p. 127 | Communism in America

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 15, 1875

Communism in America.

THERE is no disguising the fact that there is a large body of people in this country who are communists, both in name and in spirit. There are those who really wear the long hair and the wild eye, and indulge in the foolish speech and there are others who are equally absurd, but who do not know that they are communists. It is a fact, however, that by far the larger portion of the outcries against capital and “monopolies” are born of the agrarian spirit. Men who are down in the world, and are soured and moody, naturally look with an evil eye upon their more successful fellows. They hate the rich, and it affords them particular pleasure to look upon them as “grinding tyrants.” Communistic denominations have been frequent in the United States of late. Fierce denunciations have been hurled at corporations, and the wealthy have been habitually alluded to as belonging to the criminal classes. Rag money, evenly distributed, has been called for again and again, and societies of the supremely lazy exist in almost every city in the country. Among their leaders are the crack-brained sentimentalists who have been “reformers” ever since they were old enough to sigh intelligently. When Theodore Tilton, the master sentimentalist of the age, was on the witness stand the other day, he swore, in his grandest manner, that he could conceive of no higher privilege than to march in a procession in honor of young Rossell, the Paris communist, who assisted in butchering the Archbishop of Paris and the Chief Justice of France. During the past few weeks the West has had the benefit of meetings and demonstrations in behalf of robbery and general immorality. The Relief Society of Chicago has been waited upon to turn out its stores for the benefit of the men and women who believe that the world owes them a living, and Cleveland has had a paper money convention which formed a party and threatened us with a presidential candidate, to run upon a platform whose chief plank shall advocate simple bits of paper for money. Labor-reform movements have drifted naturally into the vicious channel, and we are in danger of waking up some morning and finding communism a dangerous power, unless we speedily begin to turn our backs upon all pure sentimentalism, and look with distrust on all who clamor against the rich as enemies of the poor; unless, in short, we recognize that none but men with well-ordered brains have any business in politics, especially in high places.—Kalamazoo Telegraph.