The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12Brann, William Cowper
History
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
It is well for the public to understand that the murder
of W. C. Brann did not remove all of the abuses from
which this country suffers, and the frauds and fakes which
prey upon it. Assassination may shatter an instrument,
but it cannot conquer a cause. There is still work for
the iconoclast to do, and it will be done. It will continue
to place its brand upon the forehead of the seducer, the
whining hypocrite, the sniveling rogue, the confidence man,
the fakir and the fool. It is proposed to show this country
that the pistol is unconvincing as an argument and
useless as a brake upon reform. Brann is dead; but there
are men alive who lack his phenomenal ability, perhaps,
but who share his deathless hatred of the rotten in morals
and in politics. The mission for the ICONOCLAST is
unchanged and unended. Its field is its own. It will be
filled.
. . .
The man who seeks the American spirit must look for it
in the South and West. He will not find it in the East.
That part of our common country is inhabited by a nation
of shopkeepers as distinct from the peoples of the other
sections as the lion is distinct from the jackal. They are
smooth-faced, snub-nosed rogues, tied to the counter and
till, dollar-marked niederlings of the department stores,
jack rabbits of wall street, coyotes of the boards of trade.
If every man who has traded upon the distress of his
country and the peril of his kinsfolk were to be shot this
morning, the air of the North Atlantic states would be
heavy with powder smoke. From that well kept and wearisome
prostitute and buffoon, Chauncey Depew, down to the
smallest operator of a bucket-shop, they are all tarred
with the same brush--things in trousers who would sell
their souls for coin. They own the President of this
country, and they own many of the congressmen, having
bought and paid for them.
. . .
America, I suppose, is as religious as its neighbors, but
it is for the dollar first and for Christ afterward. Easter
is a period devoted to commemoration of the saddest and
noblest event in human history, the highest and most
important event. It is used by thousands of our merchants,
however, as a time specially devoted to making money.
From the manufacturer of "Easter cards," to the maker
of hot cross buns, the signs and symbols of religion are
made the means of chasing the nimble 10-cent piece. The
cross is the hall mark of printed sentiment, to be sold for
a quarter, and the crucifixion is done over and over again
in gingerbread. The ICONOCLAST may not get to heaven
by the Baptist route or the Methodist route, or by any
one of the thousand routes which "Christians" have been
pleased to blaze out for sinners in the centuries since Christ
died, but it is a long way above that kind of impiety--
sacrilege is a better word for it.
. . .
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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