Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
and one hundred and thirty-three in the pension. Another manifestation
is the pressing demand for the extension of the pension system to
civil officials. Already the system has been extended to policemen and
firemen. In some States the teachers in the public schools receive
pensions, and in others the clamor for this form of taxation is loud
and persistent. At the present time a powerful movement is in progress
to pension the civil servants of the Government. Still another
manifestation is the passage of laws in revival of the old trade and
professional corporations. For a long time those in protection of the
legal and medical professions have been on the statute-books, if not
always in force. But, as always happens, these bad precedents have
been used as arguments in favor of the plumbers, barbers, dentists,
druggists, and other trades and professions. But the most absurd
manifestation is the social classification of Government employees in
accordance with the size of their salaries, a form of folly
particularly apparent in Washington, and the establishment of
patriotic and other societies, like the Sons and Daughters of the
American Revolution, the Baronial Order of Runnymede, and the Royal
Order of the Crown, that create social distinctions based, not upon
character and ability, but upon heredity. Could anything be more
un-American, to use the current word, or hostile to the spirit of a
free democracy?
In the intellectual domain politics works a greater havoc than in the
social. Politicians can no more tolerate independence in thought and
action than Charles V or Louis XIV or Napoleon I. "I have never had
confidence in political movements which pretend to be free from
politics," said the Governor of New York at the close of the campaign
that restored Tammany Hall to power in the metropolis, showing that
the intolerance of this form of warfare does not differ from that of
any other. "A creed that is worth maintaining at all," he added, using
an argument made familiar by the agents of bigotry everywhere, "is
worth maintaining all the time.... Do not put your faith in those that
hide behind the pretense of nonpartisanship," he continued, striking a
deadly blow at all party traitors; "it is a device to trap
the thoughtless and unsuspecting." As was shown during the
Blaine-Cleveland campaign of 1884, politicians treat dissent as proof
of unmistakable moral and intellectual baseness. Only the progress of
civilization prevents them from pouncing upon such men as George
William Curtis, Carl Schurz, and Wayne McVeagh with the ferocity of
the familiars of the Inquisition. As it is, they are regarded with
more abhorrence than the members of the opposition; they are treated
with a greater wealth of contempt and hatred, and often pursued with
the malignant vindictiveness of the cruelest savages. "I submit," said
Mr. Wanamaker in one of his speeches against the Quay machine, "that
the service of self-respecting men is lost to the Republican party by
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