Evening star., 1934-05-31
BY THOMAS R. HENRY.

El1ly years dSO d yOdllS vi dS SACA n
in County Antrim. Ireland, wondered
at the indifference with which hard
ened sinners could listen to the SER
mons of the Presbyterian minister.
The divine was Of the old school
and he dwelt with impressive elo-
uuence on hell fire and damnation to
come.
He had little to say about happiness
on earth. Beneath concern was this
fleeting instant of life in the vastness
of eternity or a speck of dust in an
infinity of stars. What did it matter
whether men and women were happy
or miserable, hungry or fed? Life in
the flesh was such an inconsequential
incident on the everlasting road OF
the soul.
The drug clerk listened to those SER
mons and was amazed that they had
such small observable effects. He felt
that there must be something lacking.
Somehow the listeners didn't under
stand.
Il used to feel" he says, that If ]
could get into that pulpit and tell the
people what I felt in my own words
could bring every one of them to the
altar.
1T seemed so senseless that any
body should pass up q chance of eter-
nal happiness when nobody had any
certainty that the present moment
might not be the last
The drug clerk left County Antrim
and came to live with brother In
America.
A few years later he found himself
in that prolific birthplace of new
ideas-the University of Wisconsin
There, for good or bad, the emphasis
was beginning to be placed on phi
losophy far different from that of
the Presbyterian minister in County
/ Antrim.
There was a tendency to shift en-
phasiS from eternity to this life-to
inculcate the doctrine that something
might be done to make existence hap
pier on earth quite without regard tc
what came after.
From this germ has developed the
in America.
The Irish drug clerk has seen al
most its entire progress from the
doubtful, hesitant class room begin
nings to community chests and asso-
ciated charities, municipal clinics ano
church clinics, welfare workers in
and asylums, the C. w. A., the E. W
A, subsistence homesteads and all the
rest. He has been an active, If some
what thoughtful and conservative
worker in it almost of the time ir
the District of Columbia, where hi
retired today as director of the Boarc
! of Public Welfare.
He has seen society evolve from the
point of almost complete indifference
over whether anybody was cold OF
hungry to the official pronouncement
that nobody shall be cold or hungry. >
He has seen the good develop with the
bad. He has seen the comfortine
hand of help held out to the widow
and orphan. He has combated the
impertinent young social worker, just
out OF college, with sublime confidence
IN his or her own ability to settle with
a casual word problems of life a1e
death that baff1ed the saints and thu
| phllosophers-and contemptuous sar.
casm for the County Antrim minister.
concerns over eternity.
Liberty, equality, fraternity"
Such was the slogan of the youns
nineteenth century, Graded in tn,
! American and French revolutions
nursed on the PHILOSOPHERS of Vol.
ta1re and Jefferson. But the cent,Ir,
had grown old, cynical and confusec
with words by the time the drug clerI
from County Antrim was sitting III
the classroom of Prof. Richard T. Ely
pioneer American sociologist, at tn,
University of Wisconsin. The shinine
armor OF the Gallahad- like time hac
been dented by Darwin and Neitsche
| and it had lost its luster in the smoke
of the factory system.
So Prof. Ely rephrased the slogan
for the benefit of his students. HI
made it: Authority. inequality, fra.
| oSAA4itys ~ was l1lC CAR1cOSlOll
philosophy more practical for an ag'
grown less adventurous. Science, evel
ready to provide material for the ra
tionalization of the necessary philoso
/ ply of social system, was at hane
with its intelligence measures and lik'
data, to support Prof. Ely's concep
of things. 1t reversed the French
revolution and Thomas Jefferson, a
least for the time being.
1t was in such an atmosphere tina
the present science and techniques O
social service were born. From Prof
, Ely's classrooms came some of tn,
first Of the present great army o
American social workers. They wen
out into the world with the firm con
viction that the genius and the moror
are not equal, that the liberty Of som'
must be restricted for the welfare o
the whole. and that the harshness o
the idea could and must be tempered
by retaining only the fraternity O
| their forerunners.
George S. Wilson has retained tn
slogan of Prof. Ely. II have no sym
i -