The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1917-01-27

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can community any harm to read and
ponder the following remarkable and
outspoken sermon, delivered last Sun.
day by Rev. George Kent, pastor OF
the First Unitarian Church of New
Orleans, and published in Mondays
issue Of the Times-Picayune:
/ / suppose there are few things that
can be done as easily and cheaply as
to fling the charge of failure to en-
force the law at any government.
And in any free and democratic com
imunity, such as ours, where the gov
ernment, without the active backing
of the people, has no power at all, few
things have more stupid futlllty about
them than mere denunciatlons OF
those in authority for not doing what
the people are notE6anabling them to
do.
l decline, then, any such easy. and
empty foolishness as that of assailing
our city officials for the lawlessness OF
New Orleans But there is no blind
ling ourselves to the existence OF such
lawiessness. It isn't great or violent.
Alas, no, ours is not the lawlessness
of a too-abundant vigor. We don't
have the free-fghts of Donnybrook
Fair. We don't have the duels OF q
Prussian student corps. We don't
even get stupendously drunk. Ours
is not the New Orleans of the old
rivermen Our lawlessness is soft
and self-indulgent, more of the de-
cadent type. To give some instances
Whenever the decent degree of
peace and safety Of our uptown ave-
nues is broken by the shrek and
whirr of some costly auto, tearing by
at twice the speed the law allows,
realize that the gilded youth of New
Orleans is hot expending any of his
own exuberant vitality. He is sitting,
softly cushioned, at the wheel, a
white-faced, sickly youth, sucking d
cigarette, while 60-horsepoWer ma
chine, weighing 1000 pounds, is do
ing all the threatening and slaughter
for him.
And if he's caught, he doesn't take
his medicine, some thirty days IN
prison, like a man. Under an ac-
commodating law he pays a fine, or
rather his father pays it. He poses
as a devil of a rhap. Which he IS,
only it's that feeble, parasitic sort OF
deviltry which they used to say gave
Iimbecility to man or some weaken
inc disease to aeWnmar
90 out to the Fair Grounds,
where the sport is on, and find hum
dreds of excited men and women
there. But they are not contestlng
in the sports themselves. Not one of
| them, nor any friend of theirs, is rae
ing, or wrestling, or exertlng any
manly strength or skill whatsoever.
A few hired men and horses play the
game, To my astonishment, not
half she hundreds there SO much as
| watch the sport, stirring slgnt
They are inside, trying to get each
others money on the chance OF what
the horses do outside. | admire the
horses, but the men and women and
their gambling strike me as degen-
crate. / a1ff compelled to say OF their
part in it: ''If this be sport, what
poor, dirty little game of picking
each others pockets they make of it!'
So, | am told, it is with the law
lessness of our cabarets. 1t isn't
virile; it's vampire. A set OF blood
suckers. men and women, leech-like,
bleeding the silly inexperienee OF
boys, or the weak, over-drugged or
drunken beastliness Of men!
And look at the breaking OF our
Sunday laws, laws as liberal and free
| as any live and decent community
can desire! Look at the shiftless ne
elect to buy ones groceries until Sun.
| dav morning, the noisy shouting OF
hucksters against the Sunday rest or
worship, the sneaking use OF darkened
| barrooms-What a needless, sordld,
debasing lawlessness it is!
And all this sort of laWlessness
doesn't signal through the land how
New Orleans!
Rather, find it taken as the S: o.
S. despairing call of rotten and sink
ing decrepitude!
| It doesn't beckon to US any OF the
capital or enterprise that counts on
straight and clean young manhood.
1t only lures to US the spendthrift,
the idler, the hunter of indulgences,
outlawed in up-to-date communities
and all the parasitic, crawling things
that live on such as these.
| The vital question to be asked by
every decent man and woman Of New
Orleans is, Why? Why this open
lawlessness? Why this degenerate
type of it that makes our city the
contempt of every other in the coun-
try? Why shall we Americans, OF a
| great American city, let it carry the
| dirty marks of some tropical pest
hole?
ours is yellow fever, cholera, plague
lspot. Why shall we let it stand that
| ours is a gamblers and leecher's
paradise?
Is it because our business men, ou1
merchants, our real estate and rail
road men have nothing left to do but
to prostitute the soft, alluring beauty
of our city for the gains that she may
bring to them? Must believe 1t true
i of a single man beyond the dastare
/ villain that heard avow it: "Sht
may go to hell, if | can make m.
i pilet"?
/ / can't i won't believe it!
! Our city's lawlessness, by-word al
it has grown to be, is not the dellber
/ ate and sordid intention of our bus1
mess men. Nor yet can we charge i
to the base betrayal of our sworn OF
feials, surrendering our city's homo
to the bribes and threats of panderer
to vice.
i No. let us take the blame, and max
the reformation, where it belongs
X .xL o1x,oc The ouri ccs