Brann the Iconoclast Volume 12 Part 9

It is anarchy. Pursued to the ultimate of its logic it means that every man is a law unto himself and the justice of an execution rests upon nothing but the opinion, or delusion, of the executioner. What one man might call a trifle might, to another man, call for blood. You could kill a man because his boots creaked or his eyes squinted or he wore the wrong shade of your favorite color in his necktie. Ridiculous? Not at all. Liking or disliking any of these trifling things is only a matter of personal preference. They may be as distasteful to one person as the tone of an editorial is to another. If a man may rightly kill a writer, like Mr. Brann, why would it not be right for someone to kill any editor? At one time there was talk in the south of killing the late Joseph B. McCullagh for his editorials. How if Senator Hanna were to "go gunning"

for the editorial "roasters" of himself, or for the malevolent cartoonist? Mr. Brann attacked hypocritic preachers, snide politicians, shoddy society people, shyster lawyers. He did it in, to me, an exaggerated manner, but he felt that such manner was necessary to arouse the people. Were Brann's blasts against Baylor University intrinsically worse, more a license of the press than let us say the a.s.saults of the New York World, the New York Journal or the Post Dispatch upon Pierpont Morgan and the trusts? And yet, if any trust magnate, crucified as a blood-sucker on the poor, were to shoot the editor of one of these sheets, he would be howled to the hangman's noose. The trust magnate would be told he should have had recourse to law. But in the south, no--Mr. Brann was rightfully a.s.sa.s.sinated. No law for him! Why?

Because Mr. Brann a.s.sailed a few southern "josses." If Mr. Brann were justly slain then the next person who may dislike an editorial in the Picayune may kill its editor on the ground that the editorial--no matter how trifling in its imputation--is "carrion journalism." This law of chivalric private vengeance would justify a saturnalia of murder in every large city where gossip circulates in society. The chivalry of it! A man has written something he deems to be true and comments upon it as he deems it his duty in a quasi public capacity. Everyone who does not like the article can "take a pop at him."

But, says the chivalrous Picayune, the law of private vengeance does not apply to anything save grave offenses in scurrility. Ah! The offensiveness of a criticism is only a matter of individual capacity for pain or humiliation.

The trifle is only a trifle, because a man thinks it so. It may become a thing of importance at any time if you leave the decision of its importance solely to the judgment of the man who is going to resent it.

Private vengeance makes for the creation of a caste of bulldozers. Let it become known in a community that criticism is an invitation to death, and who profit? Not the men of spotless reputation. Not the decent and pure elements of the community. Not at all. The ruffian gang in politics profits. The sanctimonious crooks profit. The seducer and betrayer, who is a dead-shot, profits. Every social and civic iniquity flourishes under this dominance of the law of private vengeance. All the people who deserve criticism are ready to shoot. They are the judges of their own spotless reputations. They will kill the man who spots it. So it is that in almost every southern city there has grown up a cla.s.s of political brahmins absolutely secure from criticism that counts. Take New Orleans. The papers feared for years to breathe a breath of attack against the "spotless reputations" of its leaders. The story of the corruption that developed is too well known to require telling. After all, it is not the people of spotless reputation who are a.s.sailed in the papers. Whenever anyone is a.s.sailed the chances are there is ground for the a.s.sault, and there is at least a prima facie evidence that attack or exposure is necessary in the interest of public morality. Any reputation would be spotless if no one dared attack it. If it were high crime to a.s.sail people vigorously how would dishonor, debauchery, fraud and crime in high places ever be brought to light. If the right of private vengeance shall prevail in any community then the ruffians and blackguards may pursue their nefarious ends unhampered because of the terror they inspire by threats to shoot their critics. This recognition of the right of the individual to punish, by the infliction of death, the person who has injured him, puts the community at the mercy of the worst elements in it. It is the extension of the barbarism of lynch law. It makes every man, who wants to be one, a mob. It develops the idea of savagery in revenge to such an extent that the individual executioner of the offender against himself does not hesitate to wreak his vengeance from behind. It promotes a.s.sa.s.sination.

Aspersions upon the virtue of women are certainly indefensible on any imaginable ground. They demand often a punishment which the law is inadequate to provide.

They cannot be ignored. They const.i.tute the exceptions which confirm the rule that it is well to let the law punish slanderers. And in general men are expected to protect to the last extremity the reputations of the women of their family and their acquaintance. The person who attacks publicly or privately the virtue of a woman deserves the limit of vengeance, for the publicity of legal proceedings toward punishment only aggravates the original wrong. Mr. Brann did not attack the virtue of girl-students at Baylor University. He attacked the administration of that inst.i.tution and the killing of him was the result of a distorted view of the trend of his criticisms. If it were believed that he a.s.sailed the virtue of girl-students at Baylor he would not have a single mourner in the southwest. And no man in any part of the United States can have a following of respectable people, if he defames women. The feeling of reverence for woman is so general that it is often a defense for personal violence against writers who never dream of attacking feminine honor. Aside from the fact that death is too light a punishment for the man who attacks womanly chast.i.ty, the law of private vengeance is not sweepingly and invariably to be condemned. I am not liberal enough in recognition of the great fact of human nature to admit that the objection to private vengeance is mainly an objection to the recognition of the right of individual execution of the death penalty for any criticism. Men ought not to be shot for criticisms of public inst.i.tutions. It would be foolish to argue against the fact that men occasionally feel called upon to resent criticism by an appeal to battle without weapons. The killing of critics at the whim of the criticized is the evil against which protest is made. Plain a.s.sault and battery is easily defensible on the ground that no one can be expected always to have his temper in control.

It makes writers careful, and it is not followed by the regret which follows killing. Writers are expected to keep within bounds in their criticisms, and even then they are certain to generate ill feeling in the criticized and their friends, but so long as the offense is not murderous of reputation and mortally malevolent the private execution of writers is an offense not to be condoned on a mistaken interpretation of chivalry. For all sins of journalistic criticism, outside of the diabolism of blasting reputations for virtue, the law provides adequate remedy, and if it does not, then it were idle to say that the exasperated victims of criticism should not have recourse to their fists, although decent criticism, free from malice, addressed to people in position semi-public would not seem to call for violence under pretense of resenting something much worse.

As a rule I should say that the criticism which does not call for extreme and desperate punishment calls for no notice at all, or if it does, in the case of men, there are laws, civil and criminal, that cover the case, with ample punishment for the offense. This is the practical view of the remedies against "carrion journalism."

A public sentiment strong enough to support private vengeance is strong enough to support the law. There are laws for the punishment of slander. More rigorous laws could be enforced. If the people hate slanderers bitterly enough to kill them, then they should hate them enough to see that the laws against slander are enforced.

The moral sentiment that can sustain the one could sustain the other. But the individual execution of vengeance is a turning away from the law. It is the fostering of the bully and the killer for drunken pastime. It is a bulwark for boodlers, blackguards, frauds and lechers. It gives rein to individual pa.s.sion without limit. Such chivalry is barbarism.--Pasquin.

BRANN, THE FOOL.

BY ELBERT HUBBARD, EDITOR OF THE PHILISTINE.

It's a grave subject. Brann is dead. Brann was a fool. The fools were the wisest men at court; and Shakespeare, who dearly loved a fool, placed his wisest sayings into the mouths of men who wore the motley.

When he adorned a man with a cap and bells it was as though he had given bonds for both that man's humanity and intelligence. Neither Shakespeare nor any other writer of books ever dared to depart so violently from truth as to picture a fool whose heart was filled with perfidy.

The fool is not malicious. Stupid people may think he is, because his language is charged with the lightning's flash; but they are the people who do not know the difference between an incubator and an egg plant.

Touchstone, with unfailing loyalty, follows his master with quip and quirk, into exile. When all, even his daughters, have forsaken King Lear, the fool bares himself to the storm and covers the shaking old man with his own cloak. And when in our own day we meet the avatars of Trinculo, Costard, Mercutio and Jacques, we find they are men of tender susceptibilities, generous hearts and intellects keen as a rapier's point.

Brann was a fool.

Brann shook his cap, flourished his bauble, gave a toss to that fine head, and with tongue in cheek, asked questions and propounded conundrums that stupid hypocrisy could not answer. So they killed Brann.

Brann was born in obscurity. Very early he was cast upon the rocks and nourished at the she-wolf's teat.

He graduated at the university of hard knocks and during his short life took several post-graduate courses.

He had been wage-earner, printer's-devil, printer, pressman, editor.

He knew the world of men, the struggling, sorrowing, hoping, laughing, sinning world of men. And to those whom G.o.d had tempted beyond what they could bear, his heart went out. He read books with profit, and got great panoramic views out into the world of art and poetry; dreaming dreams and sending his swaying filament of thought out and out, hoping it would somewhere catch and he would be in communication with another world.

Discreet and cautious little men are known by the company they keep. The fool was not particular about his a.s.sociates; children, sick people, insane folks, rich or poor --it made no difference to him. He sometimes even sat at meat with publicans and sinners.

He was a mystic and lived in the ideal. This deeply religious quality in his nature led him into theology, and he became a clergyman--a Baptist clergyman.

But no church is large enough to hold such a man as this; the fool quality in his nature outcrops, and the jingle of bells makes sleep to the chief pew-holder impossible.

So the fool had to go.

Then he founded that unique periodical, which, in three years, attained a circulation of 90,000 copies. This paper was not used for pantry shelves, lamp lighters, or other base utilitarian purposes. It cost ten times as much as a common newspaper, and the people who bought it read it until it was worn out. All the things in this paper were not truth; mixed up amid a world of wit were often extravagance and much bad taste. It was only a fool's newspaper!

In this periodical the fool railed and jeered and stated facts about smirking complacency, facts so terrible that folks said they were indecent. He flung his jibes at stupidity, and stupidity sought to answer criticism by a.s.sa.s.sination.

Texas has a libel law patterned after the libel law of the State of New York. If a man takes from you your good name you can put him behind prison bars and place shutters over the windows of his place of business.

The people who thought Brann had injured them did not invoke the law. They invoked Judge Lynch----

A mob seized the fool, and, placing a rope about his neck, led him naked through the October night, out to the theological seminary, which they declared he had traduced.

There they smote him with the flat of their hands, and spat upon him. It was their intention to hang the fool, but better counsel prevailed, and on his signing, in terrorem, a doc.u.ment they placed before him, they gave him warning to depart to another state. And on his promising to do so, they let him go.

But the next day he refused to leave; and his flas.h.i.+ng wit still filled the air, now embittered through the outrage visited upon him.

His enemies held prayer-meetings, invoking divine aid for the fool's conversion--or extinction. One man quoted David's prayer concerning s.h.i.+mmei: "bring thou down his h.o.a.r head to the grave in blood!" And others still, prayed, "let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow."

But still the fool flourished his bauble.

Then they shot him.

That hand which wrote the most Carlylean phrase of any in America is cold and stiff. That teeming brain which held a larger vocabulary than that of any man in America is only clay that might stop a hole to keep the wind away. That soul through which surged thoughts too great for speech has gone a-journeying.

Brann is dead.

No more shall we see that lean, clean, homely face, with its melancholy smile. No more shall we hear the fool eloquently, and oh! so foolishly, plead the cause of the weak, the unfortunate, the vicious. No more shall we behold the tears of pity glisten in those sad eyes as his heart was wrung by the tale of suffering and woe.

His children are fatherless, his wife a widow.

Brann the Fool is dead.--The Mirror.

April 14th, 1898.

WILLIAM COWPER BRANN.

BY J. D. SHAW.

William Cowper Brann was born in Humboldt Towns.h.i.+p, Coles County, Illinois, January 4, 1855. He was not raised in the home of his parents, though his father, Rev. n.o.ble Brann, survived him, and is still living. His mother having died when he was two and a half years old, he was within the next six months placed in the care of Mr. William Hawkins, a Coles County farmer, with whom he lived about ten years. As to his childhood experiences on the Hawkins' farm nothing is now known. They were probably such as are common to children raised in the country. Of Mr. Hawkins he always spoke kindly, referring to him as "Pa Hawkins." His nature was not suited to farm life, however, and he finally made up his mind to see more of the world, hence without ever having disclosed his resolution to any one, he quietly walked away one dark and cheerless night, carrying in a small box under his arm all that he then possessed, and leaving behind him the friends of his childhood in the only place he had ever known as his home, thus entering upon the active struggle of life at thirteen years of age, without friends, dest.i.tute of means, and almost entirely uneducated.

The first position he obtained was that of bell boy in a hotel. Later on he learned to be a painter and grainer, then a printer, a reporter, and finally an editorial writer.

He was energetic, industrious and painstaking in whatever he undertook to do, therefore always employed.

Early in his struggle he realized the need of an education, in the acquirement of which he applied himself with eager diligence. Nature had endowed him with keen perceptive powers, a retentive memory and great mental vigor, by means of which he soon acc.u.mulated considerable knowledge.

Every moment that could be spared from his daily toil was spent in reading books of science, philosophy, history, biography and general literature. In this way he became thoroughly informed on almost every important subject, as will be seen by the contents of his writings.

On March 3, 1877, at Roch.e.l.le, Illinois, he was married to Miss Carrie Martin, who, with their two children, Grace Gertrude and William Carlyle is now living in the beautiful home, here at Waco, from which he was buried April 3, 1898.

During all the years, from the time he left the hospitable home of Mr. Hawkins, in 1868, until after he had successfully launched "Brann's ICONOCLAST," he suffered the hara.s.sing annoyances of extreme poverty, in the endurance of which he was cheerful, hopeful and diligent in the equipment of his mind preparatory to the work he always believed he would some day be able to accomplish.

Beginning his literary career as a reporter, he was soon made an editorial writer, in which capacity he became well-known throughout Illinois, Missouri and Texas. As such he was versatile, forceful and direct. There was no needless repet.i.tion of tiresome circ.u.mlocution in his composition. He possessed an inexhaustible vocabulary, from which he could always find the words best fitted to convey his meaning at the moment they were most needed, and every sentence was resplendent with an order of wit, humor and satire peculiar to a style original with himself.

In July, 1891, he issued at Austin, Texas, the first number of "Brann's ICONOCLAST." Only a few numbers appeared, when it was suspended and he resumed his editorial work, then on the Globe-Democrat, of St. Louis, Missouri, and later on the Express of San Antonio, Texas.

It was in connection with his first attempt to establish the ICONOCLAST that he delivered a few lectures that were well received. In later years he went upon the platform again with every prospect of a successful career in the lecture field.