The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1898-05-01

the fagot, the boiling oil and the cross,
are no longer needed to secure that uni
formity of thought which to a certain de-
gree the human race must have for its
own permanently Men of different creeds
can now live together in reasonable peace.
The time was and not long ago, when
religious hatreds We're beyond all control.
But like national hatreds, they now con-
fine themselves to language. There was
time, only three hundred years ago, when
every man felt that some way or other
every man of another nation was in
stinctiveiy his personal enemy. Even the
influence of Christianity powerless
to destroy this readiness for strife. God
may have been in theory the god of all
nations. but in practice each nation pray
ed to him as his own. Each nation had
the vlest stories to tell about the others
and worse than all, believed the stories it
told.
To all Frenchmen all the English were
perfidious. To the Englishman all French
men were both licentious and dirty. Par
ler'' the French word for speaking, be-
came "parlar" in Spanish, the word for
babbling; and the Spanish hablar' be-
came 'habler' in French, and signified to
chatter. The same disease or plague be-
came French or Spanish or English in the
mouth of national enmty. Nowadays
the English virtue is recognized by the
witty Frenchman, who, however finds
the English virtue bounded by the Chan
mel and the ocean. This is an improve
ment. The world progresses every time
a bright gibe is substituted for a per-
manent hatred. People are nowadays in
termingling and finding for. themselves
that the monsters which used to people
other lands were the monsters of their
own creation, and that other nations airs
nearer of kin than the old genealogy of
hatred used to think. War itself still re-
mains terrible beyond any description
anybody has ever dared to make of it
except Tolstoi and Senkiewicz. who have
added TO the culture of the fullest civil
cation knowledge of life in lands
where civilization is at low tide. Yet
war itself has been so mitigated that
prisoners are no longer butchered or en-
shaved, nor are the wounded slain.
On the contrary, all nations welcome
the Red Cross. Even the increase in the
power of destroying has led to less
slaughter. Hand to-hand conflict was
more deadly than magazine rifles and eX
plosiye shells. If politics is still bad
there was once a time when there was
not rendered to goodness even the hom-
age of hypocrisy. When Walpole was
bribing the whole majority of the House
of Commons there was an openness about
it that seemed to link it with the virtues.
Today bribery even by office is unknown
in the land of Walpole, and almost every
where politics is not the road TO
wealth, but the road to poverty. In that
business glory and pelf do seldom go to-
gether. Moreover the seeming control of
the few lessons every day, and indeed al
ways had serious limitations. The non
combatant in politics is always power.
for he is likely often TO enlist, and when
he does he counts like a regular. Mercan-
tile honor may still be bad and officers
chosen to care for corporate property
may juggle with 1t for their own benefit.
but they do it out of sight and wicked
ness driven to cover is on the way TO eX-
tinction.
When justice openly received presents
from both suitors, the shame and the
crime were equally open. When public
sentiment crushed "the greatest and
wisest of mankind" and stamped him
also as the 'meanest, it ended public
bribery of justice. and in the end ban
ished from the courts all bribery. How
ever short mercantile honor may fall of
nice adjustment, yet 1t has made great
progress since the days when Drake
was a famous pirate, licensed by public
sentiment, and the world respected no
right which could not be maintained by
force
Strikes do bring upon us the disadvan-
tages that the pessmists claim. and more
than have been enumerated, but whoever
contrasts these days with the days when
there We're no strikes. will not care when
the condition of labor then is fully un-
derstood TO stand up for his contention
While large strikes are seldom success
full and are often the results of temper
rather than reason, yet the right to
strike and the possibility of it has al
ready led to a fairer division of the
profits of labor and capital Whenever
there shall come, as will surely come,
that full, necessary knowledge, each of
the other side, an agreement will not be
difficult.
When two opposing self-interests clash
| both sides have got TO see the truth in
the end, though much fighting may lie
across the pathway. If department stores
! are absorbing trade IL is only another
| repetition of what has so often been re-
| peated before. When Fulton invented
| the steamboat what effect do you suppose
| that had on transportation? Think of the
captains of little coasters and the crews
which were driven from the seasi Yet
| in the long run could you wish that Full
ton had never lived? The story of all
| labor-saving inventions has been the
same. Men have had to adjust themselves
| TO new conditions and with much diff
| ficulty; yet the world would not be halt
a world without the inventions. To moth
| ing do the poor owe much as 10 the
| machine which makes things cheap. HUI
| man wants increase with every invention
| The world which used to content itself
| with thanksgiving now keeps all the ma
chimes running. If you judge the future
| by the pas, there will never come a time
| when the increase of human wants vii
not keep pace with inventions.
Not only do those who nave much want
| more but every year there are comins
into the field of demand multitudes oil
those who have little and who wanted
little, but who have at least felt the neeC
| OF more. Human wants are of two kinds
| the vague ones which do not make peo
pie bestir themselves and are of no worth
TO the race, and the definite ones which
make men labor. These are the deer
| source of all human progress. Sucf
wants make the wheels turn and bushes!
! brisk. The broader the want the more
people who feel 1t. the better for all o
us. Think of the foolish days when they
would not let the people clothe them
selves in the best which their money
could buy and so stopped the stream O
work at its very source. Our wants too
are not always our own. What Other
people have we, too, must have. No
only do the trophies of Miltiades depriv,
Themistocles of sleep, but John Smith:
new piazza keeps a whole village awake
| Look at the Improvement of manners
There are no floggings at school, and YER,
few at home. All the boys of toda,
would forty years ago have been thrashe,
for their goodness as savoring of hypoc
risy. Within that same time there wa
the delicate distinction between the we'll
bred who handled the knife with III
edge to the outside and the ili-bred VIII
risk the enlargement of their mouths b