Time rolled on! Years became centuries! Methods changed and the great plan of God was lost.
Greed, avarice and monopoly commenced to steal the bread from the infant’s mouth; the keen and bitter struggle for existence is in full sway; the great land of liberty and opportunity no longer can put forth her boast and call and call for him to come, build homes, prosper, live well and accumulate.
What changeful conditions today from then! We boast of our great enlightenment and yet we are like the drowsy cat under centuries of domestication. As soon as the raw meat is put before us all the centuries’ training is cast aside and we are ready to do acts of barbarians. Instead of being able to arbitrate and handle all questions of war through peace tribunals we cast aside the brotherly teachings of the great book, increase the standing army, build more warships, enlarge the navy, and be ready for war, ready to shoot our brother, ready to destroy his home, leave his children penniless and fatherless, a widow to struggle and mourn, posterity to be enfeebled, a gigantic debt to stagger many generations unborn, a country bankrupt and all teachings of love and better citizenship disgraced.
No wonder our people are discouraged and feel we are slipping away from the preamble of our great Constitution! If this age and this country can not handle all questions, national and international, and extend the fullest measure of brotherly love where peace is needed; what age or country can?
I think it may be America that will be called upon to lead other nations and have them cast aside their war preparations and prepare for peace. In every crisis through which this country has passed we have been fortunate, thank God, that the right man has always been found. We have had our Washingtons, Lincolns, Websters, McKinleys, Wilsons, and hundreds of others and in every instance when some great problem has had to be solved, either in this country or abroad, in either science, statesmanship, literature or art, no matter how perplexing, difficult or intricate, American brains and ingenuity, in the vernacular of the day, has brought home the bacon, Swift’s premium, if you please!
I have always felt deeply sorrowful for the man who studies long and ardently with a bowed head resting upon his hands. His whole soul seems to be calling for the fine sympathies that can only be rendered from the loving teachings of the Nazarene. He is calling for the tender affection that is keenly necessary to right him just before that sullen burning wave of despondency casts him into utter gloom and sorrow. O Christianity! Christianity! amid wealth, society, culture, influence, peace, advancement, laws, legislators, and boasted liberty where art thou?
Visit the parks of any cities, towns or small villages and you can find sitting on the benches man after man who is unable to solve the problem of an honest existence. There he is, honest, clean, and worthy of good citizenship, unable to find labor that will keep him an honor to society. What will become of him in this land of boasted opportunity and liberty? Plenty for all; but monopolized and organized until the laboring man is almost ostracized. Look at his countenance, clear cut, manly and open, haggard, yes, but from what? From worry, loss of sleep, lack of food, responsibility of a family without funds, etc. But withal you find no look of dissipation, no odor of liquor, no foul language, and still with all these excellent qualities of meritorious citizenship he is sinking. How long will he stand it?
Were you ever in a condition of this kind when any way you turned you were outfigured. How long can a man have a thorn like this continually getting deeper and deeper into his flesh before he will make a grasp for it, and endeavor to release the pain? Where is the cause? What is wrong with our wide heralded economic system? This condition being true of the man with a family how alarming to the young man of today without a family? Show me any incentive or inducement for the common ordinary man of today without funds to cause him to establish a home and rear a family under the grand old Stars and Stripes, and I’ll show you a man that loses worse than a bankrupt in the finer sense of the word.
Without the establishment of homes this nation can not stand. No matter how frugal a man is, no matter how economical his habits you can give him the most promising part and he can not marry and rear a family because at every angle he is beaten. What is he going to do? Free land is almost gone, food stuffs are high, all his needs are expensive; how can he make it? Every line he wishes to enter is crowded! Reason for yourself and see if this is not true.
When you talk of large families, who raises them but the poor people and this will soon be eliminated. If the poor man raises one child he is doing more than his duty to society than the rich man. The expense is such a night-mare and horror to a common, ordinary and honest man to provide the necessaries of life for his family that I sometimes shudder and feel sorry that I caused children to be born, fought for a home, paid my debts, and lived clean. I wouldn’t want to do it again for my country, and I love her as I do the man of Galilee.