Our Country Needs Doctoring

OUR COUNTRY NEEDS DOCTORING.

The United States of America is in good condition, fundamentally, but it has many signs of disease. Although its native strength makes it healthy, there are disgusting ills. What are the postoffice scandals, the Missouri bribery scandals, the lynchings, the vendettas, but symptoms of public sickness? When the chain of bribery and theft is continuous from high officials to clerks, and when mercenary crime within a department is supplemented by mercenary crime without, it betokens widespread immorality. Business men all over the land are ready to bribe legislators or other officials, and thus buy privileges. In the national government the postoffice is not the only department that reeks with low principles, and few are the states which are without flagrant corruption. A municipal seemly could not be corrupt unless many thousands of other citizens were corrupt. This disease of immortality, of contempt for law and virtue, calls for treatment. The statesman who, today, in America, would most clearly fill a need is the great moral reformer, the man of oratorical and moral power, who could speak to the people on final moral truths. Men who believe in righteousness, to whom the Golden Rule is golden, to whom the Sermon on the Mount is true, and the Decalogue worthy of attention, are needed in public life; and such men, backed by talent, might rouse the country from an indifference which countenances the spoils system and its attendant crimes. Our public sores are caused by unhealthy elements in the nation's blood. You can remove each boil as it ripens, but a purging of the whole system is the better remedy.––Collier's Weekly.