COMMUNISM

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 13, 1878

In the United Presbyterian church of Omaha, an address was delivered May 12, 1878, by Rev. D. R. Miller, from the concluding portion of which, as given in The Christian Statesman of May 30, we give the following extracts:—

“Our country is to-day sleeping on the crest of a volcano. Beneath it there is a tumult gathering. The fires and gases are combining and growing stronger and stronger; and not many months to come this peaceful, unheroic slumber will be broken by a shock, and a burst of subterranean fire that will cause the land to shudder and grow pale. The ship of state is drifting toward a maelstrom, with the captain and crew asleep. We believe there is danger ahead. Here we are in the second year after our centennial glory with the country seething like a caldron. At Washington the political parties are falling to pieces by their own inherent corruption. The Presidential chair has a torpedo under it. Representatives of the nation come into the halls of Congress drunk. Drunk! Great heavens! has it come to this, that drunkards shall sit on the throne of Christian America? Representatives! Yes, so they are; to our disgrace be it said, in more ways than one. Infidelity and Sabbath desecration are growing. Spirituality is so gaunt and attenuated in many of our cities that it cannot even reflect the truth. The land is over-run by thieves and vagrants, labor and capital are at swords’ points, and beneath all this cracked crust of Republicanism, there are smouldering the volcanic fires of Communism. No danger? Have the signs of the times no voice of warning?”

THE STRENGTH AND CHARACTER OF THE COMMUNISTS.

“We have been unable to gain any reliable statistics of their number in the United States. We have seen but one general aggregate, from their own papers, which places their number between two and three hundred thousand. This is what they claim. It may or may not be correct. We think it is an exaggeration. One fact, however, is patent to every reader of the daily press,—that they have organizations, larger or smaller, in all of our principal cities. Since the riots of last July they have been growing rapidly. Such scenes of lawlessness and pillage as were then enacted in Pittsburg have given them fresh courage; and the same spirit that then found expression is waiting for another and more serious outbreak. We do not say that the Communists instigated the riot at Pittsburg, or that they, as an organization, had anything special to do in instigating it, but we say the same spirit of lawlessness and outrage that sacked the gun-stores, burnt the railroad property, and girdled the heroic Philadelphia boys with fire and violence in the round-house, is waiting to renew its reign of anarchy.”

“In New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Toledo, Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, San Francisco, and in many other of our large cities, and cities not so large, they have organizations. They are oath-bound societies. They couldn’t serve the devil successfully unless they were. The mysteries and secrets of the order are not made known until the candidate for admission has encased himself in the most solemn iron-clad oath. These organizations are composed almost entirely of foreigners,—Germans, Bohemians, Irish, Scandinavians, &c. Men who, raised under different laws and institutions beyond the sea, have come to this country bringing with them their crude ideas of our laws and freedom, and who, in the very first flush of our political and religious liberties, somehow get the insane idea that liberty means license, and freedom the right to do as you please without regard to the rights of others. These are the men who threaten us with anarchy and revolution. This is the volcanic fire that is rioting beneath the crust of our civil government.”

“WHAT ARE THEY DOING?”

“They are organizing, arming, and drilling. In some of our cities this is no longer a secret. In Chicago they have a growing Order three thousand strong. Meetings are held in different parts of the city, generally on the Sabbath, at which rattle-brained, incendiary, and treasonable harangues are made, appealing to the worst passions of the rabble. A few Sabbaths ago they were out drilling without any effort at concealment. They are armed with breach-loading rifles, and revolvers, and are drilling, they say, with a view to self-protection in case their plans are interfered with. In Cincinnati the Communists have three thousand men enrolled. Large numbers of them are organized into military companies, which meet and drill in secret. The Knights of Labor, an organization whose object is similar to that of the Communists, are also drilling and arming in preparation for an impending crisis. In St. Louis large street meetings are held and inflammatory speeches made, stirring up riot and sowing the seeds of discord and outrage. They laugh at the power of the police to coerce them. In New York the same thing is seen, and revolutionary measures are openly avowed. The Kearney men of California, and the Mollie Maguires of Pennsylvania, are justified in a resolution adopted by the meeting. One speaker said

that if ‘their rights could not be obtained by the ballot-box, then he favored getting them by the cartridge-box. He would make it a State’s prison offense for a man to hold more real estate than was necessary to support him.’ They are led by a Paris Communist, Citizen Meggs, who was a few days ago arrested and bound over in $500 to keep the peace.”

“In Omaha there are between three hundred and four hundred Communists. They have their hall where they meet and drill. They will drill openly before the summer is over. My informant, one of your police magistrates, said that he stood by the door at the foot of the stairs, and heard the parade tramp, the rattle of arms, and imprecations that were not very flattering to the capitalists of your city. In procuring their arms, they make an assessment on their members, order their guns from some house in the East, and have them forwarded here by freight. They order one case of guns at a time. Their leaders are engaged in the Union Pacific shops. Similar organizations are held at different points out along the Union Pacific Railroad. No immediate danger is anticipated from this Order unless they act in conjunction with other Orders East.”

“In San Francisco they are the most noisy and demonstrative. The wildest license is given to speech, and threats are openly made. Dennis Kearney is president, or was until a few days ago. Daily and weekly meetings are held in the open air, at which thousands of the worst men of the city are harangued. ‘Clubs are formed in every ward of the city, and the whole are in splendid working order, united and prompt, and sure of doing what Kearney repeatedly advises,—secure all the offices, municipal, county, and state.’ And then, with officials in sympathy with their movement, they will drive the Chinese from the State, and get what they call their rights. They are armed and prepared, and if constitutional means fail, then they say they will try revolution. They are working vigorously to overthrow the law of the State. Their great watchword is: ‘The Chinese must go.’”

“Can we stand up in the bold presence of these startling facts and say there is no danger? What is the meaning of all this organizing, and arming, and drilling from the Atlantic to the Pacific? There is no foreign army approaching. There is no war in our own land. The president has not called for militia. What does it mean? It means revolution, and that at no distant day. It means the upheaval of our liberties and homes; the war of classes; the poor against the rich; the laborer against the capitalist,—anarchy, red-handed, ghastly anarchy. It means riot, and murder, and pillage, and sacked cities, and a dismembered government. That is what it means; and that is where it will lead unless suppressed. You remember the celebrated Gunpowder Plot in the days of Queen Elizabeth, when an attempt was made by the Catholics to blow up the House of Parliament. They had secreted large quantities of powder in a chamber beneath where the Parliament was to assemble. The plot was discovered on the very eve of its execution. Guy Fawkes, the leader, was arrested, torch in hand, ready to apply it to the train. There is a gunpowder plot now at work that threatens to blow up our whole order of government. The powder-train is laid, and the demon-handed Guy Fawkes, in the shape of Communism, is standing unarrested, torch in hand, ready to fire the magazine.”