The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-05-30

and murder The rule works both ways.
Passion. selfishness will breed new
slaveries and treasons. This continent
is not large enough between the wash
and legitimatized sin. The irrepressible
conflict between oligarchic selfishness
and free institutions, and the rights of
the common people is still on, not wholly
political, but more economic. now, but
none the less a felony against home and
man.
with closest application may we
quote the classic and hallowed Gettys-
burg words of Mr.. Lincoln: Tt is for
u.s. the living, to be dedicated to the un-
here have so far so nobly advanced. 1t
is rather for US to be here dedicated
to the great task remaining before us,
that we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain;
that this nation under God shall have
a new birth of freedom, that the govern
ment of the people, by the people and
for the people shall not perish from the
earth
"BattIefields may change, but the
treason is one. Shall the few exploit
the many? Shall an oiigarchy, whether
a slaye-oracy or a bureaucracy, or
plutocracy, absorb the rights, undue
revenues, opportunities of the masses
of the people? Rev. DR.. Mcfarland just
said before our High school children:
Who owns the air and sunshine That
query has fairly obvious answer in free,
fair, green, wide Kansas, but it would
not be so easily answered in a close,
east-side tenement district of infec-
tious, pauperized New York city. Or if
an answer were given, it would not for
a moment be Cod but the name of
some Shylock, though not a Jew, who
was systematically farming at enOr-
nous rental the minimum of sun and air
that gloomily filters down a six-inch
air-shaft in a tenement fve-Story death
manufactOry.
Fellow citizens, shall the free insti-
tutions, purchased and safe-guarded by
now four wars of liberation, be set in
daily jeopardy or destroyed for the BEN
eft of any clique of limited consDir-
ators, who (on the most gigantic scale)
are again seeking to exploit toll and the
masses by grasping an unearned and
undue proportion Of the fruits of labor?
Our revolutionary fathers fought
| the oppressive economic colonial
| tees. our colonial fathers
attempted to hedge in the cradle of in
dividual liberties with constitutional
| adeQuates guarantees. You, our patriot
| brothers, fought an oligarchy that
sought to chatteliZe, and Sta1gmat1ze
labor, but you live to see another gigan-
| tic conspiracy rise. equally cruel, an
| audaciOus, no whit less reasonable, nc
| less a felony on man and larceny on
/ toll no less dangerous to free inStitu-
| senate chamber legislatures, and city
| governments an oligarchy of law-de-
fiance, and organized wealth by where
| again a few are able to play bandit or
| private rights, and minor legalized, anc
| vested interests. We watch the spec
| tacle that ought to alarm lovers of free
| dom where the few prescribe not ac
cording to any equity of value, nor ye
according to any competitive law D
| supply and demand, but by sheer robbel
force of an artiicially produced neces
sity,. how much the people shall pay 70
what they must buy, and how little the.
must get for what they have to sell.
Whether the poor shall groan on il
darkness, the rivers of oil well up from
Gods earth tC hold an almost free tore
| to human need, and turn moaning nigh
into day save as the hand of gree
snatches away the lamp till artificiall
enforced want out of its inability shal
pay the felonprice for needless sarci
ty.
I'VE as citizens must stop this fool
waste of a freeman's time on the fri
volous, and the trivial. and listen one
again to the solemn recruiting drur
beating up and down all the streets an
by-ways of our distraught nation, call
ing to fuller citizen-eQuipment for tn
burdens, and tasks of freeman. w
must enrich the curriculums of a
schools in the domains of liberty, eli
minating the relatively important an
formal and introducing the vital, an
dynamic social, and ethical, and econ
Omic cultures that help to breed u
men, not pedants, or Itterateurs. w
! must learn the as yet almost unIearne
> lesson, that fraternity. that justice, tha
: civil peace cannot be sucked on the
+ orems cOnjugations. technical empiriC
!, isms, but only on a knowledge of Coz
of love, of ethics. of religion"