The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram., 1914-02-05
Wanted: A Lincoln

The actual experience of nations they
work out their problems on the field of time is q
laboratory in which the sociologist studies the
vexing political and economic questions with
which he wrestles. But until few years ago the
student of sociological conditions was handi-
capped owing to the difficulties of studying con-
ditions among other peoples. Communication
with foreign lands was difficult or impossible,
and to ascertain the gains and losses of their po-
litcal and sociological experiments was out of the
question. But now the times are changed and
such communication has been established with all
peoples everywhere that the whole world has
been placed under the sociologist's microscope.
The fact is pregnant with revolutionary
changes in political theories because it is en-
ablng the student to see what results the much
advertised political reforms have brought about
where they have been tried.
AS the vision of struggling human society
breaks our view when we cast our eye broadly
across the nations, what is it that we see? Is it
peace and prosperity in the earth? No indeed.
1t is rather a scene of unrest and want and de-
spair. England is on the volcanoes edge: France
is troubled with impending change: Italy
smarts with such difficulties as her long history
has never known: Germany, with all it's boasted
organization, cannot respond to the demand of
ing all things into consideration now has more
unemployed men than at one time BEFORE
AS rapidly as wealth piles up at one end, poverty
accumulates at the other and the misery of the
steadily increasing depressed classes keeps pace
with the pyramiding luxuries for the monopost
classes. One is led to say with Walter Rauschen-
busch, the great social prophet, that though ev-
cry age in faces crisis of it's own, we to-
day facing not crisis of our own generation
but of the whole of civilization.
What is the cause of these conditions? "Oh"
say this reformer and that, cit is because we
have not yet put into use the right political
measures" But what political measures will
avail a remedy for this state of affairs? It
seems to matter little in fundamental way what
political measures are used. Some nations have
the monarchial, others the oligarchial, some the
bureaucratic and some the democratic form of
government: some have full suffrage and others
restricted suffrage: have the gold stand
ard and some the silver standard: some have free
trade and others protection some have armies
and others have armies: some have great for
tunes and others have great fortunes some
have machine industry and others have hand la
bor: some have trusts and others have no trusts:
some have labor unions and others have no labor
unions: some have constitutions and others have
no constitutions.
Surely this is sufficient to convince us that
the increasing poverty and depression which is
rising to such an appalling height in the world is
not due to the overlooking of some political ex-
pediency but is rather due to some fundamental
economic cause which strikes it's roots beneath
our political machinery. Nations are awaiting
some man clear-sighted enough, strong-voiced
enough and big enough to rise in our midst and to
expose that root of all the trouble and to say
Here is where thou ailest." We need new Lin
con