Show PLAIN TRUTH PLAINLY STATED in an able and eloquent address on the Material isar of the age before the association odthe of the alumni alinn i of f the t state normal normar Nor nial school scho bl by frederic beecher Ter perkins kins the author calls attention to the prominent causes in operation destined at no distant day to reduce this great and proud and powerful nation to utter demoralization and ruin unless very goon soon checked we lve extract x a few fow paragraphs life illustrated jan 22 look back into the darkness d of early times and as far as you can see from century to century the race has always been advancing on one 1 e nation arose was foremost perished and was succeeded by another the egyptian nation disappeared and the assyrian and afterwards the the persian suc buc succeeded c ee ded those peris peril perished hed and the gr greek ek followed thab that fell feli and the roman arose in their theil stead that pa passed 1 ased away and the arabian came after them that went in its turn and then came the empire of charlemange and then all the nations that are living yet and that are all awai awal awaiting tini their turn to 0 die like them the conclusion from history must be we too shall diss is appear from the face of the earth we have no claim to be considered the flower of humanity the last and perfect race the mii mil millennial people the chosen of god but it may belala be pala paid we of this day have a hold upon life which they had bad not their paganism was a rottenness within their very bones kes nes a congenial and fatal fatai taint we lye have christianity anity for a ad d and preservative a kort vort af chloride 0 of f lime a political charcoal to keep u us sweet a and nd healthy for an indefinite period christianity and the civilization and social and national systems built upon that have an entirely pew new warrant for duration durat ion lon we need not be so frightened with this new element in the calculi calculation tion no conchi conclusions drawn from old times ig is applicable to up u ButI but I 1 reply are our government our nation our social life our business our party politics poli fica which are our only politics our individual and d collective activeness of so many kinds are all these such wonderful examples of christianity in practice dishonesty in trade is general dry good goods retailers say that they find it necessary to lie they find a large class of customers mostly women who absolutely they say will not buy unless they can cap heat beat down the tradesmen he must therefore lie A and say that the tha price 0 of f the goods is more and let himself be beaten down town to less or he must lose his rade trade now I 1 do not say that lying is s not necessary perhaps that would n ot be wise in me forthe for the lying interest is a strong one and how am I 1 to make myself a friend of the tha mammon of unrighteousness ri if 1 I quarrel with his mode of doing business I 1 do not say that lying is not necessary but I 1 feel very sure that a prevalence of falsehood in the retail d dry r y g goods S trade is s not an indication favorable national to i 0 al prosperity it is a strong indication of rottenness it takes a pretty small man to lie aa as a d regular b business us in e at the rate of two cents a yard and a pretty r t ty S mall small nation to encourage it Inthe ht he bame ame same business I 1 quote it because it is one of 0 the most extensive of the retail trades it is well known that there is a common practice of dirtying or wetting un sa leable goods and selu selling ing them as damaged by affre afire a fire or shipwreck sh i awre ek usually ally aily at uncommon profit I 1 remember a young mans mans describing to me with ith great gice glee how bow he be hald had wet down the ends of piece after piece of 0 white and colored goods in a mud puddle back of the store in readiness for the sale of goods darn damaged aged by shipwreck next day adulterations Adulte rations prevail to a great extent in our food dust in pepper sand in sugar bugar s sawdust in ginger tanbark tan bark bari in cin cinnamon na mon are things of course too common to talk about boti both worms worm s and rottenness are ground vt v p in our flour A respectable man narrated 10 16 me a little while ago agg how hov he happened to be on the wharf and saw a cark cargo 0 of spoiled and wormy wheat being into carts he took interest en the matter quietly to follow one of these carts caits and he watched it to the door of a well weli known mill where it was hoisted in now it is possible that the miller took it in with the tle disinterested purpose of keeping it out of the th e mouths of society and that he quietly destroyed it but for ifor my rhy part I 1 confess to the uncharitable belief that he sold it as extra at fancy prices if he fie could worms and all our ready made coffee is doctored with so many difre different rent ingredients that it might be taken to be a new ne game ame to tb the e old tune of oats peas beans anub and barley leyo I eyO 0 our bakers bread has alum in it m when hen if it is best and soda bone dust chalk and other luxuries when it is worse I 1 hardly know whether to name it as a curse or a blessing that all spirituous liquors are now adulterated a fact which hardly he liquor selle helleis q paw now deny but it ia Js a decided evil that the i uia vie us of strychnine has beco become meso BO general enera n making whisky distillery swill has hag long been fed to new york city cows cows and the wor it has b been erf eif that their hoofs and tails have rotted off and their teeth have rotte d out as they stood in the stalls that the city children have died by hundreds and the average length of city life ilife has hail shortened under the poison this has formerly been all and bad enough but now the swill has enough strychnine in it to the barrel to kill thirty men and it is fed out from western distilleries to western hogs and kills them the hogs being a dell deli delicate cate creature ay ard d unable to endure as much tobacco or other poison as me men mer c can an and the dead hogs make pork and gardn lard which i h c come more or less into our eastern market and we can run a chance of hot only eating pork chichis chis bad enough but dead and pi poisoned pork which is 13 quite too bad but again in literature we have just passed through a three or four years whirlwind of shallow d duodecimo decimo novels of which every one ef you sou 0 u can remember a score of names and of which v chich r fear most of you own one or two those books were sold just as the stuff is sold which cures thunder humor if anybody knows what that is by loud impudent lying advertising the whole of them together did not fiot contain as much mind as a spelling book bogl I 1 know no better representation of their real value than i was given within my own knowledge linow ledge by the author of one of them enst in lest jest for in jest many a true word is spoken his hib is mother wanted an early copy of his next book and accordingly he dutifully sent her a volume this bile she opened and found not exactly what sh she bhe e expected but still justas just as mu much ch as was good for anything ing in in any part of the tha edition the author autho r had omitted only the xi useless seless part the volume was all of fair lair blank paper just at present this flood of trash is stayed and very few sales of books are being made axce except pt of standard works but it will not be ion lon long iong before a new blast of advertising will sen send bend out a similar mass of empty matter vanity will fly all over the land the late and present average of intellectual power in other words among our native writers our popular writers so called has been baen and is disgracefully low and the fact that we yet have an irving a bancroft a hildreth Hildre tb an everett and a hawthorne the truth of my charge it makes the contrast con darker turn to periodicals once more the united states does not contain cultivated and thoughtful readers enough to maintain one high grade g rade monthly like Black woods magazine dlag Alag azine or one quarterly like the westminster Put dama nama ms monthly which attempted something of the kind although at ata a long distance is dead and was never vigorously alive it was only in its last days when for a month or two it came out as a great picture book on cheap paper and with nothing in it but shallow stories that it gained much in circulation the north american review which comes near nearer erthe the english standard is voted stupid sti and pompous and prosy has never paid its own expenses and is maintained as a labor of love or a labor of pride I 1 dont doit know which and even if the readers did aid exist for such a periodical I 1 do not believe that writers writer t to 0 make mali m it are whether monthly weekly or daily our periodical product productions ons an and this I 1 say both of literary a and d pil P political li whitin writing are far below those of en england gl and in depth and force of thou thought ht in clearness and truth of style in usefulness and interest I 1 the success of a literary periodical here whether r it be weekly or pr monthly depends depenis upon thrilling stories stones whose enthusiastic r readers aderi dont know as I 1 do for once I 1 manufactured fractured done aone one that they are ground out to order on speculation by men and women comeri who laugh at the non nonsense a ense they scribble and who deliberately perpetrate raie rale these intellectual irtel counterfeits ter feits because they can sell them for circulation upon numerous pictures the production of a raw engravers ignorant fancy upon strings of decayed jokes upon fabulous amatin amounts expended for fua ita advertisement advertis verti a ment llvy ilvy always itys actions impudent dent and often falaq falbe false upon paid doin eoin commendations ions lons in newspapers their prosperity is certain precisely in proportion aa as they become fuller of wood cuts fool tool isher isber in stories readable readably with less lesa attention and with ies les less s profit too in short as they approach the ideal of great picture books for great babie babies |