The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1900-09-13

In the last one hundred and twenty
five years mother earth has witnessed
great convulsions and sublime muta-
tions in the affairs of men. Every
schoolboy and girl in the United States
of America is familiar with the heroic
achievement of our colonial sires that
threw off the yoke of bondage of the
effete dynasties of the old world, and
unfurling new flag unsullied with
mercenary blood of conquest and set
ting at naught the established prece-
dents of ages, proclaimed and builded
through evolution with sound reason,
the grandest nation this good old earth
has ever known. From their brave
example other liberty-loving sons being
initiated have fashioned their desti-
nies upon the same noble plan. Not
every boy or girl nor even grown men
and women are acquainted though
with the demoraIizing influences that
are fostered and nourished by sordid
and unprincipled caitiffs in the very
heart of our high civilization: fostering
sores that imperil our existence as an
exponent of national freedom.
The conditions in our flourishing
land today that stand for the highest
practical working out of ideal civiliza-
tion, are at a stage of their progress
that China was over thousand years
ago, with the difference that they had
an established monarchy while we
have an unwritten but still, to great
extent, established plutocratic oil
garchy. We have wealthy pluto
cracy within these United States with
kings and queens and princes royal
who live in regal style of ease and
comfort, with our modern facilities
and appliances for luxury that excells
in magnificence the barbaric pomp of
royalty of ages gone by, even as the
effulgent splendor of the full moon in
its proximity to the earth outshines
the sparkling twinkle of distant star.
Here, too, we have human beings
within the confines of our enlightened
borders as low in the scale of ignor-
ance as can be found in any other part
of the world. You who have been
reared by noble parents in good homes
that is considered of the middle class,
where neither excessive luxury nor the
gaunt wolf of care enters, may not be-
aieve it probably. Then if opportunity
ever offer itself disillusionize yourself
by visiting the chief emporium of our
land, New York city, and its environs,
or our great western city of Chicago to
which all roads lead. In those two
cities out of many you will find lordly
followers of King Mammon dwelling
Iil regal palaces that rival in luxuri-
;anee the fairy creations of the most
iimaginative brain. There, too, you
will find servile subjects of ogre filth
.eking out precarious existence in
squalor and misery equal to anything
sof the kind that can be found in any
other part of the macrocosm of man.
This is not the emanation of a fanci-
full daydreamer, but the simple state
ment of stern facts.
These United States are estimated to
represent the value of sixty-four bill
ions of dollars, controlled by twenty
nine per cent of our population. Be-
cause twenty-nine per cent of our peo-
pie enjoy enormous privileges from the
prosperity and from the wealthy devel-
Opment of this land, we hear sycophants
of this class proclaiming in toady
sophistry of the great benefits accru-
ing to our land by our commercial
expansion. Just let us undeceive our
selves by inspecting the places where
the II per cent of our remaining popu-
iation produce the materials that