The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce | Page 5

the enemy, the enemy too strong to permit the enactment
of adequate laws. The belief that a malcontent armed with freedom of
speech, a newspaper, a vote and a rifle is less dangerous than a
malcontent with a still tongue in his head, empty hands and under
police surveillance was abandoned, but all too late. From its fatuous
dream the nation was awakened by the noise of arms, the shrieks of
women and the red glare of burning cities.
Beginning with the slaughter at St. Louis on a night in the year 1920,
when no fewer than twenty-two thousand citizens were slain in the
streets and half the city destroyed, massacre followed massacre with
frightful rapidity. New York fell in the month following, many
thousands of its inhabitants escaping fire and sword only to be driven
into the bay and drowned, "the roaring of the water in their ears," says

Bardeal, "augmented by the hoarse clamor of their red-handed pursuers,
whose blood-thirst was unsated by the sea." A week later Washington
was destroyed, with all its public buildings and archives; the President
and his Ministry were slain, Congress was dispersed, and an unknown
number of officials and private citizens perished. Of all the principal
cities only Chicago and San Francisco escaped. The people of the
former were all anarchists and the latter was valorously and
successfully defended by the Chinese.
The urban anarchists were eventually subdued and some semblance of
order was restored, but greater woes and sharper shames awaited this
unhappy nation, as we shall see.
In turning from this branch of our subject to consider the causes of the
failure and bloody disruption of the great American republic other than
those inherent in the form of government, it may not be altogether
unprofitable to glance briefly at what seems to a superficial view the
inconsistent phenomenon of great material prosperity. It is not to be
denied that this unfortunate people was at one time singularly
prosperous, in so far as national wealth is a measure and proof of
prosperity. Among nations it was the richest nation. But at how great a
sacrifice of better things was its wealth obtained! By the neglect of all
education except that crude, elementary sort which fits men for the
coarse delights of business and affairs but confers no capacity of
rational enjoyment; by exalting the worth of wealth and making it the
test and touchstone of merit; by ignoring art, scorning literature and
despising science, except as these might contribute to the glutting of the
purse; by setting up and maintaining an artificial standard of morals
which condoned all offenses against the property and peace of every
one but the condoner; by pitilessly crushing out of their natures every
sentiment and aspiration unconnected with accumulation of property,
these civilized savages and commercial barbarians attained their sordid
end. Before they had rounded the first half-century of their existence as
a nation they had sunk so low in the scale of morality that it was
considered nothing discreditable to take the hand and even visit the
house of a man who had grown rich by means notoriously corrupt and
dishonorable; and Harley declares that even the editors and writers of
newspapers, after fiercely assailing such men in their journals, would
be seen "hobnobbing" with them in public places. (The nature of the

social ceremony named the "hobnob" is not now understood, but it is
known that it was a sign of amity and favor.) When men or nations
devote all the powers of their minds and bodies to the heaping up of
wealth, wealth is heaped up. But what avails it? It may not be amiss to
quote here the words of one of the greatest of the ancients whose
works--fragmentary, alas--have come down to us.
"Wealth has accumulated itself into masses; and poverty, also in
accumulation enough, lies impassably separated from it; opposed,
uncommunicating, like forces in positive and negative poles. The gods
of this lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones, less happy than
Epicurus's gods, but as indolent, as impotent; while the boundless
living chaos of ignorance and hunger welters, terrific in its dark fury,
under their feet. How much among us might be likened to a whited
sepulcher: outwardly all pomp and strength, but inwardly full of horror
and despair and dead men's bones! Iron highways, with their wains
fire-winged, are uniting all the ends of the land; quays and moles, with
their innumerable stately fleets, tame the ocean into one pliant bearer of
burdens; labor's thousand arms, of sinew and of metal, all-conquering
everywhere, from the tops of the mount down to the depths of the mine
and the caverns of the sea, ply unweariedly for the service of man; yet
man remains unserved. He has subdued this planet, his habitation