It is evident that it is not by the mere fact of a number of individuals finding themselves accidentally side by side that they acquire the character of an organized crowd. A thousand individuals accidentally gathered in a public place without any determined object in no way constitute a crowd, from the psychological point of view. To acquire the special characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of certain predisposing causes, of which we shall have to determine the nature.
The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary characteristics of a crowd about to become organized, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain violent emotions—such, for example, as a great national event—the characteristics of a psychological crowd. It will be sufficient in that case that a mere chance should bring them together for their acts at once to assume the characteristics peculiar to the acts of a crowd. At certain moments half a dozen men might constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen in the case of hundreds of men gathered together by accident. On the other hand, an entire nation, though there may be no visible agglomeration, may become a crowd under the action of certain influences.
It is not easy to describe the mind of crowds with exactness, because its organization varies not only according to race and composition but also according to the nature and intensity of the exciting causes to which crowds are subjected. The same difficulty, however, presents itself in the psychological study of an individual. It is only in novels that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an unvarying character. It is only the uniformity of the environment that creates the apparent uniformity of characters. I have shown elsewhere that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment. This explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal character of quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile servants.
It being impossible to study here all the successive degrees of organization of crowds, we shall concern ourselves more especially with such crowds as have attained to the phase of complete organization. In this way we shall see what crowds may become, but not what they invariably are. It is only in this advanced phase of organization that certain new and special characteristics are superposed on the unvarying and dominant character of the race; then takes place that turning, already alluded to, of all the feelings and thoughts of the collectivity in an identical direction. It is only under such circumstances, too, that what I have called above the psychological law of the mental unity of crowds comes into play.
The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act, were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from these possessed by each of the cells singly.
Contrary to an opinion which one is astonished to find coming from the pen of so acute a philosopher as Herbert Spencer, in the aggregate which constitutes a crowd there is in no sort a summing-up of or an average struck between its elements. What really takes place is a combination followed by the creation of new characteristics, just as in chemistry certain elements, when brought into contact—bases and acids, for example—combine to form a new body possessing properties quite different from those of the bodies that have served to form it.
It is easy to prove how much the individual forming part of a crowd differs from the isolated individual, but it is less easy to discover the causes of this difference. To obtain, at any rate, a glimpse of them it is necessary in the first place to call to mind the truth established by modern psychology that unconscious phenomena play an altogether preponderating part not only in organic life but also in the operations of the intelligence. The conscious life of the mind is of small importance in comparison with its unconscious life. The most subtle analyst, the most acute observer, is scarcely successful in discovering more than a very small number of the unconscious motives that determine his conduct.
The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation. It is more especially with respect to those unconscious elements that all the individuals belonging to it resemble each other, while it is principally in respect to the conscious elements of their character—the fruit of education, and yet more of exceptional hereditary conditions—that they differ from each other. Men most unlike in the matter of their intelligence possess instincts, passions, and feelings that are very similar. In the case of everything that belongs to the realm of sentiment—religion, politics, morality, the affections and antipathies, etc.—the most eminent men seldom surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. From the intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great mathematician and his bootmaker, but from the point of view of character the difference is most often slight or nonexistent.
It is precisely these general qualities of character, governed by forces of which we are unconscious, and possessed by the majority of the normal individuals of a race in much the same degree, it is precisely these qualities that in crowds become common property. In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand.
This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by "all the world" crowds are to be understood.
If the individuals of a crowd confined themselves to putting in common the ordinary qualities of which each of them has his share, there would merely result the striking of an average, and not, as we have said is actually the case, the creation of new characteristics. How is it that these new characteristics are created? This is what we are now to investigate.
Different causes determine the appearance of these characteristics peculiar to crowds and not possessed by isolated individuals. The first is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.
The second cause, which is contagion, also intervenes to determine the manifestation in crowds of their special characteristics, and at the same time the trend they are to take. Contagion is a phenomenon of which it is easy to establish the presence, but which it is not easy to explain. It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order. In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his nature, and of which a man is scarcely capable except when he makes part of a crowd.
A third cause, and by far the most important, determines in the individuals of a crowd special characteristics which are quite contrary at times to those presented by the isolated individual. I allude to that suggestibility of which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is neither more nor less than an effect.
The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immerged for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself—either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from some other cause of which we are ignorant—in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer.
Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotized subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more irresistible in the case of crowds than in that of the hypnotized subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the same for all the individuals of the crowd, it gains in strength by reciprocity. The individualities in the crowd who might possess a personality sufficiently strong to resist the suggestion are too few in number to struggle against the current. At the utmost, they may be able to attempt a diversion by means of different suggestions. It is in this way, for instance, that a happy expression, an image opportunely evoked, have occasionally deterred crowds from the most bloodthirsty acts.
We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning by means of suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas in an identical direction, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.
Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.
An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will. It is for these reasons that juries are seen to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would disapprove, that parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of which each of their members would disapprove in his own person. Taken separately, the men of the Convention were enlightened citizens of peaceful habits. United in a crowd, they did not hesitate to give their adhesion to the most savage proposals, to guillotine individuals most clearly innocent, and, contrary to their interest, to renounce their inviolability and to decimate themselves.
The conclusion to be drawn from what precedes is that the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual, but that, from the point of view of feelings and of the acts these feelings provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances, be better or worse than the individual. All depends on the nature of the suggestion to which the crowd is exposed. This is the point that has been completely misunderstood by writers who have only studied crowds from the criminal point of view. Doubtless a crowd is often criminal, but also it is often heroic. It is crowds rather than isolated individuals that may be induced to run the risk of death to secure the triumph of a creed or an idea, that may be fired with enthusiasm for glory and honor, that are led on—almost without bread and without arms, as in the age of the Crusades—to deliver the tomb of Christ from the infidel, or, as in '93, to defend the fatherland. Such heroism is without doubt somewhat unconscious, but it is of such heroism that history is made. Were peoples only to be credited with the great actions performed in cold blood, the annals of the world would register but few of them.
A crowd in the ordinary sense of that term is any chance collection of individuals. Such a collectivity becomes a crowd in the sociological sense only when a condition of rapport has been established among the individuals who compose it.
Rapport implies the existence of a mutual responsiveness, such that every member of the group reacts immediately, spontaneously, and sympathetically to the sentiments and attitudes of every other member.
The fact that A responds sympathetically toward B and C implies the existence in A of an attitude of receptivity and suggestibility toward the sentiments and attitudes of B and C. Where A, B, and C are mutually sympathetic, the inhibitions which, under ordinary circumstances, serve to preserve the isolation and self-consciousness of individuals are relaxed or completely broken down. Under these circumstances each individual, in so far as he may be said to reflect, in his own consciousness and in his emotional reactions, the sentiments and emotions of all the others, tends at the same time to modify the sentiments and attitudes of those others. The effect is to produce a heightened, intensified, and relatively impersonal state of consciousness in which all seem to share, but which is, at the same time, relatively independent of each.
The development of this so-called "group-consciousness" represents a certain amount of loss of self-control on the part of the individual. Such control as the individual loses over himself is thus automatically transferred to the group as a whole or to the leader.
What is meant by rapport in the group may be illustrated by a somewhat similar phenomenon which occurs in hypnosis. In this case a relation is established between the experimenter and his subject such that the subject responds automatically to every suggestion of the experimenter but is apparently oblivious of suggestions coming from other persons whose existence he does not perceive or ignores. This is the condition called "isolated rapport."[305]
In the case of the crowd this mutual and exclusive responsiveness of each member of the crowd to the suggestions emanating from the other members produces here also a kind of mental isolation which is accompanied by an inhibition of the stimuli and suggestions that control the behavior of individuals under the conditions of ordinary life. Under these conditions impulses long repressed in the individual may find an expression in the crowd. It is this, no doubt, which accounts for those so-called criminal and atavistic tendencies of crowds, of which Le Bon and Sighele speak.[306]
The organization of the crowd is only finally effected when the attention of the individuals who compose it becomes focused upon some particular object or some particular objective. This object thus fixed in the focus of the attention of the group tends to assume the character of a collective representation.[307] It becomes this because it is the focus of the collectively enhanced emotion and sentiment of the group. It becomes the representation and the symbol of what the crowd feels and wills at the moment when all members are suffused with a common collective excitement and dominated by a common and collective idea. This excitement and this idea with the meanings that attach to it are called collective because they are a product of the interactions of the members of the crowd. They are not individual but corporate products.
Le Bon describes the organization thus effected in a chance-met collection of individuals as a "collective mind," and refers to the group, transitory and ephemeral though it be, as a "single being."
The positive factors in determining the organization of the crowd are then:
(1) A condition of rapport among the members of the group with a certain amount of contagious excitement and heightened suggestibility incident to it.
(2) A certain degree of mental isolation of the group following as a consequence of the rapport and sympathetic responsiveness of members of the group.
(3) Focus of attention; and finally the consequent.
(4) Collective representation.
It was near the middle of July when the steamer Excelsior arrived in San Francisco from St. Michael's, on the west coast of Alaska, with forty miners, having among them seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of gold, brought down from the Klondike. When the bags and cans and jars containing it had been emptied and the gold piled on the counters of the establishment to which it was brought, no such sight had been seen in San Francisco since the famous year of 1849.
On July 18 the Portland arrived in Seattle, on Puget Sound, having on board sixty-eight miners, who brought ashore bullion worth a million dollars. The next day it was stated that these miners had in addition enough gold concealed about their persons and in their baggage to double the first estimate. Whether all these statements were correct or not does not signify, for those were the reports that were spread throughout the states. From this last source alone, the mint at San Francisco received half a million dollars' worth of gold in one week, and it was certain that men who had gone away poor had come back with fortunes. It was stated that a poor blacksmith who had gone up from Seattle returned with $115,000, and that a man from Fresno, who had failed as a farmer, had secured $135,000.
The gold fever set in with fury and attacked all classes. Men in good positions, with plenty of money to spend on an outfit, and men with little beyond the amount of their fare, country men and city men, clerks and professional men without the faintest notion of the meaning of "roughing it," flocked in impossible numbers to secure a passage. There were no means of taking them. Even in distant New York, the offices of railroad companies and local agencies were besieged by anxious inquirers eager to join the throng. On Puget Sound, mills, factories, and smelting works were deserted by their employees, and all the miners on the upper Skeena left their work in a body. On July 21 the North American Transportation Company (one of two companies which monopolized the trade of the Yukon) was reincorporated in Chicago with a quadrupled capital, to cope with the demands of traffic. At the different Pacific ports every available vessel was pressed into the service, and still the wild rush could not be met. Before the end of July the Portland left Seattle again for St. Michael's, and the Mexico and Topeka for Dyea; the Islander and Tees sailed for Dyea from Victoria, and the G. W. Elder from Portland; while from San Francisco the Excelsior, of the Alaska Company, which had brought the first gold down, left again for St. Michael's on July 28, being the last of the company's fleet scheduled to connect with the Yukon river boats for the season. Three times the original price was offered for the passage, and one passenger accepted an offer of $1,500 for the ticket for which he had paid only $150.
This, however, was only the beginning of the rush. Three more steamers were announced to sail in August for the mouth of the Yukon, and at least a dozen more for the Lynn Canal, among which were old tubs, which, after being tied up for years, were now overhauled and refitted for the voyage north. One of these was the Williamette, an old collier with only sleeping quarters for the officers and crew, which, however, was fitted up with bunks and left Seattle for Dyea and Skagway with 850 passengers, 1,200 tons of freight, and 300 horses, men, live stock, and freight being wedged between decks till the atmosphere was like that of a dungeon; and even with such a prospect in view, it was only by a lavish amount of tipping that a man could get his effects taken aboard. Besides all these, there were numerous scows loaded with provisions and fuel, and barges conveying horses for packing purposes.
A frightful state of congestion followed as each successive steamer on its arrival at the head of the Lynn Canal poured forth its crowds of passengers and added to the enormous loads of freight already accumulated. Matters became so serious that on August 10 the United States Secretary of the Interior, having received information that 3,000 persons with 2,000 tons of baggage and freight were then waiting to cross the mountains to Yukon, and that many more were preparing to join them, issued a warning to the public (following that of the Dominion Government of the previous week) in which he called attention to the exposure, privation, suffering, and danger incident to the journey at that advanced period of the season, and further referred to the gravity of the possible consequences to people detained in the mountainous wilderness during five or six months of Arctic winter, where no relief could reach them.
To come now to the state of things at the head of the Lynn Canal, where the steamers discharged their loads of passengers, horses, and freight. This was done either at Dyea or Skagway, the former being the landing-place for the Chilcoot Pass, and the latter for the White Pass, the distance between the two places being about four miles by sea. There were no towns at these places, nor any convenience for landing except a small wharf at Skagway, which was not completed, the workmen having been smitten with the gold fever. Every man had to bring with him, if he wanted to get through and live, supplies for a year: sacks of flour, slabs of bacon, beans, and so forth, his cooking utensils, his mining outfit and building tools, his tent, and all the heavy clothing and blankets suitable for the northern winter, one thousand pounds' weight at least. Imagine the frightful mass of stuff disgorged as each successive vessel arrived, with no adequate means of taking it inland!
Before the end of September people were preparing to winter on the coast, and Skagway was growing into a substantial town. Where in the beginning of August there were only a couple of shacks, there were in the middle of October 700 wooden buildings and a population of about 1,500. Businesses of all kinds were carried on, saloons and low gaming houses and haunts of all sorts abounded, but of law and order there was none. Dyea also, which at one time was almost deserted, was growing into a place of importance, but the title of every lot in both towns was in dispute. Rain was still pouring down, and without high rubber boots walking was impossible. None indeed but the most hardy could stand existence in such places, and every steamer from the south carried fresh loads of people back to their homes.
Of the 6,000 people who went in this fall, 200 at the most got over to the Dawson Route by the White Pass, and perhaps 700 by the Chilcoot. There were probably 1,000 camped at Lake Bennett, and all the rest, except the 1,500 remaining on the coast, had returned home to wait till midwinter or the spring before venturing up again. The question of which was the best trail was still undecided, and men vehemently debated it every day with the assistance of the most powerful language at their command.
As to the crowds who had gone to St. Michael's, it is doubtful whether any of them got through to Dawson City, since the lower Yukon is impassable by the end of September, and, at any rate, in view of the prospects of short rations, it would have been rash to try. The consequence would be that they would have to remain on that desolate island during nine months of almost Arctic winter, for the river does not open again till the end of June. Here they would be absolutely without employment unless they chose to stack wood for the steamboat companies, and their only amusements (save the mark) would be drinking bad rye whiskey—for Alaska is a "prohibition" country—and poker-playing. For men with a soul above such delights, the heart-breaking monotony of a northern winter would be appalling, and it is only to be understood by those who have had to endure similar experiences themselves on the western prairies.
On the evening of December 23, 1873, there might have been seen in the streets of Hillsboro, Ohio, persons singly or in groups wending their way to Music Hall, where a lecture on temperance was to be delivered by Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, Massachusetts.
Hillsboro is a small place, containing something more than 3,000 people. The inhabitants are rather better educated than is usually the case in small towns, and its society is indeed noted in that part of the country for its quietude, culture, and refinement.
But Hillsboro was by no means exempt from the prevailing scourge of intemperance. The early settlers of Hillsboro were mostly from Virginia, and brought with them the old-fashioned ideas of hospitality. For many years previous to the crusade the professional men, and especially of the bar, were nearly all habitual drinkers, and many of them very dissipated. When a few earnest temperance men, among whom was Governor Allen Trimble, initiated a total-abstinence movement in or about the year 1830, the pulpit took up arms against them, and a condemnatory sermon was preached in one of the churches.
Thus it was that, although from time to time men, good and true, banded themselves together in efforts to break up this dreadful state of things and reform society, all endeavors seemed to fail of any permanent effect.
The plan laid down by Dr. Lewis challenged attention by its novelty at least. He believed the work of temperance reform might be successfully carried on by women if they would set about it in the right manner—going to the saloon-keeper in a spirit of Christian love, and persuading him for the sake of humanity and his own eternal welfare to quit the hateful, soul-destroying business. The doctor spoke with enthusiasm; and seeing him so full of faith, the hearts of the women seized the hope—a forlorn one, 'tis true, but still a hope—and when Dr. Lewis asked if they were willing to undertake the task, scores of women rose to their feet, and there was no lack of good men who pledged themselves to encourage and sustain the women in their work.
At a subsequent meeting an organization was effected and Mrs. Eliza J. Thompson, a daughter of ex-Governor Trimble of Ohio, was elected chairman. Mrs. Thompson gives the following account of the manner in which the crusade was organized:
My boy came home from Dr. Dio Lewis' lecture and said, "Ma, they've got you into business"; and went on to tell that Dio Lewis had incidentally related the successful effort of his mother, by prayer and persuasion, to close the saloon in a town where he lived when a boy, and that he had exhorted the women of Hillsboro to do the same, and fifty had risen up to signify their willingness, and that they looked to me to help them to carry out their promise. As I'm talking to you here familiarly, I'll go on to say that my husband, who had retired, and was in an adjoining room, raised up on his elbow and called out, "Oh! that's all tomfoolery!" I remember I answered him something like this: "Well, husband, the men have been in the tomfoolery business a long time; perhaps the Lord is going to call us into partnership with them." I said no more. The next morning my brother-in-law, Colonel ——, came in and told me about the meeting, and said, "Now, you must be sure to go to the women's meeting at the church this morning; they look to see you there." Our folks talked it all over, and my husband said, "Well, we all know where your mother'll take this case for counsel," and then he pointed to the Bible and left the room.
I went into the corner of my room, and knelt down and opened my Bible to see what God would say to me. Just at that moment there was a tap on the door and my daughter entered. She was in tears; she held her Bible in her hand, open to the 146th Psalm. She said, "Ma, I just opened to this, and I think it is for you," and then she went away, and I sat down and read
"Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God; which keepeth truth forever; which executeth judgment for the oppressed; the Lord looseth the prisoners; the Lord openeth the eyes of the blind; the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down; the Lord loveth the righteous; the Lord relieveth the fatherless and the widow—but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down. The Lord shall reign forever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the Lord!"
I knew that was for me, and I got up, put on my shoes, and started. I went to the church, in this town where I was born. I sat down quietly in the back part of the audience room, by the stove. A hundred ladies were assembled. I heard my name—heard the whisper pass through the company, "Here she is!" "She's come!" and before I could get to the pulpit, they had put me "in office"—I was their leader.
Many of our citizens were there, and our ministers also. They stayed a few minutes, and then rose and went out, saying, "This is your work—we leave it with the women and the Lord." When they had gone, I just opened the big pulpit Bible and read that 146th Psalm, and told them the circumstance of my selecting it. The women sobbed so I could hardly go on. When I had finished, I felt inspired to call on a dear Presbyterian lady to pray. She did so without the least hesitation, though it was the first audible prayer in her life. I can't tell you anything about that prayer, only that the words were like fire.
When she had prayed, I said—and it all came to me just at the moment—"Now, ladies, let us file out, two by two, the smallest first, and let us sing as we go, 'Give to the winds thy fears.'"
We went first to John ——'s saloon. Now, John was a German, and his sister had lived in my family thirteen years, and she was very mild and gentle, and I hoped it might prove a family trait, but I found out it wasn't. He fumed about dreadfully and said, "It's awful; it's a sin and a shame to pray in a saloon!" But we prayed right on just the same.
Next day the ladies held another meeting, but decided not to make any visitations, it being Christmas day, and the hotel-keepers more than usually busy and not likely to listen very attentively to our proposition.
On the twenty-sixth, the hotels and saloons were visited; Mrs. Thompson presenting the appeal. And it was on this morning, and at the saloon of Robert Ward, that there came a break in the established routine. "Bob" was a social, jolly sort of fellow, and his saloon was a favorite resort, and there were many women in the company that morning whose hearts were aching in consequence of his wrong-doing. Ward was evidently touched. He confessed that it was a "bad business," said if he could only "afford to quit it he would," and then tears began to flow from his eyes. Many of the ladies were weeping, and at length, as if by inspiration, Mrs. Thompson kneeled on the floor of the saloon, all kneeling with her, even the saloonist, and prayed, pleading with indescribable pathos and earnestness for the conversion and salvation of this and all saloon-keepers. When the amen was sobbed rather than spoken, Mrs. Washington Doggett's sweet voice began, "There is a fountain," etc., in which all joined; the effect was most solemn, and when the hymn was finished the ladies went quietly away, and that was the first saloon prayer meeting.
There was a saloon-keeper brought from Greenfield to H—— to be tried under the Adair law. The poor mother who brought the suit had besought him not to sell to her son—"her only son." He replied roughly that he would sell to him "as long as he had a dime." Another mother, an old lady, made the same request, "lest," she said, "he may some day fill a drunkard's grave." "Madam," he replied, "your son has as good a right to fill a drunkard's grave as any other mother's son." And in one of the Hillsboro saloons a lady saw her nephew. "O, Mr. B——," said she, "don't sell whiskey to that boy: if he has one drink he will want another, and he may die a drunkard." "Madam, I will sell to him if it sends his soul to hell," was the awful reply. The last man is a peculiarly hard, stony sort of man; his lips look as if chiseled out of flint, a man to be afraid of. One morning, when the visiting band reached his door, they found him in a very bad humor. He locked his door and seated himself on the horse block in front in a perfect rage, clenched his fist, swore furiously, and ordered us to go home. Some gentlemen, on the opposite side of the street, afterward said that they were watching the scene, ready to rush over and defend the ladies from an attack, and they were sure it would come; but one of the ladies, a sweet-souled woman, gentle and placid, kneeled just at his feet, and poured out such a tender, earnest prayer for him, that he quieted down entirely, and when she rose and offered him her hand in token of kind feeling, he could not refuse to take it.
During the Crusade, a saloon-keeper (at Ocean Grove) consented to close his business. There was a great deal of enthusiasm and interest, and we women decided to compensate the man for his whiskey and make a bonfire of it in the street. A great crowd gathered about the saloon, and the barrels of whiskey were rolled out to the public square where we were to have our bonfire. Myself and two other little women, who had been chosen to knock in the heads, and had come to the place with axes concealed under our shawls, went to our work with a will.
I didn't know I was so strong, but I lifted that axe like a woodman and brought it down with such force that the first blow stove in the head of a barrel and splashed the whiskey in every direction. I was literally baptized with the noxious stuff. The intention was to set it on fire, and we had brought matches for that purpose, but it would not burn! It was a villainous compound of some sort, but we had set out to have a fire, and were determined by some means or other to make it burn, so we sent for some coal oil and poured it on and we soon had a blaze. The man who could sell such liquors would not be likely to keep the pledge. He is selling liquors again.
The crusade began at Washington C.H. only two days later than at Hillsboro. And Washington C.H. was the first place where the crusade was made prominent and successful.
On Friday morning, December 26, 1873, after an hour of prayer in the M.E. Church, forty-four women filed slowly and solemnly down the aisle, and started forth upon their strange mission with fear and trembling, while the male portion of the audience remained at the church to pray for the success of this new undertaking; the tolling of the church-bell keeping time to the solemn march of the women, as they wended their way to the first drug-store on the list. (The number of places within the city limits where intoxicating drinks were sold was fourteen—eleven saloons and three drug-stores.) Here, as in every place, they entered singing, every woman taking up the sacred strain as she crossed the threshold. This was followed by the reading of the appeal and prayer; then earnest pleading to desist from their soul-destroying traffic and sign the dealer's pledge.
Thus, all the day long, they went from place to place, without stopping even for dinner or lunch, till five o'clock, meeting with no marked success; but invariably courtesy was extended to them; not even their reiterated promise, "We will call again," seeming to offend.
No woman who has ever entered one of these dens of iniquity on such an errand needs to be told of the heartsickness that almost over-came them as they, for the first time, saw behind those painted windows or green blinds, or entered the little stifling "back room," or found their way down winding steps into the damp, dark cellars, and realized that into such places those they loved best were being landed, through the allurements of the brilliantly lighted drug-store, the fascinating billiard table, or the enticing beer gardens, with their siren attractions. A crowded house at night, to hear the report of the day's work, betrayed the rapidly increasing interest in this mission.
On the twenty-seventh the contest really began, and, at the first place, the doors were found locked. With hearts full of compassion, the women knelt in the snow upon the pavement, to plead for the divine influence upon the heart of the liquor-dealer, and there held their first street prayer meeting.
At night the weary but zealous workers reported at a mass meeting of the various rebuffs, and the success in having two druggists sign the pledge not to sell, except upon the written prescription of a physician.
The Sabbath, was devoted to union mass meeting, with direct reference to the work in hand; and on Monday the number of ladies had increased to near one hundred. That day, December 29, is one long to be remembered in Washington, as the day upon which occurred the first surrender ever made by a liquor-dealer, of his stock of liquors of every kind and variety, to the women, in answer to their prayers and entreaties, and by them poured into the street. Nearly a thousand men, women, and children witnessed the mingling of beer, ale, wine, and whiskey, as they filled the gutters and were drunk up by the earth, while the bells were ringing, men and boys shouting, and women singing and praying to God who had given the victory. But on the fourth day, "stock sale-day," the campaign had reached its height, the town being filled with visitors from all parts of the county and adjoining villages. Another public surrender, and another pouring into the street of a larger stock of liquors than on the previous day, and more intense excitement and enthusiasm.
Mass meetings were held nightly, with new victories reported constantly, until on Friday, January 21, one week from the beginning of the work, at the public meeting held in the evening, the secretary's report announced the unconditional surrender of every liquor-dealer, some having shipped their liquors back to wholesale dealers, others having poured them into the gutters, and the druggists as all having signed the pledge. Thus a campaign of prayer and song had, in eight days, closed eleven saloons, and pledged three drug-stores to sell only on prescription. At first men had wondered, scoffed, and laughed, then criticized, respected, and yielded.
Morning prayer and evening mass meetings continued daily, and the personal pledge was circulated till over one thousand signatures were obtained. Physicians were called upon to sign a pledge not to prescribe ardent spirits when any other substitute could be found, and in no case without a personal examination of the patient.
Early in the third week the discouraging intelligence came that a new man had taken out a license to sell liquor in one of the deserted saloons, and that he was backed by a whiskey house in Cincinnati, to the amount of $5,000, to break down this movement. On Wednesday, 'the fourteenth, the whiskey was unloaded at his room. About forty women were on the ground and followed the liquor in, and remained holding an uninterrupted prayer meeting all day and until eleven o'clock at night. The next day, bitterly cold, was spent in the same place and manner, without fire or chairs, two hours of that time the women being locked in, while the proprietor was off attending a trial. On the following day, the coldest of the winter of 1874, the women were locked out, and stood on the street holding religious services all day long.
Next morning a tabernacle was built in the street, just in front of the house, and was occupied for the double purpose of watching and prayer through the day; and before night the sheriff closed the saloon, and the proprietor surrendered; thus ended the third week.
A short time after, on a dying-bed, this four days' liquor-dealer sent for some of these women, telling them their songs and prayers had never ceased to ring in his ears, and urging them to pray again in his behalf; so he passed away.
Thus, through most of the winter of 1874 no alcoholic drinks were publicly sold as a beverage in the county.
During the two intervening years weekly temperance-league meetings have been kept up by the faithful few, while frequent union mass meetings have been held, thus keeping the subject always before the people. Today the disgraceful and humiliating fact exists that there are more places where liquors are sold than before the crusade.
The outward life of men in every age is molded upon an inward life consisting of a framework of traditions, sentiments, and moral influences which direct their conduct and maintain certain fundamental notions which they accept without discussion.
Let the resistance of this social framework weaken, and ideas which could have had no force before will germinate and develop. Certain theories whose success was enormous at the time of the Revolution would have encountered an impregnable wall two centuries earlier.
The aim of these considerations is to recall to the reader the fact that the outward events of revolutions are always a consequence of invisible transformations which have slowly gone forward in men's minds. Any profound study of a revolution necessitates a study of the mental soil upon which the ideas that direct its courses have to germinate.
Generally slow in the extreme, the evolution of ideas is often invisible for a whole generation. Its extent can only be grasped by comparing the mental condition of the same social classes at the two extremities of the curve which the mind has followed.
The actual influence of the philosophers in the genesis of the Revolution was not that which was attributed to them. They revealed nothing new, but they developed the critical spirit which no dogma can resist, once the way is prepared for its downfall.
Under the influence of this developing critical spirit things which were no longer very greatly respected came to be respected less and less. When tradition and prestige had disappeared, the social edifice suddenly fell. This progressive disaggregation finally descended to the people, but was not commenced by them. The people follow examples, but never set them.
The philosophers, who could not have exerted any influence over the people, did exert a great influence over the enlightened portion of the nation. The unemployed nobility, who had long been ousted from their old functions and who were consequently inclined to be censorious, followed their leadership. Incapable of foresight, the nobles were the first to break with the traditions that were their only raison d'être. As steeped in humanitarianism and rationalism as the bourgeoisie of today, they continually sapped their own privileges by their criticisms. As today, the most ardent reformers were found among the favorites of fortune. The aristocracy encouraged dissertations on the social contract, the rights of man, and the equality of citizens. At the theater it applauded plays which criticized privileges, the arbitrariness and the incapacity of men in high places, and abuses of all kinds.
As soon as men lose confidence in the foundations of the mental framework which guides their conduct, they feel at first uneasy and then discontented. All classes felt their old motives of action gradually disappearing. Things that had seemed sacred for centuries were now sacred no longer.
The censorious spirit of the nobility and of the writers of the day would not have sufficed to move the heavy load of tradition but that its action was added to that of other powerful influences. We have already stated, in citing Bossuet, that under the ancien régime the religious and civil governments, widely separated in our day, were intimately connected. To injure one was inevitably to injure the other. Now even before the monarchical idea was shaken, the force of religious tradition was greatly diminished among cultivated men. The constant progress of knowledge had sent an increasing number of minds from theology to science by opposing the truth observed to the truth revealed.
This mental evolution, although as yet very vague, was sufficient to show that the traditions which for so many centuries had guided men had not the value which had been attributed to them, and that it would soon be necessary to replace them.
But where discover the new elements which might take the place of tradition? Where seek the magic ring which would raise a new social edifice on the remains of that which no longer contented men?
Men were agreed in attributing to reason the power that tradition and the gods seemed to have lost. How could its force be doubted? Its discoveries having been innumerable, was it not legitimate to suppose that by applying it to the construction of societies it would entirely transform them? Its possible function increased very rapidly in the thoughts of the more enlightened, in proportion as tradition seemed more and more to be distrusted.
The sovereign power attributed to reason must be regarded as the culminating idea which not only engendered the Revolution but governed it throughout. During the whole Revolution men gave themselves up to the most persevering efforts to break with the past and to erect society upon a new plan dictated by logic.
Slowly filtering downward, the rationalistic theories of the philosophers meant to the people simply that all the things which had been regarded as worthy of respect were now no longer worthy. Men being declared equal, the old masters need no longer be obeyed. The multitude easily succeeded in ceasing to respect what the upper classes themselves no longer respected. When the barrier of respect was down the Revolution was accomplished.
The first result of this new mentality was a general insubordination. Mme. Vigée Lebrun relates that on the promenade at Longchamps men of the people leaped on the footboards of the carriages, saying, "Next year you will be behind and we shall be inside."
The populace was not alone in manifesting insubordination and discontent. These sentiments were general on the eve of the Revolution. "The lesser clergy," says Taine, "are hostile to the prelates; the provincial gentry to the nobility of the court; the vassals to the seigneurs; the peasants to the townsmen, etc."
This state of mind, which had been communicated from the nobles and clergy to the people, also invaded the army. At the moment the States General were opened, Necker said: "We are not sure of the troops." The officers were becoming humanitarian and philosophical. The soldiers, recruited from the lowest class of the population, did not philosophize, but they no longer obeyed. In their feeble minds the ideas of equality meant simply the suppression of all leaders and masters, and therefore of all obedience. In 1790 more than twenty regiments threatened their officers, and sometimes, as at Nancy, threw them into prison.
The mental anarchy which, after spreading through all classes of society, finally invaded the army was the principal cause of the disappearance of the ancien régime. "It was the defection of the army affected by the ideas of the Third Estate," wrote Rivarol, "that destroyed royalty."
The genesis of the French Revolution, as well as its duration, was conditioned by elements of a rational, affective, mystic, and collective nature, each category of which was ruled by a different logic. The rational element usually invoked as an explanation exerted in reality but very slight influence. It prepared the way for the Revolution, but maintained it only at the outset, while it was still exclusively middle class. Its action was manifested by many measures of the time, such as the proposals to reform the taxes, the suppression of the privileges of a useless nobility, etc.
As soon as the Revolution reached the people, the influence of the rational elements speedily vanished before that of the affective and collective elements. As for the mystic elements, the foundation of the revolutionary faith, they made the army fanatical and propagated the new belief throughout the world.
We shall see these various elements as they appeared in events and in the psychology of individuals. Perhaps the most important was the mystic element. The Revolution cannot be clearly comprehended—we cannot repeat it too often—unless it is considered as the formation of a religious belief. What I have said elsewhere of all beliefs applies equally to the Revolution. They impose themselves on men apart from reason and have the power to polarize men's thoughts and feelings in one direction. Pure reason had never such a power, for men were never impassioned by reason.
The religious forms rapidly assumed by the Revolution explain its power of expansion and the prestige which it possessed and has retained. Few historians have understood that this great monument ought to be regarded as the foundation of a new religion. The penetrating mind of Tocqueville, I believe, was the first to perceive as much. He wrote: