The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-18
THE RELIGION
 OF DEMOCRACY
By Honorable John J.Lentz. Late Member of Congress
 from Ohio

|
 al system untrammeled by any re-
 ligious superstition and bigotry. It
 was he who first projected an educa-
 tional system maintained and sup ported by the government looking
 solely to the purpose of developing
 better hearts and better brains,
 strengthening mental muscle, if you
 please, and at the same time main
 taining allegiance to his oath of his
 young manhood when he said: "I
 have sworn on the altar of God eter-
 nal hostility to every form of tyran- ny over the mind of man.
 Jefferson was so radical that his greatest follower, Abraham Lincoln, suffered martyrdom in 1865 for be- l lieving with Jefferson in the enamel | patton of the black slave. It was
 Jefferson's supreme purpose to make l men think. The Declaration of h. | dependence was a political summary
 and specialization of all the moral l purpose of the laws of Moses and all | the teachings of the Divine Master,
 who taught you should Hove your | neighbor as yourself Coming at
 to set men thinking of their politi- | cal rights.
 1 Democracy is the doctrine of doing | things. True Democracy is not an | organization for the benefit of a few
 spoilsmen. There is a wide differ Democracy and the politics of Dem- | ocracy, as wide as the difference be- l tween a statesman and a politician.
 A statesman is a man seeking an op- portunity to do something for every 1 body, while the politician is a man
 seeking an opportunity to do every I body for something. If you are a Democrat or if you are a Republican, you may be a good partisan or you
 may be a good citizen, and there is a
 wide gulf between the two. If the party to which you belong does not l love all humanity better and better each day, then it is high time that you changed your party. I once heard Quaker woman preach a ser
 mon, in which she said: "If they re- ligion doesn't change thee, then thee had better change thy religion" | And so I say in this message, that ! if your political party doesn't day by day inspire you with a nobler and
 sweeter love for all your neighbors, 1 then it is high time that you chang l ed your political religion. The true Democrat is radical who wants to
 make our ninety millions of people
 each and all educated, self-respect- ing neighbor-loving men and women,
 recognizing equality without regard | to sex and without regard to previous conditions of religious or economic
 servitude True Democracy is a
 swarm of bees, each and all ready and willing to carry it's share of honey to l the hive, and each and all ready to sting the drones and cast them out. | It is vanity, it is selfshness, which 1 develops and establishes trustocracy | in the land. The desire to strut and pose as a superior of your neighbors, l is the actual cause and substance of | the parasite who lives on the labor of others. The difference between the parasite and the other men is only
 Q matter of degree. The farmer is very apt to be @ man who wants to
 own all the adjoining farms. The | a man who wants to own all the stores in the city. This greed to be | the whole thing and to own the earth I is not solely confined within the thick pachyderm of kings and czars. We are all living in a civilization where into the treadmill of more land, more corn, more hogs, more money.
 Oh, for an age and a civilization where the universal cry shall not be Flor more land more corn, but more
 men, more women, more brain and more heart! If we are to be monop-
 olists let us be monopolists of intel lectual and spiritual substance, with which Gods universe is stored so full,
 so high, so deep and so wise that
 
 dollar should be regarded as only a key to open the store-houses of civil ization.
 How may we profit by the example of Thomas Jefferson? If we are the legitimate heirs and the Democratic successors of Thomas Jefferson, our
 duty. is plain and our opportunity great. As a political organization we should find who are the tyrants of this generation and frame new | DAn 1ov- nf Tr6
 ter upon the war of dethronement, just as did the radicals of Thomas Jefferson's day. We shall not have to look far to locate the tyrants known as the Telegraph Trust the Street Railway Trust and such other trusts as have power sufficient to en- ter the Presidents cabinet in their greedy efforts to monopoIize the wealth and treasure of the Alaskan storehouse and other treasures throughout the land.
 The whole country shudders as it contemplates the recent disclosures of graft in the City Halls, graft in the Court Houses, graft in the State Cap- itols and graft in the National Capi- tal Graft that contaminates and corrupts everybody from the ward workers to the presidents and other officers of our banks and other cor porate interests of the land. Graft that rots the marrow and the bone of our SyStSIn. GTdIL mat De- smirches the good name of those who hold the humblest and those who hold the highest places in church and so- citay. Graft here, Graft there, graft everywhere, and the time is rotten ripe for change.
 How shall<we make this change If we undertake too much we scatter our influences and accomplish noth- ing. It seems to me that we should follow the example of Thomas Jeffer- son and address ourselves to the mat ter of educating the people for self government and as I see it the first step necessary, is to make the trans mission of knowledge available at the lowest possible cost and by this I mean the improvement of the postal service by the installation of the tel egraph in every postoffice of the re- public There are only 25,0OO West ern Union offices in this country while there are over 50,0O0 postof- fices. This leaves more than 25, GOO thousand centers of population where there is no way to communicate thought by electricity.
 No one can explain why the Ma tional government has been so dila- tory in this, except by the same ex- planation which must be given in shame for so many other shortcom- ings in our governmental affairs. It is estimated that thirty words could be sent by wire no matter what the icto ho of of