Reflections and Comments 1865-1895Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
General
Reflections and Comments 1865-1895
Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
Essays
Harlem, or Lake Shore, or any other paying stock or bond, would be
subjected to cruel tortures, if not put to death. For neither the
Roman nor the Mediaeval could understand a rich man's being
terrified by anything but armed violence. Seneca enumerates as the
three great sources of anxiety in life the fear of want, of disease,
and of oppression by the powerful, and he pronounces the last the
greatest. If he had seen Wall-Street brokers and bankers last week
trying to get rid of stocks and bonds, he could not of course have
supposed that they were poor or feared poverty; he would have judged
from their physical activity that they were in perfect health, so
that he would have been driven to the conclusion that some barbarian
host, commanded by Sitting Bull or Red Cloud, was entering the city,
and was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the owners
of personal property. If you had tried to explain to him that there
was no conqueror at the gates, that the fear of violence was almost
unknown in our lives, that each man in that struggling crowd enjoyed
an amount of security against force in all its forms which no Roman
Senator could ever count upon, and that the terror he witnessed was
caused by precisely the same agency as the flight of an army before
it has been beaten, or, in other words, by "panic," he would have
gazed at you in incredulous amazement. He would have said that panic
in an army was caused by the sudden dissolution of the bonds of
discipline, by each soldier's losing his confidence that his
comrades and his officers would stand their ground; but these
traders, he would have added, are not subject to discipline; they do
not belong to an organization of any kind; each buys and sells for
himself; he has his property there in that tin box, and if nobody is
going to rob him what is frightening him? Why is he pale and
trembling? Why does he run and shout and weep, and ask people to
give him a trifle, only a trifle, for all he possesses and let him
go?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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