TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS
( 1901)
The following essay was published in the
North American Review
in January, 1901; some 125,000 copies were later distributed by the Anti-Imperialist League. There was considerable reaction, both favorable and unfavorable, to the essay in the press, and Twain was sometimes accused of having lost touch with American ideals. His rebuttal was that America had lost sight of its own democratic values and that the U.S. soldiers in the Philippines were in fact no better than “Christian butchers.” “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” is, in any event, his most eloquent, if not his most venomous, attack on imperialism. At first, Clemens was in favor of the war because he believed the United States meant to restore the country to and confer political liberty upon its native citizens. When it became clear that this was not to be our national policy, his change of heart was swift and complete. Because its satiric target is broad, including diverse imperialist wars going on at the time and examining the venal motives behind such territorial expansion, this essay has retained a certain currency well beyond its appointed hour.
“To the Person Sitting in Darkness”
“Christmas will dawn in the United States over a people full of hope and aspiration and good cheer. Such a condition means contentment and happiness. The carping grumbler who may here and there go forth will find few to listen to him. The majority will wonder what is the matter with him and pass on.”â
New York Tribune,
on Christmas Eve.
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From
The Sun,
of New York:
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“The purpose of this article is not to describe the terrible offences against humanity committed in the name of Politics in some of the most notorious East Side districts.
They could not be described, even verbally.
But it is the intention to let the great mass of more or less careless citizens of this beautiful metropolis of the New World get some conception of the havoc and ruin wrought to man, woman and child in the most densely populated and least known section of the city. Name, date and place can be supplied to those of little faithâor to any man who feels himself aggrieved. It is a plain statement of record and observation, written without license and without garnish.
“Imagine, if you can, a section of the city territory completely dominated by one man, without whose permission neither legitimate nor illegitimate business can be conducted;
where illegitimate business is encouraged and legitimate business discouraged;
where the respectable residents have to fasten their doors and windows summer nights and sit in their rooms with asphyxiating air and 100-degree temperature, rather than try to catch the faint whiff of breeze in their natural breathing places, the stoops of their homes;
where naked women dance by night in the streets, and unsexed men prowl like vultures through the darkness on âbusiness'
not only permitted but encouraged by the police;
where the education of infants begins with the knowledge of prostitution
and the training of little girls is training in the arts of Phryne; where
American
girls brought up with the refinements of
American
homes are imported from small towns up-State, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, and kept as virtually prisoners as if they were locked up behind jail bars until they have lost all semblance of womanhood;
where small boys are taught to solicit for the women of disorderly houses;
where there is an organized society of young men
whose sole business in life is to corrupt young girls and turn them over to bawdy houses;
where men walking with their wives along the street are openly insulted;
where children that have adult diseases are the chief patrons of the hospitals and dispensaries;
where it is the rule, rather than the exception, that
murder, rape, robbery and theft go unpunishedâ
in short where the Premium of the most awful forms of Vice is the Profit of the politicians.”
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The following news from China appeared in
The Sun,
of New York, on Christmas Eve. The italics are mine:
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“The Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions, has returned from a trip which he made for the purpose of collecting indemnities for damages done by Boxers.
Everywhere he went he compelled the Chinese to pay.
He says that all his native Christians are now provided for. He had 700 of them under his charge, and 300 were killed. He has
collected 300 taels for each
of these murders, and has
compelled full payment for all the property belonging to Christians
that was destroyed. He also assessed
fines
amounting to THIRTEEN TIMES the amount of the indemnity.
This money will be used for the propagation of the Gospel.
“Mr. Ament declares that the compensation he has collected is
moderate,
when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who demand, in addition to money,
head for head.
They collect 500 taels for each murder of a Catholic. In the Wenchiu country, 680 Catholics were killed, and for this the European Catholics here demand 750,000 strings of cash and 680
heads.
“In the course of a conversation, Mr. Ament referred to the attitude of the missionaries toward the Chinese. He said:
“âI deny emphatically that the missionaries are
vindictive,
that they
generally
looted, or that they have done anything
since
the siege that
the circumstances did not demand.
I criticise the Americans.
The soft hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of the Germans.
If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will take advantage of it.'
“The statement that the French Government will return the loot taken by the French soldiers, is the source of the greatest amusement here. The French soldiers were more systematic looters than the Germans, and it is a fact that to-day
Catholic Christians,
carrying French flags and armed with modern guns,
are looting villages
in the Province of Chili.”
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By happy luck, we get all these glad tidings on Christmas Eveâjust in time to enable us to celebrate the day with proper gaiety and enthusiasm. Our spirits soar, and we find we can even make jokes: Taels I win, Heads you lose.
Our Reverend Ament is the right man in the right place. What we want of our missionaries out there is, not that they shall merely represent in their acts and persons the grace and gentleness and charity and loving kindness of our religion, but that they shall also represent the American spirit. The oldest Americans are the Pawnees. Macallum's History says:
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“When a white Boxer kills a Pawnee and destroys his property, the other Pawnees do not trouble to seek
him
out, they kill any white person that comes along; also, they make some white village pay deceased's heirs the full cash value of deceased, together with full cash value of the property destroyed; they also make the village pay, in addition,
thirteen times
the value of that property into a fund for the dissemination of the Pawnee religion, which they regard as the best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of man. It is their idea that it is only fair and right that the innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty, and that it is better that ninety and nine innocent should suffer than the one guilty person should escape.”
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Our Reverend Ament is justifiably jealous of those enterprising Catholics, who not only get big money for each lost convert, but get “head for head” besides. But he should soothe himself with the reflection that the entirety of their exactions are for their own pockets, whereas he, less selfishly, devotes only 300 taels per head to that service, and gives the whole vast thirteen repetitions of the property-indemnity to the service of propagating the Gospel. His magnanimity has won him the approval of his nation, and will get him a monument. Let him be content with these rewards. We all hold him dear for manfully defending his fellow missionaries from exaggerated charges which were beginning to distress us, but which his testimony has so considerably modified that we can now contemplate them without noticeable pain. For now we know that, even before the siege, the missionaries were not “generally” out looting, and that, “since the siege,” they have acted quite handsomely, except when “circumstances” crowded them. I am arranging for the monument. Subscriptions for it can be sent to the American Board; designs for it can be sent to me. Designs must allegorically set forth the Thirteen Reduplications of the Indemnity, and the Object for which they were exacted; as Ornaments, the designs must exhibit 680 Heads, so disposed as to give a pleasing and pretty effect; for the Catholics have done nicely, and are entitled to notice in the monument. Mottoes may be suggested, if any shall be discovered that will satisfactorily cover the ground.
Mr. Ament's financial feat of squeezing a thirteen-fold indemnity out of the pauper peasants to square other people's offenses, thus condemning them and their women and innocent little children to inevitable starvation and lingering death, in order that the blood-money so acquired might be
“used for the propagation of the Gospel,”
does not flutter my serenity; although the act and the words, taken together, concrete a blasphemy so hideous and so colossal that, without doubt, its mate is not findable in the history of this or of any other age. Yet, if a layman had done that thing and justified it with those words, I should have shuddered, I know. Or, if I had done the thing and said the words myselfâhowever, the thought is unthinkable, irreverent as some imperfectly informed people think me. Sometimes an ordained minister sets out to be blasphemous. When this happens, the layman is out of the running; he stands no chance.
We have Mr. Ament's impassioned assurance that the missionaries are not “vindictive.” Let us hope and pray that they will never become so, but will remain in the almost morbidly fair and just and gentle temper which is affording so much satisfaction to their brother and champion to-day.
The following is from the
New York Tribune
of Christmas Eve. It comes from that journal's Tokio correspondent. It has a strange and impudent sound, but the Japanese are but partially civilized as yet. When they become wholly civilized they will not talk so:
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“The missionary question, of course, occupies a foremost place in the discussion. It is now felt as essential that the Western Powers take cognizance of the sentiment here, that religious invasions of Oriental countries by powerful Western organizations are tantamount to filibustering expeditions, and should not only be discountenanced, but that stern measures should be adopted for their suppression. The feeling here is that the missionary organizations constitute a constant menace to peaceful international relations.”
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Shall we?
That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way, and commit the new century to the game; or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first? Would it not be prudent to get our Civilization-tools together, and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade-Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sell out the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds?
Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who Sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and there is money in it yet, if carefully workedâbut not enough, in my judgment, to make any considerable risk advisable. The People that Sit in Darkness are getting to be too scarceâtoo scarce and too shy. And such darkness as is now left is really of but an indifferent quality, and not dark enough for the game. The most of those People that Sit in Darkness have been furnished with more light than was good for them or profitable for us. We have been injudicious.
The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed itâthey have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization. Moreâthey have begun to examine them. This is not well. The Blessings of Civilization are all right, and a good commercial property; there could not be a better, in a dim light. In the right kind of light, and at a proper distance, with the goods a little out of focus, they furnish this desirable exhibit to the Gentlemen who Sit in Darkness:
LOVE,
JUSTICE,
GENTLENESS,
CHRISTIANITY,
PROTECTION TO THE WEAK,
TEMPERANCE,
âand so on.
LAW AND ORDER,
LIBERTY,
EQUALITY,
HONORABLE DEALING,
MERCY,
EDUCATION,
There. Is it good? Sir, it is pie. It will bring into camp any idiot that sits in darkness anywhere. But not if we adulterate it. It is proper to be emphatic upon that point. This brand is strictly for Exportâapparently.
Apparently.
Privately and confidentially, it is nothing of the kind. Privately and confidentially, it is merely an outside cover, gay and pretty and attractive, displaying the special patterns of our Civilization which we reserve for Home Consumption, while
inside
the bale is the Actual Thing that the Customer Sitting in Darkness buys with his blood and tears and land and liberty. That Actual Thing is, indeed, Civilization, but it is only for Export. Is there a difference between the two brands? In some of the details, yes.