Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1902-04-14
WHAT HE WOULD SEE
HOW WE COULD ENTERTAIN DUP
FRIEND FROM JUPITER.
We Would Show Him That We Are
Travelling Toward Destruction as
Fast as Our Legs Can Carry Us-We
Do All Things but the Right Thing.
Especial Correspondence. ]

cial decision on the ground that they
cmbody some discrimination which
makes them unconstitutional. If some
intelligent being from Jupiter came
down to visit us and heard of that jul
dicial decree before he had time to
study our national development, he
would say, "Well this American nation
has certainly discovered the panacea
for human happiness" And the illu
sion would remain if he came to us as
an illustrious potentate from one of the
Jupiter nations, willing and anxious to
be honored by our own potentates, no
matter at what cost from the public
funds, the very ones that come most
especially from the working masses in
each nation. But suppose that our
friend from Jupiter was not only in
telligent, but sensible, intelligence and
sense being a combination not easily
found in our days. Then, if he would
decline the folly of all public eXhibi-
tions, decline to make a circus out Of
his own person, he would soon find out
what? Some of our great inconsistent
cies in the realm of legislation,
He would first notice that our trusts
are simply some OF the most prominent
boils of our miserable industrialism
spreading their intense malaria over
the whole social organism. He would
have no trouble to discover that Il
grand cobweb of criminal discrimina-
tions underlies all the trusts, without
which they would tumble down as rap
idly as they could be organized or set
on their feet. by digging a little farther
down into the soil of that freedom of
ours, so preposterous and laughable, he
would soon notice that our whole prog
ress is a phantasmagoria or combina-
ton of shrewd devices for us never to
know where we are at, whether we are
judges, legislators, potentates or only
plain people. Our Jupiter friend would
find that we are marching toward de-
struction as fast as our legs can carry
us.
If that friend of ours needed to have
his views indorsed, all he would have
to do is to study our daily papers, with
their views and editorials, the latter
with their eternal contradictions from
day to day, with their interminable
sophistry and nonsense, constantly en-
deavoring to cover all our deformities
with heaps of dirt in the sense of
mean, narrow, selfish conceptions of
life, never being able to rise above the
low level of the most sordid material
ism the earth ever saw.
If our friend from Jupiter wanted to
make sure of how matters stood
among the fine patrons of our dailies,
he would quickly find out that the lat
ter simply supply the kind of stuff that
the patrons are demanding, neither
more nor less. That would be proved
to him by the evasive, illusive, vapid
talk of the people in question when
they refer to the events of the day, al
ways taking for granted that their pet
paper has said just what was needed
on any of our past, present or future
troubles, that none of our problems
needs to be solved OH any lines of equi-
ty, honesty or sense, that all rests on
how to let monopoly, injustice and
falsehood thrive and prosper. Not that
our fine people mean that. oh, no!
They deplore it. They regret it. They
are ready to do all that is possible to
fix matters all right, but they don't
actualize their supposed good desires,
or they trust that our Legislative bod
les shall in due time fix everything
as satisfactorily as modern tendencies
and modes of thought will allow.
Then our Jupiter friend would ask
himself: But who is making tenden-
cies, who is co-ordinating modes of
thought in this big nationg" If he goes
to the legislators in cities, states or in
the national capital, he will find that
the poor fellows have no time for any
such nonsense as that of initiating
healthy tendencies or thoughts. Most
of their time is taken up in the reading
of their daily correspondence or in
talking with their friends from all
over the country, talk and correspond
ence which is bent upon asking our
legislators for personal positions or ia
voritisms in new legislative devices by
which wealth may be made to march
into the bank accounts of wealth ma
nipuators, leaving as little as possible
for the millions who produce it. There
we have the ultima thule of our whole
modern progress-a complete farce.
If that friend could only stay long
enough on our queer planet, he could
see that we have millions of people
positively devoured by a negatively
spiritual ambition which drives them
into all imaginable forms of good
works, as if they were bent upon get
ting rid of that dreadful EGO" of ours
which often follows us with big stick
directed against ourselves. But how
funny such people are! They keep bent
upon doing everything except "the
thing" that alone can give some value
to everything else in the line of good.
What can that be?
We humbly suggest that in the long
run "the thing through which alone
i T.