Newspaper Page Text
JPI| ’■" n ffihWUtftJSfc*Xw
» 11 lift WMwJbi ifthfr
wd|l tfe
VOLUTIE SIX
NUMBER NINE
COMMERCIALISM bs. INDIVIDUALISM
54 Graphic Arraignment of the Greed and Graft of This Age.
WALTER E. STEED.
OW free and happy were these red
men of the forest? Oh! but you
will say, they were not civilized.
Are we perfectly civilized—or are
we the artificial product of a civil
ization—which some day must be
wiped out to make room for a saner,
sounder and more natural order of
things ?
ljl
Our fathers drove him out with sword and
bayonet. Shall we be strong enough to hold
it against all comers? Shall our physical and
moral strength be sufficient unto the evil days?
If we are living as God intended that we
should live, we will survive; if not, we shall ul
timately be swept off as with a broom and float
as withered wisps down the raging torrent.
W e gained our political and civil independ
ence and set the world a new and wholesome
example in the art of civil government. We
grew from a few straggling homes along the
Atlantic Sea-board into a confederation of 13
States—of a little over 3,000,000 inhabitants, —
which have grown and expanded into 46 States
and 10 territories, with a population of approx
imately 90,000,000.
During Jefferson’s administration the annual
current expenses of this government were three
and one-half million dollars. Under the Roose
velt administration it was over $400,000,000, —
not including the appropriations for dread
noughts.
We have the most gigantic railway, tele
graph, and other public utility systems on
earth.
Our manufacturing is great and powerful;
our banking and mining are the most extensive
of any country according to population.
Commercialism and industrialism and money
making have practically paralyzed all individ
ual effort and personal incentive.
The State and its commerce is every thing.
The individual is an inconsiderable asset.
Human life and human happiness and per
sonal freedom and privilege have been made
cheap and infinitesimal compared to the gnaw
ing greed of commercialism. Human lives by
the thousands are sacrificed every year by the
great engines of modern industrialism. How
many human sacrifices did our country offer up
to the railroad Molochs in the year of grace
1908? —and how many during the last year?—
69,000 for 1908, and 62,000 for 1909. This does
not take into account the thousands killed and
injured in factories and blown up in coal and
iron mines. A hundred thousand lives would
not be an overestimate to make of our sacri
fices made annually to commercialism, in killed
“A TYPICAL SOUTHERN LADY”-Page Five
ATLANTA, GA. APRIL 20, 1911
and injured,—in which no less than ten thou
sand a year are killed outright.
Are we doing anything to stop it? Has any
statesman or captain of industry individual in
itiative and ingenuity enough to stop it. Spo
radic attempts are being made occasionally.
But the great commanders-in-chief say in
stentorian tones, “On with this gruesome
grind.’ It is justified by modern commercial
ism and industrialism.
Human life is cheap. The almighty dollar is
precious and high above such petty considera
tions.
Individualism must bow down to the yoke of
t *
i
I
HL |1 I
I
I ■l^ 1 " sbß i
ML W i
J Wlml 11 " gS 9 ?
!
? HON. WALTER E. STEED. ?
commercialism in the world of industry and de
velopment. Individual talents, genius, and nat
ural selectiveness must bow down and grovel
at the feet of that so called high born dame—
Society.
If dresses are to make women look like kan
garoos, they must buy them and wear them. If
hats are made so broad that a woman going
into the railway cars must turn her head one
sided to get inside, she must buy them and wear
them.
Our natural sense of propriety and taste has
been so long shocked and outraged until it is
telling in our moral discernment —until nearly
every one has a well developed case of Stylitis
and Commercialitis. Men have run with the
vulgar herd so long that their very features
have become a composite of several features in
stead of their own.
We see custom made men and women every
day—little above the purely artificial variety.
1 hey have to rely on everything else except
themselves—the State, the church and friends
to make themselves felt at all.
Men have too long looked away from them
selves—the source of all real human power, to
the glittering superficialities of the world. They
have become mere manikins—mere weaklings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, our great philoso
pher, tells us truly: “Every man holds his own
destiny material and spiritual in himself. Noth
ing can bring you peace and happiness except
ultimate triumph over eternal principles.”
W hen men were boldly individual and pos
sessed the primal virtues to a pronounced de
gree We did great things for ourselves and
others.
The great Thos. Jefferson said, “Individual
independence and development of cardinal
natural gifts are the essential steps necessary
to the building of a great and noble charac
ter.
Acting upon this bold initiative and ignoring
the apprehensive fears and suggestions of his
advisers and counsellors, —he added the great
Mississippi Valley to our public domain, —a
territory larger than the whole of the United
States at that time, from which has been carv
ed 15 States.
DeToqueville, a great French writer, says in
his remarkable book on the Southern States of
America that the great Mississippi Valley im
pressed him as being the grandest home that
God-almighty ever made for the human race.
He thought that the wealth of the United
States would always be in the great South
West States, because of their natural advan
tages. He believed that poverty would always
be in the New England States because of their
natural bleakness and sterility.
But the laws of artificial collectivism and
industrialism have been made largely by
Northern men. And it is the South that is
comparatively bleak and barren—while sterjle
New England has wealth that surpasses the
dreams of avarice.
But no man can ultimately kill that Which
God intended to live. As the mountain peak
catches the first rays of the rising sun, so our
people shall by reason of their natural
endowment exercise and develop their indi
vidual qualities of mind and heart. Individ
ual integrity and personal development— mean
individual and collective improvement.
Shall the tall oaks of our forest of humanity
and her tall cedars of Lebanon be cut down
that the scrubs of commercial pirates may
(Continued on Page 7.)
$1.50 5J yz>ll.
TIVE CENTS A COPY.