The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1923-05-03
SERM N
By REV. ID. J. QUILLAN

problem of local self-government is
as fatuous as for a strong man to ex-
ult in his health when his body lis
covered with running sores. II has
been estimated that the annual profits
from violations of the prohibition laws
have reached $300,00 600. Men who
thus violate these laws for sordid gain
are not likely to obey other laws, and
the respect for law among all classes
steadily diminishes as our people be-
come familiar with, and tolerant of
wholesale criminality. Whether the
moral and economic results of prohi-
bition overbalance this rising wave OF
crime, time will tell.
In limine, let us not the significant
fact that this spirit of revolt is not
confined to the political state. and
therefore its causes lie beyond that
sphere Of human action.
How Life Is Governed
Human Life is governed by all man
ner OF man-made laws--laws Of art,
music, of social intercourse, of litera-
ture, business--all evolved by custom
and imposed by the collective will of
society. Here we find the same re-
volt against tradition and authority.
In music, its fundamental canons
have been thrown aside and discord
has peer substituted for harmony as
it's ideal. It's culmination--jazz--is a
musical crime. III the forms Of dane
ing and music are symptomatic OF an
age, what shall be said of he univer-
sal craze to indulge in crude and clum-
sy dancing to the vile discord of Jazz"
music?
In. the plastic arts, the laws OF form
and the c~riteria of beauty have been
swept aside by the ruturists. cubists,
vorticists, tactilists, and other aesthe-
tic Bolsheviki.
In poetry, where beauty OF rhythm,
melody of sound and nobility OF
thought were once regarded az the
true tests, we now have in freak forms
of poetry the exaltation of the grotes-
que and brutal. Hundreds of poets
are feebly echoing the "barbaric
yawp" of Walt Whitman, without the
redeeming merit of his occasional
sublimity of thought.
In ommerce, the revolt is against
the purity of standards and the nte-
gritty of business morals. Who can
question that this is pre-eminently the
age of the sham and the counterhet!
Science is prostituted TO deceive the
public by clcaking the increasing de-
terioration in quality of merchandise.
The blatant medium of advertising has
become so mendacious as to defeat its
own purpose.
In the recent deflation i'm commod-
ity values, there was widespread
"welching'' among business men who
had heretofore been classed as rep
utable. OF course, | recognize that a
far greater number kept their con-
tracts, ever when it brought them to
the verge of ruin. But when In the
history of American business was
there such a volume OF broken faith
as in the drastic defiacticn OF 1870!
In the greater sphere OF social life,
we find the same revolt against the in
stitutions which have the sanction OF
the past. Social laws, which mark the
decent restraints of print, speech and
dress, have in recent decades been In
creasing- disregarded. Nature itself
Is defed. Thus, the fundamental Diff
ference of sex is disregarded by Soc
ial and political movements which ig-
more the permanent differentiation OF
social function ordained by Nature.
ITO be continued, May 24)