Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-12-03

should be Just as severe Tn cOnQemna' ] ton of the vice which hides itself be
 hind class or professional loyalty or s which denies that 1t is vice if 1t can es.
 cape conviction in the courts. The pub.
 lie and the representatives of the pub,
 lie, the high officials, whether on the
 bench or in executive or legislative DO ] sitions need to remember that often
 the most dangerous criminals, 80 far as
 the life of the nation is concerned, are
 not those who commit the crimes
 known to and condemned by the popn-
 lar conscience for centuries, but those
 who commit crimes only rendered pos
 sible by the complex conditions of our
 modern industrial life. It makes not a
 particle of difference whether these
 crimes are committed by capitalist or
 by laborer, by a leading banker or
 manufacturer or railroad man or by a
 leading representative of a labor union
 Swindling in stocks, corrupting legis-
 latures, making fortunes by the infia-
 tion of securities, by wrecking railroads, by destroying competitors through re- bates-these forms of wrOngdoing in the capitalist are far more infamous
 than any other form of embezzlement or forgery, yet 1t is a matter of extreme difficulty to secure the punishment of the men most guilty of them, most re- sponsible for them The business man who condones such conduct stands on a level with the labor man who de- liberately supports corrupt dema- gogue and agitator, whether head of q union or head of some municipality, because he is said to have 'stood by the union." The members of the busi- ness community, the educators or clergymen who condone and encourage the first kind of wrongdoing are no more dangerous to the community, but are morally even worse, than the labor men who are guilty of the second type of wrongdoing, because less is to be pardoned those who have no such ex- cuse as is furnished either by igno- rance or by dire need.
 Farmers and Wageworkers.
 When the department of agricul- ture was founded there was much sneering as to it's usefulness. No de- pertinent of the government, however, has more emphatically vindicated its usefulness, and none save the post i office department comes so continually and intimately into touch with the peo- pie. The two citizens whose welfare | is in the aggregate most vital to the welfare of the nation and therefore to the welfare of all other citizens are the wageworker who does manual la- bcr and the tiller of the soil, the farm CT. There are of course kinds of labor where the work must be purely men, tai, and there are other kinds of labor where under existing conditions very little demand indeed is made upon the mind, though I am glad to say that the proportion of men engaged in this kind of work is diminishing. But in any community with the solid, healthy qualities which make up really great nation the bulk of the people should do work which calls for the exercise of both body and mind. Progress cannot permanently exist in the abandonment of physical labor, but in the develop ment of physical labor, so that it shall represent more and more the work of the trained mind in the trained body. Our school system is gravely defective in so far as it puts a premium upon mere literary training and tends, there fore, to train the boy away from the farm and the workshop. Nothing is more needed than the best type of in- dustrial school, the school for mechan- ical industries in the city, the school for practically teaching agriculture in the country. The calling of the skilled tiller of the soil, the calling of the skilled mechanic. should alike be reeog- nized as professions just as emphatic ally as the calling of lawyer. doctor, merchant or clerk. The schools should recognize this fact, and 1t should equally be recognized in popular opin- ion. The young man who has the far sightedness and courage to recognize 1t and to get over the idea that it makes difference whether what he earns is called salary or wages and who refuses to enter the crowded field of the so called professions and takes to constructive industries instead is reasonably sure of an ample reward in earnings, in health, in opportunity to marry early and to establish home with fair amount of freedom from worry. It should be one of our prime objects to put both the farmer and the mechanic on a higher plane of effi- ciency and reward, so as to increase their effectiveness in the economic world and therefore the dignity, the remuneration and the power of their positions in the social world.
 No growth of cities, no growth of wealth, can make up for any loss in either the number or the character of the farming population. We of the United States should realize this above almost all other peoples. We began our existence as a nation of farmers, and in every great crisis of the past a peculiar dependence has had to De placed upon the farming population, and this dependence has hitherto been justified. But 1t cannot be justi- fled in the future if agriculture is per mitted to sink in the scale as coEl- pared with other employments. We cannot afford to lose that pre-emlnent- ly typical American, the farmer who owns his own medium sized farm. To