small, have made a bid for immortality, by bolting.
We stood it pretty well, however, until the Chattanooga
(Tenn.) Times and the Lexington (Ky.) Herald deserted
to the party of high tariff and force-bill fame. It is too
bad, and, as their own editors would remark, their " rash
act has cast a gloom over the community." We had de-
pended on the Times and the Herald to pull Bryan
through. So long as they stood firm we felt that the
country and the party were safe. We relied upon them to
gird up their surcingles and bear the brunt of the battle.
We firmly believed that their tremendous influence and
circulation of six hundred copies each would capture at
least one vote in Kentucky and perhaps two in Tennessee ;
but just as we had set our battle in array they did the
Coriolanus' act gave us an apt imitation of Benedict
Arnold. Of course we are dreadfully handicapped by this
defection; but we will fight on and die, if die we must,
in the last ditch. The intimation that the Times and
Herald were " bought up " does Mark Hanna an injus-
tice. He is too good a business man to waste the " fat "
he has fried out of the tariff barons and bond grafters,
purchasing newspapers whose editors cannot open their
mouths without making an indecent exposure of their ig-
norance, whose owners have long borne the mark of moral
32 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
cowardice and the brand of political infamy. Let 'em
slide and " good riddance to bad rubbish."
Henry Ryder-Taylor, who is lurking somewhere in the
land of cacti and cussedness, is writing long-winded com-
munications to gullible Texas papers and adding to his
vestibule-train name, " Commissioner of Texas to Mexico.
" Wot t' 'ell? " Commissioner of a single American state
to a foreign power? Nit ! Not if the 'stution knows itself.
The party with the wildly rolling eye and white-horse
beard is pumping our contemporaries full of the west
wind.
Henry Watterson declares that " a new ticket is our
only hope." Like Art emus Ward's monkey, Henri is " a
most amoosin kuss." He has St. Vitus dance of the jaw-
bone. He is forever prophesying, but none of his predic-
tions come to pass. He is always giving advice, which
falls upon unheeding ears. He is the poll parrot of
American politics. Somebody should send him a cracker.
He can look wiser and know less than even the Stuffed
Prophet. In 1892 he predicted that Cleveland could not
be elected that for the party to nominate him were to
wilfully " walk through a slaughter-house into an open
grave." Now he is training with the Cleveland-McKinley
gang. He is as chronic a turn-coat, as dirty a political
drab, as confirmed an intellectual ass as even Waco's
bench-legged " Warwick." He knows absolutely nothing,
and that not well. He has posed for some years as editor
of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and brazenly taken unto
himself the credit of work performed by other employees
of that paper. He bears the same relation to the C. J.
that Rienzi Miltiades Johnsing does to the Houston Post
trots around to political conventions and otherwise puts
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 33
his asininity on exhibition while brainier men do the work
credited to his account. He is the man who got some
cheap reporter to write him an alleged lecture entitled
" Money and Morals," and has been trotting about the
country for some years past firing it off to empty benches,
working the press for puffs and playing poker to raise
sufficient " wind " to blow him out of town. " Money and
Morals ! " He never had a personal acquaintance with
either the one or the other. Bryan is highly honored in
the opposition of this journalistic humbug and political
harlot. He is a contemptible yaller dog trotting beneath
a band-wagon at which he formerly barked. Voila tout.
BRANNAN VS. SEASHOLES.
WAS ST. PATRICK A BAPTIST?
POOR Ireland! For more than seven centuries Catholic
Ireland has borne many trials, sorrows, humiliations and
crosses; but none of her enemies, however ferocious and
relentless, however bigoted and intolerant, have endea-
vored with imperturbable and audacious effrontery, to rob
her people of the sweet and happy recollection that
through the ministrations of their patron, St. Patrick,
their ancestry received the glorious gift of faith which
has descended to them in undiminished lustre.
Her enemies have stolen everything else from her but
her religion ; and it was reserved for a citizen of Texas, in
the nineteenth century, in the city of Dallas, and a Bap-
tist preacher, Rev. " Pat " Seasholes, to lay impious and
barbaric hands, (animus furandi) on St. Patrick, its
most illustrious and transcendent exponent.
St. Patrick a Baptist ! It was hardly necessary for the
34 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Rev. Seasholes to premise his silly and peurile sermon in
endeavoring to make St. Patrick a Baptist, by this
acknowledgment : " In treating of the character of St.
Patrick I am compelled to overturn much of the popular
belief respecting him." We think so.
In one sense, in a strict and etymological sense, every
Pope, bishop and priest is a Baptist, because in this sense
it means one who baptizes. In this sense St. Patrick was
a Baptist, but in no other.
Baptist, as applied to the designation of a church mem-
ber, means one who denies the doctrine of infant baptism,
and holds that baptism ought to be administered to adults
or believers by immersing the body in the water. The
word Baptist is a contraction of Anabaptist. We first
hear of Anabaptists in 1522, their leader being Nicholas
Stork, who was at first a disciple of Luther. St. Patrick
lived more than a thousand years before the advent of the
Anabaptists and Baptists, and it is not very likely that he
belonged to a sect that did not exist in his day and genera-
tion. This would surpass the snake story incorporated
with his memory. Now what is the distinctive and pivotal
feature of Baptist belief and practice outside of a belief
in Jesus Christ? That it is wrong to baptize infants, and
all those who do not or cannot express a belief in Jesus
Christ; and also that no baptism amounts to anything
save by immersion. Now, strange to say, they teach that
baptism is not at all necessary for salvation. If this be
true, why lay so much stress upon the manner in which
it is performed? How does it become important in what
manner you do a thing, if the thing done, in any manner,
is not necessary to salvation? It comes then to this:
Baptists exclude people from membership in their church,
which they call the kingdom of God on earth, unless they
are immersed or baptized, and at the same time tell them
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 35
that God won't exclude them from the kingdom of heaven
even if they are not baptized at all! In other words, a
man may be good enough to be a child of God in the king-
dom of heaven without baptism, but can't be a child of
his kingdom on earth unless he is baptized. Can the same
God be presiding in both these kingdoms? And does He
make it less onerous to get into His kingdom than Baptists
make it to get into their church? Now while some of the
Baptists strenuously insist on being immersed and and
being members of the church, I find some who don't think
either is important or necessary. The Fort Worth
Gazette of February 20, 1896, quotes a Baptist minister
as saying : " A man may be a Christian and not a member
of the church." This is an emnation from the Rev.
Morgan Wells, if correctly reported, who is considered, I
am told, a stellar luminary of the first magnitude in the
Baptist firmament. Now, St. Patrick never taught any-
thing like the foregoing, and the best evidence of it is that
none of the Irish people believe a word of it.
The Rev. Seasholes says that the Bible is his only rule
of faith. " ' Thus saith the Lord ' is the command we
follow." That's all very nice, but let us see how true it is.
I take it for granted that Rev. Seasholes believes that we
cannot enter the kingdom of God unless we keep His com-
mandments. One of the ten commandments is : " Remem-
ber thou keep holy the Sabbath day." Now, every man
who makes the slightest pretensions to informations knows
that the Sabbath day is the seventh day of the week, and
that Sunday is the first day of the week. Now, I wish to
know why Rev. Seasholes keeps the first day of the week,
Sunday, holy, without a " Thus saith the Lord," when
we have " Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath day "
(Saturday) with a " Thus saith the Lord." Jesus Christ,
up to the time of His death, kept Saturday holy in can-
36 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
formity with the law, because it was a commandment. If
the Bible is his rule of faith, I would like to know where
it can be found in it that the Sabbath day, or Saturday,
was abrogated and Sunday instituted in its stead. To
stimulate the activity of our Baptist brethren, I promise
to pay one thousand dollars to Rev. Seasholes for a " Thus
saith the Lord " in the Bible regarding the keeping of
the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh.
Yet they lay great stress on being baptized like Christ
was, conceding for argument's sake that he was immersed,
yet teaching that baptism is not necessary for salvation,
but no stress whatever on keeping holy the day Christ
kept, although it is necessary to keep the commandments
to enter into the kingdom of God.
St. Patrick, like all Catholics, believed that baptism
means something serious. Not something that may be
administered or not, the result being the same, so far as
salvation is concerned. Acts 2, 36, 6, 8 shows the neces-
sity of baptism when Peter told those who had repented
to be baptized for the remission of sins. Certainly the
remission of sins is a very important thing, and if baptism
remitted sins in the days of St. Peter, why not now? 1
Peter 3, 18, 19, 20, 21, where Peter compares baptism to
the ark of Noah. That as the ark saved Noah and his
family, so "baptism, being of the like form, now saveth
you also." Acts 22, 1 to 16, we find St. Paul felled to
the earth sorrowful and repentant for his sins, right in
the presence of Jesus Christ. Did Christ forgive his
sins? He sent him to Ananias in Damascus, and among
other things Ananias said to Paul "why tarriest thou?
Arise and be baptised and wash away thy sins." That's
the kind of baptism that St. Patrick administered, and
which his people have received for 1500 years. And why
should not infants be baptized? St. Paul says we are
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 37
all born children of wrath. If a child is born a child of
wrath, without knowledge of that fact, why could not that
stigma be taken away from him without his knowledge also.
Is it not more in conformity with God's mercy to take away
this stigma without the knowledge of the child than to
let it remain, and thus debar him from His kingdom? Cer-
tainly a child of wrath cannot enter the kingdom of God,
and if nothing is done to obliterate the stain in which we
are born, we still remain children of wrath, therefore it
is easy to see what St. Peter means when he says we are
saved by water, and what Ananias says of it in connection
with washing away sins.
The Baptists are a wonderful people according to Rev.
Seasholes. He says they have followed St. Patrick since
300 years before he was born, and have followed him ever
since. How a man could accomplish the intellectual or
pedestrian feat of following a man 300 years before he
was born, I leave to the gigantic intellect of the Rev. Sea-
sholes to explain. However, since he has assailed the
unified and crystalized affirmative sentiment of 1500 years
that St. Patrick was a Catholic, in endeavoring to make a
Baptist of him, he will feel equal to the lesser effort of
showing how Baptists followed a man 300 years before
he was born. And yet, who ever saw a Baptist wear a
shamrock? A sham effort to make St. Patrick a Baptist,
but a shamrock, never ! But I must be reasonable. How
could it be expected that St. Patrick should be honored as
a Baptist until the fact was discovered? The new dis-
covery will be sufficiently heralded by the 17th of next
March, and I am satisfied the Irish Catholics of Dallas
will be invited to take a back seat while the Rev. Seasholes
walks at the head of a Baptist procession, with a sham-
rock in his hat, the green flag of Erin floating over his
head, and keeping step to the magical and inspiring air of
88 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
" St. Patrick's Day in the Morning." Oh, the bitter irony
of fate! A procession on St. Patrick's Day without a
Catholic, or an Irishman, or a man named " Pat " in the
whole outfit.
It's painful to dignify the matter by a serious reply to
such trash as Rev. Seasholes has written. When a man
becomes a candidate for the shafts of ridicule, he always
makes his election sure.
If, as Rev. Seasholes says, St. Patrick did not believe in
infant baptism, will he be kind enough to explain why the
Catholic Church canonized him, placing him on the calen-
dar of saints, when the church has always taught a dif-
ferent doctrine. The Catholic church has declared : " If
any one should say that children having received baptism
should be numbered among the faithful because they have
not actual faith, and therefore when they come to the
years of discretion that they should be rebaptized, or that
it is better to omit baptism than to baptize in the faith
of the church alone those who have not actual faith, let
him be anathema." Now then, if St. Patrick was opposed
to infant baptism, we have here the anomaly of the Catho-
lic church cannonizing and anathematizing the same man.
What need of going further to annihilate the pretensions
of Rev. Seasholes.
I once read of a judge who asked of a bystander why
a certain witness was not present in court. He replied
that there were a great many reasons why the witness was
not present, the first of which was that he was dead. The
judge said he didn't care to hear any more. So there is
no use in wasting further ammunition on Rev. Seasholes
when he's killed by one shot. I am sorry for our Baptist
friends that they have no saint of their own, but I'll see
to it that Rev. Seasholes shall not lay larcenous hands
upon the great saint of the Emerald Island, who brought
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 39
to my ancestry the beautiful truths of the Christian re-
ligion. Besides, I wish to shield my parents from the impu-
tation of ignorance, who, according to Rev. Seasholes,
named me for a Baptist, supposing that he was a Catholic.
It is certainly an anomaly in nomenclature that so many
Catholics are called after a Baptist saint, and yet no
Baptist will take the " Pat "-ronymic. But then, I must
be reasonable, since the discovery that St. Patrick was a
Baptist is only a week old. I am afraid Rev. Seasholes, if
he wants a Baptist saint, will have to fall back on Mr.
Brann of the great Baptist monthly, the ICONOCLAST of
Waco. The Catholic church is very deliberate in canon-
izing Catholics, requiring, sometimes, more than one hun-
dred years ; but Mr. Brann canonizes some Baptists once
a month; and if the necessity became at all urgent or
imperative he could do it while you wait.
If St. Patrick was a Baptist and taught Baptist doc-
trine to the Irish people, what caused the whole nation to
abandon him and become Catholics? If he was a Baptist,
they repudiated the religion he taught them, and upon
this hypothesis how can it be explained that they love and
revere the memory of a man who taught them a false re-
ligion? If they had not believed it to be false, certainly
they would not have become Catholics. How many Bap-
tist churches are there in Ireland? Where are they and
how long have they been there? How many Baptist
churches are there in Palestine, the cradle of Christianity,
and how long have they been there, if any?
The Baptist pretensions to antiquity is on a parity
with the extravagant folly of trying to make a Baptist of
St. Patrick.
Where are your bishops? Rev. Seasholes says: " Each
Baptist church has its bishop whom we call a pastor, but
40 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
our Baptist scholars call bishop." So it seems that to
enjoy the privilege of calling a Baptist pastor a bishop,
the Baptist who does it must be a scholar. Governed by
this criterion I have never yet met a Baptist scholar. Rev.
Seasholes withdraws himself from the catagory of scholars
when he says " we call him pastor." I am glad to see
this expression of humility. It extenuates, to some ex-
tent, the brazen effort to make a Baptist of St. Patrick,
because if he had been a scholar, which he acknowledges he
is not, he never would have made this ridiculous and abor-
tive attempt to make a Baptist out of a Catholic saint.
I don't see why Rev. Seasholes and the common Baptists
cannot employ the term bishop whenever it is meet and
fitting to do so. I think I know why they don't use it.
In 20 chap, of Acts, 28 v. we find : " Take heed to your-
selves and to the whole flock wherein the Holy Ghost hath
placed you bishops to rule the church of God which he
hath purchased with his own blood." It seems, then, that
the plan of the church of God is that the Holy Ghost
places bishops in a church to rule it. Now, our Baptist
people boast of being democratic, and say that no man
shall rule over them. So that when they say to a Baptist
preacher, come! he may come, and when they say go, he
has to " pull out." So, instead of what Baptist scholars,
alone, call bishops, ruling the church, the church rules
them. No wonder they have expunged " bishop " from
their ecclesiastical vocabualry. If Bishop, elder, and pastor
are synonymous, why is it said of bishops only that they
rule the church of God?
We suppose all this is compensated for by the fact that
the richest man in the United States is a Baptist, so Mr.
Seasholes seriously informs us. Jesus Christ had no
)lace to lay his head, and furthermore he said that it is
veasy for a camel to go through the eye of a needle as
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 41
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. And yet
his disciples are boasting of their rich men !
However, we will take courage. We are still further
assured that the largest man in the world is a Baptist.
This fact nearly scared me off when I started out, because
I am a small man ; but as I never heard of Captain Bates
living- in Texas, I thought I would write and risk it. Think
of men with beard on their faces seriously claiming it as a
badge of distinction that muscularity and adiposity, to
make a word, are in some occult way, related to sanctity.
Now, if it can be shown that " Jack, the giant killer,"
was a Baptist, I will throw up the sponge and quit the
fight. I wish to do Rev. Seasholes complete and ample jus-
tice. I would willingly rob no man of the eulogium which
always belongs to truth. Truth is weighty and has a
tendenc} r to go to the bottom, so, under a mountain of
chaff, I have found at the bottom of his sermon the
precious and scintillating gem of truth. He says : " St.
Patrick is dead." Now, if he will acknowledge a fact
which everybody else knows, that his abortive attempt to
make St. Patrick a Baptist, is as dead as St. Patrick, the
world will continue to honor the memory of their patron
since he has made the candid acknowledgment that he is
not a scholar.
Somehow or other I feel that the Irish Catholics of the
>rld may forgive him for his temerity, more especially
lint, even those in Dallas. On each recurring 17th of
March the Irishman in every country and every clime
goes back in spirit to the land of his birth. He reads its
tragic history in the deserted town, the wretched poor-
house, and the flapping canvas of the emigrant ship. He
remembers the coffinless graves of his poor fellow country-
men : he reads in letters of fire and blood the words upon.
42 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the red pages on which a cruel fate has written the desti-
nies of his country. He sees the children of forty genera-
tions entombed in premature graves, or driven by cruel
laws to beg from strangers that protection which was
denied them at home.
He hears upon the zephyrs these plaintive words which
are an epitome of his country's history:
" * Sad is my fate,' said the heartbroken stranger,
The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee ;
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
A home and a country remain not for me/ "
But his faith and the memory of the glorious saint who
brought it to his kindred are with him eternal and im-
perishable; and they are the silver lining to the dark
clouds of sorrow which envelop him. Or, as Ireland's sweet
poet expresses it:
" The gem may be broke by many a stroke,
But nothing can cloud its own native ray,
Each fragment will cast a light to the last ;
And thus, Erin, my country, though broken thou art,
There's a lustre within thee that ne'er can decay,
A spirit that breathes through each suffering part,
And smiles at the pain on St. Patrick's day."
PATEICK F. BEANNAN.
Weatherford, Texas, July 17, 1896.
If the editor of the Sulphur Springs Tribune has any
friends, they should either give him a few doses of the
" lost manhood restorers " which he so extensively adver-
tises, or tie his hands behind him. His paranoiac utter-
ances indicate that his brain has sprung a leak, that the
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 43
stopcock of his nervo-muscular energy has worn out its
washer. He thinks the " Apostle " awfully bad. Per-
haps he is he never posed as a feathered angel; but he
will say this: The editor who will print such advertise-
ments as some of those appearing in the Tribune, and
fling them into decent women's faces, is the mangiest cur
in all the great hierarchy of hell. He has the social pride
of a pariah and the moral concept of a maggot. He has
touched the profoundest depths of human degradation.
Judged by all the elements of morality, by every principle
of manhood, he's infinitely below the Bowery bum who
pimps for his mother and puts the frowsy charms of his
best girl up at auction.
PAT DONAN'S PROGNOSTICATIONS.
THE Utahnian, a snappy handsome weekly published at
Salt Lake City, the metropolis of the " Mountain-walled
Treasury of the Gods," reproduces an interview with Col.
Pat Donan, had in August, 1893. Col. Donan is always
interesting and usually instructive, and the interview in
question is so pertinent to present conditions, that we
^produce it.
" I expect no good from this extra session of congress.
he man who does is an ass, whose ears would make um-
>rella covers for cathedral spires. It would be looking for
igs from jimson-weeds and brandy peaches from dog-
fennel bushes. This congress is just like those whose ig-
noramus and lunatic legislation, for thirty years past, has
caused all our national woes. To hope for any benefit
From it would be proclaiming a marvelous faith in the
>rinciple that ' the bite of the dog is good for the hair.'
44 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
{ There is not a man in either house who ever originated
a statesmanlike measure, uttered a statesmanlike senti-
ment, or conceived a statesmanlike thought. There is not
one whom an original idea would not split open from col-
lar-button to hip-pocket. Their intellectual and political
horizon is bounded by the puny lines of their state or sec-
tion, their party or their purses. Most of them never saw
a fifty-dollar bill till they crawled out of their native
brush-piles to come here and set up as caricatures on
statesmanship. They are generally cheap office-hucksters
and self -pushers ; and some of them, if justice were not
squint-eyed, would be serving terms in states' prisons in-
stead of the United States senate and house of representa-
tives. Our American congress is a body most honored by
those who know least about it.
"All the talk about silver and the silver question, in
connection with our gigantic financial ills, seems to me the
babble of ignorance and folly, almost beyond the power
of God Almighty himself to alleviate or enlighten. Silver
has little, if any, more to do with the present smashpup
than paving stones or pigs-feet. Silver is but an atom in
the vast aggregate of our continental bustedness, a mere
fly-speck on the mighty chart of impending disaster.
" The whole population of the Silver states Arizona,
Colorado, laho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah,
all combined, is only 1,095,621 ; or scarcely one-sixtieth
of our grand muster-roll. We could exterminate them
wipe the last man, woman and child of them from the face
of the earth and not know it three weeks afterward. We
import nearly as many new inhabitants every year.
" Our total silver produce last year was but 58,000,000
ounces, worth to-day about $38,000,000. We could dump
it all into some Yellowstone geyser, pension swindle, or
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 45
other governmental hellhole, and never miss it. The hen-
eggs of the old women of the country are of more value
and importance. Compared with our $250,000,000 cotton
crop, our $150,000,000 wheat yield, our corn, hay, coal,
iron, timber, or ochre-yellowed oleomargarine butter, sil-
ver is absolutely insignificent and contemptible. Attempt-
ing to make it the scapegoat for our financial sins, follies
and miseries, is trying to pile all hell and the Rocky moun-
tains on an infinitesimal mining-camp jackass. The pack-
saddle is not big enough by a million moral or immoral
leagues. Cleveland's message and all the flapdoodle
of our sham statesmen to the contrary notwithstanding,
silver is a puny incident, and not a potential factor, in our
deep damnation.
" What, then, is the cause of our trouble? That is easy
to answer. For a full generation past we have been living
at the ' pace that kills.' Everything has been run on the
high-pressure plan, with steam up to the bursting-point,
and a darky sitting on the safety-valve. As a govern-
ment, as a people, and as individuals, we have splurged and
plunged in a world-amazing fashion, and all on credit.
Our whole history, public and private, has been a madcap
story of rant, riot and revel. We have squandered
thousands of millions of dollars all borrowed on any-
thing, everything, and nothing, that tended to tickle our
vanity or increase our braggadocious possibilities. No
swindle has been too gigantic, no humbug too transparent,
for our greed and folly. With our war-tariff in time of
peace, we have filched untold millions on millions from our
own pockets, to be wasted in the wildest business and
political orgies. We have given hundreds of millions of
acres of our public lands to thievish railroad corporations.
We have lavished hundreds of millions of dollars on a
fraudulent pension list $160,000,000 a year much of it
46 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
to bogus heroes and national grass widows enough to our
alleged cripples of a lifetime ago to maintian all the stand-
ing armies of the old world; enough to pay all the ex-
penses of our government, honestly and economically ad-
ministered.
" We have made the eyes of all God's creation bulge
out past its hat-rim by our extravagancies and profliga-
cies and all on credit. We have issued thousands of mil-
lions of bonds national bonds, state bonds, county bonds,
city bonds and private corporation bonds, at extortion-
ate rates of interest, on twenty, thirty or forty years' time,
and these bonds are coming due. We have built thousands
of miles of railroads at $10,000 a mile, and bonded them
at $100,000 a mile, and the managers have become multi-
millionaires by pocketing the trivial discrepancy of
$90,000 a mile. Our printing presses have hummed day
and night, grinding out bonds to build our courthouses
and schoolhouses, to rear our sixteen-story architectural
monstrosities of bluster and buncombe, to open our great
mines, and to develop our big farms and ranches. We
have floated bonds to pen our pigs, to milk our Texas steers
and to amuse our sportive bulls and bears. All this fun-
on-time must be paid for. We have madly discounted the
future ; and the future is here. We have sown the whirl-
wind and our cyclone harvest is ripe. We have scattered
and squandered and caroused, like bacchanalian spend-
thrifts, on credit and pay-day is at hand. That is what
ails us.
" All the silver we could produce in the next quarter of
a century would be pitiful beggars* pennies and pewter
nickels beside our appalling needs. We have out at least
$10,000,000,000 of national, state, county, municipal,
corporational and individual bonds. Think of it! Ten
[thousand million dollars of public and private bonded
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 47
3ebt ! All nations are our creditors. They want cash
and we have not the money to pay them.
" Meanwhile our reckless home expenditures go on, as
in the maddest, merriest inflation days. We are spending
a billion a year for government such as it is. Hear those
figures again: $1,000,000,000 a year for our national,
state, county and municipal government $500,000,000
a year for national misrule alone. A thousand millions of
dollars a year! It is more than any government, more
than all government, is worth! It would bankrupt all
Europe to pay it. The Czar of all the Russias would lose
his crown and his head, if he should try to grind out so
vast a sum from his 150,000,000 subjects in a single year.
No nation of 65,000,000 people under heaven can stand
it long without universal bankruptcy and pauperhood.
" Our whole country, government and people are on
stilts. We have all done business for thirty years on the
wildest credit basis and we are now face to face with
such an aggregation of debts as no nation on earth ever
had to meet before. That is the situation, and a howling
hell of a one it is.
" All the silver tinkers that ever the golden sun shone
on cannot aid us. A national liquidation must be gone
through, and then our whole political, financial, commer-
cial and industrial system must be readjusted to a bed-
rock cash basis.
" Let Cleveland and his Capitol Hill menagerie of al-
leged statesmen prate as they may, the United States and
its people must tumble from inflation to hard-pan, from
credit to cash; and many a tumbler will be broken. The
inevitable has come. That is all. We could no more
escape it than we can death or the day of judgment.
" The great want of the country is money to pay debts-
and meet obligations. We need hundreds of millions of
48 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
dollars more than we have. And our financial quacks tell
us this direful, paralyzing lack of money is to be relieved
by destroying a large part of what we have ! The despair-
and death-dealing scarcity of money is to be remedied by
making it scarcer still ! The man who says it, or believes
it, be he gold-bug president, cheapjohn congressman,
metropolitan editor, rural dirt-digger or statesmaniacal
dime-museum freak, is a fool beyond all reach of reason or
hope of redemption.
" Thousands of millions of dollars of this monstrous
aggregation of indebtedness were contracted in greenbacks
at from thirty-five to forty-five cents on the dollar. To
make it payable now in gold, would be to wring the life-
blood from the nation, to rob millions of outraged former-
freeman of half their earthly all, to desolate and pauperize
a hemisphere, and to invite total Repudiation or Revolu-
tion! Let the unclean Buffalonian Beast in the White
House, and his associate goldbugger bandits, halt in their
hellionism before they drive a long-suffering people, in
blind desperation, to a choice between the two R's ! "
FREE COINAGE OF INTERVIEWS.
PRAISED be all the gods ! I have made a new discovery
have learned that, within the broad confines of Texas, there
is such a party as " the Hon. W. Poindexter," of Cle-
burne. After serving for a dozen years as editor of lead-
ing Texas dailies, I discovered, quite accidentally, this
" man of muckle might.'* He was, at the time, indus-
triously " interviewing " himself for the Dallas News.
He prefaces his two-column polemic with the intimation
that the reporter run him down and compelled him to
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 49
yield up his intellectual treasure bearded the lion in his
den, the Douglass in his gall. Perhaps so ; but I'll wager
" the Hon. W. Poindexter " one hundred gold-standard
dollars that he prepared that " interview " himself, that he
propounded every " question," and wrote every " answer "
that he never " talked it off " to any reporter on earth.
Some cheap news hustler, heart-hungry for a space-filler,
may have asked him what he thought of the Chicago con-
vention, or Nailey's attack of the mugwump bots, the
ravages of the army worm or the length of Editor Saur-
lock's ears; but I doubt it. The chances are as one to
infinity that he sat down all by his little self, manufactured
the " interview " without further suggestion than his own
inordinate egotism, and threw in a fulsome gob of taffy
for the News to insure its insertion. I have burned up
tons of just such " interviews " with peanut politicians,
which opened with the modest intimation that my reporters
had sweat blood in the effort to run the honorable gentle-
man to earth and twist unwilling expressions of opinion
out of them with a money-wrench, to open their invaluable
think tanks with a cork-screw. The reporters invariably
find these gentlemen dreadfully busy and little inclined to
talk. Like a female nigger, they are always " forced."
" Interviews ! " Great Gawd 1 It is the insistence of such
people for the sacred privilege of airing their ignorance,
their inordinate itch for notoriety that makes the average
editor's life an agony. They are harder to dodge than
picnic red-bugs or buck ague in the Brazos buttoms. The
small-bore politician without a ready-made " interview "
concealed about his person and which he insists upon
reading to the editor if he gets within reach is an excep-
tion to the rule. " The Hon. W. Poindexter " is dis-
covered, as the curtain rises, sitting in his library half
buried in musty tomes of political economy, congressional
50 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
records, biographies of Jefferson, Jackson, Benton and
other Democratic saints all wearing gold halos and bit-
ing their thumbs at free silver. " The Hon. W. Poin-
dexter " turns from his work with an air of weariness.
He had hoped that he would be spared the necessity of
rushing into the breach this year and saving his bleeding
country, but the crisis has become so acute that he must
not withhold his hand.
" The time is out of joint : O cursed spite !
That ever I was born to set it right I '*
Now that " the Hon. W. Poindexter " whoever he may
be has seized his pen, the country may be considered safe.
He begs us to reflect upon our latter end. He reminds us
that the Supreme Court criticized by the irreverent roys-
terers at Chicago, once " unlocked the doors of the
dungeon and struck the chains from the limbs of free
men." Just which end " the Hon. W. Poindexter " was
reflecting on when he made this startling assertion it were
hard to say. Clearly any man who can conceive of " free
men " locked and chained in a dungeon, should be listened
to with respect bordering upon reverence when he deigns
to illumine the tenebrous ignorance of a Teller, or point out
the economic errors of a Bryan or a Bland. Having thus
in some measure prepared our minds for miracles, " the
Hon. W. Poindexter " assures us that the free coinage of
silver will drive $626,000,000 of gold out of circulation,
contracting the currency by that amount and playing the
very deuce with our industries that it will require from
fifteen to twenty years to coin enough of the white metal
to fill the hiatus caused by the expatriation of the " yellow
boys " ; yes, despite the fact that the exchanges of the
country will have to be effected with the currency so con-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 51
tracted, the dollar will depreciate 50 per cent in pur-
chasing power! In other words, the smaller the supply
of money relative to the demand, the less it will be worth !
Instead of reflecting on his latter end, perhaps, " the Hon.
W. Poindexter " has been reflecting with it. He assures
us that since the Chicago convention convened he " has
examined more than a dozen standard authorities on
political economy and money." Very well : If he will name
a single standard on money who declares that contraction
of a country's currency, of whatsoever make, will reduce
its purchasing power, I'll make him a present of a plug
hat and hire a nigger to call him Colonel. There is scarce
a standard authority on such matters, from Smith to
Walker, from Quesnay to Jevons, but points out that the
purchasing power of money depends on the supply rela-
tive to the demand. Many of them go even farther and
point out what must be obvious to every man of average
mind that even an irredeemable paper currency would
not depreciate in purchasing power if it were positively
known that the volume would not exceed that required to
do the necessary money-work of the nation. Now, if that
be true, how in the name of God could the extinction of
one-fourth our circulating media coupled with the im-
possibility of supplying this deficiency for fifteen years
reduce by one-half the purchasing power of the remainder?
If " the Hon. W. Poindexter," or any other of the thou-
sand goldbug editors, orators and self-interviewers now
declaring that free silver means both a " contracted " and
a " debased " currency, will cite any " standard author-
ity " in support of their remarkable thesis, I'll vote for
Bill McKinley, if it " busts " me. What we need is a
law in this land prohibiting the free coinage of " inter-
views," by economic idiots.
52 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
BAILEY AND THE DAL-GAL.
THE Dai-Gal News has undertaken to ruin Congressman
Bailey politically because he is a patriot instead of a
peon, an independent American Sovereign instead of an
anglomaniacal mugwump. That means that Bailey can
have anything he may happen to want in the way of office
that Texas has to offer. The opposition of the " double-
ender " is the shortest possible road to political prefer-
ment, for the people take it for granted that what it
opposed is a pretty good thing for them to approve. Its
candidates never keno. As a newspaper it has no equal
in the South, but the people have absolutely no confidence
in its editorial utterances. It is a political Jonah. Its
breath of praise is as a upas blight, its anathema marana-
tha as the gentle dews of heaven. Hogg understood this,
and kept the Texas Thunderer pounding away at him so
long as he remained in politics. If the " Old Lady "
should win a political victory she'd require an immediate
change of lingerie. The News deliberately misrepres-
ented Mr. Bailey, and when he called attention thereto,
proceeded with brazen impudence to add insult to injury.
It attempted to sneak out of its falsehood by means of
a string of sophistry that would disgrace a chicken-court
shyster, then, in perfect conformity with the French
theory that we hate worst those we have misrepresented,
returned to its virulent attack with redoubled vigor. It
first stated that as Bailey voted with the Republicans to
censure Bayard for telling the truth anent the corruptive
influence of the American tariff, and when called down de-
clared that the resolution was framed with that intent,
and that Bailey voted for it its original statement was
literally true. No utterance is true that is inended to
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 53
and does convey a false impression. While the resolution
of censure was pending Mr. Bailey explained in a speech
why he gave it his support. He declared emphatically
that had our Ambassador to Great Britain been guilty of
no greater impropriety than censuring the American tariff
to tickle the ears of an English audience, he would vote
against the adoption of the resolution ; but that he would
vote to censure Mr. Bayard because he had committed a
flagrant " offense not merely against good taste and dip-
lomatic etiquette, but against common sense and sound
patriotism " in describing his own countrymen as " a
violent people who need to have their will obstructed.
Mr. Bayard was extolling the president," said he, " and
in order to exalt a magistrate he defamed the people."
Mr. Bailey answered the calumnious utterance of the
66 double-ender " by producing an official copy of his
speech. Now note the rejoinder of the paper that is for-
ever throwing flowers at itself because of its alleged
"fairness:"
"Whatever he (Bailey) may say about it, his work
stands and shows for itself, and is generally understood
to be inspired by animosity to the present Democratic
administration, and not by the zeal of a faithful Democrat.
The resolution of censure if the main thing," etc. In
other words, Bailey was guilty of the heinous crime of
casting his vote with the Republicans on this occasion,
instead of rushing to the defense of Bayard at the beck of
the administration, with " the zeal of a good Democrat."
And this is the same paper that has been so long lament-
ing lack of individual independence in American politics,
and hurling foul scorn at those who yield a servile obedi-
ence to party bosses ! And side by side with its column
" roast " of Bailey for disregarding the party lash, stands
a tearful appeal to the " sound money Democrats " of
54 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Texas to disregard the authority of the state executive
committee ! It appears that what is sauce for the gold-
bug goose is not sauce for the free-silver gander; that
political independence must stop short of patriotism,
that to approve a measure not seconded by a mugwump
administration is an unforgiveable sin. Mr. Bailey's ex-
planation of his vote angers the bifurcated pro-British
paper more than did the ballot itself provokes it to a
display of animosity to American institutions. It declares
that we are a violent people who need to have our will
obstructed. By whom, pray ? By that tub of rum-soaked
tallow who entered the presidency a pauper and, in seven
years of duck-shooting and bond-selling to private syndi-
cates at prices ruinous to the people, became a seven-
figure plutocrat? Is this a government of, for and by the
people, or a government by a political boss whose busi-
ness it is to obstruct the popular will? What becomes
of our vox populi Dei if we need a political guardian? If
we require " a strong man " to keep us from running head-
long to ruin, why not ask the Czar of Russia to take charge
of our political affairs ? " All the wayward children of
men," says the News, " need to have their wills obstructed.
Both sacred and secular law prove this to be so. For
this purpose we have constitutional restrictions, the gub-
ernatorial and presidential veto," etc. What is a con-
stitutional restriction but a check placed by the people
upon their public servants? From whence does the Pres-
ident derive his veto power? From the people, who have
made him their chief servant and expect him to exercise it
when need be, not to obstruct, but to secure a faithful
execution of their will. The supreme power rests with
the people. They can amend the constitution or abolish
it altogether. Mr. Cleveland received his instructions
from the people in the shape of a political platform. In
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 55
so far as he has ignored those instructions and substituted
his own ideas of public polity, he has falsified his de-
claration that "a public office is a public trust."
There is really little danger that the " double-ender "
will corrupt any great number of people with its
misfit monarchial ideas and doctrine of presidential in-
fallibility, for its editorial page, while caviar to the
general, is a literary nightmare to the illuminati. A
News essay is a halting compromise between Browning's
poetry and the sage observations of a Boston parrot.
N.B. In the April ICONOCLAST I stated that the News
was publishing portraits of congressional candidates
with soft-soap biographies, at regular advertising rates.
I am assured that the News makes no charge for print-
ing wood-cuts of candidates for the honor of helping " a
strong man " obstruct the will of a violent and head-
strong people. I will not attempt to disguise the mis-
statement with a column of transparent sophistry. The
ICONOCLAST is not infallible. It seeks only the even and
exact truth and presents it in the plainest language pos-
sible. It would do no one an injustice. It was misin-
formed and gladly makes the amende honorable. The
" Old Lady " gets nothing for her portrait gallery
but she should get at least five years.
POLITICAL POT-POURRI.
BUCKSHOT VS. BOODLE.
IN days agone it was the custom in some parts of the
South to keep the coon away from the polls by suggest-
ing to him that exercise of the elective franchise might
56 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
prove a trifle unhealthy ; now he is not only permitte8 to
enjoy his legal prerogative, but for doing so is usually
well paid. In other words, we have substituted boodle for
buckshot, and the change is not for the better. The new
plan of avoiding black domination is bad for the nigger
and worse for his betters. It debauches our politics
makes the question of office one of money instead of merit.
This may not be true in every case, but the exception
proves the rule. The man who is not willing to purchase
the colored vote might just as well keep out of politics
wherever Sambo holds the balance of power. The South
has learned by bitter experience that to trust the black
man with public office were like turning a lunatic loose
with a box of matches in a powder magazine. What he
can't steal he'll destroy. If race pride be not sufficient rea-
son why the Caucasian should rule, the preservation of
life and property makes such dominance imperative. Ex-
perience has demonstrated that it were infinitely better to
have adhered to the old method of dealing with the black
vote and suffered the adverse criticism of philanthropic
fools than to have debauched our political life by permit-
ting him access to the polls. Open violence were better than
sneaking fraud. A little bulldozing were preferable to
the purchase of office at the hands of the blacks. Placed
between two evils we should have chosen the least. Under
ordinary conditions the man who gives a bribe is as bad
as the one who accepts it ; but the purchase of nigger votes
in the South may be an act of purest patriotism. They
are on the market going to the highest bidder. If men
of good reputation declined to soil their hands with the
unclean traffic the country would soon be turned over to
the tender mercies of the toughs. Doubtless our Northern
neighbors expected that the crown of American sover-
eignty would ennoble the black man ; but it has had exactly
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 57
the opposite effect. He considers the right of suffrage a
boon only when he can exchange it for boodle. Conferring
upon him the elective franchise has effected him much as
brandy does a bawd. There is a large purchaseable white
vote in the North, but it is not altogether destitute of
shame, and education has a constant tendency to reduce
it. The nigger has absolutely no moral character to
operate upon. He is simply and solely an animal a dif-
ferentiation of the lustful and lazy simian. Male and
female are hopelessly corrupt. Educating the nigger only
makes him impudent. It were like placing a jewel in a
swine's snout or a golden collar on the neck of a mangy
mule. Sometime the North may comprehend the crime
she committed against the South and make the amende
honorable by helping us disfranchise the coon.
K * $
A BRASS COLLAR DEMOCRAT.
ME. J. C. PATTON of Dallas has concluded that it is im-
peratively necessary that he go to congress and save the
country. I do not happen to know who Mr. Patton may
be, but he seems to have contracted the itch for office in
its most virulent form. According to his own statement
he is willing to make any sacrifice of principle, and even
work against what he considers the best interests of the
people in order to secure a congressional cushion and be
luxuriously supported at public expense. In this respect,
however, he is not peculiar, for pretty much every con-
gressional candidate now pleading for the support of the
people has frankly professed a perfect willingness to be-
tray them to promote the weU-being of some pie hunting
political party. Mr. Patton opened his campaign with a
58 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
speech in which he declared himself " flat-footed for free
silver," and that he believed it right to remonitize the
white metal, then avowed himself a " brass collar Demo-
crat " who would accept whatever financial plank might be
put in the national platform. In other words, if elected,
he will do whatsoever he is bid by the Chicago convention,
whether he considers it right or wrong, for or against the
interest of the people who are paying for his pie. If the
party should declare for protection or a force bill he would
lift up his voice in its favor. He would support the
nominee of the party though he happened to be a half-wit
Indian. He promised if elected to "defend the Democratic
president and congress and not repudiate their acts,"
whatever they might happen to be. That's the kind of
talk put up by a majority of the candidates of the various
political parties, and Patton, who appears to be a harmless
kind of lunatic, is only following where others lead. They
are all after the loaves and fishes are willing to remain
ever the humble slaves of a partisan machine in order to
get their mangy muzzles into the public flesh-pots. This
country has sent entirely too much such political peons
to congress. We need men to make our laws who are
the servants of the people instead of the slaves of a party,
men who possess minds of their own and are imbued
from head to heel with the courage of their convictions.
Those who admit that under any conditions they would
act in opposition to what they believed the best interests
of the people; who place the badge of party servitude
above the crown of American sovereignty, are potential
Benedict Arnolds who should be coupled to a ball and
chain and set to cultivating cotton or poisoning potato
bugs.
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 59
THE THIRD TERM CONSPIRACY.
THERE is every indication that President Cleveland is pru-
riently eager to go down in history as the first man to
serve this mighty Republic three times as its chief magis-
trate. When first nominated he declared that no man
should occupy that exalted office more than one term but
appetite grows by what it feeds upon. He readily ac-
cepted a second installment of power, and would not ob-
ject to again carving the pie. For months past the ad-
ministration organs have been poo-poohing the " third
term prejudice " and intimating that it might become the
" duty " of Mr. Cleveland to again " save the country.'*
Like Caesar, he has been putting back the crown " but
each time more gently than before." John G. Carlisle is
supposed to be his political heir, but his calling is un-
certain and his defeat is sure. The plan appears to be to
push the secretary into the convention shambles, and when
he is slaughtered to bring forward as the only available
candidate his big-bellied boss. Of course if the silverites
succeed in capturing the convention neither Cleveland nor
Carlisle will be considered ; but if the gold-bugs control it,
another " Old Guard " demonstration will immediately
ensue, and probably with better success than when the
third term racket was first attempted. The chances are,
however, that the National Democracy will give us an-
other Sibylline oracle anent the money metals, will con-
sent to another " cowardly compromise in order to holdi
the hydra-headed animal together and secure four more
years in the succulent clove-field. In that case it were
difficult to name the probable nominee. Cleveland would
not be available, for " it is impossible to fool all the
people all the time," and his nomination would simply
60 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
transform the equivocal financial plank into a gold-
standard pledge. Some conservative Western man, whose
financial opinions are not too pronounced, would be made
the leader of the party. It is a comfort to reflect that if
Cleveland is nominated he will be defeated, but not much
satisfaction to know that he would be shoved into the mul-
lagatawny by a wooden-head like McKinley. The South
and West would not support the fat party from Buzzard's
Bay. Here and there a place-hunter or small-bore poli-
tician might be found trailing in his wake like a poodle-
dog in that of a bull-elephant ; but the great mass of the
people would give him the frozen face. They consider the
betrayal of silver one of the least of his faults. The use-
less addition to the interest-bearing national debt; the
sale of bonds to pet syndicates at prices ruinous to the
people; his rapid accumulation of a vast fortune in an
office which America's greatest left poor in purse but rich
in the world's respect; his attempt to sacrifice the pro-
ducer of raw material for the enrichment of eastern manu-
facturers these are a few of the grievances which would
cause honorable Democrats in the West and South to de-
cline to rally to his support. Mr. Cleveland is serving his
last term. If he again sends his presidential pitcher to the
well it will not come back whole in his hand.
BEHIND THE SMOKESTACK.
A TALK WITH TRAINMEN.
FOR some time past railway employees have been forward-
ing to this office specimens of politico-financial literature
distributed among them, and requesting that it be sub-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 61
jected to impartial analysis. From the tenor of the letters
received, I infer that the million of American railway em-
ployees are, to a considerable extent, undecided what would
make to their best interests in matters monetary, and
honestly desire an expression of opinion by a strictly non-
partisan journal. I cannot presume to speak authorita-
tively on any question regarding which so many men of
acknowledged ability and integrity disagree ; but I can ex-
amine the literature submitted and state whether it con-
forms to conceded economic facts. For many years I have
made a careful study of the science of money; not with a
view to bolstering up any pre-conceived theory, but in the
humble hope that my conclusions might be absolutely cor-
rect. I have invariably found that the men most rabid
for or against any proposed monetary system, are those
who received their education in such matters from heated
political orations and the special pleadings of a partisan
press. Graduates of such a school are usually impudently
intolerant of dissenting opinion. They know exactly what
should be done another illustration of the axiom that " a
little learning is a dangerous thing " ; but the man who,
for long years has sweat blood over the standard works of
political economy and the industrial history of nations,
isn't so cock-sure. He is willing to admit that there are
two sides to every shield. Savants disagree so radically
on almost every proposition, the experience of various
countries has been so divergent, that he stands, like an-
other Hamlet, lost in his own irresolution.
Many of the specimens of monetary literature sent me
by trainmen bear the imprint of the Railway Age, and are
evidently intended to grossly deceive those whose arduous
luties leave them insufficient time for an exhaustive study
>f the currency question. The Age is trying to convince
railway employes that free silver means their industrial
62 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Destruction striving desperately to drive them, like a
flock of frightened sheep, into the McKinley shambles.
The Age has a perfect right to plead for the gold stan-
dard if it deems best, but is not privileged to resort to the
persuasive methods of the Malayan pirate, or to reinforce
its argument with falsehood. Of course like Desdemona
it " may be honest " ; but it is certainly not supplying
Mark Hanna with so many tons of literature at its own
cost. If it has entered into a compact to exert its very
considerable influence as a class journal to deliver the rail-
way vote to McKinley ; if it is grinding out campaign liter-
ature for a consideration, then it is simply a disreputable
decoy, whose every statement should be regarded with
profound distrust. The methods adopted by the Age are
not calculated to inspire confidence that it is incorruptible.
I cull the following excerpt from a card bearing its im-
print, and which I am creditably informed the employes
of various railways have been notified by the general
managers to " either sign or decline to do so." This
simply means, if not the merest baby-play to which rail-
way managers are not much addicted that men who re-
fuse to sign this card may look for an early " lay-off,"
without time limit. This is certainly a much more satis-
factory way of " bringing the men to their senses " than
undisguised coercion of American citizens, which might re-
sult in a very disagreeable revolt.
Notice : This is a statement of my personal reasons for
being opposed to the Free Coinage of Silver:
1. Because my present pay won't quite enable me to
buy everything on earth, and I have no desire to have that
pay cut in two.
2. Because I prefer to have what few dollars I earn
worth 100 cents apiece, not 53 cents.
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 63
3. Because I do not see why I should be any better off
if the price of everything I had to buy was doubled.
4. Because I have no idea it would profit me if the whole
country went bankrupt.
5. Because, though the ratio may now be 16 men out of
work to 1 who has a job, I do not desire to swell the
ratio by turning tramp myself.
6. Because, though I do not happen to be general
manager of this road, I am still no blooming fool.
I freely concede that a railway employee might attach
his signature to the foregoing symposium of financial folly
without being a " blooming fool." Having a family to
support, and feeling morally certain that the slightest ex-
hibition of political independence would cause the loss of
his situation, he might sacrifice his manhood rather than
see his loved ones suffer. True, only weaklings could thus
cower before the grim spectre of Want ; the man with iron
in his blood would make answer that 'twere better that
children should die in the faith that they were sired by
sovereigns, than live in the knowledge that they were
spawned by slaves. One may sell his political birthright
for a mess of pottage without being a " blooming fool " ;
but I cheerfully undertake to demonstrate that the author
of the card is a blooming burgeoning, ebullient ass, who
can easily fan himself with his ears. The idea floating
about in his majestic mind is that free-coinage of silver
would, by doubling the price of all products, bankrupt
the country and leave devil a thing for the railway man to
do. This idea is the pivot around which all gold-bug
arguments revolve. I sometimes think the McKinley mag-
piers have rehearsed this ridiculous romance until they
believe it appears somewhere in the Bible. To see them all
weeping and wailing around Mark Hanna protective
64 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
tariff baron and professional wrecker of labor unions
because of the enhanced price of everything the workman
has to buy, were enough to wring the briny from a terra-
cotta bust of Sitting Bull.
Doubling the price of the products of farm, and mine
and factory, would, as the veriest tyro in political economy
knows, powerfully stimulate production. Millions of acres
of land that have long lain fallow would come under culti-
vation, the flocks and herds increase, new mines vomit
forth their hidden weath, the roar of long-silent furnaces
and the hum of new factories be heard in the land. Every
transportation line would be taxed to its utmost limit.
All the antiquated engines capable of turning a wheel would
be pressed into service, every old " flat-footed " box re-
furbished and sent pounding down the long lines of shim-
mering steel. There would be a tremendous demand for
labor employers would bid against each other until the
wage rate in every calling reached the highest point the
business would bear. Who said so? Every standard
authority on political economy for 200 years excepting
only the editor of the Age. It is a lesson taught in the
school of experience that academy where even " blooming
fools " are supposed to be educated. The Age editor
takes issue with all the experience of the past and all the
wisdom of the present in declaring that free silver would
double prices, and, at the same time, send us industrially
to the devil. According to his theory, carried to its legiti-
mate conclusion, all we need to become wonderfully pros-
perous is one-cent cotton and five-cent corn. This is the
genuine gold-bug idea, to benefit the poor by decreasing
the cost of everything they have to purchase by electing
Protective Tariff McKinley president! The Age editor
wants a high tariff to push the price of American products
up, and a gold standard to push it down all for the bene-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 65
fit of the poor brakeman. But he is only playing on the
currency string at present. When the country comes to
one-cent cotton and five-cent corn, the railway employee
will be right " in the push." 'Cause why ? He can feed and
clothe himself at so little cost his salary will enable him
to " buy everything on earth." And being on a gold
basis, of course there won't be the slightest danger of its
being " cut in two." If an engineer receives $4 a day when
corn is 50 cents a bushel, he'll get no more if it goes to a
dollar, no less if it slumps to a dime. While on a gold
basis, everything has a tendency to decline in price except
the labor of the railway employee. A man with such
ideas as that ought to consult an alienist.
This remarkable mental homunculus who lays down
economic law for the poor benighted railway employee, will
doubtless attempt to crawfish out of his awkward predica-
ment by saying he meant that free-silver would increase
prices nominally, but not actually. Reference to para-
graphs 2 and 3 of his card will demonstrate that he meant
nothing of the kind ; that the idea he meant to convey, and
he did convey, was that free-silver would both reduce the
purchasing power of the dollar to 53 cents in gold, while
doubling the price, as measured by the yellow metal, of all
that the railway employee must purchase. To interpret
the two propositions in any other manner were to reduce
them to the merest drivel. I am charitable enough to con-
cede that despite the abnormal length of his ears he
would not file a kick with both hind feet because, under
free coinage, workmen would give two pieces of metal
worth 50 cents each, for what they now give one worth
100 cents each because it would still require two pints to
make a quart, two halves to make a whole. He is on
record either as urging that free-silver would double the
price of all American products, and at the same time create
66 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
universal bankruptcy and turn railway employees into
tramps, else as making a foolish roar because a man, hav-
ing a piece of metallic property, could not exchange it for
that worth twice as much. He may take either horn of the
dilemma he likes.
But let us give him an opportunity to " saw-by ," to
" take the slack " and get over the grade. In railroading,
the " boys " are very careful of new beginners, and the
same rule should obtain in economics. We will concede that
he is really trying to say that the silver would have only
about one-half the purchasing power of the present gold
dollar that it would require two of the former to obtain
what can now be had for one of the latter ; in other words,
that prices of products would remain really as now, but
would be nominally doubled when measured by the white
metal. So free-silver is not to affect actual prices they
will remain even as they are now; and while they so re-
main how can there be any marked change in industrial
conditions? From whence is to arise that forbidding cloud
which will envelop us in universal bankruptcy? An era
of panic and general bankruptcy, synchronous with sta-
tionary prices, were a miracle never yet witnessed by
mortal man. It were an effect without a cause. I have
often wished I could think of thoughts of Infinity and
here am I, trying to analyze the amorphous ideas of an
ass.
He lays it down as financial law and economic gospel
that, under the new dispensation, you would receive ex-
actly the same number of " 50-cent " silver dollars for
labor that you now get " 100-cent " gold dollars ; ergo,
your wages or their purchasing power, which is the same
thing would be greatly reduced. In other words, railway
labor is to be the one lone, lorn sufferer by free-silver.
The farmer who now gets 40 cents gold for his corn, will
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 67
i
receive its equivalent, or 80 cents silver, and cannot kick.
The planter, instead of 7 cents gold will get 14 cents silver
for his cotton, and go bury his sorrow. The carpenter,
who will now build your house for two gold-basis dollars
per day, will receive four blonde jinglers and go on his
way rejoicing. You will pay 30 cents for a shave, because
the gold basis has been knocked from under the pale metal,
and it stands on its own bottom. Your cook lady will de-
mand a double salary as measured in silver, and your wash-
lady wants two-bits for starching the tail of your Sunday
shirt. The railway sandwich will cost you 20 cents and
the cannon-ball doughnuts scoff at your dime. The milk
man will raise the price of the product of his pump, your
butcher, baker and candlestick maker just double their
bills. But in this general equalization of prices, this doub-
ling up of " 50-cent dollars " to secure to all others their
present purchasing power, nobody will care for the down-
trodden conductor, the autocrat of the locomotive will be
left out in the cold. Whether out of this wreck and
wraith the Pullman porter will rise triumphant, like an
ebony phoenix from the ashes, deponent saith not. Just
why the trainman is to be side-tracked at a flag-station
with a dead engine, I was unable to understand until I had
waded through the more pretentious economic efforts sent
out by the Age for the world's enlightment. From its
" Sound Money Talks to Railway Men No. 1," I learn
that, " within six months after the enactment of a free-
coinage law, every railway company in this country will
be unable to meet its interest payments, and go into bank-
ruptcy." I give him a chance to make you shiver.
" The gold wherewith to meet charges will not be ob-
tainable in this country and will only be obtainable in
Europe by paying for it in silver at the ruling market
68 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
rate for bullion not our 16 to 1 ratio, but the ratio of
the London bullion market. Every American railway
would have to pay every cent of its gold obligations
(about) twice over. I say " about," because there is no
knowing where the bullion price of silver would go to. And
there is no railway in the country which could do that. In
the struggle to do it there would be such a cutting of
wages and forces as we have never yet dreamed of."
So it appears that railway companies, as \roll as their
employees, will go through the financial tresfle, weakened
by the free-silver flood. Why? Because they will 'have
to carry great ship-loads of our silver to Europe and
with it buy gold to meet the interest on their bonds
will have to pay every cent of their obligations " about
twice ever." The Age editor quotes in a yaller-back
pamphlet accompanying his " Talks " President Ashley
of the Wabash as saying that the American railways are
mortgaged for 5 billion dollars, principal and interest
the latter aggregating 250 millions per annum payable in
gold. Now boys, line up alongside o' this box-car and let
us test the wisdom of our new Solomon.
The proposition is that we will have to send abroad
every year enough silver bullion to purchase 250 millions
of gold, with which to meet interest charges on railway
mortgages. We now have 500 million of silver coin. At
bullion rates that would secure the necessary gold for one
year. Once abroad it would not come back because worth
no more here under free coinage so say the gold-bugs
than anywhere else. We produce less than 100 millions
of silver a year, coin value; less than 50 million bullion
value. Of this we use one-tenth in the arts. Now where
in God's name are we going to get silver the second year
with which to buy in Europe 250 millions of gold? And
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 69
if we send abroad all the silver we can rake and scrape,
to buy gold to pay interest on our railway bonds, from
whence is to come that awful avalanche of 53-cent dollars
which is to wreck our industries? But suppose that we
can produce the requisite amount of silver with which to
purchase 250 millions of gold every year and turn it
loose in the land: In 10 years we'll have a gold currency of
$2,500,000,000. Hully gee ! The free silverites seem to
be the only sure-enough gold standard men after all.
While Cleveland has been worrying about the " reserve,"
and haunted by the free-silver bogey, Teller, Peffer, et al
have concocted a scheme whereby all the troublesome white
metal will be unloaded on Europe, while Uncle Sam runs
a corner on the gold of the world ! " But hold," says
somebody in the crowd ; " big blocks of that 5 billion o*
bonds are held in Europe. These will drain us of both
gold and silver." Don't open your throttle till you get
the signal! This nation is mortgaged for some 15 mil-
lions gold. The real estate and railway mortgagee
amount to nearly 12 billions, to say nothing of the federal,
state and municipal funded debts. About two-thirds of
these securities are held here at home ; hence, if our gold
joes abroad, and we buy it with our silver totmeet interest
charges, we will have to bring two-thirds of our purchase
to America, or some 500 millions annually the exact
amount we now have in circulation! But let us find an-
other car and tackle the problem from a different point.
Figures won't lie " but 4 there's lot o' romance in them.
r e now have the blessed gold standard, and are expected
to believe that the annual interest charge on some 15 bil-
lions of mortgages are paid in the yellow metal. About
billions of these securities being held abroad, it follows
:hat we send to Europe 250 millions of gold annually.
low we produce an average of about 35 millions of gold
70 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
per year, of which we use 8 millions in the arts. Yet,
while steadily exporting 9 times our annual product avail-
able as an exchange medium, we have managed to accumu-
late 556 millions ! Talk about the miracle of the loaves
and fishes! Why it wasn't in it a little bit with the
financial thaumaturgy of Uncle Sam! Mark you, I am
simply working out the prize " examples " which I find in
the monetary arithmetic used by the Age editor and Presi-
dent Ashley. I think it might be a good idea for these
distinguished economists to " verify their running orders."
They're liable to telescope their logical sequence.
I only proposed to prove the Age editor a " blooming
ass " ; but as he's a fine large animal, I'll ride him a little
further. A vast amount of American securities are held
in foreign countries ; but the annual interest charge
thereon is not paid in either our gold or silver coin, but in
cattle and hogs, cotton and corn. In 1896 we sent to
Great Britain goods to the value of nearly 400 millions
and received from that country merchandise valued at less
than 160 millions. Did 240 millions of British gold come
to this country to settle the balance? Have you seen any
of it? From all the nations of the earth combined we im-
ported but 35 millions of gold that year, exported to all
combined but 66 millions and these trifling imports and
exports of the precious metal were chiefly for speculative
purposes. That 240 millions, which England apparently
owed us at the end of the year, was largely applied to the
payment of interest on our foreign indebtedness. Europe
doesn't want our gold; it wants our goods, and when it
buys our securities that is what it expects to get knows
it to be the only thing it can get. When England " lends
us money," does she give us; gold ? Nit ! she lends us>
her credit.
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 71
If the free coinage of silver should really drive gold
abroad, and we needed it to meet interest on mortgages,
what then? The Age says we can get it by selling silver
at the market price in London. Then why worry? If we
obtain the market price for our bullion, how are we
robbed? And if we can obtain gold by selling silver bul-
lion, can we not get it by selling beef? And when we sell
our products for their full value in the world's markets
and apply the proceeds to the discharge of our gold obli-
gations, how in the name of Socrates do you figure it out
that we " pay every cent of our obligations twice over " ?
Wih 1 the editor of the Age explain how we get gold now,
either here or in Europe, except by selling something?
Some obtain it by selling peanuts to the people, some by
selling their labor to railway corporations, and some by
selling their souls to Mark Hanna. We are solemnly as-
sured that " gold is the basis of our currency system, the
mainstay of our credit." Why, all the gold we've got
would not pay the expenses of government, federal, state
and municipal, so long as it took the Age editor to write
himself down an economic idiot. There are ten men in this
country who could corner all we've got. Suppose they
should decide it to their interest to do so, and should
bury it and forget to mark the spot : Wouldn't this nation
be in a hell of a fix? Is it really possible for a street-car
load of men to everlastingly wreck this, the wealthiest,
most progressive and powerful nation! in the world, by
gathering up all its pound weights? Yet our dollar
measure of value is really of no more importance than our
pound measure of quantity we are no whit more de-
pendent upon it for our prosperity. Were they both taken
we would quickly devise other trade tools. " Our gold
will go abroad ! " Not unless somebody wants it worse
than we do and will give more for it. Why does any
72 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
American product go abroad? Isn't it because it makes to
our profit to assist its departure?
All this prattle about free silver giving us a depreciated
dollar and recking our industries, is the merest moon-
shine. Who says so? Every gold-bug orator and editor
in this country solemnly declares it. Cleveland, McKinley
and Col. Dan Malvin all frankly admit it. There are one
million railroaders in this country. Suppose that half of
them should go to Europe and forget to come back ; that
it would require 15 years to fill their places, the railways
increasing both their mileage and their tonnage all the
time: What would be the effect on the railway wage rate?
Would it go up or down? You know it would jump like a
jack-rabbit that had inadvertently gone to roost on a red
ant hill. Very Well: Now it is an axiom of economists
that the purchasing power of money is affected like the
wage-rate by the supply relative to the demand. Money
must do the exchange work of this country just as you do
its railway work. When there are more men than jobs the
tendency of the wage rate is downward; when there are
more jobs than men the tendency is upward. When there
is more money than business its purchasing power de-
creases, because it all presses for employment ; when there
is more business than money its purchasing power in-
creases. We will say that we have 556 millions of gold
and 500 millions of silver coin: That, according to the
gold-bugs, is all the real money we've got, our paper dol-
lars being simply checks issued against it. What do
Messrs. Cleveland, McKinley and Malvin say would be the
immediate effect of opening our mints to silver? The
banishment of gold the contraction of our volume of real
money more than one-half. They further assert that it
would require from 15 to 20 years to accumulate enough
silver coin to fill the hiatus caused by the expatriation of
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 73
the " yellow-boys " and our population and volume of
commerce constantly increasing. In other words, % bil-
lion of money would have to do the money work now per-
formed by a billion, just as % million railroaders would
have to do the railway work of this country if the other
half went away. The inference is dead easy : If coin be in
fact the basis of our currency as they claim reducing
its volume one-half would double the present purchasing
power of the dollar. It has been time and again conceded
by the wisest economists of the world; it has been time
and again demonstrated by actual experience that, no
matter of what the exchange media be made, its purchas-
ing power will be enhanced by a reduction of its volume
relative to the exchange work to be done. Twisting a
brake is one way of making money out of a railway ; there
are others. It is sometimes more profitable to bring about
conditions that enable the " railway magnates " to freeze
out the small stockholder of whom we are hearing so
much at present than to increase the tonnage of a road
and swell the ranks of the industrial army. Pawnbrokers
thrive best when the people are " broke " and the great
capitalists and mortgage companies are simply doing a
pawnbroking business.
I am privileged to speak plainly to the railway men of
America, for I have served a term " behind the smoke-
stack." I did not get my railway experience in the politi-
cal department. I was never wound up by professional
railway " wreckers " and sent forth to tell the man in the
grimy jacket how to vote if he desires to retain his situa-
tion. I may not know so much about the currency ques-
tion as do those supplying " industrial cannibals " with
campaign literature ; still I feel like warning my old com-
panions in cab and caboose of the slick artist now trying
to play them for rank suckers. You are told that free
74 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
silver will cause railway construction to cease and throw
existing companies into the hands of receivers. That
were much like flagging a train already in the ditch.
Railway construction practically ceased sometime ago,
and the receiver is numerously in evidence. The wage rate
tends steadily downward and thousands of experienced
railroaders are living on hope deferred. And the " honest
money " of the McKinleyites is " in our midst " ! Our
great period of industrial development was between the
close of the war and 1879 when gold had gone into hid-
ing and you were " suffering the manifold ills of cheap
money." Those were the days when railway men wore
diamonds. Not only railway construction, but all in-
dustrial development is at a stand-still here the capi-
talists preferring to plant their good money in free silver
Mexico, the home of " repudiation." What they put out
here is in pursuit of their pawnbroking business in taking
advantage of the people's necessities; what they send to
Mexico goes to develop new industries and augment the
legions of labor. Despite the enterprise and industry
of its Celt and Saxons, America is really retrograding;
despite the native worthlessness of her people, Mexico feels
the magic thrill of progress.
In his blood-curdling yaller-back the Age editor quotes
from President Hill of the Great Northern, who has much
to say about " the 25-cent wage rate of Mexico, paid in
depreciated dollars." They all do, and strive to create
the impression that free-silver would inevitably place the
American laborer on a parity with the Mexican. I exposed
this falsehood in the August ICONOCLAST, but as the supply
of papers was not equal to the demand, it may be well to
put the gaffles into it again. How can men receive much
for their labor when it produces but little ? Furthermore,
this " 25-cent Mexican wage-rate " is an impudent false-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 75
hood. The man who peddles it is either a liar by profes-
sion, else he ought to be castrated to prevent him getting
fools. I quote the Mexican wage scale for 1895 from
U. S. consular reports compiled by a gold-standard de-
partment of state: Bricklayers $10 per week, masons
$10.80, bakers $7.60, brass-founders and cabinet-makers
$10 each, stevedores $9, tailors $7.14, telegraph operators
$11.50 and other skilled labor in proportion. Unskilled
labor is paid an average of $2.90 per week, or nearly 50
cents per day a Mexican dollar purchasing fully as much
of the comforts of life in that country as will a gold-
standard dollar in this state. If President Hill is look-
ing for a " 25-cent wage " he can find it in gold-standard
Italy, where drivers are paid 25 and hod-carriers 28 cents
per day. The general wage-rate of silver-standard
Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela is higher
than that of gold-standard England, Scotland, Ireland,
Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. The measure
of value has no more effect on the wage-rate than has a
pair of scales on the price of putty.
" Then why " you may well ask, " should capitalists
really care to preserve the gold standard?" They have
made of gold a fetich and are robbing and enslaving the
people by playing upon their economic ignorance. They
have builded a golden Joss and by the assistance of such
evangelists as the editor of the Age, persuaded the people
to pay it almost divine honors ; to offer upon its foolish
altar the first fruits and fat of the land all of which
is promptly referred to the larders of its chief priests and
Levites. By means of this financial hoodoo they have
induced the Titan of Toil to add to his already grievous
burden 262 millions of interest-bearing bonds in a time
of abundant crops and profound peace. Why? That a
coterie of capitalists might pick up 10 million dollars in
76 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
as many days on the ridiculous pretext of " protecting
the credit " of a 2-billion dollar currency, with 100 mil-
lions of gold! The Age explains that if you draw $1,000
worth of orders against $100 due you by the company,
they will be worth only 10 cents on the dollar; yet our
$1,660,000,000 of paper and silver money is supposed
to be drawn against the $100,000,000 gold reserve of
Uncle Sam ! There's 16 to 1 for you with a vengeance !
Of course government can get more gold by selling bonds
to redeem its promises to pay; just as you can get more
money by selling labor to keep your order at par, The
great capitalists have employed gold to create panics that
have closed factories, banrupted merchants, augmented
the army of tramps and precipitated bread riots that
ended in blood, simply to enhance the gains of a pitiless
system of pawnbrokerage. Gold, by itself considered, has
given them no more power than though they possessed an
equal value of other forms of property; but they suc-
ceeded in convincing the people that the auriferous Joss
was their industrial Palladium, just as the sacred thieves
of ancient Ilium did the superstitious Trojans that, upon
the preservation of a block of stone and the payment of
tribute to its priests, depended the safety of their city.
I have no " free-silver wheels." The currency question,
stripped of the bogy feature given by capitalists to gold,
is simply a political pipe dream, an issue to get office.
Considered from a purely economic standpoint, it is of no
more consequence whether we open the mints to silver than
whether you feed your face with a spoon or a fork. But
I have treated of this phase of the question in previous
issues of this paper. After careful study of the monetary
rate-sheet, the economic time-card, I have concluded that
should we ditch both the gold-bug string o' Pullmans and
the free-silver freight, Uncle Sam as general manager of
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 77
the system, would require no explanation of the disaster.
They are both political excursions running wild on the
regular time of the hog-train. They should be pitched
into the woods and the commerce of the road given the
right-o'way. The heads of these currency agitators are
so many hot-boxes that are filling the atmosphere with the
malodor of frying dope and setting the culverts afire.
Commerce will fix the measure of value and provide the
necessary exchange media if these political tramps will but
avoid a tail-end collision with their own brains and refrain
from putting soap in the boiler. Our present hard times
are almost entirely due to political agitation. The blessed
saviors of the country won't let it be saved. They are
forever reporting imaginary landslides and paranoic
wash-outs up the line, and impeding the commerce of the
country by tinkering around the d d old work-train.
As a business man, I cannot see that free-silver would
help or hurt me, whether it remained at par and circu-
lated side by side with gold, or drove the latter out and
slumped to 53 cents. A change in our measures of value
might be inconvenient, but not necessarily disastrous.
Commerce would quietly adapt itself to the changed condi-
tions. Our bull would still gender, our cow still calve;
the earth would continue to yield its increase and food-
fish be caught in the sea. The manufacturer and the
farmer would persist in exchanging their products though
the Chinese yen or German mark became our exchange
medium. I do not expect that free-silver will fill the
Mississippi with honey and the Missouri with milk; but
gold has been made a ridiculous idol, and I'm in the idol-
breaking business. Like Mahomet, I say to men who bow
down to this foolish fetich, " Behold ! Your god has flies
on it." When I was a little Sunday school boy, a school
teacher named Decker tried to frighten me out of all my
78 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
faults. Assuming a hideous disguise, he entered by bed-
room and informed me that he was Satan himself. As I
had been told that the Devil would get me for swearing,
I was not much surprised. I said : " You're a hell of a
looking devil, but I believe you're lying; I'll just call you
with this iron boot- jack." Satan didn't " get behind me,"
but he got. I'm all aweary of this bugaboo set up by the
gold-bugs. It has thrown Columbia into commercial
spasms and industrial convulsions. If she will but muster
up sufficient courage to call it with a double-barreled boot-
jack, she'll find it another harmless old Decker in disguise.
A CRUSADE OF CALUMNY.
THE brutal post-election assaults of the Republican and
mugwump press on Mr. Bryan and those who followed his
banner, is mournful evidence of the decadence of American
manhood. Having accepted the arbitrament of the ballot,
we should be accorded the " honors of war " instead of
persistently Weylered. When brave men sheathe the sword
the quarrel's done ; to assault an opponent who is hors du
combat bespeaks the cowardly cur. The dunghill rooster
and McKinley editor are the only bipedal animals on earth
contemptible enough to insult a fallen foe. During the
campaign we expected to be belittled and belied by the
opposition orators and editors to be deluged with the
malodor of polemical pole-cats and were not dis-
appointed ; but what object they have in continuing their
crusade of calumny after capturing the spoils, is beyond
my comprehension. It must be because they are built
that way because their campaign of conquest has made
them so corrupt that lying adds zest to life, so embruted
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 79
that they enjoy their own bestiality. Conspicuous among
the blatant jacks now vigorously flaunting their cowardly
heels in the wounded lion's face is that lantern- jawed
libel of God's masterpiece who is making a futile attempt
to fill the editorial toga once worn by the mighty Horace
Greeley. Speaking of the Bryan campaign, the New York
Tribune one of the hungry dogs that ever hang about
Dives' door says with ponderous gravity:
" The thing was conceived in iniquity and was brought
forth in sin. It had its origin in a malicious conspiracy
against the honor and integrity of the Nation. It gained
such monstrous growth as it employed from an assiduous
culture of the basest passions of the least worthy members
of the community. It has been defeated and destroyed
because right is right and God is God. Its nominal head
was worthy of the cause. Nominal, because the wretched,
rattlepated boy, posing in vapid vanity and mouthing re-
sounding rottenness, was not the real leader of that league
of hell. He was only a puppet in the blood-imbued hands
of Altgeld the anarchist and Debs the revolutionist and
other desperadoes of that stripe. But he was a willing
puppet, Bryan was, willing and eager. Not one of his
masters was more apt than he at lies and forgeries and
blasphemies and all the nameless iniquities of that cam-
paign against the Ten Commandments. He goes down
with the cause, and must abide with it in the history of
infamy. He had less provocation than Benedict Arnold,
less intellectual force than Aaron Burr, less manliness and
courage than Jefferson Davis. He was the rival of them
all in deliberate wickedness and treason to the republic.
His name belongs with theirs, neither the most brilliant
nor the most hateful in the list. Good riddance to it all,
to conspiracy and conspirators, and to the foul menace
80 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of repudiation and anarchy against the honor and life
of the republic."
There is much more of it ; but my readers will doubtless
find the foregoing amply sufficient. It is offered as a fair
sample of the impudent post-election utterances of the
McKinley organs. Thousands of columns of that kind of
slop have been spewed forth by editors posing as " public
educators," and whose bellies are still plethoric with bile.
It provokes the contemptuous pity rather than excites
the anger of intelligent people. It is impossible for such
foul-mouthed blackguards to insult well-bred American
sovereigns ; still it is well to understand with what kind of
cattle we have to deal, that we may waste no courtesy
upon them in the next campaign. Such utterances prove
conclusively that the consideration shown them by Mr.
Bryan was a mistake that " 'tis a waste of lather to
shave an ass." In treating his opponents with Chester-
fieldian courtesy and assuming that they were patriots
honestly holding erroneous opinions, he was casting pearls
before creatures whom it were fulsome flattery to charac-
terize as swine. By employing legitimate argument he
provoked their unappeasable anger, and the further they
get from the election the greater their fury. In appealing
to their honor and understanding, he addressed himself to
the non-extant. Perhaps, after all, Mr. Bryan was too
inexperienced for the presidency. He ingenuously judged
his opponents by himself supposed them honorable when
they were really infamous. He could not comprehend that
courtesy was utterly wasted on even the most contemptible
of those unclean creatures called into being by the in-
scrutable wisdom of God. It appeared to him impossible
that editors like Reid and Watterson, Belo and Pulitzer,
while posing as tribunes of the people, could be corrupt to
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 81
the heart's core could be vulgar as buzzards and vicious
as bulls. And so he appealed to the reason of the people
and ignored the coarse insults of the opposition refused
to sling slime with the lepidosauria, to fight the devil with
fire. He bore himself in battle with all the gracious
courtesy of an Arthurian knight ; and, while realizing that
he had been o'erthrown by fraud had been struck in the
back with a golden dagger by base conspirators accepted
the adverse decision without complaint and left the lists
with clean hands, carrying with him the love and admira-
tion of all capable with an empty treasury and basely de-
serted in its hour of peril by those whom it had long de-
delighted to honor; handicapped by a malevolent traitor-
breeding administration and opposed by the tremendous
resources of a money power as destitute of conscience as
of patriotism such was the trying position in which Mr.
Bryan was suddenly placed. The battle which he waged
against these overwhelming odds will pass into history as
the mightiest struggle made by one man for human rights
since Rienzi contended singlehanded with the gilded rob-
bers of Rome. Self-poised as Washington, eloquent as
Webster, courageous as Jackson, honest as Lincoln, and
the equal of a thousand McKinleys in intellect such will
be the estimate of W. J. Bryan by the Carlyles and
Macaulays of the Twentieth century. And this is the
man upon whom the Tribune and other journalistic peons
and Wall street panders are emptying their stink-pots>
just as they emptied them upon Lincoln and every other
patriot who has dared proclaim that the people have rights
which even the money-power is bound to respect. " Fool,
knave, demagogue, anarchist, clown, idiot " these are
a few of the epithets applied by New York's boodle press
alike to Bryan and Lincoln. Never did a man of sterling
integrity offer for the presidency but had to run the brutal
82 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
gauntlet of New York's journalistic bravos. Think of
such a man as Bryan a man as rigidly honest as that ill-
starred Roman who proposed to coin his heart's blood into
drachmas rather than despoil the poor being declared
" apt at lies and forgeries and blasphemies and all the
nameless iniquities against the Ten Commandments." And
this by a disreputable journalistic misfit and political
Jonah who four years ago sought to attain the vice-
presidency by means of votes bought in " blocks-of-five " !
Out upon you, you cadaverous hatchet-faced Anglo-mani-
acal parvenu you canting hypocrite rolling your watery
eyes to heaven and mouthing of God and the Command-
ments while striving to steal by means of malicious lies
the good name of honest men ! If we had no better Ameri-
cans than you, we'd be the very humble subjects of Albert
Edward and John Brown's beery relict, or the barefooted,
dog-eating peons of Dictator Diaz. Haven't you got gall
to assume that a party which contains you and 8 million
other disreputable niggers and unmanly mongrels repre-
sents the intelligence and integrity of the most enlightened
land upon which shines the sun ! Hadn't you best get on
the port side of yourself and make a cautious inspection of
your panties after denouncing a majority of the native-
born white men of America as repudiators of their honest
debts and conspirators against the life of this Republic?
There are many good men in the Republican party, but
they didn't elect Mr. McKinley. His popular plurality,
of which you are so proud, represents the votes of niggers
who will steal anything they can carry who will barter
the sexual favors of their wenches to white Republicans
for half the money they demand for their ballots. It
represents the venal suffrages of illiterate paupers im-
ported from Southern Europe by Mark Hanna and other
leather-lunged " protectors of American labor." Take
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 83
out the nigger vote and Bryan has a popular plurality ;
take out the votes of Slavs and Huns, of Poles and
Sicilians, of the Italian Lazzaroni and other beggarly
scavengers of Europe's back alleys who went as one man
for McKinley and Bryan is elected with votes to burn.
These are the critters who smashed the " league of hell,"
the " conspiracy against the honor and life of the Re-
public " entered into by men whose fathers were the
first defenders of Freedom's flag! I have no bricks to
cast at intelligent men of foreign birth whose honesty and
industry lend dignity to the land of their adoption; but
as we are here discussing the relative worth of the person-
nel of the two great parties, it is not amiss to call atten-
tion to the fact that those states containing the largest
contingent of undesirable Europeans rolled up the biggest
majorities for McKinley that this one element of the
Republican party furnishes more than 58 per cent, of our
paupers and nearly 57 per cent, of our criminals. To
these malodorous factors in the " preservation of the na-
tional honor " the buck niggers and assisted emigrants
must be added a third, fully as foul. I refer to those
conspirators who nominated Palmer for the express pur-
pose of deceiving the people and electing McKinley. The
man who resorts to political skulduggery, who deliberately
practices deception, is a thief at heart and would not
scruple to rob a corpse if sure he wouldn't be caught.
Doubtless many gentlemen voted for McKinley men who
are infinitely better than their party. For these I have
no word of criticism their chagrin at being caught in
such disreputable company is sufficient punishment. It is
eminently fitting that Whitelaw Reid be organ-grinder for
such an aggregation the piano in a bawdy-house should
be played only by a pimp. The honesty, patriotism and
intelligence of this nation must be sought among its native-
84 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
born citizens, and those naturalized Europeans who have
made a careful study of our institutions of the Republic
the greatest good to the greatest number ; and it was from
these classes that Bryan drew his support. The niggers
and Huns, the vote-peddlers and men with axes to grind
at expense of government, and those political shysters
who attempted to bunco the people out of their ballots by
means of the Palmer-Buckner green goods game, had no
place in the Democratic procession. Mr. Bryan was the
choice of two-thirds of those who create the nation's wealth
who support the government in peace and defend it in
war. Had an educational test been generally in force, not
a single state could have been carried for McKinley. Yet,
having assisted in marshalling the ragtag and bobtail of
Europe and Africa to the battle of ballots, where the nig-
ger crapshooter or the Hungarian helote is potent as the
noblest patriot; having helped deliver Columbia into the
hands of professional despoilers, the Tribune has the colos-
sal impudence, the monumental nerve to add insult to in-
jury by denouncing the very men who have made this the
greatest nation on the globe, as its most dangerous ene-
mies. If I might presume to give the Tribune and other
papers of that ilk a little advice, I would " tell 'em to
don't." The Republican boodlers should enjoy their
stolen fruits without unnecessary ostentation. The people
realize that they have been swindled; but, while inclined
to let it go at that as they did in 1876 they do not
much relish being abused. We were frankly told during
the campaign that if Bryan was elected, his inaugura-
tion would not be allowed. We know that McKinley was
not elected in conformity with the laws of the land that
he should be put in the penitentiary instead of the presi-
dency. The West and the South are a trifle quick on the
trigger; hence it were the part of wisdom to jolly them up
THE WIZARD OF WORDS
85
instead of making a bid for trouble. Mr. Bryan might be-
come tired of being systematically insulted by such intel-
lectual tomtits as the Tribune man, and announce that,
having been rightly elected president, he proposed to oc-
cupy that office. Persistent abuse of his followers en-
hances his power and there are already in the West and
South a million men who would shoulder Winchesters and
follow him to Washington. If he is the "rattlepated boy "
and disreputable demagogue the Tribune would have us
believe, it were good policy not to monkey with him over-
much at this stage of the game. He might precipitate a
little contretemps that would knock so much wind and
water out of speculative values that the Tribune would
find pimping for the plutocracy no longer profitable.
This is emphatically one of those cases wherein " the least
said is soonest mended." Never awaken a sleeping bulldog
with a kick in the ribs just for the pleasure of expectorat-
ig tobacco juice in his eye. The South once became
iweary of the infernal impudence of the East, and would
ive whaled h 1's bells out of her in a hundred days had
lot Grant's Westerners spoiled our sport by getting be-
?een us and the impuissant blue-bellies and given us the
>ayonet. When the East rides both the South and West,
le should warble a soothing roundelay instead of berating
us in choice billingsgate.
IS BRYAN A BOODLER?
HIS CRITICS " CALLED " WITH COLD CASH.
'HERE are various kinds, classes and conditions of thieves,
ranging from the professional railway wrecker to the piti-
able literary pirate. It is possible to muster up some faint
86 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
adumbration of respect for those whose mental superiority
enables them to despoil the common people and avoid the
penitentiary, for genius gilds infamy itself with a kind of
infernal glory. The great wlrte light which beats upon
the brow of the lord of intellect makes us forget his faults.
Dazzled by the splendor of their genius, drunken with the
wine of their words, we care not that Demosthenes was a
coward, Horace a parasite, Csesar a tyrant, Shakespeare a
poacher and Byron king of the bawds. Lapped in the
philosophy of Lord Bacon lulled by the music of the
spheres and deep calling unto deep who can remember
that he was " the meanest of mankind? " Appalled by the
thunderbolts of Junius, we forget that they were not dealt
in honorable fight, but hurled by an assassin's hand. We
can even admire the Lucifer of Milton, who chose to be
sovereign in hell rather than a servant in heaven. A man
of superior talent may be guilty of almost any offense in
the great calendar of crime and be forgiven; but for the
plagiarist the intellectual nonentity who struts before
the public in borrowed plumes, seeking its applause there
is never a pardon. Once convicted of this pusillanimity,
he becomes a despised outcast, a pitiful pariah. The
public may discover that its idol is a drunkard or a homi-
cide, an ignoramus or a roue, and continue its adoration ;
but once convinced that he deliberately deceived it by
stealing the honor that rightfully belongs to others, it
turns from him with contempt.
That is why Dana of the New York Sun (price 2 cents),
aided and abetted by the lesser goldbug lights, has under-
taken to convince the people that Bryan is a literary
boodler, that he stole the salient points of that superb
speech which is supposed to have made him the presi-
dential nominee of an appreciative people. Dana knows
full well that no other offense which skillful innuendo or
THE WIZARD OF WORDS
87
brazen falsehood might fasten upon Mr. Bryan would
make him so ridiculous or do more to accomplish his de-
feat. As might have been expected, the " Old Lady,"
alias the Galveston-Dallas News heartily approved the
villainous plot, donned her gingham sunbonnet, grabbed
ler snuff-stick and sallied forth to exploit the scandal, to
roll the four calumny as a sweet morsel under her tongue,
to ring the charges upon a slight vraisemblance and make
of it a malevolent lie. True to its vulturous instincts,
the Louisville Courier- Journal adds its fetid vomit to this
Cloaca Maxima of villainy. And what evidence has the
Sun to offer that Bryan stole one sentence of that remark-
able oration which made trusts and monopolies tremble,
while infusing fresh hope into the hearts of a poverty-
stricken people? Dana, whose talents should cause him
to regard with contempt the vile tracasserie of " practical
>olitics "; whose position as -facile princeps of journalists
lould adjure him to be rigidly just; whose age should
lake him the loving monitor and charitable apologist of
?ady youth, descended to the level of a divorce court
detective went hunting for vice instead of virtue and
finally discovered 0, mirdbile dictu! that on the six-
and-twentieth day of the first month of the year of grace
1894, one S. W. McCall, a Republican and a sinner, did
iploy in a congressional harrangue, these very words :
Do you regard your bill with reference to labor?
leady as you have ever been to betray it with a kiss, you
scourge it to the very quick and press a thorn of crowns
upon its brow."
Now, mark the destructive awfulness of the deadly
parallel, the lethal hemlock in the following lines. Some-
ling like eighteen months thereafter, Mr. Bryan employed
ds language at Chicago:
88 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
" Thou shalt not press the crown of thorns to the brow
of labor, and thou shalt not crucify the best interests of
this great republic on a cross of gold.
And there you are ! Isn't it clear as mud that Bryan
was but parroting the words of Congressman McCall?
Sure! Dana says so; and if Dana doesn't know, who
does? The Gal-Dai says so; and if an editor who fills
his columns with mysterious allusions to " flammivomous
cotqueans, altisonous shouts, melancomous Gardens and
Sanguinivorous Bookhouts " in unable to identify meta-
phors by the thumb-marks, what in the name of Grover
the Good are we to do for literary guides? 'S'use o'
prating longer of the higher criticism if we cannot see
that McCall's speech in congress was the ovulum of
Bryan's at Chicago? Didn't both say "labor" and
66 crown of thorns ? " Did the Nebraskian specify a dif-
ferent class of labor from that alluded to by the man from
Massachusetts, or so much as intimate that he had used
a peculiarly western brand of thorns in the construction
of his crown? Evidence of plagiarism? Rather! True,
I cannot, to save me, remember my own speeches eighteen
hours after I deliver them; but that's no reason why
Bryan shouldn't be able to repeat McCall's after the lapse
of eighteen months. And of course the latter is just the
man an aspiring orator would select as his model. He is
so unusually eloquent that nobody ever heard of him until
the Danian discovery. A man eager to make " rep " on
the rostrum would naturally pass by Burke and Beecher,
Clay and Conkling, and cast his eloquence in the mold of
that new-found Demosthenes, Sammy McCall! But if
further evidence be needed of the shameless plagiarism
of the Nebraskian we have only to turn to Dana's great
diurnal. It deposeth that only a few days after McCall's
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 89
long-forgotten effort, Congressman Bryan did arise in
the full assembly of the gods, and deliver himself as
follows :
Oh, sirs, is it not enough to betray the cause of the
poor must it be done with a kiss?
Just look at that! Stole the kiss before it was hardly
cold, and in eighteen months made a sneak on the crown
of thorns ! Small wonder that Dana's office cat has been
thrown into convulsions by his vociferous call of " stop
thief ! " Just as like as not Bryan has McCall's
" scourge " laid up in his woodshed likewise and will spring
it in the present campaign. If McCall has applied for a
copyright on allusions to Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot
he should lose no time in filing a brass-mounted, copper-
riveted caveat.
It is difficult to treat with becoming decency editors who
will engage in a scheme so damnably disreputable as that
engineered by old Dana. It has in it nothing suggestive of
Machiavelli or Mephistopheles. As an imposture it were
unworthy even a Cagliostro is marked with the pretty
malignity of a Quilp, the innate meanness of a Caliban.
One is tempted to " cuss out " such bungling thieves of
reputation, to express in plain English his opinion of
such vindictive but impotent pueriles ; but it would scarce
be printable in this popular society journal and Sunday
school periodical. There is not the slightest evidence that
Mr. Bryan heard the harrangue of Congressman McCall.
There is not a sentence in his Chicago speech which sug-
gests it. The kiss of betrayal has been used as a meta-
phor since the days of Solomon. The crown of thorns
has been employed for ages as a symbol of oppression. I
find it in my own writings before either McCall or Bryan
90 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
was elected to congress. In my callow days when I was
wont to pour my lucubrations through crimson clouds and
use the rainbow for a blotting-pad I alluded to a lockout
as " a crown of thorns woven by the wolfish fingers of Greed
and pressed upon the brow of helpless Need." I've been
sorry for it since. If I had it to do over again I would hang
the " crown of thorns " upon the hat-rack and saw the
" wolfish fingers " off at the elbows ; still I was not poach-
ing on the preserves of Dana's congressional pet. I had
supposed hitherto that the " Judas kiss " and " crown of
thorns," like the " knife to the hilt," the " rosy fingers of
the morn," the " dull sickening thud," and all that kind
of thing, were common property constituted a general
magazine or public trash-barrel, to which young authors
and orators were privileged to resort for metaphorical
bric-a-brac with which to " point a moral or adorn a tale."
If Dana has proved Bryan a plagiarist, then, by the
same token, I will undertake to demonstrate that every
orator since Alcibiades, and every author since JEschilus
was a literary pirate. By applying this hitherto unheard-
of rule of criticism, Dana concedes its justness and " with
what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with
what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.'
I will wager $500 in gold that I can take any column
editorial that has appeared in the New York Sun or
Courier- Journal during the present year, and prove-
under the rule promulgated by Dana and sanctioned by
Watterson that its author was guilty of gross plagiar-
ism. The same offer is open to the Galveston-Dallas News,
and all other gold-bug organs. Nay, more: I will wager
the Galveston-Dallas News $500 in gold that it cannot
demonstrate that it has printed, as editorial, one original
idea during the past sixty days. (I haven't read the
paper closely, but I know its editors.) Now, gentlemen
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 91
journalists, who have been so busy hunting through
Bryan's speeches for small pegs upon which to hang im-
posing charges of plagiarism, be kind enough to either
come up with your boodle or spike your jaw-bones.
" Money talks," and it says you have set deliberately to
work, with malice prepense, to deceive the people to foist
upon them a damnable falsehood. It says that men who
will engage in such vicious vandalism would corrupt the
morals of a mangy coyote and disgrace by their company
a sheep-stealing dog. Yes, " money-talks " ; and my little-
esteemed contemporaries are invited to make it change the
tenor of its remarks. Understand the proposition: $500
that I can prove the Sun and Courier- Journal guilty of
plagiarism; $500 that the News cannot establish a valid
claim to one original editorial idea during a period of
sixty days and if the time is too short I'll extend it.
This looks like a case of " put up or shut up " ; but they'll
do neither. They'll not " put up " because they dare not ;
they will not " shut up," because they're destitute of
shame.
If Bryan stole his speech from the Republicans he ex-
hibited excellent judgment in taking only that which is
good ; the News, Courier- Journal and Sun have been filch-
ing from the same smokehouse, and have appropriated only
that which is bad. Bryan appears to have secured the
ivory tusks of the Republican bull elephant, leaving to
Dana, Watterson and Belo only its putrid bowels.
Solomon said probably on the morning succeeding
his seven-hundredth marriage " There's nothing new
under the sun." And there wasn't else he'd gone after
it. If the gold-bug scribes and screechers would religiously
refrain from revamping old ideas and exploiting musty
metaphors, many a pretentious editorial page would be-
come a tabula rasa, and the stentorian roar anent " re-
92 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
pudiation " resolve itself into a silence so profound that
we could hear the doodle-bugs sing. Modern literature is
little more than bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope.
New combinations are continually occurring, but there are
few creations. Show me a drama, novel, poem, religious
thesis or economic idea brought forward during the present
century, for which the industrious critic cannot find a
"prototype." According to the Danian school of intel-
lectual anatomy, Shakespeare was the prince of plagiar-
ists, and Dante but a clever redacteur. The beautiful
peroration of Lincoln's Gettysburg speech has been " dis-
covered " in an old schoolbook and even the God of the
Bible was borrowed.
Ninety-and-nine per cent, of the ideas which dwell in
the mind of the wisest man of this world were born in
other brains and the larger the proportion of borrowed
knowledge the further his remove from barbarism.
Writers and speakers often think they are creating when
they are only remembering. The literature of every land,
from its profoundest philosophy to its nephritic poetry, is
thick-strewn with unconscious plagiarisms; while, per
contra many seemingly just accusations are based on mere
coincidences. Every author must sometimes feel a cold
chill creep up and down his spinal column as he peruses
for the first time some ancient tome, and there sees a pet
idea, which he had evolved with infinite labor, exploited in
almost his own language. While a barefoot boy, follow-
ing a lazy team afield, I became imbued with the idea that
the initiative and referendum was necessary to the life of
this nation. I had never heard of the plan and knew not
the meaning of the words. And so it is with others.
As Samantha Allen would say, " When a feller reaches the
goal he finds somebody asettin' on it."
From age to age the race has added, little by little, to
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 93
its store of knowledge. The man who contributes much
to this general stock we call a genius ; that most expert in
diffusing it, a scholar. Each is entitled to the honor he
may earn, and any attempt to appropriate it is plagiarism
Bryan has taken nothing from McCall. The metaphors
used by both were older than either; that employed by
Bryan alone was new, so far as I know a beautiful
floweret which blossomed in his fecund brain, to blush
between the snow-cold breasts of Knowledge. We are told
by the editors and orators of the auric standard that the
greatest crisis in the history of this country is at hand.
They assume the role of public educators, directors of
the people. And how are they discharging this important
duty? Are they carefully analysing measures, weighing
men, studiously seeking the best means of serving their
country in her supposed hour of agony? Before address-
ing the public, Pericles was wont to pray the gods to al-
low only words of truth ond wisdom to pass his lips, yet
the great Athenian could make himself heard only by a
few hundreds. " The Sun shines for all." Think of the
responsibility in times like these of an editor who speaks
day by day to a million Americans ! Wisdom would stam-
mer, conscience weigh every word, patriotism humbly pray
for inspiration. How is it with Dana? He pours into
his columns moldy chestnuts about the repugnance of
Populists to socks and soap, gives the " Chicago lunatics "
a vitriolic bath, then goes chasing through the Congres-
sional Record for crowns of thorns, Judas kisses and
metaphorical crucifixions. He proposes to tide the
country over a supposed great currency crisis by demon-
strating that W. J. Bryan is not a deaf and dumb Digger
Indian, and, therefore, not altogether " original." Verily
there are divers and sundry ways of " saving the country.'*
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
CONFESSES ITS FALSEHOOD.
SINCE the above was written the Galveston-Dallas News
has admitted that it lied about the matter, proven its own
guilt, cackled over this remarkable accomplishment and
deliberately repeated the offense from day to day ! Geo. M.
Flick having demanded its authority for the charge
of plagiarism preferred against Bryan, it first insults him
with its flippancy, then tells him that the " deadly paral-
lel " it published was taken from the Chicago Tribune, via
the Courier-Journal, and adds that " The Tribune is a
dead shot on records." This " deadly parallel " attri-
buted to both McCall and Bryan the sentence " You shall
not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." This was the
only hook upon which a charge of plagiarism could pos-
sibly be made to hang. The News next admits having in
its possession an official copy of the McCall speech, in
which it declares the cross of gold and crown of thorns
metaphor does not appear; and reproduces a letter it has
received from McCall's private secretary, saying that
"THE TRIBUNE ERRS" in attributing the now
famous phrase to the Massachusetts congressman!
In other words, the News admits having charged Bryan
with plagiarism on the testimony of a false witness, proves
said witness to have deliberately and maliciously lied, then
takes to itself great credit for turning down its interro-
gator and substantiating the charge ! In other words, the
" Old Lady boasts that she is a vestal virgin, then hastens
to adduce evidence which demonstrates beyond the per-
adventure of a doubt that she is a dirty, malignant drab.
I do not know what Proprietor Belo may think of such edi-
torial ineptitude; but were the bifurcated journal mine,
I would take a swamp-elm club, or cane made of an in-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS
95
edible portion of a defunct bovine, clean out the sanctum
and select a new staff from the incurables at the insane
asylum. The News confession that the Chicago Tribune,
Louisville Courier- Journal and itself have lied all along
about this crown of thorns and cross of gold business for
the express purpose of belittling Bryan, is a campaign
document which should not be overlooked by the Demo-
cratic executive committee. It will be found on the edi-
torial page of the Dallas end under date of August 11.
Push it along.
GEORGIE CLARK'S COMPOSITION.
A TURGID SEA OF TOMMYROT.
JUDGE GEORGE CLARK, yclept the " Little Giant," because
his coat-tails hang so near the earth and he is fond of
defying the (political) lightning, has come to the succor
of our gab-stricken country has told us exactly what we
should do to be saved. Hitherto reporters have had to
chase him on pneumatic tires over weald and wold, sand-
bag him and despoil him of his priceless intellectual boodle.
The utmost activity on the part of the press failed to
wring from him more than four " interviews " per week ;
but now he has surprised the public by voluntarily rushing
into print, by unwinding three columns of minion, garnish-
ing it with his portrait and incidentally advertising his
provincial law practice. He doesn't so much as intimate
in his prolegomenon (Scott vs. Bradwardine) that a
dozen reporters are wailing about his door, clambering
over transoms and sliding down the chimney in a frantic
effort to get in their augurs that he has unwillingly
paused a moment in the all-important case of John Doe
96 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
vs. Richard Roe to give Salisbury a few pointers, or the
Driebund a little advice. He came to the solumn conclu-
sion all by himself that it were cruel and an unusual
punishment and therefore clearly unconstitutional to
hide his candle under a bushel, to withhold from the world
his wisdom. Ah, in these sordid times how seldom do we
find such unselfishness !
Georgie prefaces his " piece " with a modest intimation
that the national Democracy is tearfully turning to him
for counsel in this dark hour of sturm und drang, and
that, owing to the inability of the postal service to carry
individual answers to the mighty flood of inquiries pouring
in upon him from all points of the compass, it becomes his
duty, as the infallible pope of Democracy undefiled, to issue
an encyclical to bankrupt his supply of brass by erecting
in the political wilderness a nehushtan upon which those
bitten by the fiery Populist serpents may look and live.
We can but wonder how the world managed to wag
along through countless centuries without the superin-
tendence of the Brazos sage. What will become of the
American nation when, in the course of unrelenting na-
ture, his Ulyssean hand is removed from the helm, we can
only contemplate with horror. How thankful we should
be that we have for our political guide, economic philoso-
pher and civic friend this fin de siecle Moses, this modern
Simon Magus. Just how the people of Waco manage to
gaze day by day upon his rayonant glory without the aid
of smoked glass, must ever remain a mystery. When
Jupiter revealed himself to his o'er curious leman she was
incinerated and filed away in a jug; but a greater than
Jupe is " in our midst," and wearing never a mask. Only
a few acres shook when the chief guy of Olympus nodded ;
but when Waco's " Warwick " wags his brindle topknot
the round earth trembles.
THE WIZARD OF WORDS
97
Clark always has a kick coming. As a calamity-clacker
he takes both the cake and the cook. He's cursed with a
bellyache that nothing can cure. He's the Witling of
Terror, a natural Jonah, a professional Jeremiah. But,
like dreams, his calamitous vaticinations go by contraries.
When he howls in the morning it's an infallible sign of fair
weather; when he laments at midday it presages a victory
for Democracy ; when he complains at night cotton rises
in price. He's an inestimible boon to people who compre-
hend him, a priceless blessing to those who catch on to his
prophetic combination. His idea that the mighty cosmos
is forever trembling on the soaped verge of eternal chaos,
and that he is resolutely holding it back by the bust of its
breeches, is really an idiosyncracy which gladdens his
heart and does nobody harm. At present he is harboring
the hallucination that the national Democracy has con-
stituted him a board of arbitration to pass upon party
nominees and the Chicago platform. After much labored
lucubration and turbulent agitation of his think tank, he
concludes that if the party really desires to preserve the
principles enunciated by Jefferson and Jackson it should
connive at the election of Bill McKinley. He wants it
distinctly understood that he's a state's rights Democrat,
and, having discovered in the Chicago platform, a couple
of clauses which he considers inimical to duality of govern-
ment, would elevate to power the party that strove to
shoot the state rights' doctrine to death ! He clamors for
a strict construction of the constitution, yet gives aid and
encouragement to an organization which wrote its denial
of this faith all over the southland with sword and fire.
The veriest political tyro knows that barring death and
the judgment day either Bryan or McKinley will be our
next chief magistrate. There is not a man outside the
insane asylum but realizes full well that a second " Demo-
98 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
cratic " ticket could be but a diversion in favor of
McKinley, yet that has hitherto been the counsel of Clark.
This wonderful " king-maker " has taken for his motto,
" Divide and Conquer ! " In the article before me, how-
ever, he appears to have effected a change of front
nothing particularly remarkable in his political career.
He " squints " to employ one of his expressive provincial-
isms at an over alliance of the " Democratic " malcon-
tents with the McKinleyites. He says:
" This is no time for the indulgence either of sentiment
or prejudice. . . . Let us move forward to the battle
and not trouble ourselves with questions as to who touch
elbows with us on the right or the left."
If this means anything, it means that all good Demo-
crats should align themselves with the Republican legions.
Why should they do this? Because, according to Clark,
there are two planks in the Chicago platform which do
not voice true Democracy. According to this new
Coriolanus, when a few of our party principles are en-
dangered we should overturn them all! In order to pre-
serve in all its pristine vigor the party of Jefferson, we
must roll over prostrate body the car of Jaganath ! Which
definition of pantagruelism we should apply to this re-
markable proposition it were difficult to determine. By
the same casuistry whereby Clark absolves Democrats of
their party duty, it were easy to absolve Benedict Arnold.
He disliked his commanding officer and disapproved some
acts of congress ; ergo it became his duty to " purify " his
country by fire. The American flag having been " dis-
graced " by those with whom he disagreed, what could he
do to wipe out that stain but take refuge beneath the
British ensign and (to quote Clark) " fire on it with guns
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 99
Double shotted with grape and cannister? " Clark has a
perfect right to change his party allegiance. He truly
sa3^s that no man should abdicate his right as a sovereign
to think for himself and act in accordance with his con-
science. I will set foot as far as who goes farthest in
warfare on partisan slavery, blind obedience to party fiat ;
but where a man fires upon the Democratic flag from a
Republican redoubt, I deny his right to wear our uniform.
Let Clark accept the name as he has already accepted
the principles of the force-bill and reconstruction party,
and we'll file no protest. When he has been formally initi-
ated into the G. O. P. by Lodge and Hoar, Ingalls and
Tourgee, Ida Wells and Wright Cuney, he will be privi-
leged to turn his little squirt-gun loose on the party of
Bryan and Reagan, Mills and Bland. He may then fire
on the Democratic oriflamme with " grape and cannister "
even with turgid rhetoric and Thersitean calumny.
He offers as an excuse for his desertion that the Chicago
platform is undemocratic goes to the Republicans to find
Democracy undefiled! Why is it undemocratic? Because,
forsooth, it departs in some particulars from previous
platforms. Are we to understand that the " Little Giant "
is the foe of progress, the enemy of evolution? If his ideal
party be one incapable of learning in the school of ex-
perience, it is small wonder that he has camped with the
McKinleyites. Clark " planted " himself on the platform
of 1892 and viewed himself with exhuberant pride; yet
that instrument differed materially with the enunciations
of Jefferson and Madison. If Democratic doctrine be im-
mutable as the law of the Medes, then SewaLL appears to
be one of the very few who have kept the faith, for the
fathers of the party were for free silver and protection.
Surely, if we find it necessary, in order to meet changed
conditions, to amend the federal constitution, we are
100 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
privileged to deviate somewhat from our Democratic for-
bears without being incarcerated as " lunatics " or de-
nounced as " demagogues.'*
" New occasions teach new duties,
Times makes ancient good uncouth ;
They must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of truth."
Clark, with that inconsistency which has made his un-
fruitful political career resemble the gyrations of a devil-
chaser, or acephalous rooster, commends Cleveland for
assigning federal troops to active service in Illinois with-
out consent of the governor; yet denounces as undemo-
eratic and subversive of state rights a clause in the Chicago
platform demanding a law against discrediting any kind
of legal tender currency issued by the general government.
According to this corn-fed philosopher, it were in accord
with the federal constitution and Democratic canons for
the president to send a regiment of soldiers to Waco to
take possession of the town, should he learn from his morn-
ing paper that a riot was in progress, despite the protest
of the governor that the local constabulary and state
militia were equal to the emergency ; but when the people
of these United States, through their accredited repre-
sentatives, declare it unlawful to discredit, by means of
discrimination, any portion of our federal currency, state
sovereignty is in the soup, Democracy gone to the devil
and the nation vibrating between a dictatorship and dis-
solution. Clark declares that Congress, which is em-
powered by the constitution not only " to coin money,"
but to " regulate the value thereof " as well as to " fix the
standard of weights and measures cannot declare what
shall be the legal tender in Texas without smashing the
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 101
sawdust out of our dual form of government ; yet heartily
approves of and earnestly defends the practical abroga-
tion of state laws by the federal courts, which arrogate to
themselves the legislative, judicial and executive functions.
Some quibbling chicken-court attorney may reply to Clark
in kind by urging that the constitution does not stipulate
in what manner congress shall " regulate the value " of
money that its power to " fix the standard of weights
and measures " is absolute, and money is as much a
measure of value as a quart cup is of vinegar. Truth is
ever straightforward and consistent; sophistry and con-
tradiction are the twin sisters of deception. It requires
no Roentgen ray to discover why this Polly Peachum of
politics feels such an affection for the party of force-bill
fame, the nurse-maid of monopoly. He is perfectly will-
ing that the federal government should subject the State
to the rule of the injunction and bayonet; but when the
sacred prerogative of the plutocrat to make the mortgage
on the workman's cottage and widow's cow payable in a
particular coin which he then proceeds to " corner "
is called in question, this life-long peon of corporate
power hoists the State right's gonfalon and proudly dis-
plays it from Republican ramparts !
Georgie has developed all at once into a learned philolo-
gist, a wonderful etymologist albeit he continues to ex-
hibit grave anarchical tendencies by defying the rules of
grammar and ignoring the laws of logic. The Chicago
convention having declared that " Congress alone has
power to coin and issue money," he interrupts the song-
service to inquire " where congress got the power to issue
money at all," then adds, with the ponderous gravity of
a parrot and the assurance of a Delphic oracle :
" The term ' issue ' is equivalent to ' make ' and if it
was the intention of the framers of the constitution to
102 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
authorize congress to make money, what was the use in
authorizing congress to borrow it? All that would be
necessary for congress to do when the government needed
money was (sic) to make all that was needed. This is
fiatism pure and simple yet here it is in a Democratic
platform in unmistakable language."
No wonder the Supreme Court justices " leaned far over
and listened in wrapt attention " when our Georgie ap-
peared before that august tribunal to argue the Greer
county case. I can easily credit the statement of the ever
truthful Wilyum Sterett that the court " had never heard
anything like it." Such a diversion, in such a place, must
have been grateful as the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land. I cannot understand how he came to lose the
case, unless his argument was too profound for the court.
Perchance it was unable to distinguish between the ifness
of his buts and the butness of his ifs. If " issue " and
" make " be synonyms our lexicographers must be sadly
deficient in learning. Webster declares that " issue," as
applied to money, means " to send out, to put into circu-
lation "; but of course Webster was an etymological infant
compared to " Warwick." Most men travelling on the
title of " Judge " would unhesitatingly say that the right
to " coin money " carried with it, as a necessary sequence,
the correlative right to " issue " it ; but of course all such
opinions must fall before the ipse dixit of this learned
expounder of constitutional law. I have read the Chicago
platform carefully, and can find therein no suggestion of
fiatism. True, it declares that all paper which is made
a legal tender should be issued by the government, and
condemns the policy of selling interest-bearing bonds in
time of peace to maintain the policy of gold mono-metal-
lism ; but it does not ask that our present volume of paper
currency be increased one penny, while expressly stipu-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 103
lating that it " shall be redeemable in coin." " But,"
says this bobtailed sage of the Brazos, " if bonds
are not to be issued, how will the government obtain the
coin with which to redeem its paper? " It was evidently
the idea of the Chicago convention that it would do so
by coining silver by more than doubling the amount of
our " money of final payment." Is Clark's ideal monetary
system one that cannot be maintained in an era of pro-
found peace and abundant crops without going ever deeper
into debt? What kind of a currency system were that
with which to undertake a prolonged war with an Euro-
pean power?
But what appears to be troubling the modern Polonious
most is the nomination of Bryan by the Populists. That
may be an impeachment of our candidate's Democracy;
but his somewhat peculiar position is not without prece-
dent. In 1892 one George Clark was the gubernatorial
nominee of the self-styled dyed-in-the-wool Texas Democ-
racy ; yet, through the finesse of his managers, the Re-
publicans, in state convention assembled, were induced to
accept him as their candidate. I cannot exactly see why
Bryan's managers should not accept Populist aid against
the Republicans, when Clark entered into a conspiracy with
" Cuney and his coons " to overthrow the regular Democ-
racy. It seems to me that a white Populist would make
almost as sweet a political bedfellow this warm weather
as would a black Republican. Having received so large
a share of his gubernatorial support from the " coons,"
our political Brobdingnagian could scarce do less than
discharge his debt by using his " flooence " to secure a re-
enactment of the force bill. Political apostasy is a venial
fault, but ingratitude is the chief of sins.
I have often yearned to take our " Warwick " out into
the woods and give him a few verses of good advice. I
104 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
would begin by warning him of the evil of too much gab.
The gab-habit, like wine-bibbing, is a pleasant diversion
when cautiously indulged; but at last it biteth like a
serpent and kicketh all the boards off the barn. I would
explain to him, in soft easy words of two syllables, that
a man utterly incapable of continuity of thought should
resolutely maintain a resounding silence. I would suggest,
in my soothing Chesterfieldian way, that an unsuccessful
politician, who has been everything in turn and nothing
long, should not have an epileptoid convulsion and fall
outside the breastworks because the party to which he
professes allegiance chooses to slightly amend its confes-
sion of faith. I would read to him some of his nice home-
made " interviews," open letters, encyclicals and speeches
which have appeared in print during the last five years,
and beseech him, as a man and brother, not to belabor
with his herculean club every stiff-jointed unfortunate who
has failed to exactly imitate all his political saltations
and economic contortions. I would remind him that if
Democracy has drifted upon the Inchape rock of fiatism,
he, as the recognized oracle of the party, is responsible
therefor. I would suggest that if the Chicago convention
failed to fall down and worship the pinocle expert and
beer canner of Buffalo, it may have been because G. Clark
so recently denounced him as a tool of Wall street and
traitor to his country referring to him as a kind of
Democrat suggestive of Oscar Wilde's Turkish atrocity.
I would call his attention to the fact that conditions have
not materially changed since he publicly expressed a will-
ingness to have the government both " make " and " issue "
three billions of irredeemable paper currency and lend it
out a la Populesque, on any kind of security ; that we are
producing less silver to-day, as compared with the output
of gold than when he had his mouth wide open, like a giant
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 105
bootjack clamoring for its free and unlimited coinage.
I would strive to impress upon his judicial mind that, hav-
ing read all the goldbugs out of the party four years
ago, he cannot now expel the silverites without creating
something closely resembling a vacuum. I would mention,
in a nice, genteel way, that, after his still-born guberna-
torial boom had sailed up Salt River, he confessed that
Hogg was a better Democrat than himself, and add that
a man who admits having warred on time-honored party
precepts should not court-martial Democratic dissenters.
Clark will come 'round all right he always does. He
first admired, then damned, then deified Cleveland; he
has simply begun on Bryan at the other end of his com-
bination. In two years he will apotheosize the " Boy Ora-
tor " in four he'll consign him to the auto-da fe. Hav-
ing been first a " free silver fanatic," then a fiatist, and
next a goldbug, he is at the end of his economic tether
will have to go back and begin over again, for he cannot
remain stationary he is " constant to one thing never."
We may expect to learn at any time that the " Little
Giant " has espoused the governmental faith-cure of
Mother Lease. The great trouble with him is that he
spends so much in umbilicular contemplation that his
concept of practicalities has become a chaos. He has
somehow conceived the idea that, because his navel is in
the center of his body, it is the axis of the universe.
The Eumenides, having resolved to render him su-
premely ridiculous, inoculated him with the idea that he
was a second Warwick, commissioned of God to make
chief magistrates. With his mighty archimidean lever
and despite the party's " brutal majority " he elevated
General Ross to the governorship ! Could the Little
Cavalryman have foreseen all the evil effects of this more
than Blenheim victory on the small-bore political boss,
106 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
he would doubtless have withdrawn from the race. No
peacock was ever so inflated with its own importance. He
began to issue economic ukases more wonderful in con-
struction than the legendary papal bull against the comet.
He declared that the free coinage of silver would, by ex-
pelling gold, both contract the volume of our currency
more than one-fourth and decrease the purchasing power
of every remaining dollar one-half that the smaller the
supply of a thing relative to the demand the lower the
price! Having thus, at one stroke, reversed the funda-
mental principle of economics, we may expect him to
tackle the law of gravitation. He concluded that the state
imperatively demanded his sacrifice to its service, and
stretched himself upon the gubernatorial altar; but the
good God, who saved Isaac by sending a goat, preserved
Clark by providing a Hogg. He met his opponent in
joint debate, and cut so sorry a figure that he was pitied
even by Democrats. But even the withering rebuke ad-
ministered by the people at the polls failed to reduce his
inordinate egotism. He is still directing the universe
deluging with unsought advice the party he has twice de-
serted. His pomposity might be tolerated if backed by
talent, or even faithfulness to his political friends or fixed-
ness of purpose ; but his ignorance is dense as his egotism
is distasteful, while as a publicist he's uncertain as a dose
of salts. Instead of being a mental Colossus, as his hand-
ful of retainers would have us believe, he is what George
Eliot would call " the quintessential extract of medi-
ocrity." He was originally a very tall man, but has worn
himself away to the knees chasing every new political fad
and economic ignis-fatuus. Such is the man who is ex-
pectorating on the Chicago platform and bellowing like
a hornless bull of Bashan at W. J. Bryan. I bear him no
shadow of ill-will have but attempted to paint his true
THE WIZARD OF WORDS
107
portrait. I would elect him to some small office were it
possible, just to see how he would " perform." God made
him, and far be it from me to caricature his handiwork;
still, I sometimes wonder, in a vague, tired way, what was
the object of Omnipotence.
THE ISLE OF CHANEPH,
'S'MATTER with Galveston? The people of the interior
appear to regard it as the identical spot to which Panta-
gruel referred when he asked " what kind of people dwell
in that damned island." Whether it be indeed Rabelais'
famed Isle of Chaneph, or aggregation of slippery hypo-
crites and canting thieves, is not my province to deter-
mine; still, it were worth while to inquire what has given
the general public that impression. A community is
usually judged by its representative men, or rather by
those whose prominence in matters commercial causes
to be so considered. Col. W. L. Moody is one of the
wealthiest men in Galveston, perhaps the most extensive
cotton factor in the state. Is he in anywise responsible
for the general belief that the ghost of Lafitte haunts
the " Pirate Isle " that the erstwhile buccaneer is still
doing business at the old stand? Is he, like Brutus, an
honorable but much-maligned man, or a daring commer-
cial desperado whose conscienceless cupidity has given an
msavory reputation to the city of Galveston? To the
two million Texas people who have toiled through this
long hot summer to make a little cotton, these be questions
of vital importance. Can they ship the fruits of their
labor to Moody & Co. and rest assured that they will not
108 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
be buncoed and beaten that every dollar rightfully theirs
will be promptly paid to the uttermost farthing? The
people have a right to ask these questions, and it is the
duty of the ICONOCLAST, as the only journal that reaches
a quarter million Texas' readers, to answer it to the very
best of its ability. I would not, for the price of my right
arm, do any honest man an injury, but I would give them
both, if need be, to shield the Texas people from a syste-
matic swindle.
Col. W. L. Moody is the chief factor of the firm in
question, therefore, responsible for any crookedness which
may have occurred in its cotton transactions with the
people of Texas. In order to correctly estimate a man,
to know whether he be liable to moral lapses which can-
not be passed over as inadvertent " mistakes," it is neces-
sary to know somewhat of his history, for " previous good
character " is a strong counter-plea when a man is sus-
pected of criminality on evidence largely circumstantial.
W. L. Moody drifted to Texas before the war from some
terra incognita and hung out his law shingle in Houston.
Clients were few and far between, however, so he removed
to the little town of Fairfield, engaged in merchandizing,
and failed. He then married the only daughter of a
wealthy and popular gentleman, and thus rose, at one
bound, out of the slough of Financial Despond. The war
came on, and through the influence of his wife's family,
he secured a commission. Deaths and resignations ad-
vanced him to the position of lieutenant-colonel of a regi-
ment that never saw service outside of the Lone Star
State. In a skirmish he was slightly wounded, upon which
he was seized with such an attack of homesickness that he
did not recover until after Lee's surrender. At the close
of the war he removed to Galvston and blossomed out as
a cotton-factor in co-partnership with his father-in-law.
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 109
The popularity of the latter throughout the country se-
cured for the firm a large amount of business, and Moody
bid fair to become a millionaire. Having now no further
need of the " ole man," he managed to get him out of the
firm and took in E. S. Jamison, who had accumulated a
fortune by remaining at home to speculate while better men
were at the front stopping Yankee bullets. But Col. Moody
did not confine his commission business solely to cotton.
After the overthrow of the Davis' regime it was decided to
fund the State's enormous floating debt, and Moody, who
had managed to get himself appointed State financial
agent, was sent to New York to dispose of large blocks of
8 per cent, bonds. He formed a syndicate which took the
entire lot at 90 cents and the bonds immediately went to
par and now command a large premium. The rake-off
on this little deal has been variously estimated at from
$250,000 to $500,000 ; but of course Moody didn't get it
all. There were others people who knew how to make
politics pay ; " but that's another story," and will be
treated by the ICONOCLAST in a subsequent issue. We are
now discussing cotton factors ; not the dark but profitable
ways of practical politics.
This coup de maitre seems to have dissatisfied Col.
Moody with the slow-coach gains of 21/2 per cent, cotton
commissions, so he conceived the following brilliant scheme
for increasing his profits : He employed a private weigher
and deducted " for water " 10 pounds per bale. When the
cotton arrived at Galveston it was promptly weighed by
Col. Moody's hired man, but when it left the port its
avoirdupois was ascertained by an authorized servant of
the state. As the climate of the island is much more moist
than that of the interior, and cotton a great absorbent, it
usually gained materially in weight notwithstanding the
fact that 10 pounds per bale had been deducted " for
110 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
water." Col. Moody then made out his bill against the
buyer according to the figures of the public weigher, and
his account sales to the confiding planter by the private
weight-book kept by his employe. If his patron com-
plained, why, there were the figures and a man ready to
make oath that they were absolutely correct and that
usually ended it.
But Galveston's great Christopher Sly did not exhaust
his ingenuity on one scheme. The recept of merchandise
by one pair of scales and its sale by another the Lord
enhancing it meanwhile by a most fecund atmosphere
were a trick well within the conception of an enterprising
city milkman ; but Moody appears to possess the strategi-
cal instincts of a commercial Napoleon. His firm seems
to have made a regular practice of shipping out to
Europe, on its own account, cotton received from interior
planters and merchants, while the latter were led to believe
that for months their staple was held in the Island City
and charged with storage thereon. The firm also made
future contracts on its own account against the spots of
its customers. It has reported cotton sold, and rendered
an account thereof to the shipper, when it had not been
sold, but was held for an expected advance in price. It
has sold cotton at a good price, then waited for a strong
decline in the market and settled with the shipper at the
lowest figure reached. By this latter practice the firm of
Moody & Co. is supposed to have made a profit of some
$300,000 last season ; and the evidence of the swindle was
so strong that it was compelled to disgorge some of its
ill-gotten gains. The firm appears to own a controlling
interest in a Galveston compress, for it is very insistent
that cotton be shipped uncompressed. Whether this is
because it opens up another fruitful field for fraud, I know
not ; but I do know that men who send cotton to Moody &
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 111
Co. have a great deal of difficulty in tracing it, and that
there is no better place than a compress for so concealing
its identity that not even a court of experts could estab-
lish its grade.
The plan of receiving cotton by one set of scales
with 10 pounds off " for water " then selling by another
set after it had sucked in some 20 pounds of moisture
from the atmosphere and pocketing the difference, was
finally exposed and created a roar at the forks of the
creek that 'woke the echoes even in the Galveston Cotton
Exchange. Moody was at the time president of that
eminently conservative association, and listed, I believe, at
about two millions made chiefly out of cotton and Texas
bond commissions. Despite his tremendous " pull," how-
ever, it looked as though the Galveston Exchange would
have to follow the example of that of New York and fire
him out fling him as a sop to the angry Cerberus. " Love
is potent, but money is omnipotent." Compromises were
patched up with the more lusty of the kickers at con-
siderable cost ; the columns of the Galveston News were
crammed with articles in defense of Moody prepared
by an expert pleader in criminal cases and the Exchange
decided to whitewash its president, evidently fearing that if
the " many-headed monster " secured one victim it might
return for more. The criminal prosecutions so fiercely
threatened, failed to materialize, and Moody's double-
standard of weights was wellnigh forgotten until the ex-
posure of his plan of selling cotton at 8^2 an d settling at
C 1 /? recalled it to mind.
The ICONOCLAST has on file letters from responsible
planters and merchants from almost every section of the
state, relating to Col. Moody's cotton transactions, and I
regret to say that not one of them refers to him in a
complimentary manner. If Col. Moody desires to see
112 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
himself as others see him, he is privileged to peruse them.
If guilty, such a terrible indictment by his fellow citizens
might reform him; if innocent, he should certainly take
some steps to correct the false impression which has be-
come pandemic. In this connection it may not be amiss
to quote from a letter to the editor : " Maybe you don't
know that the city of Galveston raises some 5,000 bales
of cotton per annum? And yet that city annually ships
some 5,000 more than it receives. Every cotton factor has
an average of some 2 pounds " loose " per bale to sell, and
all you have to do is to go to any pressyard early in the
morning or late in the afternoon, to see the " pickers "
industriously at work gathering the Galveston crop.
SALMAGUNDI.
" GOLD for Iron for Jesus' Sake," is the inscription on
the front elevation of a pea-green circular sent broad-cast
by one Louise Shepard of New York City. Therein the
gentle Louise asks all who love the Lord to send her
their costly jewelry, " the proceeds to go to the Inter-
national Missionary alliance. She promises to send iron
watches to those who will give up their gold tickers, and
boasts of having already landed a large number of suckers.
Several readers of the ICONOCLAST have appealed to it for
information concerning this iron for Jesus' Sake industry.
I know nothing of Louise ; but it can be taken for granted
that the missionary scheme, which she is supposed to repre-
sent, is a brutal fraud from imprimis to finis. It has been
amply demonstrated that not one bona-fide conversion is
made for every $10,000 the American people pour into the
foreign mission fund. Wear iron watches? And why?
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 113
That our missionaries may outshine Indian nabobs with
the splendor of their apartments and the number of their
servants? That we may send men to the antipodes to
make up long lists of " converts " from moss-grown tomb-
stones and report to the home office, " The work goes
bravely on send more money." Must our women strip
themselves of their trifling gold ornaments that such men
as M. D. Early may loaf around on a salary of $2,500
per annum when " the devil finds some mischief still for
idle hands to do ? " If you want to give your gold
jewelry " to Jesus," wear a trace chain around your neck
and ten-penny nails in your ears, it were better to sell it
and with the proceeds help your needy neighbor. Then
you will know that no fat and impudent Grand Secre-
taries, Chief Organizers, State Superintendents, etc., etc.,
are paying themselves out of your bounty and giving to
the godless heathen a cast-off hoopskirt and a frazzled
hymnbook. As Louise says in her appeal to those afflicted
with the sanctified brand of insanity, " These are strange
and solemn times." They are, old girl. Half a million
Americans are homeless, twice that number are hungry;
and the land is full of holiness-crazed old hens, who would
melt up even the paltry trinkets of their sisters and send
the proceeds to feed a congeries of whining hypocrites at
the antipodes for breeding such atrocities as the Armenian
troubles by inflaming religious fanaticism. No, sweet-
heart, you can't work the " Apostle " for his nickel-plated
Waterbury. If you really want to do something for the
heathen that will fill your angelic wings with ostrich
feathers, cause your crown to shine like a locomotive head-
light and make you the envy of the entire she-contingent
of the heavenly host, borrow a washboard and manipulate
it until you have honestly earned a dollar, fill a market-
basket with good, wholesome grub, and feed some of the
1U BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
starving 1 wretches in the Trinity church tenements. No
offense, Louise; but your jewelry for Jesus scheme smells
too much like a New York green-goods game.
Rev. M. D. Early declares that he was not " making
signs " to the colored cook, but was communicating with
his horse. An equine that understands the deaf and dumb
alphabet is certainly something of a daisy.
66 A Drummer " writes the ICONOCLAST, taking issue
with its dictum that " the bike doesn't make woman de-
praved, it only renders her ridiculous." He declares that,
by the confession of female bike-fiends themselves, riding
clothes-pin fashion is a powerful aphrodisiac. Being a
doctor of divinity instead of medicine, the " apostle " will
not presume to dispute the point with the American drum-
mer.
A correspondent asks the Apostle to write an article on
the political sins of John Sherman. That were too much
like compiling a biography of the devil to be an attrac-
tive midsummer task.
I am pleased to note that the Santone Express' $18-a-
week young man is still employing his archimidean lever
to pry the free-silver world out of its orbit and brain the
" repudiators." " Ting-a-ling-wrrr ! " " Hello." " Who
t' 'ell's dat? " " This, sir, is Mr. Whelply, sir, the editor,
sir, of the San Antonio Morning Express. State your
business briefly, sir, for we editors are busy men." (Tre-
mendous applause in the composing-room, and a wilted,
awe-struck mortal at the other end of the wire). " Hello ! "
(Faintly) Beg yer pardon; fought it was only old
Grice."
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 115
Gov. Altgeld of Illinois enjoys the distinction of being
the best abused man in America. Like the youth who
fired the Ephesian dome, he has been " damned to everlast-
ing fame." The press has exhausted upon him its vocabu-
lary of invective. It has striven with all its strength to
utterly destroy him, exerted all its boasted power to make
him the bete noir of the public, to drive him in disgrace
from American politics. And it has only succeeded in
demonstrating that, instead of being a " public educator "
it is an incorrigible ass. From an obscure state politician,
it has developed Altgeld into a national power. It has
placed him prominently before a people prone to judge
a man by his acts, rather than by the comments of his
enemies, and the result is that all this falsehood, fog and
ifuliginosity has but served to discover an intellectual
Titan. It must be a sharp reminder to the press of Lin-
coln's apothegm, to the effect that " you can't fool all
the people all the time." The more astute of the anti-
Altgeld papers have quit referring to him as a " red-
flagger." Like a certain little boy who required a change
of linen they have precious little to say. A few densely
ignorant or ultra-malicious editors, continue to denounce
Altgeld as an " anarchist " ; but they be men unable to
realize that when a case is lost there's enough of words.
The putrid wave of calumny, which a year ago rolled
mountain high, has subsided to the seeping of a city sewer.
What called down upon his head the unprecedented storm
of denunciation? He smashed the regular Democratic
machine in Illinois, much as did Hogg in Texas. The
powerful faction of professional spoilsmen, which thought
to crush him, was itself overcome, and the same wild yawp
anent communism, populism and anarchism broke forth in
Illinois that was heard in Texas when Clark, Cuney and
their co-conspirators reached for the public udder only
116 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
to get a swipe from the right hind-quarter of the indig-
nant cow. Elevated to the governorship, Altgeld found
men in the penitentiary supposed to have been implicated
in the Haymarket massacre. It was notorious that they
had been convicted on insufficient evidence at a time when
the public was clamoring for vengeance that they were
really victims of a Reign of Terror. He pardoned them,
and the act met with popular approval. His political
enemies, however, cited it as evidence that he was in
sympathy with anarchy. Later there a disastrous labor
riot in Chicago, which was suppressed by federal troops
despite the Governor's protest that Illinois was amply
able to restore peace, and all the administration organs,
great and small, forthwith took up the cry of the Sucker
soreheads. The Chicago riot was the fault of the local
authorities, who protested that they were equal to the
emergency, and neglected the Governor's advice to apply
to him for assistance. He had notified every sheriff along
the line of railway affected by the strike that if any vio-
lence to persons or property resulted from their neglect to
call upon him for assistance, they would be held responsi-
ble therefor. He was moving to the relief of Chicago,
despite the failure of the mayor to invoke his aid, when
forestalled by federal interference. The managers of the
railways centering in Chicago testify that they have ever
found Altgeld willing and anxious to protect corporate
property that he is the most uncompromising foe of
monocracy that ever sat in the gubernatorial chair of
Illinois. The people declare that the state never had a
better governor. He has demonstrated his political saga-
city by routing his enemies. The most servile sorehead
sheet has never questioned his moral courage or dared im-
peach his integrity. His steadily increasing popularity,
not only in his own state, but throughout the Union, sug-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 117
gests Bob Ingers oil's remark, that " One man in the right
will eventually become a majority."
Verily man is of few days and full of politics. He
cometh up as a flower and is cut down like a Republican
candidate. I have striven for lo! these many moons to
please everybody to make the ICONOCLAST an universal
edulcorant a soothing salve spread upon the pimply
face of nature, or Standard Oil tank turned loose upon
the waters of tribulation. I have been patient, long-suf-
fering and gentle with this wicked and perverse generation.
I have titillated its intellectual appetite with honied
phrases, coaxed it from the paths of folly with sugar-
plums and just gorged it with the milk of human kindness ;
yet it continues to back and buck, kick and recalcitrate.
Some of these days my Christian fortitude will slip a cog
or sprain a kidney, and I'll say something I'll be sorry for.
Following is a sample of the woe and wail which the
" many-headed monster " is pouring through Uncle Sam's
postal service upon its custos morum. I select it be-
cause of the many anonymous and eminently " Christian "
epistles to the " Apostle," it is the only one neither obscene
nor grossly insulting:
u Mr. Brann you announse on your first page that you
hav no room for contribbetted artickels. now sir it seams
to me you have no room when they is writen by a prottes-
tant but when a catholick Freest wants to assaile our
religgion he can do So and life long prottestants like me
air not permited to anser him. do you call that just or
rite, what is Soss for the goos should be soss for the
poap of roam." " justise."
" p S you shall Here from me agane. I am an a P a
118 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and am Proude of it. a Wink is goode as a nodd to A
blinde hors."
I am somewhat fearful that Dana or the New York Swn
will convict my correspondent of plagiarizing from the
late-lamented Josh Billings. He should remember that
this is the era of " higher criticism," and that modern
Macauleys cannot be too careful. To " justice " and the
entire tribe of chronic kickers at present adding materially
to Uncle Sam's postal receipts, I would say that the
columns of the ICONOCLAST are as inaccessible to Catholic
priests as to Protestant clergymen. I presume that the
" roar " was occasioned by an article which appeared in
the August number from the forceful pen of Father Pat
Brannan. It was written at the earnest solicitation of the
editor, who, in closing his columns to the inane drivel of
Vox Populi, Justicia and Jackassia, did not relinquish the
right to seek the assistance of men of genius in his warfare
upon fraud and fakes, folly and falsehood. When the
ICONOCLAST wants an article from the outside, it selects
both the writer and the subject. It is as apt to solicit
articles from Protestants as from Catholics, from Jews or
Agnostics as from either. It plays no theological favorites
is after fraud wherever found, and with the heaviest
metal it can command. To the objection so frequently
heard that it criticises freely without affording oppor-
tunity for reply, it might retort that it possesses no
monopoly of the art of printing that its editor is fre-
quently "jacked up" in no gentle manner by preachers
who would consider it an impertinence should he demand
the privilege of replying from their pulpits. " What is
Soss for the Goose should be Soss for the Gandor."
Imagine Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, after having pompously
Denounced this humblest of scribes, as " The Apostle of
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 119
the Devil," inviting the poor miserable worm of the
dust to address his congregation of bejeweled followers
of the meek and lowly Jesus, on the short-comings of
their minister! And then consider all the complimentary
things such a confirmed peacemaker, such an habitual
paneulogist might say of that windy huckster of jejune
words, that prize jackass of his day and generation.
An exchange declares that " Uncle Tom's Cabin broke
down the American prejudice against novel-reading." We
knew that the book did much to precipitate a civil war
which cost more lives than all the durn niggers, from
Ham to Fred Douglass, were worth; but it had not oc-
curred to us that it was likewise responsible for the
mighty tide of drivel that is making paranoia pandemic.
The ICONOCLAST has no desire to speak aught but good
of the dead; but it does believe that competent critics
of the next generation will concede that Mrs. Stowe's
masterpiece was deficient in literary merit as it was chary
in truth that its phenomenal success was solely due to
inflamed sectional feeling. Mrs. Stowe died a devout
Christian. Her intentions may have been ever good; but
just the same, a million Banquos will shake their gory
locks at her on the thither side of the river Styx.
A gentleman writes me from Abilene, Texas, to the
effect that one, Rev. J. H. Davies, an Arkansawed Eng-
lishman, of the Presbyterian persuasion, has been holding
" protracted meeting " in that progressive burg and ad-
vocating a relentless boycott of all newsdealers selling
the ICONOCLAST. My correspondent adds : " During the
past five weeks I have heard various scavengers advocate
a boycott of all dealers who handle your paper."
120 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
This is indeed encouraging. I had begun to fear that
my ministerial agents were neglecting their duty that
I would have to saw off their salaries. There are about
twenty ministers in Texas engaged in advertising the
ICONOCLAST, and I am indeed pleased to learn that they
are faithfully discharging their duty. One red-hot ANTI-
ICONOCLAST sermon is worth a dozen new subscribers
any day. If " God moves in a mysterious way His won-
ders to perform," why shouldn't his ministers, " by in-
direction seek direction out "? If any preacher is working
for me and finding his own fodder it is his fault. " The
laborer is worthy of his hire," and no man who sweats
and stinks these long, hot summer days to enhance my
circulation shall be sent away hungry and empty-handed.
My scale of prices for ANTI-IcoNOCLAST sermons ranges
from $1 to $10 each, according to size of audience and
power of preacher. Brother Davies does not hold a
regular commission from this office, but can secure one
in the $1.25 class by proving good moral character. The
boycott is a good thing, and I trust that he will push it
along. He must understand, however, that all preachers
carrying the ICONOCLAST as a side line are required to
apply the soft pedal to themselves, so as not to become
insufferable nuisances to entire neighborhoods. Of course,
we constitute a privileged class; but the public still
possess a few rights which we should feel bound to respect.
We have no celestial authority for turning the holy Sab-
bath into a pandemonium by the jangling of hell-fire
bells and obstreperous howling. We have no right to
distress the sick and nervous with unnecessary noise.
While I write a revival, or something, is in progress at
a Methodist church within a block of me, and a leather-
lunged preacher talking to God over a long-distance tele-
phone. He is evidently of the opinion that the Deity is
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 121
not " in our midst," and that he must bawl like all the
bulls of Bashan to make him hear. Within ten feet of
me lies a delicate woman prostrated with a nervous head-
ache, and to her his every yawp is an agony. Were he
creating that disturbance in a saloon, or even a private
house, I could 'phone the police and have him pulled;
as it is, I'm not even privileged to knock the bad air out
of him or kindly unscrew his neck. How many other
invalids he is distressing; how many more men in the
neighborhood would like to get their fingers on his goozle,
I have no means of knowing. The pietists make a great
outcry if a German picnic party returns to the city
Sunday even with sound of instruments; yet we make
more noise with our needless and unmusical bells and ob-
streperous howling than could a dozen brass bands. Not
only that, but we feel privileged to set up our gospel
shops in juxtaposition to cultured homes, and without
the slightest regard for the habits or comfort of our neigh-
bors, hold revivals that last a month, and have a hundred
or more big-mouthed hoodlums, wormy children and hys-
terical women howling half the night, with religious pains,
while a relay of stentor-tongued " exhorters " help murder
sleep, drive the student to despair and enhance the agony
of the invalid. The Bible suggests that we " make a
joyful noise unto the Lord," but says nothing about our
earning either the first or " second blessing " by giving
an imitation of a boy with the green-apple belly-ache.
Beloved brethren, boycott this great religious journal to
your heart's content, but for the love of God, don't go
into thickly settled neighborhoods and turn your lungs
loose like a hired man calling hogs across a forty-acre
field. Remember that " God is everywhere " even in
church.
122 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
According to the census reports imbecility is rapidly
increasing. Is this the cause or effect of the development
of the illustrated daily ?
In trying to demonstrate that Ireland's patron saint
was a Baptist, Dr. Seasholes overlooks the fact that the
other fathers of that peculiar faith did not begin to ad-
minister the sin-cleansing sacrament by the strangulation
method until St. Patrick had been dead nearly 1200
years. Even Roger Williams, the boasted Baptist pioneer
in America, was " sprinkled " instead of " dipped." If
Seasholes would read more gab less he would be held by
scholars in higher esteem.
Kansas has no monopoly on cranks. Rev. Henry E.
Barnes, a congregational preacher of Andover, Mass.,
thinks that Bryan has been guilty of blasphemy in em-
ploying the crown of thorns and cross of gold metaphor
or at least, he thinks that he thinks so. As nails
were driven thro' the hands and feet of our Lord and his
side wounded with a lance, all such implements necessarily
possess a sacrosanct character and should be handled with
due reverence. Politicians will, therefore carefully abstain
from " nailing campaign lies " or " breaking a lance "
with the opposition. I don't see how Mr. Bryan can
square himself with Barnes unless he explains that the
cross to which he referred was one employed in the cruci-
fixion of Jerusalem's Wall street thieves. Just why a
preacher should regard with reverence instruments em-
ployed to humiliate, torture and put to death the object
of his adoration is as incomprehensible as that Christians
should chide me for speaking of the devil and hell without
first removing my hat. Imagine a son revering a six-
shooter that had been used to assassinate his sire! The
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 123
fact that Barnes gave copies of his letter to the press
before mailing it to Bryan, argues that the crown of
thorns and cross of gold are not hurting him half so
much as his prurient itch for notoriety. He evidently
belongs to that numerous class of people who would
rather be called fools than never noticed at all.
The sentence passed by a British court on Dr. Jameson,
the Rand raider, is, perhaps, the most magnificent speci-
men of Pecksniffianism yet afforded by John Bull. The
freebooting enterprise embarked by this political ad-
venturer and conscienceless cut-throat, cost the lives of
forty people. Placing himself at the head of a godless
gang of British condottieri, of professional desperadoes,
he waged war upon a friendly power without excuse or
provocation attempted the subversion of the Boer Re-
public. The Afro-Germans simply took the British in-
vaders by the scruff of the neck and bust of the breeches
and slammed them behind the bars, then notified John
Bull that disposition they had made of his freebooters.
Upon his promise to give them a fair trial mete out to
them proper punishment, the leaders were turned over
to him. Instead of being received as a contemptible crimi-
nal who should have been swung up like a cowardly sheep-
killing criminal cur on the very spot where he was caught,
Jameson became the lion of the hour in England, his
infamy the subject of a sloppy eulogy by that " ass at
the lyre," Alfred Austin, poet laureate. The trial was
made a swell society reception, the Jim Crow Alexander
the object of national gush. The evidence of his guilt
was so overwhelming, however, that, for appearances*
sake, a pretence had to be made of punishment. So he
was sentenced to Holloway for a period of fifteen months
as a first-class misdemeanant, where he will occupy luxuri-
124 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ous apartments and be fed with the best that money can
buy. Jameson's " punishment " is well-nigh as awful as
being sentenced to board at the Palmer Hotel for 15
months at public expense. This is England's reward for
having failed in his attempt to overthrow a friendly
power; what would it have been had he succeeded? It
is safe to predict that the next British freebooter who
falls into the clutches of Oom Paul, will be surrendered
to John Bull in a nice mahogany box.
The New York World, in its craze for sensationalism,
prints adverse criticism of W. J. Bryan by one Lillian
M. Johnson, who claim to have been his stenographer
while he was practicing law at Lincoln. Lil avers that
he " had little need of a stenographer except to keep up
appearances " ; says that the most important case in
which he was employed was one involving $75, and com-
plains bitterly that he was very unsociable that he was
absent much on speech-making tours and spent his time
with his wife when in town. Perhaps we should not blame
Lil for taking Josef Phewlitzer's money for belittling the
man who supplied her bread. A handsome young lawyer,
who leaves a flip female stenographer to mope at the of-
fice while he pays court to his wife, deserves no mercy.
If Lil can demonstrate that he really did this, then will
the country tearfully acknowledge that he's no true-
blue spoils Democrat.
A few months ago the Texas Methodists wanted to
drive the ICONOCLAST into the ground for stating that
Rev. E. H. Harmon, presiding elder, and Rev. W. Wim-
berly, pastor at Brenham, got drunk and took in the
bawdy-houses while attending a conference of the Epworth
League at Galveston. This paper never makes a state-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 125
*nent which it cannot substantiate. Its mission is not to
besmirch the good, but to expose the bad to block the
game of the professional Humbug, to knock the sawdust
out of the sniveling Hypocrite. The man who condemns a
journal for doing this is himself a rotten-hearted rascal,
a natural-born knave. Finding himself unable to lie out
of the charge preferred against him by the ICONOCLAST,
Wimberly confesses that not one-half of the shameful
truth has been told. He admits that the defense offered
by himself and Elder Harmon before the conference com-
mittee was a tissue of brazen falsehoods, and that he
bribed witnesses to perjure themselves on his behalf. He
professes repentance and wants to be reinstated as a
Methodist preacher. Not just yet, little man you'll have
to take a turn on the bleaching-board. The ICONOCLAST
recognizes the virtue of repentance; but when a man has
been guilty of drunkenness, fornication, dead-beatism, dis-
orderly conduct and deliberate perjury, it cannot issue
him a license to preach until his repentance has been
tested by time. The ICONOCLAST cannot afford to turn
loose, in a shouting Methodist camp meeting, a minister
who still smells of the boozing ken and nigger variety
idive. Wimberly will please put himself on a corn-pone
diet and take a carbolic acid bath every day for a couple
of years, then again forward to this office his application
for license to preach.
THE TEIXEIRA AFFIDAVIT.
affidavit has been sworn by Antonia Teixeira before
R. L. Allen, Esq., exonerating Mr. Steen Morris of the
charge of assault to commit rape upon her person. The
126 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
affidavit is now in the hands of Mr. Morris' lawyer, Cap-
tain T. A. Blair, and he says the paper will be preserved
for evidence in court and refused to let the Telephone
have it for publication. Captain Blair says it will all
be brought out in due time, and that his client will be
duly exonerated. It is understood that Antonia Teixeira
has left Waco, and is now in Memphis. Waco Telephone.
For the benefit of new readers of the ICONOCLAST, a brief
resume of this casus celebre may not be amiss. About
five years ago, Rev. Z. C. Taylor, Baptist missionary to
Brazil, returned to Texas, bringing with him, as com-
panion to his wife, Antonia Teixeira, an orphan child.
The Baptist church of Texas adopted the little waif as
its " ward," and, at Taylor's suggestion, she was placed
at Baylor University, a sectarian establishment, " to be
educated for missionary work in her native country."
After three years of eminently moral instruction, it was
discovered that "the ward of the Baptist church" was
in the family way. She was promptly bundled out of
Baylor, but no steps whatever taken to discover and
punish her destroyer. Antonia was at this time about
14 years old, and quite small for her age. A local justice
of the peace, unterrified by Baylor's political pull, insti-
tuted an investigation, and the unfortunate girl made
oath that the brother of President Burleson's son-in-law
had criminally assaulted her; that she had complained to
the Burlesons, " but nothing was done about it." During
her three years' sojourn at Baylor she had not learned
that it was an offense against the laws of this Christian
land for a man to forcibly ravish a maid. Steen Morris
was arrested on a charge of rape, and forthwith Presi-
dent Burleson rushed into print and branded this child
in short dressed as little better than a common bawd.
Rev. Z. C. Taylor protested that he knew Antonia to be
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 127
a disreputable character when he selected her as his
wife's companion, and when he recommended that she
be placed among the pure girls at Baylor. The case
resulted in a mistrial, seven jurors voting that Steen
Morris was guilty of rape, five that he was not, but all
conceding, I believe, that he had been criminally intimate
with a 14-year-old child. The new law, raising the age
consent to 15 years, had not gone into effect. An old
roue might, by presents of toys and bonbons, secure
the " consent " of a 12-year old child to carnal intercourse,
and be legally guilty only of simple seduction. Of such
material were those Texas legislatures made for whose
spiritual welfare we paid two preachers $5 per minute
each to pray !
Such was the status of the case when the affidavit
mentioned by the Telephone was sprung upon the public.
What caused the unfortunate child to make it, is a matter
that should be carefully considered by the court. It
smacks too strongly of subornation to be permitted to
pass without rigid perscrutation. It must be remembered
that Antonia did not, of her own volition, bring this case
into court was suffering her shame in silence. When
formally interrogated, and advised that she must answer,
she told her story with a straight-forward simplicity
which, for more than a year, withstood the wheedling of
Taylor, the bullying of Morris' big brother who is an
adept in that art, where only children are concerned
and both the coaxing and badgering of the Burlesons.
What induced her at this late day, to go before a notary
public in the office of defendant's attorney and make
oath that she had twice committed perjury? Was she
conscience-stricken, and desirous of making amends?
Then why didn't Baylor receive her back, that she might
complete her course in President Burleson's kitchen
128 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and carry aqueous grace to Brazilian Catholics? If
contribution made Mary Magdalen, a common prostitute,
fit associate for the mother of Christ, both here and in
the world to come, may not a penitent child be admitted
to the sacred association of such ultra he-saints as Presi-
dent Burleson and his reverend son-in-law? If the re-
pentant Magdalen was permitted to wash the feet of our
Lord and wipe them with the hair of her head, cannot
the conscience-stricken Brazilian be trusted to scour the
pots of Brother Burleson? Is it harder to break into
Baylor University than into heaven? Clearly, we cannot
concede that Antonia's affidavit is the fruit of a sincere
repentance without calling in question the Christian spirit
of that church which proclaimed her as its protegee.
According to the latest version of the affair by the faith-
ful, Antonia has not repented we are expected to be-
lieve that the very considerable start hell-wards which she
received at Baylor is carrying her rapidly to the bottom.
Is it possible that she has already become so bad as to
be susceptible to bribery? We know that after the pre-
liminary examination of Steen Morris an attempt was
made to send Antonia back to Brazil. Rev. Z. C. Taylor
took a very active interest in that enterprise. Why? He
said that her father was dead, her mother a prostitute, and
the rest of her relatives degraded. How could she be
benefitted by returning to such a home? Perhaps Taylor
considered the Texas climate too trying on the complexion
of his wife's cidevant companion or Dr. Burleson may
have thought a sea voyage would benefit her health. But
Antonia appeared satisfied with Texas and turned up
at the trial. Dr. Burleson had cheerfully predicted that
the defendant would " have easy sailing " but he didn't.
Seven jurors stubbornly insisting that he was guilty of
rape argued that at the next trial the " sailing " might
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 129
be o'er troublous seas. Under such circumstances it must
be admitted that a retraction by the State's chief witness
would be a very handy thing to have in the house. By
some means it was secured. The Lord may have sent it
in response to prayer. Possibly Antonia concluded that,
before leaving Texas, she would give it to Capt. Blair as
a keepsake. Or he may have asked her for it, and, accord-
ing to the theory of the defense, she resembles Trilby in
her " inability to say nay to earnest pleading " and the
Captain is a pleader for your life. Antonia had no money
of her own; hence somebody must have paid her fare
to Memphis. I didn't. Of course, she may have drawn
on " our heroic young Christian governor " ; Brother
Wimberly of Brenham, or Dr. Seasholes of Dallas, but
I doubt it. When Capt. Blair asks the court to dismiss
the case on the strength of this affidavit, let him be re-
quired to state why the drawer of the remarkable docu-
ment purchased Antonia's ticket, and who furnished the
funds. Of course, her long conference with Steen Morris
and his attorney on the day before her departure may
have been merely a social visit. If the currency question
was discussed at all, it may have been from a purely
theoretical standpoint. I have no desire to invade the
sacred privacy that should behedge a lingering farewell
of old friends ; still I insist that the court should not ac-
cept that affidavit without submitting it to a careful
examination. The Captain says that he has the docu-
ment and that it exonerates his client, but is leaking
no further information. It is the duty of the court to
shove in the cork to thoroughly acquaint itself with
the methods employed to secure such a concession from
a homeless and ignorant girl of sixteen. Their interview
with Antonia, the materialization of the affidavit exonerat-
ing Morris, and her sudden departure for Memphis, places
130 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the affair in a light so questionable that Lawyer Blair
and Notary Allen, as honorable men, should court an
investigation. If Morris be innocent, what object, other
than hope of pecuniary profit, induced Antonia to accuse
him of the crime? True, he was a penniless benedict ; but,
if she be the shrewd adventuress, we are asked to believe,
she might have supposed that Baylor would buy her off
rather than be advertised as a popular resort for roues.
If he be guilty, what other object than the alleviation of
the pangs of poverty could have induced her, while en-
joying the respect and sympathy of the people, to brand
herself not only as a disreputable drab, but a malignant
liar? If Antonia did, of her own volition, and without
asking or receiving therefor any pecuniary reward not
so much as a railway ticket to Memphis make oath that
she perjured herself when she swore that Steen Morris
ravished her, that settled the case and an apology is due
the defendant and Dr. Burleson by the ICONOCLAST: but
if it be demonstrated that the affidavit in question was
purchased, it then becomes prima facie evidence of the
defendant's guilt. Perjury is a penal offense, and if
Antonia ruined the reputation and endangered the liberty
of a citizen by bearing false witness, she should be com-
pelled to expiate her crime. If, as claimed, she has " gone
to the bad," a two-years' term in a well-regulated peni-
tentiary might effect a reformation. It certainly could
not have a worse effect upon her morals than did her so-
journ at Baylor for I insist that Rev. Z. C. Taylor
criminally libels himself when he declares that he selected
as comparison for his wife a girl he knew to be a bawd,
that he placed a foul strumpet among the young daughters
of the first families of Texas. No man or woman born
has yet been guilty of such godless infamy, such hellish
bestiality as that of which Taylor accuses himself. There
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 131
be theoretical depths of human depravity to which even
a Baptist preacher cannot actually descend. Taylor was
troubled with lycanthropy when he accused himself of
this crime or a rush of astringent bowels to the brain.
The prison matron could be depended upon to protect
Antonia from prowling rape-fiends ; if she " threw herself
away," she would have to do so without assistance. If,
despite the vigilance of the matron, she was ravished,
or willfully went wrong, the superintendent, instead of
striving to keep the matter from the press in order that
it might not reach the courts would hunt up her as-
sailant or paramour and bring him to the bar of justice,
thereby setting a most excellent example for President
Burleson. The ICONOCLAST insists that Antonia be
brought back and required to explain why her affidavit
gives the lie to her deposition. Even tho' she wanted
money to enable her to reach a second paramour, and
freely offered to sell her soul therefor, that does not excuse
the purchase. I do not care particularly to see the poor
child punished. Despite her three years at the great
Baptist educational institute of Texas, she is very ignor-
ant. Altho' being " educated for missionary work," she
knows nothing of the Christian religion. There is not the
slightest evidence that she was ever taught the Ten Com-
mandments, or realizes that it is wrong to swear to a lie.
I cannot see how a young girl, driven forth from Baylor
in disgrace, and denounced by President Burleson in the
daily press, could well avoid becoming a bawd. No other
career was open to her. She is entitled to pity rather than
deserving of punishment ; but the exposure of more astute
criminals may depend upon her apprehension. I submit
that the court has no moral right to dismiss the case of
the State vs. Steen Morris without first exhausting every
honorable means to ascertain the efficient cause of such
132 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
i
remarkable testimony by this child, who was wrecked in
an attempt to transform her from a Brazilian Catholic
into a Baptist missionary. The ICONOCLAST asks naught
but even and exact justice to all, no matter who it helps
or hurts and the public is in no humor to accept a
judicial white-washing job.
POLITICAL POT-POURRI.
REV. ROBT. S. MACARTHTJR, of the Calvary Baptist
church, New York, appears determined to make an
" arse " of himself, despite all the ICONOCLAST can do to
retard the growth of his ears. He has been regaling his
congregation with a series of alleged sermons on the cur-
rency question, having given up his regular summer vaca-
tion on full pay to assist McKinley, Morgan, Cleveland
& Co., to save the country. Just what the Rev. Robt. S.
Macarthur knows of monetary science, and who told him, I
have no idea; but the glibness with which he denounces
Democrats as " repudiators " and " traitors " suggests
that he may have drawn his inspiration from the ebullient
bar'l of that eminent patriot, Marcus Aurelius Hanna. He
has suddenly discovered that the regulation of the currency
is a great " moral question," which should be decided by
the pulpiteer instead of the politicians, incidentally as-
sisted by the people. He declares that " the honor of our
country is at stake," swings his arms and shout : " When
the Union was threatened there were but two parties
patriots and traitors, and the same spirit should control
the pulpit today." It does, Bobby; it does. In war
times the pulpit was preaching abolition in the North
and the divine institution of slavery in the South. About
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 133
all that's left to remind us of the " late unpleasantness "
is the pension steal and the slavery split in certain
churches, which not even Christian charity and the Ameri-
can spirit of toleration have been able to bridge. Today
the pulpit is for silver in the West and for gold in the
East. The pulpiteers are as far apart as the politicians
disagree as radically regarding what constitutes a
" traitor." Keep your shirt on, little man ; you can't get
up any old-time abolition furore over the down-trodden
slaves of Wall street. August Belmont makes an excel-
lent Uncle Tom, but you rather overdo the part of Little
Eva. Government, my dear Bobby, is a practical, theology
a speculative science. Like oil and water, they don't mix
well. Either is big enough for the average head ; hence it
follows that if you know much of one, you are painfully
shy on the other. This being the case, don't you think
that you exhibit a superabundance of what euphuists call
" nerve '* in presuming to speak ex cathedra on the cur-
rency question, and denouncing all those careful students
of economics who dissent from your dicta, as traitors
and repudiators? I am not a doctor of medicine, Bobby,
but it is my non-professional opinion that a little vermi-
fuge and a change of diapers might add to your creature
comfort. If the currency is a moral question, and, there-
fore, within the province of the pulpit, what is the tariff,
civil service, building of war-ships and appointment of
ambassadors? Why not establish a theocracy at once
and supplant the President with some omniscient Baptist
preacher? But don't you think if really capable of
ratiocination that when a church is transformed into a
political wigwam; when it is used to boom the presi-
dential aspirations of any man; when it is employed for
other purposes than the worship of Almighty God it
should pay taxes into the public treasury? The exemp-
134 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
tion of a church necessitates the laying of heavier burthens
on other property. Now do you think granting that
you can think that a New York Democrat should be
compelled to pay one dollar that a lippy booster for
Bill McKinley may not have to hire a hall? Hones'
Injun, little man, is that your idea of Americanism? On
the level now, don't you think that a minister wearing
the livery of a denomination which is forever spraining
its goozle shrieking " separation of church and state,"
should climb a stump when he wants to spout politics?
Judge M. L. Crawford, of Dallas, has returned from
the pow-wow of soreheads at Indianapolis, and leaks some
valuable information thro' an " interview." The " honest
money Democratic " movement to Crawford, is simply a
diversion in favor of McKinley. These " Democratic "
purists propose to preserve the party of Jackson and
Jefferson by conniving at the election of a Republican
president. Democrats who dissent from one or two planks
of the Chicago platform will be pleased to learn that, in
the opinion of the manipulators of the Indianapolis move-
ment, a vote cast for their proposed candidate were
equivalent to an indorsement of the party of high-tariff
and forcebill fame. The witness may take his foot out
of his mouth and step down. We submit our case to
the jury without argument.
Postmaster-General Wilson has issued a ukase prohibit-
ing railway mail clerks making campaign speeches, alleg-
ing such action to be "detrimental to the best interests
of the service and in violation of the order of the presi-
dent." So far, so good. A governmental employee should
not have too much to say in matters political should
not attempt to dictate to the people from whom he is
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 135
drawing his pay ; but how comes it that it is " pernicious
activity " for a mail clerk to employ his leisure time mak-
ing political speeches, while it is pure, unadulterated
patriotism for members of Mr. Cleveland's cabinet to
leave important public duties to under-strappers and go
gadding from Dan to Beersheba, doing exactly the same
thing? Has the present administration one law for the
$1,000 government employee and quite another for the
hired man who hits Uncle Sam's till to the tune of $8000
per annum? General Wilson will please take the stand
and return unequivocal answers. Do cabinet officers and
ambassadors constitute a privileged class? Is it worse
for a postal clerk to make a political speech in time which
is his own than for Secretary Carlisle to travel to distant
states and fire his bazoo from the hustings on matters
political in time paid for by the general public? Is this a
country of equal political privileges, or isn't it? If the
witness is not prepared to answer these questions he can
refer them to the president.
The Texas Prohibs have nominated " the Hon. Ran-
dolph Clark of Waco" for governor of Texas. The
ICONOCLAST is deeply gratified. It rolls as a sweet morsel
under its tongue this new honor heaped upon the city of
spouting geysers and unctious hypocrites. But who the
dickens is " the Hon. Randolph Clark, of Waco "? I had
not hitherto heard of him. But hold: A Prohibition
convention is always a multiplication of Mrs. Gamp:
hence " the Hon. Randolph Clark of Waco," may be
another Mrs. Harris.
The Southern Mercury announced some time ago that
only under certain conditions would it " support Bryan."
Now let the Bungtown Broadax and the Jimtown Jabber-
136 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
wak issue their ultimatums. Miltonius Park persists in
mistaking his ebullient belly-girth for his hat-band. Be-
cause two or three hundred Bohemian farmers have been
cozened into promising to pay subscriptions to his mister-
able advertisement of hog-cholera-cures and pip panaceas,
berkshire boars and half-breed bulls, this concentrated
extract of economic ignorance imagines himself " a man
of muckle might " that he actually carries the Populist
vote of Texas in the hip-pocket of his linen " pants."
Miltonius Park ! Why doesn't some Dallas bootblack stick
a pin in the wind-blown bladder just to hear it pop? Is
Tom Sawyer but a dream ; or are all the Dallas kids de-
generates ?
The Populist party might just as well give up in de-
spair, having incurred the displeasure of the redoubtable
Doctah Macune. He is wroth because it sat upon the
A.P.Ape, and has withdrawn his fellowship with such po*
white trash as Tom Watson and Taubeneck. In making
up my list of " Ape " celebrities last month I inadvertently
overlooked this choicest blossom in the malodorous boquet.
Whether Macune was originally a Democrat or a Republi-
can I do not remember. It appears, however, that he
was a kind of hungry sorehead in politics, and unable to
make a living by the practice of his profession. Pos-
sessed of an oleaginous tongue and a tireless jawbone, he
became a shining light in the Farmers' Alliance, and man-
ager of the Dallas Exchange. Into this sink-hole the
farmers poured their dollars, and Macune clothed himself
in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.
Finally there was an end to the fake, but, for some reason,
Macune's liberty was not curtailed. He went to Wash-
ington, became identified with a Reuben-gouging journa-
listic graft, and again flourished on the fruits of corn-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 137
fed folly. There was another collapse, I suppose, for
Macune drifted back to Texas and hid out in one of the
small towns. He tried to become a Populist oracle, but
his fiats fell on unheeding ears. Then he tied fast to the
tail of the " Ape," in humble hope that the obscene animal
would drag him into fame and fortune. When the simian
passes to the Stygian shore, Macune will be found trying
to secure a livelihood without honest labor by yawping
for some other brazen fraud.
The dispatches state that " Evangelist Sam Small has
offered his services for Bryan during the campaign."
Of course for a consideration. It is to be sincerely
hoped that they will not be accepted. Men are judged
by the company they keep, and the connection of Small's
name with the Bryan campaign would cost the party a
hundred thousand votes. Sam Jones is generally regarded,
even by his opponents, as a man of merit, of incorruptible
honesty; but Sam Small has disgraced every cause with
which he has been connected. He is a professional ad-
venturer, a chronic deadbeat. The Texas' libel law is
iron clad; hence I would not dare make this statement if
unprepared to substantiate it. He has been in turn
printer, journalist, preacher, teacher, lecturer, Prohibition
spouter, and a failure in all; but has managed to feed by
bilking his friends. He has no more moral character than
a tom-cat in rutting time. He has gall enough to ask
Almighty God to indorse a draft for him on a bank in
which he never had a dollar. He has grown children,
but has not paid for the clothing in which he was married.
If Faulkner wants to find out what kind of an unclean
bird the Rev. Sammy is, let him write Oklahoma, Utah, or
any of the Southern States. Wherever known his repu-
tation smells to heaven. In no city where he has resided
138 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
six months could he get trusted for a pound of soap.
He's below even the moral level of S. L. Morris. Faulkner
should fill the bust of his breeches full of leather and
give him the Bowery bounce.
Geo. M. Flick wants to pufi up $100 that, in order
to fasten upon Mr. Bryan the charge of plagiarism, the
Dallas News misquoted the speech of Congressman McCall.
That's nothing: the ICONOCLAST will double the money
that the News not only misquoted McCalPs speech, but,
after having been forced to admit that fact, continued to
exploit a falsehood based upon the interpolation. Will
the News call either Mr. Flick or the ICONOCLAST? Not
a bit of it ; the News will " save its good money " and
continue its cowardly prevarications.
Sharp political practice, not to say disreputable scull-
druggery, robbed Hon. H. M. Gossett of the Democratic
nomination in the Sixth congressional district of Texas,
and conferred it upon Judge Robert Emmett Burke, of
Dallas. I regret the result, for various reasons. I dis-
like to see the methods of the bunco-steerer and sand-
bagger prevail in Texas politics the expressed will of
the people contravened by plotting demagogues. Gossett
is a patriot and Burke a professional pie-biter. The first
forgets more every day than the latter could learn in a
life-time. Gossett would be an ornament to Congress and
a credit to Texas ; the less said about Judge Burke the
better. His name having suggested Irish Catholic ex-
traction, he hastened to issue handbills protesting that
he was not a communicant of that church, and bellowed
from every stump that he was a Baptist the latter
denomination being politically all-powerful in that dis-
trict. Perhaps Judge Burke was not a Catholic when he
THE WIZARD OF WORDS
139
opened his canvass like Slattery, he may have aposta-
tized for reason sufficient unto himself ; but in claiming to
be a Baptist he got clear off his base. Having been
caught in his own springe by Barney Gibbs, Burke hast-
ened to get himself baptized. He was striving to reach
the political kingdom under false colors. He was mix-
ing religion with his politics appealing for support to
a sect of which he was not a communicant and probably
would never have been had his deception remained unex-
posed. Burke's religious pretensions may be sincere; but
it looks very much as tho' he were a Baptist for office
only that he would have claimed to be a Mormon elder
or Mahometan imaum had either of those heresies been
able to render him political aid. Judge Burke has not
been a dazzling ornament to the Texas Judiciary. On one
occasion he threatened to fine Bob Seay, a criminal lawyer,
for contempt, upon which the latter impudently retorted
that if he (Seay) had all the money he had paid buck
niggers to vote for Burke he could easily pay his fine. Did
the " honorable " judge fine or incarcerate Seay for con-
tempt? Not exactly. He took him into a corner of the
courtroom, held a whispered consultation, and returned
to the bench. No wonder a disgusted spectator of the
disgraceful scene exclaimed: " A judge without the man-
hood to uphold the dignity of his office, is certainly a
fine duck to send to Congress ! " Rather ! If the " buck
nigger votes " were not purchased with Judge Burke's
knowledge and consent, why did he swallow the insult?
And if they were, why send him to Congress instead of
to the penitentiary? It might be a good idea to baptize
Judge Burke again. It required seven immersions to re-
lieve Naaman of the leprosy.
140 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
A REMARKABLE PUBLIC EDUCATOR.
"OMEGA," WEITING in the Gainesville Register, takes a
tremendous fall out of the " Apostle." It is, perhaps,
the most scathing pasquinade since the days of Juvenal,
infinitely superior to the famed philippic which Dr. John-
son hurled at Junius. In elegance of irony, concinnity
of satire and verve of invective, " Omega " has no equal.
He hath burst upon our literary horizon like a bifurcated
comet, " shaking war and pestilence from its horrid hair,"
and woe betide the unlucky wight upon whom this lethal
lightning falls, at whom he shoots the Parthian shafts
of his intellectual sagittary. The " Apostle " feels as
tho' he had trodden upon an adult dynamite bomb or
been caught in a St. Louis cyclone without life insurance.
I do not wonder that " Omega " is so in love with his own
article that he has had ife issued in circular form he
should also get it framed. I admit the correctness of his
criticism. I confess that I am a veritable neophyte in
the realm of knowledge that I know absolutely nothing,
and that not well. Before such learned Thebans, such
intellectual Titans, such mighty philomaths as " Omega "
I only ask to stand in silent adoration. When he de-
poseth that I am so densely ignorant of the English
language that I must invent new words to express my
alleged ideas, I can but cast myself upon the mercy of
the court and confess the limitations of my learning.
Intercede for me, O mighty shades of Shakespeare and
Shelley, Carlyle and Macaulay, for thou too art guilty of
this damning sin of neologism, and we must stand or fall
together. Plead for me, O Proctor and Pasteur, Burke
and Beecher, else are we all in the boullion! The edict
hath gone forth that no writer or speaker may add one
jot or tittle to the sacred English tongue that we must
THE WIZARD OF WORDS
return post-haste to the gibberish of Chaucer and the bar-
barism of Spenser. I have managed to learn just enough
of the English language to know that Omega means
" the end " ; but, to save me, I cannot say whether my
hypercritic be the east end of a west-bound or the west
end of an east-bound horse. It is an etymological prob-
lem I cannot solve, a linguistic riddle II may not rede.
Perchance, in very pity for my sad predicament, " Pro-
fessor " W. A. Brimberry, who has made such a scintil-
lating success of the North Texas School Herald, will
illume my more than Boetian ignorance, and add to my
scant stock of general information by forwarding his
photograph. In the January ICONOCLAST I had some-
thing to say about the English of this distinguished public
educator; but supposed his hurts had long since healed
that he had tired of " answering " my rather caustic
critique by circulating the foolish falsehood that I am
an infidel. It appears, however, that he has been nursing
his wrath to keep it warm has employed the entire seven
months in " composing a piece " intended to be a crusher,
and now uncorks himself, regardless of consequences.
Perhaps, after seven months more of intellectual anguish
and labored lucubration, he'll have another mental emis-
sion. I would advise, however, that when again pregnant
with an idea he would let nature take her full period for
parturition, instead of aborting his brain with psychic
ecboline.
" We that do chisel words like chalices,
And moving verses shape with unmoved mind,
What we need, all, is fixedness intense,
Unequaled effort, strife that shall not cease,
The night, the bitter night of labor, whence
[Arises, sun-like, slow, the masterpiece!
142 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
That North Texans may understand the gravamen of
"Professor" Brimberry's sudden outburst, I reproduce a
few excerpts from the January ICONOCLAST'S comment
on his remarkable editorial efforts :
I recently provoked the wrath of the professional peda-
gogues by criticising some features of our public school
system, and by insinuating that an attempt is made to
teach children the " dead languages " by those who are
not even masters of modern English. The North Texas
School Herald which has a large contingent of profes-
sors, superintendents, etc., for " associate editors "
poured upon my defenseless head the seven vials of its
wrath, then, fearing I might not learn of my utter anni-
hilation, kindly forwarded me a marked copy. From the
Herald before me I select a few paragraphs as examples
of " English as she is spoke " by our public pedagogues,
and their ideas of what constitutes an education :
" One great object of school is to learn children how
to study ! "
Noah Webster, of whom the editor of the Herald and
his distinguished corps of " associates " may have inci-
dentally heard, remarks : " To learn is to receive instruc-
tion; to teach is to give instruction." The Herald's
blunder is one that no managing editor of a cheap daily
would pardon in a $10-a-week reporter. Again : " There
are 48 different materials used in the construction of a
piano from no fewer than 16 countries."
But suppose the piano was from only one country?
** As humanity ascends toward the mountain heights,
the leaders must always be in advance of the masses."
Which were equivalent to saying that the man who is
before should not be behind, that what is on top should
not be underneath.
"Elihu Burrit was a linguistic prodigy educated in a
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 143
district school. He was compelled to discontinue even
these meager opportunities at 15 by the death of hi*
father."
How a youth can " discontinue opportunities " that
have been abrogated by the act of another is beyond mj
comprehension, but may be clear as mud to the trained
mind of the Herald man. A reporter, who had acquired
his knowledge of English at the " case " instead of in
the class-room, would have written: " At 15 he was com-
pelled, by the death of his father, to withdraw from the
district school."
But to point out all the pigeon-English appearing in
any one issue of this flamboyant organ of our public
educators, would require a page of nonpareil. I am no
grammar-sharp I have small patience with those ultra-
purists who esteem manner above matter; but I do insist
that people who are well paid to teach our children
English composition, should be able to construct an in-
telligible sentence. Our pedagogues worry their pupils
well-nigh to the verge of insanity with " parts of speech,"
but how many of them have the faintest conception of the
majestic beauty and transcendent power of the English
tongue ? They can " parse " the sentences of Ingersoll
and Macaulay; can resolve those prose poems into their
component parts much as a brindle pup scatters the
petals of the great blush rose; but they can no more
construct a sentence on these models than a fence-painter
can reproduce an Italian sunset.
144 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
" TOO MUCH WORLD."
FAMINE THE HANDMAID OF FORTUNE.
" THERE'S to much world. There are not enough cor-
sumers. Too many fields have been opened by science.
The world has not yet adjusted itself to limiting produc-
tion to consumption."
What's that? It is the Republican explanation of the
present industrial depression.
The words quoted are copied from an interview had by
the London Telegraph with " a prominent Anglo-Ameri-
can banker, whose opinions are those of an expert." His
name is withheld by the Telegraph " for business
reasons " ; but he speaks as an avowed champion of
McKinley, and his utterances have been reproduced and
approved by all the leading gold-bug papers on both
sides of the ocean. We are thus asked by " the party of
progress and prosperity " to believe that the masses are
poor because they have created too much wealth. Accord-
ing to the latest economic theorem of the McKinleyites,
half the world is hungry because there is too much hog
and hominy, butter and beef; it is naked because we grow
too much wool and cotton and weave too much cloth ; it is
inhabiting unhealthy huts because we have too much lum-
ber, building stone and brick ; it has no spot of earth hal-
lowed by the name of home, because " there's too much
world."
Excuse my Latin but it's a damned lie!
Unless the Anglo-American banker aforesaid and his
industrious claquers be talking the veriest tommyrot, the
way to become prosperous is to close every factory and let
our fertile fields lie fallow until the surplus is consumed.
We could compel the return of " good times " by burning
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 145
up half our breadstuffs, cloth and building material, or
slinging it into the bottom of the sea. According to this
theory, much wealth is the equivalent of poverty, a part
is greater than the whole. If the McKinleyites be correct,
the anarchists who destroy property are patriots, those
who persist in creating it in times like these are public
enemies. The opponents of the " Boy Orator " have prac-
tically told us that the torch of progress and the brand
of the firebug are synonymous if not exactly the same.
When the people cry to these economic savants that the
auric standard hath filled their cities with silent factories
and bankrupt merchants, their country lanes with penni-
less tramps and disputatious Populists, they calmly reply :
" Nay, good friends ; what ails you is too much wealth.'*
When the giant of Labor, his hands fastened with golden
fetters and watching the gaunt wolf of Want creep ever
nigher those he loves, cries out in agony, " Unhand me,
that I may shield my home from hunger and rags and
wretchedness," this Anglo-American McKinley booster
softly smooths his red brawn with lily fingers and makes
reply : " Nay, my good man ; those hands of thine have
been busy to the country's hurt. Because of thy perni-
cious activity, there's a glut of products, which molder
in the market place. In thy too fecund brain were born
those accursed wealth-creating devices which, like the
monster of Frankenstein, torment their maker. Patience,
kind sir, until the surplus is exhausted, when like another
Satan you may be loosed for a little season."
If this be all that " expert opinion " can do for us, then
is our condition desperate indeed. If, with a million idle
men, we produce too much, how many must stand outside
the industrial pale, in the limbo of beggary, ere the Mc-
Kinley system of economics can save the country?
" Peace," says the poet, " hath its triumphs no less than
146 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
war "; must it have its victims too? I am no " expert "
in matters industrial, and am loth to take issue with the
eminent authority paraded by the McKinleyites ; but if
our present ills be indeed due to overproduction, then we
are entering upon an age of agony, of suffering and of
sin such as the world has never seen. If the Republican
theorem be correct, then here is an application of the law
of the survival of the fittest which dooms half mankind to
the hell of famine. The poor man has naught to exchange
for life's necessaries but his labor, and if that becomes at
times a public curse, what is left him but to steal or starve?
Americans are notoriously an impatient and headstrong
people. They have not been bred like the bloodless Ben-
galese to meekly bear the oppressor's wrong, the proud
man's contumely, and perish without a murmur in a land
of plenty. They are firmly convinced whether right or
wrong that their hard condition is due to deliberate
despoiliation. With tireless industry and rigid economy
the masses cannot get out of the morass of poverty ; yet
on every side they see those who neither toil nor spin, ar-
rayed like unto Solomon in all his glory. A bitter hatred
has found place in their hearts for those who waste while
they must want a hatred that may yet flame forth in
desperate deeds.
" Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion drawing nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying
fire."
For five years past the famished lion of Labor has been
creeping closer and ever closer to the silken tent of Croesus ;
for five years past the patriot has been stroking its mane
with trembling fingers and preaching patience; for five
years past every political party has been promising that
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 147
its wisdom would soon transform the dark night of indus-
trial depression into glorious day. If by such means we
could scarce keep the " blatant beast " under control ; if
our prayers and tears and flattering promises flanked
here and there with a double-shotted battery or forest of
bristling bayonets could scarce prevent it fleshing its
murderous fangs in Croesus' throat, what will the monster
do when it gathers from " expert opinion " that the night
is perpetual, that for it the long-cherished hope of dawn
was but an idle dreamt
If the idea that he must be sacrificed to " save the coun-
try " that he occupies no important place in the scheme
of things, and will be turned out to starve that decreased
production may enhance price once finds secure lodg-
ment in the head of Labor, the world will soon witness a
new and more terrible Reign of Terror. Yet that is the
idea promulgated by this economic " expert " and loudly
applauded by the Republican and Mugwump press.
<c There is too much world," say they while millions de-
pend on charity for six feet of earth in which to lay their
marrowless bones. " Too many fields have been opened by
science " and this blessed night a million Americans will
go supperless to bed. " The world has not yet adjusted
itself to limiting production to consumption " which
means that an universal trust, higher prices, another mil-
lion tramps pressing for employment and forcing down
wages, is the economic idea of the Republican party. For
three-quarters of a century political economy was tainted
with the black pessimism of Malthus, who insisted that
population had a tendency to increase faster than its
means of subsistence could be made to do ; that unless man-
kind placed a prudential check on its procreative passion,
millions would finally perish for lack of food; but what
is the bogy of Malthusianism to that of McKinleyism?
148 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
The former would wreck us in some far-off time ; the latter
declares damnation even now at our door. The first would
consign us to Famine's clutches; the last would make us
butt our own brains out on bursting smokehouses and
bloated wheat bins!
And this is the kind of unadulterated damn nonsense
sanctioned by the McKinleyites as a part of the curri-
culum in their wonderful " campaign of education ! "
There never was, and there never can be, in this world
such a thing as over-production. A man's gray matter
must be full o' maggots before he can entertain for a; mo-
ment such a crazy economic idea. Under normal condi-
tions where each receives that proportion of the world's
wealth which he actually earns as the productive power
of labor increases the standard of living advances. When
there is enough of necessaries the surplus energy of the)
nation turns to the production of luxuries, which in turn
become necessaries mankind ever rising higher above the
habits and condition of the brute. If my banker friend
thinks there is " too much world," let him attend the next
opening! to settlement of an Indian reservation. If he
thinks there is overproduction, let him consider how many
of us would decline to live on the elegant plan of the Astors
were we able.
The trouble is not overproduction, but enforced under-
consumption. The wealth annually produced congests at
a comparatively few points instead of flowing into the
coffers of its creators. If every workman were regularly
employed, and the productive power of each enhanced an
hundredfold, it were impossible to create more wealth than
the world wants. If distributed in accord with the earning
power of each, the result would not be glutted markets
and falling prices, but better food, clothing, houses, more
of the comforts, and conveniences of life for the toiling
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 149
millions. The " dignity of labor," anent which the poli-
ticians prattle about election time would become some-
thing more than an iridescent dream. The workingman
would have more leisure in which to do battle with tK'e
demon of Ignorance and the foul gorgon of Superstition.
Soup-houses and penitentiaries would practically disap-
pear, and where now stands the wretched hovel would rise
the cultured home. Where Famine grimly stalks Plenty
would show her smiling face, Despair yield place to Hope,
and upon the strong shoulders of sweet Content the Re-
public sit secure.
This is no fancy sketch. Despite the fact that we are
on the threshold of the age of invention the mighty era
of intellect ; that we have obtained as yet but slight mas-
tery over the power of the elements; that vast armies
stand idle, producing nothing despite the fact that
Labor, that wonder-worker, is cribbed, cabined and con-
fined by unnatural conditions we create enough wealth
every year to comfortably clothe, feed and house every
human being who stands within the shadow of our flag.
Take off the accursed interdict, give place in the industrial
ranks to every man able to wield the hammer or swing the
steel, strengthen his heart and nerve his arm with the
knowledge that whatsoever of wealth is created by his work
that he shah 1 surely have, and the most extravagant dream
of the optimist were to the reality but
" As moonlight unto sunlight, and water unto wine."
Products remain unsold in the marketplace and the
tendency of prices is downward because those who produce
are not permitted to consume because the producers of
wealth are not its possessors. If the usufruct of my farm
be taken to pay my taxes, interest and insurance, what
150 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
have I to exchange for the product of labor in other lines?
And if these, too, be similarly confiscated, what have my
brother toilers to exchange for the fruits of my farm?
Nothing. Exchange between us cannot be effected, simply
because neither has aught to give, and some wild-eyed yap
posing as an economic " expert " lifts up his voice and
protests that our troubles are due to overproduction ! If
the farmer and artisan have nothing left to exchange when
they produce much, how will their purchasing power be
enhanced if they produce little?
" There are not enough consumers " (and that's no lie),
cries the gentleman who is peddling " expert opinions,"
with the approval of the McKinley campaign committee.
But how does he propose to increase the number? By
limiting production and raising prices, by decreasing the
number of people employed, by depriving another million
or so of all purchasing power! Dr. Sandrago has long 1
been laughed at for attempting to cure a man of the gout
by drawing off all his blood and filling his stomach with
warm water ; yet here is a scheme to relieve an acute case
of industrial prostration by hitting the patient in the head
with a hatchet. It must be patent to every man whose
brain has not become ossified by allowing a steady stream
of Markhanna literature to trickle through it that so
long as a vast number of people depend for existence upon
their immediate earnings we cannot reduce production
without reducing consumption; that so long as we have
a great army of destitute people unemployed, it is im-
possible to increase production without increasing con-
sumption.
It is a trifle strange that the apostles of Republicanism
should, in one breath, demand protection as a means of de-
veloping American industries, and in the next complain
that we do not limit production to consumption that they
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 151
should approve a protective tariff, which is intended to
raise prices, and damn free-silver, which they say will do
exactly the same thing. They assure us that gold makes
for high and silver for low wages. Labor can only be paid
out of the price received for its product ; yet it is a part of
the Republican profession of faith that gold, while raising
wages, makes the cost of living less, and that silver, while
lowering wages, makes the cost of living more. I confess,
with a feeling akin to shame, that Republican economics
is beyond the range of my comprehension. Its parabolical
paradoxes and supernatural syllogisms remind me of those
amorphous monsters which a high priest of Bacchus can
sometimes see with his eyes shut. The man who enters the
labyrinthine maze of McKinley argument needs a ball of
twine, a piece of chalk and an inextinguishable torch if he
hopes to ever find his way back to the sunshine of common
sense. Solomon admitted that there were three things too
wonderful for him yet David's wisest son died before
Markhanna began turning loose his campaign literature.
What we want and needs must have is not a national
trust to limit production and add to the idle legions of
labor, but conditions that will enable every man to produce
to his fullest capacity and enjoy the usufruct of his en-
deavor to the uttermost farthing. That's the ideal indus-
trial system to the attainment of which we must bend all
our energies, instead of sitting supinely down in the Ser-
bonian bogs dug by this Anglo-American banker, and
wailing that " there's too much world." We cannot afford
to tie fast to any party in whose heaven there blazes no
star of hope which calls a halt to the workingman just
as he has seized the genie's wand for the multiplication of
wealth. We have here a land capable of sustaining five
times its present population, so rich is it in natural re-
sources ; yet millions struggle from the cradle to the grave
152 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
for a bare subsistence, while tens of thousands beg in
vain for this poor privilege. How to break the accursed
spell to make it possible for this people to utilize to the
utmost the good gifts of a gracious God is the problem
of problems, the riddle which the American QEdipus must
read or be destroyed ; yet McKinleyism makes answer that
the Almighty has ruined us with his munificence ! Better
that we should align ourselves with the wildest dreamers
and strive ever so blindly to remove the blight, than to
cast in our lot with those blessed " conservatives " who
have naught to offer but bread boluses already proven
abortive, and who denounce all who would lead the masses
to a higher plane as alarmists and demagogues ! Were not
John the Baptist and Jesus Christ alarmists in the view
of the eminently conservative Sadducees ? Did not George
III and all his " most loyal and dutiful subjects " denounce
Washington as a Jack Cade, Adams and Jefferson as dema-
gogues? Courage, faint heart! Remember that, since
the dawn of human history, every man who became dis-
satisfied with existing conditions, howsoever bad; every
man who dared cry out against prescriptive right en{-
trenched in brutal wrong, has been denounced and denied,
belittled and belied by the blessed " conservatives " of his
day. Surely it was not intended that any man of woman
born should sit with folded hands and starve while all
about him the potential wealth of nature beckons. There
is in heaven a star, the radiant star of Hope.
" Not in vain the distant beacons ; forward, forward let
us range;
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing
groves of change."
I do not believe that any possible tinkering with the<
currency can bring about ideal industrial conditions ; but
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 153
the abolition of the single gold standard will be a step in\
the right direction. It will be a second Declaration of
Independence, a timely warning to all the world that Uncle
Sam has outgrown his financial leading-strings and as-
sumed the management of his own affairs. It will be an
impressive notice to the little knot of millionaires who have
so long been taking exorbitant toll in so many different
ways of American labor that the masses are h 1 bent on
industrial emancipation. Having demonstrated their
ability to secure what they want, despite the organized
opposition of monopolies and trusts, the people will be
encouraged to undertake other and more important re-
forms. We know that there is something radically wrong,
and that if the gold standard did not cause our ills it has
done nothing to cure them. We have learned by sad ex-
perience that it is no commercial palladium or industrial
deity. It is an idol whose impuissance for good has been
amply proven, its capacity for evil strongly suspected.
We know that at its shrine worship those who fatten on
the fruits of others' toil ; that its chief priests and Levites
are the great money lords, the protective tariff benefi-
ciaries, the wreckers of railways, the sworn enemies of
labor unions, the managers of trusts and monopolies, the
dardanari who gamble in life's necessaries, and the news-
papers which pander to the plutocracy, fake up coats-of-
arms for parvenues and prove their un-Americanism by
bowing down with a noisy adoration that endangers tjheir
diapers before every two-by-four princeling and chan-
crous dukeling. If we may judge idols, as men, by the
company they keep, then indeed are we justified in laying
the iconoclastic hammer to the golden calf. Perchance its
fall will serve as a warning to the house of Have that
Labor, which hewed this nation out of the wilderness, is
still lord and ready to enforce its rights, humbugged and
BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
driven with contumely from a table which groans beneath
viands wrung from the earth's bosom in the sweat of his
brow.
THE APOSTLE'S RAG BABY.
IN the year of our Lord, 1891, I became pregnant with
an idea. Being at the time chief editorial writer on the
Houston Post I felt dreadfully mortified, as nothing of the
kind had ever before occurred in that eminently moral
establishment. Feeling that I was forever disqualified for
the place by this untoward incident, I resigned and took
sanctuary in the village of Austin. As swaddling clothes
for the expected infant, I established the ICONOCLAST,
which naturally gravitated to Waco, the political ganglion
and religious storm center of the state. When the young-
ster made his appearance in this troublesome vale of
financial buncombe and economic idiocy, it was given the
ponderous title of " Inter-convertible Bond-currency
Plan." It's a wonder the name didn't kill it ; but, turned
out to grass, it thrived and grew in grace. The infant
was generally supposed to be an unholy cross between in-
cipient insanity and a well developed case of confluent
Populism; but when the bankers of Germany, assembled
at Berlin, approved the little waif, the suspicion passed.
Hon. Tom Johnson became the Congressional champion
of some features of the plan, which now finds earnest advo-
cates among all political parties. I have an abiding faith
that, in a couple of million years or so, it will be generally*
accepted as the proper solution of the much vexed cur-
rency problem ; but it may be that my exuberant optimism
misleads me. If the plan possesses genuine merit,, that if
no indication that it will ever become popular ; if it be th
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 155
wildest nightmare that ever kicked a vagrom-minded man,
that will not prevent the public accepting it as another*
Pegasus, and politicians riding it into power. At the re-
quest of many patrons of the ICONOCLAST and with
apologies to those who have already gone with me over*
the ground I submit a brief compendium of the plan and
the propositions upon which it is based, promising that I
do not recommend it as the ne plus ultra of financial)
wisdom, but suggest it as an improvement on our present
unsatisfactory currency system.
I shall not weary the reader with a long dissertation on
economic science, but assume, as praecognita already
proven, that our national exchange media has absolutely
nothing to do with our foreign trade ; that nations do not
swap money, but exchange commodities ; that our gold
and silver coin is valued as bullion when carried abroad,
and would have as great purchasing power in foreign mar-
kets if never minted, consequently we need consult only
our domestic convenience in establishing an exchange
media. Further, that the word " dollar " is an abstract
term by which we express, not so many grains of gold or
silver, but the commercial relation of each commodity to
all other commodities ; that whatsoever enables us to ex-
peditiously effect exchanges is " good money," no matter
of what made; that an irredeemable paper currency will'
not depreciate in purchasing power so long as it is not,
and cannot be, issued in excess of the necessary money-
work to be done. I also assume that we can never have a
currency both safe and flexible grounded on one or two
comparatively unimportant products, of fluctuating value,
and that the exchange media should be removed entirely
from the province of partisan politics and subjected to the
direct and absolute control of commerce.
Some of the foregoing propositions are in conflict with
156 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
monetary theories bearing the sanction of centuries; but
this fact no more establishes their falsity than the ipse
dixit of the college of cardinals disproved Galileo's cos-
mogony. Economic writers were loud in their denuncia-
tion five years ago; but are gradually accepting these
propositions, a fact which prompted a witt}^ but incor-
rigible " gold-bug " to send me the following lines fromf,
Pope:
" Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen ;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."
To this sally I retorted with an excerpt from the same
author :
" Old politicians chew on wisdom past,
And totter on in bus'ness to the last,
As weak, as earnest, and as gravely out
As sober Lanesb'rough dancing with the gout."
A governmental money that will automatically and in-
fallibly adapt itself to the varying needs of commerce,
preserve the equilibrium between the money-work to be
done and the money available to do it, and thereby obviate
all danger of either appreciation or depreciation of the
purchasing power of the dollar, is universally conceded to
be the great desideratum. To attain this I propose :
(1) That the government keep constantly on sale at
all postoffices of the presidential class low interest-bearing
bonds in denominations of $100 to $1,000, redeemable at
the option of the holder in full legal tender currency.
(2) That this new currency be added to the general
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 157
revenue fund, and paid out the same as other money,
until currency bonds to the amount of $250,000,000 be
taken the proceeds constituting a redemption fund
when such additions to the general revenue fund shall cease
and not be resumed until, through bond redemption, the
fund set aside for that purpose falls below the foregoing
figure.
That's all there is to the Inter-convertible Bond-Cur-
rency Plan. When there is too little money, the govern-
ment will supply more ; when too much, the government will
absorb the surplus, and the equilibrium at all times be
maintained. There could be no " money famines " and
consequent enhancement of the purchasing power of the
dollar; there could be no depreciation, caused by the pres-
sure of a redundant currency for employment. The re-
demption fund would be an infallible indication of the
monetary needs of the country. The volume of currency
would be controlled by the natural laws of commerce
Congress could neither add to nor take from it a single
farthing. The administration would be powerless to mint
a single coin or print a dollar bill until notified by the
nation, through the medium of the redemption fund, that
it needed more money. Silver might become plentiful as in
the days of Solomon and cheap as scrap-iron ; gold might
advance in value another 100 per cent., and only the fine
arts be affected the American currency would maintain
the even tenor of its way, the dollar be " the same yes-
terday, today and forever." The unit of value could no
more be affected by the varying fecundity of the mines,
good or bad crops, legislative ineptitude, war or pesti-
lence, than could the length of the yard or weight of the
pound. The dollar would be tripped to the commodity
feature, which makes it mutable. The supply relative to
the demand would ever be the same. It would measure
158 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
each by all instead of itself, and, therefore, be a true and
unchangeable denominator of value.
Perhaps I have fixed the normal redemption fund at too
high a figure; 100 millions were sufficient but for the
danger that those interested in preventing proper cur-
rency expansion might buy and hold sufficient bonds to
make automatic operation of such a system impossible.
The redemption fund must be too large for even Wall
street manipulation. There would be little danger of
any coterie of conspirators tying up 250 million in govern-
ment bonds, bearing merely a nominal rate of interest, while
commerce was bidding for more ready money. With so
large a redemption fund, and bonds bearing even so high
an interest rate as l^/o P er cent., our exchange media would
cost us but $3,750,000 a year, or less than one-tenth the
annual commercial interest on the wealth we have invested
in a metal tool of trade.
It will be exclaimed that this is " fiatism." It is the
fiatism of which Dr. Adam Smith fondly dreamed and
which his successors have unqualifiedly approved. It is
the fiatism of Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay. It is
the same fiatism by means of which 95 per cent, of our
exchanges are now effected; for, as I have frequently
pointed out, our " commercial money," approximating 40
millions, is not grounded on a pitiful % billion of gold.
Back of it is all the wealth and credit of its makers ; be-
hind the bond currency, which I propose, would be all the
wealth and credit of the richest nation in the world, the
earning power of 70 million people. " But it would be
irredeemable," cries one. Not so long as it remained a
legal tender and was accepted at its nominal value in trade.
In what do you want a paper dollar redeemed? If you
exchange it for a gold or silver coin you have got but
another order for goods, which you must present for re-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 159
demption to the people. When you have exchanged your
dollar for corn or cotton, pork or pig-iron it has been re-
deemed not till then have you received final payment.
So long as the people will redeem a paper dollar at its
nominal value, isn't it as good an exchange medium as
gold? Even that incorrigible economic ass known as Ed-
ward Atkinson will answer in the affirmative. If we can
discover Dr. Adam Smith's " wagonway through the air,"
why incur the expense of building turnpikes? If we can
make an effective trade-tool at so little cost, why keepf
more than a billion of wealth tied up in gold and silver*
coin? Why imitate the Chinese and burn a house to
roast a pig, when the porker may be done brown with a
billet? Holding such views, why does the ICONOCLAST
advocate the free coinage of silver? The goldites would
base our exchange media on one, the silverites on two, the
ICONOCLAST on all forms of national wealth. In my hum-
ble opinion the question at issue between the two political
parties is of precious little importance ; but, while the
silverites manifest a slight inclination to get into the right,
the goldites exhibit a stubborn resolution to remain in the
wrong.
EDITORIAL ETCHINGS.
I AM told that a very large proportion of the members of
the Reformed Presbyterian church belong to the A. P. A.
There's nothing particularly remarkable about that. No
member in good standing of the Reformed Presbyterian
church will take an oath to support the constitution of
the United States. They are the descendants of Cromwell's
Fight-the-Good-Fight and Captain Smite-Them-Hip-and-
Thigh. It is part of their Religion to hate the Church
160 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of Rome. In England they expelled the Stuarts, pro-
claimed Catholics ineligible to the crown, set up a canting
butcher as Lord Protector and invested him with more
than kingly power. They have no objection to taking the
oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria, but will not pledge
fealty to the principles of the American government. Yet
they are helping Rev. Huddleston and Whisky Bill Tray-
nor, Apostate Slattery and Convict Price protect this
blessed Yankee nation from " Popish conspirators." What
strange things we see when we've got no lariat and can
find no limb! Speaking of Price, reminds me that he's
no longer in the penitentiary. At least he wants to wager
me $1,000 that he isn't, and sends me a new Ape paper
which purports to be printed by one " W. E. Price, some-
time a convict in San Quentin prison." He demands that
I make correction of my previous statement and the
ICONOCLAST strives to please. Price was put in the peni-
tentiary, but was subsequently released by order of the
Supreme court, which seems to have considered that en-
forced companionship with so foul a creature was in-
flicting cruel and unusual punishment on pimps and pro-
curers, forgers and rape-fiends, and, therefore, clearly
unconstitutional. I was certainly mistaken in saying
that Price was in the penitentiary, and hasten to apologize.
Heaven forefend that I should ever lack the moral courage
to confess my faults. The murderers in San Quentin have
been happily relieved of the degrading companionship of
Price. Unable to mount to the moral level of common
cut-throats, he has been returned, as an intellectual per-
vert and abnormal malodor, to the roost of his brother
Apes. I present my humble apology on a silver plate.
I sincerely hope that Price will be allowed his liberty until
he accomplishes the purpose for which he was created
the complete extinction of the un-American order. He is
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 161
doing more to discredit Ape-ism than are all its opponents.
Americans are naturally chivalrous, fairly honest, reason-
ably intelligent, and to such men the foul belchings of this
California buzzard constitute a valuable object lesson
which smells too loud to be conveniently overlooked.
Hicks and Slattery, Huddleson and Price would soon
stink even Gulliver's Yahoos underground. " God moves
in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." That
accounts both for the presence and preservation of the
party to whom I'm apologizing. Were he not under Divine
protection, some irate Catholic whose sister or daughter
he has brutally defamed, would cut off his ears and feed
'em to a coyote. Were he not an instrument in the hands
of Providence for the suppression of Apeism, his rotten
hide would be filled so full of holes that it wouldn't chamber
baled hay. Having sincerely repented, he should grant
me absolution.
The bicycle craze appears to have hit Denver very hard.
The ladies not only bestride the evasive machine, but enter
the public races and compete for prizes. A dispatch from
the metropolis of the Centennial State says : " Miss Lulu
Fox won the race yesterday; Misses Birdie Francis and
Grace Bradley fainted at the close." Lulu will please ac-
cept the compliments of the ICONOCLAST. It has been
demonstrated that she can work her shapely legs faster
than any other woman in the gladsome West that she's
an adept in the gentle art of pawing the atmosphere with
her feet. Atalanta ran foot races, and won them too;
why shouldn't Lulu bestride a glove-fitting saddle and
sling space behind her, to make a hoodlum holiday? Ata-
lanta was a girl who usually got there. The heroic Greeks
admired her movement and tried to get a mortgage on
it; but the old chivalric days are dead. Lulu could have
162 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
strung Atalanta at the first road-house; yet no sighing
Hippomenes gave chase with his pocket full of golden
apples. But that may have been due to the free silver
sentiment. Birdie and Gracie got no medals in the
Amazonian games. They kerflummized " at the close.'*
Whether the sun was too hot, or their garters too tight,
we are not told. A bicycle is not the best possible com-
panion in a case of syncope. It doesn't wind a manly
arm about the supple waist and loose the corset-strings,
because it ain't built that way. It is more apt to plow
up a segment of turnpike with the nose of the patient
while turning her Trilbys t'other end, to walk all over
her, muss her bangs and disarrange her bloomers. But
" no pains no gains." The next Denver novelty will doubt-
less be female horse- jockeys. From straddling a bike to
bestriding a thoroughbred is only a step, and the new
woman appears determined to go all the gaits.
Speaking of the clothes-pin mount reminds me that, in
this matter, the culchawed East still leads the wild and
wooly West by several laps. A year or more ago a high-
fly society female appeared in Central Park wearing her
horse after the manner of men. It proved a trifle too risque,
however, for even Giddy Gotham, and the bifurcated riding
habit was abandoned. It has been revived and improved
upon by the buxom daughter of Marcus Aurelius Hanna,
the multi-millionaire master of Major McKinley. Miss
Hanna is only in her seventeenth year ; but, as Mrs. Par-
tington would say, is quite big for her size. If we may
judge her by her portraits, she is built on the ebullient,
not to say beefy model of the riotously materialistic Lil-
lian Russell. She suggests a rather wholesome looking
young woman with capacity for three large, rectangular
meals per diem and a bottle of Burgandy before going to
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 163
bed. As a dress reformer she can make even Dr. Mary
Walker look wild. If the telegraphic reports and news-
paper pictures may be relied on, " Miss Hanna does not
wear a skirt of any kind when riding, but carries out the
masculine costume to the minutest detail." Thus at-
tired, she straddles a prancing stallion and rides about
the streets of Cleveland " like the finest trooper in a crack
cavalry regiment," or, attended by a groom, makes 15-
mile excursions into the country. Verily the emancipation
of enslaved womanhood, for which the suffragists have
toiled and prayed, is even now at hand! But in their
accounts of Miss Hanna, it seems to me, the papers have
overlooked something. They have told us all about her
immaculate shirts, her derby hats, the cut of her coats
and the number, color and texture of her " pants,"" bub
neglected to state whether the latter are supported by
suspenders. Perhaps they considered that her pictures
solved that problem. Miss Hanna's waist is not particu-
larly spirituelle; still we may presume that the main-
tenance of suspender buttons were a work of supereroga-
tion. She not only " sits the saddle well," as the reporters
say, but fills it full and it is no toy affair. We are told
that her sire does not approve her risque riding habit,
especially during the campaign, when the eyes of the
universe are focused on the Hanna household, but cannot
help himself" Ruth rules him with a rod of iron, he is
mere putty in her hands." Here is a confession that may
give even the most rantankerous Republican pause.
Hanna bosses McKinley and Ruth rules Hanna. So it
appears that she is the Joan of Arc of the Republican
national campaign, just as Rebecca Merlindy Johnson is
the directress-general of the Texas Democracy. But this
is not the worst of it. It is tacitly admitted, even by the
Republican managers, that McKinley is a mere cipher
164 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
who is to be elevated to the presidency as a kind of Toom-
tabard or obedient puppet; that Mark Hanna, as repre-
sentative of the trusts and combines that are putting up
the corruption fund for this campaign will be the con-
trolling power. Now if Hanna controls McKinley and
Ruth runs Hanna, and the Republican party wins, where
in the name of T. Watson, Esq., will we be " at "? Will
not this young female be president de facto? Will not
the real power repose in the hands of this modest maiden
who parades herself before the public in " pants "? When
Ruth goes forth with her groom for a 15-mile ride, will
not the decision of great questions of state have to await
her return, just as they now do the reappearance of Cleve-
land when this political J. C. is enjoying a duck-shoot
or a comfortable drunk? Will not the fondest dreams
of the Stantons and Anthony's, the Claflins and Leases be
more than realized when the destiny of the most powerful
nation on earth is carried in the hippocket of Miss Hanna's
66 pants " ? Even so ; unless the Republicans can outdo all
previous legislative miracles and repeal the law of cause
and effect. I am not criticizing Ruth; I leave it to the
Republican preachers to point out, that, according to
Holy Writ, a woman who assumes the garb peculiar to
men is an abomination to the Lord. If she can manage
the " old man " that fact proves that she is his superior
in mental power and would make the better president; still
I cannot but reflect that if she is elected by proxy to the
chief magistracy her rather startling dress reform will be
fixed upon this fair land forever. Few women could refuse
to fall in with a fashion set by a female president having
Mark Hanna and Major McKinley for obsequious upper
servants. What is the tariff controversy or currency ques-
tions beside such considerations? Friends, Romans,
Countrymen: The real issue in this campaign is whether
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 165
the skirt shall be abolished and the great she-world walk
forth in breeches. The Republican party is trying to give
us a gynocracy shorn even of its petticoats. A genuine
queen full were bad enough, but think of being ruled by a
bobtail flush ! I don't blame Ruth ; a young lady's behavior
depends much on her raising; but were she daughter of
mine, I'd lay her across the horse-block, secure a long
elastic swamp-elm plank and make it necessary to put a
patch on the bust of her riding breeches the size of a
buggy-wheel.
I am just recovering from a prolonged mental debauch;,
and feel as though I had been doing Galveston by gaslight
with the Revs. Harmon and Wimberly for running mates.
I set deliberately about the disgraceful affair, and have
no one to reproach but myself. I purchased copies of the
Sunday edition of the New York Herald, World and
Journal, hired a nigger to haul them home, and waltzed
into them with all the vigor of a backsliding saint hoisting
aboard his second installment of saving grace, or a Kansas
jayhawker taking a hard fall out of a two-gallon jug.
The doctor says I'll come 'round all right with careful
nursing, but that I'd better sign the anti-slushing pledge,
and get back to the legitimate and sane in literature by
easy stages ; says that if I must dissipate I 1 had best
purchase a parrot, stick to Edward Atkinson's economic
pink lemonade and Dr. Talmage's sacred tanglefoot, else
take my simians in a manner customary from time im-
memorial in Texas. I have a dim recollection of being
surrounded by acres of amorphous monsters, resembling
nothing in the heavens or the earth or the waters under
the earth " creations " of phrenetic artists, whose minds
had been rotted by reading the articles they were expected
to illustrate. Some of these " creations " were plain black
166 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and white ; others daubs of color resembling a London sun-
set crossed with a basket of addled eggs, the chiaro-oscuro
worked in with a hickory broom and a squirt-gun loaded
to scatter. But no other school of art would correlate
with such remarkable literature. It is consectaneous, fol-
lows as a matter of course. The scientific world is agog
because a man has succeeded in photographing dreams;
yet here we have reproduced, in all their hideosity, myriads
of nightmares. I read some of the articles, and that's what
ails me. Perhaps I could get used to such a diet, and even
grow fat on it ; but a taste for literary luxuries, like that
for cavaire and limburger cheese, must be patiently
acquired. The mental " meenyow " supplied by New
York's great papers consists of wind that has been
pumped through a gas-pipe, in which intelligence lies
dormant and ideality so dead that it smells like a Chinese
hotel on a summer's day. I am told that in England
game is not considered good until it emits an odor like
a Waco mayoralty election, and New York is so blawsted
Henglish that it has carried its craze for the consumption
of " rot " into the province mental as well as material.
The New York idea of journalism is to spoil as much
white paper as possible in a given time. There is abso-
lutely nothing in any of the three papers I have been in-
specting which a Texas cross-roads editor would consider
worthy composition. They are simply receptacles for
slush intended to be sensational. There is less salacity
than might be expected in papers pandering to the foex
populi; but they deserve no credit on that account the
writers for the New York press have become too weak to
be even wicked. Edgar Saltus does make a spasmodic at-
tempt to be " suggestive," but is unequal to the occasion.
His enforced Frenchiness suggests an inpubescent kid
suffering with urinary calculi. I sometimes wonder that
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 167
Edgar doesn't give himself a fatal case of ennui; still, he's
not half so jackassically jejune as the average ready
writer of drivel for the New York diurnals. Reading after
them were like eating soap-bubbles served on fried hydro-
gen with sauce a la Barmecide, kissing a grass-widow by
telephone or drinking the froth out of a pop bottle. They
should be given the Lagado treatment for intestinal colic.
I think they must all smoke cigarettes, turn up their
twousahs, and say eyther and nyther. They are sym-
posiums of emptiness so utter that all known vacua were
St. Patrick's Day plenums by comparison. They are
impalpable shadows of purely imaginary shades. In the
world of letters they are represented by ciphers and " out
of nothing, nothing comes." When I find papers padded
out to two-score pages with such vain imaginings, yet
boasting a circulation of 'steen million copies, I can no
longer wonder at the increase of crime. A child becomes
wroth when given an empty teat and men are but children
who have had the mumps. Habitual readers of such litera-
ture must sooner or later degenerate into driveling idiots
or develop into murderous maniacs. Homicide and in-
sanity are increasing in this country in exact proportions
with the expansion of New York's Sunday papers. Yet
we pillory John Sherman for the " crime of '73 " and let
Joe Phewlitzer live !
The Republican papers and their Palmer-Buckner allies
are making a great parade of Howard Sewell, son of
Bryan's running mate, who has volunteered his services to
help defeat his father. It occurs to me that when a man
begets that kind of a kid there must be something radically
wrong with his blood, else he has mistaken a nephritic im-
pulse for cestruation. There must be an efficient cause
for such an unnatural effect. There's a watery, lost man-
168 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
hood look to Sewell's son, suggestive of the old school-book
injunction, " If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."
His face is the counterpart of a diseased kidney. A dap-
per, dudish youngster with waxed moustachios, hair parted
a la the Lily Maid of Astolat, large pendulous ears which
would make excellent doormats, weak mouth and eyes as
expressive as two burnt holes in a horse blanket, he sug-
gests the unhappy usufruct of that tired feeling. I am
inclined to think that, through some mishap, Howard was
ushered into the world before his fingernails were formed
and was reared on skim milk and Baxter's Saints' Rest.
He can do his father a great deal of harm by simply ex-
hibiting himself. The average citizen will conclude that if
Howard is a fair sample of the old man's executive ability,
he'd best take in his sign and give Tom Watson a chance.
The bankers on both sides of the sea are just now giving
a great deal of advice regarding the proper solution of
the American currency problem. The bankers are a very
clever set of gentlemen, and much above the average in
the matter of brains. It is popularly supposed that what
they don't know about so-called monetary science, can-
not amount to much; still, the fact remains that blessed
few currency reforms of conceded merit were originated
by bankers. It by no means follows that because a man
handles large sums of money, or has accumulated a com-
petence, he possesses a clearer understanding of monetary
science than do other men. A merchant may grow rich
buying and selling goods, yet be a miserable failure as a
farmer or manufacturer. It is not really necessary that
the grocer, to be successful should know that mulley cows
do not give buttermilk nor hens lay two eggs per day.
A porter cannot make a Pullman car, nor the teamster
construct a turnpike. It is an axiom among railroaders
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 169
that the mechanic who builds a locomotive cannot be
trusted to run it. A banker is simply a man who buys
and sells money, much as another trades in mules. He
learns to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious,
and knows what money is worth in the market ; but he may
shuffle it across his counter for fifty years without learning
more about it than that it's a kind of merchandising which
constitutes his stock-in-trade. I do not mean to disparage
the " business sense " of bankers ; but I do say that their
occupation does not, by itself, considered, necessitate
catholic ideas of the currency, or aid them to a better
understanding of money as a measure of value. Who
would think of appealing to the merchant who is continu-
ally using scales, gallon cups and yardsticks, to devise a
better system of weights and measures, or to a railway
trainman to solve the transportation problem? It is the
quiet thinkers who devise great labor-solving machines,
not the men who manage them. Those who are engaged in
gainful pursuits, whether manufacturing, banking or
merchandising, have little time to delve down to the funda-
mental laws of finance. It is noteworthy that the standard
authors on economics have seldom risen above a modest
competence. Many great statemen whose opinions on
matters of national finance are universally regarded with
reverence, made close calls for the potter's field. Possibly
many of them could have successfully applied the laws they
so well understood, possessed what is known as commer-
cial capacity ; but, like Agassiz, " had no time to make
money " preferred reigning as kings in the realm of
knowledge to posing as " merchant princes." The
thinkers are the genii who bear Aladdin's lamp and the
magic wand of their more earthly brethren. If you want
to borrow or lend money a banker is the proper person to
consult; if you would learn finance in its national and
170 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
international aspect, you must apply to the student or the
statesman. Let the bankers talk 'tis their privilege;
but let us not forget that their advice anent the pending
question is of no whit more importance than is that of any
other class of tradesmen. There is nothing in the busi-
ness of either the banker or merchant calculated to teach
him more about the currency question than the farmer or
mechanic may learn from his own experience.
The ICONOCLAST is assured that in its September issue
it did grievous injustice to the memory of the late E. S.
Jamison, by saying that he shirked the duties of soldier-
ship during the civil war. When the article was published
I did not know that Jamison was dead. The statement
concerning his war record was based on information which
I considered reliable; but am now convinced that my in-
formant was mistaken. Jamison, according to the testi-
mony of his old companions in arms, served his country
faithfulty and was as brave a soldier as ever unsheathed
a sword. The ICONOCLAST regrets exceedingly having
been misled in the matter. Its warfare is on living hum-
bugs, not on dead heroes.
The ICONOCLAST has been sharply criticized for de-
nouncing foreign missionary societies as frauds ; but it is
noticeable that these adverse comments invariably come
from people who are not in position to know much about
the matter who glean their information from ill-informed
sectarian editors, and honest but misguided preachers who
are made catspaws of by those who profit by the sacred
conspiracies. There's Early, for instance: He keeps a
job-lot of half-baked pulpiteers and sap-headed Sunday-
school superintendents rounding up the widow's mite and
the baby's candy coppers for what? To carry the
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 171
gospel to the Beegum of Bunglapore and fill the Akhoond
of Swat with saving grace? Not altogether. Before the
heathen can be yanked from the discomforts of hell-fire,
Mr. State Superintendent must have his little salary of
$8.33 per day for lying awake to worry over this world's
wickedness. Then his fellow conspirators in the shame-
less fraud, from national manager down through the
various degrees of grand and assistant secretaries, pub-
lishers and traveling grafters, must get their greedy fingers
in the fund collected " for Christ." What is left by this
gang of able-bodied loafers goes to fatten a coterie of
kindred fakirs in foreign countries. I defy any man to
prove that one person is really converted from idolatry to
Christianity for each million dollars collected in this
country in the name of foreign missions. The Missionary
Record exclaims enthusiastically : " After four years' work
in Egypt, the North African Mission rejoices in its first
convert ! " It should have added : " Let the glorious work
go on and send more money ! " And who is this convert
. the result of four long years of agony and enormous
investment ? A Mohammedan. A man who all his life had
been praying to God five times a day, has actually been
persuaded (or hired) to change the ritual of his religion
j whether for better or worse I shall not pretend to say.
The experience of the North African Mission is in nowise
remarkable. The ICONOCLAST has heretofore called at-
tention to the confessions of returned missionaries that
after laboring half a lifetime in India, China, or Africa,
they could not be certain of one bonafide conversion; to
the testimony of reputable travelers, merchants and gov-
ernment officials long resident abroad, that converts to
Christianity are almost invariably from the lower classes ;
that such professions are usually made in thei hope of
pecuniary profit and promptly abjured when they no
172 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
longer pay. Think of the incalculable good that might be
accomplished in our own country with the enormous wealth
annually wasted in the name of foreign mission work!
We have at our own doors millions of people who do not
worship at the shrine of any Deity. We have a vast con-
tingent who never saw the inside of a church, who do not
know that Christ is dead, and are ignorant of the divine
mystery of a well cooked meal. In the slums of our great
cities lurk savages more debased, barbarians more brutal
than can be found in the islands of far seas, ranging the
wild steppes of Crim Tartary or swearing allegiance to
the unspeakable Turk. In view of these facts, I here
assert that the man who would have us waste our wealth
meddling with the religion of pious Buddhists, law-abiding
Confucians or devout Mohammedans, is an infernal fraud
who should be apprehended as a public enemy and put to
breaking rock. Let us sweep before our own door ere
we polish the back yard of the antipodes. Let us supply
Caucasian babes with bread before we furnish the black-
and-tans with Bibles. Let us Christianize or at least
civilize our own land before exporting saving grace to
foreign countries. Think of a country in which thousands
of homicides yearly occur; whose every city is rank with
dens of infamy and alive with professional robbers ; where
children die of hunger and wretched women barter their
soul for bread a country which has 100,000 criminals in
prison and as many more in politics peddling its surplus
piety at the antipodes.
The ICONOCLAST has been appealed to for information
regarding " The Monetary Trust," located on Broadway,
N. Y., which invites people to commit their surplus cash
to it for investment, promising that, " under normal con-
ditions, it can invariably accumulate profits for its cus-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 173
tomers." I know but little about the concern ; but this I
do know; it will lie and a liar will invariably steal. In
the circular sent me it practically admits that its opera-
tions have been unsatisfactory, but attributes this to " the
remarkable growth of the free-silver sentiment." This
looks very much like it was trying to play the same set
of suckers a second time. On the occasion of Mr. Bryan's
visit to New York to accept the presidential nomination,
" The Monetary Trust," made a frantic bid for notoriety
by publishing a grossly insulting and remarkably impu-
dent " open letter " to the distinguished visitor. After his
famous speech at Madison Square Garden it followed up
its first offense with another literary effusion even more
foul. Both these screeds were filled with deliberate false-
hoods of a nature so gross that even such carrion crows
as old Dana were disgusted. And these stuprations of
morality and breaches of good manners it is now issuing
in circular form, ostensibly as a McKinley campaign docu-
ment, but really as an advertisement of its own gambling
graft. My private opinion publicly expressed is to the
effect that " The Monetary Trust " is a fake, and that
the man who trusts it with a dollar is a fool.
The great mercantile business built up by that brainy
Irishman, A. T. Stewart, long known as America's " mer-
chant prince," has succumbed to the bad management of
Judge Hilton, the notorious Hebrew hater. This is ex-
actly what might have been expected. A man so narrow
between the eyes as to exclude respectable Hebrews from
his hotel, could scarce prove equal to the intelligent super-
intendence of the vast and varied interests of the Stewart
estate. That a hotel in a so-called Christian country could
be too good for a people to whom we are indebted for all
the prophets, as well as for Christ and the Twelve
174 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Apostles, is an idea which could have originated only in
an Hiltonian head. When one is incapable of learning
that " a man's a man for a' that," his intellectual measure
is a clerkship in a peanut stand, or the management of a
nickel-in-the-slot machine. It is to be regretted that so
grand a fortune, built up by a commercial Napoleon,
should have been entrusted to the stewardship of one who,
as Reedy would say, " could sue himself for being a
jaquasse and get judgment."
POLITICS IN THE PULPIT.
I SUSPECT that I will have to adopt radical measures t(>
prevent my brother ministers making political harangues
from the pulpit. Thus far my friendly warnings have been
without effect. I am naturally patient and long-suffering;
but there's a point where forbearance ceases to be a virtue,
and I much fear that I'll have to make a frightful example
of a few contumacious offenders excommunicate and drop
them with a dull hollow plunk beyond the ministerial pale.
I dislike to resort to extreme measures with the misguided ;
but, as the duly ordained monitor of the American minis-
ters, am entrusted with a sacred duty. If all my suf-
fragans cannot be orthodox they must at least be decent.
I have determined that, come what may, the pulpit shall
not be profaned by a lot of tickey-tailed politicians. I
haven't the slightest objection to the preachers under my
apostolic protection making political harangues and
whooping it up for this or the other partisan organization ;
but when they desire to do so they must mount a con-
venient drygoods box or hire a hall. They did not sur-
render their rights as American citizens on entering the
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 175
ministry Secularly considered, they are both in the world
and of it. They enjoy all the political prerogatives which
even the swellest bartender can boast. They are the equals
before the law of the man who drives a dray, the political
peers of the autocratic policeman. I have not striven to
coerce them into voting for my favorite candidate. I ad-
vised them to exercise perfect freedom in such affairs
without fear of losing their pastorates ; but did not mean
thereby that they were privileged to turn their churches
into political wigwams and spew their pseudo-economics
from the pulpit. Christ preached no political sermons ;
yet Palestine was in a far worse condition during his minis-
try than is America to-day. He did not so much as men-
tion the Roman tyranny, the currency, tariff or prohibi-
tion questions in his Sermon on the Mount. They may
have been " great moral issues," but evidently did not
concern the mission of our Master. When he found dove
dealers and money changers occupying the porches of the
temple he scourged them thence. Had he discovered a
political caucus in the holy-of-holies and the high-priest
harangueing the people in the auditorium on the evils of
free silver or the gold standard, he would scarce have gone
after the godless gang with a scourge of cords he would
have procured an adult club, studded with brass nails, and
wearing an iron knob as large as that anchored to the end
of a Republican's neck. As a Roman citizen, St. Paul may
have taken a lively interest in administrative measures;
but he failed to incorporate his political views in his
famous epistles. He didn't pretend to preach Christ cruci-
fied to get an opportunity to air his private opinions about
gold-bugs or repudiationists, the McKinley atrocity or the
crime of '73. Of the entire thirteen Apostles, Judas
Iscariot was the only one who mixed the currency question
with his religion, and he insisted on the Republican ratio
176 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of thirtj-to-one. Learning by experience that he was an
economic ass, he put an end to his existence. In religion
the preacher is exalted above his people; but in politics
he's on an exact parity with the sexton who dusts the
pews, or the sinner on the back seats. I have been moved
to these remarks by the horse-play of Rev. Thos. Dixon
Jr., who precipitated a disgraceful row in church by mix-
ing matters temporal and spiritual instead of taking the
latter straight ; the pollution of various temples dedicated
to the Deity, by the intemperate partisan harangues of
Bishop Newman, Dominie MacArthur, Doc Talmage, Sam
Jones and other gentlemen of the cloth who have mistaken
the Lord's vineyard for a political convention. The Hart-
ford Fire Insurance Company is sending out, as a Mc-
Kinley campaign document a sermon preached by Rev.
F. F. Emerson of Gloucester, Mass., which, for deliberate
sacrilege complicated with colossal impudence, lays over
anything I have hitherto seen. It is a rehash of the most
violent harangues made by McKinley boosters on the
hustings, seasoned with a sacred virulence which suggests
that an admixture of the odium politicum and the odium
theologicum makes an unsavory compound of bigotry and
bile, greed and gall worthy the cauldron of Shakespeare's
witches, a delectable dish for the Prince of Darkness.
Granting that every proposition of the reverend blather-
skite be correct ; that Bryan is an enemy of all social order
and his followers red-flaggers and repudiationists, while
G. Cleveland is a little tin god who is giving his precious
life for the people ; still, I submit that the pulpit is not the
proper place for such promulgations. A minister of the
gospel cannot afford to substitute either Bryan or Mc-
Kinley for Christ. No man can serve two masters even
though these be Grover Cleveland and Almighty God. My
bump of reverence is not so altitudinous that I can rent it
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 177
for an astronomical observatory; but I do protest that
when a preacher invites people to hear him discourse of
the beauties of religion, then regales them with a disquisi-
tion on partisan politics and an indecent exposure of his
economical ignorance, he should be seized tenderly but
firmly by the bust of his panties and " trun tro de roof."
There may be preachers who know something about poli-
tics ; there may be ministers who have made an exhaustive
study of economics ; but during forty years wandering in
this terrestrial wilderness I failed to find 'em. I'll wager
the price of my pew-rent against a yaller pup that not a
single preacher who has been puking politics over his
congregation during the present campaign can quote one
line from Smith or Mill or Montesquieu, can repeat three
paragraphs of the Federal constitution or name in their
proper order the American presidents. Yet these wind-
blown guts attempt to give to their political ineptitude
somewhat of the sanctity which encircles the Saviour.
THE McKINLEY AID SOCIETY.
AN INTERESTING SESSION AT INDIANAPOLIS.
PERHAPS the most remarkable exhibition of political
Pecksniffianism the world has yet witnessed was furnished
by the " Sound Money Democrats," who recently enacted
at Indianapolis the pitiable farce of placing a presidential
ticket in the field. I have no word of criticism for those
cidevant Democrats because of their declination to support
the Chicago nominees. I recognize their inalienable right
to transfer their allegiance to other parties, or to create
a new one, as they please. They are free moral agents en-
titled to their opinions in matters monetary, and would
178 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
be derelict in their duty as American citizens did they fail
to champion that financial policy they believe will best
promote the general welfare; but no man is privileged to
be politically dishonest to borrow the linen of the Lord
in which to do the dirty work of the devil. The raison
d'erre of the Indianapolis convention was not the conserva-
tion of time-honored Democratic principles, but rather to
aid, by arrant hypocrisy and contemptible skullduggery,
in elevating the Republican party to power. I do not
criticize the gentlemen who constituted that convention
because they are in revolt against the national Democracy;
for I hold in supreme contempt such men as McKinley
who depend on others to supply their political principles
who place the badge of party slavery above the crown of
American sovereignty. The man who, at the command of
any convention, however august, helps fasten upon his
country a policy he believes hurtful to its people, should
have a ring put in his nose and be led about by a nigger.
When a man declares that he dissents from the Chicago
platform, " but feels it his duty, as a good Democrat, to
bow to the will of his party," you may set it down that he
should have been born a goose, to patiently plod in the
wake of some flat-headed old gander that he's white-
livered and lacks gall. I believe that Bryan would have
bolted the Chicago convention had it declared for gold
monometallism and I would have kept him company. I
criticize the Indianapolis covenanters because they are not
toting fair with the people because they are engineering
a deliberate bunco-game that would disgrace the vilest beat
that ever lay in wait for a confiding countryman.
This is a serious charge, and should not be preferred
unless it can be substantiated by indubitable evidence. Did
not the convention, it may be asked, denounce in un-
measured terms the general policy of Republicanism? It
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 179
undoubtedly did. Did it not formulate a platform, nomi-
nate candidates and loudly call attention to its own self-
righteousness? Sure that's what it was there for. Did
you expect it to nominate McKinley and put a member of
the Morgan-Belmont syndicate on the tail-end of the
ticket? It must be remembered that there is a very con-
siderable contingent of Cleveland Democrats for power
will ever have both intellectual poens and professional
parasites. These people who have made of Cleveland a
political Dalia Lama, and religiously swallow the pastilles
made of his economic evacuations regard with consider-
able disfavor the Chicago platform and candidates. Still,
comparatively few of them can be persuaded to turn for
consolation to McKinleyism. Compelled to choose between
the party of high-tariff and impudent trusts, federal force
bills and coon rule reconstruction, and their old party with
its one objectionable plank, a vast majority of them would
rally round the banner of the Nebraskian, considering it
wiser to attempt the reformation than to assist in the
destruction of an organization with which they have been
long identified. The sole object of the Indianapolis con-
vention was to sidetrack this vote, to prevent it going to
Bryan, and thereby assure the success of the party which
represents the very antithesis of Democratic principles.
How do we know? By the very frank confession of the
promoters of that enterprise. Seven out of ten delegates
to that convention have been bearing aloft the McKinley
banner ever since Bryan's nomination are doing so to-
day. They have informed us in public addresses and inter-
views, both before and since the Indianapolis convocation,
that the object of this second ticket was not the capture
of the presidency, but the defeat of the regular Democracy.
Men who sat in that convention had already announced
their intention of voting for McKinley. Seven out of ten
180 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
of the Stuffed Prophet newspapers began pulling for Mc-
Kinley so soon as the result of the Chicago convention was
known, and they are still giving aid to the enemy. While
loudly they are slobbering over the senile ticket put forth
by the " Sound Money Democracy," they are doing so
simply because it is expected to deflect votes from Bryan.
While loudly commending the renaissance of " the faith of
the Democratic fathers," they are particularly tender to
those who, as one of them expresses it, consider it their
duty to vote for McKinley direct and thereby preserve
the credit of the country. They are engaged in figuring
out, not a possible chance of victory for the new ticket,
but how many states it will add to the McKinley column.
Scratch a leader of the Indianapolis movement and you'll
find a McKinleyite every time. They are sailing under
false colors are professing an almost pathetic attachment
to Jeffersonian principles while, at the same time, striving
to entrap their brethren into rendering aid, direct or in-
direct, to the old time enemy of Democracy. That is
carrying practical politics to the verge of criminality. It
is on an exact moral parity with obtaining money under
false pretenses. Had these fellows been politically honest
they would have either abided by the actions of the regular
Democracy or gone over openly to the Republican camp.
They did neither they became cappers for Bill McKin-
ley's political shell game, decoys to lure Democrats into
Mark Hanna's meshes. Assuming a holier-than-thou ex-
pression, these political pharisees had the polite and ele-
gant gall to accuse their brethren of " abandoning for
Republican allies the Democratic cause of tariff reform "
then set deliberately to work to elevate to power the
party of protection ! That's what I call cheek incarnate,
impudence preeminent, audacity absolute, insolence insuf-
ferable ! These fellows posing as " the representatives of
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 181
Democratic principles "? And what kind of Democracy,
pray? A Democracy whose tenets must be determined by
a coterie of self-constituted priests, instead of by the duly
accredited representatives of the people. It matters not
how far the Chicago platform may depart from the teach-
ings of Jefferson and Jackson ; it is still the confession of
faith of the regular Democracy ; and no man hath right or
title to the party name who declines to support the Chi-
cago nominees. The Presbyterian church has rejected
some of the extreme tenets of the Calvinistic creed ; yet no
man has a right to proclaim himself a member of that
denomination who denies its present doctrines. One may
be a Jeffersonian or a Jacksonian without being a Demo-
crat, just as he may be a Calvinist without being a Presby-
terian. That political party which makes no progress,
which cannot adapt itself to changed conditions, had best
get off the earth, for it is utterly useless as much out
of place as a crooked stick in the age of steam plows. We
don't care two whoops in Halifax what Jefferson or Jack-
son said or did under different conditions in the long ago ;
what we are trying to guess is what those wise men would
say and do were they here to-day.
The plain fact is that the Indianapolis convention was
composed, for the most part, of old political hacks who
have been left behind as useless lumber in the grand march
of progress men who are incapable of learning even in
the school of experience ; men who have either been already
relegated to the rear, or who read the mne, mene tekel
upharsin on the walls of their political banquet hall. Not
being allowed to longer rule the party, they are ready to
gratify their pique by wrecking it. The nominees of the
McKirJey Aid Society are really better than the rank
and file of that monstrous collection of political fossils
and savage soreheads ; but they are representative in that
182 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
they have outlived their usefulness do groan for burial.
Should they be elected, Palmer would be 84 and Puckner
80 when their term of office expired in 1901. The ICONO-
CLAST has great respect for old age; but that octege-
narian does not exist who is in full possession of his mental
powers. Gladstone and Bismark are the world's most
remarkable specimens of green old age ; yet the " Grand
Old Man " began to exhibit unmistakable signs of mental
decay early in his eighties, and before reaching four score
years the " Iron Chancellor " was wisely relieved of the
burden of public life. The men who have made a favorable
mark on the pages of the world's history after passing
their eightieth year may be counted on the fingers of one
hand. As men, we can make low obesiance to the hoary
hairs of John M. Palmer; but as citizens we must select
for the chief magistrate of this new nation, which bears
its days before it and the tumult of its life, not a slippered
pantaloon whose face is to the past, but rather one who
will use equal to the mighty problems of the future. In
these kaleidoscopic times, when conditions press upon us
for which there is no precedent, we must have in the pilot-
house not one who is yearly losing, but one who is daily
learning. We are told that the Ship of State is in dire
distress is running upon the rocks, her masts shivered,
her canvas ripped to rags, the threatening billows breaking
across her bows. At such a time 'twere sheer madness to
place the helm in the palsied hand of a superannuated
sailor. No matter that in days agone he plowed Messina's
stormy strait while Charybdis frowned and Scylla beck-
oned under hatches with him, and send to the help an
able seaman, with judgment clear and eye alert, with nerves
of steel and muscles of beaten brass.
The platform adopted by the Indianapolis convention
is on a moral and intellectual parity with its Democratic
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 183
professions. It is such a tissue of antilogies, such a sym-
posium of absurdities that we may well suppose it written
by some man as far into the sear and yellow leaf as even
the neo-Democratic nominees. It should have for preface
Minister Terrell's famous axiom to the effect that " Con-
sistency is the virtue of fools." It mocks at the idea
that the price of silver can be enhanced by legislation,
while accusing the Republicans of raising the price of
commodities by tariff laws. It is a part of the religion
of the Democratic-Republican party that free coinage of
silver is sublimated protection for the producers of that
metal, and that protection is an evil simply because it
gives the commodities an abnormal market value. Clearly
if protection will raise the price of soap it will have a
similar effect on silver. The platform breathes the spirit
of state rights, yet commends Cleveland for invading a
sovereign state with federal troops despite the protest
of the governor, whom it has been amply proven was both
able and eager to restore order. It attributes all our
individual ills to Republican extravagance in appropria-
tions and " the Populist threat of free coinage." The
most expensive Republican government since the war ex-
pended less than $1 per annum in each $130 of national
wealth, most of it immediately finding its way back into
the pockets of the people. The expense was outrageous
'tis true ; but scarce sufficient to create a commercial panic
among people who had been through the fiery furnace of
a civil war. The total vote for president in 1892 exceeded
twelve millions, of which the Populists polled about one
million ; hence " the Populist threat of free coinage " was
calculated to have about as much effect on our currency
as Dr. Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill's Prohibition exordiums
on the price of bourbon. Why men who expended so
much time and lung power throwing boquets at them-
184. BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
selves, should deliberately sign a certificate of their own
idiocy, is one of those things that no fellow can find out.
The Indianapolis convention is sui generis in that it
insists that the gold standard is a good thing per se and
declares emphatically against bimetallism, as that term
is generally understood. It would permanently relegate
silver to a secondary place, limit its coinage and base
it upon its yellow brother. This is the same kind of
bimetallism as the coinage of gold eagles and copper cents.
Those who advocate it and pose as " true bimetallists,"
are either dishonest or have something radically wrong
with their heads. They go even further than Cleveland
in their gold craze, and set a pace entirely too rapid for
even their Republican allies. While all other parties and
all standard economists are professedly striving to secure
the equal use of both gold and silver as standard money,
each dependent upon itself for its purchasing power, the
Indianapolis conspirators declare that silver must ever
remain subsidiary to and dependent upon gold as it is at
present. If this theory be correct, why coin any silver
at all? Why use up 53 cents worth of material to make
a token dollar, when it is just as easy to maintain at a
parity with gold one made of paper? There's an answer
to this, but the Indianapolisites were so busy posing as
disinterested patriots and simon-pure Democrats that they
failed to see it. Coming silver dollars, that must depend
on gold for their purchasing power, were a wicked waste
of wealth. 'S'use of a " bimetallism " that doesn't add
one dollar to the volume of our " real money," our " money
of final redemption"? If the Indianapolis savants will
answer this simple question, I'll vote for their real candi-
date, Major McKinley.
This wonderful platform denounces the National Dem-
ocracy for " threatening unlimited issues of paper money
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 185
by the government." If that's true my slogan henceforth
shall be, " anything to beat Bryan " but I can't find it
in the Chicago platform. Some such idea may be floating
about in the senile brains of the Indianapolis buncoists;
but it is not in the Democratic bond. The assertion is
on an intellectual level with that foolish falsehood to the
effect that Altgeld is an anarchist. The gentlemen who
have undertaken to " preserve Democratic principles " by
electing a high-tariff Republican president, demand the
separation of government from the banking business, de-
nounce further maintenance of the present system of na-
tional currency as a constant source of injury and peril,
insist upon a single gold standard and such monetary re-
form as " will afford a safe and elastic currency under
government supervision, measured in volume by the needs
of business." Now if anybody will tell me what those fel-
lows want I'll buy the buttermilk! A gold currency de-
pends upon the fecundity of the mines, and does not
flexibly conform to the needs of commerce. Free silver
and bank notes being barred, what is left but the issue
of treasury notes, which issues may be great or small,
according as the party in power finds it necessary to obey
the plutocrats or play to the proletaire? According to
these economists such notes could not be maintained at
a parity with gold unless redeemable on demand in that
metal, the " endless chain " of which Cleveland complains
would remain unbroken, and Belmont, Morgan & Co.
have to continue " protecting our credit " by the pur-
chase of big blocks of bonds on private bids. It is a
trifle strange that a convention which, if we may accept
its own modest estimate of itself had a corner on pa-
triotism undefiled, Democratic purity and economic knowl-
edge, should howl so lustily for currency reform, and then
adjourn without so much as suggesting a method by which
186 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
this desideratum could be attained. But, perchance, be-
fore it got to that problem Markhanna gave it a quiet
tip that it was time to go home.
A MODERN SIMON MAGUS.
SCHRADER, the soi-disant " divine healer," has worked
Texas to the queen's taste and departed for green fields
and pastures new. " The Lord called him away " after
he had picked up all the cash possible. The Lord is very
accommodating to this man of miracles ; he never "calls "
him to visit a place until his business manager has ar-
ranged with a street-car company for a liberal percentage
of the profits. Schrader is in very truth a " wonder-
worker " he works an alleged intelligent people in a
manner truly miraculous. As a " grafter " he can give
any of the itinerate gospel sharps cards and spades and
beat them at their own game. Schrader is, in the idiom
of the street, a slick artist. He can " turn a trick " as
deftly as any bunco-steerer. He possesses sufficient art
to conceal his art. He doesn't want money for " doing
the Master's work " but he gets it just the same. He
doesn't pass around the hat, like Rev. Sam Jones, and
tell cultured ladies to " spit in it if they can do nothing
better " ; he gives a free show and goes cahoots with
transportation companies which carry the crowd. To
ask his audience for money Would spoil his game the
doubting Thomases would say the godly man was out for
the long green. They would examine more closely into
his " miracles," and having paid handsomely to have a
cork leg or tin ear displaced with one of flesh and blood,
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 187
would clamor for the delivery of the goods. Schrader
works the press, and it assists him to work the people.
He has Tom Sawyer's labor system down to a science.
He has evidently adopted as his motto : Never do to-day
what you can get some damphool to do for you. The
" great public educators " ever hungry for a sensation,
whether it be a double hanging or a sea serpent, give
Schrader columns of gratuitous advertising under the
impression that they are supplying their patrons with
news of prime importance, thereby whetting public curi-
osity and exciting an expectancy of the supernatural. A
vast crowd gathers (at 10 to 20 cents for the round
trip) and gawps at him as though he were indeed a God.
He has made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame
to walk for have not the papers said so? Huggins has
been cured of stuttering and Muggins of rheumatism.
There is a strong vein of superstition in the best of people,
and when this is artfully played upon the commonplace
becomes the miraculous, faith supplants reason and faith
is the basic principle of both medicine and miracles. It
were enough to destroy one's confidence in the law of
progress to make us regard the highest civilization as
but a receptive veneer laid upon a surface of hopeless
savagery to witness one of Schrader's seances. Thou-
sands of awe-struck people, their faces rendered ghastly by
a futile attempt at the bravado of unbelief; people of all
ages and sexes, classes and conditions, crowding to get
within reach of a greasy, lousy tramp, aping the airs of
our risen Lord! We might expect such scenes in the
canebrakes of Louisiana at the midnight hour, " Voodoo
Doctor Sam " as the central figure, the audience ignorant
negroes afraid of the evil eye; but imagine it at high
noon in the chief cities of the South and West, the
gullible women of culture, gentlemen of erudition, who
188 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
get kerchiefs blessed as charms against measles and
mumps ! " Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! "
Of course, Schrader wrought no cures that could not
have been accomplished as easily by any other Weary
Willie under like conditions. That such is generally con-
ceded since press and public passed from under the spell
of this foul-smelling Simon Magus who has read the
" Good Book " to so little purpose that he has not learned
that " cleanliness is akin to Godliness." But what of
the press the " public educator," the " sentinel on the
watch-tower " whose gullibility or peccability has
brought reproach upon the people? Is it any wonder
that demagogues, adventurers and professional pilferers
get control of government that seventy million people
groan, and sweat, and stink and fardels bear through the
long hot summer days that a few impudent non-producers
may live like lords? Verily, pessimistic old Tom Carlyle
had a head as long as a striped watermelon when he
declared that " Gullible by fit apparatus all publics are ;
and gulled with the most surprising profit."
EGYPT VS. ARKANSAS.
POOR old Rackensack ! She has had the irremediable mis-
fortune to incur the enmity of that journalistic Jehovah
known as the Carbondale (111.) Herald. Arkansas has
ever been a State familiar with sorrow and acquainted with
grief ; but never until now did her cup of misery slop over,
her burthen become too grievous to be borne. Pelion is
piled on Ossa, horrors on horror's head accumulate, one
misfortune doth gall his fellow's kibe so fast they follow.
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 189
At last the awful climax has come. The almighty Herald
man hath quite o'erwhelmed Arkansas with his Balaamic
curse, thereby pressing upon her shrinking head a sorrow's
crown of sorrow for giving the frozep. face to the party of
Markhanna and his political pupped. He rears up on his
subsequent legs, lashes himself with his caudal appendage,
wildly waves his ears and wails forth that " the miserable
yaller-bellied State of Arkansas went Democratic," and
expresses " surprise that honest money has any friends at
all in that narrow-contracted, God-forsaken State. Its
inhabitants," he says, " are a lot of peak-nosed renegades
who were a by-word in the rest of the United States."
The Herald man then proceeds to yank victory from the
fanged jaws of defeat by declaring that the honest men of
the North invariably vote right opposite to the " peak-
nosed renegades " of Rackensack aforesaid that the ae
tion of the latter "insures a big increase in the honest
money vote all over the North." It were a great pity to
confine the odor of so rare an exotic to the circulation of
a plate-fake country newspaper. Such colossal genius
should have room in which to burgeon and bloom, hence I
take great pleasure in presenting him to the patrons of the
ICONOCLAST. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the editor of
the Carbondale Herald, who will favor you with a correct
imitation of a man about to tear a cat please don't go
near the cage.
" Every time they bury a man in Arkansas they dump
a wagon load of manure in the grave so that he will rise
on resurrection day. Its inhabitants are composed of
miserable old women and lean, lank-bellied yahoos. Their
principal occupation is drinking whisky and hanging
niggers. They are too infernally lazy to eat a full meal,
and consequently have a hungry look. Nobody ever saw
a fat man in Arkansas. They are too shiftless, too trifling.
190 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
too worthless to even get fat. Some of them come North
and take on a little flesh, but on their heath they are like
Cassius they have a lean and hungry look. They all
have noses like pelicans and eyes deep sunk, yaller, watery
and sickly, which are set in their heads so close together
that they can look through a keyhole with both eyes at
once. They are constantly looking around for someone
to beat. They are restless and uneasy, a condition they
have acquired by lying awake at nights and listening to the
notes of the bullfrog and the hum of the * muskeeters.'
Religiously they are divided into two classes the heathens
and the greater heathens. The heathens get drunk every
Sunday on mean whisky and raise the devil generally with
sacred things when not too drunk. The worse than
heathens hang and burn niggers for pastime, and when
they get down to business assassinate white men. A real
good Arkansas father licks his boy half to death if he
catches him in a clean shirt on Sunday, but commends him
if he has made a successful raid on his neighbor's chicken
coop."
' That's a pretty good " roast," but I doubt its origi-
nality. It reminds me very much of a razzle-dazzle which
a Missouri paper once gave "Egypt," alias Southern
Illinois, of which Carbondale is the geographical center.
And the portrait it drew of that section of the great sucker
State tallies exactly with popular opinion. Southern
Illinois has been known for generations as " Egypt " ; not
because its soil is fecund as the Nilus valley, or nurtures
a crop of Josephs; but because its dense ignorance was
thought to resemble the " thick darkness " which Moses
laid upon " the land of Mizraim " because of a popular
superstition that when the plagues were lifted from ancient
Egypt they were transferred to the Herald's territory,
where, for four-and-thirty centuries, they have faithfully
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 191
observed the biblical law to be fruitful and multiply. The
people of north and central Illinois have ever regarded the
denizens of " Egypt " with undisguised disdain. " Worth-
less as an Egyptian," " scabby as Egypt," long ago found
place in their vocabulary of invective. In that section of
Suckerdom where I first oped a sad blue eye to the garish
light of day and lay long debating whether 'twere more
fun to be a bloody pirate or a Baptist preacher, to call a
man " a son of Egypt " was considered an unforgivable
affront to his family, and meant a fight or a foot-race.
It is a popular idea that, south of Centralia, the employ-
ment of the people consists in catching bull-heads and
crawfish, frying out rattlesnake oil as an antidote for
rheumatism, shaking with " buck-ager," drinking " sacka-
frack " tea, " chawin' natural leaf " and expectorating the
juice at a knot-hole. The " Egyptians " are generally
thought to be immoral, but lacking sufficient vigor to
break the Seventh Commandment ; hungry, but too lazy to
work and too cowardly to steal; lousy, yet lacking suf-
ficient intelligence to scratch for relief. And, truth to
tell, this portrait of southern Illinois was no caricature a
third of a century ago. It seems to have been settled with
the offscourings of the universe. When a man was so un-
utterably worthless that the Lord didn't want him, the
devil wouldn't have him and decent people couldn't toler-
ate his presence, he drifted into " Egypt " to take his
chances with the water moccasins and malaria. Into that
dreary desolation the most degraded of the river char-
acters, from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, found their way,
as well as a large sprinkling of the poorest specimens of
the South's " po' white trash " the root-diggers and
clay-eaters, regarded by the slave-holder as occupying a
moral and mental neutral ground between the nigger and
the mule. Yet here we have a Pharaoh hardening his heart
192 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
and hurling great wads of withering scorn at the people
of Arkansas because they decline to vote the Republican
ticket or encourage niggers to despoil their daughters ! I
can understand that, before the war, a native of " Egypt "
might feel not a little proud of a stray pickaninny, either
as an improvement of the breed, or because he could
smuggle it across the Ohio and exchange it for tobacco
and booze ; but why, under present conditions, the Herald
man should be so deeply concerned for the welfare of the
black miscegenationist, is beyond my comprehension. He
cannot now sell a nigger baby to the Arkansas Democrats
for so much as a silver dollar ; besides, the native " Egyp-
tian " breed has been graded up by a light admixture of
gentle blood. The " Egypt " of ante-bellum times is not
the " Egypt " of this year of grace. It was finally dis-
covered that the so-called " bad lands " of southern
Illinois could be made to yield something better than
disease, Digger Indians, " yaller dawgs " and death. They
would grow strawberries as big as walnuts, and peaches
and apples equal to the best in the world. Industrious
people poured in, bringing books, soap and other evidences
of civilization. They drained the pestilent marshes,
initiated the younger natives into the sacred mystery of
an annual bath and innoculated them with a little of their
own enterprise. But the evil reputation still clings to
" Egypt." Its savages have not all disappeared before
the march of civilization. Men can still be found there so
illiterate as to be incapable of intelligible speech, and upon
whose bodies a crop of wheat might be grown and gathered,
so great is their laziness, so deep the accumulation of dirt.
Bryan was born at Salem, beyond the " Egyptian " boun-
dary sufficient reason for suspecting him of being a
gentleman, thereby calling down upon his friends and
followers, the wrath of the Herald man, as a matter of
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 193
course. If even the worm will sometimes turn, we can
scarce expect an unreconstructed " Egyptian " to give the
glad hand to one born of the ancient enemies of filth and
ignorance. The hate which a member of an inferior race
bears those who make his lack of human attributes a
subject for their laughter, can scarce be equalled by a
woman scorned. It is perfectly natural that the Herald
man should admire McKinley ; for while Markhanna's
automaton was not born in the southern swamps of
Suckerdom and reared on " biled crorfish " and " ager
roots," he is on a mental and moral parity with those who
were. A ligneous-faced creature lacking the courage of
his convictions, and so destitute of pride that he accepts
charity while in the prime of manhood, McKinley is the
logical candidate of those natives of Illinois* older
" Egypt " who have proved impervious to the humanizing
influences of civilization. He has but to trade his tooth-
brush and bath towel for a couple o* coon dogs, contract
a case of the seven-year-itch, sit on the park fence at
Carbondale and squirt tobacco juice on his beard till it
runs down on his boots, to catch the vote of every " arly "
settler of " Egypt " who isn't too tired to drag himself to
the voting booth, or too ignorant to know that a presi-
dential election is pending.
DAVID AND BATH-SHEBA.
THE ORIGINAL SCANDAL IN HIGH LIFE.
I AM in receipt of a letter from a prominent Missouri
divine, kindly commending the ICONOCLAST'S criticisms of
the daily press for printing obscene advertisements, reports
of unsavory divorce trials and exploiting breaches of the
194 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Seventh Commandment by people of social prominence.
My reverend correspondent adds : " No book or paper in
which are found accounts of seductions, rapes or brutal
murders like those of ' Jack-the-Ripper,' should be allowed
to come into the home to poison the minds of youth. To
such publications I attribute the frightful increase of
crime. Children are made familiar with the social evil as
soon as they can read, and the result may be seen in the
vast armies of roues and prostitutes. It is a fact, uni-
versally conceded, that publishing the details of a
peculiarly brutal murder breeds imitators."
To all of which I was about to respond with a fervent
amen, when the pious exclamation was frozen upon my lips
by the following remarkable sentence : " Remember that an
open Bible is the hope of the world a Bible which all may
read, interpret for themselves, and mold their lives accord-
ing to its sacred precepts." I much dislike to criticize
a brother minister ; but it occurs to me that he is not
consistent that he strains at a diatom and swallows a
whole drove of dromedaries. I believe that I have as much
reverence for the Christian religion as has the average
ministers ; but keep my Bible under lock and key with my
Decameron, Don Juan and Venus and Adonis. I would
as soon think of placing the Police Gazette or Houston
Post on my parlor table. I trust that I will not be dubbed
irreverent by the sanctified rabble, nor wilfully misunder-
stood by the ministry. The Bible is the greatest of books
greater even than that penned by Avon's immortal bard.
It contains many passages that were unquestionably in-
spired, for the unaided mind of man could not have soared
to such celestial heights, nor plunged so deep into the
profound mysteries of Life and Death. In it we may hear
the music of the Morning Stars singing together, and learn
the mystic language of Deep calling unto Deep. I think
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 195
sometimes that it is a searchlight placed on the highest
tower of the Eternal City, with which God reveals to the
philosophic eye the past, the present and the ages yet to
be. The Bible is an anthology of ancient literature a
wonderful symposium of poetry and philosophy, the fierce
love and fiercer hate, the wild worship and wilder waps of
the old world. " There were giants in those days " bar-
baric Titans who wrought with rude tools, and whose lives
and labors must not be measured by modern standards.
The strange book which they have left to us is the Iliad
of the Jews grander, nobler than that of the Greeks;
but it contains many chapters which no woman or child
can ever read under my roof. Highly as I esteem this
Book of Books, I consider that those who place unex-
purgated copies thereof in the hands of children of igno-
rant people are guilty of a heinous crime. They had
better poison a public well or import a pestilence. In the
hands of learned teachers, where the lessons are carefully
selected and intelligently explained, the Bible must be an
incalculable power for good; but committing it to the
hands of people incapable of distinguishing barbaric
history from holy precept, were like turning a sick laborer
loose among the medicinal herbs and deadly poisons of the
apothecary and bidding him heal himself. Ignorance is
but intellectual infancy. The untutored mind, whether in
youth or age, readily grasps that which is evidently evil,
frankly brutal, but cannot comprehend what is exalted or
profound. The Bible is the word of God, but has been
adulterated by the Devil. It is a stream of living water
which burst pure and sweet of Siniatic heights, but has
flowed for ages through a miasmic land. It is at once a
veritable galaxy of poetic metaphor and eternal truth, and
a cesspool foul with the fetid offal of forty centuries.
If my correspondent will but examine the Bible he will
196 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
find therein recorded " the brutal murders of ' Jack-the-
Ripper ' " multiplied ten thousandfold. There is nothing
in the annals of the Unspeakable Turk or the hordes of
Tartary equal to the atrocities of which we are there told.
The boldest flights of Milton's imperial wing, the morbid
imagination of Dante reveling in the horrors of his mimic
Hell, fall short of the biblical account of the despoilment
of the Land of Promise. Blood, blood and ever more
blood, until even the murderous soul of a Sioux brave
must be more than satisfied the blood of smiling babes, of
grandsires aged and blind, of women with infants in the
womb, outrage and rapine, wreck and wraith, the sun
standing still on Gibeon and the moon in the Valley of
lAjalon to prolong the sickening scene! One would sup-
pose that, instead of being God's Chosen People, the Jews
had made " a league with Death, a covenant with Hell.'*
If it be true indeed that publication of brutal murders
breed imitators, who can estimate the influence on our
criminal annals of the "Open Bible"? The scholar, the
discriminating critic may gather from Judea's bloody fields
golden apples of Hesperides, while the ignorant find only
thorns and thistles to their hurt. The Bible may be said
to begin with a homicide and end with a holocaust ; yet
my correspondent expects its general perusal to eliminate
crime !
If he will turn again to the book which he would place
in the hand of innocent childhood, he will find it rank
from imprimis to finis with accounts of sexual sins which
even so enterprising a sensation-monger as the modern
daily would scarce dare put in print. In this country men
who inscribed biblical verses on postal cards have been
imprisoned for sending obscene matter through the mails ;
yet my reverend friend insists that what is too feculent for
the postal service should be given to women and children
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 19T
as the word of God! According to the biblical histiogra-
phers> fornication is but a venial fault and usually for-
given a mere pastime for the beloved of the Lord, who
escape punishment without the trouble of repentance ; while
rape, incest, onanism and sodomy tumble over the pages of
this popular book as in some wild phallic revel or DeviPs
dream. Lot, the nephew of Abraham, supplied the biblical
reporters with a racy narrative surpassing anything yet
attributed to the Vanderbilts or Marlboroughs, and the
details are worked up in a manner that would satisfy even
the editor of the Sunday Slumgullion. The scribe even
added to his story a dash of the marvelous by making the
old man so drunk on Rev. Bill Homan's non-intoxicating
biblical wine that he despoiled his two daughters uncon-
sciously thereby surprising the modern Prohibitionists
and fairly dumfounding all students of physiology. If
" the unfermented wines of Bible times," of which Brother
Bill delights to discourse, have this effect, perhaps we had
best pin our faith to bourbon. Judah was brother to
Joseph, but served the Lord in a different way and, ap-
parently, quite satisfactorily to all concerned. Had he
been carried into Egypt the romance of Mrs. Potiphar
would have ended otherwise. Like Col. W. C. P. Brecken-
ridge, he was addicted to closed carriages and practical
politics. When he got loose in the land the ladies climbed
the tallest trees, while their lords lingered in the vicinity to
feed a few extra slugs to the shotgun and tie the bulldog
loose. But Judah was full of enterprise as any Lancelot
or Lovelace, albeit not so exacting in his tastes. With the
assistance of a woman who was the widow of his two
elder sons and betrothed to a third, he succeeded in found-
ing a very interesting second family from which the Kings
of Israel descended. Solomon could trace his lineage to
Judah and Tamar, a beast and a bawd and was. there-
198 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
fore, as much entitled to boast of his ancestry as either the
Duke or Duchess of Marlborough. A touch of the
dramatic is given Judah's alliance with his desiring daugh-
ter-in-law, and if properly staged it would doubtless
" take " even better than DeMaurier's Trilby.
But neither Lot nor Judah were people of social promi-
nence. The former was a cave-dweller in the mountains
perhaps a moonlight distiller or " sang " digger ; the latter
a cross between a ward-heeler and a goatherd. Abraham
was a strolling vagabond when he offered to prostitute his
wife to save his neck, while Mrs. Potiphar was but the
companion of a petty officer when she attempted the virtue
of her slave. For the first recorded " scandal in high life "
we must come down to the days of David. Had Josef
Phewlitzer been running the Jerusalem Morning World,
when the Davidian family occupied the White House he
could have had a genuine screamer-head sensation every
day, and enough " interesting readin' " left over for an
evening edition. Josef allowed himself to get ingloriously
" scooped " by not being born twenty-nine centuries
sooner. Of course he would be dead now but his loss
would be our eternal gain. When David's sons were not
ravishing his daughters or making free with his concubines
in the sight of all Israel, he was himself shaking up society
from center to circumference. Like his ancestor Judah,
David was preeminently a Squire of Dames. He was
known as the " Sweet Singer of Israel " which may ac-
count for his success with the fair sex. Although David
preferred the harp to the piano, and curried his hair oc-
casionally, he appears to have been the ancient Paderewski.
When we remember how the New York women followed the
crinose piano crank around like a lot of overfed fillies try-
ing to attract the attention of Hambletonian, we can
scarce blame the sweet singer of Israel for occasionally
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 199
falling by the wayside. He doubtless remembered how
Joseph happened to get in jail. But while Paderewski is
shy and has to be chased down with flowers and tear jugs
and have salt thrown on his coat-tails, the son of Jesse
was inclined to " bring a corallary rather than want a
spirit." While larking around one night at an hour when
all respectable old Mormons were supposed to be ensconced
in the bosoms of their families, David discovered a beau-
tiful woman taking a bath. He didn't know who she was,
which argues that she'd just got in on the late train and
was removing the dust of travel perchance with the
express purpose of attracting the attention of the royal
Peeping Tom. The beloved of the Lord was growing old,
but the living picture charmed him and he determined to
transfer it to his private gallery. It chanced that the
woman was a war-widow, her husband being engaged at the
time in keeping the Ammonites off the color of the Israel-
itish king. Fearing that she might get lonesome in the
absence of her lord, David invited her over to the palace to
attend religious services and hear him sing a new psalm
he had just composed, and play the accompaniment on the
royal harp. His visitor was so charmed with her noc-
turnal entertainment that she didn't get back home in time
for breakfast. Subsequently a de ventre inspiciendo con-
vinced her that if her husband remained longer away he
was liable to be disagreeably surprised when he came home,
so David sent for him and told him he could take a fur-
lough. So devoted was he to the cause of Israel, however,
that he went not near his home, but slept at the palace gate
with the night policeman, and the scheme to make him
father the unborn bastard slipped its trolley-pole. Some-
thing had to be done, else he was liable to catch on, smite
King David under the fifth rib with his Arkansas tooth-
pick, spoil Bath-Sheba's face and apply for a divorce; so
200 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the sweet singer of Israel sent him back to the front with
a note to General Weyler to get him comfortably killed.
To do this without being suspected of deliberate assassina-
tion it was necessary to send a whole troop into the Am-
monite slaughter-pen; but the beloved of the Lord didn't
mind a little thing like that so long as his own hide was
whole and he could safely dally with the widow of the dear
departed. The fruit of this infamous liaison was the cele-
brated King Solomon, who lived a virtuous and happy life
with his little family of seven hundred wives and three hun-
dred concubines. Despite the vaunted theory of hereditary
traits, Solomon was no hog. Of course when the scandal
got into the papers and the bald-headed prophets began to
jack him up in their usual abrupt manner, David repented
him but didn't give up his stolen goods.
The story is very well told in the second volume of
Colonel Samuel's great historical novel ; but if he worked
any particular moral into the narrative it has been jolted
out by a journey extending over ninety generations. The
debauchment of the wife of a faithful subject; the attempt
to make the unhappy cuckold accept the ill-begotten brat
as his own ; a score of brutal murders to conceal the kingly
crime; a brief attack of the snuffles when upbraided by the
prophet who grants absolution as soon as asked ; the side-
tracking of Bath-Sheba for a younger paramour in the
king's old age in the vain hope of reviving his power for
evil, all told with that biblical straightforwardness which
never calls a spade an excavator's implement, constitutes a
story which my ministerial friend would put into the hands
of children and half-wits then supplement it with " The
Song of Solomon," the most lascivious dream that ever be-
guiled foolish girlhood to the Grove of Daphne.
I have examined the literature of all lands, yet have
found no other book which I should so much dislike to
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 201
place in the hands of an innocent maid. If a libidinous
book or paper be dangerous to public morals, an incentive
to crime, how much more so when the reader is led to be-
lieve that its every line bears the sanction of the Lord?
I want to see an " Open Bible," but desire that it be a care-
fully expurgated edition. I can imagine no nobler service
which a learned and devout man could render the Christian
cause than to go through the Bible with a blue pencil and
a pair of shears. He should make it a Bible which we can
afford to " open " on all occasions and at any page
a Bible for the people as well as for the priesthood. He
should begin by scissoring out the tiresome repetitions and
fake genealogies. He should harpoon Jonah's whale, shoot
Elisha and his she-bears, and deprive Eve's serpent and
Balaam's ass of the power of speech. He should eliminate
whatsoever is absurd, unprofitable and unclean, retaining
only those eternal truths which do credit to a God capable
of evolving the cosmos out of chaos. He should purge
it of the Devil's adulterations relieve the Almighty of
the imputation that he was partlceps criminis in the folly
and cussedness of mankind. I have several times threat-
ened to undertake this work myself, but received only in-
different encouragement from my brother ministers. They
appear to be too busy preaching politics to take much
interest in a great religious enterprise more anxious to
elect Bill McKinley than to " capture the world for
Christ." Think not that I am attempting coarse sarcasm
-Luther himself was never more in earnest. The char-
acter of a people is largely molded by what it reads ; hence
it is not remarkable that an unexpurgated Bible should
produce sanctified robbers, canting murderers and praying
prostitutes. It is not strange that religionists should in-
vade the private rights and civic prerogatives of those who
dare differ with them, when they read in holy writ that
202 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
such offenders are deserving of death. When they are led
to believe that God's choicest blessings rest upon those
guilty of murder, deception and adultery, is it any wonder
that as their religious fervor rises their morality declines.
It is worthy of remark that, wherever introduced, the
" Open Bible " leaves in its wake the footsteps of the
homicide and the pungent odors of the scarlet woman.
In no paynim land is crime so common as in the great
Protestant countries. For every effect there must be a
cause; and we may find it in the practice of putting the
Bible into the hands of children and allowing them to revel
in its glowing accounts of crime. Mature minds absorb
the good and reject the bad, but the nascent intellect
does not discriminate. The Bible should be cleansed of the
corruptions that have crept into it and are today the most
fruitful source of infidelity. The sciolist the half-learned
rejects the good in the book because of the bad, and
seeks solace in the sophisms of the Ingersolls. Thus, while
we are striving to bring all nations beneath the banner of
Christ, we are losing our own country. Of our population
of seventy millions but twenty-three millions are church
communicants. America is today an infidel instead of a
Christian country, and the " Open Bible," together with
that little learning which is a dangerous thing, have made
it so. We must either close our schools, expurgate our
Bible or see Christianity perish.
A VERY BAD BREAK.
MR. BRANN: I enclose clipping from Louisville Courier
Journal, which declares that, instead of becoming scarce
and dear, gold is becoming cheaper, and proves it by point-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 203
ing out that in 1873 the Government had to pay 6 per
cent, interest, while it can now get money at 3. That
seems to be a knockout argument.
GIL BLAS.
It is neither a " knockout argument," nor any argument
at all; it is simply the most colossal specimen of jack-
assarie yet furnished by even the Courier- Journal. The
Dallas News reproduced the article, and, in an herculean
attempt to surpass even the Wattersonian idiocy, added
editorially :
" Gold has not gone up in value. It has gone down.
There are hundreds of men in Texas who remember dis-
tinctly the day when they paid 3 or even 5 per cent, a
month for gold."
No man who has so much as glanced into a primary
work on political economy, or is capable of independent
ratiocination, could be guilty of such an absurdity. The
value of gold has no more to do with the nominal interest
rate than with the state of the weather or the acreage of
Watterson's ears. Gold may go up or down, may become
" cheap " or " dear " without affecting its nominal
" rental " value a single farthing. I say rental, for that
is exactly what interest is. According to the theory of my
entertaining contemporaries, if I pay a rental of six
bushels per acre when wheat is worth $1 a bushel, I will
get the use of the land for three bushels when wheat goes
to fifty cents. I was not hitherto aware that economic
laws were so kind to the debtor class that they auto-
matically temper the wind to the shorn lamb. Verily, God
is good ! If we can " prove " by the decline in the nominal
interest rate that " gold has gone down," then it should
204 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
be dead easy to determine how far it has fallen but I'll
give a feathered cow and flying calf to the first man up
with a correct answer. If the value of the gold dollar has
decreased, what relation does the three cents rental now
given by the government bear to the six cents paid in the
erstwhile? There's a prize conundrum for the mathemati-
cal cranks. The man who attempts to measure the muta-
tions of a unit by its component parts would wait at a
ford for a river to flow by. Suppose the nominal interest
rate to be 10 per cent., and that, by currency contraction,
you double the value of the dollar ; don't you also double
the value of the dime? And if so, why should the nominal
interest rate advance to 20 per cent.? Suppose that, by
currency expansion, you decrease the value of the dollar
one-half: haven't you decreased the value of the dime in
like proportion? And if so, why should the nominal in-
terest rate fall to 5 per cent. ? Is there a greater number
of cents in a " dear " than in a " cheap " dollar? What
kind of an " economic law " is that which fixes the rental
of a cheap at 5-100 and that of a dear thing at 20-100?
Yet the Courier Journal and News are carrying on " a
campaign of education " denouncing those who reject their
peculiar economic ideas as lunatics, demagogues or anar-
chists ! The nominal interest rate is affected by many
things; but there isn't a careful student of economics on
earth who numbers among them the value of money.
Under normal conditions the interest rate is high when
capital yields a large profit to its employer and low when
the margin of profit is small. That's the " law of in-
terest," and as generally recognized among men of intelli-
gence as is the law of gravitation. Government can
borrow at 3 per cent. ; not because " gold has cheapened,"
but because commerce is sluggish and industry paralyzed
because the entrepreneur cannot pay a higher rent for
capital than he can make it earn. When the greenback
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 205
was worth but 45 cents gold, and possessed less than one-
fourth its present purchasing power, it commanded 12
per cent; now when a business man pays more than 6
per cent for gold, or its equivalent, his creditors begin
to caucus. If " gold has gone down " in Washington and
New York it has also tumbled in Texas ; but should a
man try to borrow money here at 3 per cent we'd lock
him up as a dangerous lunatic. General bankruptcy
benefits the pawn-broker and curbstone money shark
enables them to place small loans at cut-throat prices ;
but generally speaking, a high interest rate indicates
prosperity, while a low interest rate is a token of " hard
times." When trade is brisk and the margin of profit
large, a merchant can pay a high store rental, liberal
salaries, 10 per cent for money and prosper; but when
" hard times " hit him he at once begins to hedge. Time,
amount, security, laws governing the relation of creditor
and debtor, even distance, are all important factors in
fixing the yearly rental of " these rascal counters." As
soon as the baseball season is over, I will have my office
boy write a nice, easy economic primer for the especial
benefit of Colonels Watterson and Belo.
POOR OLD TEXAS.
TEXAS is in the throes of a political paroxysm, and every
day exacerbates the disease. The situation may be de-
scribed as a section of chaos hit with a stuffed club. It
is confusion worse confounded. It is Pandemonium hoist
with its own petard. It is Babel on a debauch. All the
laws of nature have been repealed or reversed. The least
is the largest, the first is the last, a part is greater than
the whole, and yesterday is day-after-to-morrow. White
206 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Democrats have to walk on the windward side of them-
selves, while nigger Republicans sweat pure attar of roses.
Miscegenation has become the standard of partisan mo-
rality, and open adultery the supreme test of political
purity. Everything goes by contraries. A political prin-
cipal can only be honored by worshipping at the shrine
of a party that uses it for purposes not polite. " Get
there Eli" hath become the sole law of each political
Israel, and its high-priests would barter the bones of all
the prophets and sell their risen Lord for success then
throw in something handsome as lagniappe. The contest
is between " our Heroic Young Christian Governor " and
the Kearby Combine, the Prohibition candidate having ap-
parently taken to the woods to blow into a local-option
canteen to see if it is loaded. The Combine much re-
sembles the army which Peter-the-Hermit led into Pales-
tine and fed to the omnivorous Saracen. It consists of
such members of the Populist party as are not particularly
choice of their political bed-fellows, Cuney and his coons
and Clark and his ring-tailed rooters. At last accounts
the lilies of the valley had not been located ; but doubtless
they will shed their grateful perfume from the buttonhole
of Grant, the new Republican boss. " Our Heroic," etc.,
alias Texas' great Cry-Baby-Cripsie, is making his cam-
paign on his breach of faith with the Florida Athletic
Club. He is ostensibly for Bryan and Sewall, but is
chiefly concerned in preventing a disgusted public prizing
the public-udder out of him with a crow-bar. At the
present writing (Sept. 24) Kearby appears to be for
Bryan and Watson with an " if " annex. Each candi-
date has troubles of his own, and is not permitting his
anxiety for the national standard-bearers to cause him
to miss any meals. I opine that either would cheerfully
trade the national ticket for an opportunity to get or
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 207
keep the Texas teat between his milk-white teeth. The
Republican party is divided into two faction a wee one,
composed of white men who would like to be decent if the
political exigency permitted, and an aggregation of vote-
peddling niggers and their associates. These latter oc-
cupy a position in the politics of Texas akin to that of
squaw-men in the social economy of the Territory. Both
factions are inordinately hungry, their appetite turning
chiefly upon postoffices, collectorships, and other choice
tid-bits from Uncle Sam's table. They care never a
nickel who makes or executes the state laws if they
distribute the mails. They would cheerfully support
Herr. Most or Dr. Ahlwardt for governor, if, by so doing,
they could land McKinley's electros and thus pave the
way to the pie-counter. They would sink the Lone Star
fathoms deep in hell to get control of the custom-houses.
They inherit their political morality from the carpet-
baggers and impudent nigger officials of the reconstruction
era, when the South was the oyster of Cupidity and Ig-
norance. Mark Hanna has sent a couple of his Hoosier
helotes Huston and Hedges down here to marry the
Republican elephant to the Populist goat, and superintend
the McKinley-Kearby campaign. We learn from Republi-
can headquarters that the nuptial knot has been duly tied,
and the offspring of this remarkable union is expected to
be another Hercules who will cleanse the Augean stable
at Austin. Teddy Green was retained as accoucheur ex-
traordinary for the interesting occasion on a trip from
his multi-millionaire Mama that " Teddy has Hetty behind
him." With Hetty behind Teddy and Mark Hanna be-
hind Houston, it is scarce to be wondered at that the
rooters, alias the Cleveland cuckoos, should cast aside the
Indianapolis mask and come squarely out for McKinley.
These patriotic gentlemen have a very robust grudge to
208 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
gratify. They have been sat upon by the machine, " trun
down " and walked on until they have become ridiculous.
They made the mistake of supposing that G. Cleveland
was the Democratic party; but he proved to be only a
beer-soaked gob of grease; and now they are political
orphans,
" With no one to love them, none to caress,
Alone in this wide world's wilderness."
They made a frantic break for the flesh-pots without
consulting Hogg, Reagan, et al; the result was a right-
foot, left-foot, straw- foot, git ! and now their panties cover
many a sore spot. They have blustered and begged,
crawled in the dust and held scalp-dances, only to get it
" broke off in 'em " by an offer to take 'em aboard as
" ballast " by suggestions from the banqueters that
" They also serve who only stand and wait."
They are ostensible for the single gold standard and
the permanent demonetization of silver; but revanche has
become their watchword, the sole law of their lives. Pre-
tending to be patriotically interested in the preservation
of the honor of Texas, they would trade the state to the
devil for power to destroy the regular Democracy. If
they fail in their present attempt to wreck the " machine "
because not permitted to run it, I don't see what better
they can do than " curse God and die." They are having
a concatenation of epileptoid convulsions because of the
" Popocrat repudiationists," yet will give their votes to
an avowed champion of " red-dog " currency. Too in-
tensely Democratic to vote for Bryan, " because of his
Populistic proclivities," they are toiling like Trojans to
elect Kearby, who is Populism personified. So loyal to
Democratic tradition that they could not suffer the na-
tional platform to be amended to suit the exigencies of
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 209
the times, they helped to place the Palmer-Buckner ticket
in the field- and are now assisting Aunt Hetty's Ted,
Jack-the-colored-giant-killer Grant and N. W. Cuney to
place the banner Democratic state in the McKinley column.
That's the situation: Texas must choose between Popu-
list Kerby and Cry-Baby Culberson is between his Sa-
tanic Majesty and the surging main. Personally, Kearby
is infinitely superior to Culberson. If elected, he would
probably not set up a state mint for the free coinage of
silver. Since he conceived that brilliant design somebody
has doubtless called his attention to the federal consti-
tution. I don't think he would put up his diamonds or
lose his " pants in a little game of draw, then come before
the public in his pajamas to snuffle about persecution for
daring to enforce the criminal law without first charg-
ing himself up with a fine for infraction of the anti-gamb-
ling statute. Kearby would probably not consume the last
eighteen months of his administration explaining the first
six nor pay $2500 out of the public funds for the politi-
cal friendship of his predecessor. Still, like Old Dog
Tray, he's caught in very bad company. I recently put
the question to him squarely : " Is there a trade afoot
between the Populist and Republican leaders, by which
McKinley is to get the electors and you the governor-
ship ? " I told him frankly that I could not support
Culberson because a double-dealer was unworthy the office
of dog-catcher; nor could I cast a ballot for a man who
would, directly or indirectly, aid in the election of Mc-
Kinley. He replied that if such a deal was pending or
had been consummated, he was not aware of it. I do-
not impeach Judge Kearby's honesty perchance the cam-
paign managers have not taken him into their confidence.
Many a clean man has been elected to office by methods
with which it was thought best not to make him unduly
210 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
familiar. The Republicans are supporting Kearby by
order of their bosses, and Mark Hanna's henchmen are
not carrying the Populist banner solely for their health.
The gold " Democrats " are for him, and McKinley is the
god upon whose altar they sacrificed Palmer and Buckner
in their old age. Of course, this is but circumstantial
evidence ; but it becomes " confirmation strong as proofs of
Holy Writ " when taken in connection with the attitude
of the Populist lieutenants. They have, from the first,
manifested the same sulky sore-headedness which distin-
guishes those political pariahs who are supporting Mc-
Kinley as a compliment to Thos. Jefferson. Preaching
that silver is the paramount issue, they did all they could
at St. Louis to prevent an alliance of the free-coinage
legions. They got " in the middle of the road " and
rooted when it was proposed to sink partisanship in pa-
triotism to forego a bootless struggle for the fleshpots
to secure currency reformation. They insisted on splitting
the free silver vote, thereby assuring the success of a party
which is the antithesis of all their professions. Having
got Tom Watson tacked to the tail of the ticket, they
failed to give him loyal support, and now, if appearances
count for anything, are willing to join hands with Mark
Hanna and give us a gold-bug, high tariff administration
if he will but lend them his nigger myrmidons. Mark
Hanna can deliver his goods all right, for they will be
his private property, duly purchased and paid for; but
when the Populist plenary committee attempts to carry
out its part of the programme it's going to blow out its
breech-pin. No cabal carries the Populist vote of Texas
around in its hip-pocket. Despite Hades and high-water,
it will go to Bryan, and the man who forgets to remember
this fact will soon attend his own political funeral.
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 211
" SASSIETY " IN NEW YORK CITY.
NEW YORK CITY is face to face with a problem that can-
not be solved without cruel suffering, the shedding of
torrents of tears, the expenditure of barrels o' boodle.
The Four Hundred has returned to town. For months
past is has been flirting promiscuously in the mountains
and displaying its padded underpinning at the sea-shore;
it is now ready to take up indoor dissipation and expose
the other end of its anatomy to public gaze in decollete
gowns. I do not mean to convey the idea, however, that
the Oleomargarine de la Oleomargarine of New York is
immodest; there's a small portion of the society woman
that's seldom seen by the public at any season. It's a
sacred circle full two inches broad, and covered by her
belt. The Frenchiest ballroom corsage is usually carved
higher, the most stunning bathing-suit ever paraded at
Bar Harbor cut lower than the horizontal median line.
Whether this be a concession to modesty or hygeine I
have not heard; but the all-important fact remains that
there exists a torrid zone on the female form divine, where
the corset gets in its most remorseless gripe, that is con-
sidered by the more conservative members of the Four
Hundred as highly improper to expose. Whether from
the summer or winter point of view; whether floating the
winsome fair on sensuous ocean rollers that break in
slumb'rous thunder on a beach of shimmering sand, or
bending over beauty's chair in perfumed ballroom, while
voluptuous music wakes all the latent passion in the blood,
the o'er curious eye of man encounters that provoking
belt. With the home-coming of these high-toned vagrants
the tremendous problem presents itself: Who are to be
the social autocrats, the stage managers of the Momus-
212 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
masque for the next seven months? There must be an
arbiter elegantarium or bell-wether for the willies, a pace-
setter or lead-ewe for the opposite sex. These sit in
judgment on all social " functions " and decide whether
they be properly " soaped " ; they consider the claims of
new candidates for admission into the " hupper suckle,"
where every prospect pleased and man seldom possessed
sufficient virility to be vile; they determine whether the
correct hand-shake shall consist of a hip-shot and a
nervous giggle, or an extension of the arm in the shape
of a rainbow on a debauch, reinforced by a slow, sad
cholera-morbus grin and a distant touch of the finger-
tips suggesting the query, " Do you use Bear's Soap ? "
A thousand matters of minor importance come before such
a court for adjudication such as the number of lovers
a married woman may have, her " old man " being worth
a given number of millions ; if it be au fait for a debutante
to get drunk, or a belle of two seasons to cuss except in
her morning gown ; the propriety of serving cocktails and
cigarettes to ladies at swell feeds and if it be the duty of
a gentleman to go to the assistance of the reigning belle
should she spill her bust while making a Marie Antoin-
ette bow. Hence it will be seen that while the office is
highly honorable, its duties are very exhaustive. No one
can fill it more than two consecutive seasons, can long
continue to burn the candle at both ends can successfully
defy both paresis and pin-worms. That's why New York
has to select society leaders every season. What is the
prospective dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, Li
Hung Chang's opinion of the Irish or even McKinley's
private views of the currency question, compared with this
problem of problems? Even the cut of T. Suffern Tailer's
wonderful tandem coats, the color of Chimmie Van Alen's
French corsets, the detonations of Dickey Peter's golf
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 213
costume, or the aesthetic effect of Foxall Keene's thin
legs in his " tweed riding things " sink into comparative
insignificance fail to elicit so much as a bad egg from
the newsboys, so interested is all Gotham in the present
Titanic struggle for social supremacy for a little season.
I arn watching the battle from afar, as depicted by that
mighty " public educator," yclept the New York press.
It is more exciting than a jack-rabbit race at Cleburne,
or a head-end collision at Crush. The life-and-death
struggle of the rival campaign liars does not stir the
sluggish blood as does the battle royal between the he-
things and the she-things of New York for the jackass
pennant and jennet prize respectively. I said he-things,
but after a casual glance at the candidates for Ward
McAlister's old post of honor as chief ass of the universe,
I'll not lay any wagers on their sex unless offered long
odds. They are posing as men, to be sure ; but their weak
faces and effeminate apparel suggests that they may be
tenor-singers. If so, we can easily understand why New
York business men permit them to bathe and bike, dance
and flirt through the golden summer days, with their
wives and daughters at flip resorts, while paterfamilias
remains at home and cheerfully pays the freight. Elisha
Dyer, Jr., appears to be making a still race for the
coveted position of lead gander of Gotham's intellectual
geese. He wears a soupy expression which was copied
with such great success by Stuart Robson as " Slender."
A physiognomist would select him as just the party to
tempt nervous prostration by practicing the correct hand-
shake with his valet, or cultivating the society grin before
an amorous looking-glass. Elisha is eminently qualified
for the honor, and if there's any little thing the ICONOCLAST
can do to enable him to reach the goal of his ambition,
he has only to signal us with his neckties. In the female
214 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
list there are several entries, Mrs. Bradley-Martin being
a hot favorite with the newspapers probably because
" she has a deep purse " and doesn't giveadam for ex-
pense if she can only get there. But while the rather
good-looking lady with the retroverted nose and vestibule-
train name is running like a scared wolf in the Sunday
papers, it must be remembered that these mighty " moul-
ders of public opinion " are as impuissant in society as in
politics. Even Josef Phewlitzer, whose average circula-
tion is 927 billion copies, is not permitted to insert his
legs under the mahogany of New York's Four Hundred.
The newspapers are simply the paid claquers, and their
applause cuts no ice in the sanctum sanctorum of Goth-
am's swell society. Mrs. Ogden Mills is not spending
very much money with the daily press, a slight which
Phewlitzer fiercely resents; but just the same she's in the
race, is throwing dirt like a thoroughbred and has Mrs.
Bradley-Martin breathing so hard you can hear her four
blocks. She comes of the proud old Knickerbocker stock,
which got its financial start by squatting on Manhattan
Island when it wasn't worth two bottles of rum and a
Queen Anne musket, and holding on like grim death for
the unearned increment; hence of her staying qualities
there can be no question. Mesdames Edward L. Baylies
and Hermann Oelrich are making a flutter for the post of
honor, but seem to be jumping up and down in one place
like the " flying coursers " in a one ring circus, while
Mrs. August Belmont appears undecided whether to
"blow herself" for the coveted bauble, or wait until
Grover the Good has let the family in on the ground
floor of another governmental fraud. It can be taken
for granted that the greatest fool in Gotham if he
have sufficient funds to successfully play the fop and
the woman who wastes the most wealth in vulgar display,
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 215
while within sound of the funky " functions " people stand
starving and destitute, will be accepted as the social
leaders of that hive of human vermin, known as New
York's Four Hundred. Small wonder the Almighty re-
pented him of having made man in his own image! I
can only wonder that he doesn't renige on that rainbow,
and apologize to his Son for having sacrificed him to save
a lot of useless lice.
OUR HEROIC YOUNG CHRISTIAN GOV.
CHAS. A. CULBERSON, alias " Our Heroic Young Christian
Governor," is swinging 'round the circle seeking re-elec-
tion, and shooting hot shot into those who criticized his
course in the Corbett-Fitzsimmons prize-fight case. With
his proverbial slipperiness, he avoids the salient point, and
places the matter in a false light before the people. He
strives to impress them with the idea that it was simply
a content between an eminently moral governor and a
gang of godless toughs who were planning the eternal dis-
grace of Texas that he was compelled to call a special
session of the legislature, at great expense, to uphold the
dignity of the commonwealth. Were this an honest pre-
sentation of the case, Gov. Culberson would have little
occasion to complain of adverse criticism. The people
of Texas are not much in love with professional pugilism.
They did not complain because the great " physical cul-
ture " exhibition was laid out by the strong hand of the
law ; the gravamen of their complaint was and is that the
216 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
enterprise would not have troubled Texas but for the
encouragement accorded it by Gov. C. A. Culberson;
that had he dealt uprightly in the matter the cost of that
extra legislative session would have been saved. Gov.
Culberson stated to representatives of the Florida Ath-
letic Club, that, in his opinion, the then existing anti-
prize-fight law was faulty, and that if declared invalid by
a court of competent jurisdiction he would take no further
action in the matter. The Club felt confident that the
courts would declare the statute of no effect, but feared
a called session of the legislature that would so amend
the law as to defeat the enterprise. Culberson not only
gave the Club to understand that the then existing statute
was all it had to fear, but announced his intention to
witness the fight himself. On board a sleeping-car going
into Forth Worth, he said to a party of legal gentlemen
that " The godly would make a great roar about the
fight but soon get over it." The " roar " of the sancti-
fied reached proportions, however, which he did not ex-
pect, and, alarmed for his political future, he made a
hasty change of front went back on his brother sports
and gave the glad hand to the professional godly. Yet
this man has the supernal gall to pose before the people
as an " Heroic Young Christian Governor," and wail
that his critics want to " turn the state over to a gang
of toughs ! " The ICONOCLAST is no admirer of the pro-
fessional pug, but it does insist that the man who smashes
mugs to make a hoodlum holiday occupies an infinitely
higher moral plane than one who seeks to obtain a position
of public trust by means of sneaking hypocrisy. The
charge that the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight would not have
been brought to Texas but for the tacit encouragement
of Culberson that the called session would have been un-
necessary had he discountenanced the affair from, the
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 217
first was preferred by the ICONOCLAST more than a year
ago, and has not yet been publicly denied. " Our Heroic "
etc. simply wrapped his new-got robe of righteousness
about him and sawed wood. Silence is said to give con-
sent; but I suspect that Slipperly Charles, who is an
adept in the arts of practical politics, will find his tongue
on this topic just before the November ides when too
late for the ICONOCLAST to reply. I'm looking for a sen-
sational exhibition of outraged innocence by this muchly;
persecuted " Christian Governor " after the November
ICONOCLAST is put to press. If Culberson is so unalter-
ably opposed to pugilism ; if he is so fearful that " the
tough element will disgrace Grand Old Texas," why did
he not make some attempt to suppress prize-fighting dur-
ing his four years as attorney-general? If he believed
the anti-prize-fighting statute to be defective, why did
he not, as governor, suggest to the legislature in regular
session the advisability of amending the law? During
his two terms as attorney-general and long after his
elevation to the governorship, brutal prize-fights were of
common occurrence in the chief cities of Texas. Why
didn't Holy Charlie get his Ebenezer up and do something
to shield Texas from such disgrace? He has trained with
the sporty element long enough to know that a mill be-
tween unskilled sluggers is far more brutal than one be-
tween accomplished athletes like Corbett and Fitzsim-
mons. The unscienced slugger relies on " main strength
and awkwardness " to beat an adversary until he can en-
dure no more; the true lanista seldom inflicts serious in-
jury upon an opponent. Every week or two a brace of
brawny bruisers, after due advertisement, would meet
in some Texas city and pound each other's face to a pulp
for the gate receipt and the godly raised no " roar."
Culberson forgot, however, that the sensational preacher,
218 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
like the practical politician, never overlooks an oppor-
tunity to make a grand-stand play. The professional
plate-passer cared nothing about the scores of bloody mills
between human bull-dogs to fortune and to fame unknown ;
but the eyes of the world were on Corbett and Fitzsim-
mons, there was a chance for notoriety for which the
Cranfills and the Seasholes have an inordinate itch and
they so filled the atmosphere with their hypocritical howl
that Gov. Culberson concluded not to accept a compli-
mentary ticket to the " physical culture " contest.
POLITICAL POT-POURRI.
I HAVE for years been harboring the ridiculous halluci-
nation that the average American toiler found Jordan a
pretty hard road to travel; but I now find that in be-
dewing him with my tears I have been guilty of a wicked
waste of water. From a circular which emanates from
New York I learn that " there never were so few poor
people in any land as we have in this land to-day, and
those who are poor are kept down only because of physical
or mental defect. The fact is, the potentates of the din-
ner-pail own almost everything." So it appears, after
all, that the workingman is right in the push! All those
who possess ordinary horse sense and a pair o' hands
have boodle to throw at the birds. Only those experience
difficulty in getting a living in this blessed land who are
ligneous-limbed, physical freaks or mentally malformed.
The average American laborer simply toils ten hours in
summer's hrat or winter's cold to work up a keen appetite
for pate de foie gras and pie on two plates. It isn't that
he cares for the paltry six-bits a day he's fearful that
if bed
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 219
if he doesn't keep up an eternal hustle he'll get the gout.
He returns at nightfall to his palatial residence from
factory or farm, doffs his grimy duds, takes a perfumed
bath in a marble basin, dons a silken robe de chambre, ab-
sorbs a pint of imported champagne, lights a two-for-a-
dollar cigar, puts his feet on the ebony and rose-wood up-
right, turns his dreamy, soulful eyes to the frescoed ceil-
ing and lolls in sybaritic luxury, fairly wallows in wealth !
It's such a comfort to this " potentate of the dinner pail "
to reflect that he " owns almost everything "has but td
lift his little finger to make such paupers as the Rocke-
fellers, Astors, et id genus omnes get off the earth!
" Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," and this
sceptered " potentate of the dinner-pail " surfeited with
life's choicest luxuries, puffed up with the pride of power
and the impudence of wealth, threatens at times to raise
unshirted sheol with those miserable peons whom, in a
spirit of sad-irony, we call the American plutocrats. In-
stead of dealing gently with the Vanderbilts, Belmonts
and other of his poor neighbors ancC sending them the
broken victuals from his banquet board, and occasionally
an old suit of clothes from his groaning wardrobe, he
manifests a disposition to treat them with contumely and
contempt. Of course, he will vote the Republican ticket,
leaving those whom physical deformity or mental defect
has prevented acquiring fortunes, to " throw up their
sweaty nightcaps and emit a deal o' sweating breath"
for Bryan of Nebraska.
I have discovered why the people must go to McKinley,
while Bryan goes to the people. McKinley is not alive;
he's Carlyle's man of Murenburg, and has to be wound
up every night. A phonograph, into which Mark Hanna
has talked, is placed inside the dummy, which is then stood
220 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
on the front porch, like a clothier's lay figure, to receive
the Republican pilgrims. A spring is released at the
proper moment by means of a concealed wire, and the
result is a flow of empty words. That's why the Buck-
eye is not permitted to meet Bryan in joint debate. His
insides might get out of order.
The Dallas News seems to consider Sin-Killer Griffin
the greatest man since the days of Fred Douglass, whom
it once admitted was the peer of Washington and Jefferson
second only to Jesus Christ. Is my early-worm contem-
porary pushing Griffin as a darkhorse candidate for gov-
ernor, on a high-tariff-nigger-equality platform, or simply
standing in with his evangelical graft getting a per-
centage of his collections for continually flinging this
consequential coon in the faces of white people? I have
no desire to pry into the counting-room secrets of my
contemporary; but its all-consuming love for McKinley
and frantic protests against white domination in the
Southern states, is making Kearby not a little uneasy.
Debs declares and his statement is confirmed by other
prominent labor leaders that here in the United States
between two and three million able-bodied men are seek-
ing in vain for employment, while thousands are working
for 50 cents a day, boarding themselves and trying to sup-
port families. Yet the ICONOCLAST is denounced as " a
dangerous alarmist " because it points out that, unless
the terrible pressure on labor be relieved, there may be
a bloody revolt. Dives is doing the ostrich act running
his head in the sand to avoid seeing the cyclone that
may make free with his tail-feathers. If there be one
class which, more than all others, is vitally interested in
ameliorating the condition of the masses, it is the men of
million
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 221
millions, for it is upon their heads that the blue lightnings
will break, that the storm will expend its fury.
" Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over
heath and holt,
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a
thunderbolt."
Fifteen thousand people recently assembled at New
Haven, Conn., to hear W. J. Bryan, presidential nominee
of the dominant political party, discuss the issues of the
day; but the meeting was broken up by 500 misbegotten
curs from Yale college, assisted by the band of a state
militia company. Yale is the " swell " college of the
country. To it the tariff beneficiaries of Yankeeland, the
managers of fake insurance companies, the successful
peddlers of wooden nutmegs, the presidents of mortgage
syndicates and the descendents of early squatters on town
sites, send their supposed sons to be transformed into
English flunkeys. A glance across the Yale campus, with
its dawdling chappies and ligneous-faced chumps, sug-
gests the futility of the law of the survival of the fittest.
It is part of the curriculum of Yale that the West is a
Nazareth, out of which no good can possibly come; that
wealth, not worth, makes the man, and want of it the
fellow that the masses were created for the sole purpose
of ministering to the comfort of the classes. If a fresh-
man declines to turn up his twousahs when it's raining in
Lunnon, and sneer at hte United States as a country of
bahbawians, he is promptly expelled. Three times a day
the students are drilled in cane-sucking and Cockney pro-
nunciation by the dean of the faculty, while God Save the
Queen is sung in chapel instead of Old Hundred. If a
student be caught with an American flag in his possession
he is lectured on the evils of anarchy and his duty, as a
222 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
colonist, to the " Mother Country." It is small wonder
that the Yale dudes and diletante howled Bryan down.
As a sure-enough man who has won his own way, he
could expect but scant courtesy from the spawn of Dives,
the disciples of Oscar Wilde. It is to be regretted that
Mr. Bryan did not have in his audience a couple o* dozen
Texas Democrats those quiet, inoffensive gentlemen who
hate a beastly row, and can, with a six-shooter, trim the
ears of a jack-rabbit on the jump. At about the second
yoop from Yale they would have quietly cut or three or
four hundred young bucks from the herd, deftly castrated
them, stood them on their heads, and utilized them as
candlesticks. Very few Texans are 'varsity bred, but all
hold sacred the rites of hospitality. No man is more un-
popular in the southwest than McKinley, but should he
come among us he would be treated like a king. Should
any forget that he was the guest of Texas and serve him
as the Yale yahoos did Bryan, they'd quickly adorn a
tree.
Judge calls Bryan " the sacreligious candidate," and
referring to his cross and crown metaphor, declares that
" no man who would drag in the dirt the most sacred
symbols of the Christian faith is fit to be president,"
If Judge is not careful it will yet be suspected of being a
professionally humorous paper. Nothing so excruciat-
ingly funny has been worked off since the St. Louis Mirror
referred to William J. Bryan as " Willie." Judge has
evidently got the willies known to we eminent physicians
as nematoidae, to the vulgar as pinworms.
After reading the speech of Hon. T. S. Smith, placing
the name of C. A. Culberson before the state convention,
I am convinced that the gentleman from Hill County
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 223
thought he was exhorting a Methodist campmeeting, and
talking about Jesus Christ instead of " our heroic young
Christian governor." It's a wonder he didn't ring in
something about Mary Magdalen or " a woman of the city
who was a sinner."
Despite the friendly warning of the ICONOCLAST, Rev.
Sam Small, of Jawgy, has been employed by the Bryan
campaign committee and turned loose in Illinois. It is
a great pity equal to sending a prostitute forth as the
apostle of sexual purity. Fortunately, the Suckers do
not know Sammy as do we of the South. If kept well
supplied with funds he may refrain from leaving behind
him the unsavory trail of the crook. The committee should
give him to distinctly understand, however, that the very
first time he bilks a bill or induces a confiding Sucker to
endorse his draft on a bank in which he has no boodle, he
will get the royal bounce. Just what untoward circum-
stances induced the committee to turn this empty-pated
blatherskite loose in the state of Lincoln and Douglass,
Ingersoll and Altgeld, Dick Yates and David Davis
among the only people on earth equal to the industrial
miracle of Chicago must ever remain a mystery.
I think the readers of the ICONOCLAST understand by
this time that I am no " free silver fanatic " that I do
not believe the much vexed " currency question " per se
of much important ; but when a party starts out to make
a " campaign of education " I insist that it yield at least
a little respect to the law of logic ; that when it indulges
in sophistry it gives the appearance of common sense.
Take McKinley's letter of acceptance, f'rinstance: He
says that under free coinage of silver the bullion owners
would take their commodity to the mint, and for every
2?A BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
53 cents worth of metal receive a dollar. That, accord-
ing to the Canton Napoleon and all his field marshalls,
would result in the enrichment of the mining barons at
the expense of the common people. Yet the Republicans
and their Indianapolis allies all assure us that under free
coinage the silver dollar, as measured by gold, would be
worth 53 cents. Then in the name of Plato, how is the
mining baron enriched and the people despoiled? We
are told in one breath that 412l/o grains of silver is worth
the same, whether coined or uncoined ; in the next that its
coinage will enable the bullion owner to jam 47 cts of un-
earned increments down in his jeans. If my five-year-old
kid made such an immaculate ass as that of himself in an
argument, I'd take a club and kill him.
It is noticeable that those preachers who have substi-
tuted McKinley for Christ and are now making rabid
political harrangues from the pulpit, are either A.P.A.s,
or notoriously in sympathy with the principles of that
infamous order. Rev. R. S. McArthur, of New York
whose political holy-shows have disgusted all decent people,
is a Canadian who thinks he pays the Pope a great com-
pliment by referring to him as Anti-Christ ; while Metho-
dist Bishop Newman, of San Francisco, whose anti-Bryan
harrangues are vindictive enough to have been conceived
in hell, first attracted general attention by the dirtiest
attack on the Catholic sisterhoods that ever appeared in
print. If Bishop Newman doesn't prove McKinley's Bur-
chard it will be because the Roman Catholics conclude to
treat the mangy cur with contempt.
I have policies in a number of insurance companies, all
of which have forwarded to me literature setting forth,
at much length, that I will be irretrievably in the tureen
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 225
if they are compelled to pay my policies in " a depreciated
currency." Good gentlemen, kind gentlemen, dear gentle-
men, so long as I do not worry, why should you lie awake
to mourn? So long as I am willing to accept the " 50-
cent dollars " in lieu of the 200-cent article, do not permit
your conscience to rear up on its hind legs and trample
on your liver. If, despite all you can do, it breaks your
tender hearts to pay my policies in " 50-cent dollars,"
there's no law to prevent your doubling the dose. I have
been frequently asked why the insurance companies are
so frantically opposed to free silver. The answer is dead
easy : The premiums paid in must of necessity be greater
than the losses paid out, and they desire that this surplus
have the greatest possible purchasing power. Further-
more, all standard insurance companies have millions at
interest, which is enhanced in value by contraction of the
currency. The man who supposes for one moment that
any Yankee insurance company is striving to outdo the
late Baron Hirsch in disinterested philanthropy could
flick flies off his hind quarters with the tips of his ears.
When a company appeals to you to " protect your in-
surance " by voting gold standard, just state for its
edification, that under normal economic conditions you
could easily acquire a competence, and dispense with the
services of pawnbrokers in life and property. It will be
a proper rebuke to the impudence of these parasites.
Col. W. W. Leake, a Dallas delegate to the convocation
of the McKinley Aid Society recently assembled at Indi-
anapolis, says in an interview that " it was merely a thin
disguise to save the country from falling into the hands
of the Chicago crowd," and that " in doubtful states a
vote should not be thrown away," i.e., on the Palmer-
Buckner ticket, but given direct to McKinley. There are
226 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
no disguises in honest politics. Patriots make no false
pretenses. He should go cork himself.
Mr. R. B. Hawley, Republican nominee for congress
from the Galveston district, is said to have been a very
active member of the Warmoth administration in Louisi-
ana. That accounts for the aid and encouragement he
is receiving from those eminent Democratic (?) papers,
the News and Tribune. Scratch a Democrat of the Indi-
annapolis school and you'll find a reconstructionist.
In a lengthy editorial criticism of the ICONOCLAST, the
Chicago Chronicle makes the startling announcement that
" Editor Brann is just as sane a man as W. J. Bryan."
If wit to madness be near allied, the editor of the Chronicle
need never fear the insane asylum it were like apprehend-
ing a wooden indian on a suspicion of homicide. He thinks
Bryan crazy because he's for free silver coinage, that
Brann is off his base because he declares that " the unit
of value in vogue in a country has no more to do with
its wage rate than the number of wiggle-tails in its rain
water." Then, with a naivete truly refreshing, the Chron-
icle proceeds to demonstrate the correctness of this
" Crazy " proposition. It says : The wages in a silver
standard country are to be taken, like the wages in a gold
standard country, in connection with the prices of com-
modities labor must buy. In a country having much use
for bricklayers wages will be higher than in a country
having little need of them. Machinery has helped to make
America the best paying of labor countries. That is
good ICONOCLAST doctrine, reiterated a dozen times,
and it is a little remarkable that the Chronicle editor
should agree so well with a lunatic. Supply and demand,
cost of maintenance, power of production these are fac-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 227
tors in fixing the wage-rate, which is measured but not
made, by the exchange media.
The single standard men are on the stump, explaining
to the farmer that, with free silver, gold will go to a
premium, when he " will have to accept pay for his wheat
in a depreciated currency, and with this purchase the
yellow metal wherewith to discharge his mortgage." Hor-
rible ! But, as P. Henry would observe, we can only
judge the future by the past. A bushel of wheat will
buy about .58 gold to-day; in 1866 the farmer has to
" accept pay for his wheat in a depreciated currency "
getting 2.19 1 /2 in greenbacks, with which he could pur-
chase 1.56 gold. A bushel of corn will buy .20 gold
to-day; in 1866 it sold for .68 greenbacks, equivalent to
.48% gold. There is scarce a farm product that will
purchase half so much gold to-day as when the yellow metal
was at a heavy premium.
The Dutch have taken Holland and the Republicans
captured Maine! McKinley and Mark Hanna have re-
covered their equilibrium ; but the Palmer-Buckner Bene-
dict Arnolds continue to rejoice with a hysterical gladness
which proves that there's no venom so virulent as that of
a renegade.
A Terrell correspondent says that when the press is
booming a man for office, it usually refers to him as " a
Christian gentleman ". He desires to know what differ-
ence there is between a Christian gentleman and any
other kind of gentleman. All genuine Christians are
gentlemen (if they don't happen to be ladies); but all
gentlemen are not Christians. When a man contracts
the office appetite he parades his piety as a bid for the
228 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
votes of a very considerable class of bigots, who cannot
understand that a man may respect the Ten Command-
ments without accepting their Sinaic authorship.
A contemporary declares that " the enormous cost of
imported goods in Mexico is due largely to the high rate
of exchange, caused by depreciated silver." I consulted
a Waco banker on the subject taking care, however, not
to let slip a word about silver. Following is the conver-
sation almost verbatim:
Q. What makes exchange high or low?
A. The location of money. Bills of exchange simply
obviate its transfer, with the attendant cost, risk and
trouble. Thus, we need money here now to move cotton.
It must come from the East. When you buy a bill for
$1000 on New York it practically amounts to a transfer
of that much money from Gotham to the Geyser City.
If you buy a New York bill on Waco the effect is reversed.
In the first case you are saving your banker trouble; in
the second you are increasing his sorrow.
Q. What makes exchange between nations high or low?
A. Same thing. If the trade balance is in our favor
as against England, exchange on London will be low.
The money is in the wrong place, and in buying a bill
you help put it right. If the trade balance is against us
and in favor of England, then exchange on London will
be high, for the bill you buy increases by that much the
amount of bullion, or some other kind of wealth that must
be sent abroad in settlement.
Q. Then if our exports to England did not pay for
our imports and discharge the annual interest on the
money we owe her, New York exchange on London would
infallibly be high?
A. Exactly.
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 229
Q. And that's the condition of Mexico to-day. She
has borrowed vast sums abroad to develop her resources,
and in funding her national debt. She has not yet reached
that point where she can comfortably carry this incum-
brance after paying for her imports with her exports.
Exchange with her creditor countries is high, and would
be so were her exchange media gold or diamonds. The
value of her silver is computed in London in pounds
sterling just as easily as is that of American gold coin.
What the free-silverphobists seem to need is the establish-
ment of a parity between their distressing yoop and the
unit of commercial common sense.
SHEOL TO PAY AT PARIS.
THE First Baptist Church of Paris, Texas, appears to
be in a very bad way. It had for pastor Rev. Geo. W.
Fortune a man entirely too learned and able to be a
hide-bound sectary, a hardshell Baptist. According to
the best information I can gather, he judged creeds by
the Bible, and that in turn by an intelligent conception
of the Creator, instead of working the combination from
the other end. He seems to have entertained the neoteric
idea that truth cannot possibly suffer from investigation ;
that every creed should be subjected to the experimentum
crucis, and that one good way of honoring G k od is to
assiduously cultivate the all too seldom virtue of common
sense. He appears to have been a progressive preacher
a genuine teacher instead of a theological poll parrot
who strove to bring his congregation into touch with the
truths of science, to give his people a grander conception
of the power and majesty of God than was entertained by
230 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
the semi-savages of by-gone centuries. This did not ex-
actly suit those who still hold to the Mosaic-Carpenterian
cosmogony who believe the world is flat and has four
" corners " ; that the Zeitfurst is a scaly old reptile with
a harpoon tail, who goes walking up and down the earth
like a Georgia evangelist, seeking whom he may devour.
There was a considerable contingent in the church who
were suspicious of the higher criticism," because it im-
periled their comfortable doctrine of eternal damnation,
and threatened the Biblical theory that the sun arJdl
moon are a brace of igneous tar-barrels which can be
pulled around by a string to suit the convenience of a
professional butcher. They strenuously insisted that
Balaam rode their great progenitor to the Court of Balak ;
that Lot was beloved of the Lord despite the little esca-
pade with his daughters; that God proved his supernal
goodness by sending she-bears to tear the children of
Jericho for calling Elisha Old Baldy, demonstrated his
infinite mercy by ordering the Children of Israel to rip
open the pregnant women of their enemies, put prisoners
of war under harrows of iron and violate helpless virgins.
That's the kind of God they hoped to go to, knowing that
in such company they would feel at home ; hence they hotly
resented Dr. Fortune's attempt to pull down this idealiza-
tion of their own character and place on the throne of
the New Jerusalem a soverign with the instincts of a
gentleman. He became the quarry of a red-hot heresy
hunt, was called before a council of the non-progression-
ists and convicted of teaching that the earth is round
that " the firmament above the earth " is not a concave
vault daubed with indigo and supplied with " windows "
through which the celestial waters were once let down to
drown the world. Dr. Fortune resigned, but the more
intelligent of his congregation followed him, thereby pro-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 231
yoking the ire of the orthodox of that denomination which
boasts that it was the first to proclaim liberty of con-
science in this country, and who are now giving them a
taste of that Christian charity which permeates the aver-
age church like the subtile odor of sour milk and undeodor-
ized diapers the nursery of a nigger orphan asylum. The
seceders hired a hall for Dr. Fortune, where he is now
preaching such sermons as a self-respecting Deity might
listen to without again repenting that he had made man.
Of course, the Baptist Standard had to take a hand in
the disagreement couldn't resist the temptation to slip
in a little of its quintessential extract of brotherly kind-
ness into the sore. If there's anything which Dr. Je-
hovah Boanerges Cranfill loves better than the almighty
dollar, it's a beastly row at long range. As a neighbor
he's gentler than a turtle dove, harmless as a speckled
hen ; but at a distance of a hundred miles or so he's a
veritable besom of destruction, terrible as an army with
banners. He assailed Dr. Fortune with all the ferocity
of a bench-legged fice barking through a picket fence at
a Catholic archbishop in full canonicals ; but his Holiness'
tantrums attracted no attention Dr. Fortune had evi-
dently learned from his Latin lesson that " an eagle does
not catch flies." Boanerges next aligned his billingsgate
batteries on Dr. J. M. Fort of Paris, a friend and staunch
adherent of the ex-pastor. In the course of a couple of
months a copy of the Standard drifted into Lamar county.
Dr. Fort's attention was called to the Mendacium Cran-
fillium, or orthodox Baptist lie; but instead of having it
framed and placed on exhibition that he might be loved for
the enemies he had made, he waxed wroth and entered com-
plaint of criminal libel. He will inevitably lose his case.
Despite the law of libel, our courts of equity will not
permit a man to be punished for doing good to his fellows.
232 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
The Standard's defamation of Dr. Fort will pass current
anywhere In Texas as a certificate of good character.
Like Aesop's snail, the Standard beslimes only that which
is beautiful. Like a buzzard, Boanerges pukes only on
that which is pure.
AS TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
THE A.P.A. professes to be distinctly an American or-
ganization, its mission the conservation of the fundamental
principles of this government, chief of which are liberty
of conscience, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
I do not agree with the order that American principles
can be best preserved by means of a dark-lantern, oath-
bound organization which would debar people from the
honors and emoluments of public office because of their
religious opinions. I have said so. I have opposed the
order from its inception; not because the objects of its
proscription are Catholics, but because they are Ameri-
cans and privileged to worship God according to the dic-
tates of their own conscience. I have gone somewhat into
the private and public records of the apostles of Apeism
to prove it an organization with which no reputable white
man can afford to affiliate. I am ever ready to make
the amende honorable when my information misleads me,
to an honest man's injury; but no A.P.A. has ever
asked it. The Texas law both civil and criminal is an
ironclad; but, although the ICONOCLAST is financially sol-
vent, I have never been called to answer in the courts.
Not a single Ape has cocked his ear to hear the jingle
of the guinea which " heals the hurt which honor feels."
Not one of them has gone gunning for me. Slattery did
threaten something of the kind but that was before he
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 233
was advised to keep off the streets of Waco, unless he
desired to have the bosom of his pantalettes filled with
patent leather. The Apes have selected a very unique
method of playing for even with the " Apostle." They
write me insulting anonymous letters and decorate them
with skulls and cross-bones to remind me I presume,
that "in the midst of life we are in death." Some of
these epistles are quite interesting orthographically con-
sidered; but none are redolent with the odor of sanctity.
The following mailed on the train to disguise the post-
office is a fair sample of the A.P.A. epistles which reach
this office.
Nebraska, U. -S. A.
To My A.P.A. Friend:
I have been privileged for some time past to reaidl
copies of the ICONOCLAST, and I find in almost every
issue of that periodical an attack is made upon some
member of the order. Allow me to inform you that long
after your foul mouth has bitten the dust, after the ma-
gots have eaten their way through your flesh to your
black heart, and then turned away in disgust, the A.P.A.
will still live and flourish. They pay as little attention
to your contemptible lying as though you were howling to
the wind. Watch less some unseen hand strike you down.
" Sic sempter trannus."
W. H. Brown.
What " sic sempter trannus " means, I haven't the re-
motest idea. It may be Dog-Latin, School-girl Greek,
Squaw-man Choctaw, or an A.P.A. idiom equivalent to
Pat's report of J. Wilkes Booth's famous exclamation
" I'm sick, send for McGinnis." Or it may be one of
the thaumaturgic incantations employed by the Apes in
secret conclave, and signify " No Irish need apply." Per-
haps if a hoodoo, or another of the Galveston News' Nor-
234 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
man maxims. Or it may be one of Snap Shot's esoteric
witticisms, or the key to McKinley's private opinion of
the currency problem. However that may be, I shall
certainly look a leedle oud shall watch lest some hidden
hand make a cold, clammy, uncomfortable corpse of me
while the must is still upon the grape, the bloom upon the
rye. An order which makes war on women is well calcu-
lated to breed assassins, curs who bark at longest range
and cowards who strike in the back. In dealing with the
Ape I shall imitate the lightning bug and wear my head-
light on my caboose. I have had some little experience
with the Mafia, and it will stand me in good stead in deal-
ing with this new Association of Pusillanimous Assassins
organized to preserve freedom of conscience and free-
dom of speech. I may die one of these days of excessive
goodness, or be executed for doing the Joseph act; but
if I live until an A.P.Ape musters up sufficient " sand "
to shoot me in the back, old Mathuseleh won't be a marker.
But if die I must, at the hands of these desperate men,
I trust that my remorseless executioners will at least tell
me what " sic sempter trannus " means.
SALMAGUNDI.
I AM in receipt of a letter from a purveyor of nostrums
supposed to cure private complaints, in which he sug-
gests that I am " over-nice " in debarring advertisements
of such medicines from the columns of the ICONOCLAST.
He urges that private diseases do exist, and that the phy-
sician who compounds, and the paper which calls atten-
tion to remedies therefor, are really benefactors of the
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 235
race; that the great dailies, and even many religious
journals regard the matter in this light, and thai} it
" smacks of pharisaism on the part of the ICONOCLAST
to assume to be better than its brethren." This paper
is simply trying to " tote fair " with its patrons. It as-
sumes that its readers are ladies and gentlemen, hence
does not insult them by continual suggestion that they
may be the " victims of early indiscretions." It takes
it for granted that they are strangers to the ills peculiar
to prostitution. It assumes that none of them would
commit the crime suggested by the persistent advertising
by my contemporaries of abortion pills. Among the
quarter million regular readers of the ICONOCLAST but
two or three cases of " lost manhood " have developed,
and the patients immediately stopped their paper. No
youth addicted to " secret vice " was ever known to send
in a subscription. Such being the case, I would simply
rob the purveyors of private disease panaceas by selling
them advertising space. They would receive no return
on their investment. If those " great dailies and religious
journals " mentioned by my correspondent really consider
that their patrons are suffering the pangs of syphilitic
poisoning, or practice self -pollution, it is right and proper
that they suggest a remedy; but I cannot see wherein
they become " benefactors of the race " by exploiting
medicines intended to prevent motherhood. The ICONO-
CLAST may be pharisaical, as my correspondent suggests.
It thanks God that, in one respect at least, it is not as
other papers. I opine that no paper exploiting the pro-
prietary remedies now under discussion, has any idea of
alleviating the miseries of mankind. Every editor who
can distinguish between a man and woman without a dia-
gram knows full well that ninety-and-nine per cent of
these nostrums are frauds, and oftentimes more dangerous
236 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
than disease. The papers that accept such advertise-
ments have simply gone into partnership with quacks for
the express purpose of fleecing the public. When a man
forgets the Seventh Commandment, dallies with " the
weariness that lies awake for hire," and suffers for it
more than the pangs of conscience, he should consult a
reputable physician else go hang himself.
J. F. Raley and Mrs. Gallic May are members of the
Baptist church of Denton, Texas, but do not greet each
other with a kiss in conformity with the Pauline com-
mand. Sister May concluded that Brother Raley was
making remarks about her not complimentary to her
Christian character, and had him " churched." The pro-
ceedings becoming somewhat prosy, she enlivened them by
touching up the defendant with a buggy-whip, greatly to
the scandal of a goodly congregation assembled in the
house of God. The Denton Baptists are evidently suf-
fering because of the drought. Somebody should turn the
hose on them.
After an absence of eight long weary years, Wilyum
Gotterdammerung Sterrett has returned to Texas and
resumed general supervision of the great Southwest.
Things got into a terrible tangle while Wilyum was away.
He knew they would knew that without Wilyum " in
our midst " to ward off droughts, fix the price of cotton
and direct our political destiny, Texas would fall on
evil times. He returns, as the novelists say, in the nick
of time. Just as we were teetering on the slippery verge
of heaven knows what, this pale-haired philosopher ap-
pears on the scene like the hero in a tragedy of the
spasmodic school, and snatches us by the coat-tails from
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 237
certain destruction. If the good Lord spares him, and his
gall-bag doesn't burst, Wilyum will save not only Texas,
but a large slice of adjacent territory. In these parlous
times, when all economic ideas are in a transition state
and the world's wisest wondering where they are " at,"
it is such a blessing to have among us one who, for years
past, has been smelling around Cleveland's coat-tails like
a brindle fice examining a St. Bernard, and who, as an
illative consequence, is qualified to promptly answer the
most abstruse questions ; who knows exactly what each
political convention should do speaks as one having
authority and not as the scribes. We drink to the health
of Wilyum, whose well-known cap " I " constitutes a pillar
of cloud by day, and of fire by night to lead the industrial
Israel out of Egyptian bondage. Wilyum is preeminently
a self-made man. He was born with a faber No. 2 behind
his ear and feathers on his feet, signifying that he was
intended for the newspaper trade. He was immediately
given a satisfactory assignment and a colored woman en-
gaged to edit his copy. After a very successful career as
reporter of snipe-hunts and badger-pullings, he was sent
to Washington by the Dai-Gal News as poet laureate to
the court of Cleveland, merry-andrew of the administra-
tion. In the course of time he learned to ride a four-
wheeled bike and even mastered the esoteric art of feeding
his face with a fork. The Washington correspondents
took kindly to him as a Texas curio a kind of resurrec-
tion plant, which must be thoroughly soaked ere its ebul-
lient beauty can be seen. Whether Washington wearied
of Wilyum, or the News felt the necessity of having him
here to lighten up with his brilliant buffoonery the Stygian
gloom of Slop Soots' sub-cellar misanthropy, I know not ;
but Wilyum Gotterdammerung is here, and we rejoice. He
is the " most amoosin' kuss " since the demise of Artemus
238 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Ward's monkey. If I had nine dollars to spare I'd buy
him, and keep him in the show-window of the ICONOCLAST.
. )
Dr. Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill, of the Baptist
Standard, is suffering with another serious attack of the
fantos. The prearranged collision of two locomotives on
the Katy road filled the soul of Boanerges with alarm
and overloaded his liver with bile. He opines out loud that
such destruction of property is a species of anarchy which
may lead to consequences too terrible to contemplate. In
his mind's eye he sees buildings burned; whole hecatombs
of bleating animals roasted, a man fricaseed alive at fifty
cents admission, the Katy running excursion trains to all
these horrors and filling its coffers with cash by wrecking
the car of progress, telescoping civilization, blowing out
the cylinder-heads of society, smashing the cow-catcher of
moral concept and raising an enormous crop of eternal
chaos. I am a trifle fearful that Brother Boanerges has
been hitting that five-gallon keg of " medicinal " bourbon
too hard. Time and again have I warned him that
drug-store whisky is a dangerous thing for even a profes-
sional Prohibitionist to fool with. The saloon brand of
booze will sometimes give a fellow the simians, but seldom
fills one's phantasy with human fricasees. If the destruc-
tion of comparatively valueless property by its owners to
amuse the public is " a species of anarchy " to be con-
demned, what must we say of national salutes and costly
pyrotechnics? Must we place Brother Boanerges in the
category of dangerous anarchists because, during the past
year, he has destroyed half-a-carload of good white paper
and wasted a keg of ink and that without proving either
entertaining or instructive to the general public? The
trouble with the Standard is that it couldn't make the
Katy officials swallow its circulation falsehoods, and they
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 239
grew weary of honoring applications for passes by a fifth-
rate paper. Having failed in a systematic attempt to
queer the aforesaid officials with the general management,
it now opens the sluice-gates of its Christian calumny upon
the corporation. The next time the Baptist Church under-
takes to transform a white-livered, wooden-headed, bad-
hearted Gatesville tough into another-cheek saint, who
loves his enemies and prays for those who despitefully use
him, it should hold him under water at least a week.
Since Texas Sifter entered the field political and began
to explain the currency problem, it is really entitled to be
called a humorous paper. I have seen nothing so unaf-
fectedly funny, so conducive to hilarity, since the Galves-
ton niggers played Hamlet. The Sifter's frequent refer-
ence to Mrs. Cleveland as " Frankie," and to Mrs. Bryan
as " Mamie " is certainly the ne plus ultra of the merry-
andrew's art, the highest reach of apolaustic genius.
The Gal-Dai News is bearing down hard on the Houston
Post for havnig shifted its allegiance from gold mono-
metallism to free silver. Let Rebecca Merlindy alone
even Hebe's foot slipped once upon a time, displaying more
of her anatomy than she intended. The News should be
the last paper on earth to bite its thumbs at a contempo-
rary because of economic acrobatics. Within five years it
has been a fiatist, " free silver fanatic," bimetallist and
gold monometallist, as can be proven by reference to its
files. It changes its economic faith as easily as a Chicago
woman her husband, or the beautiful editress of the Post
her complexion. Four financial flags " floating above the
grand temple of truth and gilded by eternal sunshine " is a
record for monetary veracity seldom equalled and never
surpassed. The News is certainly not one of those
240 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
" Positive, persisting fops we know,
That is once wrong, will needs be always so."
We are pleased to note that Rebecca Merlindy was not the
aggressor in this matter- that she has heeded Mrs. Mala^
prop's suggestion that " people without stones should not
cast the first sin."
A sacreligious correspondent suggests that Moses got
a corner on beef before passing a law prohibiting the eat-
ing of pork, just as our latter-day leaders secured a
monopoly of gold before demonetizing silver. This is
indeed a suspicious age. There actually be men who sus-
pect that Geo. Clark fell at the feet of "Anarchist
Hogg " and worshiped in the humble hope that a fatted
senatorial calf would be served up for the repentant prodi-
gal, and that he bolted the harmony conclave and again
became a Cleveland shouter because the aforesaid calf was
not forthcoming.
Some years ago " The Wild Boy of Zanzibar " was
brought to California to be educated for missionary work
in his native country. It now develops that, as a versa-
tile long-distance liar, he can take the pennant even from
Rev. Z. C. Taylor. When sent abroad the "Wild Boy
Preacher" will be able, by faking up regiments of imagi-
nary " converts," to disprove the ICONOCLAST theory that
the foreign mission graft is an arrant fraud.
I am beginning to suspect that Hon. Geo. P. Finlay of
Galveston has accepted the position of editorial leader
writer for the Gal-Dai News. For long years the editorial
page of our bifurcated contemporary was heavy as a
patent medicine electrotype with a lead base, prosy
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 241
onprofitable as an oration by Hon. E. L. Antony ; but now
it is fairly ablaze with corruscations so brilliant that
Lucifer, bright son of the morning, pales his ineffectual
fires. In a recent roast of those irreverent politicians who
presume to criticize its methods or morals, the double-
ender declares its " armor of truth and righteousness as
impervious to their forceless missiles as Gibraltar to the
plashing billows which roll and break and die against its
eternal foundations (the "Old Lady" evidently wears a
chilled-steel corset) ; that " when the evanescent creatures
who assail the News are enveloped by the darkening 1
shadows of life's approaching evening; when they shall
turn to bid the world a feeble good-by they can behold this
grand temple of truth gilded by eternal sunshine, its-
banners kissed by the morning breeze of a grander des-
tiny." No one but Geo. P. could have pawed the stars
around so dexterously with his right forefinger, or spilt so
much unadulterated eloquence while saying so little. Since
Alex W. Terrell went over to Turkey to get some pointers
on the management of a harem, Colonel Finlay is the only
man in Texas who can paint the lily and gild refined gold
without botching the job. Our erstwhile ambling con-
temporary is now setting the pace for " fine writin' " in
this neck o' the woods, and will doubtless soon be heard of
outside of the State. Mayor Frank P. Holland of Dallas
and Mayor A. W. Fly of Galveston are hereby authorized
to buy each a little bunch of modest violets or pansy blos-
soms, lay them reverently on the respective shrines of the
double-ender and draw on the ICONOCLAST for the cost.
Virtue hath been its own and only reward too long in this
land of mixed Democracy and straight drinks.
Captain T. A. Blair, attorney for Steen Morris, de-
fendant in the Baylor University rape case, protests that
242 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
he had no interview with Antonio Tiexeira previous to hef
affidavit exonerating his client, and that the instrument
was not signed in his office, as the ICONOCLAST intimated.
I am pleased indeed to learn that he had nothing whatever
to do with the transaction which smacks so strongly of
subornation. Captain Blair is now in possession of the
document in question, and must have a pretty good idea of
how it was obtained. The fact that he protests so strenu-
ously that he had nothing to do with its procurement sug-
gests that those who did manipulate the deal should be
closely questioned by the court. Captain Blair reminds
me of a man who, having been cast for the role of Advo-
catus Diabolus, would jump his job if he could do so with
professional decency.
Ye Gods ! Ye Gods ! ye pitying Gods ! my heart is
broken quite the ruddy drops run down incarnadining
all my lumbar region. Woe, woe is me ! There is no
longer sun, nor stars nor sea; the very flowers have lost
their fragrance and wine its flavor, while the spheres that
in their jocund course did hymn celestial harmony, now
make discord dire. The Houston Post, edited and adorned
by Miss Rebecca Merlindy Johnson, the beautiful belle of
Buffalo Bayou, points the cold unmoving finger of scorn
at the ICONOCLAST and accuses it of " originating defama-
tions of private character." Is it any wonder that such a
cruel stab from the lily maid of Mudtown should slit my
cardiac pericardium from A to Izzard and pour forth its
bright red ber-lud even as the o'erloaded bombard spills
his booze? It cannot, cannot be that the lethal bolt was
sped by my Rebecca, that paragon of gentleness, that
avatar of purity, known throughout all lands as the
" Apostle's " sweetheart, his old geranium, his Dulcinea del
Toboso! Doubtless she was absent attending a female
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 243
suffrage convention, laving her Trilbies in some mountain
torrent or tangling her taper fingers in the snowy mane
of old Neptune's steeds, leaving some unlicked office cub to
wield the archimedean lever. Doubtless her " sub " hath
been played upon by some rival of the " Apostle," some
serpent who seeks to poison our Hymenic Eden with his
anguineous slime! 'Twas not like Rebecca of the gentle
heart. Not thus did Cleopatra chide her Antony, nor
Juliet roast her panting Romeo. True, Rebecca and I
have had our little tiffs, for true love was ever a rocky
road. Sometimes when playing Heloise to my Abelard, she
would pout and pout until I'd contract the sulks. Some-
times when I would write gentle sonnets, in which I ever
called her Laura and signed myself Petrarch, she would
complain that my muse was cold, Pegasus a mere plug, and
hint that she would rather I'd rush her once against an
ice-cream joint or feed her on caramels than sing her
charms in Hudibrastic verse ; but as a rule our lives ran on
as smooth as oil upon a summer sea. Once the green-
eyed monster grabbed me, when I surprised her paddling
perspiring palms with Epictetus Paregoric Hill, the
whilom owner of the Post; but she assured me that she
was only working the piebald guy for a raise of salary,
and the clouds which lowered upon our house did lift.
Again, when Governor Culberson called her the Texas
Jeanne d'Arc, made her his aide-de-camp and persuaded
her to ride her neighing charger clothespin fashion into
the mimic war, I felt that I had inadvertently swallowed
one of Epictetus Paregoric's political editorials and was
doomed to die of dyspepsia. The fact that Charles had
earned the title of " our heroic young Christian governor "
made me none the less uneasy, for right well wot I that
not every man who exalts his horn and chants alleluiahs is
a St. Anthony. I may have spoken harshly to Rebecca
244 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
when I found her acting as referee of a beauty show at
John Bell's variety dive, and awarding chipped-diamond
rings to enameled high-kickers and expert beer canners.
When she discarded petticoats for " pants," corsets for
sack coats and insisted on chewing plug tobacco and play-
ing draw-poker, I filed complaint ; but, remembering Polly
Peachum, I never questioned her purity. Why should she
" turn me down " ? Is it possible that the handsome Cul-
berson has usurped my place in Rebecca's heart hath
added this fair Georgian to his harem ? To " dote, yet
doubt, suspect, yet fondly love ! " Ha ! am I about to
play the o'erhasty Othello and swat with a hen-feather
pillow the chaste mistress of my heart? Nit! Up Eros!
Down Mars ! Rebecca is all right even if she does wear
" pants." Her tongue may be a trifle shrewish, but when
it comes to a showdown it will be found that she's still
my Annie, I her Joe. Those good Harris County people
who expect me to complain of the Post; who are waiting
to see me beat my resounding brisket and make moan like
a he-Aenone to many-fountained Ida, might just as well
crawl off the fence and resume the humble, though profit-
able occupation of planting hogs.
THE MOUTH OF HELL.
SAM JONES once located Hell, if I mistake not, one mile
from the city of Waco. Should Sam happen into the city
some day when we are holding a mayoralty election, he
would correct his geography by placing the Bottomless
Pit midway between the eastern and western confines of
this great center of pseudo-sanctification. Waco is sup-
posed to be the hub of the religious world. It has more
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 245
sectarian educational institutes, churches and preachers
in proportion to population than any other city of its size
in the South. Waco is so pious that the very policemen
emit an odor of sanctity and it is at the same time the
rottennest political hole this side of Hades. Whether this
be cause and effect I will not assume to say ; but if it be
simply a coincidence it is certainly most remarkable.
Waco is the only town in Texas of any consequence where
men are boycotted in business for questioning the Immacu-
late Conception; it is likewise the only one that licenses
bawdy-houses and considers the buying or selling of votes
as a virtue rather than a vice. I can take $50,000 and
make Jack the Ripper mayor of Waco ; but the Lord Jesus
Christ could not be elected strictly on his merits. When a
citizen becomes a municipal candidate his first care ift a
corruption fund, so-called; but the man who can really
corrupt the average voter in this community can add
malodor to the odor of a skunk or spoil a rotten egg. He
appoints his buyers, stations them in convenient rooms
and sends his steerers forth to round up American sover-
eigns. These latter may be seen standing around in groups
like wood-carriers in a Mexican market-place, waiting for
purchasers and discussing the prospective price. One
dollar and two drinks of barrel-house booze is the recog-
nized standard, but in close elections this figure may be
doubled. The steerer ushers them by squads into the
presence of the buyer, who makes his bid. If accepted, he
pays the contract price and returns them to the steerer,
who marches them to the polls to see that they deliver the
goods ; well knowing that, if afforded opportunity, they
would resell their suffrages to some other candidate. This
article is not meant to cast any special reflection on the
candidates in the recent mayoralty race. They only did
what their predecessors have done; it is the system I am
246 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
assailing. Men rigidly honest in all things else, gentlemen
by birth and breeding, unblushingly purchase political
preferment, arguing, I suppose, that when a desirable of-
fice is for sale somebody will buy, and they might as well
make a bid. When a community is notoriously corrupt,
great scrupulosity can scarce be expected on the part of
its politicians. The fact is that Waco is too busy putting
up hypocritical prayers, listening to empty sermons, dis-
puting about forms of baptism, seducing fourteen-year-old
orphans, begetting nigger babies and courting enameled
society " ladies " whose reputations would smell rank even
in the " Reservation," to cultivate the homely virtue of
political honesty. Some may suppose from the foregoing
that the ICONOCLAST has soured on the Geyser City. Not
so ; the love of Damon and Pythian, or of David and Jona-
than were as nothing to the fond affection which Waco and
the ICONOCLAST feel for each other. Brother Burleson
of Baylor and the " Apostle " are simply inseparable. Dr.
Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill and your humble servant oc-
cupy the same bed when the weather is not too warm.
Almost any pleasant evening Waco's Warwick and the
undersigned may be seen strolling down Austin Avenue
arm-in-arm, or cuddled up to a cozy table in some cool
retreat, with two rye-straws and one mint-julep. There's
not a society lady in the city who doesn't keep a copy of
the ICONOCLAST in her boudoir and read a chapter from it
every morning to strengthen her for the duties of the day.
The ICONOCLAST is too good a friend to Waco not to tell
her of her faults ; Waco loves the ICONOCLAST too well not
to accept in a grateful spirit this gentle courtesy.
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 247
MAYOR CAMPBELL'S MENDACITY.
AMERICAN VS. MEXICAN PRICES
DEMOCRATS in the North and East have been sending to
the ICONOCLAST a circular entitled " Prices in the United
States and Mexico," and asking " How about it? " I have
grown somewhat aweary of confuting campaign lies about
the " Land of God and Liberty " ; but as this particular
document contains just enough truth to be dangerous, I
will give it a little attention. The circular aforesaid pur-
ports to be a wholesale price list of " some common articles
of merchandise in the city of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez,
Mexico, just across the Rio Grande," the correctness of
the quotations being solemnly certified to by one R. F.
Campbell, who occupies the exalted position of mayor of
El Paso, the last resting-place of the Cardiff Giant, home
of the McGinty Club, and physical culture Mecca. Hav-
ing made his price list affydavy, the Poobah of El Paso
hastens to add : " I also find, and do hereby certify, that
Mexican labor in Mexico in the larger cities, is paid from
seventy-five cents to $1.50 per day in Mexican silver. The
highest price paid for the very best and most skilled labor
is $2 per day in the same kind of money."
This is some improvement on the " twenty-five cent wage
rate," of which we hear so much in the plutocratic press ;
still it is pregnant wtih falsehood. Here are the wages
paid by the Sonora Mining Company : Engineers, $5 per
day, smelters $10, tenders $10, blacksmiths $3, miners
$1.50 to $4, lumbermen $2.50 to $2, wheelbarrowmen
$1.50 to $2.50. The payroll of this company runs nearly
$5,000 per month and the wage rate testifies that living
is very cheap in Mexico and the wage rate advancing.
Railway conductors average $150 per month in Mexico,
248 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
locomotive engineers $175. Common labor can be had at
seventy-five cents a day without board, or $10 a month
with board. I have seen carpenters working in Iowa for
eighty cents a day and boarding themselves. It may sur-
prise the Lord Mayor of El Paso somewhat to be told
that the average rate of skilled labor in this blessed gold
standard country is considerably less than $1.50 per day;
yet such is the fact. According to the United States
census report of 1890 before the Cleveland panic and
consequent slump in prices before the tremendous cutting
in wages began the average pay of more than 4,000,000
skilled employees was less than $1.50 a day. What it is
now God only knows. I'm no " free-silver fanatic " ; but,
like the Arkansas schoolmaster, " I'm simply h 1 on
figgers." I like to deal in federal statistics especially
those bearing the sanction of gold standard administra-
tions. In these days of partisan polemics, when all
manner of assertions and counter-assertions are ripping
great jagged orifices in the atmosphere, it is a great com-
fort to turn occasionally to the official statistics of the
United States.
The price list concocted by the Texas Cadi comprises
thirty-two articles, the El Paso quotations being given in
gold, the Juarez quotations in silver-standard money.
The compilator adds that the latter prices are those
u which prevail in the Free Zone, on which there is small
duty, in the interior they would be much higher. Ac-
cording to this remarkable document which I understand
is being widely circulated to substantiate the Republican
thesis that " silver makes for low wages and high prices
of whatsoever the workingman must buy " the cost of
foodstuffs is much greater on the thither side of the Rio
Grande than here, even when measured in gold. Thus, it
assures us that breakfast bacon is worth eleven and one-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 249
half cents wholesale, in El Paso, and thirty-two cents just
across the river, in the Free Zone, " where there is small
duty." Just why the Mexican retail grocer patronizes
the Juarez instead of the El Paso jobber the Bradstreet of
the border does not explain. There is both a railway and
a wagon bridge across the river. A thousand pounds of
breakfast bacon would cost him in Juarez $320 Mexican
money. He could readily exchange this amount for $160
American currency, buy his bacon in El Paso, and have
$45 United States, by $90 Mexican money left, less the
drayage and "small duty." Why doesn't he do it?
Campbell's price list quotes flour at $2.25 per hundred
pounds in El Paso and $8.50 in Jaurez. The Mexican
merchant, who is so shrewd a trader that he has starved
the Jews out of his country, can throw a sack of flour on
his burro, drive it across the bridge, and make a profit of
$2 American or $4 Mexican money on the half-hour's pil-
grimage, less the small duty and wear and tear of his
jackass between El Paso and Juarez. Why doesn't he do
it? There must be some reason which the Lord Mayor
doesn't see fit to set forth, something that is not a cor-
relative of the currency.
I have taken some pains to correctly " size up " the
Campbell circular. I have sent it to government officials
and prominent merchants on both sides of the Rio Grande,
asking for information, and am forced to the conclusion
despite the very solemn asservations of the originator
that it's a flagrant fraud. I have not as yet received
replies to inquiries mailed to Juarez, but have definite in-
formation from Nuevo Laredo and Monterey. It appears
that Campbell has given the wholesale price of foodstuffs
at El Paso, the retail price over the river, and not content
with this stroke of commercial genius, has " bulled " the
Mexican market in a manner to make even Wall Street
250 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
stare. Campbell quotes as wholesale prices in Juarez:
"Flour $8.50 per hundred pounds, rice 11% cents and
beans 17 cents per pound, molasses $1.69 and vinegar
$1.40 per gallon." A retail merchant at Monterey, who
is known as a " fancy grocer " one who caters only to the
wealthier class, keeps the best and charges accordingly
quotes retail prices as follows : " Flour $7.50 per hundred
pounds, rice 8 cents and beans 5 cents per pound, molasses
$1.50 and vinegar $1.00 per gallon." On eight important
articles he duplicates at retail the Campbell wholesale
price, while his advances on the remainder would scarce
pay transportation charges from the border to Monterey.
And it must be remembered that Monterey is not in the
Free Zone, but " in the interior," where " prices would be
much higher." As between the quotations of the merchant
and those of the politician, why " you pays your money
and you takes your choice." Being an American of high
social and commercial standing, and whose trade is chiefly
with Americans resident in Monterey, the price current of
this merchant probably means something which is quite
unusual in Mexico, either among wholesalers or retailers.
Anybody who knows anything about the matter, knows
that the native Mexican merchant allows himself a very
liberal margin of profit, and that the price he demands is
no indication of what he will accept. In compiling his
Juarez price current, Campbell evidently got the prices
" asked," instead of the prices " bid."
Goods are not admitted free into the Zona Libre,
" but pay 18% per cent, of the duty laid upon consign-
ments to the interior, which is twenty cents per kilo on
ham, twelve on bacon, fifteen on canned goods, and other
articles in proportion a kilo being two and one-fifth
pounds.
Of the thirty-two articles quoted by Campbell only
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 251
one beans is produced in Mexico, and it alone of the list
is entitled to be called a " common article of merchandise "
across the Rio Grande. Thirty-one of the articles named
are imported, and the one which is a Mexican product sells
for less at retail m Monterey than at wholesale in El Pa$o.
According to Campbell's whole figures, salt, corn-starch,
chiefly from the United States are cheaper in Mexico
flavoring extracts soap, tea and sugar all imported, and
chiefly from the United States are cheaper in Mexico
than here, as measured in gold, while matches, dried prunes
and Arbuckle's coffee sell for exactly the same. Of the
articles on the list that cost more in Mexico than in Texas,
not one has ever been considered even by the middle-class
Mexicans, as among the necessaries of life. They are im-
ported luxuries, just as French wines and Havana cigars
are with us, and cost accordingly. Not one Mexican
laborer in five hundred ever tasted a single article on the
Campbell price current the cost of which is greater in
gold in that country than in Maine or Massachusetts.
Breakfast bacon, deviled ham and many other tempting
items of the Lord Mayor's menu are not " common articles
of merchandise " in Mexico, or among any other semi-
civilized Indians on earth. They are not even considered
necessaries of life in Ireland, Scotland, Italy, or among
the laboring class of any other European country. In
good faith, they are dispensed with at the present writing
by several million Americans.
The laborer in Mexico may fill himself to the bursting-
point with tortillas, frijoles and chile-con-carne for about
six cents in the currency of his country, and for six more
get a nip of mescal and a good cigar as prelude to his
siesta. He is then as comfortable and content as the
American workman who has paid two-bits for a meal and
blown in two more at the bar. If the Lord Mayor of El
252 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Paso desires to fill his ample pod with Aztec cookery, with-
out taking the trouble to cross the river, secure a drink
of mescal and a passable cigar, he'll find himself short
about fifty cents American money. To a Mexican the
price of what he considers life's necessaries are ridicu-
lously high in this country, and presuming that he's as
great an economic ass as Campbell he attributes it to the
curse of a gold standard currency. While I resided in
San Antonio a Mexicai applied at my house for employ-
ment. He had been searching several days but could find
nothing to do, and was very homesick. " In my country,"
he plaintively remarked, " work a plenty. I go to market,
have ten cents, maybe fifteen, my family eat much. Here
we no can. Eat cost much house cost much, work not
any." That tells the story. Mexican staples are high in
this, American high in that country as a rule, each nation
having its peculiar habits, tastes and standard of living,
due not to its exchange media, but to race, degree of civi-
lization and average productive power of the industrial
unit. People ignorant of these prcecognita are too foolish
to be trusted with the elective franchise; those who are
familiar therewith, yet ignore them in comparing Mexico
and America, have reached a state of moral depravity sug-
gestive of the penitentiary.
Had Campbell really desired to enlighten the public,
rather than to prove himself an adept in " practical poli-
tics," he would have pointed out that while many American
products are higher across the border than here because
of customs dues, transportation charges and large profits
inseparable from small sales it requires a cordon of sen-
tries from El Paso to Brownsville to prevent the smuggling
of Mexican staples into the United States ; that the dif-
ference in price is so great that not one returning Ameri-
can tourist in ten thousand can resist the temptation to do
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 258
a little contraband trade. For the year ending June 30,
1895, Mexico bought of us merchandise to the value of
fourteen and one-half millions. Did she give us therefore
twenty-nine millions of her "fifty-cent silver dollars"?
Not exactly ; she sold us fifteen and one-half million dollars
worth of her general products and pocketed a comfortable
trade balance. Had the Lord Mayor of El Paso been a
broad-gauge patriot, instead of a small-bore partisan, he
would have scorned to compare a semi-civilized country
like Mexico with the land of Edison, Morse and McCor-
mick a nation boasting itself " heir of all the ages and
foremost in the files of time." Did he possess one atom of
racial pride he would not have placed the American work-
man on a parity with the Mexican peon, with his igno-
rance, laziness, lice and primitive methods of production;
but would have pointed out that the wage rate and conse-
quent standard of living of a people cannot be the ex-
change medium what it may rise superior to their pro-
ductive power. He would have cited the fact that, despite
her poverty and mongrel people, Mexico is rapidly devel-
oping industrially ; while the United States, the wealthiest
nation in the world, her labor-saving machinery the
mightiest miracle since the creation of the Cosmos, the
muscles of her people throbbing with energy, their blood
ablaze with the Promethean fire of enterprise, is standing
still bound with gold chains, like another Andromeda to
the rock, the prey of monsters. He would have pointed
out that the wage rate is slowly but surely advancing in
the land of Diaz, and as steadily declining in the country
of Cleveland.
But what's all this row about, anyhow? Isn't high
prices of commodities a thing to be commended? Do not
the farmer and stockman, the manufacturer and miner all
assent? Haven't the Republicans been preaching protec-
254 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
tive tariff to prevent a slump in the market price of Ameri-
can commodities, and a corresponding cut in the work-
man's wages? And isn't Lord Mayor Campbell striving
with all his petty might to elect McKinley? Why damn
free silver for advancing prices, while sweating out your
blessed undershirt in supporting a party h 1 bent on the
self-same purpose?
K * *
THOSE BLAWSTED HAWMERICAN
MEN.
MRS. GERTRUDE ATHERTON recently made a startling bid
for notoriety and achieved it. You can get anything
you want in this world if only able and willing to pay
the price; and Mrs. Atherton has deliberately put her-
self up as a mark for the shafts of ridicule, evidently pre-
ferring to be laughed at rather than altogether ignored.
She has fired the Ephesian Dome to secure for herself
a celebrity which her intellect could not earn has com-
pelled the satirists to afford her standing-room among
those " damned to everlasting fame." Writing to the
London News, she attempts to explain the supposed " affin-
ity between American women and Englishmen," by assum-
ing that they are, respectively, superior to American
men and English women. She pictures the Englishman
as God's most glorious work, and declares that " the vast
majority of American men are composed of two elements
only money-greed and sensuality." The English women,
according to Gertie's diagnosis, are veritable chumps,
while American women " one of whom she is which "
are the most irresistibly captivating creatures this side of
the Celestial City. As the ICONOCLAST has a world-wide
beauty contest pending (page 279) it would ill become me
fr Pi'tl
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 255
to either deny or indorse this latter proposition. I will
say, however, that the woman does not live who is catholic
enough in her views to make her comparisons of differ-
ent nationalities of any particular importance. What
pleases even the most liberal minded of the gentler sex
is " charming," and what she takes a notion with or
without reason to dislike, is simply " horrid," and there
you are! No woman should turn herself loose in the
wellnigh boundless realm of comparative ethnology she
is sure to get lost. Still, the ICONOCLAST, as official organ
of the American ladies, accepts for them Gertie's little
gob of taffy with the profoundest gratitude. I am in-
clined to suspect that it is well deserved ; for " a good
tree bringeth forth good fruit," and the American woman
is but a reflection of her father. If there be in all the
world a/ land where the ladies are more lovely, I have
failed to find it. Perhaps it is just as well, for I'd sure
get into trouble by trying to monopolize the whole lot.
Here in America I have to work with my back to the
window. Whenever I face the street I do nothing but
look at the girls go by and scribble anacreontics, when I
should be writing sermons or engaged in silent prayer. I
fancy myself Siddartha sitting beneath the sacred Bodhi-
tree and surrounded by
" Bands of bright shapes with heavenly eyes and lips,"
until the wild yoop of some political orator saving the
country reminds me that life is real, life is earnest and
things not what they seem. I do not much blame Gertie
for driving her hair-pin dagger clear through the quiver-
ing diaphragm of the typical American and hanging a six-
pound sad-iron on either end. Having found no one to
love her in this land of the free and home of the Bryan
256 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
boom, she may easily be forgiven for asserting that a
most dutiful British subject is preferable to an American
sovereign. " Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
Gertie has a kick coming and must, perforce, give vent
to her " felinks " by pounding her pink tootsie-wootsies
against a brick wall, and turning up her nosie-wosie at
the unappreciative sons of Uncle Sam. I am sorry that
she is compelled to waste her loveliness in a foreign
land; but 'tis not my fault. When she exported her
ebullient beauty I was not old enough to make a bid.
Of course we are dreadfully naughty; but I cannot, for
the life of me, imagine how Gertie discovered it. I am
dreadfully sorry that we should have given her cause
for complaint. If she will send the names of the design-
ing villains to the ICONOCLAST, it will print them as a
warning to other women. Still I suspect that her
ethnological conclusions will not stand analysis. It has
become an axiom with sociologists that boys usually in-
herit their dominant traits from the mother and girls
from the father; hence it follows, as an illative conse-
quence, that if English women are wooden, English men
are stupid; that if American women are bright, brainy
and spirituelle, their sons inherit these characteristics. I
cannot now recall a single great man who attributed his
success in life to the old man; almost invariably they re-
fer the credit for their achievements to the mother; hence
the o'er hasty ipse dixit of this female Anglomaniac, stands
discredited. The typical American is a mighty money-
maker, the typical Englishman a grasping money-horder.
John Bull puts his wife on allowance " ; Uncle Sam lays
his purse in her lap. The American will spend a dollar
like a prince while his British cousin is haggling over
ha'pence. Throughout the world the American is wor-
shipped by menials, while the Englishman is abhorred-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 257
i
The latter inquires what is the customary " tip " and gives
it grudgingly ; the former pays what largesse he likes, and
it is given with kindly courtesy. The Englishman is a
chronic kicker ; the American " takes things as they come."
The first vaunts his superiority by snubbing servants ;
the latter can afford to be gracious, because he's a sov-
ereign. The American works hard to make money that
he may enjoy spending it, and he lets it go easily be-
cause of his supreme confidence in his own ability to
make more ; while the Briton seems to think his only salva-
tion an inheritance or a wealthy wife. " Save the pence
and the pounds will take care of themselves," is the axiom
of England. The " tight little isle " animadverting on the
" money-greed " of Americans were almost as laughable
as the pictures in Ptmch. American women are better
dressed and better educated than those of England, simply
because they possess the sesame to the purses of men
who make the most money and care the least for it. The
grievous charge of sensuality cannot lie against Colum-
bia's sons without including her daughters, for they are
" bone of the same bone and flesh of the same flesh."
The ewe lamb and the lion's whelp cannot spring from
the same loins. We men don't mind; but Gertie should
ask the American women's forgiveness. She assures us
that the wonderful Briton " loves sport better than
women." Then indeed must he be a model companion
creation's masterpiece! It would appear from this that
Tennyson's " Cousin Amy " didn't make such a bad match
after all, for he assures her that
<c He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its
novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his
horse."
258 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
The typical English husband would have preferred his
fox-hounds, so Gertie says, and she speaks from experi-
ence. The American loves women better than aught else
in this world and his preference has my hearty appro-
bation. Uncle Sam is preeminently a Squire of Dames.
The American's heart beats faster, his blood is warmer,
he is more susceptible to female beauty than is the Briton.
Beneath bright skies the sun-god pours his consuming
flame into mortal flesh, while those reared in clammy
fogs become half fish. But despite this, the American
is not so carnal as his trans-Atlantic cousin. To him a
woman must be more than a mere female. He loves
his mistress, idealizes her, shares his purse with her
will fight for her if need be. The Englishman buys illicit
indulgences with the same sang-froid that he might pur-
chase a plum-pudding or a pup. Harlotry flourishes in
England and starves in America. There men of social
prominence frequent houses of ill-fame with as much un-
concern as they visit the cafes ; here no man of respecta-
bility goes to such places except by stealth, or when in
his cups. Wine and women may be an American weak-
ness ; that of England in view of recent interesting dis-
closures seems to be brandy and boys. The English-
man is a gourmand, a slave to his belly; the American
is not. The first lives to eat ; the latter eats to live. The
first spends an hour or more at table, gorging himself
like my Lord Archbishop at Talleyrand's diner diploma-
tique, hoists in a gallon or two of drunk-promoter and
drowses off content feeds and lies dormant like a boa-
constrictor; the latter snatches a frugal meal in fifteen
minutes, and is then ready to build a railroad, run for
Congress, discuss the latest scientific discovery, or mur-
der will out flirt with his neighbor's wife. The " sensu-
ality " of the Englishman is that of the old Vikings ; the
" sensi
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 259
" sensuality " of the American is that of the ancient
Greeks. The first is grossly materialistic. Give him a full
paunch and a brace of painted sepulchres from the slums,
and melud is in the halls of Valhalla; but it requires
beauty, love, and the spice of danger attending stolen
sweets to carry the American in Elysian fields. This may
explain why Gertie imagines the first a Joseph, the last a
Lovelace. The difference in the twain is simply this: A
pretty woman has to drop a brick down on the thick head
of John Bull to make him take a hint, while a rose leaf
is sufficient to bring your Uncle Samuel to her side. If
there really exists an " affinity between American women
and Englishmen," I can account for it on no other hy-
pothesis than the British one, that every woman needs and
must have a master. We do not " boss " our wives
to any great extent; we haven't time. We do not con-
sider them our slaves. When we want a household drudge
we hire a coon or an Englishman who has been bred for
the coach or the kitchen. Perhaps we are treating our
wives too well. They may long for representatives of
what Gertie calls " the most highly developed race of
men the world has ever known " ; men who will " lam "
them occasionally in conformity with English law! If
such be the case it were an easy matter to break up this
trans- Atlantic " affinity " business and keep our heiresses
at home. There was no necessity for Lil. Hammersley
or Nellie Grant to go abroad to get licked. We can
all take a day off, secure baseball bats and " w'ale bloody
'ell " out of 'em. Then they will understand that we are
" masterful " ; will realize that we are quite superior crea-
tures almost equal to Englishmen ! Or we can give Bill
Sykes, or even the late Duke of Marlborough pointers on
household management if we have a mind to. After this
(exhibition of our manly " forcefulness " we ought to create
260 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
that " domestic peerage " of which Gertie prattles.
Surely we will have " ennobled " ourselves, and ought to
establish forthwith an Order of the Garter and wear, as
insignia of our exalted rank, the stocking support of a
tough old " cat," as do those " healthy-minded men " whom
Gertie so much admires, and in whom she assures us " there
is no taint of morbidity " Oscar Wilde to the contrary
notwithstanding, howsoever, but !
LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES.
I MUCH fear that before this confounded election is over
I'll have a whole wheel-factory in my head. As a sacred
duty owed to myself, I read the argument on all sides of
every issue, for I hold with Byron that " he that will not
reason is a bigot, and he who dares not is a slave." But
I'll not be able to continue this labor of love much longer.
The logic employed by the McKinleyites is tying my brain
up in a double bow-knot. To save me, I cannot catch onto
its combination, for its predicates look one way, its con-
clusions another, while its syllogisms fail to syllogize; its
argumentum ad ingorantiam seems to be sadly overworked,
and its jucticium suffering from the jim-jams. Perhaps
it's all too deep for a mere lad of six-and- thirty who had
the misfortune to be named " Willie," and may, for aught
I know, have willieisms, or even something worse. I am
evidently too recent to fully comprehend the deep work-
ings of McKinley's master mind when it is dealing with
money. I may grow to it may catch some fleeting glimpse
of what the McKinleyites really mean by the time I am old
enough to be available as the candidate of the gold-bug
" Democrats." Just as I think I've got their esoteric
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 261
science of money mastered it rears up on its subsequent!
legs and walks on me till it dislocates my liver. It is
evasive and uncertain as a cake of soap in a cistern. I
would give four-bits for instantaneous photographs of it
in its various attitudes. It is the Proteus of politics. Just
as you have sized it up it becomes something else. It is
the only thing in existence that can be on all sides of a
subject at one and the same time, swallow itself and then
turn a double somersault. I don't so much mind the brain-
fag necessary to keep tab on its saltations, but its per-
nicious activity makes my eyes ache. " The Silver Trust
Circular," which the McKinley organs are all printing in
screamer type under scareheads, is the latest agony in-
flicted upon me. All the gold-bug orators have copies of it
in their inside pockets, pull it on every occasion and cry,
" Ha ! ha ! " but damfino where the laugh comes in. I am
naturally a frolicsome fellow, and can outlaugh Teufels-
drockh when there's any provocation; but somehow this
circular looks more like McKinley's wake than his wed-
ding, and I cannot cachinnate in the presence of a corpse.
It gives the lie point-blank to the charge of " repudiation.'*
It knocks the " 50-cent dollar " theory higher than Gilde-
roy's kite. I presume that everybody has read the circu-
lar, for the McKinleyites have sown it broadcast why I
know not, unless as an official certificate of their own in-
sanity. It is an address by one Thos. G. Merrill to the
silver mine managers, and sets forth that they should con-
tribute to the Bryan campaign fund, as free coinage would
greatly benefit 90 per cent, of the American people and
cause " the immediate return of silver to its former price
of $1.29 per ounce." Do the McKinleyites deny that free
coinage would thus affect the market value of silver? Not
at all ; they admit it, and proceed to thunder against " this
infamous scheme of the mining barons to add $35,000,000
262 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
to the value of their annual product at the expense of the
entire people." Yet in the self-same breath they declare
that " free coinage means a 50-cent dollar," and tearfully
protest against " repudiation." In other words, they
assert that free coinage would send the selling price of
silver to $1.29 per ounce just as Bryan and the mining
barons predict which means that, at a ratio of 16 to 1,
the white would possess equal intrinsic value with the
yellow dollar and be as acceptable in any part of the
world ; and then, without so much as a change of counte-
nance, declare that free coinage means a debased cur-
rency ! This may all be true. Mark Hanna and McKin-
ley, Edward Atkinson and Bob Ingersoll, Cleveland and
his cuckoos and Cuney and his coons all say so ; but alack !
I'm too young to understand it ! The " Boy Orator "
can't make it out. The only " Little Willie " who has
mastered it is the editor of the St. Louis Mirror. The
auriferous economists assert that " it is impossible to
create value by law " ; and before this Ipse dixit can soak
into us, they point out that Congress can, by a simple " be
it enacted," add $35,000,000 per annum to the value of a
single American product \ That looks like a flat contra-
diction to ye youngsters ; but it requires age and experi-
ence to deal with the stunning paradoxes. I have no desire
to pose as an enfant terrible; still I opine that grown
people should not permit we kids to perish in our igno-
rance. It is barely possible that the philosophers of the
McKinley school have discarded prosy logic for poetic
license. The Republicans pose as " the real bimetallists,
the true friends of silver " declare that all they want is
" an honest dollar, one worth its face the world over."
Then why wait for that " international agreement " which
ever recedes like the pot of rupees at the rainbow's base,
when, by simply opening our mints, we can make 412 1-2
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 263
grains of coin silver equal to 25.8 grains of coin gold
anywhere, and add $35,000,000 per annum to the value
of American products ? I know that it is impertinent for
thoughtless kids to harass a New Napoleon with vexatious
questions when he wants to talk about the tariff; but
juvenile curiosity cannot be easily overcome. We are told
that " this tremendous profit of the mine-owners would
come out of the pockets of the working people." What
profit, if the silver dollar " will sink at once to its bullion
value? " But I forget ; it will sink, and still it won't sink.
It is to go up and down and stand still simultaneously.
Silver is to double in selling price without affecting the
intrinsic value of the dollar! I seem to be catching on.
How beautiful it all is, when you once get really into it !
Poor Willie Bryan ! I wish I had him here to explain it
to him. He might resign in favor of McKinley and thus
end the agony. But how are the mine-owners to get this
tremendous profit which they will make and at the same
time won't make out of the people's purse? I'm stuck
again ! Will some Republican GEdipus rede me this riddle?
I don't like to make trouble; still, if McKinley or any of
his lieutenants will explain it satisfactorily, I'll contribute
something handsome to Mark Hanna's slush fund. I
respectfully refer it to Dana of the New York Sun, and
McCullagh of the Globe-Democrat. " If anybody kin
they kin." But they can't. The only effect which the
advancement of silver to $1.29 an ounce could have on
the workingman would be to make the white dollar in his
possession intrinsically worth 100 cents and relieve him
of further taxation to pay interest on bonds sold to bolster
up the gold reserve. Suppose I carry silver bullion to the
mint and have it coined into " dollars worth 100 cents
the world over," and employ labor therewith : What then ?
Suppose that I had carried gold bullion to the mint and
264 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
employed my money in like manner. Does the workman
have to give more for a white than for a yellow dollar
" of equal purchasing power, the world over ? " True,
the mining companies will make money may, after so
many years of disaster, be able to declare a dividend much
to the satisfaction of some millions of small shareholders
who have known only assessments ; but how will they make
it? By taking from the pockets of the people the coin
already there, a la the tariff beneficiaries, and hoarding
it up in their coffers until Cleveland gets ready to sell
another block of bonds at private bids? They will make
it by adding to the volume of our exchange media, thereby
causing a revival of business, the advancement of the wage-
rate and the employment of the idle legions of labor.
And the people will also be in on the " rake-off." The
silver coin they would own will be enhanced in value more
than $250,000,0001 Doubtless that would be a great
evil, else it would not be so vigorously condemned by the
McKinleyites. Now " youze kids," understand the situa-
tion " git on " to the fin de siecle monetary science as
expounded to us by McKinley and other of our elders
whose superior wisdom it is our duty to honor: The free
coinage of silver will double the value of the raw material
and cut the value of everything of which it is made, square
through the middle. See! We'll have a deluge of white
dollars, each worth 199 cents if you melt it down in New
York, or Amsterdam or Timbuctoo; but so long as it's
got Uncle Sam's spread eagle on it it's worth only 50
cents. You've got to believe that or you're an anarchist,
a repudiationist, a popocrat and full o' prunes. You've
got to swallow it or you've got wheels in your head and
an attack o' the willies. If you ask any questions you're
" a lippy kid " and a rainbow chaser. That's what. But
that's only part of the new monetary science. These 100-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 265
cent silver dollars are going to drive all the 100-cent gold
dollars out of circulation, reduce our volume of " final
payment money " 50 per cent, and at the same time
cause a tremendous depreciation in the purchasing power
of every remaining dollar. You see the goldites have re-
pealed both Gresham's law and the law of supply and
demand. They're going to tackle the law of gravitation
next in fact its elimination is necessary to the success
of their monetary system, for while it's in effect things
can't go up while they're coming down without considerable
difficulty. They have amended the law of interest, and
now all those old economists who held that the purchasing
power of money has absolutely nothing to do with fixing
the interest rate, are dead wrong. They have " proved "
in all their big papers and from every stump and the
head of every beer barrel that the value of gold has fallen
one-half during the past few years, because where the
government formerly paid a rental of 6 per cent for its
use it now gets it for 3 ! This is a glorious thing and
entitles them to our eternal gratitude. But don't ex-
amine it too closely never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Just take the good the gods provide and hold your peace.
Should a man ask you if a farmer pays 6 bushels per
acre rent when wheat is worth a dollar, and but 3 bushels
per acre when it is 50 cents, shoot him on the spot ; he's a
red-flagger, an enemy of vested rights and a dangerous
crank. Ten-to-one he's got a dynamite bomb in one coat-
tail pocket and a copy of the ICONOCLAST in the other.
Don't read anything but gold-bug literature, don't think,
don't disagree with the powers that be. Just see what
happened to Jesus for questioning the supernal wisdom
of the money-changers of Jerusalem !
266 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
A PLAGUE OF POETS.
MACHINE-MADE MELODY.
IN days of old it was supposed that poets were born, not
made, and bright indeed was that century considered which
could boast of more than one true son of song; but in
this progressive age we easily circumvent niggard nature.
When chemists can manufacture eggs, and even hatch
'em without the aid of hens, can we wonder that bards
are as thick as birds? Surely it were as easy to produce
a poet as a pullet easier, perhaps since Pindars and
Petrarchs wear no plumes. Plato defines man as a two-
legged animal sans feathers ; hence we may infer that our
modern crop of warblers are the 'prentice work of science
the product of the incubator ere curious ornithologists
discovered what to add to the artificial ovum to bring
forth the full-pinioned bird.
Silas Wegg's unlucky habit of " dropping into poetry "
threatens to become a pandemic disease. Every frog-
pond is now a Pierian spring; the woods are literally
aflame with the divine afflatus ; the Muses Nine have multi-
plied as did Jacob's fecund seed in ancient Mizriam, while
every sanddune hath become a Parnassus, every mole-hill
a Helicon. The cities swarm with Meistersingers, the
towns are over-run with Troubadours, each hamlet boasts
its jay Jongleur, while from Texas ranch and Yankee
hedge-row the " poet lariat " or Della-Cruscan rhymster
blithely carols his roundelay. Every biped, with feathers
or without, is doing the bulbul act piercing its panting
brisket in the Gardens of Gul and weeping melodious
tears. No modern magazine is considered complete with-
out a hand-me-down " poem " or two about nothing in
particular ; Jenny Wrens twitter in the cross-roads press ;
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 267
true hearts bleed in an endless procession of books, while
half-fledged Homers pour their divine harmony in gush-
ing torrents adown the column rules of the great diurnals.
Poetry, poetry everywhere ! Youth's shrill treble and man-
hood's lusty roar mingling with the cracked bassoon of
age the " sweet girl graduate " and shriveled gran'dame,
the rough plow-boy and sleek sybarite all twanging the
Apollonic harp, tuning the Pandean pipes and pouring
forth their quivering souls in song! Not a withered leaf
can be blown adown the wynd or porker squeal an^ath
the garden gate; not a measly brat can creep into the
world or old rooter make his exit, but some poet half
consumed with Promethean fire bursts his tether and makes
a rhythmic dog-fall out of his mother tongue! I think
the Poetische Trichter or Poetical Funnel manufac-
tured at Nurnberg some two centuries since, and " pro-
fessing within six hours to pour in the whole essence of
this difficult art into the most unfurnished head," must
have been perfected and brought into common use in
this country:
" Hence bards, like Proteus, long in vain tied down,
Escape in monsters and amaze the town."
Poets? We've got 'em; got 'em in flocks, swarms,
droves and shoals got 'em to burn, perhaps. The popu-
lation of America is 73 million people 72 million poets,
the rest Populists. The Homeric era and Elizabethan
age have become mere grease spots on the robe of the
gods. The man toiled and prayed through long years
to bring some single poem to perfection ; and when he
had wrought his life into it a master-mind its warp,
an all-embracing heart its woof he cast it forth into
the mighty sea of Time and died unknown ; but in succeed-
268 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
ing ages the flickering torch which he had nourished
through the laborious night that was his day, kindled
from altar to altar until a radiance as of heaven beat
upon the world a celestial search-light seeking out the
nameless grave of a god! Now poems are manufactured
to order while you wait. Drop a nickel in the slot and
get a tune sonnet, ode or elegy. Great is science! Of
all labor-saving inventions the Poetical Funnel is certainly
facile princeps. Yet there be pessimists who insist that
we are making no progress ! No progress indeed ! Why,
we have donned seven-league boots and are pounding up
the plank turnpike like the devil beating tanbark. See
with what difficulty Alfred Austin squeezes his titanic form
into the overcoat once occupied by Alfred Tennyson. Ob-
serve how Algernon Charles Swinburne improves upon the
awkward scrawl of Pope. Note how the Rileys and
Stantons are making Horace tired, while the Wilcoxes
and Chanlers, with their animalistic oestruation, knock
" burning Sappho " off her perch. And there's the Emely
Evans Hendricks and Bessie Campbell Galbraiths, the
James Clarence Harveys and Sydney Thompson Dobells,
and a hundred others striving to gild three-story names
with immortal glory. And there's Dobson, the greatest
of the decadents Austin Dobson ! No wonder the muses
have deserted their ancient haunts and learned that medley
of antilogies known as the English tongue. With apolo-
gies to Byron:
Oh Austin Dobson ! Phoebus ! what a name
[To fill the speaking trump of future fame!
Still the horrid thought will intrude itself that all living
twangers of the lyre would be much better employed
manipulating the humble but useful washboard, or trail-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 269
Ing the meek-eyed mule through the lowly cotton-patch.
I am no complaining preterist ; I do not hold, as do some,
that the age of true poesy is forever past that science
is a pitiless Car of Jaganath beneath which the poetic
muse must perish. Promethean fire should burn brighter
in the brain of Wisdom than in the breast of Barbarism.
True, the Delphic Oracle hath long gone silent and Do-
dona's Oaks ceased whispering strange secrets to credu-
lous souls. Chaste Dian's lips will never touch those of
sleeping Endymion, nor Aurora's blushing charms grace
aged Tithonus' bed. Gone are all the Gods from High
Olympus,
" the Spirits of the Hills
With all their dewy hair blown back like flame,"
appeal no more to the wondering minds of men. These
were but crude conceits of the world's infancy, the coat of
many colors with which it clothed its ignorance. Science,
" creeping on from point to point," displays even greater
wonders than the naiads and nereids, the gorgons gray
and chimeras dire that recede before her lamp ; and until
Wonder, Reverence and Ambition forsake the human heart
and Love and Beauty perish from the earth, true poesy
cannot pass. The more exalted the singer, the purer his
song. If it be objected that never in modern days has
the poetic muse mounted with soi strong a wing as in
those far years when Rome indeed was crowned with
grandeur and Greece with glory, yet science lay wrapt in
swaddling clothes, we answer that Prose, too, suffers by
comparison with the days that are dead, while Art blushes
for her own decadence and Eloquence stands dumb. De-
spite our boasts that we are heirs " of all the ages and
foremost in the files of time," no modern nation has reached
270 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
those intellectual heights trod by the Hellenes when the
noblest poesy, since the hymning of the morning stars,
came virgin from the harp. Modern is no superior to
ancient civilization it has simply developed differently.
In the province of Utilitaria we stand the acknowledged
superiors of all preceding ages ; but in all that pertains
to the spiritual life of man we turn instinctively to the
crumbling tombs that mark the grandeur that was Rome
and the glory that was Greece. Aristotle and Plato, Phi-
dias and Praxiteles, Homer and Demosthenes our masters
have been dust and ashes so long that their very graves
are forgotten; yet we assume that the weight of our su-
perior wisdom will break the muse's wing !
It simply happens, as indeed it has happened so often
before for in five thousand years less than a score of
true bards have been born that the poets are all dead.
In such interregnums the petty versifiers tune their paltry
pipes. When the sun has set the stars peep forth; but
when the day-god resumes his throne these flickering points
" pale their ineffectual fires." When the lion is dead in
his lair indifferent beasts do range abroad. When genius
departs from earth Mediocrity and Stupidity hold high
carnival.
The mawkish sentimentalists are weeping " tears, idle
tears " and know not what they mean and little the
great world cares. People really suffering for pills imag-
ine themselves pregnant with poems mistake a torpid
liver for the divine afflatus. Those who couldn't beat
time on a bass drum to a bull-frog duet, bestride a cock-
horse or old gray goose as Pegasus and soar at the sun,
only to be pitched headlong into Icarian seas. If this
old world has one real live poet concealed about her per-
son, he must be some " mute inglorious Milton.'* To
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 271
paraphrase Epictetus, Show him to me ; by the gods !
fain would I see a poet !
" Behold ! in various throngs the scribbling crew,
For notice eager, pass in long review;
Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode,
And tales or terror jostle on the road."
Thus wrote Bryon of the poetasters of his time. When
it is remembered that in the " scribbling crew " he placed
Tom Moore, Walter Scott and Southey, can I be blamed
for protesting against the doggerel of the Dobsons and
Dobells of our day? Pope was not so exacting. He
spared the faintest gleam of genius, the smallest floweret
that lifted its face to greet the sun, but " damned to
everlasting fame " the devotees of Dullness :
" Some strain in rhyme ; the muses, on their racks,
Scream like the winding of ten thousand jacks;
Some free from rhyme or reason, rule or check,
Break Priscian's head and Pegasus's neck."
Still, not all the verses ground out in this twilight of
poesy are to be condemned. I have no desire to remove
Marsyas' pelt because he does not play as sweetly as
Apollo. Here and there is heard a note, not of the
strongest or purest, yet not altogether unpleasing. James
Whitcomb Riley gives forth an occasional gleam, as of
fox-fire or a valetudinarian glow-worm, casting a faint
radiance into the general gloom. His muse never carries
him high, which is fortunate, as she has an unhappy trick
of dropping him, and he falls quite as frequently into
Serbonian bogs as upon odorous banks where the wild
thyme grows. When President Harrison's wife died, Riley
272 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
spilled a few soul-sobs over the dear departed which trans-
formed the general gloom into hilarious gladness. Even
the stricken husband was so pleased that the loved and
lost was insensible to the splay-footed nenina of the
Hoosier numbskull that he well-nigh forgot to weep. He
realized that the Lord tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb, and in a few months was striving manfully to found
another family. Father Ryan, the poet-priest, has some-
what of the sweetness of Tom Moore, greatest of Irish
bards, the truest singer but scarce the noblest poet of
his time. One indispensable pre-requisite of the poet
Father Ryan had the love which never dies. Despite
his sturdy Americanism, the Emerald Isle was never for-
gotten.
" Yes, give me the land where the ruins are spread,
And the living tread light o'er the hearts of the dead."
Thus sang Father Ryan. Like Elaine, sweetly could he
make and sing. We would not care to spare all the
poetic fragments left us by Eugene Field. They are
fragile flowerets, 'tis true, the corolla mere flakes of foam ;
but oft the ovary is a drop of blood which every heart
feels that it has furnished. There is a dash of genius in
the work of Paul Verlaine, who so lately followed Field
into the shadows, behind the mystic veil, leaving the muse
of la belle France widowed like those of England and
America when Tennyson and Longfellow laid down the
cross to take up the crown. Verlaine was a glorious
vagabond, a celestial tramp, a wild son of Bohemia
sometimes an angel of light, too often a goblin damned;
but however crass or criminal his surroundings, he sang
from the heart, often wisely, always well ! and when amid
grime and grisettes, among debaucheries terminating be-
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 273
hind prison-bars his voice was hushed by the grim De-
stroyer, Dullness extended her drowsy sceptre over a
weary world. Of those left to us, on either side of old
ocean, none have any message to the sons of men. They
are poetasters and pretenders all, who are striving to
steal Promethean fire, not to illumine a world, but to
boil a pot. They grind out profitless rhyme as a mill
does meal, their financial manner harmonizing well with
their worthless matter. They want the art to conceal their
art. The public hears the creaking pulleys, as with
monster derrick-crane they hoist unconsidered trifles out
of the great inane, the labored breathing of their asth-
matic muse as she hammers the diotomic raw material into
Hudibrastic verse, where
" Maggots half-formed in rhyme exactly meet
And learn to crawl upon poetic feet."
What is poetry? Ask me rather to define Love's soft
desire, Ambition's mad'ning flame, or the fierce ecstasy
that beats in manhood's heart of oak when trumpets are
blown for war. The veriest tyro can tell you what poetry
is not; the world's wisest may well stammer when asked
to say what it is. Despite the critics, there are no rules
by which it can be measured, any more than there be
rules by which the charm of woman may be defined. Some
say that poetry is truth. Perhaps; but all truth is not
poetry, else were the law of gravitation the grandest
of epics. Who are, or say rather, who were the poets?
Not every man who versifies, else were a rhyming diction-
ary and plodding patience sufficient to transform a Demp-
ster into a Pope. A Pope say you? Was Pope then a
poet? Nay, 'tis not my province to settle a controversy
that has raged for near two centuries among the critics.
274 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
Philosopher he certainly was, and his rhyme as smooth
as oil upon a summer sea. Strange as it may appear,
when the controversy regarding his right to the bays
was raging most bitterly, classical scholars were vigorously
debating whether in his translation of the Iliad, he had
improved on Homer! I submit that a man who was
strongly suspected by bettering the verse of Chios' im-
mortal bard, may well pass for a poet in a land where
Alfred Austin tunes the laureate lyre. Still, many a
time I've wished that Pope had eschewed all petty tricks
of the versifier and delivered his message in rugged prose.
His ideas are hewn and hacked to fit a procrustean bed
of rhyme, when they should have been given us, like those
of crabbed old Carlyle, in all their massy strength. No
man should write poetry who is capable of expressing
himself in prose. The latter is the towering oak, the
former but the ornamental vine, and beautiful indeed must
it be to have a valid excuse for existence. Still, where
prose ends and poetry begins in a disputed point. There
is more true poetry in Ingersoll's oration at his brother's
grave than in Pope's " Essay on Man," Longfellow's
" Evangeline " and Byron's " Chide Harold " all combined.
It sweeps with one master stroke every heart-string,
stirs to its profoundest depths that lake of tears which
is the true heart's Acheron and the trifler's Lethe. There
is no garish tinsel, no labored rhyme to clothe the simple
scene with dramatic gauds. There lies the corpse, a
tragedy in itself as grandly pitiful as Aeschylus ever
pictured; here stands the dead man's alter ego, battling
like a giant with his despair, biting back the sobs that
fain would burst the bonds of his stern philosophy
grasping despite himself at a forlorn perhaps at what
Reason, that god of his idolatry, has branded as the
shadow of a shade. In this, his hour of supreme agony,
THE WIZARD OF WORDS 275
he seeks with straining eyes to discern that Star of Hope
which he has denied, and listens for the flutter of that
Wing he has denounced as folly. A few broken words,
the dead is consigned to its mother dust, the living is
led away, and the grandest elegy ever said or sung has
passed into the treasure-house of history, a poetic gem
that will shine ever on and on,
" As long as the heart knows passion,
As long as life has woes."
Poe declared forty years ago that Alfred Tennyson,
then but upon the threhold of his fame, was the greatest
poet of all the ages. But was Poe a competent critic? I
think not else he would have burned four-fifths of his
madcap as an incantation of Orpheus or Apollo. There
is a wild charm about some of his work a kind of mania
a potu fury ; but at the risk of being called an Ishmselite
by the faddists and cast into the outer darkness of Phil-
istia, I do protest that Edgar Allen Poe earned for him-
self no place even among the minor poets. " The Raven,"
his best production, might have been written by almost
any reporter, if comfortably full of wienerwurst and dol-
lar-a-bottle wine. Tennyson, like Moore and Burns, was
a genuine bard. The shadow of his muse's wings falls not
on Parnassus' lofty brow; but some of his songs, like
Longfellow's " Bridge," sink into the soul as softly as
aromatic dews into the parched plain. We cannot imag-
ine Tennyson, Moore or Burns writing prose. They
" lisped in numbers and the numbers came." They ap-
pear to have thought in verse, hence they spoke as those
" to the manner born." They constitute the poetic trinity
of the English-speaking world. People read them, while
they only talk of Byron and Milton, Dante and Homer.
276 BRANN, THE ICONOCLAST
The first are welcome guests at the fireside; the latter
hang sombre in the heavens like dark portents of Fate.
But I'm glad Dante and Milton wrote they gave artists
a chance to cultivate their morbidity and at the same time
earn a meal. Tennyson is the Sir Galahad of poets. His
song, while seldom cold, is ever chaste as ice. To turn
from Byron to Tennyson is like passing from a drunken
revel with nymphs du pave into the society of vestal vir-
gins. There is neither " the lilies and languors of virtue "
nor " the roses and raptures of vice " ; but a wholesome
human nature, the fragrance of the dew-washed fields, the
music of falling waters a rolling world circled by " the
star-domed city of God." Moore is a Troubadour of ye
olden time, who sweeps with a free hand
" The harp that once through Tara's halls,"
or touches with equal felicity the gay guitar beneath the
windows of " Gades' soft desiring train." Tennyson some-
times becomes didactic, but Moore is content to ravish us
with his melody. Wine, Woman and Song is his poetic
triune, and he leaves it to the dull plodder of prose to
appeal to the understanding, while he plays at will on all
the passions.
P.S. Since the above was put in type I have discov-
ered that " Mr." Paul Lawrence Dunbar, whose verse is
commended by William Dean Howells and " has found
frequent admission into leading American ma 
