The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1902-02-21
THE PROBLEM OF COMBINATION
A Live Topic Discussed With Facts
and Figures.

aAA II uICSs
By Ed. A. Paradis, Midway News.
Few minds have the patience to pur-
sue complex problem to it's solution,
and fewer still have the endurance to
follow the pursuer any great distance.
Yet all minds seem to turn instinctively
towards latency, prompted by desire for
revelation in all that is hidden. The
fondness of the youth for riddles and
puzzles is but earlier stage of the
aged's love for science and philosophy.
BUT to the scholar, and not to the schOl-
astic, is the world mostly indebted for
advancement. 1t is the student, the in
vestigator, and not the teacher, the
pedant who treads the path of knoWl-
edge that leads to wisdom.
In all times and in all countries diff
cult problems have invited the best efforts
of human genius and rewarded the prac-
t1cal man with wealth and the wise man
with contentment. The wealth-getter is
necessarily 1mpelled by the aggressive
ness of his discomfort, while the seeker
after true knowledge must first free his
mind from all that is sordid; and to dis
cover a proper equilibrium between these
two forces has ever been the most per-
picking Of all human problems. .~
After satisfying his immediate wants
the wealth-getter seeks to provide for the
morrow, and for the years to come. When
he has accumulated more than he needs
he strives to provide for his descendants;
he POUNDS house, then tribe, then a
kingdom and finally an empire, and why?
Simply "to continue such interests in as
ISOLATION, together, and to prevent such
interests from being scattered by death or
otherwise" $50. .v.~---
The entire history of the world Is but
the history of partial successes but more
disastrous failures in that one direction,
hence our intellectual and moral prog
rsss. All that there is on earth Of popular
comfort and contentment is directly
traceable to the pursuit of knowledge and
the search, for wisdom. The APPALLING de-
vastations from wars of conquest and the
millions of human lives have been
crushed on the march to popular freedom
and to popular knowledge, all the way
from the Euphrates to the Black Sea and
the Mediterranean, from the Black sea
through the continent of Europe to the
Atlantic, across the Atlantic to America,
over America to the Pacific and across
the Pacific to New Zealand, Australia and
the Philippine group-back again to that
primitive materialistic, civilization which,
like the onion, is made up Of cast within
cast, whose cities are built up Of walls
within walls, and whose hundreds of mil
lions Of country people-country people
who, with U.S., have been the bone and
sinew Of our advancing civilization, but,
with them, are the slaves Of benighted
idolatry and cruel oppression fast sink
ing into vice and humiliation.
Viewing this universal panorama, what
three great questions, affecting human So
ciety, present themselves most conspic-
uously to the students mind? In Asia,
the water question; in Europe, the land
question, and In America, the transporta-
tion question. In Australia, and part1c-
ularly In New Zealand, we see the three
resolved into one, and, let us hope, solved.
under the magic influence Of public con-
troll.
In New Zealand, as we are informed.
the public has done away with monopoly.
Gigantic fortunes there are impossible.
and poverty is unknown. In that land is
found a Job for every man and every
man finds job. The inordinate concen-
tratton OF wealth and consequent abuse