The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-07-07

nanuS were not employed. Inc hanQ
that holds out package of bills or
fat public position, or any other price
of mans integrity and honesty, will
beat the empty air and return help
less to the pocket from which it emery
ed, If there is no other hand stretched
out to receive it's contents. The bride
taker must take his stand side by side
With the bride giver. 1t is not the con-
centration of wealth, whether we think
that good thing or an evil thing, that
gives rise to corruption. There has
never yet been a civilization which
made men substantially equal in ma
terial wealth or anything approaching
it, and there never will be. That is
just as impossible as to make them
equal in physical strength or in men
tai ability Nature has created human
beings with capacities quite as far re-
moved from one another as the million
alre is from the pauper The world
is full of i'll gotten gains and of men
who ought to be made to disgorge.
were complete justice done, were alb
solute equality of opportunity estab-
lished, we would still have, as long as
liberty endured, the same differences
In wealth that now exist Fortunes
might be in cleaner hands, but there
would still be the rich and the poor to
reckon with.
1T is amazing, it is Incredible, that a.
man of Gov. Altgeld's ability should
really suppose, and we do not believe
that he does suppose, that a mere
change in the form of our currency and
the substitution of silver for a gold
standard would make men wiser. purer.
better and more patriotic. The evil lies
in the low standard of a commercial
age, and we must get men to see the
danger and the error of it before we
can hope for Improvement We have
to wash clean the hand that takes, as
we'll as the hand that gives. The peo-
pie of the United States have had a
long, long education in the principle
that politics is a business out of which
money should be made. Any people,
however great and however free, that
would not find character lowered and
their government degraded in their
eyes to the level of a mere money
making machine by such exhibitions
as they have witnessed at Washington
in the framing Of this tariff BILL would
be superhuman. The vice penetrates
the whole community. If it is right for
representative in congress to vote
for an act that will add $4,000 a year
to the profits Of his business, or to the
profits of the business of one of his
constituents who is able to control
enough votes to re-elect him, why
should it be wrong for the voter him
self, who elects this man, to take S.
as a consideration for his ballot?
This is the vital principle of the cor
ruption that holds high carnival in our
political life today. From this we
must get away. At the root Of this
tree we must lay the ak. We shall
never cut it down by telling one set
of people that the whole blame of a
vice, in which they are equal partners,
belongs to the other man. We shall
never do it, we shall never push for
ward a reform by arraying class
against class, when each of them has
its own weaknesses and weaknesses,
and when safety and honor lie only in
setting up a high standard of indi-
vidual conduct and of forcing it into
our public life. Let wrong doing have
it's just condemnation wherever it ex-
lists, be the offender millionaire or day
laborer. the betterment of public life
must come from the improvement of
the mass, and not of any class.