The Detroit times., 1915-11-10
To the Dump Heap
~ Or. FRANK CRANE
Copyright. 1915. by Frank Crane)

Does the world move? Sometimes we
wonder.
So it is good to look over the past. Il
shows that while progress Is slow, waste
full, often cruel, yet there is progress.
Once men were imprisoned, tortured,
burned for their religious opinions. At
that time no one dreamed or dared to
hope the day would come when the
authorities would not coerce mems
minds. Everybody accepted conformity
as absolutely necessary. That delusion
gripped the world a thousand years. Yet
after while its hold was loosed. Relig-
ious liberty did come.
But little over hundred years ago
democracy was a doubtful experiment.
1t was an axiom accepted everywhere
that no government was possible with
out kings and the caste system. That
delusion was also dispelled. It took
bloody revolution in France and death
struggle in America. Yet today the
great American Republic Is the most
prosperous nation on earth, France Is
showing the vitality of a republic in
Europe and little Switzerland is holding
her own.
Duelling was once impregnably in
trenched in civilization. Those who OPP
posed it were called towards, poltroons.
and without sense of honor, precisely as
the Roosevelt type call those who are OPP
posed to war today. But duelling had
to go.
Slavery was once esteemed a divine
institution. Preachers proved it out Of
the Bible Society and business were
organized upon it. II was inground in
the convictions of thousands. Those who
advocated abolition were deemed Wild
eyed fanatics, troublers, traitors. Yet
down went slavery, although with .
huge convulsion.
It had to go. Everything has to go
that is opposed to reason, common sense,
and humanity.
If you had lived in certain districts OF
Illinois and Indiana up to ten years ago
and had expressed the view that some
times votes would not be bought and
politics would not be controlled by ring
of bosses your neighbors would have
laughed at you. Yet the courts are
actually sending men to prison there for
buying votes and stuffing ballot boxes.
If you had said generation ago that
the patent medicine takers, who got rich
by poisoning and swindling the ignorant
and unfortunate, would ever be curbed,
YOUR assertion would have been received
by practical, hard-headed" men with a
sheer of incredulity. Yet the stronghold
of the drug dopers has been riddled by
publicity.
The other day United States district
attorney even filed condemnation suit
against a package containing bottles OF
I-I Dot
Imminent" Think of that! Rattlesnake
oil has time out of mind been rubbed on
the Joints of athletes. Our fathers and
mothers used it religiously. 1t would
have been deemed impious and against
all experience to say that it was no good.
Yet now the officers of the law declare
il plain fraud.
Well may the stand-patters tremble
and look to their palladiums.
Bear in mind that it was the "practi-
cal" people, the sound, sensible folk, who
championed every one of these things.
Very often to be practical simply
means to ally ones self with the ignor-
ance, stupidity. and insanity OF tradition.
And tradition now says there Is no
way to adjust international differences
but by war, that the fruits of civilization
cannot be preserved except by keeping
in readiness for wholesale slaughter. The
same kind of old leading citizens" that
once thought heretic-hunting, duelling,
slavery and political corruption newt
able. and necessary, and sneered at the
impractical theorists who seemed to
think the world could ever escape from
those evils, is now chanting the glories
of militarism.
But war, and the whole programme OF
war. being utterly nonsensical, insane,
and inhuman. will have to 60 some day
to the dump-heap.