Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1921-12-11
CLAIMS PARTY
CONTROL BLOW
At DEMOCRACY
Nicholas Murray Butler
Pleads for Return of
Representative Rule.
American People Must
Rise Above Smallness
Now in Evidence.

Chicago, Dee. 1O-The diseases anc
growing pains of democracy must be
dealt with as such and the American
people are called upon to lead the
way in carrying forward democracy to
a condition of permanent and sturdy
health, DIR. Nicholas Murray Butler
president of Columbia University, N
T., told the members Of the Illinois
Bar association here.
This cannot be DONE" DR.. Butler
continued, unless the American peo-
pie are prepared to rise above the
smallness, the selfishness that are now
SO much in evidence. To return to
autocracies or to conscious oligarchies
would be quite impossible.
Ignorant Of Facts.
Ignorance of economic history and
economic laws, is particularly wide
spread. One wonders what the schools
aud colleges have been doing for the
last half century that men and women
are left in such ignorance of the fact
and the laws. Senators and represen-
tatiyes in congress vote with FIERCE
joy to impose, in time Of peace, very
high taxes on wealth without appear
ing to realize by thus diminishing the
amount of productive capital they are
denriving the farmer of his market,
the wage-worker of his employment,
the transportation system of it's freight
norance, the old enemy of human we'll
being, is still powerful and active.
There are ominous signs all round
about us. The American form of gov
ernment is in danger whenever a
group Of men endeavor to operate it
in the interest of section or class
Against Party Control
"a labor party or farmers party
is as undemocratic and as un-Amer-
lean as millionaires' party, or ship
lean farmer, the American wage
worker, the American manufacturer,
the American business man, is pay
ing heavily today, five years after
wards, for the un-American and TN
patriotic act that was forced by threat
upon the statute book of the United
States, known as the Adamson law.
This law established privileged class
among us and thereby increased the
cost of living for every man, woman
and child including members of the
privileged class itself.
The use of the power of the state
to enforce some particular rule of con-
duct, which those to whom it appeals
describe as moral, may easily differ
only in form and not in fact from the
long since abandoned use Of the power
of the state to enforce conformity in
religious belief and worship.
Private morals and private con-
duct hn of
the individual and not for regulation
by some majority which lat best, can
only be temporary.
Need Help Immediately
''We need quickly to strengthen the
Of representative govern
ment and thereby rebuild public conf
dence III it. This can only be done
by attracting to the political service Of
the state men and women of the high
est type Of intelligence and character,
who have no personal or group ends to
serve.
$50 completely has established
vanished that today public
speaker may not cite even the Bible
Or SHAKESPEARE with any assurance that
his allusion will be understood, to say
nothing of the great orations and dram
as and poems and historic events of
Greece and Rome. So long as this
was general among persons
called educated it served as binding
and unifying force, both intellectual
and moral Popular teachers are now
laying down as principle that there
are no principles, but that each indi-
yidual, each group, each generation
must follow its own instincts. Such
reduces man with all his his
sory to the level of an animal.