The citizen., 1913-11-14
Had a Powerful Influence on the
American People.
in His Original Home He Favored
Direct Action" and in the West
ern World Built on Empire
What He Accomplished.

New York.-In great many affairs
that go wrong today the social mind
ed detectives do not say, Cherchez lie
femme; they say, Cherchez the puri-
tan ancestor. That dour figure in
sugar loaf hat and buff jerkin and
breeches striding on his way to
church with his fiintlock and his
Bible. is responsible for an extraor-
binary number of things that now af-
flict us. He stands in the way of
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 / 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 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-
ton 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-
pie like the French and the Germans
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 a king,
sent another king packing about his
business, and in other ways pursued
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 SPADE a
spade, it is remarkable how well 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 speak
ing through his nose, but for the most
part faithful to his conspiracy of ST.
lence, he dug up the more grateful
soil of the Mississippi valley and the
western prairies and the Pacific river
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 fintlocG into
the field He used it in Kansas, and
five years later he was carrying it
over a thousand miles of battlefield
In his own hypocritical way he called
it fight for free institutions against
slavery. When the war was over he
went back to farming and railroad
building, persistent in his churchgo-
ing habits and the traditional conspir-
acy of silence.
We are forced to the conclusion
that the puritan ancestor Jared bet
ter than he deserved and builded bet