Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1902-10-02
Home.

UOHuts |
In the REGISTERS local brevities,
last week, the editor goes into rhap-
over the word home; yet all
that was said is true. 1t is the tender
est word in our language. Around it
the highest virtues humanity
Is capable Of, and in it love bears it's
brightest and sweetest blossoms. But
when we turn from the poetical to the
practical how saddening it is. 1t is
said that the man who wrote Home,
Sweet Home" never had a home; and
now we are told that a very large ma
jority of our 20, 900, 900 of people have
nj homes that they can call their own.
Nothing more than this fact so COM
pletely shows the shortsightedness,
not to say the stupid ignorance, Of
those we miscall statesmen. More
politicians than statesmen, they per-
sistently overlook conditions most i'm
portant, and that lie at the root OF our
prosperity as a people, conditions upon
which the permanence of our institu-
tions depends.
A hired or rented home is only half
a home at best. A home that the
owner holds for sale or speculation is
not a home in the truest sense. Little
of that sacredness that endows a true
home can belong to it, for it ia not
permanent enough to have many ten
der and cherished memories cluster
about the spot where it stands. The
owner may be pleased with the mer-
cenary gains its sale gives him; he
may carry elsewhere his household
gods, his names and penates, but he
cannot carry with him all that men
and women should learn to love. If
one wants to know how much is lost,
in u half nomadic lives, let him go
back to the spot that his infancy knew,
where, bright and CHEEKY as the fire
on the old, yet well remembered,
hearth, his earliest hopes and glowing
aspirations were born. What a mer-
cenary misanthrope a man must be
who can pass such a spot without feel
ing as if he were passing the graves Of
those he has loved but lost. And
what pitiful politicians the men must
be, who, protesting to advance the
public welfare, ignore the hottest i'm
pulses Of the soul.
Reflect that all this comes of max
ing land, in the broad sense of the
word, a thing Of barter and sale, in
stead of making it the full measure of
every ones obligation to the State. It
is undeniable that a large majority OF
our people have no homes; but who
has the harihood TO say that a large
majority of our people are failuresp
If there were q iend incarnate, a devil
OF the Augustinian or the Athanasian
creed, he could not more completely
curse and damn human beings than by
superinducing such conditions as we
are living under to-day. II you want
a home you must buy it. To buy a
home you must have dollars; 80 to get
dollars men and women are both drawn
and driven to selling their souls, and
the Spectator raises the price o!
homes faster than the dollars to buy
them with can be gathered. What Q
hollow, transparent, ~palpable, mock
cry and fraud, social regulation, OF
government, is that permits such con.
ditions to exist!
II those who ask our votes are such
fakirs, what shall we say Of our
preachers, OF those who solemnly pro.
Tess to be devoting their lives to bet.
tering the lives Of their fellowmen,
yet who never point out this greatest
of all evils, nor suggest a remedy
nay, who often attempt to Justify and
defend practices that even those who
are not orthodox have the moral sense
and courage to condemn. They know
that men and women are what their
environment makes them; yet they fail
to show how our present environment
could be changed. Realizing all these
things, II is almost %sickening to cit
under the pulpit and hear so much
about the love OF God while 30 little is
said, or done, to ward off the malicious
hate OF the devil, under whose power
we live and get dollars. Get money!
get 1t honestly II you can, but, at any
rate, get money! You have got to get
1t, you must have 1t, or you can never
have q home. Again one Is reminded