River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1886-09-02
Depravity.

1t seems to us impossible, FOR any
person who has at heart the we'll being
of the community, to reflect upon the
recent revelations, the depravity in a
ladof only III years of age, who took
his employers property in the form
of check, committed forgery, and
banked the paper, receiving the cash
thereon, without experiencing feel
ing of deepest modification and dread
and an inward prompting to do more
for the enlightenment of the rising
generation, than he has hitherto done.
1t can hardly be possible that any
one who intends, or desires to be a
good citizen, can look on such evil
dences of youthful deprayity without
feeling some rebuke, and a twinge of
guilt for duty neglected in some par
ticular, or for the influence their ex-
ample may have had in shaping the
mental tendency of those who thus
fall in the childhood of life to such
depths of degeneracy.
Has not the inordinate desire for
getting money so benumbed the hu-
man sense of correct action, that it
has blinded the eyes of the speculative
classes to their highest duty, and thus
created contagion which preys on
the moral health of the youth to the
arrangement Of the moral faculty, and
to the obliteratlOn of the moral sense
to such an extent as to lead to per-
verseness those who though young,
are quick to see the general tendency
and drift OF desire in those older than
themselves!
"Get money; honestly if possible,
but get money! seems to be the maxim
too generally followed, and whatever
want of principle presents itself as
the governing tendency in the bust
ness transactions of any respectable
number of citizens will, without
doubt, have corresponding influence
on the youth who live with their eyes
and ears open, especially where they
have no well defined moral guardian.
ship to shelter them from, and safely
guide them through, danger.
If the youth see that, to get money
is the all absorbing theme of their
elders, and that many care little for
the means by which they obtain it;
and see at the same time that, to have
money means to luxuriate in that the
heart most Graves, it is hardly to be
expected that all will escape the influ-
onces of so dangerous an example.
1t is an unpleasant truth, still it is
a truth, that the love of luxury en-
gendered by the possession of much
money, is tending, more and more, to
rob the human heart of its moral SEN
sibilities, and the increasing precO-
ciousness or the youth, together with
the unwholesome indulgence granted
them in these rapid days, gives them
longings hard to control, when to
crafty those longings it is only need
full for them to do, what they suppose
is not unlike in spirit, what people of
some social and business standing
have the reputation of doing in char
acter if not in kind.
We cannot safely pass these things
by without thought, for, although the
Reform School may make the needful
change in this offender, it will have
little or no influence as preventive
against the spreading of contagiOn
which has already passed liberal
seed time, and is thus ready to pro-
duce an abundant harvest if passive
ness is allowed to control the public
mind, and the seed already sown
allowed to grow and ripen. The cup
of truth is sometimes bitter, but it is
better to drink it than to repent when
it is too late. JoSEPHUs.