The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-05-30

1 w 4AcbtSfSE Oll6 may llllilh OL litT @NASA- tive merits of private or public ownsr- ship of such things as water, gas and street railways every man should see l that the people living in a community at one time should not deed away land or streets, which should bSoEg to the public in such way as to deprive future inhabitants of that community of the revenue which should be justly theirs.
 Another thing which brotherhood de- mands and which the spirit of brother hood will secure to men Is equality of opportunity. A single illustration must serve here. One of the most inn portant things for men is the distribu- tive system. The distributive system bears to the body polite the relation | which the arterial and venous system bears to the human body Every part of the body depends upon it. undoubt- edIy private enterprise has done more than public enterprise would probably have done in building our railroads. Two things, however, have marked the history of our railroads. The people who have actually furnished the money to build the roads have won or lost their money. More and more the rall- roads have become largely the property tof a few families and have come under the control of a small number of men. There is feeling that the opportuni- | ties of business which should have been equal to men engaged in manufactur- ing. or in merchandising along these roads has not been equal. but that some communities and some men have been built up or enriched to the detri- rnent of other communities and other men. At present the president of the United States is engaged in an effort to discover this evil where 1t may exist and to correct it by legislation and by governmental control, Whatever may be the ultimate outcome of this effort, the spirit of brotherhood will not be satisfied until in a business way men shall have so far as nature permits, equal and just opportunity. .,.9 ....
 There is another thing which the abolition of masters and the reeogni- tion of brothers must consider, and that is the care of the orphans and the aged. The spirit of brotherhood has assumed the education of the young. Few are now dissatisfied with this po- sition. The spirit of brotherhood will be likely in time to see that the una voidably dependent and the aged should be provided for. Men in modern society have devised life insurance as a means of meeting this condition of things.
 Practically two methods of insurance have been adoptad The method of what are called the regular companies and fraternities. The former with the very large salaries paid to officials and the necessity of many competing agents is costly at best The latter de- pends upon the reliability or individual men and makes no provision for a man except in case of death, leaving him in old age if he cannot pay his assess ments, without protection.
 In view of these facts the method of old age insurance tried in Germany and elsewhere and recently proposed in the state of Massachusetts, is worthy of consideration. This need not interfere with the other insurance soci- cities for such as wish to enter them and for such as wish to carry large in- surance. But if the United States gov ernment, which finds it possible to pay out something like $15O, O,000, 900 a year in pensions to the families of soldiers, was to impose tax on every man from the time he is twenty-one until he Is sixty five, which would cover the actual cost of irlsurance-now we'll know1l-it would be a simple matter to pay an an- nuity to every man over sixty-five or seventy years of age and to grant the payment of 6 policy to the family of every man who dies under such age This would reduce the cost of insur- ance to a minimum. It would give as much security as is possible It would avoid the accumulation of large sums to be invested. It would tax no man for another. It would pauperize nc one. It would secure to men peace of mind and confer some comfort in time of death or old age. know of no req son why we who assume the education of the young should not provide for each other by a mutual and common burden against those sad experiences to which we are all exposed.
 Towards such state of society the world is tending. Peace societies, soci- cities for investigation of the condition of poorer classes, single-tax societies fraternities, trades-unions, insurance societies, socialism and the attempts of I governments to become democratic and fraternal are all signs of the times Many of the above societies are. al times, imperfect in their spirit and in sufficient in their methods, but they are all only sngle waves of sentiment thought and action in the rolling tide of brotherhood inspired by the spirit of Jesus and destined to be more and more supreme and sufficient as mer bow to the authority of Jesus and re. ceive his spirit and in that spirit, call no man master, but love and treat all men as brothers.
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