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«and only wealth there is.

April 19, 1873.

 

,WOODHU_LL- & OL.AFLIN’S. WEEKLY. - r I 9

cretlyconsulted regarding any movement in the interests of the I

enemies of 'crowns—-the people. But there were secret missions
in Europe. They were not in the interests -of liberty; they
must have been intended against it. VVould not the people

~ be astonished if it should come out that a proposition to es-

tablish the Empire in this country has already received the
approval of the crowned, heads of Europe, and that the Y.
M. C. A. is at the bottom of it all.

But this could not be done, or ever hoped for, without an‘

exigency should arise to be made the occasion. Therefore
an exigency is necessary; and, strange as it is, even that is
not suspected. We have already hinted at it. Gold has
reached a higher price than for nearly three years, without
interference from the Administration. Suppose, now, while
a further rise is going on, a rise which the financial policy of
the Administration has made inevitable, that the. European
bankers should suddenly call the gold to the sum of thirty
millions that is held in Wall street? What would be the re-
sult?‘ Necessarily and unavoidably, a financial panic, in-
volving every interest in the country; United States bonds
would fall to 50, and every national bank be made insolvent
and ruin and desolation would spread over the whole coun-
try, as it were, in a single day. Every manufactory would
stop, and the “Testern harvest would be worthless. Uni-
versal panic and dismay would be the occasion for the proc-
lamation of the Empire, and immediately that was done the
gold of Europe would be at hand to sustain it. What chance
would the labor slaves of the country have in such a muddle
as this? None whatever, except to accept the situation,
while the monopolies would be left with all their landed
estates, and all their bonds, to be gradually appreciated again
to their standard values by the general productiveness of
the country, now entirely in their hands, which is the real
And thus the laboring poor would
be more emphatically enslaved than now, while wealth, re-
constructed into a political aristoeracy, would have its
greedy hands still more tightly about the throats of its slaves,
and the Revolution, now pending, be accomplished.
-—4@>—4

SEXUAL VICE IN CHILDREN.——~No. 1.

We new approach a present sexual condition, which being
antecedent to and the basis out of which others of which we
have already treated grow, presents the most mournful pic

ture of which it is possible for the true humanitarian to con- '

ceive. Sum up all other vices; add to them the terrors of
inherited ills, and multiply these by all other deleterious
influences, and the total is nothing when compared with
this most frightful demon which is devouring the race and
spreading devastation and desolation in every household.
The clergy may prate of salvation for the soul, they may
dilate upon the deep damnation which is sure to follow
“ wine and women,” and they may hold up before the youth
of the world the prospective possibilities that lie stretched
before them in the shining future, but all the former may
be shunned, and all the latter’ anticipated and hoped for,
and yet the most vital thing of all is untouched—~is ignored-
and its deadly sting left to penetrate the very fountains of
life,‘either to dry them up or, rushing to the opposite ex-
treme, run them quickly away.

When we look around us and everywhere see the demon
holding high revel among the brightest buds and choicest
blossoms of humanity, and its teachers and guardians quietly
watching its progress and lifting not a voice against it, our
hearts sink in despair at the prospect of the future. We
can see nothing but degeneracy here, degeneracy there, de-
generacy everywhere. For years we have been waiting for
the men of medical. and physiological science to raise the
warning cry, since to them does the duty primarily bclon g,
and since from them society listening would receive it;
but the few who have attempted to do their clear duty have
been hounded silent by their brother scientists, and the
whole subject for the past few years has been remanded into
oblivion; and many seemingly gloat over the progress of
the silent ravager.

It therefore falls to us to speak again the unpopular truth
-—to call down upon ourselves anew the bitterness and the
cursings of this great sham called society, and to say to it:
“You are permitting your children to commit suicide;
moral, intellectual and physical suicide, without lifting a
hand to save them; and with no resistance, amildew—a
blight——is settling down over all their future.” ’

Is this anything to startle you into thought; to rouse you
into the consideration of what is going on unchecked in all
your households? -It is not unknown. Ask your physi-
cians and they will tell you that not one girl in a hundred,
seventeen years of age, is perfectly healthy, sexually; ask
them again and they will tell you the same of your boys;
——your girls have leucorrhoea, your boys have spermator-
rhoea, and both suffer equally the consequent blight.

Do you say this is not so? Look to your children. Are
they bright-eyed, rosy-checked and plump-limbed? In vain
you seek these evidences of health. And why are they want-
ing? Have your children been sick;are they overworked;
do they over-study, or what is it that keeps from them

. the bloom which belongs to youth ;» why are they faded be-

fore fully blossomed; why are their cheeks hollow, their

' eyes sunken and yellow and their eyelids pale and dark;

why is their skin sallow and their forehead pimpled;
why are they nervous and fretfulwalways complaining, and
delicate? Can any of you tell? “Do any of you ever stop to
ask the quest.ion? Neither the first nor the last; but now

 that your attention is called to it, do you not see that this is

all so? Mcurnfully must you shake your heads and admit
it, for it stares you in the face in every household; and it is
sufliciently terrible ‘in its prophesies to I warrant the most
fearful alarm. It is not, to be sure, the acute disease that kills
within a few days; but it is the slow-creeping consumption
that beguiles its victims, months, or years perhaps, and when

‘it has played with them until it is itself sick of the sport,

suddenly puts its fearful claw upon the victims’ life-currents
and stops them.

‘Go to your fashionable boardingschools-—bcarding hells,
rather—~and pass the members in review, and there you will
find that vice stalks with most fearful tread. Look at the
graduates as they come home from these hot-houses where
the sexual appetite is prematurely roused and ‘unnaturally
satiated. Mothers send their daughters to them to be edu-
cated, and be assured they are educated in a way that will
last them all their lives. And again, if you doubt this, ask a
competent physician. And if you cannot believe even him,
ask your daughters; pin them so closely down to the truth
that they cannot evade it, and if they can evade this, watch
them and you shall become satisfied that a fire burns within
them that is feeding upon their vitals, and that they, though
all the efforts of their natures are put forth against it, yield
to its demands. ‘

But gain the truth at last, and then listen to the confes-
sion, and you shall hear a tale of horror and of sorrow -that
will condemn you as mothers, and cause you to realize that,
of all things, you have overlooked the most vital, and have
permitted your daughters to acquire a vice which, when once
fastened upon them is impossible of eradication. They will
tell you that when very small, perhaps no more than eight,
nine, or ten years of age, they were taught by some one al-
ready acquainted with the vice, the act that led them to de-
struction. They will tell you that they did not know there
was any harm in it; that you had never told them any bet_
ter, and that they did not think anything \bad could come
from it, because they had never known you to warn them

‘ against it, and that you certainly would have told them if it

were wrong, knowing, as you must have done, all about it.
In complete ignorance of its results, and unwarned as to ac-
quiring the habit, they blindly fell into it, and knew not its
fearful character until so far advanced that retreat was
impossible. They will tell you how, when they really
awakened to know its dreadful efieets, they struggled to
overcome the habit; that when its fascination ceased from
the almost complete disappearance of the accompanying
pleasure, that it took on a form from which they will shrink
in horror even at its recital. They will tell tell you of dreams
at night and of involuntary action upon the slightest excite-
ment, by day, and altogether such a tale of horror as to make
you wonder that you could have been blind to it. all this
time.

But these are the women whom you marry and who are to
become the mothers of the next generation of children. Do
you not think they will be worthy representatives of their
mothers? Do you not think that the sexual demoralization
of the parents of today will be reproduced in their offspring,
if, indeed, they have any, which is extremely doubtful, at
at early age! Every succeeding generation it makes captive
the children at an earlier age. A hundred years ago the
sexual appetite was undeveloped in girls at eighteen and
in boys at twenty; now a girl of fifteen, aye, of twelve, feels
the fire of sexual desire thrilling her veins, even when not
unnaturally developed by sexual vice; and a boy of sixteen
has realized all the sexual senses. In the next generation
these realizations will be reduced to still more tender years,
and for this very reason. to which we have referred—--that of
the sexual demoralization of parents, which is reproduced in
children, rendering them in early years the subjects of mor-
bid sexual desires and capacities. I .

Vfell may the question be asked: Wl1e1'e will all this stop?
We can only answer this: _That unless it do stop, reproduc-
tion will soon cease and the physical race be blotted out of
existence. Everybody knows that American women now
hear less than one half as many children as their grand-
mothers bore. VVhere now are found families of ten. fifteen,
aye, twenty children? Nowhere! Two, four, and perhaps
five, and one ‘half of them dead, have been the average.
What does this mean? Has it no competent causes? is it
merely because women object to having children more than
they formerly did? Yes, in part; but in a small part. The
real meaning is, that men and women are sexually demoral-
ized and incapacitated to beget and bear children. Suppose
it go on unchecked a hundred years longer, what will have
become of the race? Civilized nations will have become ex-
tinct, and the present generation may as well look this fact
squarely in the face and prepare to meet it or -to cure it,
since one or the other mustlcertainly be done.

To us the question is of such terrible moment that we,
though feeling the necessity, approach it with fear and
trembling. Those whose duty it seems it should have been
have not raised a warning voice, but have left it for us. to
do who are already overburdened with a terrible weight of
prejudice as the advocates of unpopular and unpalatable
truths; but this is a natural adjunct of the question of social
freedom; and as the advocates or that, we could not ignore
it if we would; indeed, we had not entered upon the war-
fare for social freedom, had it not been that this question
being under consideration,could and not be approached except
through it. Every question that is based in the sexuality of
the race, and all present ills that attach to it, must find the
possibility for reformation in the establishment of freedom

, that for their profitdepend upon the public.

....J'£ ._.  ‘!I.!,I—————

.. ... ,. H .. - -, . L

in sexuality. We boldly assert it, and time will bear ‘testi-
mony —to its truth. .

None of the ills that now belong to the sexual relations
of the race can ever hope for a cure until their freedom is
first established and until nature is permitted to have its
sway, instead of being compelled, as it is, into unnatural
methods to attain its desires. If people are refused natural
food, and that which is unwholesome is attainable, it may
be set down as certain that the unwholesome, though it may
be known that it will bring disease and death even, will be
greedily devoured. The same rule holds good in all other
appetites and passions. I _

It behooves the people, then, to set themselves about to
investigate this question of sexuality, to find out what are
its’ natural demands that require to be met to avert the cer-
tain coming devastation and demoralization, and ultimate
death. And we shall not hesitate to discuss it in such plain
terms as to be comprehendable to all, though both Church
and State continue to hold its hands against us and to charge
us with obscenity’, just as though society itself is not obscene
in the fact of the existence of all this demoraliza*;ion.

 

Q>-——4~-———-———’—- »

THE PLATFORM OF THE EQUAL RIGIITS PARTY
—~FIFTH PLANK. ‘ ’

“ That all monopolies should be abolished and all charters

revoked, and that the government of the people should ,
manage all public enterprises for the common benefit of the ,

‘H

wh ole country. .

It has come to be acknowledged that all monopolies exist
at the expense of the people. It does not matter what form
the monopoly assumes, all its gain must be extortion——must
be the receiving of more value than it gives. ,; In an especial
sense is this true of those monopolies that exist and grow fat
under chartered rights. The government, in the name of,
the people, grants privileges to individuals, by which, to
swell their profits, the people are swindled. In fact, so extort’
sive are monopolies, and so far reaching in their effects upon
the community, that it may safely be said the common
people are enveloped by them and actually deprived of all
natural rights. And when the chartered rights of monopo-
lies do not quite succeed i11 reducing the common people to
absolute bondage, then the government; slips in with its pro-
tective and restrictive laws and completes the subjugation.

So fearful and certain have the issues become between pre-
ductive labor and aggregating capital that the former-, let it
produce what it may, barely exists, while all , that is not re-
quired to sustain life passes to the possession of the capital-
ist. An evidence of this, at once complete and convincing,
is in the fact that, whatever expenses the government may
invblve, it is never paid by capital, since, let them be what
they may, it is continually increasing in quantity, while, let
the laborer produce whatever he may, he remains the labor-
er merely. Therefore, it is clear, so ‘clear, that none may
question it, that labor pays all the expenses of government,
while capital builds itself continually. c

Now, this plank of the Equal Rights Party Platform looks
to the supervision by the government of all enterprises
lVhy, for in-
stance, should the public be made to pay a million dollars in
dividends to the stockholders of the N. Y. Central Railroad
annually when the government could run it at cost of mainte-
nance? Railroads, as a system of transportation, have become
of even greater importance than public highways ; and why
like them should they not be maintained at the public ex-
pense for the public benefit. Is it objected that those who
have no occasion to use them should not be compelled
to pay as much for their support as those should pay who
make continuous use of them? It is replied that the
same objections hold with equal force as applied to high-
ways. When railroads become, as they will, as common as
public roads now are ; indeed, when they shall, in a great
measure, have superseded all other methods of transporta-
tion, then they will necessarily have to be conducted by the
people through their agent the government.

In the same category as railroads, there must be placed all

ferries, and methods of steam transportation ; all methods of '

lighting cities ; all coal, oil, gold, silver and other mines and
salt manufactures, since these last are natural wealths, be-
longing of inherited right to all the people, to monopolize
which, as is now done, is simply to steal from the people.
Were the Government to even manage all -these public
conveniencies and necessities, at a profit, they could readily
be made»~to pay all its own expenses, and thus save hundreds
of millions of dollars to the producing people every year.

The profits of our railway system alone are suflicient to meet ,

allthe current expenses of government. So, also, is the
interest that is paid for the use of money to individuals

sufficient to again meet all the same expenses; while the

profits paid to those who monopolize the products of indus-
try in their passage from the producer to the consumer,
would several times over pay the same. And all this, even,
does not include another vast swindle of the people. Forty
thousand persons called clergymen are paid annually say
$40,000,000, while the untaxed Church property amounts to

an equally great swindle, which are the greatest impositions, "
making the least return to the people of all the swindles,

and; together with their attachments, again filching from
the public a sum sufiicient to meet every expense of its
government. _ g - -

Thus we haveseveral systems in vogue, each of which
is a necessity of the people, and each of which is

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