The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1896-03-18
AN IMPORTANT QUESTION.
HAVE THE SCANDINAvIANS BEEN BE-
TRAYED BY THEIR CLERGYMEN?

| HAVE THE SCANDINAVIANS BEEN BE-
TRAYED BY THEIR CLERGYMEN?
We print in our Forum this week an
interes ting letter from one Of our
Swedish subscribers. living at Wheat
on, Mimi, upon an important and
delicate question.
No man In the world has more re-
spect for religion than we have. HUI
man nature is prone to wickedness as
the sparks fly upward: and therefore
we have no sympathy with the Inger.
sollian attacks on the churches. We
are all Of us evil enough in our ten
denotes without being stripped Of the
moralVestraintS. Almost any religion
! is better than none: since even the
pagan creeds keep open, to some ex-
tent, the pathways between mems
hearts and the great spiritual world
| around US, and the God who sits
above it all
Therefore in giving space to articles
which reflect upon particular clergy
men we do not want to be understood
as attacking the cloth, or as under
mining religion. 1t is no discredit to
the Chris tian apostles that their body
once contained Judas. And religion
is pureSt in those lands where the
pressure OF an enlightened, Argus
eyed, public-opinion is brought to bear
upon its shortcomings. We shall be
just as prompt to publish articles in
defense Of the clergy as we are to
print those opposed to them. "Hew
to the line let the chips fall where
they may"
There was time when the Repub-
lican party, under the leadership of
Lincoln, Greeley, Chase, Sumner, and
others of the great men Of the past,
represented the cause of the poor
against the rich, the slave against his
master, Democracy against Plutocracy.
At that time our Scandinavian breth-
rem swarmed into this country; and
the sacred name Of Liberty drew
them, as freedomloving race, into
the ranks Of the Republican par
ty. They were, at the same time,
pre-eminently religious race, as all
great races are. They needed
churches. In the meantime the en-
thusiasts of the first generation of Re-
publicans, the fanatics" as they were
called,-the poor men, who had made
a despised minority triumphant ma
Jority-were passing off the scene, and
the sordid and selfish and money
grabbing elements were coming to the
io0 nj ct AZ ln
cloak under which these knaves rob-
bed the people. They saw that the
Scandinavians of the Northwest rep
resented vast voting force which
must be utilized. How? Through
their ministers. They did not offer
to buy them outright, for most of
them were honorable gentlemen and
would have resented any such course:
but schemers came up with two,
three, five. ten thousand dollars as
contributions to the erection Of the
Gothic churches. The devil built the
temples and the sons of God Worship
ped in them. It was, of course, most
natural that the struggling minis ters
should receive these gifts; and equally
natural that they should be grateful
for them. And so, as the Republican
party gradually departed from it's
ancient standards of devotion to lib
erty, and became more and more the
representative of the stealing, thiev-
ing crew, who had risen to great
wealth amid the carnage and corrup-
tions Of the civil war, the grateful
clergymen shut their eyes to the
transformation that was going on,
and kept their innocent and I'M
suspecting tlocks in line for the plum
derers of the people. Then newspa-
pers, in the northern tongues, were
established, largely with the money of
the capitalists, to supplement the in
fluence of the clergymen; and these,
as in the last campaign, drew vast
sums from the corruption funds fur
nished by the rings, trusts and corpo-
rations. In 1894 eight thousand dol
lars were paid to one or two Scandi-
navian Chicago newspapers, and S. 900 |
more to the local Scandinavian pa
pers, out of funds furnished by the
railroads and lum bermen, to fill the
minds of the people of this state with
a deluge of falsehoods and misrepre-
sensations. In the meantime, as has |
been charged, and generally believed,
many of the clergymen, becoming
more and more accustomed to the cor
rupt practices of the age and country, |
drifted into the position of actual |
pensioners upon the bounty of the Re-
pulican party, drawing every cam
palgn their one, two or five hundred |
dollars, to preach to the people in ia
vor OF that party. Even to this day |
it is the habit of the G.. o. P. to |
send out clergymen to PREACH to the
people on politics.! And thus religion it,
self was made the tool and advocate |
of the conditions which are rapidly |
bringing this country to ruin, aud
putting the Scandinavians them
selves back into the very horrors from
which they fled in the old world.
A friend. in whom we have every
confidence, who had an office in the
EndicOtt Arcade, St. Paul, tells US
that, in one Of our recent state cam
paigns. OS94), it was matter of COM
mon talk, that the halls outside of