The herald., 1897-06-20
CONSERVATIVE AGE

The signs of the times point toward
east lived in before the war and the
greater part Of what was then the west
was brought UP in. One can see it in
almost all transactions, great and small,
and even in exchanges, where the
amount of money cuts little or no fig
ure. What can 1 do with it now? Can
I hold it, or is there possibility of my
losing it through mortgage? What in
come can I get out Of it today? Such
are the questions each side is asking
now, and not what can 1 do with it
next year, or how much can I sell it for
on the next boom?
Like everything in human life, the
course of progress is by ups and downs,
Periods of buying run in great waves
that no one can explain or predict far
enough ahead to be sure of advantage
The United States has been an excep-
tion to the rule only in having its upe
most dizzly up. AS a certain conse-
quence the downs are abysmally down.
We have been raised to the idea that
we were an exception to all the old-time
rules of the world and that we could dc
this and that because we were Ameri
cans From this we have come quite
naturally to the conclusion that we could
carry a burden of private debt that no
other people on earth think of stagger-
ing under. AS our public debt is the
lightest of the debts of the civilized
world, so our private Indebtedness is by
far the greatest. The world has long
stood aghast at our extravaganza, and
we have laughed at it as not knowing
how to live, or not being able to indulge
in what we call comforts of life because
it was not located in the northern half
of this hemisphere. And this we thought
patrio tisTn, little dreaming it was mere
conceit
Nearly all Of these ideas have grown
up since the war. Time was when a
congressman on eight dollars day could
live respectfully in Washington, his wife
would be called on by the wives of thA
senators, could go in all society in the
city, and her husband would return
home at the close of the session withou,
owing dollar or spending dollar out
side his salary. These were the times in
which Lincoln and hundreds of others
without dollar to waste went to Wash
ington and moved in as fine society as
any one does today. And yet the differ
ence in price between those times and
thoee of the past twenty years does not
account for onefourth of the difference
Since the war all this is changed and
the six thousand a year the represen-
tative now gets does not go as far or
bring his family into as good society
as that term is misused-as did the old
eight dollars a day. Much the same diff
ference runs through all lines of So
cial life and 1t is hard to see what we
have gained except in whirl and excite
ment. Our progress" for the past
twenty years especially has been largely
the invention of new bearings on the
machine of life, followed by an increased
struggle for coal to overcome the fric-
ton. The Mexican uses grease on the
bearing instead of more coal under the
boiler. The people OF Europe do the
same and we used to, but have allowed
our ideas of greatness to run away with
us.
These ideas of our greatness which we
imagined were patriotism grew from the
development of our youth. We were a
great country, the greatest ever seen,
hue great because we were new and be-