Cut Bank pioneer press. [volume] (Cut Bank, Mont.) 1909-current, 1913-06-20
Twas surprising how quickly the
town went to-well


Twas surprising how quickly the
town went to-well
A very long way from Chicago.
True Patriotism Begins at Home.
There is both truth and eloquence in
the following address of William Allen
White st the Southwestern Lumber
mems convention in Kansas City:
The preservation of the home trade
to the home town carries with it the
preservation of many of our American
Institutions.
1t seems to me that a lot of good
things in American life will pass If the
country town passes. And it will pass
just as surely as Capitalization of re-
tail business in cities continues.
The American country town, the
town of from one hundred to fifty
thousand people, preserves better
than the crowded city and better than
the lonely ranch the things that make
America great.
Here in these country towns the
spirit of neighborliness is the prevail
ing spirit. The American country
town with its broad circle Of friend
ships. with its close, homely, SIMPLE
relations between men, with its spirit
of cooperation and with it's economic
status that permits the creation of no
indecently rich and no abjectly poor
the American country town, it seems
to me, is the most hopeful of our
American institutions.
To destroy that town, furnishing the
market for the farmer and giving
steady employment to labor, means a
reorganization of our commercial, so.
cial and industrial life that will be
revolutionary-and more, a matter of
doubtful value.
The mail order house, therefore, be-
comes a n to this country. The
mail order house unrestricted will kill
cities with their terrible contracts Of
life, with their cruel social relations,
with their inevitable caste feeling that
comes from the presence of strangers
who are rich and poor living side by
side.
Friendship, neighborliness, fratern-
ity or whatever you will call that spir-
= u voulradery that comes when men
know one another well, is the cement
that holds together this union of the
states. 1t is not created in great
cities.
Great cities give much in aims. but
little III justice. Only as we know
each other well can we treat each
other justly; and the city is a wilder
ness Of careless strangers whose in
stincts of humanity are daily becom'
ing more and more blunted to suffer
ing because in the nature of things
suffering in cities must be impersonal
! So the mail order house, crushing out
our towns, is drying up the milk OF
} human kindness in our hearts.
If we who live in these small towns
: in America can not see that our duty
/ to our country lies first of all in oul
duty to our neighbors, then we are
I blind indeed to the basis of real pa
} triotism. For, after all, patriotism il
only neighborly kindness. Patriotism
is not in cheering for the flag; it il
! not in feeling our eyes filed with emo
tional tears at hearing THE Stal
Spangled Banner; patriotism is JUS
3 old fashioned human duty.
To sacrifice our n~eighbor-the maj
who helps the town with its taxes
a with its public business, with 1T
myriad activities for neighborly right
|. eousness-to sacrifice that man ant
his business for the mere sake of saw
. ing a dollar on the purchase of a hun
1 dred dollars worth of goods is just al
unpatriotic as it is to spit at the flag
The motto of the mail order housI
is, every man for himself and the dew
take the hindermost-and you bet tn,
devil will.
h That spirit never fails to work; an,
the weak man, the unprotected mar
the man alone-the man or the farm
at the end of the fact, when his farm
market is gone, when his town
gone, when the spirit of selhshnes
r and greed has left this country col
and hard and mean and neighborles
II 1.-THE farmer will be the hindermost