Newport daily independent., 1913-11-19
Had a Powerful Influence on the
 American People.
Tn His Original Home He Favored Direct Action" and in the West ern World Built on Empire
 What He Accomplished.

New YOrk.-In a great many affairs
 that go wrong today the social mind
 ed detectives do not say, Cherchez le femme; they say Cherchez the puri-
 Ian ancestor. That dour figure in
 brooches striding on his way to church with his flintlock and his
 Bible, is responsible for an eXtraor-
 dinary number of things that now af- flict us. He stands in the way of 8
 minimum wage. of Sunday baseball,
 of the uplifting of the stage, of the
 speedy. solution of the white slave
 problem, the divorce problem, the sa-
 loon problem, the eugenics problem, the 1 a. m. lobster palace problem.
 and a good many other problems
 which, the theatrical managers on
 Broadway are aching to solve, but are not allowed to.
 The cavaliers despised the puritan ancestor because he spoke through his nose. But that was a minor fault. The real sin is that he refused to speak at all He is the original patentee of the conspiracy of silence to which all our ills are due, as con- trasted with the happy nations of the continent where there is no conspir- acy of silence on all these fascinating topics. and consequently these prob lens do not exist The puritan ex- alted salvation at the expense of con- versation, thus failing to perceive that the latter is the indispensable condi- tion of the former. If he had not been so afraid of calling a spade a spade, we should now have a flourish Ing literature and drama and art. and We should have done away with the social evil, even as conversational peo- have done away with it.
 Considering that the truth alone can be the basis of true progress and civilization it is astonishing how many things that whining hypocritical puri- tan ancestor accomplished in his day. In his original home in England he had not been going many years be- fore he cut off the head of king. sent another king packing about his business, and in other ways pursued a policy of direct action" that should appeal enormously to w. D. Haywood. Crossing the Atlantic, he helped to lay the foundations of an empire For man who hated to call a spade spade, 1t is remarkable how we'll he could use that familiar agricultural Implement. He used it to dig up the ungrateful soil of rock bound. frost-bitten commonwealth. Later he shouldered his spade and. still sneak 1 Ing through his nose, but for the most ! part faithful to his conspiracy of si- ! fence. he dug up the more grateful soil or the Mississippi valley and the western prairies and the Pacific river 1 valleys, with occasional deviations to | the pickax when he struck the ore bearing lands of Colorado and the Sierras. He did not lose the early habit of carrying his flintlock into the held. He used it in Kansas. and hVe years later he was carving if over thousand miles of battlefield In his own hypocritical way he called It light for free institutions against slavery. When the war was over he went back to farming and railroad persistent in his churchpo. Ing habits and the traditional conspir. icy of silence
 we are forced 10 the conclusion hat the puritan ancestor fared bet. CT than he deserved and builded bet.