Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1891-04-30
Random Thoughts.


! mould at the casting of q bell, the traits
and peculiarities of each race uniting and
blending with the immense whole SO that
no man can certainly forecast the result,
there naturally arises a feeling of anxiety
as to the effect this mixing of nations
will have upon our national life. A GEN.
tury ago we were mere handful, seat
tered along an extended seaboard. thor
oughly homogeneous, the great ma iority
emigrants from the same nation. England
our institutions being in fact but copies
of her institutions-while to-day we bava
a heterogeneous population of over sixty
millions, derived from every nation on the
earth. The institutions that answered
for us then will no more suffice now than
the garment OF the boy will do for the
full grown man. With the single eX-
ception of slavery. they have so far been
modified to our changed conditions with
out any very great amount Of friction,
Notwithstanding the singular frequency
with which we have found ourselves face
to face with problems undreamed of by
the great mass of our people, until they
have presented themselves. For instance
when the first Railroad was begun IN this
country, no one suspected that it was the
Inauguration of q system whereby a few
tuen representing vast associations of in
dividuals would gain possession of the
| great avenues of traffic, with their ma
chinery, and be enabled to create an Or
eanized power in the state which would
require all the energy of the state to curb
and prevent tlom eating the people for
whose benefit they were created. \ ct
that is one of the questions with which
statesmen are now trying to deal. The
discoverer of dynamite had no idea that
he was propounding a knotty social and
international conundrum to perpleA
! future politicians. We very often felIc-
tate ourselves with the idea that we have
retained the institutions of the fathers
in their primitive simplicity, when we
have only retained their semDlance. The
trainers of the Constitution would be more
astcunded at some of the constructions
placed upon that document than at any
amendment appended tuereto-more sur
priSed at the methods and tendencies OF
legislation than at any positive enact
ment-and would point out to us changes
of the greatest consequence taking place
under our eyes, unnoticed by us:
"Once sacred symbols, fluttering as
empty pageants.''
This disposition not to cross the stream
until we have arrived at the bank, and
perhaps, been p-ecipitated into the flood,
is due to the operation of the law of iner-
tia upon the mind, very necessary no
doubt for the preservation of existing
opinions and modes of thinking when
they are worth preserving, but very
troublesome when new ideas are to be
introduced and old ones are to be got rid
of. Any change, however advantageous,
is, in the beginning, unpleasant. Each
revolution requires a new generation to
inaugurate it. Old men do not take
kindly to new habits, either OF mind or
body. To them the breaking up of their
party is a catastrophe little short of the
collapse of the universe: for it leaves them
as homeless as Lear. We prefer the old
shoes to the new, for comfort, even
though they be not so good protection.
We do not like to leave the old home be
it ever so humble. The plantation hand
looks back to the old plantation where he
grew up. the old master whom he served,
the old mode Of life that he was used to,
in the good time ''betOh de wah, - with
feelings of unaffected regret. Life is too
! Shnrr for each nf nc to work Ont ALL the
various problems that present themselves.
As we pass on we must take somebody
else's work fer part of the foundation
OF our own superstructure.
On very many of the great questions
of life we can do little more than pin our
faith to some eminent authority, taking
it for granted that he has exhausted the
subject, sometimes forgetting that his
judgement is no more intallible than our
own. and we can have to do with no
more unpleasant party, than he who de-
thrones our kings, dismantles our Gods,
and tears to pieces the theories in which
we have enveloped ourselves. We re-
gard him with DO very kindly feelings as
we stand among our ruined idols. even
though we know them to be worthless.
Verify, "use doth breed habit in man" ;"
We are prone to deem the good old ways
good enough for US, and thus it comes
about that the reformer is always fanat-
ic-a crank-in his own age. and must
wait for the next to be appreciated,
Perhaps none of our institutions owe
more to this dislike of change than our
system of state education; none has taken
deeper hold upon the popular heart, and
consequently there is none that the pub
lie cannot better endure to hear unfavor-
ably criticized. We have accustomed
ourselves so long to the ordinary plati-
tudes about it, that we have come to ac-
cept them as automatic, without ever
taking the trouble to ask ourselves what
we mean by the terms we use. Like
nearly all the rest of our institutions, it
Is inherited, and, like all others, has had
the misfortune TO have originated among
a people not altogether pertect-of the
earth earthly. Emanating from the peo-
pie, it partakes of their good and evil
qualities; as they grow better or worse
it will grow better or worse. The future
historian will find the crime of Protec-
ton upheld by the educational institu-
tions of Pennsylvania, as the crime of
slavery was upheld by tne educational
Of rho ri in zach