The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-01-22

T Topeka Fire Department.
IrectIy responsible for the rousing of
the brutal passions and have their in
fluence in spreading the social evil
declared DR.. Arthur S Henderson, in
speaking Sunday morning at the First
| Congregational church. ION the Brink
of the Precipice was the title of the
sermon.
There are some very serious and
widespread conditions confronting the
American people today began the
| speaker. 1.-THE investigation habit has
| become so general that we know more
| of the forces that work in darkness
and the conditions that lie out of sight
1 than we used to know
The Situation Is Serious
President Roosevelt had a country
! life commission which brought to our
notice many facts concerning country
/ life that were either new to US or of
which we we're but dimly conscious.
1 The Lorimer scandal dragS along and
| leaves a larger question in the peoples
corruption may be. The sugar trust
with its doctored scales and seven
teen holes the steel trust, the tobacco
trust, the oil trust and trusts of many
the light and their piratical deeds I'M
covered. The Mcnamara case and the
Incorporate and unreasoning defense
of all labor men and labor methods by
President Gompers has revealed a stu
alton and a spirit that is exceedingly
serious
The quick attempt Of the capitalis-
tic organs to throw discredit upon the
whole labor movement and all it's
leaders because of the crimes of the
McNamaras and their like, and be-
cause of the unreasoning attitude of
President GomperS, has demonstrated
afresh that capital will not scruple to
be unjust to gain its ends.
PhariSee Must Come Down
Foreign immigration, especially
since it is mostly from southeastern
Europe where for centuries the peo-
pie have had no training for freedom
and citizenship, has undoubtedly
brought US problems and added to the
completely of our conditions, but the
Pharisee ought to stand abashcd and
humbled in the presence of a Newark
whisky law-defying mob, of southern
negro burnings and Kansas tar par
ties, of the vice reports of the cities
and hundred other things that can.
no more be charged upon the foreign
er and his ideas than upon the native
American stock. 1t is high time for
the Pharisee to come down from his
holier-than-thou pedestal and realize
that race pride is only a peculiarly
hateful form of meanness.
g Let him that thinketh he standeth
take heed lest he fall. It is not once.
but many times in recent years that
high churchmen have been found
guilty OF nDeZZlem6nL OF great trust
funds and in some cases have chosen
suicide rather than face the shame of
exposure, and even ministers have
been found guilty of imm Orality and
murder.
Peril in Domestic Life.
I'VE must remedy one of the fatal
defects Of the education of our time.
We make specialists and experts but
we do not make strong men able to
meet the temptations of life. 1t has
Of
college men of a generation ago are
the vices of the high school boys OF
! today. In the domestic life of the ma
ton there is a peril of degeneracy
from the perniciOuS idea that the OLD
fashioned moral restraints and con-
ventions are not to be borne by mod
ern men and women, that love is not
to be controlled but is 1awless going
where it will without regard to moral
and conventional restraints, that mar
rage until death do part is out OF
date.
I'VE must have a new Puritanism
in this country that creates and en-
forces an old fashioned decency in
public action in place of the la-xity and
brazenness and suggestiveness that
shows an increasing shame iessness IN
every city and town in America
lone does not have to go far or
wait long to see young girls smoking
cigarettes. to see women in the res
taurants drinking, to see wives going
bands with other mems wives to the
theaters and late suppers, to see the
divorce courts crowded with men ana
women who have sinned shamelessly or
have already planned new alliances as
soon as the legal bonds that bind them
can be dissolved
Pleads for New Puritanisna.
This Puritan revival ought to COM
prehend in its stern rebuke certain
shame lessness that is all too common
in womens dress on the streets of
every city. 1t is all we'll to say, evil
to him who evil thinks but neverthe-
less figure revealing costumes do cause
men to think evil. and the thought in
many cases speedily becomes the act
Every woman who goes on the streets
in these suggestive costumes is, wheth-
er she knows it or not, adding fuel to
the flame of brutal passion that we
have been ten thousand years trying to
put in leash.
I'VE need a Puritanisn that will
not deny beauty, but will demand with
it modesty.''
Woman Registers at 1O1
Whittier, Cal, Jan. 22.=The first
woman to register here for the next