Charles Ashleigh with a proletarian poet’s thoughts from on passing youth, wage-slavery and wage-slaves, and the ‘wine of life.’ Just wonderful.

‘Profit’s Toll’ by Charles Ashleigh from Mother Earth. Vol. 9 No. 3. May, 1914.

WHEN I was a boy I was a poet, as all youth should be. When I was a boy I lived royally, as all youth should live. I was unconcerned, careless, independent, healthy and alive—vigorously and sensitively alive. My meals were regular and plentiful, my bed was soft and certain, my widow mother was an exceptionally good mother: she never talked to me about God and she let me have my own way. We had what is popularly and facetiously termed an “independent income,” some small savings of my deceased father, judiciously invested. So my youth was a royal youth.

We lived either at a sea-side town or in the city of London, both places teeming with interest to my keen curiosity. I read hundreds of books avidly; hard books—some of them—books of philosophy, books of history, fiction, belles-lettres, anything that came my way or that my insatiable thirst for knowledge dictated. I swam in the sea and played football and tennis and was unconscious of my body, which is true health. I was fond of taking long walks in the country and was acutely sensitive to the influence of nature.

I had friends at that time. Some of my friendships were wonderful, almost holy in their intensity. How I remember my chosen comrade; how dear was his friendship to me! We had a signal: a couple of bars of a certain tune, whistled. He used to pass by our house and give the signal. When I heard it a joyous pang would thrill me, I would seize my cap and dash out into the street. Sometimes he would come to take tea with us. I would sit proudly silent nearly all the time, watching the effect of his personality on my mother and sister. How gallantly gentle he was with my mother and handsomely abashed by my sister. I would sit still and exult. We would have interminable talks in which we confided to each other the deepest secrets of our souls, ***

And, then, later, when passing from boyhood into youth, came London. I was one of a group of enthusiasts, idealists, Bohemians. We would meet and discuss, *** Exulting in our adolescent intellects we would play with ideas, sport with paradox, toss epigram from one to the other, exploring every realm of thought, shattering idols and erecting new ones. I remember long afternoons spent in picture galleries, and ecstatic hours at symphony concerts. ***

And the dreams—ah, the dear dreams that colored life! And the soul experiences, too subtle for description, when walking home alone in the quiet summer nights, or at the contemplation of beauty, artistic or scenic. The supreme ecstasy, almost painful at its inception, in which the limits of personality seem to break down and the Individual fuses into the Cosmic. *** All this was part of my youth.

And, all the time, I was walking on a thin crust, beneath which boiled and raged the economic maelstrom, I had looked on life as a god’s game and suddenly beheld it a sordid tragedy. My relatives decided that the time had arrived for me to begin to “earn my living.’ And slowly my dreams withered; my ecstasy faded and beauty died. Still I had tasted enough to make me forever a seeker. From the window opposite my desk, where I added endless rows of figures, I gazed out on the blank wall of the next building and visualized things glowing and splendid. But my head ached, and the boss was snapping angrily, and they faded. I thought, at first, that it was merely a matter of wrong occupation. Therefore I toiled on the land from four in the morning till seven at night and sailed in ships as steward and sailor and sweated in the open air for great railroad corporations. But never did the golden time return. The phantom of starvation and homelessness loomed ever large in my mind. The petty tyrannies of taskmasters fretted my nerves. Work in close, confined places hurt my health and the fight for the job made me callous and mercenary. ***

Once, when, for a space, my old visions returned to me, I was seized with a great longing and was desperate. I made a bold bid for freedom and failed. I was not skilled at the work, nor had I bribed the powers that be, so I was caught and held for a while in a vile place of captivity where they poisoned my life still more.

But when I came out of the prison, a new thing came into my life. The old things were lost because no worker can hold them in these days, but the new spirit rushed into my life with giant wings, and it was scarlet, and terrifying in its cleansing might, and my soul leapt to greet it with gladness and I became its servant for all time. And the name of the new spirit was Revolution.

So, now my days are spent in serving the Masters of Bread that I may live; and serving the Revolution, that I may preserve my manhood.

Sometimes I think of the days when I was a poet and lived royally, and I think of how the old wiseacres used to shake their heads at me and say: “It will not last; this will go when youth goes.” And how stoutly I used to deny this and say: “As I am now, so shall I always be. Beauty can never lose its hold upon me, nor can the precious things I have within my soul depart.” Yet I was wrong and they were right. I did not know of the Giant Beast Profit that was lying in wait for me, with its poisonous breath to strangle all the bright, growing things within me.

Yet they were not wholly right, nor I wholly wrong. I do not think it is the Law of Life that all those dear things of youth must pass away; I think it is merely the Law of Profit. And when food and shelter and the other daily needs shall be as secure to us for all our lives as they were to me in my boyhood, and when work shall be an act of joy and fellowship and not of misery and tyranny, then I think we shall be young our whole life long and the splendors and the visions shall be always with us.

Sometimes, when I am tramping through the radiant country or am resting for a while from the strain of toil and struggle, the husks seem to fall from me and once again I seem to enter into the mysteries. *** The wind whispers to me its ineffable secrets and the moon shines into the hidden chambers of my soul, and the glory of the world comes upon me and lifts me up and enfolds me, and once again I taste of the Wine of Life. ***

And sometimes I realize the impulse of creation within me that has been sacrificed to the Dollar King, that he may use me for his profit. I feel that I might have been a lord of words, weaving wonderful things for my delight and for the people’s pleasure. But the holy thing within me has been killed and what has been left is the working and the fighting. ***

And then, after my short, rare rest I go down once more into the hell of industry, once more to serve the Beast and to enter into the battle. ***

The battle! That is my life and salvation; for that do I live. But for the cleansing fire of Hate and the joy of the struggle I had long since been but a brute—a less than brute, a spineless, servile Thing. But the Fight has saved me.

Well, brother, remembrance is bitter-sweet and lasts not for long. It is a thing of one short night and, see, the dawn is coming! Recollection is done and Action comes. Watch, brother, the dawn’s light spreading. Do you not hear the voice of comrades, rising high in hymns of revolt, full of the lust of combat? Hear you the groans of wounded and the cries of war? Hear you the tramping of their march and the full-mouthed music of their rebel chants? The dawn cometh, brother; shoulder your pack and buckle on your sword, for there is man’s work before us!

Mother Earth was an anarchist magazine begin in 1906 and first edited by Emma Goldman in New York City. Alexander Berkman, became editor in 1907 after his release from prison until 1915.The journal has a history in the Free Society publication which had moved from San Francisco to New York City. Goldman was again editor in 1915 as the magazine was opposed to US entry into World War One and was closed down as a violator of the Espionage Act in 1917 with Goldman and Berkman, who had begun editing The Blast, being deported in 1919.

PDF of full issue: https://archive.org/download/mother-earth/Mother%20Earth%20v09n03%20%281914-05%29%20%28c2c%20Harvard%20DSR%29.pdf