Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1892-06-23
$3.50 IN ADVANCE
The Great Moral Issue.
BY MARY T. LATHRAP.

The Great Moral Issue.
BIZ MARY T. LATHRAP.
For years money has bought its will
into the ballot box and legislation.
1t has opened the licensed saloon.
The saloon has created a whiskey
serfdom by the debauching of the in
divIdual. This serfdom has been
purchased and hurled in quantity in
to the ballot box, to control elections,
and money has been king. But let
the protest now in the country reach
revolt, let the quantity change to IN
dividualism, the muttered curse to
revolution, and where is the central
grip of power to cope with it, In the
ciVal war there was involved a great
moral principle that swept like a
breath from heaven over our people
and swayed even mean men to a mob
Ter impulse. Where in this industri-
al contest as now arEayed, is the NOR
al center? Where is the home of con-
science in the fight between McKin-
leyism and the tariff reform? Is it
in the nickel that divides the two?
Where is the moral center of the bat
tie between gold and silver, govern
mental or individual ownership Of
banks and railroads, or the control Of
wealth when it expresses its power IN
monopoly? There is a moral quality
IN all these questions, but as the pres
ent lines are drawn neither side would
dare to uncover it lest it break the
lines of their sham battle. So wealth
that can afford dress parade passes
on with a smile on the lip. Gold is
conservative, diplomatic, adhesive and
imperial, and in the absence of NOR
al issue has the best of the fight.
Agricultural industry is patriotic, vir-
tuous as populations go, and Ameri-
can. City industry is at one end So
Der. At the other end it is vicious,
drunken, idle and un-American.
These two extremes, however, are
bound together by such law of organ
ization as makes them one. Into this
| deepening struggle has come, in thir-
ty years, 100000 of foreigners and
! in the last two years more than 1,000,-
| 600 from across the waters, to say
nothing of immigration from Mexico,
Spanish America and Canada. What
| does labor in the contest? It meets,
discusses, protests and divides, be-
cause agitation is not adhesive. In
dustry is American and foreign, shad-
ed and white, patiotic and anarchist,
intelligent and ignorant, and breaks
| like clay from iron. What is needed
in the present stress of the battle? A
great moral issue, deep enough to
find the sounding where all souls
unite high enough to lift mon from
savagery to unselfishness and breath
from the hills of Gods morning,
which shall scatter the fogs from be-
fore our vision, and usher in the days
of Justice and reform. To meet this
gathering crisis we have politics with
out morals; parties without issues; a
struggle without conscience. The
need of the hour is moral conviction.
an organization of forces on the basis
of the ten commandments and the
golden rule; not to array industry
against wealth, bnt to unite them both
in a warfare on all that is wrong and
dangerous to the whole country.
| Wanted, then, moral issue. Where
shall we find it? Four years ago the
republican party said in an appendix
to its national platform: The first
concern of good government is the
virtue and sobriety of the people and
the purity of the home" The state
ment is true, and is only another way
of saying that IN the nations life the
moral forces are imperial, and IN our
form of government these forces can
only be conserved through the integ-
rity of the individual citizen.
So long as boys are ruined and
mothers weep; so long as homes are
wrecked and the sob of unsheltered
children finds the ear of God; so long
as the Gospel lets in the light for the
lost, and Christ is King, there will be
a contest on the temperance question
until victory. So long as this chris
tian nation sanctions the destruction
} of It's sons for revenue, and sets on a
: legalIzed throne that "sum of all vii
} lianies," the saloon; so long as the
. wicked are justified for reward" and
7 cities are built with blood, there will
7 be prohibition issue, and one day
3 right will triumph.