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Show Rector Reese's Harrangue FREEDOM of speech and of the press is one of the bulwarks of our free country, but the i right to criticise a blatherskite when he in- ! veighs against the law and tries to inflame the passions of the people against others is an equally equal-ly sacred right, and hence a few words relating to the harrangue of the Rev. Ward Winter Reese, rector of St. Paul's church in this city, delivered de-livered last Monday evening, is not out of place. He told of the time when the common people would come into their own" in this country. j Whom does he mean by "the common people," j t and if they are kept out of their own now, why j do they not come in? Are there any strings on them? Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor, J Stephen Girard, Andrew Jackson, Zachry -Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James G. Garfield, Wm. McKin- ley and millions more who have made fortunes 1 or eternal fame in this country, began with noth- 1 ing. Some of them were born in squallo'r and deg radation, but they won their way unaided, and the only strike they were ever engaged In was to 1 strike for higher places, provided always that they could show their own worthiness for such places. The man who goes on the street and holds up I t his fellow man and robs him, is not much esteem- 1 eu in any country. But what of the man who in the name of the Lord, denounces the laws of ( I the Republic, inveighs against capital as though , I the possession of it was necessarily a crime, and tells working men who are securing more for their work than ever did men in their positions f in any land on earth, that they are being rob- ' I bed and maltreated by merciless capitalists, is in ' .' our judgment a man who all his life has coveted SU something for nothing, and is an enemy of those men whom he pretends to sympathize with. f And, when he tellB these men that working men in this world were better off 500 years ago than they are at present, he is making a burlesque of both history and common sense, for men lived 1 in squallor, not sufficient food, not one sanitary , precaution to guard their lives, working sixteen j 'hours a doy, little children working twelve hours; 1 no schools; nine-tenths of them peons on the con- j f tinent and serfs in England; no books, no decent f clothing; no comforts the shame of it all and i ,t the squallor, who shall dispute it? I t He said an eight-hour law was in the long ago passed by parliament. If there was, which we ' greatly doubt, it was never enforced. Mr. Reese ' cannot show any such law cr that it was ever enforced. j He says this was under the church and pre- ! mw vailed until the power of the church waslBn down. Well, it has never been broken in sE or Portugal. What is the condition of the maSjfc in those countries? He ascribes to the ComniSjB cial club a sinister motive for trying to avorW the threatened strike on the Harriman lines Would Mr. Reese like to see that strike go on, and witness the distress that would follow? But we are devoting too much time to him. By his own words he is the enemy of free government and one whose desire is to gain unearned alth. |
