CHAPTER X.

The Expansion of Billionaires. .

Of all the fables that adorn the rocky pathways of the human career there is none more unearthly in its weird and mysterious architecture than this fine invention of our own time that our affectionate monopolists are calling on the people to expand for their own good. Those unfortunate beings who are roasting in eternal torment must sometimes forget their heat and smile when our monopolists speak. The heart of the commercial monopolist, like the heart of Africa, has been discovered and explored. In fact he does not scruple to take his heart out and hang it up in public in the familiar shape of his daily deeds, and like a museum demonstrator with rod in hand, to point out the springs and tributaries of his motives. He has preached to us with holy and satisfied zeal for six generations: I am governed in all my actions by self-interest. If he had not preached it we have his deeds themselves, and what has he done that was not for self-interst?

Hence when he declares that expansion is for the good of the people, he declares it from self-interest; and when he asserts that his devotion to expansion is for the good of the country, he says that from self-interest also. And it is easy to see deep craft of his cozening words, for six generations of self-interest teaching and acting have brought the people to such a state of maudlin moral despair that if the powerful will merely do outward reverence to the bare name of disinterestedness and public good, they are thankfully rewarded for their lip worship by free permission to do all devilishness. If they will

but say all their crimes are done in the name of popular love the people are ready to die for them, though knowing that their love is no deeper than the word.

Now this is why we are hearing so much lately of 'the good of the laborers,' 'the good of the country,' and 'the good of the world.' It is a magic shield for the most diabolical wrongs and the most atrocious betrayals of the people. And it is a very aged shield, a magic that smells of thousands of years gone and of repeated use by all manner of now despised tyrants and destroyers. Why then does the magic live? Why work on nineteenth century intelligence which is full of scientific antidotes for antique fascinations? Perhaps we are not shrewd, perhaps we only boast. The Athenians were a smart people, like the Americans, but doses of this primordial magic always operated on them and turned them into temporary lunatics.

Alcibiades was a man who, like our present millionaire monopolists, had unbounded aspirations for his country, knowing that the more his country acquired the more would he have to monopolize from it. His career is a

marvelous forecast of what our millionaires would do when in these days of vanishing general virility they came into their inheritance. He was like our millionaires in many ways. Plutarch has recorded that his abilities "were tarnished by his luxurious living, his drinking and debauches, his effeminacy in dress, and his insolent profusion." His heart was set on the expansion of Athens, and he was ever 'exhorting the Athenians to assert the empire of the land, as well as of the sea; and ever putting the young warriors in mind to show by their deeds that they remembered an oath they had taken to consider wheat, barley, vine, and olives as the bounds of Attica, insinuating by this that they should endeavor to possess themselves of all lands that are cultivated and fruitful." Now the island of Sicily was to Alcibiades what the Philippines are to our imperialist millionaires. The

Athenians had a desire after Sicily' and when Pericles died they attempted it'; "frequently under pretence of succoring their allies, sending aids of men and money to such of the Sicilians as were attacked by the Syracusans." The Greeks who taught us philosophy, poetry, art, and morals, also instructed us how to take the land of others that we covet, 'under pretence of succoring our allies.' "This," continues the unsparing Plutarch, who must have had his eye on us down the ages, “was a step to greater armaments." "But Alcibiades," like our own brilliant orators and commercial imperialists, "inflamed this desire to an irresistable degree, and persuaded them not to attempt the island in part, and little by little, but to send a powerful fleet to entirely subdue it. He inspired the people with hopes of great things, and indulged himself in expectations still more lofty; for he did not, like the rest, consider Sicily as the end of his wishes, but rather as an introduction to the mighty expeditions he had conceived." He was "dreaming of Carthage and of Libya and after these were gained, had designed to grasp Italy and Peloponnesus, regarding Sicily as little more than a magazine for provisions and warlike stores." In these events what a distinct and wonderful likeness of ourselves! Our wealthy and luxurious classes inspire the people with hopes of great things, letting the popular mind rest on the Philippines, which are a step to greater armaments, but the soaring minds of these monopolists are on greater things, and these islands are but the introduction to mightier expeditions which they have conceived; for their dreams stretch on to the vast regions of China for which enterprises the Philippines are regarded as little more than a magazine for provisions and warlike stores. The glory of Athens and the country's good were the magic arguments of the unprincipled Alcibiades to win the people over to his splendid schemes; but his real motive "In these distant expeditions he beheld a means of gratifying his passion for adventure and glory,

and at the same time of retrieving his fortune, which had been dilapidated by his profligate expenditure."* "He wished not merely to outshine his fellow citizens, but to outstrip all Greece in glory and splendor," a modest design which the malicious have begun to suspect of our potentates of trade and wealth.

And what came of Athenian imperialism? It was not hard to turn the heads of the people. "Five years of comparative peace had accumulated a fresh supply both of men and money; and the merchants of Athens embarked in the enterprise as in a trading expedition. As the ships were preparing to slip their moorings, the sound of the trumpet enjoined silence, and the voice of the herald, accompanied by the people, was lifted up in prayer.” (Smith.) (Smith.) They were going out to plunder another people and they asked God's help. But this imperial policy led directly to the degradation and decline of Athens. A rival power saw with dread her ambition for empire and sent a fleet to the support of Sicily; the campaign ended in the destruction of the Athenian ships and the annihilation of an army which after heavy defeats still numbered 40,000. If citizens of the republican United States two thousand three hundred years later are not as infatuated and crazy as the Athenians were they may learn something from this grim story. "Thus the Sicilian expedition [originated by men of wild ambition for personal objects of glory and wealth] ended in a series of events, which to this day excite feelings of horror, the primary cause of the failure of this expedition consisted in the fact that the Athenian people had deserted the principles of Pericles. It was his policy, after having secured to Athens such an enviable position, to act simply on the defensive, and not to run any risk by pursuing a dangerous offensive course; therefore the first mistake of the Athenians was in sending any expedition at all to Sicily."‡

*William Smith. "History of Greece": p. 329. +Pennell, "Ancient Greece": p. 81.

Pennell, pp. 88, 89.

This was the Monroe doctrine of Pericles. He was a statesman with an eye like Washington's to the conditions of Athenian perpetuity and strength, but when he was gone and could no longer interpose the serene strength of his will the adventurous bloods, the selfinterested merchants and the truculent fire-eaters pronounced Pericles a 'little Athenian' and his sagacious policy of holding the city free from the entanglements of conquest a copperhead absurdity before the full-grown strength of the nation; and the end was that the forces sent out to conquer were destroyed, Athens itself shorn of protection was taken, its shipping was burned and its long walls destroyed. The Platts, Hannas, Depews and Roosevelts, the McKinleys, Algers and Roots, and the great merchant syndicates and trusts had prevailed, all who opposed them were traitors to the magnificent destiny of Athens, the magic formula 'For the good of the people' prevailed, and Athens was stretched powerless in the dust.

The principal Athenian expansionist, whose zeal was to use his country to fill his pockets and replenish his fortunes, and whose harangues on the glory in store for the people brought them over to his side, showed a little later on how sincere his care for the people was by inciting the nobility to "exert their superiority, repess the insolence of the commonalty, and taking the government into their own hands, by that means save their country." By overthrow of popular government this man planned to open the road to his own return to Athens, after 'depriving the people of their power and pivileges.' These things happened in a city which Milton has called

the eye of Greece, mother of arts

And eloquence, native to famous wits,” yet all the shrewdness of this shrewd race was not qualified to stand against the arts of flattery and fraud of one seductive creature supported by that potent engine of