Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-10-26
WHAT SORT.
OF "Prospcrity'' IL Titan Article for
Careful Reading by Considerations


looked The moral standards of a ma
ton are, in truth. of far greater i'm
portance in the long run than the
growth of its commerce, its agriculture
or its manufactures, or all of them put
together.
This may sound like too bold as
sertion at time when the Mckinley
spellbinders, from Hanna and Roose-
welt down to the humblest talker of
them all, are agreed that material pros
perity,' cent per cent dividends for the
trusts and full dinner pail" for the
workingman are the only things worth
talking about. Nevertheless what is
true of the individual man is true Of
nations; they cannot live by bread
alone" There are such things as moral
greatness, moral expansion and moral
prosperity. And If these are forfeited
and lost no amount of material pros
perity-mere piling UP of wealth, null
duplication of factories and increase Of
imports and eXports-can compensate
for tnat calamity. righteousness ex-
alteth a nation" is as true now as it
ever was. The shores of history are
strewn with the wrecks of empires
whose rulers dis,believed it.
Our forefathers who founded this
republic believed in moral strength,
moral force and moral resources as the
vital elements of true national prosper
ity. The counsels and examples which
they bequeatled to us are all of an ele-
waited moral character. The ideal
American nation, as they strove to
make it, and exhorted their successors
to go on making it, was nation that
should love liberty and justice above
all things; that should cultivate SIM
plicity frugality and honesty in its own
government; that should keep out of
foreign wars and leave foreign adven-
lures alone; that should honor men
more than merchandise, and put prin-
ciple before profit; that should offer
to the old world the example of coun-
try in which there should be no patents
of nobility, no distinction of rank and
title, no privileged class or castles, nonh-
ing that denied or hindered the perfect
equality of rights and opportunities be-
tween all its citizens.
Built on these high and broad moral
lines our forefathers who framed the
Constitution foresaw that the United
States would draw to themselves, by
happier conditions of life for the COM
mon people, men q all the white races
who lived in lands where property and
privileges were only for the few and
poverty and oppression the fixed lot
of the many. And their foresight was
justified by the event
There is no nation in Europe which
is not largely represented in our pop
ulation. Alike from Great Britain and
Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy and
Russia the tide of immigration to this
country has been flowing without in
terrrption, sometimes higher or lower,
but always flowing for over a hundred
years. And the magnet that has drawn
them has been their knowledge that
here was a land OF real liberty, where
one man was as good as another before
the law; where one. mans opportunity
to get on in the world and acquire a
share of those goCdAtlings Ain tethat
all men desire-independe in bus
mess, the title deed to home, property
and money-was the same as anOther's;
where, in a word, the race Ofslife' was
free-for-aH contest, with neither han
dicaps nor favors for anybody.
But to-day the Republican party has
nothing to say of those great moral
ideas of liberty and justice and equality
of rights and opportunities which the
fathers meant this republic to stand for,
and which, as in times past, we have
proudly and truthfully claimed, have
made it the Mecca Of poor, depressed
and otherwise hopeless men all round
the globe The Hannas and the Roose-
velts are preaching a far different gos-
pei OF prosperity" 1t is all material
prosperity, and that only for limited
few, that they are talking about. 1t is
prosperity for the classes, but not for
the masses.
The Republican prosperity" idea is
to give millions in unearned dividends
on watered stocks to trust magnates,
and bids the multitude of toilers be
satisfied with a full dinner pail
which the State provides for even the
worst of criminals. 1t is the prosper
| ity of the great manufacturing mono
poles, enabled by a Chinese tariff wall
against the foreign competitor to cut
| the wages OF their employees with one
/ hand to the lowest point and with the
other to raise prices to the highest
point for the consumers. 1t is the pros
perity of the Standard Oil kings, whose
individual fortunes far surpass the ia
bled wealth of Croesus, and who in
! this current year alone have already
gathered dividends on their stock
amounting to 3o per cent. and expect
; to gather a total dividend OF so per
cent before the year is ended. 1t is
the prosperity Of the Coal Trust, which,
while appearing to concede rise OF 10
per cent in wages to its 100000 mine
workers-they nave not really done it
has arbitrarily raised the price of
coal 81 a ton to the consumer. That
is to say, to balance a pretended in
cease in wages of $780, 900 a year,
they mean to pick the pockets of the
public to the extent of $50 100000 a
year by adding 81 a ton TO the cost
of the $4,000, 900 tons of anthracite an
nually mined and sold.
That is the kind OF prosperity the
Republican orators ana organs are
prating about. But, as Mr.. Bryan per-
j tinently asks, Whose prosperity is it.?
And what, above all, is its moral or i'm
moral character? If it Is prosperity
only for the pampered favorites of
tariff and other class legislation, then
it is immoral prosperity. If it is pros
perity only for the monopolies at the
4 expense of the great body of the peo-
I