Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1901-08-02

Shall we who have enlisted in the
cause of God and humanity expose
our plans to the enemy? No; we will
in secret plot the ruin of all the en-
terprises 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 will fall on their right. By a
plan of battle formed in secret con-
c1ave we will come suddenly upon
them crying: 1.-THE sword of the
Lord and of Gideon" Secrecy of
plot and execution is wrong only
when the object and ends are nefari-
Gus. Every family is a secret society,
every business firm and every bank
ing and insurance institution. Those
men who have no capacity to keep
secret are unfit for positions of trust
anywhere. There are thousands of
men whose vital need is culturing a
capacity to keep a secret. Men talk
too much, and women, too. There
is time to keep silence as well as a
time to speak.
Although not belonging to any of
the great secret societies about which
there has been so much violent discus
sion, I have only words of praise for
those associations which, have for
their object the maintenance of right
against wrong or the reclamation of
inebriates or, like the score of mutual
benefit societies called by different
names, that provide temporary relief
for widows and orphans and for men
incapacitated by sickness or accident
from earning livelihood. Had it not
been for the secret labor organizations
in this country monopoly would long
ago have, under its ponderous wheels,
ground the laboring classes into an
intolerable servitude. 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 organizations, and while
we deplore many things that have
been done by them, their existence is
a necessity and their legitimate sphere
distinctly pointed out by the Provi-
dence of God. Such organizations are
trying to dismiss from their asso-
citation all members who are in favor
of anarchy and social chaos. They
will gradually cease anything like tyr
amy over their members and will
forbid violent interference with any
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' asso-
citation, which says any man found
running or working beyond regular
speed shall be fined two shillings six
pence for the first offense, five shil-
lings' for the second, ten shillings for
he i,.I CT; ho1
be dealt with as the committee thinks
proper.
There are secret societies in our col
leges that have letters of the Greek
alphabet for their nomenclature, and
their members are at the very front
in scholarship and irreproachable in
morals, 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 So
cieties, like individuals, are good or
bad, are the means of moral health or
of temporal and eternal damnation. All
good people recognize the vice of SIAN
dering an individual, but many do not
see the sin of slandering an organiza-
ton. There are old secret societies in
this and other countries, some of them
centuries old, which have been wide
ly denounced as immoral and damag-
ing in their influence, yet have hun
dreds of personal 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 would have for my
executors at the time of decease, and
they are the men whom would have
carry me out to the last sleep when
I am dead. You cannot make me be-
ieve that they would belong to bad in
situations. They are the men who would
stamp on anything Ubiquitous, and I
would certainly rather take their tes-
timony in regard to such societies
than the testimony of those who, hav-
ing been sworn in as members, by their
assault upon them confess 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 societies have poured very
heaven of sunshine and benediction
into the home of suffering. Several
of them are founded on fidelity to
good citizenship and the Bible. I
| have never taken one of their de-
grees. They might give me the grip
Ia thousand times and I would not
recognize it. I am ignorant of their
passwords, and I must judge entire
ly from the outside. But Christ has
given us a rule by which we may
judge not only all individuals, but all
societies, secret and open. by their
fruits We shall know them" Bad
societies make bad men. Good socie-