Montana news. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1904-191?, 1905-02-22
66e Industrial
Evolution Grind

AS liberty of thought is the fore
runner of liberty of action il follows,
as natural sequence, that thought
is the source from whence our free.
dom is to come, and as our thoughts
are guided by our inherent, and aft
erwards trained, intellects, we find
that the human intellect cannot de-
velop to its fullest until perfect lib
erty is secured.
Intellect, in its search for know
ledge, has by slow progress con-
quered the ignorance ofthe past, and
evolved nearer and ever nearer to
light.
Perhaps the greatest enemy of
progress and freedom is today, as it
always has been, phantasms, pref
udice, superstitions and self conceit.
These are diseases of the mind. and
will in time, be removed. A diseased
mind cannot fulfill its proper func-
tions any more than diseased body
can fulfill its proper functions.
Society, long ago, partly discov-
cred the dangers incident to a di-
sease, disordered. dwarfed body, and
condemned the conditions which
produced neutrality-suspicious.; but
as the struggle for existence shifted
from physical combat to a contest
by cunning and deceit, the mentally
strong have not been so Jealous for
the preservation and development of
the mental weaklings as they were
for the physical weaklings.
The reason for this is not hard to
find, as history shows that it always
has been the desire of the strong to
prey and feed upon their weaker fell
lows, just as the wild animals de-
voured their own kith and kin. Some
how, though, man discovered that
cannibalism didn't pay-that live
man was worth more than his car
cass-that a mans labor was worth
more than his flesh. Hence he
spared his captive's life, and called
his captive slave" and himself a
MASTER" and lulled his conscience
to sleep with the idea that he was a
very tender hearted philanthropistin in
making the man a slave, when he
might as we'll have made meal from
his body and an angel of his soul.
But as mankind has always been
cropping towards the light, these So
cial relations could not endure. The
argument of the master, in defense
of slavery, was that the slave would
not work unless he had a MASTER
that he would die from want of la
boris product if deprived of the
blessed privilege of having master
to support as we'll as himself This
argument was so common, and uni
versal, that it was afterwards called
THE language of the masters"
But as slave holding became prof
liable the strong masters prey upon
the weaker, and thus the number of
masters decreased, as compared to
the mum Der of slaves. Thus weak
ening the chain that should have
been strengthened to hold the grow
ing intellects of the more intelligent
slaves. The same process we see
carried on, unintentionally perhaps,
in modern times by the merging of
partnerships into small corporations,
small corporations into large, and
large ones into the trust. And at
each step of consolidation and the
substitution of cooperation for COM
petition the number of masters has
decreased, and the number of slaves
increased.
With the breaking of the chain, in
the warfare of master against master
and the freeing of mems intellects,
the race progressed by leaps and
bounds, civilization, arts, sciences,