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September 10, 1914.
A FAMILY PAPER.
E D I T O R I A L
John W. Pritchard, Editor.
A MODERN
TRIUMVIRATE.
In the latter days of the so-called Republic
of Rome before the days of the Caesars, the
government was in the hands of a triumvirate,
a combination of three men who controlled
all pubHc affairs for their own ends.
The government of the great cities of the
United States, and so far of the whole country,
seems now to be in the hands of three
great interests which control everything for
their own ends. This trio of evil consists of
the great corporations, the liquor traffic and
the Roman Catholic Church. There are other
subsidiary evils, but they all find their
centers of strength in these three. For instance
the social evil, the theaters and the
Sunday newspaper will generally be found
in company with the liquor traffic; the infi-
• dels, Jews and Mormons,—and it looks a little
strange,—will generally be found in the
same party with the Roman Catholic Church;
and the corrupt politicians of all parties will
be found working for their paymasters, the
great corporations.
Among these three the leadership is to be
assigned to the representatives of the great
corporations. These men, with their socalled
legal advisers plan the campaigns, present
the issues on which they hope to win—•
which may be very far from their real purposes—select
the men and furnish the means
to make things go. Occasionally they have
failed in carrying out their plans', as in 1912
when they rejected Mr. Roosevelt, who had
talked against them and had at the same
time let them increase and multiply and do
what they liked, and chose Mr. Taft, who gave
them both his talk and his actions and had
clinched their hold on the country by packing
the Supreme Court with corporation
judges. Then through Mr. Bryan's efforts
at Baltimore, their candidate, Mr. Clark, was
defeated and Mr. Wilson was nominated.
.Sometimes through the Providence of God
they are defeated also in some one of the
great cities, but it is seldom and not for
long. The corporations furnish the brains
and the money to run the combination that
proposes to run the country, and when they
want to force the people to elect their man
or defeat their opponents, they bring on hard
times, or even start a panic. They own most
of the newspapers and the people read what
the corporations choose to let them read.
The votes to carry out these plans come
from the people who go with wealth and power,
the reactionary people, the people who
vote with the party and the people whose
minds are so full of the issues of a past generation
that they do not see what is before
their eyes. We may add to this number the
people who see, but whose bread and butter
are in some of the hundred hands of these
corporations and their friends.
These make up a mighty army but the
great allies of the corporations are the votes
that are secured for a consideration, the voters
controlled by the liquor traffic and the
Roman Catholic Church. Why is municipal
misrule so common Why are our great
cities the centers of corruption Why are
reforms in these cities spasmodic and so
soon a failure It is not because they have
not schools and intelligence, not because they
have not churches and religion, not because
they have not thousands on thousands of
good people who love honesty, decency and
good order, but it is because the corporations,
the liquor traffic and the Roman Catholic
Church are concentrated there and because
each one is getting his divide out of
the spoil of the general public and each one
of the three is willing to help the other
members of the triumvirate, providing it
can get what it wants for itself.
The distillers and brewers, who head the
saloon keepers and plan their course of action,
want the traffic in liquor to go on unhindered.
They know the character of their
traffic and the opposition it provokes, and
they are willing to pay the tax and license
which operate as a bribe given to the general
public. They would like the traffic conducted
as respectably as possible without diminishing
the sale of their product. They
run liquor papers to keep the trade in line
and to keep the saloon men active in lining
up the largest number of votes for the parties
and candidates who are standing by the
traffic. If it were not for their poli'r.cal alliances
and protection, they would soon be
facing prohibition. The great corporations
furnish them the money and protection and
in return they make every saloon a little political
center and furnish the votes.
All this is fairly plain, but when one comes
to a study of the political activity of the
Roman Catholic Church, he can judge in
general only from the known character of
their leaders and from the results. That
Church while opposed to secret societies, is
the most secret of them all. It is perfectly
evident, however, that every politician is
afraid of the political enmity of the priests
and that most of the politicians bow down
to their desires. As a rule the priests can
control their whole citizen membership and
they in turn are trained to take orders from
the men higher up. The Roman Catholics
were a Democratic asset until the time of
Mark Hanna; now they are on the middle
of the teter board, as in England, giving
their votes to the party that will give them
what they want. They are closely linked up
with the liquor traffic, as most saloon keepers
are Romanists, and as a rule the priests
are the secret if not the open enemies of
all real efforts for reform.
We do not seem likely to get into war with
any other nation, but we may have our troubles
with unruly elements at home. Among
these the chief danger is from the liquor
traffic and the Roman Catholic Church. The
great corporations do not want internal war
for that would stop business and destroy
profits, but by being on the side of evil, by
breaking the Sabbath and by other unscrupulous
conduct, they not only stir up resentment,
but they greatly weaken the power
of the moral and more stable element in
the country. If the power of this trio of evil
is not broken, we will see our own troublous
times.
ROBERT HALL ON WAR.
Extracts from a Sermon Preached in 1802.
While we cannot be too thankful for our
security, it has placed us under a disadvantage
in one respect, which is, that we have
learned to contemplate war with too much
indifference, and to feel for the unhappy
countries immediately involved in it, too little
compassion.
Real war is a very different thing from
that painted image of it which you see on a
parade, or at a review; it is the most awful
scourge that Providence employs for the
chastisement of man. It is the garment of
vengeance with which the Deity arrays himself,
when he comes forth to punish the inhabitants
of the earth. It is the day of the
Lord, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger.
Half a million of beings, sharers of the
same nature, warmed with the same hopes,
and as fondly attached to life as ourselves,
have been prematurely swept into the grave;
each of whose deaths has pierced the heart
of a wife, a parent, a brother, or a sister.
How many of these scenes of complicated
distress have occurred since the commencement
of hostilities is known only to Omniscience;
that they are innumerable cannot admit
of a doubt. In some parts of Europe,
perhaps, there is scarcely a family exempt.
It is remarked by an ancient historian,
that in peace children bury their parents, in
war parents bury their children; nor is the
difference small. Children lament their parents,
sinceresly indeed, but with that moderate
and tranquil sorrow which it is natural
for those to feel who are conscious of retaining
many tender ties, many animating
prospects. Parents mourn for their children
with the bitterness of despair; the aged
parent, the widowed mother, loses, when she
is deprived of her children, everything but
the capacity of suffering; her heart, withered
and desolate, admits no other object, cherishes
no other hope. It is Rachel weeping
for her children, and refusing to be comforted,
because they are not.
The lot of those who perish instantaneously
may be considered, apart from religious
prospects, as comparatively happy, since they
are exempt from those lingering diseases and
slow torments to which others are liable. We