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Lynching Not Local Disease

Lynching Not Local Disease image
Parent Issue
Day
17
Month
July
Year
1903
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

THE ARGUS DEMOCRAT

AND

YPSILANTI WEEKLY TIMES.

PUBLISHED BY

The Democrat Publishing Company.

D. A. HAMMOND, President.

S. W. BEAKES, Secy. and Treas.

PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY

for $1.00 per year strictly in advance.

Entered at the Postoffice in Ann Arbor Mich as second-class mail matter.

FRIDAY, JULY 17, 1903.

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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.

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LYNCHING NOT LOCAL DISEASE.

"Murder most foul, as at best it is," plays a loud part in the world's news. How bloody and unnatural, set among all our civilized ideas, seem the brutal stories which we read almost daily. In Servia, not content with removing two wicked rulers, the excited revolutionists plunged their bayonets, again and again, through a woman's body. Their bestial fury threw away what sympathy might have come to them for the sufferings inflicted by a selfish despotism. Barbarity defeats its own ends. Once petty theft was punished by death, and torture was a part of justice. To our humaner sense such punishment is more wicked than individual crime. Punitive murder all over this country may well full us with gloomy wonder. To murder is added torture. Burning at the stake is indulged in for excitement. Lynching is no longer a sectional issue. No part of the country need lecture any other. It is not a question of Illinois, or Delaware, or Mississippi. Sectional comment obscures the issue and increases the evil. Let us think about the brutish mob murders which go unpunished among us, as if we were all one community, as we are. A high-minded, Christian father loses his daughter, through heartbreaking violence, and he pleases with his neighbors to let justice take its course. Christianity to him is a reality. even in his anguish he prefers good to evil. Not so the mob, which will not be balked of its prey. The Christian father asks only justice. The mob wants the excitement of burning human flesh. All drench themselves in sin. Every man becomes guilty of blood. For excitement they resort to crime, and very participator takes a step toward the criminal life; not least the preacher, woh sought notoriety by icing to murder.––Collier's Weekly.

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The question now being asked is "What has become of the 'Iowa idea?'" It seems to have "gone glimmering like a schoolboy's dream, the wonder of an hour." After all the beating of tom toms and sounding of hew gags anent this "Iowa idea" the platform adopted by the Iowa republicans was a straddle and a fake on the tariff reform and revision question and all the analyses of it on earth could make nothing else out of it. Gov. Cummins says he will continue to make the same kind of tariff revision speeches throughout the campaign that he has been making heretofore. If he does he will be speaking through a protection muzzle all the time. He says he wrote the tariff plank in the platform himself. If he did he was hypnotized by Senator Allison while he was doing it, for it talks one way while he talks another when he is out form the influence of the pussyfooted Senator who, as John J. Ingalls once said, "could walk on hens' eggs all day and never scratch a shell." The "stand-patters" and the American Protective Tariff League have won a victory. They have forced the republicans of Iowa to adopt the regulation protection platform. What will the republicans who want tariff revision do about it?

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It is said that an element of the National Manufacturer's association is planning an aggressive campaign against organized labor, if the scheme can be carried through the organization by the votes of the members, and to this end a huge fund of $1,500,000 is to be raised. The purpose is to put a restraint upon organized labor. This aggressive propaganda which is to be carried on will bring into one organization so far as possible all employers of labor in the country. That much can be accomplished by such a movement there is no question. It will necessitate on the part of organized labor a corresponding struggle for membership and a broadening of the purposes of the organization beyond an increase of wages and shorter hours. While these two things are not now the entire purposes of organized labor, these issue have been made so very prominent in the camp of organized labor that the general public has come to look upon these things as the whole of the aims of organized labor. To keep the support of public opinion, therefore, in the great fight which is likely to come on between these tow forces, organized labor should push the improvement of its members in workmanship, in education for themselves and children, in moral well-being and citizenship to the fore. Should this prospective battle degenerate into a contest of mere selfish greed without involving any advantage to those involved outside of dollars and cents, it will not be difficult to predict the result.

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It is said that the Michigan Central is likely to have a strike of its telegraph operators involving all of its lines west of the Detroit river. It is reported also that the trainmen's organization is in sympathy with the operators. The operators last winter demanded a flat raise of $15 a month for all operators west of the Detroit river and they demanded 25 cents an hour for overtime. Other demands such as passes for operators' children to attend schools along the line, two weeks' vacation with pay and passes for operators three years in the company's service, and the release of operators from a ll kinds of manual labor about their stations. The company in replying these demands sent circulars to each man direct, and thus ignored the organization. The circular denied the demand for overtime, and granted some of the men some increase of wages. Another demand of the operators which the company refuses to recognize is that no operator shall be compelled to teach apprentices. Both sides are willing, it is said, to make some concessions, but on the principal demands of the men they are so far apart that a strike seems very probable.

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It is reported that the vacation schools in Chicago, New York and Boston are crowded, especially in the poorer districts of these cities. This fact alone would seem to be sufficient evidence of the need filled by these vacation schools. In Boston and New York these schools are supported by liberal appropriations, while in Chicago they are supported by private philanthropy. An important point to be observed in this connection is that which is said to be the cause of the popularity of these schools. The secret is said to lie in the fact that for four days in the week the studies are manual training, sewing, drawing, music, basket weaving and cooking, while the fifth day is devoted to nature study and is spent out of doors. There may be a lesson for the public schools in general to learn from these vacation schools. Evidently the before mentioned curriculum appeals to the nature of the boy and girl.