James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[213] cial reform, which is precisely our position. But how is individual reform to be effected? By association, says the Tribune. That is, the motion of the water-wheel is to produce the water by which alone it can be set in motion—the action of the watch is to produce the main-spring without which it cannot move. Absurd.

Horace Greeley. Jan. 13th. Incorrigible mis-stater of my positions! I am as well aware as you are that the mass of the ignorant and destitute are, at present, incapable of so much as understanding the social order I propose, much less of becoming efficient members of an association. What I say is, let those who are capable of understanding and promoting it, begin the work, found associations, and show the rest of mankind how to live and thrive in harmonious industry. You tell me that the sole efficient agency of Social Reform is Christianity. I answer that association is Christianity; and the dislocation now existing between capital and labor, between the capitalist and the laborer, is as atheistic as it is inhuman.

H. J. Raymond. Jan. 20th. Stop a moment. The test of true benevolence is practice, not preaching; and we have no hesitation in saying that the members of any one of our city churches do more every year for the practical relief of poverty and suffering than any phalanx that ever existed. There are in our midst hundreds of female sewing societies, each of which clothes more nakedness and feeds more hunger, than any “ association” that ever was formed. There is a single individual in this city whom the Tribune has vilified as a selfish, grasping despiser of the poor, who has expended more money in providing the poor with food, clothing, educuation, sound instruction in morals and religion, than all the advocates of association in half a century. While association has been theorizing about starvation, Christianity has been preventing it. Associationists tell us, that giving to the poor deepens the evil which it aims to relieve, and that the bounty of the benevolent, as society is now organized, is very often abused. We assure them, it is not the social system which abuses the bounty of the benevolent; it is simply the dishonesty and indolence of individuals, and they would do the same under any system, and especially in association.