XVII

Developing the spirit and means of Lothian Farm was a task strange and interesting enough to absorb Jael’s energies. She passed all of her time either there or at Little Jones Street, as an executive base; and of course followed the way of political events in New Freedom, now having the rôle of spectator only.

Capuchin, Semicorn, all the very radical elements of the Freemen’s League, grew more and more reckless.

The “Herald’s” campaign against Plaino became scandalous and personal. This was inevitable in human nature. It is all very plausible to begin, as the Semicorns do, by saying it is impersonal, that it is the system one attacks, not the man, or the man only as an accidental fact in his function of representing the system. But it is not possible to hate an abstract thing. Capitalism, for example, cannot be visualized as a system. It cannot be hated as a system. Emotion requires a definite object, responsible to the senses. This is proved by the necessity, which every demagogue obeys, of erecting human symbols of it to begin with. Presently the fact of representation becomes dim and the symbol itself is hated, as in the opposite case the deity is forgotten and the effigy worshipped. And so it was here.

At the outset, Semicorn and his associates believed in the idea of what they were doing; if in the doing of it they should happen to be unfair to an individual, to Plaino, namely, that was of no consequence. Worse luck to him; he ought not to be that symbol. Eventually they came to believe what they wrote about him as a person, and to hate him as a person; and so it was also with their readers. Plaino himself was the monster. All the rage, the fear, the recriminatory passions rising among the fanatical Leaguers, especially toward the end when they began to have a premonition of defeat, centered upon him. And he did provoke them exceedingly. The intensity of his purpose gave him a super-human, menacing aspect.

He came on with his pamphlet against the Lothians, their retirement notwithstanding. Then was one devoted wholly to Mr. Capuchin, setting forth his record complete, with all the facts about his unfortunate irrigation schemes long before anybody here had heard of him.

Politically, no doubt, the most effective pamphlet was one entitled, “Confiscating Your Land by Taxation.” This was a thesis to prove that if taxes went on increasing at the same rate for another four years they would amount to more than the value of the land. The people would be unable to pay them. Therefore they would lose their land; it would default to the state and private ownership of the soil would cease. Very shrewdly he quoted some of the Lothian theorists who advocated state ownership of land as against private ownership; so that one might infer some such end had been in view from the beginning. This argument cut deeply into the minds and feelings of the farmers.

In the last pamphlet he exposed the bank. His information about it was exact. He knew of the grain speculations and of Capuchin’s Louisiana Company. The bank was empty. The school funds were gone. He demanded that Parshall be brought home and indicted.

Nevertheless, for reasons which he had explained to Jael, there was no run on the bank; it did not fail. It merely stood there as a rotten tree, unable to fall. Indeed, the revelation of its insolvency caused thousands of people who owed it money to wish it might fail, thinking naïvely that in such case their indebtedness to it would be wiped out. Another result also was in accord with his predictions. For several months people had been murmuring against their bank because it had stopped lending money; and now, having got from Plaino’s pamphlet the notion that the reason why it had stopped lending money was that the insiders had looted it, they were furious.

The excitement was progressive. Each of Plaino’s pamphlets stepped it higher, and as the November election approached nobody’s fuse was quite safe.

Capuchin had smashed his airplane. He was afraid to replace it, lest that be a reminder to the Leaguers of the state’s swollen expenditures. So now he was racing about in a motor car with a gorgeous phantasy of himself. The Great Defender, fighting for the people, back to the abyss. Whatever happened his glory was prepared; for even more thrilling than the thought of desperate victory was the thought of dramatic defeat—of falling backward into the yawning darkness, heroically brandishing the fragments of his weapon, an imperishable phrase on his lips, a cry of dismay from the people. All that was lacking was the immortal phrase. He had not been able to invent one that satisfied him.

His speeches were accusatory, exhortive, more and more rhetorical. The forces of capitalism were arrayed against them. The eyes of the world were upon them. The fight for freedom had to be fought all over again. Privilege was powerful and thirsted for revenge. They had made mistakes, naturally. Profiteers also made great mistakes. The difference was that the profiteers capitalized their mistakes and expected the people to pay dividends upon them forever, whereas the people, having made their own mistakes, would pay for them once and be done, taking to themselves thereafter the profit. It was a brilliant, prodigious performance, but empty for all that, having no substance of fact. Continually he was met with the cry, “Talk about Plaino’s facts!” He could not talk about them because they were facts. The alternative was to defame him, asperse his motives, inflame feeling against him, which he did in a dangerous manner.

His power was expiring. In paradox, never had the flame of it been so high and vivid, the adoration of it so ecstatic.

Between man and multitude a time comes when one acts upon the other in a manner to glorify both. The man is not then himself. He is, even to himself, the figure reflected in the people’s eyes. The people, though they look at him, do not see him. They see a symbol of themselves. As they think they are, so the symbol is. When it speaks they hear themselves. At last occurs the emotional act of deification. In whose image were people made to begin with? Here now is an image of themselves in the likeness of their creator. The pattern is returned to its maker and the translation is complete.

Toward the end he began to rebuke them, saying: “We are losing. I tell you this to be remembered. We are losing because, being tempted, ye turn away.”

Once after he had said this to them at the end of a violent speech a slow, powerful voice was raised, saying:

“There has appeared among us one like Christ.”

To this many voices groaned, “A-a-a-men!” A scoffer who whistled derisively was roughly handled at the door.

Yet this Capuchin was a little man, about to be rejected as a symbol and utterly forgotten.

That the League was losing everybody knew. The extent of the disaster was unforeseen. It was total.

Everywhere the Freemen’s Leaguers were chased into the ground. Not one official head survived.

The edifice of folkmotes collapsed.

Three hours after the close of the polls Plaino’s stone-cutter began to chisel the last numeral at the bottom of the famous tombstone in his bank window, and two tall candles were set in front of it to burn all night.