People's voice. [volume] (Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas) 1890-1917, 1893-02-03
LOOKING BACKWARD.

Although the Birth of NationaIism Is Of
Recent Date Its Growth Has Been
Phenomenal.
With this number the New Nation
enters upon its third year. Reform
journalism is not pecuniarily profitable
and ought not to be. If it were. its
conductors would be quite too richly
rewarded, at least nationalist papers
would be; for certainly the dividends in
growth and progress declared on our
cause during the last two years have
been such as to make it seem grasping
to suggest the desirability of any other
form of returns
The progress of nationalism since
1890, and still more strikingly if we
look back to the first organization OF
the nationalist propaganda in 1888, has
exceeded the most sanguine anticipa-
ton of the most sanguine of our faith.
Look back four years and the United
States was practically virgin field for
any form of the socialistic propaganda.
To-day, nationalism, the name given to
the most radical form of socialism,
nothing less than Jesus Christ's social
ism, is household word from one ocean
to another. Four years ago, ridiculed
as amiable enthusiasts, people actually
fools enough to believe that Gods king
dom of fraternal equality ever could
come on earth, the nationalist to-day
see their hope become the religion d
hundreds of thousands, their practical
programme adopted as the creed of
national party which, having polled
million votes at its first election, in no
spirit of idle boastfulnesS claims the
presidency in 1896.
Public management of the railroads,
the telegraphs, the telephones the ex-
press service, the coal mines, the liquor
traffic, the deposit and exchange bank
ing system and of the issue of money,
state insurance and the municipaliza-
ton of all the public services of cities
and towns, ideas scarcely heard of four
years ago, many of them not two years
ago, have become burning issues before
national, state and municipal conven-
tons and at the polls, and nowhere
have the nationalist any other oppo-
sition to meet than that of mere iner-
tia. The moral sentiment and the bus
mess sense are so absolutely and wholly
on their side in every proposition that
they have made, that hearing is all
they have needed to ask for.
Ridieule was the only weapon that
greed and ignorance could use against
us from the start, and that, long since
dulled, we are turning against them
with newly whetted edge. Our cause
is instinctively recognized even by those
who have not joined us, as that of all
against the few, of the masses against
the classes, the people against the plu-
tocrats. We have everywhere put the
other side on the defensive. Can there
be any question as to the future of such
party, which seeks the ideal of Christ
by the most hard-headed sort of econom-
ic logic?
Parties of radical social reform in
Europe and Great Britain antedated
ours, and until recently it has appeared
that America would be alaggard in the
glorious race. The prospect has
changed of late. America aroused in
time to recognize the falsity of its
democratic pretensions, will yet be first
to touch the goal of true liberty,
equality and fraternity. Edward Bel
lamy, in New Nation.