OCR Text |
Show IB THIS RUSHING AGE. I These are days that ought to make the men of j , the United States thoughtful. Through the own- I i ershlp of mines, of machinery, through railroadB i which by their very nature force men of all i j classes to stand and deliver, and through the manipulation of the stored money of the country, ' a mighty moneyed class has been produced in our country during the past forty years. So numerous 'I is this class, and so potential is wealth, that they I control the business of the country, and while I they have not, thus far, broken down the spirit of I the American people, they, nevertheless, insidl- I ously, in great measure shape legislation and con- 3 trol public sentiment. Then the sons of many of I these, the sons, the wives and daughters of many of them have flocked to the great cities, and with a their extravagance and their ostentatious display ( 9 -of wealth kindle envy, unrest and resentment in i i tens of thousands of souls. They make one pic- kjjc 8 1 ture. The companion picture is that of the mul- y I titudes who toil and depend for bread every day H I upon their every-day labor, and with millions of HK 'I these there is no respite from that toil from the l 5 cradle to the grave. All the time, too, on the out- Hfifi S skirt of the picture are great ships in steady pro- ffi 1 1 cession coming in from across the sea and dump- vlf ' ng UDOn our Bnoes thousands and tens of thou- Hfi I sans of the world's foreign poor, many of them $g I having no comprehension of the land to which HjiM I tny come, no love for it, no idea of it, no knowl- H rj 9 1 edge of its institutions. H; M i' The two pictures are vastly more striking, m' m 1) more filled with elements of possible future dis- H O I' aster than anything that could have been im- Hi m 1 1' , agined by Macauley when he drew his picture of j m I, what would be when the glory of his country B, i ! should have passed away, leaving nothing in'evi- I, & deiice of the greatness that was, save in the ruins h that remained. Two questions are suggested by the pictures. How long can the dissolute and extravagant rich hold their pace until their candle, burning as it is at both ends, consumes itself and they become a race of perverts and degenerates? How long can our country, mighty as it is, receive and assimilate assimi-late the never-ending host that is coming to us from beyond the sea. and at the same time keep hepe warm in the hearts of our own toilers? Those are serious questions. It is said that in the late great strike in the anthracite coal region twenty millions of days' work were lost to the miners. That was not nearly all the loss. There was bitterness engendered and animosities awakened awak-ened that will last as long as life. That is not all. The loss to consumers of coal, thousands of whom are very poor, is incalculable, and in many a home will be felt in lessened comforts and necessaries ne-cessaries of life all through the coming winter. This is but one wrong; there are many others, and we are not the great people we claim to be unless .remedies to cure these evils can be provided. pro-vided. Some of them can be cured by law, but the laws to do the work must be far-reaching in wisdom, they must be upon an exact basis of justice jus-tice and yet must be softened and sanctified by mercy. Where are the men to frame this new code? But much can be done through enlightened enterprise. No man, looking upon a great river making its way through the desert, would think of trying to stop its flow, but a natural thought would be of the glories that would succeed could its waters be turned aside to give moisture to the land and cover it with harvests. What might be then, were the great river of humanity that by births and immigration is filling our land, be turned aside to vivify lands that await the settlers? set-tlers? -Hexico welopmes.oiewcomers; South America Amer-ica needs transformation. Why ao not our railroad rail-road men, grown rich beyond all their dreams, turn to the new fields to the south and begin their peaceable conquest? Why does not our Govern, ment encourage this through ships and ocean ca. bles? The locomotive was the real path-finder and pioneer between the Missouri and Sacramento. Sacramen-to. It was the locomotive that really blazed the way and made the transformation which has com& to this interior since 1869 possible. It could do the same for the unpeopled millions of acres that await settlement and cultivation to the south of us. Mr. Carnegie, when read aright is not satisfied. He thought once that all he needed need-ed to be happy was wealth. It came to him In volume so vast that he could not handle it; ol late he has been trying to give it away, and the manner of his bequests shows that he now covets glory more than he formerly did money. No one could wish to discount the great measure of good he is doing, but many wonder at the form of charity char-ity he has adopted. If he had started a railroad on the southern shore of the Caribbean sea, driven, it on across Venezuela or Colombia, skirted the eastern slopes of the Cordilleras and Andes, then bending to the southeast to make it meet another road he was driving northwest from Buenos Ayres, and then decreed that the profits of the, road should be devoted to educating the children along the line, he would have been the first man of his age. We state this merely to illustrate that there can be a way to make wealth immortal and to immortalize its, for the time being, possessor. |