The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-12-07
SHACKLES
RELICS OF THE DAYS
OF VAST IGNORANCE
DIR. Parke Draws Interest
ing Conclusion From
Scene on City Streets
Friday Morning

To the Editor of The Age-Herald:
According to custom, Eleventh avenue
was cleaned off Friday morning by
gang of shackled and chained city con-
Victs. This particular Friday a large per-
centage of these shackled fellow citizens
of ours We're from IA to is years of age, If
any reliance was to be placed on appear
ance or on their testimony.
one among them was limping from fric-
ton of the shackles on his lower limbs
This youth was not complaining. He
managed to keep up with the others, but
1t was plain to all spectators that. for
him, walking involved discomfort and
pain.
What effect was produced on the many
other citizens who witnessed this youth
full gang. L know not, but do know that
into my own consciousness came surging
sorrow and shame and protest.
What happens to this particular gang
of our fellow citizens is in reality of sec
ondary Importance. The vitality impor-
tant thing is the effect, on the community
as whole, of the responsibility for the
condition. Whether bull is killed in the
ring or a cock in the pit is of secondary
importance to Spain or Mexico or Cuba.
The really important thing is the effect
on the people of those countries of encour-
aging bull fighting and cock fighting
In our ignorance and our resulting in
difference we, like the people of Spain
and Mexico and Cuba, imagine We can
continue to violate natural sociological
laws with impunity. We imagine we can
continue to make criminals out of these
youthful petty offenders and exploit them
for profit, without paying the sure PEN
atty.
We imagine we can continue to engage
in this petty, this unjust, this cruel ex
ploitation of our weaker fellows and still
be good as the next.
Mexico follows her traditional policy and
is as stiff necked as we in her assump-
ton of self satisfaction.
1t would be a crushing blow to every
individual who accepts the idea of the
beneficence of natural laws that any peo-
pie could now or in future, violate natural
sociological laws as we violate them, and
not pay the penalty. We will pay the
penalty as our forebears of the race haze
paid penalties for their ignorance through
out the untold ages of the slow ascent
from savagery and bestiality. In that
ages-long struggle. only knowledge and
the strength to apply their hardly ac
quired knowledge, have brought welfare.
To those who accept such an explana
ton, the remedy for our ills can never
come through appeal to emotions. The
remedy must come through a dissemina-
ton of knowledge already acquired by
students of ethics. of sociology and of
government. Many trees in Birmingham
attest, by their vigorous growth that the
application of acquired knowledge con-
cerning tree surgery results in welfare to
tree and owner. Many a child, sick with
diphtheria, has demonstrated the welfare
incident to utilizing knowledge acquired
by this wonderful two-footed race of ours.
Europeans for a thousand years cruelty
treated their insane till advancing
knowledge proved insanity to be due to
disease of the brain substance.
Armies throughout all history NAL
treated and made slaves of icaptives TIL
advancing acquired knowledge proved
such practices opposed to welfare.
Thus any citizen who recognizes ignor-
ance as the cause of our SHINING and
knowledge as the remedy and hope. be-
comes perforce an enthusiastic advocate
of the dissemination of this stored racial
knowledge by every device known to mod
ern educational propaganda. Very truly,
THOS. L. PARKE. :
Birmingham, December 8, 1913