Equality and Individuality.
THE Declaration of Independence declares that "all men are created equal." It does not mean by this of equal stature, girth or heft. It does not mean of equal birth as men count rank. It does not mean of equal beauty or comeliness. It does not mean of equal brain capacity, or mental caliber. What the Declaration does mean is clearly intimated by the words which follow: "That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." All men are created equal in respect to these rights. "Life" belongs to each and all equally. "Liberty" of choice belongs to each and all equally. "The pursuit of happiness" each one has the right to follow in his own way, irrespective of the wishes or desires of his fellows, providing he does not contravene their equal rights or infringe their equal liberties. This equality demands the right of individuality. It demands the right of the individual to choose what he will, providing always that he does not trample upon the equal rights of his fellows. He may persuade as many as he will; he may compel none. He may choose to be great and good and wise, a helper and guide to his fellow men; or he may choose to be ignorant and low and base. The right is his. He may choose to be religious, devout, a Sabbath-keeper, a believer in Christ Jesus; or he may choose to be irreligious, unreligious, irreverent, a Sabbath-breaker, an infidel. That is his God-given right, and man may not set it aside. He has, in other words, the right to make himself unequal to the rest of his fellows in every good thing as truly as they have the right to make themselves his superior in every good thing. They may persuade him to make a different choice, but they may not compel him an iota. The choice is his to yield or not to yield to their persuasions, to join or not to join their company or organization. If he in his right refuse to yield to their modus operandi, they have no right to seek to compel him thru others. For instance, the regulation of interstate commerce,—barter and trade between the States,—especially over the great transportation lines, is in the power of the Federal Government, at least to the extent of guarding the equal rights of man. These common carriers have no legal right to grant privileges to the great corporation or wealthy shipper which are not granted to the poorest. The corporation has no right to the public lands of the nation; they should be held for the individual. The necessities of life—food, light, water—should not be controlled by a few wealthy men, whom technicalities of law permit to exploit cities and States and people and nations, netting them in their great commercial schemes, as men gather the fishes of the sea. Are we condemning all great trusts, corporations, companies?—We are condemning nothing; but the predatory tendencies of the trust or company should stop where the right of the individual begins. No man nor set of men has the right thru control of dollars or the massing of men who have surrendered their selfhood to some unscrupulous leader, to trample upon the rights of a single individual, whatever his state or condition. And this is true of all combinations, whether centering in the office or the shop, whether controlled by a Calhoun or a Cornelius, a Harriman or a Gompers. The Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted "to establish justice," and "to insure domestic tranquillity;" but the trend of affairs, State and national, has carried us a long way from that noble purpose. God has given to all men equal rights. Every true government will secure to its citizens equal opportunity before the law; but that they have not at present. The Sacramento Union, in a recent editorial, truly says: "In order to restore equality of opportunity to the ordinary citizen it will be indispensable to reestablish justice. The demands of justice will give everything back to the common man that he has any right to possess. The poor man is not now equal to the rich before the law. Our jurisprudence has lost itself in a labyrinth of technical procedures that have small relation to the establishment of justice. It must be stripped of these and made simple, equal, and speedy." But this brings us back again to the individual. For if the rights of the individual are secured to him as the fathers of this nation intended, they are in him secured to all. But if a single soul is deprived of his God-given rights, and that deprivation is justified by law, approved by public sentiment, or treated with indifference by a people buried in pleasure or pursuit of gain or power, in that very condition lies the deprivation of equal rights of whole classes and masses. "The Constitution," in the words of George Bancroft, "establishes nothing that interferes with equality or individuality. It knows nothing of differences by descent, or opinions, of favored classes, or legalized religion, or the political power of property. It leaves the individual alongside the individual." (See the SIGNS of July 3, 1907, page 8.) That was the rule, the ideal, of the new nation. Under the influence of decadent religion, of wealth, of combination, she has mightily drifted from that high ideal, till a justice of the Supreme Court, David J. Brewer, declares: "ONE STEP FURTHER must be taken before the ideal of human liberty is realized in this country, and that, if I may thus express it, is the ACTUAL AND UNQUESTIONED INDEPENDENCE OF EACH INDIVIDUAL." "The proposition that the many may rule the one is carried into the daily life of the nation in a practical way, to the extent that the INDIVIDUAL IS SWALLOWED UP IN THE MASS; and the PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE of EVERY CITIZEN, in all matters of contract and labor and life, is in DANGER OF BEING DESTROYED." "The penalty which the nation pays for all its benefits is the growing disposition to sacrifice the individual to the mass, to make the liberty of the one something which may be ruthlessly trampled into the dust, because of some supposed benefit to the many." "So long as any SINGLE MAN, the humblest and the weakest in the land, may not enter into business or engage in labor such as his means will permit and his inclination determine, just so long is PERSONAL LIBERTY AN UNACCOMPLISHED FACT." "Thru the land the idea is growing that the INDIVIDUAL is NOTHING, and that the ORGANIZATION, and then the State, is EVERYTHING." "The great Master divided the powers and possibilities of our nature when He dethroned priests and prelates and bade EACH SOUL STAND FACE TO FACE ALONE WITH ITS GOD." Those sentiments were true, July 4, 1893, when Justice Brewer uttered them in a speech at Woodstock, Conn.; the conditions which demanded the utterances are far more evident to-day. The capitalistic trust and the labor trust are crushing out individuality of effort, of purpose, of will, of initiative, of independence, of manhood, and are training a race of peons. God made each man a responsible being; gave each man the right to believe or not to believe; made each the slave of none; and demands that in the last great day "each one of us shall give account of himself to God." In view of that great and awful fact, is it not time to heed another scripture: "Ye were bought with a price; become not bond-servants of men"? As truly as in 1776, as truly as in the times of the Civil War, this government and this people are in a crisis. Is it slavery or freedom? Is it to be ruled by men, by demagogues, by law-shielded predatory wealth, by walking delegates, by State-favored religions? or shall we stand in our own God-given, individual independence, neither fawning before the rich, nor crooking "the pregnant hinges of the knee" to over-ambitious combinations? The free men of a free nation are those individually free. "The truth shall make you free." "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."