1877

"Solange man das Leben noch für unerschöpflich und den Tod für eine schlechte Angewohnheit der alten Leute hält, lösen wir uns alle ohne jedes schmerzhafte Gefühl von dem Bisherigen los."

"Ich habe einen berühmten Psychiater gekannt, der hat die Philosophie für bloßes Geschwätz, und einen berühmten Philosophen, der hat die Chemie für eine gehobene Kochkunst gehalten."

"Vieles, was nach außen als Anmaßung und Hochmut erscheint, ist in Wirklichkeit Unsicherheit oder gar Angst."

"Hätte das Leben keinen tieferen Sinn, als unser kleiner Verstand zu fassen vermag, so lohnte es nicht, dieses Leben zu leben."

"Wie können wir uns gegenseitig das Leben erleichtern? [...] Sehr viel Güte also und ein wenig Humor — das ist das Rezept."

"Bitte vergiß alles, was Du auf der Schule gelernt hast; denn Du hast es nicht gelernt."

"Die Zahlentheorie ist nützlich, weil man mit ihr promovieren kann."

"A tumult, riot, and mob exist on the Pennsylvania Railroad at East Liberty and in the Twelfth Ward of Pittsburgh. Large assemblages of people are upon the railroad and the movement of freight trains either east or west is prevented by intimidation and violence, molesting and obstructing the engineers and other employés of the railroad company in the discharge of their duties. As the sheriff of the county, I have endeavored to suppress the riot, but have not the adequate means at my command to do so, and I therefore request you to exercise your authority in calling out the military to suppress the same."

"It's a question of bread or blood, and we're going to resist."

"We're with you. We're in the same boat. I heard a reduction of ten percent hinted at in our mill this morning. I won't call employers despots, I won't call them tyrants, but the term capitalist is sort of synonymous and will do as well."

"Meeting an enemy on the field of battle, you go there to kill. The more you kill, and the quicker you do it, the better. But here you had men with fathers and brothers and relatives in the crowd of rioters. The sympathy of the people, the sympathy of the troops, my own sympathy, was with the strikers proper. We all felt that those men were not receiving enough wages."

"You that know me know that I will obey orders...I have troops who will obey my orders and I tell you, gentlemen, these trains must go through. My troops will have no blank ammunition, and I give you warning of this in time."

"It was bread or blood, and they could get any number of men to come up and prevent the running through of any train until the matter was arranged with them."

"We are workingmen and we don't fight against workingmen. We want bread at home, but we don't want to rob our fellow-workingmen for it. No sir; we came here to protect property, but not to murder the poor men of Reading."

"In view of the recent high handed interference with the business of Railroad Companies, and the serious and sometimes fatal consequences that have resulted to the innocent traveling public from the unjustifiable and arbitrary conduct of the organization known as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers upon other Railroads, it has been deemed unadvisable to retain in the employment of this Company any one who is a member of that organization."

"The Eagle has never been called upon to chronicle a more horrible slaughter of its peace and law-abiding citizens as is its duty to-day ... The pavements, sidewalks and streets in the vicinity of 7th and Penn streets, were literally baptized in blood..."

"My situation is not improved by the arrival of the Sixteenth regiment, which is very disaffected. The Fourth is becoming anxious, and is also very much exhausted. Should have reliable troops, without delay ... The Sixteenth regiment is furnishing the strikers with ammunition and openly declare their intention to join the rioters in case of trouble. If troops do not reach us by dark, I cannot vouch for the safety of the city, or my power to hold the depot. Stir heaven and earth to forward reliable and fresh troops."

"It will be useless to come with only two companies, and they not reliable. The morale of the Fourth regiment has given way within the last three hours, under their distrust of the Sixteenth … [T]he desertions from the Fourth regiment bring its effective strength down to one hundred muskets. The crowds cheer the Sixteenth, and hiss and groan the Fourth, and say if the Fourth would only leave, they would make no more trouble … Expect a meeting in what is left of the Fourth. The officers join with the men in the sentiments I have mentioned, and have just waited on me to demand their removal."

"The Fourth regiment most positively refuse to return to Reading to-night; the men declare they will walk home rather than return ... The regiment and company officers are perfectly useless."

"[I]f disobedience, insubordination and dicipline are to be disregarded, and allowed to go by without reproof or check, the armed soldiery of the land will be far more dangerous to the country, than an ignorant, howling, lawless mob, and, I predict, if we are not given a good, working, military code, the efficiency and stability of the National Guard of Pennsylvania, will be a failure, and, I regret to say, its days will be numbered."

"[H]ad the civil authorities acted with some degree of promptness, vigor, and determination, the riots would not have assumed such proportions. But it has proved in all of our late troubles, they act feebly, make no attempt to exhaust all power at their command, flee out of harm’s way, apply to the Governor for protection, and results in the calling out of the National Guard, who must stand the blunt, the stones, the abuse, and curses of the mob, and the slurs of the pusillanimous sympathizer, and the Guardsman is expected to stand and take all."

"Let’s jump ahead a hundred years to a time when the whole of India had been brought under British control, and the East India Company’s authority had been transferred to the Crown. In 1874, a drought in the northeastern Indian provinces of Bengal and Bihar ruined the harvest. Starvation loomed for millions of unlucky peasants, but the local official, Sir Richard Temple, leapt into action and set up a model welfare system to ease hunger. Importing a half-million tons of rice from Burma, he distributed it freely to the poor. Thanks to Temple’s prompt action, only twenty-three people starved to death in that famine. It has been called “the only truly successful British relief effort in the nineteenth century.” Temple was severely reprimanded for his extravagance in feeding the hungry natives in his charge. The Economist scolded him for teaching the Indians that “it is the duty of the government to keep them alive.” He was scorned all across the governing class for spending public money and meddling in the natural order of things. Humbled by the criticism, Temple learned his lesson and wanted to make amends. The opportunity came quickly, in 1876, when the monsoon rains failed to arrive across a much larger area. The earth dried up and died. Crops shriveled; livestock wasted away. When Temple took the job of supervising the relief effort of this new famine, he was desperate to prove that he could stay within budget. “Everything must be subordinated,” he promised, “to the financial consideration of disbursing the smallest sum of money consistent with the preservation of human life.”"

"...The guiding philosophy at the time was that relief should be difficult to obtain in order to discourage the poor from becoming dependent on government handouts.8 Recipients were expected to work hard for their supper, digging ditches and breaking stones. The camps accepted only the able-bodied and healthy into their public works projects, and they hired only workers from at least ten miles away, on the theory that a long walk would weed out the weaklings. Hundreds of thousands were turned away as too weak to be of any use. Most British authorities agreed that helping the poor only created a cycle of dependency. The finance minister declared, “Every benevolent attempt made to mitigate the effects of famine and defective sanitation serves but to enhance the evils resulting from overpopulation.” Lytton argued that the Indian population “has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil,” and that any relief would simply be absorbed in further unrestrained breeding.9 A later government report concluded, “If the government spent more of its revenue on famine relief, an even larger proportion of the population would become penurious.”"

"The ration that Richard Temple distributed to each inmate of these labor camps was only two-thirds of what he had given out during his successful relief in 1874—1,627 calories per day instead of 2,500. In fact, the new daily ration for the starving Indians of 1876 had 123 fewer calories than the ration for an inmate in the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald in 1944. The Temple ration of one pound of rice a day—no meat, no vegetables—was half of what felons in Indian prisons received.10"

"Temple and Lytton imposed the Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877 on all of the lands under their control, which outlawed any private relief donations that might undercut the price of grain set by the open market. The law was backed up by the threat of imprisonment. Meanwhile, as the people of India starved, over 300,000 tons of grain was exported from India to Europe.11"

"...Lord Salisbury, the secretary of state for India, waffled on the proper response to the hunger. On the one hand, he tried to distance himself from countrymen who “worshipped political economy as a sort of ‘fetish’ ” and who considered “famine as a salutary cure for over-population.” On the other hand, he congratulated Disraeli for not being fooled by “the growing idea that England ought to pay tribute to India for having conquered her.”Salisbury denigrated the idea “that a rich Britain should consent to penalize her trade for the sake of a poor India” as a “species of International Communism.”"

"..An English publisher tried to get his fellow journalists to investigate what was going on in India. “For long weary years have we demanded the suspension of [the land tax] when famine comes and in vain. With no poor law in the land, and the old policy once more set up of letting people pull through or die, as they can . . . we and our contemporaries must speak without reserve or be partakers in the guilt of multitudinous murders committed by the men blinded to the real nature of what we are doing in the country.”"

"An 1878 government report on the famine absolved the government of all responsibility and blamed it entirely on the weather. The official estimate was that 5.5 million died in the British territory, not counting the native states, but various scholars later estimated that either 10.3, or 8.2, or 6.1 million died across India during the 1876 famine."