Carnegie's Prediction

Carnegie's Prediction 

Militarism has been the curse of mankind for ages. The United States is the only great nation that has been comparatively free from it. As a result the development and progress of the American union have been unparalleled. Militarism has destroyed untold wealth representing the life labor of millions of human beings. It has also consumed for the support of armies other vast stores of human labor. Millions upon millions of human lives have been uselessly sacrificed upon this same altar. Yet even at this day the greater part of the earth is cursed by this same spirit. In a recent speech by Andrew Carnegie has made the statement that Europe must disarm and unite or be industrially swamped by the almost disarmed United States. This is undoubtedly true unless the United States turns from its almost unarmed condition to militarism. There is greater danger of the United States turning to militarism today than ever before in our history. After more than a hundred years of the most wonderful progress in human annals we have departed from the traditional policy of the republic and entered up a career of governing alien and unwilling people thousands of miles distant from the seat of our government and outside of constitutional guarantees, a task which has required a large increase of our military establishment which has now became a permanency. As long as we have stolen goods in our possession we shall need the brute force of a large military establishment to protect them. Of course our military establishment is small still in comparison, but we are fairly embarked upon a national policy which has made militarism necessary in Europe and no one can predict the end. But with the United States out of militarism and devoted to the arts of peace, Mr. Carnegie's declaration would undoubtedly prove true. 

The national grange is on record in opposition to trusts and combines and all interference with the law of supply and demand. It is against branch banking, which of course means that the grange is against the money trusts. The grange is string in its declarations of principles throughout. It is in line with the best and most advanced thought of the thinkers of the day to practically every great issue. But the great trouble with its membership is that the members do not vote in accordance with the declaration of principles of the national body. For instance, the grange is strongly opposed to the ship subsidy graft, yet its members are the most steady voters in the country in support of the part which stands pledged to the principles of the ship subsidy. The republican party is favorable to all the great combination which the grange opposes, yet the granges are very l**y supporters of that party and its policies. This seem to indicate that as grangers they oppose those things for which the republican party stands but as partisans they vote for the things which as grangers they oppose. They may distrust the democratic party and fail to vote for its principles and candidates for that reason but unless they prefer their partisanship to their principles they should find some means of making their vote heard in the national councils of the party. There is no question but that they have the power if they only ex?? it, for the carrying out of their declarations of principles. They have t?? votes to carry their principles into legislation, of they throw them in the proper direction. 

The coal operators in their statements to the strike commission appear to be in about the same frame of mind they were at the time of their f? conference with the president. They let no opportunity pass to show th? venom toward the United Mine Workers' union.