Mammonart: An essay in economic interpretation — John Shaqi
Mammonart: An essay in economic interpretationSinclair, Upton
History
Mammonart: An essay in economic interpretation
Sinclair, Upton
Arts and society; Economics and literature; Literature -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc.
KANSAS KICKING
_Cranks’ Convention in Tumult at Topeka_
_Wild Asses of Prairie Bray_
_Millennium by Majority Vote Scheduled for Next November_
Topeka, Kan., July 3. (Special to the “Sun.”) The open season for
devil-hunting is on in Topeka today. From Nemaha County on the North to
Comanche on the South, from Cherokee County on the East to Cheyenne on
the West, the hunters are pouring into their state capital; money-devil
hunters and speculator-devil hunters, railroad-devil hunters and
rum-devil hunters. The streets of the city swarm with them, the lobbies
of the hotels are packed with them, spell-binders and oratorical
wizards, political quack-doctors and prohibitionist cranks, long-haired
men and short-haired women, partisans of free money, free land and free
love. For months they have been looking forward to this convention,
which is to wrest the powers of government from the hands of a predatory
plutocracy; today, if there is a lunatic in Kansas who is not in Topeka,
it is only because the Wall Street devil has got him behind bars in one
of the asylums.
The lobby of the American House this evening is more like the menagerie
tent of a circus than like anything else ever seen in the effete East.
The convention opens at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, and tonight every
orator has a last chance to save the nation before the platform is made
up. Audiences are not necessary, everybody talks at once, and there are
a dozen men delivering exhortations, standing on the leather seats of
hotel-lobby chairs. Here is “Sockless” Jeremiah Simpson, expecting to be
nominated for Congress tomorrow. Coatless and tieless, his collar wilted
flat, he shouts to the corn-field cohorts his denunciations of the
blood-sucking leeches which have picked the bones of the farmers of
Kansas. Here is Isaiah Woe, weird figure having whiskers almost to his
belt and pants almost to his shoe-tops, waving his skinny arms and
justifying his surname--“Woe, woe, woe--woe unto this and woe unto
that--woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write
grievousness which they have prescribed; to turn aside the needy from
judgment, and to take away the rights from the poor of my people, that
widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!”
Isaiah is known as a “prophet” among this prairie population; he roars
the grievances of the dear peepul of the prairie-country, and shakes the
hayseeds and corn-dust out of his white whiskers until his audience
really believes it sees a halo about his head. He does not hesitate to
claim divine inspiration, declaring to the mob: “The Lord hath anointed
me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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