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Show I THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. B Four years ago the country was stirred to its I farthest border by the sinking of one of its bat- tie ships in the harbor of Havana. It was an in-1 in-1 suit to our flag which symbols the Nation's sov-Jf sov-Jf ereignty; it was a foul assassination for with the ship went down with her crew of fighting men. The demand for justice through a Nation's vengeance was universal. The blameless and glorified man who was then President sought with all his personal per-sonal and official power to calm the people and avoid a wasting war, but even he could not stem the tide; even he could not turn back Destiny; at last it was decreed that the prayers of centuries centu-ries should be answered, the wrongs of centuries righted; the Nation put on its war panoply, and in a few weeks Spain's arm upon the sea was broken, bro-ken, upon the land the power of Spain was so shivered that she was forced to give up all her island possessions. Then a new duty fell upon our country. It was found in Santiago and in Havana Ha-vana that both were breeding places for the pestilences. pes-tilences. In castles and palaces most imposing on the outer side, it was discovered that for years the lower stories had been given up to domestic animals, and in some of them the accumulated stable filth was seven feet deep. There had to be a general cleaning up and the people compelled to be decent, the result was the driving away of the pestilence. Then schoolhouses by the hundred had to be built, the schoolhouse and the hospital and trained teachers and nurses were by the hundreds sent out to work the land's redemption. It was a great and splendid work. The land was made healthy, our own coasts were freed from a mighty menace: the news of the work gave a new and exalted prestige to our country in foreign lands. But while that was going on, in our own country coun-try some wrongs were being perpetuated which were more of a reproach to our Government, more of a reproach to the moral health of our people than anything transpiring or that could transpire in Cuba. Many of the working men around our great manufactures and our great iron and coal mining min-ing centers were living in squalor, in filthy huts not fit to house human beings in, in places where all rules of sanitation were ignored, where decency de-cency was outraged, where the pestilence which lives on filth had perpetual invitations to come, where its ablest lieutenants, Poverty and Ignorance, Igno-rance, were ever standing ready to receive it And all around were little children growing up in squalor, being hardened to look without blushes on their parents degradation and shame; all around were overwearied mothers worn out by constant labor and denied all but the barest necessities ne-cessities for themselves and their children. All around were men with souls unilluminated by knowledge, with bodies bowed by perpetual work, with hearts hardened and made cold because be-cause no ray of hope ever shone in to warm and I soften them. Cuba is redeemed, but those plague spots on our own country still remain and under the world's merciless competition are extending and deepening their horrors. Had the desolate and suffering beings in Cuba a greater claim upon our Government and people peo-ple than have those sufferers on our own soil? Had the pestilence in Cuba more of a menace in it than have these plague spots? Contagions exhaust themselves after a while but when a child grows up embittered by hardships hard-ships and with its sense of shame stifled, those wrongs carry germs that it requires generations to eliminate. But some one will say, "Those are local wrongs; they belong to their respective States, and then by the very nature of things in the lower low-er ranks of society there must be poverty and ignorance ig-norance and more or less beastality." But does such an .one never reflect thai; these "lower ranks" are a part of our people; that their votes count for as much as a like number anywhere any-where count; that they are a part of our Govern ment, a part of the host to which the ballot has been given as the great panacea against wrong, the great corrector of evils? No stream can rise higher than its source. Our Government can be no purer, no higher, no freer than are the people behind it. If we who are more favored are lacking in humanity, still the instinct in-stinct of self-preservation ought to be kept alive and the laws should be made merciful enough and just enough to be a protection to our people: |