Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1889-10-19
ERROR NOT ETERNAL.

While the masses suffer necessarily
under system of erroneous govern
ment and from their inability to subvert
it, they are wont to regard all social
agitators as dangerous individuals, and
are ready to condemn them lnstanta-
neously as workers of iniquity; or, when
they do investigate the reformer's
claims, it is only with the predetermi-
nation to condemn them.
BY education we are taught to respect
and reverence the institutions and laws
that govern our land; and, brought up
from untutored infancy under the in
hbence of custom, is it to be wondered
a that ancient and appalling error finds
dn almost invincible stronghold in the
pppular mind? Patriotism has been
Muded as the greatest Of human virtues;
bat it is the mandate of accurate phil
osophy that, when customs and laws
have been proven by experience to be
erroneous and detrimental to the gen
eral good they should be abolished; and
that when it becomes the function of
patriotism to support corrupt msttu'
tons and protlgate rulers, it loses its
significance, and is no longer virtue,
but error
Out of chaos all tangible facts are
derived by experience, and the advan-
tages that we enjoy to-day are only the
results of the accumulated experience
of all our progenitors. All should realize
Ia, nd la f,ln nj foe
proven by experience to be right and
abolish those proven to be wrong, in
stead of supporting wholly "the powers
that be- and opposing the introduction
of new ideas founded upon the basis of
progress and evolution.
Whether a being Of creative design,
under the guidance of an omnipotent
ruler, or only material organism, sub
iect to and amenab!e only to the laws of
nature, man is being affected by pro
cess of gradual evolution in all things;
for there is and has been evolution
among men from the remotest antiquity
of their existence, for which the pages
of history and the indelble traces
borne by mother earth furnish n volume
of testimony. What is needed is a
realization of the fact that the race yet
occupies station in the course of evo-
luton that is environed with many
hinderances to social bliss, and that hui
mainly must either journey on upon
the road of progress until the millennium
Is reached or merge into barbarism and
the lower ranks of the animal kingdom,
from whence it sprang, 1t has been the
experience Of man that nature allows
no standing still in human affairs
There must be either progress or
retrogression.
Only what is right-right wholly and
universally-canl live. Error may exist
for time; it may exert its devastating
influence upon a few generations, but
virtually it is transient and has no sta
bility. Looking backward upon the rec
ords of by-gone events can be seen the
countless ruins of nations that were
founded in error and maintained by
injustice. Oblivion has silently crept
upon and subdued them, while the ire
pressible spirit of man has continued
erecting governments and overthrowing
them, because of the tenaclty with which
the masses cling TO the error of then
ways and give no heed to the law OF
right. As those ancient realms who
gloated themselves upon the product OF
labor held in subjugation by military
strength have suffered decadence, st
must these modern ones who subsist
upon labor held submissive by the
power of finance and grant to individ
uals the power to claim the profit thai
justly belongs to only those that toll, I'll