The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1899-02-06
OF
OUR BROTHERS
Cries to Us From the Ad utter
ated and
MOnopolized Foods Says Prof.
Geo. ID. Heron.
COMMONWEALTH CLUB
Opened Its Institute in Repre-
sentative Hall
Last Night With a Sermon
Without Text.


wrangling of politicians and would-be
statesmen, and upon the CRATER as
he plies his trade, last night heard the
principles of the Sermon on the Mount
enunciated from the speakers stand.
1t was the opening of the Common
wealth institute, and the sermon was
delivered by Prof. George d. Heron,
Iowa college at Grinnell, Iowa. Mrs.
Annie L. Diggs, who is at the head OF
the Commonwealth club movement,
presided. She explained that the insti-
tute was held under the auspices of the
WOmen'S Commonwealth club Of Kan
sas, which had been planning for it for
the past six months.
"Our object" said Mrs. DiggS, sis to
study sociological questions from an
absolutely non-partisan standpoint, and
1 am glad to state that people of all
party affiliations are taking an interest
in it,
Prof. Heron announced no text, but
he drew frequent comparisons between
the real teachings of Christ and the al
legged civilization of the present day.
We live near the elimination of
social system" he said. "Over the
chaos and strife which we call civiliza-
ton there broods the thought of love as
law, changing the motives that make
and remake the world. From the midst
of the devouring industrial monsters
rises the creative dream of equality and
harmony. And this dream has already
Il LIS
ing in stature and favor with men,
The social problem he defined as "a
problem of how to so organize the
world that all men may be equally Sc
cure in the material means and social
resources needful for a complete life
without regard to his conscience,
our economic system involves a man in
the moral and physical death of his
brothers. Their blood cries to him from
the adulterated and monopOlized foods
he eats; from the sweat shop clothes he
wears, from his educational advantages,
his special privileges, his social oppOr
tunities. Civilization denies to man
that highest of all rights-the right to
live a guiltless life, the right to do
right.
For instance, I cannot come from
Iowa college to this city to speak to
you of Topeka, against the existing or
der of things without riding upon
railway system, the capitalization of
which is largely watered stock. Water
ed stock is a method of high treason by
which corporations forcibly tax the ma
ton for private profit, and by which
they annually eXtort millions from
American toilerS and producers. Al
though a large part of American indus
try is organized by this system of wa
tered stocks, and we consent to it
tamely and ignorantly, it is yet the
worst historic form of indirect usurpa-
ton and tyranny, and it renders our
national wealth in large part purely
fictitious Again this railway system
administers
of the United States in all things that
concern the system, and the govern
mentS of the several states of the I'm
ion as well. The majority of the Uni
ted States senators recently elected
have been it's mere appointees and lob
byists, and agents at the same time for
other corporate interests. 1t took
shameless mob of 16 railway attorneys
to elect a United States senator to rep
resent the people of the state of which
/ am a, citizen.
IF I put sugar in my coffee support
a trust that practically administered
the finances of the United States for
personal profit; that threw the national
government into the hands of a Wall
street receiver, where it still remains;
that presented, in it's relations to the
United States senate, one of the most
awful and uncOncealed spectacleS of
national debauchery in political his
tory.
In order to send my children to the
public school 1 must buy the books or
dered by a private corporation that has
forcibly assumed the function of admin
iStering the free school system of the
United States as private property; that
employs gangs of ruffians to go up and
down these states and prepare school
legislation for private profit; that ap-
points school superintendent, intlml-
dates school principals, throws out or
employment and blackliStS teachers who
dare reject its publications.
Il can no longer clOthe myself, wheth-
er in GOOD clothes or cheap, WITHOUT the
likelihood that my clothes are made I'M
der sweat shop conditions, in which
men and women and children toll to-
gether in hot air slave pens, fourteen
to eighteen hours a day, for earnings
that range from two to five dollars
week.
IF I send my students to pursue fur
Their study upon subjects to which 1
have introduced them, I must send
them to receive the benefits of endow-
ments from the hands of a beSotted
philanthropy, drunken and stated with
crushed and exhausted millions who
feed the modern industrial wine press.
by merely preaching the ethics of
the sermon on the mount in their pull
pits, have been the means of depriving
able and noble men of their positions
and hvelihoods, because of their eco
nomic dependence upon the few rich
men who control the organization of
their churches.
I'm the early part of 1897, when meet
ings for the relief of the famine in In
dia were being held in English and
American cities, when contributions
were being received from newsboys and
waSherwOmen, scores of ships laden
with wheat and carrying millions of
money arrived in English ports as rents
from the people in India for the priv
ilege of living on the lands which the
English had taken from them.
THE recent forcible control of the
American wheat market, which enabled
one man to hold up the earth by pre-
cisely the same ethics which the foot
pad with the sandbag holds up his vic
tim in the dark alley, occasioned the
shooting down of hundreds of starving
workmen in Italian cities, and may in
directly cost more lives than some of
the great wars.
THE economic advantage which our
Spanish war has given to the controller