The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1893-06-09

backward hundred years, the coming In
tellectual workers will be Less superficial,
more thoroughly equipped for their work,
Of larger views and broader catholic spirit,
with less creed in their religion and more
of God and humanity. The encyclopedia
man, who makes a show of knowing all
things, will give way to the specialist, who
makes an effort to know one thing and
know it well.
The newspaper which has made a bold
incursion into current literature has with
the stimulus of competition overdone the
matter, and there Is already tendency to
go to the review for expressions of opinion.
We hear continually of the Generalization
of the press which means the populariza-
tion of the newspaper at the expense of con-
viction. There is going to be reaction in
that field. There ought to be, and there
undoubtedly will be in New York or some
other commercial and intellectual Ameri-
can center, a press which will express the
convictions of the wisest minds in all de-
partments of thought, irrespective of what
q party or a corporation or an advertiser
wants.
Such paper whose opinions cannot be
bought, whose convictions cannot be fright
ened and whose good will cannot be cajoled
will bring the power of the press up to the
traditional standard, and it's opinion will
command the attention of the world. 1t is
American just now to want the news. AS
the facilities for gathering it and dissent
mating it increase, the intelligent public
will want something else. They will re-
fleet as well as apprehend.
They will have more leisure to think. The
present rate of headlong material activity
cannot be kept up for another hundred
years Already a new class is multiplying,
| which is reaping the leisure that its fathers
made possible with drudgery and heart
failure. The continent is all explored and
nearly all surveyed. There will scarcely be
another Pixies peak fever. While I am
writing this the statesmen of the country
are asking themselves if it is not time to
make laws which shall restrict if they do
not put stop to immigration.
In 100 years Denver will be as big as New
| York and in the center of vast population.
| If the republic remains politically compact
| and doesn't fall apart at the Mississippi
river, Canada will be either part of it or an
independent sovereignty, and the northern
shore of the Gulf of Mexico will be the
| Riviera of the western continent.
1t is not possible to estimate the per-
| petuity and progress Of the United States
without feeling that it's political majesty
| and it's benefcent freedom will react upon
the intellectual expression of the people
The solidarity, The general happiness of
| the nation, will find an outcome in nobler
works Of art and science.
| In that hundred years we will have ma
tured our poet and found our Moliere or
our Shakespeare.
The CESSATION of genius is by centuries.
OF course / do not suppose that the in
coming century will bring the millennium.
We all know that progress often depends
ON disaster as character depends on suffer
ing and no one can tell what upheavals are
in store for u.s. History, on the whole, is
very sad reading, and it is the lesson not of
uninterrupted material prosperity, but of
rise decline and fall.
But in our present rate of progress is
much hope and some calculable signs. In
100 years the public will desire better read
! ing, because it must reach a better plane
of thinking. The germs of great universe
ties will have matured their fruit by that
time The world will be in closer touch.
Mercy will march with war and arbitra-
ton precede it, Somewhere the nation
will have an intellectual capital with a
national library and a national theater. 1t
will have developed an art school of its own.
The ideal man and woman will have an
opportunity to use all plastic arts, and will
speak to us in literature and drama. The
homes of the country will have been quad
rupled, and it is the home that fixes the
status of the theater. AS we increase the
enjoyments of the family circle we Rssen
the attraction of the cheap public enter
tainments, which depend upon the hotels
and the floating population.
We can see even now that sectarian bar
riers are crumbling. Men are climbing
over the ecclesiastical fences to get nearer
to each other, and they have found that as
they come together they approach the
eternal reason.
In a hundred years man will have learned
the lesson of trusting his brother, and the
nation which has drawn all peoples to it
with cosmic gravitation and lifted them
with freedom and confidence will also have
destroyed the prejudices of race and the
animosities of sect.
Such a view presents the new solidarity
of fraternity, but it is the old lesson which
that first democrat dauntlessly proclaimed
on Mars hill.
A. G.. WHEELER (Nym Crinkle).