Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1896-05-15
SOME CRANkS.
What Luclus Goss Says About Calamity
Howlers.

What Luclus Goss Says About Calamity
Howlers.
1t is no answer to mans argument
to sneer and say hes crank-a ca
lamity bowler! This age is too enlight-
ened for that sort of thing.
Noah was calamity bowler, but the
flood came.
Daniel standing before Belshazzar.
was a calamity bowler; so, too, were
Jonah and old Lot-but Babylon, Nine
veh and the cities of the plain all per-
ished.
Christ would now be called calamity
bowler for weeping over the coming fate
of the Holy City, and crank for driv-
ing the money changers from the tenn
pie of the Lord.
Columbus, the crank, discovered a
new world. Luther, the calamity
bowler, shook Rome to its center. The
Pilgrim Fathers were cranks, and the
signers of the Declaration of Independ-
ence were calamity howlers-every one
of them. To the list must be added the
fiery Henry, the skeptical Paine, the
philosophical Franklin and the noble
Washington.
What were Garrison, Phillips and the
other abolitionists but calamity howlers
of the deepest dye. And the republican
party's first presidential candidate was
cranky, SO was Greeley, whom the DEM
ocrats once supported. Lincoln, to let
toll or
calmly, awkward and unconventional
crank. Sherman, who marched to the
sea, was crazy crank; and fighting
"Stonewall" Jackson was a religious
crank.
So you see, it is too late in the day
to call man hard names because he
has honest convictions and will think
as he pleases; 1t Is method which,
when pursued towards the man who is
determined to vote as he chooses, sim
ply
Won't work worth cent?
Before l leave the subject. I want to
tell you something. The working men
and women of this country have discov-
cred a great secret They have found
a long forgotten word which wise men
Some Of the Pilgrim Fathers, some of
the signers of the Declaration of In
dependence knew the word. Wash
ington murmured it in the dark days Of
Valley Forge. Lincoln wrote it "be-
tween the lines" Of every paragraph Of
ba yoip nj
1t is the battle cry of freedom and at
times 1t is heard kissing through the
air like the sword of divine wrath. 1t
is the amen Of universal brotherhood,
as gentle and far reaching as the
breezes of Heaven. 1t is the watch
word of true civilization, the test-word
Of craftsmanship, the shibboleth of la
Dor, and the terror of ill-gotten wealth.
Within this word lies the worlds
hope, as the germ is hidden within the
seed. So potent in its Specification
that at the sound thereof wrong van
ishes and evil hides from sight; but,
strange to say the word is seldom so
much as whispered in the higher cir
cles of the upper quarter Million" for
there 1t is mot in good form"
Metaphysicians and those deeply
versed in mystic lore will tell you that
this word was once the unspeakable and
unwritable name of the Eternal One.
But, translated into the latter-day Ian
guage of our nineteenth-century civili-
cation, it Is spoken fearlessly and fire.
quently in the labor organizations of
our land-in the Alliance, the F. M. B.
A. and the Grange.
have heard this word myself more
than once, in fact, often. 1 know it
we'll, and believe it to be all-powerful.
Bend low your head and you shall hear
it:
"Justice!
Behind this lie the eternal verities.-
Lucius Goss in Chicago Express.