The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1912-11-10
The Race Not Decadent
BY WINIFRED BLACK.

The lecturer was dried.up
mincing little person, with large
round spectacles, enormous ears,
and hands and feet that really--it
was plain to see that no one would
ever encourage him to help the
human race to detcriorate.
"There Is only one thing the
matter with the human race to-
day." announced a woman I know
that same evening, "and that's the
cigarettes. Wipe them out and
we II be all right.
"We'D never pull ourselves to-
gcther as race again until we
stop the baseball craze and the tur-
key trot fad, ~ writes hollcr-
than thou evangelist And so ride,
gallop, trot, pace, walk, the mob
bics all 90 marching by.
1t IS tobacco, it s whisky, ITS too
much starch in the food. it g too
much work, it's not work enough,
it IS the bachelors, it S the married
men, it IS the babies.
Over and over, and round, ana
round, and under and about. and
through the past they talk, and
write. and preach, and tell what 1T
is that makes us so decadent, and
all the time I keep on wondering
whether we really are decadent at
all or not. ] can t see that we are.
Can you?
Was your mother failure in life
compared TO your grandmother!
How would grandma do if she had
TO live as Won do now2
You take bath every day;
grandma was considered a trifle
fussy if she wanted moro than one
complete bath week
In your grandfather S time the
preacher used to come to the log
rolling and 90 home the worse for
liquor, and no one thought any the
less of him for IL either, Have You
ever seen the rector Of your parish
ever so little under the weather?
Forty years ago il you were a
Democrat and lived in a Republican
community you might expect to
wake up and find your barn burned
and your stock set loose as gentle
hint to you to go where you were
welcome. If you were a Republican
you never even dreamed OF trying
TO live in peace with Democrats;
you knew it was no use.
Don u you think we We gone a lit
tie ahead of that sort Of thing?
When I was little girl, not so
awfully long ago, people used to
give q litter of kittens to the chill
dren and tell them to go and drown
them, and when we cried at the
idea the grown people laughed.
Anyone who would ask a growing
q child to do a cruel thing like that
today would be sent to the juvenile
court for investigation, and quite
right, too,
When my grandmother died the
nelghbors came and sat in the room
with her and watched every symp-
tom of her agony with a kind Of
gruesome interest, and went home
and told the children all about IT.
Civilized!-they It even par
TALLY so.
1t was only fifty years ago that
the insane were locked in cellars
and starved and beaten by their
own families. Forty wears ago you
could whip horse to death In the
streets Of the biggest cities of the
world, and no one could do thing
TO make you stop your wanton
cruelty, so long as the horse was
yours. Forty years ago they used
TO take little helpless children out
of asylums aud farm them out for
drudges to people who worked them
to death. and if you had dared to
make fuss about any such case
you would have been laughed at
For your pains.
We do some Of these same things
l., -. ah Of fboD,
ANYHOW, Our grandfathers were
not at all ashamed Of them. and
would have given you a. good deal
TO think Of if you had tried to
make them SO.
NDecadence of the race!' Stuff
and nonsense, we are not decading,
we re rising slowly, slowly. Mis-
erably slow, Paltering,- not sure OF
the strange ground, slipping back
every now and then-but rising,
rising, inevitably, irresistibly,
Dominating the beast, conquering
the animal, beating down the brutal
impulses. higher, higher we rise, we
rise. thank the good Giver of honest
endeavor and true-hearted desire to
be better.
Decadence Of the racel Gro to the
old countries just for SIX weeks.
See some of the old prisons that pol
lutte the free air of heaven, even to
stand there empty. Go through some
of the old castles We think SO ro-
mantle. See how the noble lords and
ladies lived, hike dogs in kennel,
without air, without light, without
clean water.
Step into one Of the cages they
used to hang in the court yards.
Pretty things those cages. They
were made just big enough to bold
a man croucbing, and he crouched
there in the rain and the snow and
in the beating, blistering sun, and
starved. And the women and chill
dreu came to see him and laughed
at his moaus,
When q child OF high degree fret
ted, his lady mother took him to
the courtyard and let him watch
a starving man writhe in his agony
And then some troubadour wrote
verses about her lily hands and
heavenly eyes, and she hadn t had
bath for year and wore her
coarse underlinen till it dropped
Off,
Grand gentles, these. fine sprigs
of nobility! The plainest clerk In
the humblest shop in our city today
wouldn t sit at the same table with
one of them any more than he
would dine with a growing, numb
ling, paw biting monkey.