The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1894-02-14
ADDRESS
Delivered Before the State Farm.
ers Alliance at Minneapolis,
January 10th, 1898.
BY HON. JOHN ARNOLD KEYES

Continued from last aveek.
| The venerable George William
Curtis, than whom there has in re.
cent times been none greater IN pol
itical councils, in one of his last ut.
terances said: "The American Re.
public greatest and best of all re-
publics, has no more power than the
Roman republic, by it's name
alone, to secure freedom and wise
progress. 1t is but an instrument
and it's beneficient efficiency depends
upon the intelligence, character and
conscience of the people who WELD it,
and upon the wisdom and skill with
which it is kept in repair and adjust.
ed to the changing conditions of it's
eVironment."
Never was truer word spoken,
and it leads us to ask the ques tion,-
has our government kept abreast OF
the needs Of the hour and the de-
mands of new conditions? Has it ac-
complished and is it accomplishing
what the fathers had hoped and in
tended? There can be but one reply.
Manifestly not. If it has not, the
legitimate question is ever being put
to US as citizens and patriots. Why?
And this we must answer. We can
not hide our heads in the sands of
sloth and evade it,
Let me for a moment, as your
spokesman, answer it as would an
swer it. The reason is that mans
material ,ua',ts-his food and clothing
and shelter, and all those terms i'm
port of physical comfort and
we'll being have not been
sufficiently considered in the
scheme of government. He has
theoretically guaranteed to himself
life, liberty and the pursuit of hap
piness but has not secured to himself
the reasonably equal enjoyment Of
the, great natural opportunities Of
the country; nor was he secured to
himself the control Of the main
avenues of the distribution of wealth.
He has neglected to recognize the law
of environment, and there has there
| fore come about condition of
things whereby the great mass of the
wealth of the country has fallen into
the hands of and been absorbed by a
few men and limited number of in
terests and all the great sources Of
food, clothing, shelter and fuel have
come within the control of the few;
many of them perhaps living else
where, and they may find themselves
exploited. In other words all the
great natural opportunities which
the Creator has endowed all men
with as divine heritage, to be cared
for and attributed by them among
themselves, under just regulations,
have been siezed upon by the strong,
the cunning, the capable, and those
more weak or unWise are in one way
or another doomed to serve these in
terests. and it matters not whether
the service is actual and direct. as in
the relation Of employer and en-
ployee or as tenant or mortgagor, the
result is the same. There the woven
and seamless web Of circumstance
holds them within it's meshes and
never was servant more obedient to
master than the vast majority of
men in this country to the demands
OF the conditions surrounding them.
1t has also come to pass that this
great government has drifted into
the hands Of and is under the domin-
alton Of aggregate wealth; and this
not in any merely partizan political
but in general sense. The large in
dustrial loaf we as nation annually
produce is being divided in such
manner that smaller piece goes to
each man and family; outside the
ranks of the accumulation" and the
government puts forth no effort
to check the growth of this in
equality.
The growth of the inequality thus
advances upon us and Of it we are
unawares, until we are sometime
suddenly awakened to find that the
coal tields-the pine forests-the iron
and steel industries-the telegraph
system-the railway and steamship
indirectly, through mort
gage Indebtedness, the wheat and
cotton fields of theWest and South
are owned by or under the control of a
few men and then we realize how the
natural sources Of supply and trans
portation are out of the hands of the
masses and in the hands of those who
now are and ever increasingly are to
be their social and industrial masters
unless some change be wrought in
systems, And while we declaim on
the housetops for freedom Of con-
tract and individual autonomy, there
is none; and you sell wheat in a mar
ket created for speculative purposes;