The Athena press. [volume] (Athena, Umatilla County, Or.) 18??-1942, 1905-08-01

nunciation in the newspapers. As
people wake to the meaning of it,
they are fascinated and enraged.
They are stricken with the whole
some, old fashioned conviction Of sin,
not in the grafters only, but in them
selves. A whole nation is crying
lord, be merciful unto us misera BILE
sinr ers." The belief is coming home
to all of us that if Diogenes were to
set ont with his candle today to-fnd
an honest man, he would be still less
successful than he was in Athens two
thousand years ago. The nation sick
ems of its moral filth.
How will it fare with pillars of
society like Fish and Rockefeller in
that day Of wrath which seems to be
at hand? No sane person looks for a
bloody, and, possibly, richly deserved,
retribution upon these men; but there
is going to be fearful coming to
judgment of some sort. What can
they say in their defense? They can
say, for one thing, that they are
symptoms, rather than causes, of the
national disease. Rockefeller can
successfully plead in reply to Miss
Tarbell, for example, who indicts him
again in the August McClure's, that
he has not made the nation dishonest
but, rather, that the dishonesty of the
nation gave him his opportunity to
achieve his bad eminence in piracy.
He was born into corruption, and,
like the larvae of certain insects, he
found it uniquely adapted to his
nature, and throve in it. Not one of
his schemes could have been manned
or executed in community of sound
moral ideas. All of them must have
failed in country where adequate
laws were faithfully enforced. Mr..
Rockefeller found the law neither
adequate to cover the conditions of
modern commerce, nor enforced
when its antiquated rules did apply.
For every principle of law he found a
method of evasion with as good or
better standing in the courts. He has
used the law as an apparatus for plum
der but he found law and lawyers
ready to his hand. He created neither
of them. Nor has he ever failed to
find plenty of helpers in all his pre-
datory undertakings.
With the soul Of a miser and the in
tellect of Bacon, Mr.. Rockefeller
was born at time when lax morals
and inadequate laws invited avarice
to plunder. He accepted the invita-
tion with determined zeal, and for
many years he spent all his energy in
devouring his abundant and easy prey.
A student of the evolution of Mr..
Rockefeller would naturally call this
the larva, or grub, period of his life.
The student would also expect to see
him emerg from this lowly estate, as
all grubs do, and soar above the
earth as winged creature. Mr..
Rockefeller, and all his genius, try
very hard to complete their evolution
and show themselves as something of
finer nature than mere devourers.
No one enjoys the hatred of his kind.
In these men the hunger for approba-
tion even overcomes their avarice,
and, without forsaking their. evil
ways, they pay enormous sums to
buy the praise, or at least, the silence,
of those who lead public opinion.
They find both the praise and the
silence for sale; but they find also that
in this matter public opinion will
not be led. It moves more and more
strongly toward condemnation and
beigns to repudiate the leaders who
would, as it thinks, mislead. These
criminals, who have SO long defied the
law and despised the rules of manly
fair dealing, and who now wish to
pose as philanthropists and benefac-
tors of humanity, hear nothing from
the great public but sneers and satire.
They may ultimately hear something
worse, for the American people are
growing impatient of hypocrisy. But,
whatever may fail, they are entitled
to plead that the nation which now
condemns them tempted them to COM
NIT their misdeeds by its own made
quate laws, plant Judiciary and lax
morals.