with ballots, signifying his corrupt control of the very sources
of power. In his lap he holds the book of Law, which he is skilled
to pervert to his own ends. In the background are his factories,
the smoke of their chimneys testifying to his prosperity. On the
other side the factories are smokeless and idle, showing a strike or
shut-down; and the earthen jar in which the savings of Labor have
been hoarded lies broken at her feet.
The logical conclusion of such government is _Anarchy_. She is
represented entirely nude, raving upon the ruins of the civilization
she has destroyed. In one hand she holds the wine cup which makes
mad, and in the other the incendiary torch, formed of the scroll
of learning. Serpents twist in her dishevelled hair, and she
tramples upon a scroll, a lyre, a Bible, and a book--the symbols,
respectively, of Learning, Art, Religion, and Law. Beneath her feet
are the dislocated portions of an arch. To the right, Violence,
his eyes turned to gaze upon the cup of madness, is prying out the
corner-stone of a temple. To the left, Ignorance, a female figure,
with dull, brutish face, is using a surveyor’s staff to precipitate
the wreckage of civilization into the chasm which opens in the
foreground. Beyond, lying in an uncultivated field, are a broken
mill-wheel and a millstone. But the end of such violence is clearly
indicated; no sooner shall the corner-stone be pried from the wall
than the temple will fall and crush the destroyers; and beside the
great block on which Anarchy has placed her foot lies a bomb, with
a lighted fuse attached. Such a condition, says the painting, must
inevitably contain the seeds of its own destruction.
[Illustration: GOOD ADMINISTRATION.--BY ELIHU VEDDER.]
On the other side of the central tympanum, _Good Administration_
sits holding in her right hand a pair of scales evenly poised, and
with her left laid upon a shield, quartered to represent the even
balance of parties and classes which should obtain in a well ordered
democracy; on this shield are emblazoned, as emblems of a just
government, the weight, scales, and rule. The frame of her chair
is an arch, a form of construction in which every stone performs
an equal service--in which no shirking can exist--and therefore
peculiarly appropriate to typify the equal part which all should take
in a democratic form of government. On the right is a youth who casts
his ballot into an urn. He carries some books under his arm, showing
that education should be the basis of the suffrage. To the left is
another voting-urn, into which a young girl is winnowing wheat, so
that the good grains fall into its mouth while the chaff is scattered
by the wind--an action symbolical of the care with which a people
should choose its public servants. In the background is a field of
wheat, a last touch in this picture of intelligence and virtue, and,
in itself, symbolical of prosperous and careful toil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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