Great Falls weekly tribune., 1896-10-02
NEW ENGLAND CULTURE.

From the beginning of a campaign
which, though to be fought on a single
issue, has been freighted with many
weights calculated to aid the gold side
at the expense of the silver side we
have had, at least go far as speakers are
concerned, fair play That is to say
the orators of the opposing forces have
been treated with courtesy wherever
they appeared. 1t is true that at the
Powderly meeting in New York city
there were few boisterous individuals
who made themselves conspicuously OBJ
jectionable, but they we're promptly and
properly elected by the police. With
this single exception we know of no in
reference with the right of free speech
during the campaign, until Thursday.
Strange to say, the first real innovation
on the rule occurred in the city of New
Haven, the hub of New England culture,
and it was reserved to the students of
Yale university to be the offenders, not
only against good breeding, but against
common decency. The reports tell
US that Yale students, to the
number Of 500, with a brass band,
organized themselves into mob and by
their outrageous conduct broke up
public meeting in New Haven and pre-
vented the democratic candidate for
president, William j. Bryan, from max
ing an address. The insult need not be
construed into personal affront to Mr..
Bryan, 1t goes further than that. 1t
was a significant violation of the higher
law of courtesy and the written laws of
the land. That the perpetrators of the
crime were the sons of rich parents
makes it all the more fragrant. Had
they been poor and ignorant there might
have been a moral excuse, there GER
tainly could have been no legal one, and
it is safe to say the New Haven author.
tiles would have enforced the latter.
Therein lies the difference. These young
men, congregated from different sections
OF the country, possessing the advau-
tages that birth, education and money
are supposed to give them, made an op-
portunity to develop their real charac-
ters and nature. The exhibition
they made places them in their
true light. They are very COM
mon clay, disgrace to themselves
and to the institution of which they are
q part. 1t will not do to smooth this
outrage over as a freak of school boys.
Yale students are old enough to know
better. 1t is rather the deliberate con-
duct of band of men who consider they
are better than the "ordinary rum" and |
are superior to law and its restraints and
consequently are at perfect liberty to
put in practice the theories of their
parents and tutors. Yale, through its
professors from president down, has
taught them that the advocates of free
coinage are anarchists and lungtics, the
fathers Of these Yale students have pro-
claimed that the reconciliation of sill |
yer meant ruin to the country, and the
method which these cubs took to ex-
press their contempt of the great
principle is the logical outcome Of their
teachings; it differs only in degree from
those adopted by their teachers.
Had such serious affront been nut
upon Senator Sherman when he spoke
in Helena, or were any Mckinley men
subjected TO like indignities in the
south, the goldbug press and rost-
rum would have teemed with
denunciations OF the affront. 1t would
have afforded good opportunity for
Mr.. Cleveland to order out federal