The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-02-27
UNCLE sILAs. HE SAYS.
He Has . Feeling to Give Some More
Advice.

My son. was telling you some time
ago when not to butt in. On this oc-
casion 1 am going to tell you when to
butt out.
/ Don't start in life with the idea that
all men are dishonest, and that 1t
| stands YOU in hand to hustle for your
share of the loot. 1t will seem to you,
after reading a dozen issues of a daily
paper, that this whole American ma
ton stands ready to swap its reputa-
ton for probity for dollars, but we are
not quite as bad as painted.
The other day 1 bought a hundred
dozen eggs. Being too lazy to count
| EN- took the sellers word for it. L
expected to find them at least four
dozen short, but there was hundred
dozen, and four eggs over for full
to a grocer and were counted. found
an honest man. True. he may have
| been only one in a thousand, but he
was enough to rally on.
1 came across an alderman a while
! ago who was raising a great fuss over
& sewer swindle. He wanted the tax
payers to get what they had paid for.
He wanted the contractor to live up to
| his contract. They had tried all sorts
| of pulls" on him, but he was honest
| That was anly one case of official hon.
| esty, but it was lighting up the dark
ness for miles around.
Now and then we hear of a corpora
| ton being brought to time. We hear of
some one who has made hundreds of
| thousands by lodging the law being
caught in its meshes at last and COM
PEELED to disgorge. State and municipal
rings" run along in an oily way for a
time, and then there is a heave-up and
several eminent citizens don the
stripes and begin serving the state.
You hear it said every day in the
week that there are no honest men
elected to the legislatures and to con-
gress any more. 1 admit that you
might have to hire the services of a
searchlight to find them, but they are
there just the same. Nobody ever saw
all the pigs of a litter the same color,
and you can't expect mankind to be
all alike.
1t looks to a man up a tree as If this
country was in the grasp of the rail-
roads and the trusts, and that we shall
all be wrung dry and hung out on the
line before they are through with us.
It's got so that few hundred men
own most everything and leave it to
the rest of us to pay the taxes, but
don't imagine that these things are
spiked down and can't be uprooted.
Any young man of today who has got
| the idea that the motto of his country
is going to be changed to Loot is
making big mistake and should butt
right out of it, He may argue that So
called eminent men are to be found be-
hind all sorts of schemes for raking in
the dollars, and he may see men wink
and smile at the idea of integrity in
high places, but lightning changes
have often occurred in this country
and are liable to again. The list of
"eminents" who have come off the
perch in the last twenty-five years is
a long one.
You can sit down with yourself my
son, and figure out that it will take you
years to get few thousand dollars to-
gether by playing square game You
can figure out, on the other hand tl,,t
you have only to join the gang to
be rich man in half a dozen years.
Just when you begin this sort of figur-
ing you want to butt out of the game
and leave the others to finish it.
If you have only to read the daily
pa pers to see how the ''eminents' have
rolled up great fortunes at the expense
of integrity you have only to read
them again to see how these same men
are pulled down and covered with
obloquy when a spasm of reform seizes
the country. It's all in the game while
it lasts, but when the accounting comes
that's different.
I've been done brown, a hundred
times over my son. I've been lied to
and cheated and swindled until the in
stances would make a book. but you
can't convince me that we as a people
are without honesty and a conscience.
The man who argues that America Is
going right to the devil because we
have turned up the rascality of five
hundred men doesn't begin to know
his own country.
We run things like an old farmer. He