Fair Play from Valley Falls, Kansas • 6

FAIR FLAY. Vol. H. 100. able to earn money lie is barely living upon the cheapest and the most scant supplies of food.

A soldier of peace, upon whose hands there is no stain of blood, he richly deserves the pension which the comrades of liberty should voluntarily bestow upon him. lie has earned all and more than he will ever receive. His address is, J. II. Cook, Columbus, Kas.

"V-A-IRIOTJS "VOICES. STUART AND HIS NINTH DEMAND. Mr. F. Q.

Stuart of the Denver Individualist has created a great stir in Anarchistic cir-cles with his Ninth Demand. Mr. Stuart contends with great force that to allow one individual, or even a minority in a given community, to monopolize the highways, would be an invasion. The highways are for the general public, and their use should be equally open to everybody. But as this use must be regulated by some system, it seems to the writer that such regulation must be determined by the majority, in case of disagreement.

If we trust liberty and follow her, the individual wants of the social organism will not be so selfish as they are under the present system of spoliation and exploitation, therefore I conclude that those things which are for the common good of any given community can be regulated by conference, co-operation and concessions among and of those units. Am I correct? If not, why not? Marius. DO NOT LIKE PLAIN SPEAKING, No 67 of Fair Play was received to-day. I desire a respite for another five weeks, as money with me is always scarce. I like your enlightening and instructive paper.

What you preach has been for years my creed, but when I try to impress the same ideas on the minds of some of my customers, ihey rebel. They call me "too damned independent" because I don't worship a fine coat nor anybody's money. They call me a crank, an Infidel, an Anarchist, because I am poor, without influence, friendless and all alone, and treat me almost as an outcast, but one thing they don't call me they at least don't consider me a coward. They almost spit fire when I tell them that it is the workingman who is the workingman's greatest enemy; servile, cringing to his supposed superiors, tyrannical to his seeming inferiors, and they can't digest my bluntness, and consider me an old crusty well, I can't help it, it is my disposition and my conviction. An old friend, (that is, when I was in better circumstances,) told me after I had arrived at the foot of the hill that once I had friends, what a comfort to know but since I had always treated my enemies and my friends with equal vigor I was to blame that I had none to-day.

Well, no company is better than bad company, and books and papers afford me good company. Arnold Rohr. Keokuk, Iowa. IT WAS DIRECTLY IMPLIED. Comrade Walker Permit me, I pray, to say a few words about your comment on some expressions of mine in the Individualist.

I reproduce both quotation and comment The mental conditions which produce a lawyer can never produce an Anarchist. But the indorsement of such utterances, anti-Anarchistic sayings of Ingersoll by friend Stuart has surprised me though I am sure that at the present time he knows better and soon will know best for he is a progressive thinker. Marie Lou ise, in Individualist. "The mental conditions which produce a lawyer can never produce an Anarchist," says Marie Louise, and yet she is sure Stuart is on the road Anarchyward. Stuart is a lawyer.

in Fair Play. I never said that Stuart is on the road Anarchyward but on the road truthwari, as his efforts to reason logically and his broad-mindedness reveal. I am not so bigoted in Anarchism that nothing short of that conception should appeal to my approval. Frank Q. Stuart may never see in "Anarchism the telling truth and beauty which so captivate me, but he may be more liberal or progressive than myself.

Regarding my statement that the mental conditions which produce a lawyer can never produce an Anarchist," I am at a loss to see where I erred. That F. Q. Stuart took degrees in Law has nothing to do with the case. He does not pretend to be an Anarchist," and if he is a thoroughbred lawyer like R.

G. Ingersoll, he will never become a votary to "Anarchism." But is he a thoroughbred lawyer I have been brought up an orthodox Presbyterian. Where am I now New York. Yours for Liberty, Marie Louise. So that laws when prudently framed are by no mean subversive, but rather introductive of liberty for, as Mr.

Locke has well observed, where there is no law there is no freedom. But on the other hand that constitution or frame of government, that system of laws is alone calculated to maintain civil liberty, which leaves the subject entire master of his own conduct, except in those points wherein the public good requires some direction or restraint." Black-stone's Commentaries, paye 125, Book I. Respectfully submitted, with the question, asked in good faith, Is not the remedy for the present muddle of our laws to be found rather in reconstruction, than in annihilation. K. D.

C. FROM STILL ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW. Editors Fair Play I perceive in your issue of April 5 which some one has kindly sent me) that Caroline de Maupassant has some adverse criticism to offer upon "Women's Conventions." I have not seen the letter of Mrs. Clark to which she refers, but infer it contained a similar castigation. I believe I am as radical an Anarchist as Mine, de Maupassant herself, at least the Washington papers accused me of blood-thirsty revolutiouism," which is generally held to be a little worse than the pure philosophy of Anarchism.

I opposed the ballot, and every form of coercion, upon the platform of the W. N. L. and yet I am a member of that organization, and see no reason why it should be denominated either selfish or bigoted. True, the major portion of its founders are suffragists; true, equal suffrage is announced as one ot the objects of the organization.

But there are three objects, and acceptance of but one qualifies for membership. There is no sex exclusion, though that may, unfortunately, be inferred from the name. It is not our business to separate, but to unite all who can unite upon the principle of opposition to the dominating spirit of Churchocracy the spirit of authoritarianism. Personally, my chief battle is with the State: I frankly announced it to Mrs. Gage and others, nor was the statement received with selfishness or bigotry.

And it occurs to me that a platform which can tolerate a Roman Catholic, a Quaker, a Spiritualist, a Universalist, a Theosophist and an Anarchist, as ours did in the persons of Charlotte Smith, Belva Lock-wood, Henrietta Westbrook, Olympia Brown, Elliott Coues, and myself, has at least an equal claim to fairness with those who condemn the agitative work of others as "puerile." Where would be, to-day, the well-deserved success of Hugh Pentecost, if he, Anarchist as he is, had derided the work even of totally opposite schools of reform. There might, indeed, lie cause for the reproach of "bigotry." Inequitable. conditions condemn us to the use of certain means of agitation, and let it not be forgotten that these were obtained by rebellion, in their day stigmatized as of a "blood-thirsty and revolutionary character,) and if those means take the form of conventions, speech-making, press reports, "blue-stocking efforts," the business of unification can certainly not be served by crying bigot because all the platforms, all the speeches, and all the reports, do not represent our own particular pet views, or the efforts be dyed in that particular shade which suits our especial idea of true-blueness. Respectfully, Voltairine de Cleyre. USE "BUT NOT PREVENTION.

The theory of personal occupancy and use of vacant land as a title of possession does not seem to me to be a just one. The majority of the Anarchists believe in this theory, but in spite of this there is an unjustness in it which makes it very dangerous and un-Anarchistic. -I believe that every man has the light to the use of any portion of the earth that he may desire. This necessarily implies that no one man, or collection of men, can have sole right to the use of a particular spot for then every man could not have the right to the use of any particular spot. While it is the right of any person to use any portion of the earth's surface, the fact that they are using it does not give them the power to prevent others from using it also, The right to the use of the earth I thinkfjust, but not the right to prevent others from using it.

If possession and use is to be a title to land the inevitable outcome of it will be rent the demand of price for natural advantage as by occupying and using land a person could hold it from all others until some one in search of such natural advantages as that piece of land contained desired it, whereupon the occupant could demand a price for the privilege of allowing the newcomer the use of the land. The inevitable fluctuations in value which result from changes in environment would also afford an opportunity for the demand of rent. It would be an easy matter for one so desiring to keep possession of a piece of land until some one paid him for leaving, and then take possession, by virtue of occupancy and use, of another piee of land, holding, it until paid to leave by some one desirous of the use of that Und, and so on. It is the right of every man to take what he wishes from the earth, and the taking of it makes it his, and it can not be taken from him but he has not the right to anything not taken from the earth, and therefore no right to prevent others from taking what they please. Of course if a man build a house he has a right to as much space as that house takes up, as the house represents material which he has taken from the earth, and as the taking of the material makes it his, he has a right to room to keep such material.

Everything must come from the earth, and everyone has the right to take what he wants. Everything must in time return to the earth and go to making the endless changes. The earthy therefore, again becomes the possessor of that which was taken from it, ready again to give out to whoever wishes to take. Under the personal occupancy and use theory, as I understand it, a man who might be so fortunate as to locate on land whfch contained a gold mine could prevent others from using it, and thus hold a purely natural advantage, not the result of his own labor. It is certainly his right to take what gold he wishes from the mine, but the mere fact that he got there first does not give him the right to prevent others from using, any more than the fact that I get to dinner first gives me the right to the whele tab'e.

He has as good a right to the mine as I have and I have as good a right to it as he has. In my opinion this is a much more important question than Yarros and Pentecost seem to think, judging from their recent utterances, and one which should receive more attention than it does from Anarchists. Mr. McCready seems to be about the only one who is giving this question the attention it deserves, and he is doing nobly. A Young Anarchist.

COMMUNISTIC ANARCHY." "Hence 4 Communistic Anarchy is a chimera." writes Wm. Trinkausin ycur No. 67. The why seems to be that value must b3 destroyed, arid upon the assumption that unless there is an artificial organization, private property can not cease to exist; no reasons are given, however, for his why," nor are any reasons adduced to show that the fundamentals of Communistic Anarchy are not correct. 0 The use of the word value may be questioned if it is used in the sense of worth, then good, but if the same sense as the Georgeites use the term economic rent" then it is not good.

If cost is the limit of price then value can be but the labor involved and no more, anything beyond this is a spurious value created by an abnormal demand, but if the producer in a condition of equal freedom controls more than he needs, it can be of no service to him except in procuring other commodities which others produce having the same value, cost.) Communism does not touch value at all, it neither increases nor decreases it, it simply affirms that if production be for the purpose of securing life and happiness that all men equally have the same right, and further affirms that men may not own or possess anything necessary to all as exclusive property. Giantedthat "the market is the medium through which individual activity manifeats itself" it does not involve anything claimed by Mr. Trinkaus, if man produces tho things for which he can receive the greatest social value in exchange then "social value" must be to him the position of advantage, to be obtained by violating equality; the possessor secures his advantage but he uses it to his exclusive benefit. Men as- FREE BANKING MR. LUM'S POSITION AND RECORD.

Editors Fair Play In the Freiheit for April 26, Johann Most attempts to notice my recent pamphlet on Economics of Anarchy." Had he left his comment confined to the charge that it was a bouigeois scheme, and a recommendation to his Yahoos to let it lie unread, I should not notice it. But he brings a charge that over a dozen times I admitted the organization of credit as proposed by Proudhon was a humbug, and that I did not believe it. If I simply say he lies, it would resolve itself into a question of veracity. But I can do more. The substance of Chapters 7, 8, and 9, dealing with this scheme appeared in the Alarm in New York City in Nos.

30, 31, 32, 34, and 35. It was attacked by a friend of Most's in subsequent numbers, and in No. 40 I replied under the editorial heading of Mutual Credit in which I defended mutual banking as now reproduced in my "Economics," Further, over and over again I asserted that freedom to exchange and to voluntarily organize credit was even more essential than free land. Again, New York friends who attended the Parsons Debating Club know that I incurred the opposition of the Communists by my constant assertion and defense of individ-ualism," as they were pleased to term it. When the Communists of the Most stripe withdrew their support for this reason and because, as Most expressed it once, they had been disappointed in their expectation of winning me over, there was not one who could bring the charge that I had ever been different than what I was when I edited the Alarm in this city.

As all this is matter of history to all my friends in New York City, whether of my "school or not, I leave it to them to reuder the verdict as to who is the liar. 129 Cortland Chicago. Fraternally, Dyer D. Lum, SOME EXTRACTS AND A QUESTION. The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with discernment to know good from evil, and with power of choosing those measures which seem to him most desirable, are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind.

But every man when lie enters into society gives up a part of his natural liberty, as the price of so valuable a purchase, and in consideration of receiving the advantages of mutual commerce, obliges himself to conform to those law which the com- munity has thought proper to establish, and this species of legal obedience and conformity is infinitely more desirable than the wild and savage liberty which is sacrificed to obtain it. Political, therefore, or civil liberty, which is that of a member of society, is no other than natural liberty, so far restrained (and no farther as is necessary anl expedient for the general advantage of the public. Hence we may collect that the law which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow-citizens, though it diminishes the natural increases the civil liberty of mankind but that every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of a subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly is a degree of tyranny, nay, that even laws themselves, whether made with or without our consent, if they regulate and constrain ourjeonduct in matters of mere indifference are regulations destructive of liberty..