The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1899-03-17
Friday, March IL, 1899.
Imperialism.


When men cease TO grow in thought
everything affects them afterwards as a
dream does sleeper. The man reads
and hears of all that is going on i'll the
world but does not fully realize it. 1t all
passes thro' his mind as dream thro the
mind of the sleeper.
Most men stop growing in thought and
expanding intellectually at about as or so
years of age. They quiet down at that
age and ripen. Comparatively few expand
after that period in life. They don't con-
tinue to grow with the progress of the
times. They feel in dim, dreamy, re-
gretable manner that things are moving
around them, but cannot realize that all
things are becoming new, that the old
things are passing away, and the living
realities when they stopped thought
growth are now fossils, and that young,
new growth of ideas has sprung up from
those old roots, and is expanding till the
days of youth and vigor mark the dim
horizon far behind the present.
Hence it is that most old men are
anchored to the past, and only few con-
tinue to grow as the years move on and
produce new thoughts in the moral, as
new growths bury the old i'll the vegetable
kingdom. This is mainly the reason eco
nornic changes are so slow and difficult to
attain. Men past the middle age cannot
realize that everything has changed from
what it was when they we're young and in
their prime. They are semi-conscious, to
be sure, that nothing is just like it was,
but they cannot wholly believe their own
senses and try to grope in the past to find
the familiar things of yore. Faith is too
weak to wholly trust the present.
The generation that is passing in its
chips and off life's stage cannot be de-
pended on to aid in securing the many
reforms so vitality needed; nor neither can
we rely on the men who have travelled to
life's meridian. In the vast majority of
them thought has had its growth, and
they lean on the past for support, as
the young swimmer clings to his board,
lacking faith in himself.
To the boys and girlsnow in the schools
the hope of those who would make the
world better and wiser turns, and on the
proper teaching of them much depends.
A systematized effort is being made on
the higher institutions oflearning- the
colleges and universities-to inislead and
beguile their students with false philan-
throphy and sophistry. The aristocracy
of wealth is striving hard to establish an
exclusive order of its own, enshrined as a
divine right, or as sacred vested-right,
as the class of force and fraud created for
itself sphere from which it barred out
all the rest of the world of humanity
branding it as a base-born and inferior
part, made to serve royal masters. The
world has discarded this belief and over
turned the idols of blue blooded royalty,
and only waits the coming hour to tram
pie the last vestige of the blasphemers of
humanity under foot.
Increased knowledge lifting up the
human mind has enabled man to harness
the elements to do the work which human
hands alone could do but few short
years ago. By the aid of his invention
and knowledge of natures secrets, man
has multiplied his wealth hundred fold,
or is enabled to do so, but he does not
enjoy this abundance he has created A
class of the Inscriptions and cunning,
corresponding to the class that came up
out of the darkness of past ages with
sword and chains for the masses, claiming
divine origin, has seized on this newly
created abundance of wealth and are aim
ing to build on it thrones and temples
where they shall reign as royal masters
and be worshiped as demigods. This is
the real Imperialism which is to be feared,
and it lies right at home, not away in the
Philippines
The slavery to be feared is not the ell
slavement of the half naked Malays in
the tropics but the people who dwell in
American cities and on American farms
with white skins and public schools, their
charter of freedom and source ofknowl-
edge and power. If this old enemy in
new garb and false teaching can defile
the source of knowledge and possess him.
self of the fruits and wealth of labor he
may reign another thousand years, or till
the civilization on which he is now so cum
ningly building collapses, as those on
which he builded in past ages fell beneath
concentrated wealth's blighting power.
This is the momentous question of i'm
perialism which confronts us and the
enemy most to be feared.