St. Paul daily globe., 1891-12-06
A CHALLENGES.

Chicago is good deal elated over the
discovery that it has a police Justice
gifted with the rarest eloquence and
power of rhetoric. His name is WooD-
MAN, and before him the alleged anar-
chists were recently arraigned for firing
on their mouths with too great vigor at
GREIF'S hall the other night. He found
them all guilty with much prOmptness,
and imposed a sentence of the most
terrifying severity. The sentence, how
ever, is not the thing which has at
tracted attention, but the speech which
accompanied it. Two of its periods, in
particular, have charmed the Windy
clty'S heart, aud are now being men,
Orized in its every household. The first
was characterization of one WEIsAIAN,
who had been conspicuous at the revol-
utiOnary meeting, and here it is:
WEIsMAN, the apostle of RoBEsPIERRE the
apologist of those men who in cold blood
assassinated the archbishop while in prison
IN Paris in 1871, during the reign of terror;
who also excuse the murder of that great
and noble woman, Mme. ROLAND, who ex-
claimed while on her way to the scaffold,
Liberty, oh, Liberty. what crimes are COM
mitted in thy namei' Such man is WEIs-
MAN, violent in his harangues
The other is an expression of personal
experience, and runs in these words:
Duty in this case is the only safeguard. Our
sympathies must be with those who labor
with their hands or brain. From the time
stood at the helm in the Arctic seas or be-
meath the scorching sun of the equator, my
maxim has been at all times-duty.
Chicago thinks that these excerpts are
great, and so they are. Bus we have a
man in st. Paul who not only can beat
WOODMAN, j. p, all hollow, but has
done 1t many time. 1t is unnecessary
for the GLOBE to say that it refers to
WILLIAM w. ERWIN, the Pine Tree of
Minnesota. Usually his lofty sentences
are born amid the rude surroundings of
the court room, and are treasured only
III the minds of those who have been
fortunate enOrgh to hear him. But
sometimes he takes his pen in hand,
and when he does he makes the ink fly.
Is there any orator i'll Chicago who eau
equal this Outburst. in which he ex-
pressed his admiration for the Farmers
Alliance a few months since?
My every sense is awakened to the stern
and immediate necessity of this profound
earnest and heaven-led movement against
the world-old forces which have enslaved
the economic liberties of men and nations
march begun in prayer from honda ge,
which will not be opposed nor stayed until
man is free. and the divine command to love
one another is not alone a standard of in
div1dual action, but the rule and base of the
government of men.
Or is there rhetorician in Chicago
who can advance a profound truth of
human nature in words like the follow
ing, which Mr.. ERWIN used on the same
occasion?
Every individual, think, has duties. per
sonaIties. moods, sorrows, wounds and
blood-born priGes, in whose broad domain lie
camped the unseen but potent destinies what
control design and give intention the sacred
character Of fate.
The GLOBE does not believe that
there is man in Illinois who can come
up to this Minnesota model. 1t does
not believe that there is a man in the
rest of the world who can. The world
is not in it.