VOL. XXIV. MY PLATFORM JOHN F. HOGAN, Founder, Detroit, Mich. To combat Socialism. To uphold our Representative Form of Government. To promote respect for Constituted Authority. To assist in a better mutual understanding between Capital and To sustain workmen in their demand for Just Compensation. To make clear that the interests of both sides are mutual, and To advocate Individual Initiative as the basis for all Social, In- To Defend Integrity of Family, Love of Country, Reverence for YOUR PLATFORM TOO — ? THEN JOIN THE GATEWAY MOVEMENT. Issued Monthly - FEBRUARY, 1915 He Needed It More. A minister meeting a neighbor's boy who had just come out of a fight on New Year's Day with a fearful black eye, put his hand on the boy's head and said: "My son, I pray you may never fight again, and that you may never receive another black eye." "That's all right," said the boy. "You go home and pray over your own kid. I gave him two of 'em." * The Deacon Was Right. A minister of the Gospel one Sabbath announced to his flock that he would have to leave them, as he was called to another field. "How much more salary do you expect to get there than here?" asked one of the deasons. "Three hundred dollars," remarked the minister, with some hesitation. No. 1 He Wanted to Know the Worst. A miner who was suffering from dyspepsia one day consulted a doctor and took his prescription to a druggist to be made up. "Well, how much?" said the miner, "Well, hurry up, boss. Put a price on ¶ The end of a dissolute life is a desperate death. God is Evil! --- Property is Theft! A Warning. The terrifying responsibilities of the American Journalist, who, to gain the bleat of the mob for larger "circulation" is surely subverting individual rights and thereby sounding the doom of this republic-are the people forever to be debauched?—The Gateway Magazine on certain modern tendencies, with additional light shed by that great thinker Judge Cullen, the retired Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals wherein it is shown that The Gateway's long-sustained warnings are shared by America's brilliant Jurist; a study of socialism in its most insidious forms justifies all Gateway's utterances and sustains the urgency of united action on part of the intelligent, who love their country too well to see Columbia's garments torn off by Rapists and the woman thrown into the ditch to be outraged in the clear light of noon Why sit ye idly by, Americans, when Jack the Ripper is abroad in the land? By JOHN F. HOGAN, EDITOR THE GATEWAY MAGAZINE ILL your gran-hildren in- The Gateway Magazine has often been the object of bitter attacks on part of yellow journalists and quack-doctor politicians; again, this magazine has been visited with. curses by labor "bosses" whose grafts we have broken up. We have often been accused of pub-. lishing material that excites the public mind! To excite the public mind on questions that in our view should be aired, in the interests of true Americans— yes, indeed, that is our policy. Despite whatever disadvantages may come of our attitude, we shall continue to call a spade a spade. Hence, the line at the top of this review lil no doubt bring still further damnation on our heads from social istic yelpers who, in effect if not in words, repeat the blasphemous cry throughout our fair land: God is evil! Property is theft! Americans, look this matter in the face. If Socialistic propaganda is not halted by the intelligent minds that gather around true Americans, as represented by the National Gateway Movement, then it will literally come to pass that your grandchildren will have no stake in this republic, for what you have will be taken away. Yes, just as in the excitement of the French Revolution, the landed estates were confiscated and handed over to the petty farmers. We are on the broad highway right now in free America, although the smug, ignorant, self-satisfied sit back and close their eyes. God is evil! Property is theft! This damnable doctrine has been growing amazingly in free America during the past few years. Again and again The Gateway Magazine has been held up to vile criticisms by Americans who, in their self-satis ¶ Learn to hold your tongue; words have often caused disaster. fied owlishness, have professed that a French Revolution is impossible in America; we are too wise, too honest, too free, etc. Now, there are more ways of stopping a man's mouth than by cuting off his head, and one of these is to keep on hollering "God is evil! Property is theft!" These phrases we we deduce clearly, in spirit if not in substance, from the daily utterances of yellow journalists and quack-doctor politicians of our nation. Pick up almost any newspaper, east or west, and seriously occupy yourself with the assaults on capital, to please the mases; or listen to the howlings of professional agitators, in politics, to set the working man by the ears-and you will come back to the position that The Gateway Magazine, instead of being a force that unduly excites the public mind, is to be supported by intelligent Americans for the unsparing protests made against forces of revolution in our Republic. As surely as American editors persist, week after week, in filling the heads of laboring men with the idea that the working class is the "victim" of legislative conspiracies, that this class has "no chance," no stake in this Republic," and that the "hand of 'big business' is against him," just that much sooner will a new French Revolution come on in America. ★ ET us make ourselves clear. Our critics, revilers and haters, set up the cry that there can be no French Revolution in free America, because this or because that, and that The Gateway Magazine is off its base! But We have shown, from month to month, that forces of disaster are at work in America. The word "Revolution" is by no means to be taken in the literal sense of the military man. Revolutions often come seemingly unannounced, from secret causes working through years. That was the case in France in '89, in Vienna in '48, and in Paris in '71-after Sedan. Or it may be a bloodless Revolution, but Revolution just the same! Never forget that one of the dreams of the American Socialist is that one day, by a great secret, concerted movement, the laboring classes will, as a man, "stand with folded arms,” and in that solemn moment when all productive labor ceases, will usher in a new order, in which all capital will be instantly destroyed, because it will be valueless! Man needs some hope of sudden salvation in politics! You see it everywhere. The old cry, Let the people "elect" "Big Bill" Haywood, of the dreaded I. W. W.; Moyer, of the rejected Western Federation of Miners, or the labor-bound McNamara, "then" will the hope of sudden new fortunes for the "downtrodden masses" come to pass-in a night! Is not this the attitude of the yellows? Syndicalism has no gospel for the worn-out workingman; syndicalism demands brute force-just as much as militarism depends on the doctrine of violence. And as our military friends in the present great European war solemnly assure us that the "more savage" the war is made, the "more merciful" it becomes, meaning that extermination ends war; likewise, the American followers of out-and-out Socialism are bent on violent destruction of the existing order. If this is not "Revolution," then words have no meaning. Violence rather than free association is the keynote. Almost any day you will see "leading" newspapers expound the doctrine of confiscation; and, following the sugges By Revolution, we mean Revolu- tion, here and there we find legislators tion! heaping higher and higher the inheri ¶ Love gives itself, it is not bought. tance taxes till, in some states, the estate is mulcted as much as fifteen per cent before the heirs can receive what the father, through a lifetime of toilor economy it may be-managed to keep together for his children. If a State can, without creating a ripple of excitement, mulct an estate fifteen per cent, why not twice that much, or why not three or four times that sum-or, for that matter, why stop short of confiscation? By a stroke of the Socialistic Governor's pen, we have Revolution in personal rights so far as that State is concerned-yes, over night. It is, in short, an evidence of the much-prized secret dream of the Socialists, with their "folded-arms" theory, applied to poli tics. VERYWHERE there is a growing tendency in America to suppress individual rights in favor of mobs. You need not take our word for it; you have but to exercise your brains, and read the newspapers. One of the great jurists of America, Judge Cullen, late head of the Court of Appeals, of New York State, in a recent address before the Lawyers of America on his topic, "American Liberty in Danger," said: ¶ "Judicial decisions are made, statutes are enacted, and doctrines are publicly advocated which, when I was young, would have shocked our people to the last degree. In those days liberty was deemed to be the right of the citizen, to act and live as he thought best so long as his conduct did not invade a like right on the part of others. Today, according to the notion of many, if not most people, liberty is the right of part of the people to compel the other part to do what the first part thinks the latter ought to do for its own benefit. "It has been said that the great mis fortune of the day is mania for regulating all human conduct by statute, from responsibility for which few are exempt. "In the domain of commercial and industrial activities have been the greatest attempts to restrain individual activity and liberty. The members of nearly every vocation have sought, and often secured in their own interest, legislation which invades the rights of the rest of the community, and, at times, the rights of some of their own members. We all know that much of the so-called labor legislation has assumed to forbid the pursuit of particular trades except to persons who have passed examination and obtained licenses, the real object of such legislation being not to protect the public, but to limit the number who could follow the particular trade. But this disposition, usually termed trade unionism, and justly condemned, is by no means confined to the trades. The same spirit seems to prevail in nearly all vocations. The famous Tenement House Cigar Act prohibited the manufacture of cigars in any tenement house. As pointed out by the courts, its provisions were such as to show plainly that it was in no sense a statute for the protection of health, but enacted solely for the benefit of large manufacturers who sought to stifle competition. Every one familiar with the public affairs of that day knows. that this was the true purpose of the act. When oleomargarine was first made the farmers of the State, not content with legislation to prevent fraud on the public in passing off the article as butter, obtained the enactment of a statute which absolutely prohibited its manufacture, though it was indisputably shown that oleomargarine was a wholesome article of food. Some ingenious and energetic storekeeper sought to increase his sales by giving prizes or premiums to purchas ¶ Evil doing and fraud grow up in every soil; the product of all climes. ers of goods in excess of a certain quantity or value. His plan must have been successful, since forthwith his business rivals had a statute passed forbidding giving a prize on the sale of goods, and making the act a misdemeanor. The statute was sought to be upheld on the claim that the gift of prizes induced customers to buy more than they needed and to spend too much money, though how this justified interference by the State I am at a loss to imagine. Of course, the real object of the statute was to stifle an ingenious method of doing business in the interest of rivals in that business. "The local store keepers in some small places thought their business injured by transient retailers, who advertised their goods as bankrupt or assigned stock, or as damaged by fire. So they had a statute enacted which required transient dealers, in cities of the third class, so advertising, to take out licenses for the privilege of selling their goods, the cost of which to be fixed between twenty-five and one hundred dollars a month. That the statute was solely directed against the advertising was plain from the fact that its requirements applied only to itinerant merchants so advertising, and this, whether the advertised statement was true or false, while others not advertising were exempt. "No trade or calling seems so limited, no society or association so insignificant, the advocates of no hobby or nostrum so few or so wanting in influence as to be denied the privilege of having a new misdemeanor created. "It is true that many statutes to which I have referred have been held invalid by the courts, but that does not go to the root of the evil, which lies in the attitude of the public toward these violations of private right, that of approval by part of the community, of in difference on the part of the rest. The spirit of the public is ewll shown in the matter of taxation. John Marshall said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. This is especially true where constitutional restraints on the exercise of the power are few, as in the case in most of the States, as well as in the nation at large. The primary purpose of the power of taxation is to raise money to support the government. People may well differ how taxation should be adjusted to best accomplish that purpose, with the least interference with commerce-or hardship on the citizen. But now there is a strong tendency to pervert the taxing power to accomplish ends wholly foreign to that for which it is granted. Complaints are constantly made to the press of the great signboards that are seen along the line of railroads and the highways, of the offence they occasion to travelers. It is urged to get rid of these by taxing them out of existence. The mere suggestion of such a measure degree. The land belongs to the ownseems to me dishonest in the highest ers of the adjacent farms, who derive a profit of some kind from the signs, to which they are as much entitled as the profit to be gained from the crops which they raise from the ground. The suggestions are also eminently unwise at this time, when many persons demand that the taxing power be used to remedy the inequalities of fortunes and to achieve "social justice." The signs. may offend the aesthetic taste of some travelers, but it must be remembered that discontent and envy are so prevalent today that any evidence of luxury, or even of comfort, on the part of the well-to-do, is still greater cause of offense in the sight of those who possess nothing of the kind. The latter are in the majority, and if the rights of property are to be subordinated to the criteria of taste, the ¶ A lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies. |