The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-02-23
UNITED STATES
OWES 4 BILLION
Justice Brewer Calls Attention
to National Habit of
Extravaganza.
DISC0UNTlNG THE FUTURE
pE5T-PAYING ALMOST A FOR
GOTTEN DUTY.
DISC0UNTING THE FUTURE

New York, Feb. pa note of warning
that our rapid growth of national great
ness was leaCing TO an unwise discount
ing of the future and developing a habit
of extravagance. was sounded tonight in
a speech delivered with judicial impress
siveness by Justice David J. Brewer OF
the United States Supreme court before
a large audience which filled Cooper
Union hall. The lecture was arranged
by the board of education. The eminent
jurist said:
us this republic more and more seek
lag only material development, luxurious
living ostentation and parade. or is 1t
looking to the higher things, striving for
that which makes for the better life?
We cannot be blind to the fact that there
is great striving after the material; that
we do love the luXuries of life and to
see them increase and multiply.
Fondness for Display.
I've are manifesting fondness for
military and naval proves. We are
building up large navy. We magnify
bStn army and navy. We are buying
libraries by the cubic yard, pictures and
gest yachts, the most expensive and
swiftest trains. the finest and most lux
urious coaches.
"Our great expansion and rapid growth
ing a habit OF extravaganza. We have
been most unwisely discounting the fu-
ture. When the civil war closed the ma
tion was in debt about S3.oOO,OOOOOo II
set resoluteiy to work to pay that debt,
and it continued paying until the begin
ming Of the Spanish war, but since then
debt-paying has become almost for
gotten duty, and we now owe an inter-
est-bearing debt of about N,WoOoo'OOo.
More than half the fOrty-five states are
in debt
Startling Figures.
when we pass into the domain of mu-
nicipal indebtedness the figures are simp-
" startling. It will not do to say that
all of this Indebtedness has been unjustly
or unWisely created. But there runs
through much of il a pure matter OF
speculation. an unwise discount of the
future, and an unjust casting OF the Dur
den on those who are TO come AFTER us.
cit makes the blood boil in the deScen-
dants of those who settled these COLO
MES and laid the foundations of our ma
tiOnal greatness on the eternal princl-
pies of Justice, liberty and equai rights,
to hear Dennis Kearney and men like
him. who have Just been welcomed te our
shores and who haye.not yet washed the
brogue off their lips, stand on the street
corners and cry out:
." America for the Americans! ana
The Chinese must go!
Duty of the Nation.
yet even for the Chinese ray of light
is appearing In obedience 20 an aroused
public sentiment the brutal and barbar-
Gus rules for while enforced for the
purpose of excluding the Chinese have
been largely modified, and now we are
beginning to remember that they, too,
are numbered in the brotherhood of man.
81 do not mean by this to say that
il is the duty of the nation to, welcome
every immigrant any more than il is the
duty of any man who has nome 10
omen its doors to everyone who wishes 10
come in it is not merely the right, but
the duty, of every Individual and every
nation to exclude those it deems unfit
for a place within the limits OF nome
or nation. but il does owe the duty of
treating every one who desires to come
deceptly and politely"