Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume], January 30, 1909, Image 1

About Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1902-1919

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I Goodwin's Veekly I
Vol. XIV SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, JANUfO, 1909. 1N0. 13 fl
C The Path of Duty
I- ENTLEMEN OF THE LEGISLATURE:
Jj You have the opportunity, If you have
: . the strength, tb do Utah much service,
and to make great names for yourselves. In his
inaugural address, Governor Spry expressed a hope
that there would he a drawing together of the
people, closer friendships, closer business rela
tions, and the doing away of much bitterness
which exists in this State. It is not necessary
r to dwell upon what has made any trouble here,
" it Is not necessary to more than repeat that if
(here had not been any disposition to ignore laws
which interfered with the practices and preten-
sions of certain men, there would never have been
k any trouble here. '
Now, you are legislators, under oath to do the
If best you can for Utah, which includes the en-
f' forcement of the laws, which includes the pas-
sage of no sinister laws to cripple progress, which
& includes all the elements which go to make up the
r well-being of the State. Certain measures are
; proposed which are sinister in their character,
,v and which are intended not to promote peace and
prosperity, but to satisfy partly the spites and
partly the disposition to graft on the part of
" those pushing those measures. Now, if you have
the strength, when any measure comes before you
$ v to ask yourselves, is this a measure which an
m honest business man would indorse? is it a meas-
ure which would be considered except from the
L source that it comes from? the answer will help
J- you in reaching a conclusion. You will have very
many petitions showered upon you asking you
to do certain things. Every one of you know
how those petitions are obtained, and it is your
duty, in our judgment, under your oath, to ask
whether if the petition were granted, it would
produce anything which a level-headed business
; man would indorse.
'That is, as legislators, we are asking you to
be real legislators, to use your own best judg
ment, and to do what you in your hearts think
is right
If you do thp.t, there will be no menace in what
you do to any legitimate interests in this State,
there will bo no opportunity to say of you that
v what you did was under, compulsion or because
i of a superstitious fear. That is, we are asking
you to be men, indeed, and appreciating the office
you hold, to determine to fulfill your duties ac
cording to your own best judgment. Is this an
unreasonable request? If you do that, then you
$) will be acting out the spirit of the Governor's in
augural, you will be giving confidence to people
who are in doubt, you will be giving popple a
hope that the uncertainties which have vexed
people here for years will pass away, and that
Utah some time will become in truth, a real
American State.
And -n the questions that come before you,
we venture to suggest that you forget whether
this is going to be a special benefit or a special
Injury to any portion of the State, and to keep
in mind that what affects any one place in Utah,
affects It all; and anything that breaks down the
prosperity of one place, injures all the rest.
fy The members of the dominant church have do-
Mvf dared, by voice and through their press, that the
f people of Utah are absolutely free, that there Is
J no interference in their politics, that every man
' has a right to think what he pleases and to vote as
he pleases. We suggest that you take this author-
i
I
ity as true, and that you act accordingly, so that
when you go home in the spring you will carry
with you at least the consciousness that if you
haye made any mistakes, they were honest mis
takes; that with all your hearts and souls you
tried to serve the State, and to honor, so far as
It .was In your power, the office to which the peo-1
BteflSlected you. Srv
Science and Heroic Men
THE GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY gave its an
nual dinner in Washington last month,
which was attended by great men In all
walks of life, but the feature of the evening was
the American navy, past and present, and in the
different speeches signal acts of heroism were re
called and just tributes paid to heroes.
But we can recall nothing in the history of our
naval service, or in the service of the merchant
marine, that shows more genuine, unselfish and
devoted heroism than was the part played by
Captain Sealby and the mate Williams of the
steamer Republic, last Saturday and Sunday.
They had no hope of saving the ship, at least
the captain had not, but they would not desert it.
So wheu the fatally wounded steamer was taken
in tow and started slowly, In the hope of reach
ing some port, this captain and this mate took
their places on the bridge, and remained there
until it was clear that the ship was going down.
Thqn the captain fired his pistol to notify the
steamers that were towing him to cut ' their
cables, which they did, and together those two
devoted men went down with the ship. As they
came up out of the whirlpool, each caught some
floating piece of drift and was eventually picked
up.
But we can Imagine no more severe test of
the invincible courage of two men than was ex
hibited by those two when they remained on the
abandoned ship and stood on the bridge until the
ship was engulfed. It is no wonder that the peo
ple went wild when they reached New York. And
tho character of the captain can be understood
by the mate's description that when utterly ex
hausted he was lifted into a boat, he lay sometime
to gain a little strength and then throwing his
arms around his mate, he said, "You were game to
the last." Those are the kind of men that are
a glory to a nation.
The rule is that when a captain loses a ship,
no matter under what circumstances, ho Is de
prived thereafter of command on the score that
ho is unlucky, but we think people who go down
to tho sea in ships would prefer to have a cap
tain llkte that, to one who had never been tried,
and he ought to havo command of tho best ship
that the company owns.
Then tho wonderful wireless came in for its
part of tho glory. Had tho accident happened
ten years sooner a few might have escaped in tho
boats, and they might have been simply saved
from the sinking ship to be overwhelmed by the
storm following. But tho wireless made every
thing clear; nothing was ever recorded more
splendid. The fog enveloped the ship when from
off that wounded ship the message went out Into
the air that the ship wis in distress, and here,
there, everywhere on the face of the deep, the
message found places to be delivered and those
great steamers answering back, "We are coming,"
turned out of their courses to find, if possible, in
$
1
the deepening fog, the vessel that was in distress. jH
It was altogether superb, tho ships of half a H
dozen nations vied with each other to go to tho 11
rescue, because to them had come a voice like 11
the voice of fate itself, that a sister ship was in 11
trouble and that hundreds of lives were In dan- H
ger, and so, without any guide except a guess, H
they all rushed to the scue. wM
It was' splendid In the way of science, it was, Hl
splendid in the way the humanity of men was
shown, and yet it was natural. Those men face 11
the storms and tho fog; those men that go down il
to the sea in ships know tho peril that surrounds i
them every moment, and while most of them es-
cape scathless, once in a while one is caught and
struck; and this ship that was sunk was on its j
regular course when another ship thirty miles out j
of its course stole up in tho fog and crushed its 1
beak into the beam of the Republic. M
And it was all fate. Had the blow been forty !'
feet further aft, or forty feet further forward, the 'M
ship would have made port under her own steam. 11
As it was, it crashed into the apartment where j
the engines are, in a few minutes the engine room H
was flooded and the ship lay helpless as a log on ,M
the sea. iM
And still out of it all, because of the wireless; M
every life was saved and brought to port safelyt M
Nothing so magnificent was ever seen before, in M
no way has the genius of man ever devised any- -M
thing so grand. The fog could not stop the mes- M
sages, the winds and the storms could not stop
th lessages, old ocean was helpless to interpose VM
and those' messages that went out into the viev-
less air on routes of their own, found an answer jfl
which was like the answer to prayer. iM
Thero is nothing more splendid on earth than M
a palatial steamer except when aboard that M
steamer there is an apparatus that can notify all M
the surrounding space of its presence, or of its :M
sorrows, and nothing else half so splendid as to M
find a man in charge of a craft of that kdnd .who Q
holds his life as nothing in the interest of his M
ship, his passengers and his company . H
What It All Means H
SOME REFLECTIONS which it might bo H
good for our Legislature to consider are M
in The Argonaut of San Francisco; that M
Is, if our Legislature was made of free agents, M
men who are not agents of a higher power, which H
in tlie namo of the Lord, makes monkeys of them. H
The Argonaut, after discussing New York horse H
racing and declaring that tho just way Is not to H
destroy an innocent sport because some unscrupu- H
lous men have perverted It, but rather to go af- H
tor the men, says: M
"The doctrine of lalssez falre is not a popular M
ono just now, when there Is a perfect mania for H
law making and for wrapping the nation in the M
swaddling cldthes of prohibition. But we shall M
reach that point presently, and then our legisla- HJ
tures will usefully spend their time in repealing HI
instead of enacting, as most European legisla- M
tures have been doing so for some time past. M
Then we shall stand a chance to grow wise by ,M
experience and to learn discrimination by prac- H
tlce. Then we shall realize that when we make M
a new law, we make a now kind of law-breaker, ,fl
and new temptatlbns to perjury, bribery arid gen- m
eral iniquity. The passing of a law should bo 'Bl
among the momentous events of a nation's life. vO
'fl