The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1912-05-10
The American Type.
THE Times Democrat


roughly familiar with that historic
Commonwealth; for those people were
persuaded that, though Mr.. ROOseuel
would carry everything before him il
the states to the westward, he would
60 to certain defeat in advocating the
recall of judges and judicial decisions
before the defendants of the Pilgrims
Yet the result showed that the Re
publicans of Massachusetts were al.
most evenly DIVIDED as to the merits
of proposals which strike at tt e mar
row of our government.
The mistake lay in assuming that
the present electorate of Massachus-
etts is, as a rule, decended from the
Pilgrims, or swayed by their ideals.
The immense immigration has pro.
foundly altered the blood and habits
OF thought of the race which TODAY
yields the ballot in the Bay State.
The strike which recently threw the
town Of Lawrence into chaos revealed
a condition of things that could not
exist among artisans of the pure
American type. Indeed. we are told
that a considerable number of the
strikers cannot speak or read Eng fish.
This mass of foreigners may be as
simulated in generation, or two, hut
the American type is bound to be af-
fected bv the process. Greater New
York has ceased to be an American
city, except in the name, and nobody
can pretend to say how the American
of 20l2 will look, speak, think and
act. We only know that. in politics
and sociology alike, we are entering
upon a new era-are puttlng to sea
without a compass.
There caE be no doubt that the in
fusion of alien blood has been bene-
ticlal in some respects. With all his
virtues, the Puritan was greatly
bv his lack of artistic
instinct and his narrow outlook on
life. Much fun has been made of the
New England conscience" and it is
quite true that the Old New Highlander
was apt to make his religion a bore !
TO himself and his fellows. But the
old New Highlander at least knew how
70 suffer, without imagining that the
universe was ipso facto out of Joint.
And 1t was this genius for silent
suffering that caused the old type of
New Highlander to be so potent in
nigh politics. The old New Highlander
heard, and accepted, hard doctrines
when he went to church WHY should
he not practice them when he went to
he poll?
This composite electorate is as rest
esS and desperate as Mr.. Roosevelt
himself, All the evils of the time
must be reformed and reformed in a
urrY. 1t matters not that the reform
would make the nations
asst case worse than the first. There
ave been bad judges and bad iudg- !
lents; judges and judgments should {
lerefore, be subject to the recall.
he very idea is enough to stir Web. =
ter and Chote in their graves, But a
us is not the Massachusetts, for
hich Webster and Choate spoke, and
which they SO confidently appealed. il
truth, the achusetts of 1912 ?
esembfes the Massachusetts of 1872 -
NV in the sense that the England Il
George Y. resembles the England ID
Harold II. With q radical change
blood, a radical change of ideals
ID methods must come. Mr.. Roose- n
lit has been shrewd enough, or " W
ckV enough, to grasp this fact That q
why he stormed the citidel of con- b,
rVatism and left the President a SC
'rrhic victory. III Il,