Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1912-11-01

endeavor. To our forefathers the
chance came in the troubled years that
stretched from the time when the First
Continental Congress gathered to the
time when Washington was inaugu
rated as first President of the repub
lie. To us in our turn the chance has
now come to stand for liberty and
righteousness as in their day these
dead men stood for liberty and right
eousness. Our task is not as great as
theirs. Yet it is well-nigh as impor-
tant. Our task is to profit by the les
sons of the past, and to check in time
the evils that grow around US, lest our
failure to do so may cause dreadful
disaster to the people. We must not
sit supine and helpless. We must not
permit the brutal selfishness of AFRO
gance and the brutal selfshness of
envy each to run unchecked its evil
course. If we do so, then some day
smoldering hatred will suddenly kindle
into a consuming flame, and either we
or our children will be called on to face
a crisis as grim as any which this re-
public has ever seen.
at is our business to show that nine
tenths of wisdom consists in being wise
in time. Woe to our nation if we let
matters drift, if in our industrial and
political life we let an unchecked and
utterly selfish individualistic material
ism riot to its appointed end! That
end would be widespread disaster, for
it would mean that our people would
be sundered by those dreadful lines of
division which are drawn when the
selfish greed of the HAYES is set over
against the selfish greed of the have
nots. There is but one way to prevent
such division, and that is to forestall
it by the kind of movement in which
we are now engaged.
"Our movement is one of resolute in
sistence upon the rights and full ac-
acknowledgement of the duties of every
man and every women within this
great land of ours. We war against
the forces of evil, and the weapons
we use are the weapons of right. We
do not set greed against greed or hatred
against hatred. Our creed is one that
bids US be just to all, to feel sympathy
for all and to strive for an understand
ing of the needs of ALL Our purpose
is to smite down wrong. But towards
those who have done the wrong we feel
only the kindest charity that is COM
patible with causing the wrong to
cease. We preach hatred to no man,
and the spirit in which we work is as
far removed from vindictiveness as
from weakness. We are resolute to do
away with the evil, and we intend to
proceed with such wise and cautious
sanity as will cause the very minimum
of disturbance that is compatible with
achieving our purpose.
Again, friends, do not forget that we
are proposing no new principles. The
doctrines we preach reach back to the
Golden Rule and the Sermon on the
Mount. They reach back to the Com
mandments delivered at Sinai. All that
we are dong is to apply those doctrines
in the shape necessary to make them
available for meeting the living issues
of our own day. We decline to be
bound by the empty little cut-and-dried
formulas of bygone philosophers, use
full once, perhaps, but useles now Our
purpose is to shackle greedy cunning as
we shackle brutal force, and we are
not to be diverted from this purpose
by the appeal to the dead dogmas of a
vanished past. We propose to lift the
burdens from the lowly and the weary,
from the poor and the oppressed. We
propose to stand for the sacred rights
of childhood and womanhood. Nay,
more, we propose to see that manhood
is not crushed out of the men who toll,
by excessive hours of labor, by under
payment, by injustice and oppression.
When this purpose can only be secured
by the collective action of our people
through their governmental agencies
we propose so to secure it. We brush
aside the arguments of those who seek
to bar action by the repetition of some
formula about States rights or about
the history of liberty being the his.
tory of the limitation of governmental
power, or about the duty of the courts
finally to determine the meaning of the
Constitution.
1--WE recognize in neither court nol
Congress, nor President, any divine
right to override the will of the people
expressed with due deliberation in or.
derby fashion and through the forms Of
law. We Progressives hold that the
words of the Declaration of Indepen.
dence, as given effect to by Washington
and as construed and applied by Abra,
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