The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-01-03
J. J. ingalls, Writes a Review
and a Forecast.
Tells How the United States
Has Grandly Grown.
PIONEER STRUGGLES.
He Reviews the Work Of the
56th Congress
From an Independent Stand
point In Breezy Style.

/ (John J. Ingalls, in New York Journal)
The Genesis of other nations has been
| legendary and obscure. They have had
an unrecorded infancy and childhood Of
fable and mythology. Their dawn has
emerged from a dim twilight peopled
with vague shadows and phantoms,
Gods and Giants and Heroes whose
| loves and wars are written in the lad
and odes of the race. But there is no
| Romulus and Remus business about the
! United States of America; none of it's
| founders were sucked by wolves on the
banks of the James or the inhospitable
shores of Massachusetts Bay.
The forty thousand Englishmen who
migrated to Virginia and New England
in the first half of the seventeenth CEN
fury are no strangers. We know their
names, where they were born, why they
4 came, the day and hour they landed
| and what they did when they set foot
1 on shore. We know, for they have told
I US, that Massachusetts was discovered
| by accident and settled by mistake.
| The pilgrims did not intend to land
/ at Plymouth, and they would not have
remained there could they have gotten
/ away. They sailed for the Hudson, and
| after a tempestuous voyage of more
| than two months the Mayhower an
| chored off Cape Code.
the sunless sea, and then, landing on
/ Plymouth rock, founded the famous
/ colony without the knowledge of 1.-THE
/ corporation that claimed the territory
and without the sanction of the govern
ment by which it was chartered. They
! were neither much better nor much
/ worse than the average American citi-
| zen today. No doubt they wanted the
/ right to worship God according to the
| dictates of their own conscience, but
| six days in the week they had an in
credibly keen eye for the main chance.
| Those sombre exiles brought in their
| cargo many things that did not ap-
! pear in the invoice. They unloaded
| from their shallop the elements of a
\ civilization the most rapacious, the
/ most arrogant, the most relentless ever
known in the history of mankind. Those
! who signed their names to the compact
| of government in that dingy cabin re-
| leased social and political Ideals of in
/ conceivable energy, self government,
4 liberty of conscience, universal educa-
ton. The same spirit that penned that
/ charter wrote the declaration of indie
! pendence, the constitution, the procla-
! nation of emancipation, guided the pen
4 of Lincoln, unseathed the sword Of
| Grant, trained the guns of Dewey at
| Manila and created the splendor and
| opulence and power of the civilization
| Of the nineteenth century.
/ The prescriptions Of these pioneers
| were simple. They were neither dream
/ erS nor NOT philosophers
/ They were tired of kings They were
! fatigued with the hereditary distinc-
| lions of rank and birth and station.
They resolved to build a state in which
! all men should be politically equal. For
| The divine right of kings they SubSti-
| tuted the sovereignty of the people. In
| the place of prerogatives and privilege
| for the few they put equal opportun-
/ tiles for all They determined to secure
! the universal diffusion of social and pO-
/ rio q nif
| panied by sufficient guarantees for the
| protection of life, the security of prop
! erty, the preservation of liberty. They
| projected that the means Of education
| should be co-extensive with the desire
! to know and that the conditions Of hap
| riness should be commensurate with
| the capacity to enjoy.
| Anniversaries are the exclamation
| points Of history. The mind takes mys-
| FERROUS pleasure in their return. The
| birthday of a hero recalls him from the
| tomb and he lives again in the souls of
| millions who rehearse his triumphs and
| deplore his death.
| Upon the dial plate of nations CEN
| turtles are the hours, and though the
! twentieth century does not begin till
! January 1, 1901, it is not Inappropriate
to recount the vast achievement Of
| democratic principles in the hundred
| years now drawing to their close.
! 1t is certain that in 1900 most sanguine
| advocates of Democracy had no pre-
moNition of the coming grandeur and
| glory of the Republic. It's area was
| then much less than one million square
| miles, which was more than doubled in
| 1903 by the sudden and unauthorized
| ACQUISITION of the Louisiana Territory
| from Napoleon, and has since been in
| creased by purchase and conquest to
three and a half millions, exclusive of
| our possessions in the West Indies and
| the Pacific.
It is far within bounds to say that
humanity has made greater progress in
| the last hundred years than in all the
! six thousand that preceded.
In everything that makes life rich
| and valuable and worth living for,
| health, comfort, beauty and happiness,
| the humblest artisan enjoys what
| kings could not purchase with their
treasures a century ago.
/ When John I. Blair, who died a few
| weeks ago at ninety-seven, was born,
it took longer to go from Boston to
! Washington than it does now to travel
from New York to San Francisco. and
cost half as much to make the journey.
| There were no railroads nor steamboats,
nor telegraphs nor telephones. The
only means of public conveyance were
stage coaches, sailing vessels and canal
| boats. Communication by mail was
equally costly and uncertain Cincin-
natl and St. Louis were frontier out
! posts, and the name of Chicago was
| not written in the gaZettes. There was
not a friction match in the world Fire,
| the Indispensable minister of civiliZa-
ton, was preserved by being covered in
| the ashes at night or struck from the
flint and steel into finder. Illumina-
ton was by candles. Electricity for
| light, heat and power was unknown
The awful horrors of surgery and the
pangs of death had not been mitigated
by chloroform- Intelligent sanitation
and scientific nutrition had not beer
discovered. The typewriter, the sewing
machine and agricultural machinery
were phantoms of hope. Every acre
/ | of grain was sOWed broadcast, reapeo
4 by the sickle and threshed by the dull
thunder Of the alternate fail.
It is difficult to conceive the condi-
/ lions and incidents Of existence wheI