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102 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
because the popular view was not in sympathy with those
acts. Yet had they been committed at another time, under
different conditions, the story of these men might
have been told for centuries to admiring groups of children.
In Carlyle's "Hero Worship" and in his philosophy of
history, the progress of the world is summarized under
the stories of great men. Certain individuals are responsible
for social wrongs,
while other individuals are
responsible for the great revolutions that have righted
those wrongs. In the building up, as well as in the destruction
of empires, the individual plays stupendous
roles. This egocentric interpretation of history has not
only been the dominant one in explaining the great political
changes of the past, it is now the reasoning of the
common mind, of the yellow press, of the demagogue, in
dealing with the causes of the evils of the present day.
The Republican Party declared that President McKinley
was responsible for prosperity ; by equally sound reasoning
Czolgosz may have argued that he was responsible
for social misery. According to this theory, Rockefeller
is the giant mind that invented the trusts ; political
bosses such as Croker and Murphy are the infamous
creatures who fasten upon a helpless populace of millions
of souls a Tammany Hall Bismarck
;
created modern
Germany ; Lloyd George created social reform in
England while Tom Mann in
England and Samuel
;
Gompers in America are responsible for strikes; and
Keir Hardie and Eugene Debs responsible for socialism.
The individual who with great force of ability becomes
the foremost figure in social, political, or industrial development
is immediately assailed or glorified. He becomes
the personification of an evil thing that must be
destroyed or of a good thing that must be protected.
It