Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1896-06-26
KANSAS AGlTAToR. GARRETT. KANSAS.
SOCIALISM.

Sometime since, there was an oratorical COIL
test in Topeka. Seven states were represented
by young students. A Topeka Capital re-
porter stated that all the orations were tinctured
with socialism. At the commencement exer-
cises of the State University, recently, Rev. F.
w. Gunsaulus, of Chicago, in an address to the
graduates, taught socialism from the Christian
standpoint. We quote few sentences:
ga lofty humanism has grown up, and goes
out into the world to conquer, and it finds the
old political economy of laissez faire to be met
and batted with"
Speaking of the inaction of scholars, he
says:
Gone scholarship has at last been taken by
the dangerous class, and the idea OF lofty
humanisn has been taken out of the hands OF
the scholar proper into the hands OF the mob.
This truth must be met No modern cannon
can shoot the idea down, though every man of
the mob be shot"
He said, further, that 'Bearye one another's
burdens is true socialism, and that bearing
ones own burden was true indvidualism.
Rev. Gunsaulus is right as to what socialism
is, and wrong as to the truth being held by the
mob 1t is impossible for man who believes
in lofty humanisn to be other than peace
able, orderly citizen. The disciple of lofty
humansm is lofty in sentiment and in action.
He lives to lift burdens from the shoulders of
the weak Living for others develops the loft
lest individualism. From Jesus down to Jerry
McAuley, of the Water Street Mission, New
York, we find the grandest types of individual
ism, but in an innumerable host of men and
women of the character of Jesus, not one but
labored for lofty humanism, and but few who
did not spring from the ranks of humble, and
sometimes ignorant, life.
But we don't mean to teach that socialism, or
any other 'sm" can succeed without intelli-
gent guidance. 1t is a mob, truly, that at
tempts to work without plans or organization,
and, while socialism will get no help from
the doctors of divinity or the millionaire, it is
receiving, and will receive, abundant help from
scholars
The orators at the Topeka contest may have
come up from farms and workshops, and it was
on farms or in workshops that they got their
ideas of lofty humanism, and not in the schools.
The universities have culture, but the fields and
workshops have the truth God abides on the
farm, and His hidden truths of lOftier man
hood and fairer womanhood are dimly seen,
but tenaciously held by the operative and me-
chanic. God will call his leaders all in due
time, and, in the meantime, we await the full
development of the lofty humanisin that cannot
be shot to death, or strangled, or burned
The apostle informs us that God does not
choose the wise or the mighty to perform
great work in the interest of lofty humanism.
Luther and his early followers were mob in
the ewes of the learned men, or the mighty
men, England had never king that God had
anv use for, and the churches that are full of
learned men, or rich men, have never, as yet,
stood for lofty humanism. God gave the
American people liberty through the efforts of
workingmen-the mob, if you please. Again,
when God would free the black slave, He called
His leader from the backwoods, and not from
the universities The old truth comes up in a
new garb, and man is being prepared to enter
upon higher existence, but the wise men and
the mighty men are not called, and will not be
called, for the simple reason, that that class OF
men are satisfied with individual surroundings,
and, being satisfied are not in sympathy with
the hungry and naked.
SOME party organs, which pose as news
papers, have already begun to try to drag the
tariff issue into the campaign. Everybody
knows that there is not the rernotest possibility
of any change in the tariff laws with the United
Cto+ae eapote made IN as If now is 1t is also
we'll understood that it will take at least four