The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1898-04-08
q Few That Bother Modern Society.

a Few That Bother Modern Society.
At the Social Science club last even
ing, G. M. Hobart read paper on
"Some Sociological Wrinkles, in which |
he held that the much referred to
good old times" were myth that
kept receding into the past as you
searched history for them; that the So
called ''good old times were not good
times as compared with the comforts
and commences enjoyed by the
masses today. He showed that there
had always existed discomfort
among the masses over their LOT
in life, though that discomfort
might be more widespread today and
more dangerous in certain way be-
cause it exists among more intelligent
people that it is this discomfort that has
spurred man on for something better
and made the civilization we have at
tanned possible. But while holding
that the masses are more intelligent, he
also took the ground that there was a
vast amount of misinformation spread
among them concerning economic con-
ditions which concern them; that there
is a vast amount of matter published
along this line in magazines and also
in book form that takes too much for
granted and is not based upon actual
facts. That it all too often gives but
one side of the question without con-
sidering the other side. He further
held that this state of affairs was furth-
er aggravated by the construction put
upon the oft quoted phrase of the Dec
laration of Independence that 'all men
are created equal" and which is used
by demagogues and professional agita-
tors to show that society has drifted
away from the conditions upon which
the nation was founded. He held that
it was nothing but sentiment, written
for a purpose which it accomplished
That men were not created equal In
any respect, either as to intellectual or
physical power, and from the very ma
ture of things could not have equal OPP
portunities. The two main points OF
the paper were the matter of distribu-
ton of the products of labor and the
alleged concentration of wealth. AS to
the former, he held that it was &C
complished without any system what
ever. That in the principle of COM
binations and trusts there was the
chance for the working out of more
perfect system of distribution, but that
it had been perverted by the greed of
man from its true line. and used to too
great an extent for the benefit of the
few. AS to the assertion that wealth is
concentrating, he held that it is more
widely diffused among the masses to-
day then it was 30 years ago. He
showed that the many articles put
forth in the attempt to show that
wealth is concentrating are valueless as
data, because they contained no COM
parision with the existing conditions of
forty or fifty years ago, which is the
only true test. He then gave COMPARE
sons prepared by T. o. Wiley in his
work, ''The Laborer and the Capital
ist," showing that 25 men held the
same pe1centage of the wealth of New
York City in 1910 that 1873 men did in
1894, and that the same conditions exist
all over the country. He held that the
trouble did not come so much from the
alleged concentration of wealth as from
the abuse of the concentration of pow
er result of the vast aggregation of
capital in the carrying on of vast indus
tries.
Mr.. w. E. Freeman opened the dis
cussion, holding that the Declaration
of Independence meant just what it
said, that all men were created equal,
and further that wealth is concentrate
ing in the hands of the few, though he
admitted that the general state of soci-
ETY. is better today than ever before. A
lively discussion followed.
The next regular meeting will be
held on Tuesday evening, April 10Th,
when Prof. Fl. B. Leyenberger will
read a paper on THE Social Effect of
Modern Popular Conventions.