The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1905-08-03
A POLITICAL SERMON.

Inc most important duties InaI d
citizen can be called upon to per,
form are his duties of citizenship,
yet they are made subordinate and
secondary to every other duty by
the great mass of our citizens.
The moral, social, financial and
political condition of a nation
depend to a very great extent upon
the character of the Legislation
enacted and the manner of it's en-
forcement, yet less attention is
paid to the enactment and enforce
ment of law than to any other
question that affects the rights and
welfare of the people. 1t is
scarcely an exaggeration to say that
nine out of every ten never give it
a thought. The man who performs
his full duty as citizen, is the
exception and not the rule.
Men and women will carefully
and prayerfully rear their sons and
daughters in the paths of righteous
ness, rectitude and virtue, spend
years in careful instruction and
weeks on Bonded knees, and then
permit the passage of laws allowing
practices that will undermine their
labor and supplication without
protest. More than that they will
throw up their hats for the men
who aided in destroying the work
they so labOriously performed.
Men and women who stand for
good, pure and wholesome social
conditions in the home and in the
community. will support with
feverish eagerness candidates whom
they would not invite into their
homes and whom they know follow
practices that would break their
hearts and bring their gray hairs in
sorrow to the grave if they knew
their children would initiate and
make the rule of their lives.
Men and women will dare the
dangers of the tropics, brave the
perils of regions of eternal winter,
defy death by thirst in the desert,
go out on the sea in ships, face the
wrath of savage races, burrow into
the bowels of the earth, endure
hardships incredible, and suffering
inconceivable that they may acquire
a competence to provide necessities
and luxuries for themselves and
those dependent upon them, and
then see discriminating laws passed
and pernicious public practices
inaugurated that will permit and
empower trusts, corporations, and
even public officials to appropriate
a gOOdly portion of their accumula
tons to themselves without return
ing a shadow of compensation
therefor, with scarcely an effort tc
correct the error or right the
wrong. The people as a whole
manifest the utmost Indifference a.
TO how the men who make the law!
perform their duties, and an almos
criminal carelessness in investioat
ing as to their abilities to perform
any duties at all.
We occupied a public position
for twenty-one years, eight years o
the time i'll Congress where tn
financial interests of every person
owing a dollar, were constan
subjects of discussion and legisla
ton. During this period W
received thousands of letters ever
year asking for paltry portions o
the governments humbug see
distribution, soliciting periodical
that not one in hundred ever read
DANGEROUSLY demanding that thi
man or that be appointed to som
petty office, but we did not receiv
a hundred letters a year asking L
how we stood or what action W
intended to take on legislation thu
affected the financial welfare G
every citizen, and ninety out c
every hundred we did receive wer
from persons and corporations thu
had become rich and powerful frol
the results of discriminating legi
lation urging us not to disturb til