The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1875-11-20
The Result Of . Hundred Years.

Inc k09QV o. Ho0ofe0 Tears.
! If q man should recommend clerk L
q merchant by telling him that the chic
excellence of the friend whom he recon
mended was that he would not forge the
merchants name, or an engineer should
offer as his credentials trustworthy evi
dence that he would not steal, or car
penter should be pressed upon a man
about to build 4 house because he was
not pick-pocket-all these suggestions
would be thought excellent fooling. But
an employer would fall into very grave
thinking if, when he said he wanted men
competent to do his work, he should be
told that that was secondary consider
alton to the question whether they would
steal. He would probably come out of
his thinking to remark that it he had
come into community of sharpers, he
would go elsewhere, and find people who
we're at least and of course honest. A man
may well be aghast if he is told that the
important point in voting for a judge is
to be Sure to find one who will not be
bribed, and that, in calling a physician,
the essential question is not if he can
cure, but will he poison. If hundred
years have brought us, in casting about
for officers and magistrates of every kind,
to assume that only very great care can
secure common honesty, and that if We
elect to office men who will not forge, or
steal, or commit burglary, or set fire to
houses, we ought to rejoice and celebrate
the great victory. what have we invited
all mankind to come and look a.?
If we show them great buildings, is
there no fear that they may discover
them to be monuments of great rascality
and jobbery? five heap up inventions
and machines of every kind. if we display
the exquisite fineness and elaboration OF
our manufactures, magnify the results of
our industry, carry them down into the
mines, whirl them from sea to sea upon a
cloud of vapor, unroll our dazzling sta
tistics, and challenge the universe to
show SO much done in 90 little time, is
there no danger-if the issue be what We
are told-that the world may admire
and applaud, and agree that such mowers
and reapers and tedders and sewers, such
cloths and silver and copper and coal,
such notions and knick-knacks and conf
forts and conveniences and luxuries, such
school houses and sleeping cars and North
River steamboats,, were never known,
and are evidently the best of their kind,
and then ask, since the things Are SO ex-
cellent, how about the people and are
they as intelligent, and, above all. hon.
est, as with such advantages they ought
to be? Wouldn't it be awkward to have
to reply that, simultaneously with the
magnificent results of machinery and en-
terprise and inventive genius which We
had the pleasure to present to the
universe, we we're engaged in tremen-
dous struggle to fill our public offices
with men who would not steal? If that
be fact there seems to be good oppor-
tunity for humiliation as well as con-
6 .atulation. If our politics have become
mainly an effort to secure honesty in of:
flee, it is something of which we ought
to he thoroughly ashamed.
Yet there is no doubt that it is largely
true. In his eulogy upon Mr.. Seward
before the Legislature Of New York, Mr.. |
Charles Francis Adams said: sour fore
fathers would marvel could they imagine
il possible for me to claim credit for Mr.. |
Sewatd on the score of his honesty Is
public man. Yet the time has come
when we must honor one who never
bought nor sold vote or place. and
who never permitted his public action to
De contaminated in the atmosphere of
influence" No one can de-
~ it, and the one chief contribution that
We can brihg p the Centennial EXPOSE
ion is the resolution that it shall be
rue no longer.-Eaitor's Easy Chair in
Magazine, for December.