The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-08-20


a poor national adviser. who seeks tc
make the nation in any way subordi-
| nate effort to ease. who would teach
the people not to prize as the greatest
blessing the chance to do any work
| no matter how hard. If it becomes theil
| duty to do it.. To the sons of the Puri-
tans it is almost needless to say that
the lesson above all others which Puri-
tanism can teach this nation is the all
Importance of the reSOlute perform
ance of duty. If we are men we will
pass by with contemptuous disdain
alike the advisers who would seek to
lead us into the paths of ignoble ease
and those who would teach us to ad-
mire successful wrongdoing. Our
ideals should be high, and yet they
should be capable of achievement in
practical fashion; and we are as little
to be excused if we permit our ideals
to be tainted with what is sordid and
mean and base. as if we allow our
power of achievement to atrophy and
become either incapable of effort or
capable only of such fantastic effort as
to accomplish nothing of permanent
good. The true doctrine to preach to
this nation. as to the individuals COM
posing this nation. is not the life of
ease. but hte life feffort. If it were in
this land anything, would not prom
Use them pleasure. / would promise
them that stern happiness which
comes from the sense of having done
a
Which was worth doing.
The Puritan's Success.
The Puritan owed his extraordinary
success in subduing this continent and
maxine it the foundation for social
life of ordered liberty primarily to the
fact that he combined in a very re-
markable degree both the power of
individual initiative. of Individual
self-help, and the power of acting in
combination with his fellows; and that
furthermore he Joined to a high heart
mat Shrewd common sense which
saves IL man from the besetting sins of
the visionary and the doctrinaire. He
was stout hearted and hard headed.
He had lofty purposes. but he had
practical good sense, too. He could
world without clamorous insistence
upon being helped by others. and yet
he could combine with others when
ever II became necessary to do a job
which could not be as we'll done by
any one man individually.
These were the qualities which en-
abled him to do his work, and they
are the very qualities which we must
show in doing our work today. There
is no use in our coming here to pay
homage to the men who founded this
nation unless we first of all come in
the spirit of trying to do our work to-
day as they did their work in the yes
terdays that have vanishd. The prob
d
ton, but the spirit in which they must
be approached, if they are to be sue
cessfully solved, remains ever the
same. The Puritan tanned the wilder
ness. and built up a free government
on the stump-dotted clearingS amid
the primeval forest. His descendants
must try to shape the life of our COM
pick industrial civilization by new de-
vices, by new methods. so as to
achieve in the end the same results of
r6 al
He cast aside nothing old merely for
the sake of, innovation, yet he did
not hesitate to adopt anything new
that would save his purpose. When
he planted his commonwealths on
this rugged coast he faced wholly new
conditions and he had to devise new
methods Of meeting them. So we of
today face wholly new conditions in
our social and industrial life. We
should certainly not adopt any new
scheme for graphing with them
merely because 1t is new and I'M
tried; but we cannot afford to shrink
from graphing with them because
they can only be grappled with by
The Puritan was no Laodicean, no
theorist. When he saw
conduct which was in violation OF his
the rights of man, the
rights OF God, as he understood them
he attempted to regulate such con-
duct with instant. unquestioning
and effectiveness. If
there was no other way to secure
conformity with the rule of right,
then he smote down the transgressor
with the iron of his wrath. The spirit
Of the Puritan was a spirit which
never shrank from regulation of con-
duct If such regulation was neces-
sary for the public veal; and this IS
day whenever it is necessary.
Chanped CoudftiOns
The utterly changed conditions of
our national life. necessitate changes
in certain of our laws, of our govern
mental methods. Our federal sys-
tenn of government is based upon the
theory of leaving TO each community,
things which affect only its own mem
bers and which the people of the To-
cality themselves can best grapple
with. while providing for national
necessarily affect the nation as a
whole. 1t seems to me that such
questions as national sovereignty and
states rights need to be treated not
or accidentally, but from
the standpoint of the interests of the
people as a whole. National sover-
eighty is to be upheld in so far as 1t
means the sovereignty of the people
used for the real and ultimate good
Of the people; and states rights are
10 be upheld in so far as they mean
The peoples rights. Especially is this |
true in dealing with the relations of |
he people as a whole to the great !
which are the distin- |
gushing feature of modern business
Experience has shown that it is nee
assary to exercise a far more efficient
control than at present over the BUSH |
ness use of those vast fortunes chiefly
corporate. which are used Gas under
modern conditions they almost invarf- |
ably are) in interstate business. When |
the constitution was created none of |
the conditions of modern business ex-
sted. They are wholly new and we |
must create new agencies to deal ef-i
,ectively with them. There is no OBJ
lection in the minds of thiS neorIa IN |