The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1906-08-09
UNREST OF MAN OUR uNporNo,
President Butler Decries the Dcca.
dence OF Nations Moral Standard.

President Butler Decries the Dcca.
dence OF Nations Moral Standard.
Serious consideration of the pres
ent-day spirit of unrest in politics
and business marked the address of
President Nicholas Murray Butler at
the one hundred and fifty-second an
nual commencement of Columbia
University.
President Buffers address was
brief. He began by saying that Abra-
ham Lincoln furnishes a good exam
pie for persons to-day, owing to the
fact that Lincoln remained tranquil
amid angry seas" He then said that
there is much dissatisfaction with
modern social and political formulas.
Continuing, he said
That this unrest has been and Is
being used by ambitious men for
their own selfish ends and for gain
by journalistic builders of emotional
bontires is certainly true, but It will
not do to dismiss this spirit of unrest
with a sneer on that account.
ut has passed far beyond the
bounds of the dreamers and vision
aries, the vlolent-minded and the
naturally destructive. Men accus-
toned to honest reflection and them
selves possessed of sincerity, always
the sheet-anchor of conservatism,
have come under it's influence Poll
cies that not long ago were dismissed
as too extreme for serious discussion
are now soberly examined with refer
ence to their immediate practicable
ity. What has brought about this
change?
An answer is not far to seek An
increasing number of men have come
to distrust the capacity of society as
now organized to protect itself
against the freebooters who exist in
it.
AN increasing number OF men be-
lieve and assert that law and Justice
are powerless before greed and cum
ming. and they are the more ready
to listen to advocacy OF any measure
or policy, however novel or revolu-
tionary, that promises relief Their
imaginations, too, cannot help being
affected by the appalling sight, so
often called to our attention of late,
of that moral morgue wherein are ex-
posed the shrivelled souls and ruined
regulations of those who have lost in
the never-ending struggle between
selfshness and service that goes on in
the human breast"
President Butler said that greed
for gain holds an appalling number
of men in its grasp" and that great
wealth and opportunities have caused
a loosening of the old ideals of con-
duct and business. In conclusion he
said:
1T is our own individual charac-
ters that are at fault, and not the in
stitutions whose upbuilding is the
work of the ages. Sound and upright
individual human characters will up
lift society far more speedily and
surely than any constitutional or leg
1slative nostrum, or the following of
any economic or philosophical will-o'-
the-wisp. Unethical acts precede lille
gal ones, and speedily lead to them.
Given an acute perception of the
difference between right and wrong,
clear conception of duty, and an
appreciation of the solemn obliga-
tions of trust, our social and polit-
ical system would, perhaps, be found
to work equitably and we'll. Without
these traits no system is workable.
Moral regeneration, not political and
economic reconstruction, is what we
chiefly need"