The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1899-01-11
WRONG MORAL STANDARD
The Evils Which Are Generally At
tributed to Bad Hearts, Are In Fact
but the Natural Result of Our Pres
ent Economic System.

| Uecture Delivered by Prof George D.
Heron in Willard Hall, Chicago)
! How comes it that human life is prac-
tically treated as mere grist for the cap
italist mill? Is it the end of civilization
that industry should develop into a
monstrous universal proft-making ma
chine, into which the multitudes are
fed, to be ground as the increased capital
| for private owners? Every nation,
| every conscience that has a right to be
| called Christian, searches for the an
swer, and every reform waits for it, It
Is thus that the social problem is the
problem of human destiny.
We build civilization on the backs Of
| the people, and then piously enjoin them
to get up. We fasten yokes and fetters
| on the people, and then blame them for
! not getting on" We go on creating
and supporting an economic order that
| morally and physically exhausts the
multitudes, and then condemn the So
cial grist for the industrial mill out Of
which it has been ground. From pos
sessions" says Richard Wagner, (which
have become private property, and
which now, strangely enough, are re-
garded as the very foundation Of good
order, spring all the crimes, both of
myth and of history
Nearly all the evils which we are in
the habit of attributing to bad hearts
are in reality the moral fruits of our
economic struggles and inequalities.
Half the crimes committed by human
beings" said John Brisben Walker to
the students of the Catholic university
at Washin gton. come from frightful
poverty or an overabundance Of wealth
or from efforts to escape the one or ac-
Qulre the other. There is no remedy but
changed economic system"
Perhaps half million people will sit
down in the saloons of Chicago tonight;
not to get drunk, or even to drink, for
vast numbers of them do not drink at
all; but because the saloon is the only
social shrine, the only municipal draw
ing room, in which the greater number
of citizens can get together as human
beings, and shake their hearts out to
each other, as the Germans say. The
drunkenness and crime which follow are
the direct fruits of the social system.
With the moral standards produced
by our economic system, it is no wonder
that our periodic appeals to good citi-
zens' to organize to save their CITY or
reform the nation have become gro
tesque and clownish. The "good citi-
zens' we call upon to rise above their
material self-interests-and that on the
ground of more material self-interest,
lest the political corruption they have
begotten sweep their material things
away-are in fact the socially worst;
1t is from them the city and nation
needs saving. The social redemption
will come, at last, through the people
the good citizens" exploit and fear.
The good citizens" are the chief enc
mics of goodness, the men of "blame-
less lives are the high priests of wrong
that affront the skies; that blaspheme
the universe, and that make the very
stones cry out against the sufferings of
man.
Political corruption is an integral
part of the present business system. In
New York city the bottom municipal
ailment is not Tammany Hall and it's
retainers hut tho h,,cinocc iptoroc+c +I,o+
use Tammany Hall to buy legislation at
Albany, and to buy franchises at the
city hail. Tammany is but symptom of
disease, Of an economic system that
is through and through corrupt and
| morally exhausted. 1t is business"
that balks our attempts at better city
government; that easily brides and sad
dies our feeble and halting municipal
citizens" who will ride them in the di-
rection of property interests. 1t is
business" that elects and corrupts our
state and national legislatures, and de-
bauches all our sacred political func-
tions. There is scarcely any legislation
In the land, municipal, or state and ma
tional, that is not now bought and sold
in the open market.
Worse than all else, the economic
system corrupts the sources of public
opinion, and battles the free expression
of such opinion as remains. The money
that owns the public press, that inspires
its dispatches and writes it's editorials,
also dictates what shall be taught in our
colleges, and qualities the utterances Of
the pulpit to an immeasurably larger
degree than we are willing to admit,
| and it is gradually adopting legal, jour
| nalistic and religious means to suppress
| freedom of speech. If were to stand
| before any representative religious gath