The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-06-13
HERBERT TO STUDENTS.
Supremacy of the Government, Inger-
soIIism and the Labor Problem.


AUBURN, Ala, June 12.-The chief
feature of the commencement exercises at
the Agricultural and Mechanical College to-
day was the address of the Hon. Hilary
\. Herbert, Secretary of the Navy, to
graduates. Preceding the Secretary's re-
marks there were the usual addresses by
college students and professors. Secretary
Herbert was warmly received. In the
course of his remarks he said:
1.-The power Of this government no per-
son dares 10 dispute except i'm the courts.
When last year mob in the name of
labor laid violent hands on property used
in interstate .corpmerye Q. the judicial de-
partment of the. government raised its
hand and the mob fled away. When recent
" after much angry discussion in Congress
and the public prints about the income tax.
the Supreme Court decided by the vote of
only one Judge that the law was void. the
thought or a threat OF resistance. Never
were more convincing proofs of the power.
the majesty of human government. Men
may question and they are free TO question
the wisdom of Congress or OF the President,
or Justice correctness of the decision
of the Supreme Court That government,
nevertheless, stands supreme. You are
fathers have. not left 10 you as their
fathers did to them. any unsettled funda-
mental question Pregnss a with civil , war;
Ito express the hope, young gentlemen.
that none OF you WIFI leave this institu-
ton Wanting yourself on having gotten
your mothers knee; that none of you will
affect TO look down with pity on the re-
claiming that science, the little smatterine
of il you can acquire in a year or so, has
taught you all this. There are now, as
Robert j. Ingersoll, would tear forever from
the heart of man all of Christian hope and
leave him to contemplate in blank dismay
lions. who would rob the grief-stricken
widow and orphan of the consultations of
religion. Tom Paine. thought a hundred
free mankind. as Ingersoll now claims he
is doing from what they call the cruel
superstitions of Christianity; but Paine's
Age of Reason has taken ats place the
book shelf among the dusty volumes of for
gotten literature where Ingersolrs lect-
ures will mold while Christianity is con-
auering the world" ssft.
Evolution. the Secretary said had done
much in some quarters TO undermine faith
in Christianity, but this was because IL
had heretofore confined its researches to
the discovery of laws governing the physical
world.
Secretary Herbert believed that the prob
lem of the future that seemed now most
difficult of solution would grow out OF the
relations between capital and labor.
What" he asked .'is to be the outcome
socialism: socialism by attempting TO equal
ize conditions without abolshing the springs
of action? II would place energy and thrift
and intellectual activity alongside of ignor-
ance and sloth and profligacy. On that
dead level society would, stagnate and man
would relapse into the condition of the
brutes Of the field No. gentlemen. this
cannot and will not be-. So long as human
nature remains as II is men will strive
TO excel, competition will go on and. judg-
ing of the future by the past, it may be
predicted with certainty 1nat unless our
people forget God and his teachings and go
to cutting each others Threats as they did
this conflict between capial and labor will
be the betterment of social conditions