The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
Things have reached this pass in "the representative American
city": A youth born, reared and educated there believes that it
is his mission and his duty to get dollars and has no other idea.
A girl born and reared there thinks it her mission and her duty
to marry dollars. If her parents are poor, if she is compelled to
"work out" as stenographer, typewriter, shop-lady, or whatnot,
and if she keeps her virtue, she is a phenomenon. The vaudeville
stage is recruited from her ranks. The bawdy houses are recruited
from her ranks. The fetid river's yearly burden of corpses is
recruited from her ranks.
What is to become of it? What is the natural fruit of such a
tree? What is the legitimate of a million and a half of such
humanity cooped into one space and boiling and seething with ten
million different aims and passions? What part in the drama of
the future is to be played by the 300,000 non-English speaking
residents, many of whom are voters? Men say that the signs of the
times point to revolution. Men behind the scenes say that this
country was dangerously near it in 1896. It needs no prophet to
foresee trouble when the rich are becoming richer, through
scoundrelism, and the poor are becoming poorer, through
drunkenness, idleness, dirt and all viciousness. Of that
revolution when it comes Chicago will be the fountain and the
center. I dare to say that if there are 5,000 open anarchists in
Chicago to-day there are 50,000 anarchists unconfessed. The
trouble is that their indictment against the wealthy ruling
classes contain true counts. They are not worth the powder and
lead necessary to their execution, but are those who sit in the
high places any better?
Preachers on fat salaries may preach in rich churches, scrolled
and cavern and mullion-windowed, then form laisons with
choir-singers; hired writers may write of the goodness of the
times, then pose in beer-joints and denounce God and the
universe. Christian Endeavorers and all the other bands of inane
asses may shout their mawkish hymns, but facts are facts. The
city of the dollar is in a bad way, and it is the "representative
American city."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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