River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1922-02-02


contempt for law and the present revolt against
the spirit of authority make this age emnently
Zone of sham and counterfeit lie rejected the
easy theory that these symptoms of grave mall
hdy are merely reaction of the World war; L ar
from causing the moral sickness of the age, says
the solicitor general, the World was in itself,
perhaps, but one of its many symptoms. Some OF
the contributory causes Of the worlds disorder are
reluctance to obey laws regarded as unreasonable
or vexatous, the laws delays and laxty in adj
ADMINISTRATION which have bred q spirit of contempt,
and the rampant individualism which began in the
Eighteenth century, with its excessive emphasis
on the rights of man and small stress mans
duties. In proof of his contention, Mr.. Beck in
stances the records of the criminal courts and
police dockets; violations of the sumptuary laws,
which in the case of the prohibition statute have
resulted In fines aggregating an estimate of more
than $300,000000; and IAN increase in nine years
of nearly 400 per cent in the comparatively
ROW sphere of the federal criminal Jurisdiction"
in the greater sphere of social life we find
the same revolt against the institutions which
have the sanction of the past" says Mr. Beck
Laws which mark the decent restraints of print
speech and dress have In recent decades been In
creasingly dsregarded. The very foundations of
the great and primitive institutions of mankind
Alike the family, the church and the state-have
been shaken Nature itself is defied. Thus, the
fundamental difference of sex is disregarded by
social and political movements which ignore the
permanent differentiation of social function or
daned by God himself"
Five plaques are affecting humanity said the
pope last year in a public utterance before the
college of Cardinals The first, Mr.. Beck recalls
Us the unprecedented challenge to authority; sec
ond, hatred between man and man; third, alb
normal aversion to work; fourth, the excessive
thirst for pleasure; fifth gross materiaIsm which
denies the reality of the spiritual in human life
All these charges, says the lawyer are proved in
recent experience
1t is however, to a widespread change in social
conditions rather than to any change of mans es-
sential that the solicitor general attributes
the malady of our time 1t seems to him that
she morale of our Industrial civilization has been
shattered. Work for works sake, the most
glorious privilege of human faculties, has gone
both as an ideal and as potent spirit. The con-
ception of work degrading servtude to be
done with reluctance and grudging ineficiency
seems to be the ideal of millions of men of all
classes and in all countries.
The great enigma, then, which this situation
propounds to us, and which, like the riddle of
the Sphinx, will solve or be destroyed" is this:
HAS the increase in the potential of human pow
err through thermodynamics been accomplished by
a corresponding increase in the potential of human
character?" Then Mr. Beck goes on to say:
"a mass morality has been substituted for In
dividua morality and group morality generally in
tensifes the vices than the virtues of man.
What was true of Germany was true--athough
I'm lesser degree-of all civilized nations In all
of them. the individual had been submerged in
group formations, and the effect upon the charac-
ter of man has not been beneficial.
sThere many palliatives for the evils which
/ have discussed. To rekindle in men the love of
work for works sake and the spirit of discipline,
which the lost sense of human solidarity once In
spired, would do much to solve the problem, for
work is the greatest moral force in the world.
If we of this generation only recognize that
the evil exists then the situation is not past REM
edy.
81 have faith in the inextinguishable spark OF
the Divine which is In the human soul and which
our complex mechanical civilization has not ex-
tinguished OF this, the World war was In Itself
a proof. All the horrible resources of mechan-
les and chemistry were utilized to coerce the
human SOUL and all proved Intellectual"
AS everyone knows Iaw-abidlng citizens In
number of big American cities have been driven
by conditions to organize Iaw-enforcement COM
mittees-a fact which would seem to corroborate
Mr. Beck Denver is the latest city to feel the ne
cessity of such an organization. The indictment
against the citf administration is mildly expressed
by Mrs. Mabel Stearns Noble, executive secretary
of the Woman's Cooperative league, who puts 1t
thus:
Drunkenness immortality and gambling are our