Part 01, Chapter 38

[Liberty, January 25, 1890.]

The New Abolition Party, nominally of the United States, but really limited at present (pending by the time when it is to sweep the country like a wave) by the walls of the Individualist office at Denver, started out with eight demands; and, taken as a whole, very good demands they were. Lately it has added a ninth; just why, I don’t know, unless New Abolition was jealous of Liberalism and bound to have as many demands. This explanation seems hardly reasonable, because in the case of Liberalism nine does not seem to have proved a magic number for demand purposes. However this may be, it is certain that the ninth demand is a square contradiction of some of the most important of its eight other demands, notably the fifth and the seventh. The ninth demand is for collective maintenance and control of all public highways, waterways, railways, canals, ditches, reservoirs, telegraphs, telephones, ferries, bridges, water works, gas works, parks, electric plants, etc., to be operated in the interest of the people. The seventh demand is for immediate and unconditional repeal of all forms of compulsory taxation. The fifth demand is for immediate and unconditional repeal of all statutes that in any way interfere with free trade between individuals of the same or of different countries. Suppose that Mr. Stuart (the father of New Abolition) and I live on the same side of a river. I have a boat; Mr. Stuart has none. Mr. Stuart comes to me and says: How much will you charge to row me across the river? Ten cents, I answer. It is a bargain, says Mr. Stuart, and he steps into the boat. But up steps at the same time the New Abolition party in the shape of a policeman (and it will have to take that shape, because in these matters a demand without a blue coat on its back and a club in its hand is an ineffective demand) and says to me: See here! stop that! Don’t you know that the New Abolition party, which at the last election swept the country like a wave, inundated your row-boat with the rest by instituting the collective maintenance and control of all ferries? If you attempt to row Mr. Stuart across the river, I shall confiscate your boat in the name of the law. And then, addressing Mr. Stuart, the policeman adds: So you may as well get out of that boat and take the ferry-boat which the New Abolitionists have already provided. Officer, you are exceeding your duty, hotly replies Mr. Stuart; I have made a bargain with Mr. Tucker, and, if you were at all qualified for your post, you would know that the New Abolition party demanded, in the platform upon which it swept the country like a wave, the immediate and unconditional repeal of all statutes that in any way interfere with free trade. Yes, I say, hastening to put in my oar (I use the word metaphorically, not referring to my boat-oar), and you would know too that this same triumphant party demanded the immediate and unconditional repeal of all forms of compulsory taxation. So I should like to see you confiscate my boat. Oh! you’re a couple of tom-noodles, way behind the times, retorts the policeman; the demands of which you speak were numbered five and seven; but the demand in regard to ferries was a ninth and later demand, which invalidated all previous demands that conflicted with it. Mr. Stuart, being a law abiding citizen and not one of those Boston Anarchists who do not believe in the State, sorrowfully steps from the boat inwardly cursing his political offspring, takes the government ferry-boat an hour later, and gets across the river just in time to lose the benefit of a lecture by a Boston Anarchist on The Fate of an Individualist Who Threw a Sop to the Socialistic Cerberus.(39 ¶ 1)