The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1896-11-13

The present financial and social con-
ditions of the people of this country
present few prospects which are pleas
ing. TO the student of history, the think
err, the man who reasons from cause to
effect in political economy, the future
of civilization looks dark indeed.
Under present conditions the far-seeing
man must become pessimistic. To the
optimist our present situation presents
nothing but pleasing prospects. To
him it appears that we have reached a
higher peak of civilization and en-
lightenment that was ever dreamed of
by any other people. To him the
future holds nothing but rainbows of
glory and future progress. To him 1t
seems impossible that learning should
perish from the earth, that the sun of
national existance should set in blood,
that the civilization and enlightment
should finally be swallowed up in an
archy and barbarism. Gibbon, in his
"Decline and Fall of the Roman En-
pire" says that it is impossible that
modern civilization should decline to-
ward barbarism because there are no
more barbarians to over-run the earth.
Gibbon was man who lived entirely
in the past. His companions were bar
barrie people and savage semi-ciyilized
kings. He had learned of the barbar-
ians of the past, but he knew nothing
of the barbarians of the present. He
knew by heart the geneology of every
savage tribe which infested the forests
of the Rhine and the Danube, but he
knew nothing of the "more hideous
Huns and tiercer Vandals' that lurk
in the shadow of the library, the mu-
scum and the college. The tenement
houses in our great cities to-day are
breeding more and tiercer barbarians
than ever sailed forth from the forests
of the lower Danube or the plains of
Hungary.
Along the highway of civilization,
destruction has kept pace with con-
struction. The barbarians of our
cities are more to be feared to-day
than the barbarians of old. The same
intellects which gave us the locomo-
tive, the steamboat, the telegraph, the
electric light and the telephone, gave
us also petroleum, dynamite, nitro
glycerine and melinite. bet one of
our modern barbarians pump a little
atmospheric air into the gas mains of
our great cities and touch a match to
it and he would produce more ruin,
death and desolation in one second
than could ten thousand ancient bar
barians in an hundred Gay siege.
We are producing engines of de-
struction in our navy yards today
which must ultimately be turned
against us. The under-currents of the
times are fast sweeping us back
to the conditions from which we dream
ed we had escaped. With seething
poverty and misery on the one hand
and on the other hand splendid pal
aces i'll which the few roll in wealth;
with beggars on our streets and tramps
upon our highways; with poverty en-
slaving men who we boast are polite
al soverigns; with citizens voting as
their masters dictate; with want pro-
ducing ignorance which our schools
cannot enlighten; with gold weighing
in the scales of justice; with men sit
ting in high places who do not pay to
civic virtue even the poor compliment
of hypocracy, the pillars of the Re-
public which we thought so strong, al
ready bend under the increasing
strain,