Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great ReformersHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers
Hubbard, Elbert
Reformers
Slaves can not be made free by edict. Moses led his people out of only
one kind of captivity, and in the wilderness they wandered in bondage
still. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free the colored
race, because it is the law of God that he who would be free must free
himself. A servile people are slaves by habit, and habit is the only
fetter. Freedom, like happiness, is a condition of mind. A whining,
complaining, pinching, pilfering class that listens for the whistle,
watches the clock, that works only when under the menacing eye of the
boss, and stands in eternal fear of the blue envelope here, and
perdition hereafter, can never be made free by legislative enactment.
Freedom can not be granted, any more than education can be imparted:
both must be achieved, or we yammer forever without the pale. A
simple, strong and honest people is free. People enslaved by
superstition and ruled by the dead have work at filing fetters ahead
of them, which only they themselves can do. Henry George did not
realize this, and his strength lay in the fact that he did not. He did
not know when men get the crook out of their backs, the hinges out of
their knees, and the cringe out of their souls, that then they are
free. Slaves place in the hands of tyrants all the power that tyrants
possess. Fortunate it was for Henry George, and for the world, that he
did not know that any man who labors to help the workingman will be
mobbed by the proletariat for his pains a little later on. Monarchies
maybe ungrateful, but their attitude is a sweet perfume compared to
the ingratitude of the laborer. He can be helped only by stealth, and
his freedom must come from within. The moral weakness of man is the
one thing that makes tyranny possible.
Tyranny is a condition in the heart of serfs. Tyrants tyrannize only
over people of a certain cast of mind. Tyrants are men who have stolen
power--convicts who have wrested guns from their guards. Watch them,
and in a little while they will again shift places. Henry George was a
very great man: great in his economic, prophetic insight; great in his
faith, his hope, his love. He gave his message to the world, and
passed on, scourged, depressed, undone, because the world did not
accept the truths he voiced. Yet all for which he strived and
struggled will yet come true--his prayer will be answered. And the
political parties and the men who in his life opposed him are now
adopting his opinions, quoting his reasons, and in time will bring
about the changes he advocated. Of all modern prophets and reformers,
Henry George is the only one whose arguments are absolutely
unanswerable and whose forecast was sure.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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