The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-07-25

/ OF 10 treat the people white.
| Grafters? Bet your life they'd drop it
Quicker than you might suppose.
Teddy kin learn how to stop it
Ii he'll go to Uncle Nose.
He'd sure make them quit their capers.
He'd not let 'em get too gay
| Uncle Nose he reads the papers,
One Or two most every day.
He's got lots O. time to figger
How to settle things like those
4 GU must bring on suthin bigger
| II you'd stump old Uncle Nose.
The Meaning of RockcfeiIerisnl.
Rich indeed should be the returns
to the public for what it has cost to
| build up a fortune like Mr.. Rookie
| feIler's. But what has Mr.. Rookie
| felier given the public in return for
the code of business principles he has
| taught it, in return for the havoc
their enforcement has cost, in return
/ for the hypocrisy and cynicism he has
fostered? great business organiza-
tion-one of the greatest the world
has ever seen-a demonstration of
the possibilities of combination. True.
but to build his organization he was
obliged to perpetuate and expand,
secretly, by force, bribery and trickery
d vicious business system the coun-
try at large was striving to overthrow,
and whose perpetuation and expan-
sion has brought us into one of the
most serious public situations since
the civil war. Has that paid?
and endowed schools. True, and
/ those helped have become his open
| apologists, by taking what they call
the large view or the Charitable
view" or by deliberately stunning a
consideration of the subject, quietly
not seeing in it topic for discussion.
Does it pay to have those who are en-
trusted with the very sources of our
| intellectual and moral life blinded OF
silenced to the ethical quality of the
practices of our daily life? Will it
pay our colleges to put over their
doors the teaching of one of our
present-day moralists, Never discuss
politics or religion il you would sue
ceed."
He has led a life devoted to charity
and the church. True. And the prin-
ciples of the religion he processes are
so antagonistic to the principles of the
| business he practices that the very
world which emulates him has been
turned into hypocrites and cynics I'M
der his tutelage. Not only
has charity been tainted by the hypoc-
| irsy of his life, the church itself has
been polluted and many man has
turned away from its doors because
of the servile support it gives to the
men of whom Mr.. Rockefeller is the
most eminent type. Does all this
pay?
There is no shrinking the answer.
1t does not pay. Our national life is
on every side distinctly poorer, uglier,
meaner for the kind OF influence he
exercises. From him we have re-
ceived no impulse to public duty only
| lessons in evading it for private greed;
no stimulus to nobler ideals only a
! lesson in the further dedication of
gold; no example of enlarged and
noble living, only one of concealment
and evasion; no impulse to free think
| ing, only a lesson in obscurfng vital
ethical issues by dressing them in the
CARDS of piety and generosity. None
= 4f-s L. til L ~
lie has a right to demand from the
man. to- whom it permits great power
are returned to it by Mr.. Rockefeller.
| For Mr.. Rockefeller has none of these
things to give. He has nothing but
money, and never was there a moro
striking example of the impotency of
money! He has neither taste nor Gull
tivation, ideals nor potent personality.
He is not a great man, not a human
man. He is a machine money
maehine-stripped by his overwhelrm-
ing passion of greed of every quality
which makes a man worthy of citizen
ship. He has not made good. He can
not make good. It is not IT, him. He
has nothing the aspiring world needs.
On the contrary, that for which he
does stand is a menace to our free de-
velopment not only or chiefly our free
development in commerce, but vastly
in citizenship and morals. Ida NJ.
Tarbell, in the August McClure's.
Midnight for Samuel.
I Il am a firm upholder of the theory
| that mans best work is done after
midnight" said Samuel M. Shortridge
last night. Twelve o'clock is the
| shank of the evening and just about
| that time a mans wits get to working
| we'll will assert that the wittiest
| tales, the brightest bonmots and the tru-
est words of wisdom are uttered be-
tween the hours of midnight and day
| break mans work for the day is
| then ended, and he feels that uplifting
of soul which results in flashes of gen.
Jus. Had 1 lived in the days of So
crates I would have been one of his
most earnest followers. Just think of
| the sage spending tho night with pleas
ant fellows, dropping pearls of wisdom
from his lips and thinking nothing of
| his wife at home tearing UP the furni-
turc, and then, when the night was
| ended. instead of steeping himself in