Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-07-03
LAST FOURTH or THE CENTURY.

ten:ion that tomorrow will be, or will
rot be the last Fourth in the present CEN
fury, the affirmative of the question is
assumed for the purposes of this article.
The causes which led up to the birth of
this great nation transpired when it was
composed of a few struggling colonies,
enumerating less than 5000, 900 souls.
And this was a long time before the
present century was ushered into the then
unknown future, and before the ''Fourth'
was clothed with the significance which
now attaches to it.
=.
When our revolutionary fathers entered
their protest against taxation without
Representations when they raised their
voices against a stamp act that COM
PEELED them to pay tribute to a power
which treated them as serfs-not as a
people holding a common interest in the
welfare and advancement of the world;
when they consigned to Boston harbor
teas upon which they We're compelled to
pay duty taxes if landed and stored upon
their soil; when they left their plows in
the field their tools at the workbench,
their domestic animals unlocked after.
their prattling babes in the care of weep
ing wives, and their farewell kisses upon
the lips OF mothers and wives, of sisters
and sweethearts. to defend their rights,
4boir Iorar -bo;, bo~,c. ,bo;, Ill So
the fields at Concord, at Lexington and
al Bunker Hill; when their patriotic rep
resentatives at Philadelphia attached
their names to a "Declaration of INDIE
perdence" which forever absolved them
from allegiance to their mother country,
and made the date, Upon which their
world, the natal day of the first and only
republic upon Goods green EARTH When
all this was done, the revolutionary sires
burst the shackles which bound them to
degrading and as CALLING as that borne
by the proud spirited captives of AFRO
CANT Rome when she bound them to the
wheels of her victorious chariots and
paradea them before haunting mobs, we
say when all these things had been ac-
complished, when a brave, patriotic, lib
erty-loving people had fought n suf-
fered in defense of their declaration that
men were created free and equal and
should enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness, and had proven to the world
of the free and the home of the brave
it was then that the spirit had become
matured which now finds expression in
civic and military parades, in patriotic
orations, in music by stringed and brass
bands and cultured voices, in laundering
cannon, in artistic pyrotechnic exhibitions,
in the inevitable fi~recrackers, in balls and
p!easure-loving parties, in picnics and
gaily-costumed aggregations of youth
and beauty, and in other manifestation
in which a liberty-loving, liberty-appre-
an uncontested inning in these latter-day
Fourths
The first Fourth of the present century
found a differently organized and much
less demonstrative people than those who
are now scattered over our more than
5000, 900 square miles of territory. They
We're a temperate, seriously inclined, in
dustrious, honest, frugal, ~law-abiding,
God-fearing people. 1t is true that not a
few Of them had drowned those suspected
of witchcraft, had banished Quakers, per-
secuted others whose religious beliefs did
not harmonic with their own, who had
enacted laws Furnishing those who cooked,
swept their house floors, INDUCED in jests
or idle conversation, walked over a mile,
unless to attend church; or, kissed their
wives upon the abath day. But this was
all lone in the interest of souls-'for
Gods sake" as they expressed it. No
thought of prosecuting others for gain
or honor entered their simple souls. The
birth OF their nation was commemorated
in the same serious. God-fearing. God
worshiping spirit which characterized
their daily walk. They burned a little
Black powder between anvils or rusty