The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1875-01-27

spectlve OF innocence or guilt. what are
we coming to? What passes for morality
would seem to be thin crust of propriety
over unfathomed rottenness. Are we a
nation of scoundrels?
This thing is not confined to New York.
People imagine that the country is honest,
that the intelligent yeomanry retain all the
simple and severe virtues of an earlier time.
But this illusion has been swept away. If
any community Is both intelligent and hon
est, 1t is to be found in Massachusetts. But
the report of the legislative committee ap-
pointed to investigate county expenditures
discloses disgraceful amount of petty
stealing on the part of some officials and
money grabbing on the part of others, of
justices who charged double fees, attorneys
who kept all the forfeited and unclaimed
fines, and sheriffs who cxtorted ali
the money II was possibleto squeeze out of
anybody, and one official who charged dol
lar every time he went from his house to
his office and another for going back again.
One district attorney had put $4,000 of
forfeited recognizances into his embarras-
sed business, and sheriff who serves
twenty subpnnas in Lowell charges each
victim with the entire expense of his Jour-
ncy from Cambridge. The books are so
loosely kept that nothing can be made ont
of them. One Of the county jails has been
used as a fofaging ground, and house of
correction has been run by its manager as
though it were his private property, its in
mates making brushes for HIM to sell for
his own profit. And this in Massachusetts,
the pattern state, the originator Of home
rule No wonder that Cakes Amcs was
kept in congress half dozen terms and
was buried under honors.
..g 40
would almost seem so. We understand
perfectly well that much of the present de-
| moralization is due to the peculiar circum-
stances of our time. The old faiths have
lost most of their hold on society and intel.
lectual sanctions, but half our people have
no religion. Then the introduction OF
steam has effected an industrial
and social revolution and while
machinery has driven thousands of
people out of old employmcnts and upset
the primitive industries of women, the rail
way and steamboat have entirely changed
the condition of society, turned tie coun
try into ncipient cities, dislocated all the
old arrangements of the social organism
and left our people to reconstruct theii
life as best they can. Everybody is adrif
and Scramble is king of the hour The
new adjustments have not come. The ole
New England town was the most perfec
democracy the world has seen since Athen.
succumbed to Asiatic and Roman rule
But New England society has entirely
changed within half century. 1t was I
great cluster of rural populations, compos
ed for the most part of small proprietor
who owned and worked their farms Nov
1t is group of manufacturing cities, an,
its population is largely If fneign eXtrac
ton, and even the F.cnch Canadians ar
buying its farms and working its mills.
There is more New England in Ney
York than in Boston to-day. TIE New
England of to-day is Minnesota and Cali
tornia and Iowa and Oregon. We liv
under a new industrial and social orde
of things, and are not yet settled com
pletely into the altered circumstance
of the country. But strange to say
of American life have undergone trans
formation that is not completed yet, tn
would-bc leaders of our thought and pol
tics are constantly parading the specific
, which once worked admirably, but are nov
as much out of place as the soothing-syru
given to tccthlng babes when a man
wrestling with the ague or Frustrated wit
typhoid. The policy and ethics of d.
i, parted social condition do not meet TIL
needs of the new condition. There want
complete REIMBURSEMENT of ideas to situi
tons. The Observation-Disclosures man figh
ing his own life-battle on his own accouI
once perfectly proper and the best thing
could do, is out of place in concentrate
society armed with all the implements an
agencies Of modern mechanism. The Gel
tralization our fathers fought against wit
reason is the very thing we have to figl
for, and the only thing that can save Il
The diffused scoundrelism can be met on
by complete organization of society, ar
: increase authority balanced by increased r
: sponsibilty on the part of the government
The head must save the body, or it will {
> to pieces of the disorders which have q
: ready become an offense.-Ae'o oyk Dai
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