mothers and prospective mothers, and unmarried young women-the foundation of human existence, toiling long hours in sweat shops, laundries, stores, cigar factories, slaughter houses, offices, etc., etc., and thus physically pauperizing their persons, rendering themselves incompetent to give grand men to the world. Let these be taken kindly care of by the state and nation, and the young men, idle in the army posts, demoralized by drink and bad women, be put to work in place of the mothers and daughters. Patriots all be on your guard; One kind of devils "go out hard;" YE 100TH LESSON. The Army Canteen. An army whisky hell is just as much a necessity in America as is a standing army, and the sooner we are rid of both the better. No benefit has ever come to this republic, or to any other country, from either. There would be no demand for an army at any time in any nation if the people governed. There would be no wars, no strikes, no disharmony of any kind and no crimes. In our country the only need of armed men is to shoot strikers and the demand for man killers would be nil, but for the continuance of slavery, which has never been abolished, except in its less profitable, and hence less desirable form, less profitable and less desirable on the part of those who "reap where they have not sown"-money makers by the exploitation of labor. And to that end army posts are placed in labor centers and to that end alone. It will take several hundred thousand regulars and three hundred thonsand national guards (state regulars, bloodhounds of corporate tyranny), Pinkertons armed thugs (strike breakers-mercenaries more deserving of being despised than were the Hessians in the British army in the "day that tried men's souls,") thousands of sheriffs and deputy sheriffs, marshals and deputy marshals, to keep up wage slavery for a little while longer, hatching out millionaires. And men wearing khaki cannot be depended on to "do their duty," shooting their fathers, brothers and women and little children, unless besotted-hence the necessity of the army canteen. If soldiers were being put in readiness for duty against a foreign foe, the example of the temperate Japanese pitted against the vodka-soaked Russians would bring such a pressure of public sentiment from all classes of Americans to bear on Congress and the state legislatures as would compel the passage of laws forbidding the location of whisky hells within five hundred or a thousand miles of any army post on the Continent; yes, banish them from America for all time. The anti-canteen law must not be repealed. Public sentiment forbids. Editorials like the following in the leading dailies voice the growing public opinion. This from the Iowa State Register and Leader of recent date: "There is one argument that is conclusive to the average mind in favor of the anti-canteen law. Large factories, railway shops and other institutions employing men in numbers have not found it advisable to have saloons of their own or to allow their men to have them in order to avoid the evils resulting from frequenting vicious resorts maintained in the vicinity. If private employers have not been converted to the canteen idea, why should the government set the example? "Mr. Dinwiddie predicted in an address that the time will come when the people of this country will rise up and demand that the NATURE'S PARAMOUNT LAW. 145 officers of the United States army and navy shall be total abstainers. This prediction seems to be aimed at a point in the dim and distant future. But this is to be said for it. If the time ever does come when the officers of the army are total abstainers, there will then be no demand for the restoration of the canteen." Why so? The demand of the na The "dim and distant future!" tion unexpressed in legislation at the present time, but will be expressed soon, is that not only the commissioned officers but the rank and file be compelled to total abstinence or the commissioned officers be dishonorably discharged from the service. The rank and file will be easily kept away from the evil and the evil away from them or army discipline is no discipline at all. The people do not think as they did a score of years ago have lost reverence and admiration for officials, those of corporations especially drawing large salaries as insurance presidents, etc. And as for army officers (drunk most of the time and devoted to "disorderly" women), habitually idle and dissolute men, can be of no good use anywhere. Why did McArthur take only state troops in his dash across the island of Luzon and dispense with the regulars? The regular army has been of very little use at the front in time of In time of peace it is a profitable asset to the red-light districts and the saloons. war. YE 101ST LESSON. Nature's Paramount Law. We Nature is paramount and the survival of the fittest is her law. accept this as true in reference to primitive peoples. These do not survive under influences hurrying them from primitive, stone-age conditions into the conditions we term "civilized," as in Hawaii, New Zealand and the other Pacific islands, even where only Christian missionaries have come among the native inhabitants. Race suicide is the law on all the islands where civilization moves hurriedly forward to supplant barbarism. Is this law universally applicable? Does it explain our condition of decadence in family life today? One hundred years ago the common people-the ninety and nine of every hundred Americans were illiterate farther than reading, writing and arithmetic through the simple rules-the curriculum of the district schools-the teachers themselves not being, as a rule, qualified farther. And the limitation was frequently specified in their contracts with school offi cers. The Bible and Weems' Life of Marion were about the sum of reading matter in nearly all the homes in the states south and north, New England not excepted. No complaint was made by women then that "motherhood is degrading, making of the female a mere animal. and revolting to her higher nature," as the society guild gives it out today. And families were large-twenty children sometimes of one mother-healthy and long-lived mother and children at that. Is civilization doing away with the American race as with the Pacific Islanders? It looks so when even the President of our great republic expresses alarm. Roosevelt said in a late address: "Questions like the tariff and the currency are of literally no consequence whatever compared with the vital question of having the unit of our social life, the home, preserved. If the average husband and wife fulfill their duties toward one another and toward their children as Christianity teaches them, then we may rest absolutely assured that the other problems will solve themselves. But, if we have solved every other problem in the wisest possible way, it shall profit us nothing if we have lost our own national soul; and we have lost it if we do not have the question of the relation of the family put upon the proper basis. One of the most unpleasant and dangerous features of our American life is the diminishing birth-rate and the loosening of the marital tie among the old native American families. It goes without saying, for the race as for the individual, no material prosperity, no business growth or artistic or scientific development will count if the race commits suicide." * ** * The wife that of her own fault fails in fecundity will ere long be placed in the same category with harlots. She, the mistress of one man, surrounded by conditions proper for the bringing up of a large family of children, if for pleasure-seeking motherhood by her be stifled, she, I say emphatically, is far beneath the scarlet woman, compelled to a life of shame by the betrayal of her confiding love and so made the helpless outcast she unwillingly is. For the recreant wife there is no valid excuse. Her parental instinct so criminally aborted, she should be looked upon by society with abhorrence as a monstrosity. YE 102D LESSON. In Accord With Nature. Yes, be natural. It is natural for adult men and women to join in marriage and establish homes. To do otherwise is unnatural and wrong. The whole end and purpose of a true and healthful social economy is to make it most easy to build the home-establish the family. And the ideal purpose of education is to prepare for the parental office. How far civilized society is off the track today! The whole trend is counter to the home. It tends to immorality. "I support myself; I am independent; I will enjoy life; I will have all the pleasure that is going-all that nature gives and I take no risk. I know too much for that. It is my own business. I have but one life to live, and I'll do my best to have a good time while it lasts." Who say this? Thousands say it today. Marriage is going out of date. "We don't need to marry-don't have to marry. Marriage is stale. There is nothing in it. It is good to be alone. I'll be 'helpmeet' for no man." And under our present order this reasoning is plausible, though vicious and unsound. The woman of the town is the ripened fruit of our un hallowed, despicable, wicked, Sodomized social system. Accursed be the man who rides in his automobile felicitating himself that he has riches won, as all wealth as a rule is won today. He is a wicked man that can do it. No matter if he do bestow great sums to build colleges and establish libraries. It should go to the building up of happy homes. The cost of one automobile would place a family in easy circumstances and a thousand automobiles costing on an average of at least three thousand apiecethree millions for all-are seen on the lake-front and in Washington and Jackson parks, Chicago, every evening-all of no practical benefit --no manner of good. All lovers of humanity are grieved at the present outlook. Within forty years the number of children under ten years of age for every thousand adult women has fallen off from seven hundred to four hundred. And the decrease has only fairly begun in our country. The unsophisticated foreigners have not got on to American ways as yet, so that North Dakota and some other states lately settled by Scandinavians, Germans and the like are not below six hundred. But the decrease will go on, down and down, until deaths far exceed births in number and race suicide be an established fact, if we do not call a halt. TRUTH AND TROTH. 147 We vainly preach that patriotism demands of each person selfsacrifice; that each should be willing to do his part as his parents and grandparents did theirs-marry and bring up a large family. But men and women will not do so unless it be to their interest. They will move inevitably along the line of least resistance. born. Let conditions be as favorable for home life as they were a half a century ago and families will be as large as they were then. Children were a help to our parents. Now the word is, "we cannot afford to do justice by our children and bring up a family of ten." And, hence, few are We have no statistics of the still-born. But so-called "physicians" (females mostly) have "hospitals" in the cities where many are born, and none born alive. This is lamentably true. And the business of child-murder goes on in all the cities as a "profession" and is winked at by the police authorities-restrained by graft-as they are from enforcing laws against gambling and prostitution. know positively that this is so in one city at least, in regard to the still-born. I There is but one remedy. Make it good for children to be born. Break up this insane seeking after wealth. It can be done. It must be done. It will be done. Make laws that no unmarried man shall be empolyed on railroad, or in any line of civil service. Shut out the employment of women where they work for less wages than men, at Let no pursuit be kept up by grinding down wages. Reduce the income of employers to the level of that of the employed by making them one-let no industry be other than co-operative. take control. Let speculators step down and out. least. Let the toilers The Senator Beveridge says: "All who do their best-do a good piece of work deserve equal credit whether the work be little or big. architect who builds a house has wrought for humanity as truly as the statesman who builds a government. Who shall say the hod-carrier has not done as much for humanity as the orator or poet? * The point is that all useful labor is equally noble. The Master-Weaver understands what we are here for and * what we are doing, and that is enough. He has uses for every sound thread and doubtless one is as important as another. Vaunt not yourself, O thread of purple, over your fellow thread of white." Ought not, then, each human worker have equal wage, since each presumably has equal needs, a like burden resting upon each and all to bear? 'YE 103D LESSON. Truth and Troth. These two words in meaning are more important to mankind than any other two words ever spoken or written; yea, than all other words. The Bluebird's tiny fledgeling is transparent. The ex-ray renders opake bodies subjected to its brightness transparent. We look for the life-to-come to reveal all that is hidden of our lives. the most baleful of words. be no concealment whatever. "Conceal" is Between husband and wife there should With marriage, life begins anew. not the day is the evil thereof. But the new day has brought new duties-sacred as the Word of God. In truth and troth rest those duties. Let them be inviolate. These left to be desired but death. How many, many murders result from violated troth: How many suicides! More than from any other cause, and, it may be, from all other causes. To find that her life-companion possesses neither truth nor troth deprives the wife and mother of reason-destroys her being. It is the greatest calamity that can befall humanity. But why do men and women.ever prove false to each other? Most often with women the cause is that the man is not companionable. Here should trouble be nipped in the bud by a law declaring the marriage not consummated before the birth or prospective birth of a child, and allowing the parties then to dissolve the relation at will; and only then and not after. The evils of divorce do not accrue to the childless couple. There are no tears for them. Let them be divorced without let or hinderance. But not so where children prattle. Here should marriage crystallize and remain unbroken. Let no application for divorce be legal after this, except for incontinency and for this let the guilty be punished-a felon that he is-by our statutes. Incontinency on the part of men has one sole natural cause the same as unchastity on the part of women. It is given in the Bible: "Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence and likewise also the wife unto the husband," etc. (I. Cor. vii:3, 4, 5.) Is it possible for this injunction of scripture to be lived up to by both? Yes, if the parties are in normal health. That the world may be populated the passion involved is made by nature overmastering. "It is not good for man to be alone." Why is that passion ever set down as shameful? It is essential and honorable, in natural and reasonable bounds, within the pale of lawful wedlock. But the great and lamentable cause of unchastity in the unmarried is enforced celibacy. How enforced? By social anarchy resulting from wage slavery. Let civil service be made the law in all industries and all men and all women as a rule will find refuge in lawful wedlock will put off the yoke of celibacy and nature will no longer be outraged. The red-light will go out. What a dreadful report has the physician to make of present conditions! It is an awful state that the public is little aware of. The boarding-house substituted for the home and wife and babes is the cause. Diseases the most loathsome are sweeping through society like an old-time prairie fire across the plains leaving only blackness and the dead in its path. How many of the young men of our day, if they were compelled to obtain a certificate of physical fitness for the married state, could obtain one from a reputable pyhsician? Very many would fail, and not of their own fault, either, I insist, but solely the fault of the economic conditions of society. Let all men awaken as does the soldier at bugle call; yea, let the long-roll be beaten and all come immediately into line and the battle begin against the destroyers of our sons-the great trust magnates who have closed the door to marriage by their insatiable greediness. If restrained from reform by the "Constitution as it is" of our commonwealth, let the Constitution be changed and made as it ought to beand the door to early marriage be again opened as it was in the days of our fathers. Then again will Truth and Troth be held sacred, as they were by our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc., back to the beginning of human history. Of all the words recorded in the books But what is troth? Rivers and running brooks "Truth and troth, truth and troth, truth and troth, troth," All Nature says aloud, that speaks of both, "United not to sever!" Clearly the words are one. The first is God; The second, God incarnate; Which means the Highest clothed in flesh and blood. Their meaning none can fully state. |