HOW LONG?
To the patriotically inclined, the callousness of the public conscience to reforms freely demanded by the popular welfare is indeed alarming.
Consider for example the supine indifference of the country at large over the ignominious defeat in Kansas of a great moral measure to enact the ten commandments into law! And that it was accomplished in the teeth of a united support of a large, active and pious Methodist, Congregationalist and Presbyterian lobby!
And who does not recall the humiliating failure of the Georgia patriot to have passed a bill to protect the long neglected interests of bull bats, turtles and other game birds hitherto and still entirely ignored by that presumably enlightened commonwealth?
And while there was a low and sullen popular rumble in Tennessee against a shameless lobby of centralized bachelors that by bribes, imprecations and cajoleries smothered a pro bono publico measure to tax their immunity from the strenuous life, public sentiment is once more callous and numb.
As a climax in corporate effrontery, however, as well as an extreme illustration of popular lethargy, a Missouri bill to prohibit the criminal practice of tipping waiters in hotels, restaurants and cafés was ingloriously snowed under and that, too, in the face of the lynx-eyed young governor. A cunning realization by the beef trust of the impossibility of getting its unrighteous commodity before the eating public with such a regulation in vogue, is no doubt responsible for this grave popular misfortune.
Hence the inquiry, what of the times when the public continues indifferent and when those who alone have the courage to essay the people’s relief from the thrall of mammon and general unrighteousness are to be derided as freaks or purchased, and nothing done about it!
A CUBAN SKETCH
By Harvey H. Hannah.