Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1901-07-29

ruin of all the enterprises Of satan and
his cohorts! When they expect US by
day, we will fall upon them by night.
While they are strengthening their left
wing we viii fall on their right. By a
plan of battle formed in secret conclave
we will come suddenly upon them, cry
ing. The sword Of the cord and Of
Gideon!' Secrecy of plot and execu-
ton is wrong only when the object
and ends are nefarious. Every family
is a secret society, every business firm
and every banking and insurance in
stitution. Those men who have no ca
pacity to keep q secret are unfit for po-
sitionS of trust anywhere. There are
thousands of men whose vital need is
culturing a capacity to keep q secret.
Men talk 100 much and women too.
There is time to keep silence as well
as Il time to speak.
Although not belonging to any of the
great secret societies about which there
has been SO much violent discussion,
have only words of praise for those as
Sociations which have for their object
the maintenance Of right against wrong
or the reclamation of inebriates or like
called by different names, that provide
temporary relief for widows and or
phans and for men incapacitated by
sickness or accident from earning a
livelihood. Had it not been for the
secret labor organizations in this coun-
try monopoly would long ago have IN
der its pOnderOus wheels ground the
laboring classes into an intOlerab1e
'yitude. The men who want the
whole earth to themselves would have
got it before this had it not been for
the banding together Of great secret
organic tons. And, while we deplore
many things that have been done by
them, their existence is necessity and
their legitimate sphere distinctly point
ed out by the providence of God. Such
organizations are trying to dismiss
from their association all members who
are in favor of anarchy and social
chaos. They will gradually cease any
thing like tyranny over their members
and will forbid violent interference
with any mans work, whether he be-
longs to their union or is outside of it,
and will declare their disgust With any
such rule as that passed in England by
the Manchester Bricklayers' assOcia-
ton, which says any man found run
ming or working beyond a regular speed
shall be fined shiIlings and sixpence
for the first Offense, 5 shillings for the
second. 10 shillings for the third and if
still persisting shall be dealt with as
the committee thinks proper.
Relief of the Sick.
There are secret societies in our col
leges that have letters of the Greek al
phabet for their nomenclature, and
their members are at the very front in
scholarship and irreproachable in NOR
ais, while there are others the scene of
carousal, and they gamble, and they
drink, and they graduate knowing a
hundred times more about sin than
they do of geometry and Sophocles In
other words, secret societies, like indi-
viduals, are good or bad, are the means
of moral health or of temporal and
eternal damnation. All good people
recognize the vice of slandering an in
dividual, but many do not see the sin
of slandering an organization. There
are old secret societies in this and 9th
er countries, some of them centuries
old, which have been widely denounced
as immoral and damaging in their in
fuence. yet l have hundreds of person
al friends who belong to them, friends
who are consecrated to God, pillars in
the church. faithful in all relations Of
life, examples of virtue and piety. They
are the kind of friends whom I would
have fer my executors at the time Of
decease, and they are the men whom l
would have carry me out to the last
sleep when I am dead. You cannot
make ME believe that they would be-
long to bad institutions. They are the
men who would stamp on anything in
iquitous, and l would certainly rather
take their testimony in regard to such
societies than the testimony of those
who having been sworn in as mem
bers by their assault upon them con-
fesS themselves perjurers.
One of these secret societies gave for
the relief Of the sick in 1873 in this
country $1.49O,274. Some of these So
cieties have poured d very heaven Of
sunshine and benediction into the home
of suffering. Several of them are
founded on fidelity to good citizenship
and the Bible. l have never taken one
of their degrees. They might give me
the grip a thousand times and would
not recognize it. l am ignorant of
their passwords, and l must judge en-
tirely from the outside. But Christ
has given US & rule by which we may
judge not only all individuals, but ali
societies. secret and open. 'By their
fruits We shall know them" Bad soci-
cites make bad men. Good societies
make good men. A bad man will not
stay in a bad society. Then try all Sc
cret societies by two or three rules.
In Eumanfty's Service.
Test the first: Their influence on