The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1940-02-15

mountain folk. But the hopeful thing
is that we know it, and in fun
bling fashion are beginning to do
something about it, rather than ac-
cepting want, squalor, fearful in
FAINT mortality, disease, crime as a
part of the plan of Divine Provi-
dence.
All Brothers.
Our mixed blood is at once our
hope and our menace. Our menace
because when thousands of foreign
born men and women are trans
planted to a new soil, it takes them
several generations to develop 10y
atty to the new flag, and to learn to
live in freedom and comfort. They
see fortunes made by graft and
theft, and they are tempted beyond
any strength that the poverty and
restriction of their old lives had
power to give them. But year by
year conditions and environment
are improved, and in another few
years-say $50 or 200, this difficulty
that comes from pouring old wine
into new bottles will be eradicated,
and we will become as law-abiding
as we are strong and rich and pow
erful.
Our Hope Here.
Every woman who teaches her
children the true history of Amer
lea, gives them some idea of the
potentialities still ahead of us under
our own Constitution, does her bit
to hasten that happy day.
The foaming yeast of mixed heri-
tages, mixed blood, mixed ideals
and customs may be our menace.
But our hope springs from this very
condition, too. The hope that we
who are all neighbors; whose fore
fathers came from Germany, Italy,
France, Spain as well as the two
great streams from England and
Ireland, may show the quarrelling
peoples of the world that there is
nothing irreconcilable in a differ
ence of blood. The lists Of pupils
in our schools show hundreds of
names of Chinese, Japanese, Phil
Pine, Indian and colored children;
every one of them good American
now. All are being blended and
welded and reconciled under one
flag, teaching and helping each 9TH
er by their very differences as well
as by their common education and
town and way of living.
Purchasing Power.
When Japanese or Russian FAM
lily living in Dakota wants a roll of
cotton it goes to the dime store and
buys it. When a Florida Negro
housewife needs maple syrup she
patroniZes her chain store. When a
Maine farmer finds himself short of
gasoline he stops at the nearest gas
pump, and his brother In Arizona
would never think of going to war
for fresh salmon; he can't catch it,
he is under-privileged in not having
a salmon-run of his own. But he
can buy it and buy it cheap, and so
instead of modifying he puts his
hand In his pocket. And his boys
stay at home with him and their
mother, and grow to manhood in
safety, and marry and have farms
and sons of their own in time and
live In peace.
One Hundredth the Cost.
Why must nations own the sources
of everything they need? Unless all
nations are to be enemies that is an
expensive and cumbersome idea. At
one tenth-one one-hundredth the
cost of war any nation could buy
needed. This is so obvious that it
is ridiculous to repeat it. If all our
states are small nations, as they
are, acknowledging, in a crisis, the
paternal wisdom of a central gov
eminent, and if in all these 48 in
dividual divisions of our nation ev-
cry nation in the world is repre-
scented among the people, and In
the local governments, which they
are, and if we, in California, have a
comfortable feeling that such es-
sentials as we haven't got are easily
purchasable from our friendly neigh
bors, then why in the name of God
the God of peace and brotherhood,
can't Europe do likewise?
Which may as well bring US back
to the starting point, that February
is the birth month of two great and
good men, and that we are grateful
to Washington and Lincoln, and will
forever bless their names And that
whatever experiments or extremes
other nations may try, we believe
In the simple, sane ideal that they
gave and preserved for US, and viii
follow it to the end.