Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-04-04

Within the last twenty years the build
ing of traRscontinental railroads and the
opening up of the great west have thrown
open America TO the would in q sense IN
known to our fathers. Unfortunately the
gamblers splendid chance has gone even
paced with the industrious mans oppor-
tunity. Almost every civilized race is
building ships and croTding them with
frantic eagerness to accept our open
handed invitation. The wild scramble in
the west to get possession of everything
worth having has reacted upon and dis
turbed the east. No such demoralizing
test has ever been put in force against
any people. In Europe. business life,
commerce, the develop ment of land. are
governed by laws almost as exact as those
of the army. Social and political Europe
is illustrated in the German estate for
ests," where the tlees are all aligned, and
none is ever cut down without another
being at once planted. A clever English
or German boy when he enters count
ing room can tell with almost mathemat-
ical exactness what his income and stand
ing will be in twenty years. All other
pursuits are equally exact. Life runs in
well settled grooves. Few alter their
place of residence; public opinion is
feared; there Is leisure to apply the laws.
Each life revolves along Its expected
orbit, and is exposed to indignant criti-
cism if it interferes by cratic move
ments with the delicately balanced and
complicated whole. All this tends to
moral order, the restraint of temptation,
the repression of furious ambition or ex-
cess. But with Us at present it is all
knowing day" We have been Temporal
rily thrown into confusion by Nature IN
bosoming her bounty on the west, and
Europe uulading her ignorance and vice,
as we'll as her intelligence and virtue, on
the east. Medea is seen Remembering
her victims and casting them into the
caldron. What will emergef We are ex-
pected to clarity a turbid stream of brute
labor, very much as a "cellarer" shoots
the sediment from each bottle into space,
and injects the rock candy which turns it
later into sparkling champagne. But in
the process the whole economy of Ameri-
can home life is disturbed. million
lotteries of raiIroad building, wheat
growing, silver mining, cattle raising,
land settling, with all their attendant in
dustries aud vices, and the countless mi
nor speculations which each encourages,
are calling men from settled paths to
take their chances. Almost every one
thinks he could easily do better than he
is doing, we're he only in the right place.
Even in our oldest cities half the popula
ton is on the move. Thus public opin-
ion loses its restraining touch. Men who
have offended it leave their native towns,
and no not dread it elsewhere. The Law
has to assert itself among, and often
against, the pref udices, hostility, and ig
| - n
ent localities. There is danger lest there
be no strong, homogeneous, patriotic, OF
religious condemnation of anything
Chance and movement reign supreme
because any good fortune is possible il
one is only alert aud on the way &c
meet it.
1t seems then, matter for surprise
and gratitude that in this era of tremen-
dous material development and unexana-
pied migration there should be such g
vast amount of public and private virtue
and even of exalted religious faith and
life, as one sees in this country. Nor il
strange that the railroads, the manufac-
lures, and the mines, Offering such mu-
nificent rewards as they do to- intelligent
and gifted young men, should absorb tai
ents which under other circumst ance:
would adorn the church. Another gene
ration will witness a great change in the
| influences and habits which mould Amer
| lea. The land will all have been takeI
up, the chances for sudden fortunes les
| sened, the immigration shrUDken to
''thread-like stream" the population be
come tolerably homogeneous, the chan
nels of trade marked and bounded, thu
ways of men touched by the Christening
| and calming hand of a holy ancestral
faith unfeIt in the wild i'm patience OF no
youth.--Archdeacon Mackay Smith, il
Harper's Magazine for January.