| Show TEE REV JOSEPH COOK 11t t A BRIEF CRITICISM OF HIS LAST LECTURE t The Boston Oracle lItU Planted Him Nclf Upon tlie Eternal Rock of JoscpH Cook Walter Murphys f Queries Salt Lak City Utah April 10 1894 To the Editor of the Herald Noting that Joseph Cook of Boston was billed to deliver a lecture last evening even-ing upon The Political Signs of the Times I betook myself to hear him hoping not only that the unparalleled i distress prevalent throughout the i United States might be Included by him nnng the Signs to be discussed 1 but that the justly celebrated Omniscience t Omni-science of this ponderous gentleman f would make clear to us the cause of J this distress and the remedy Mr Cooks keen intellect illumined t a number of novel subjects such as white domination at the south illit L eracy the saloon in politics municipal misgovernment the beneficent effect of the church and the school etc and he t laid down quite a number of entertaining entertain-ing and strictly veracious propositions anent these subjects such as may usually usu-ally be found for instance in the trustworthy and conservative columns f of the country newpapers of humble I circulation but lofty aims Someone in the tudlencc who had t evidently been thinking about a Sign I that just now has prominence if not i significance called out to the lecturer t What about Coxeys army Mr t Coo replied that Coxeys army was F nothing but an ulcer on one limb off of-f the body politic but that in due course of his remarks he would proceed to t prick the same I therefore comforted myself though I was not the questioner I ques-tioner with the thought that now I at last we were to know how it comes about that Mammon holds high carnival in his gilded palace while little lit-tle children hunger mothers faint for food and die and strong men weep i for want of work For Mr Cook as we all know is a man who has art ar-t rived He has cultivated inerrancy with great assiduity and with deserved lif f success When the time came Mr Cook disposed II dis-posed of the Industrial Army with such neatness and dispatch that everybody every-body in the audience must have wondered won-dered how they could ever have been I such egregious asses as to pay any attention to it either as the symptom 1 of a serious disease in the body economic econ-omic and politic or as a simple ulcer Zeus simply projected a thunderbolt ac Coxeys army and wiped it out of the landscape Thus The industrial army is merely a rabble of worthless loafers Crucify them and all of their ilk Send them to the workhouse and make your provision for them in your workhouses unendurable Then they wont want to go to the workhouse but will go to work Mr Cook omitted to state just how when or where they might go to work but doubtless there must be abundant employment for them easily accessible For otherwise Mr Cook would not have said this and Mr Cook is the man who knows Several detachments of this army Mr Editor have been moving across different parts of the country for several I sev-eral days So far as I have read there I have been no depredations no violence or even disorder Tramps the leaders to exclude say are rigidly excluded or them at least is the aim The newspapers news-papers have all said that the men are peaceable and quiet and that the great majority of them are honest workmen who have been out of work for months and dont know which way to turn If Mr Cook by the way has devised any workhouse system more unpleasant I than riding across a desert herded in a box car like a beast and living upon of crackers day a diet of one meal per he has invented a remedy for sturdy pauperism which is certainly to be classed among the heroic 4 I am not writing in defense of the Coxey enterprise I believe it to be foolish and hopeless But I protest against the tone used by this minister of the gospel of good will toward men in dealing with these symptoms of widespread and almost unimaginable suffering among those whom his Christ came into the world to befiend Mr Cook of course had something to say on the general labor question I And of course he had solutions plenty of them Mr Cook will not allow al-low a question or a problem to go without its proper solution for any innrr + v rr timo tvViiif hp in around He ItUbLU UL LU n with great magnanimity of Mr c pok Bellamy and said that he always I i treated him with respect He animadverted I ani-madverted with warmth upon European t Euro-pean socialism but unfortunately forgot for-got to explain what special opprobrium t t oppro-brium liesjn the term European or what vice necessarily inheres in a thing which it Liay suit the purposes of some persons to label socialistic I had hoped to hear something important im-portant on these subjects from the great oracle But possibly because I am not worthy to drink at this great fountain of truth I came away with thirst for information unslaked mv It seemed to my doubtless unworthy and sinwarped intellect that his solutions consisted of nothing but twad the same old dreary respectable I dIe that has helped so many of the clergy and so many of their more unthinking un-thinking hearers about one hundred in the behind the times and fifty years domain of economic and social reform and lent color to the accusation that respectability of the philanthrophic Christendom is willing to do everything for those who suffer from present economic and sccial conditions except off their backs The Oracle to get says Go to wOlt But will the Oracle vouchsafe to put us onto a job Will he answer the questions When How At what To even let us say ten of the estimated two millions mil-lions of our countrymen who are anxious to follow his advice He says follow the golden rule and all will lovely But suppose the house of i have declines to follow the golden rule At the erquest of the house of want This bright idea of Mr Cooks might q well embodied in a paraphrase of a ous axiom thusAll the rights of fanous theNndnstrially governed derive their the of the I just existence from the consent industrially governing The Oracle says Aid and increase ur philanthropic activities The your Oracle ought to known and does know that charity socalled organized or unorganized Is not and never can be anything but a temporary i Uliative It cannot prevent a recurrence of present conditions it is not curing and never will cure our economic and social diseases r We go to the great Oracle to learn what amendments we ought to make in our economic social and political j scheme in order to do away with and i render impossible the spectacle of two I millions of citizens of the great republic re-public begging of thsir equals the boon of earning their own bread on a continent easily capable of supporting the poation of the globe and the Oracle 1Is his eyes impressively and churches and your Z4et your vs siys labor unions work together as they did in Boston this winter And to give the scheme scientific exactness and accuracy of detail lie illustrates it by and working 1 interlacing his fingers and down seesaw fashion a them up Such is the v anomie and social solution solu-tion according to Cook He is a devotee de-votee of Laissey Faire His scheme is to let all present injustice stand until can convert its perpetrators in the you meeting For the sufferers c er waver and degrading ii from It in the meantime t pauperizing charity blame 111 Cook for failing not I do i u w to find a cure for our terrible condi 1 tion But I protest against the brutality with which he clubs the unemployed un-employed out of the offended presence I of respectability And I protest against his offensive selfsufficiency his arro selfconceit Into the sphere in g gaut which hostb of his betters are strivin t to find way out of Industrial slavery 1 t t 9 1 I 0 into better things laying the results of their labors in a spirit almost of solicitous supplication before the in1 tellect and conscience of the world Joseph Cook enters with the majestic waddle of a Podsnap turns up his respectable nose at he motley crew of i humanitarian thinkers and proceeds j with the impersonal calmness of an instrument in-strument of eternal truth to say It has been revealed to me Go to work and give the golden rule a chance to more widely commend itself and get itself I it-self into effect Mr Cook will not solve the labor or j any other problem He has simply I planted himself upon the eternal rock of Joseph Cook and then become intoxicated in-toxicated on his own epigrams I WALTER MURPHY |
