Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume], March 11, 1911, Image 1

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

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Goodwin's (fckly I
I ,. VOL.XVI1I SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, MARCH ,11 1911 No. 21 ll
1 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY.
F NINTH YEAR
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L 915-916 Boston Block. Salt Lake City, Utah.
F J. T. Goodwin, Mgr. L. 8. Glllham, Bus. Mgr.
P C. C. GOODWIN .... Editor
I This Land Of Ours
1 OST American bprn men think much of
ijMJrTfieir own country, of tlieir fellow Ameri-
cans, and looking out upon the rush and
roar, keep asking themselves: "When will all this
slow down?" or: "Are we to continue to increase
the momentum until we, as a nation, go over the
r bank in a general smashup and ruin?"
I Never before were such conditions. For a
r hundred and fifty years the controlling portion of
L ( our country was an English colony. In tnose
I years the people learned to grade and meet the
h u needs of a new land; they practiced the self-ab-
negation needed; they learned a severe economy;
x they learned to adopt means to certain ends, until
they became at once hardy physically and self
reliant mentally. They had a region of their
own and accepted every sacrifice required by it;
they never neglected to keep the little red school
! house as the chiefest corner stone of their civil
ization.
The mother country cbuld not understand the
colonists. It continued to look upon them as the
I average New York and Boston editor seems to
! look upon the west a good place from which to
I obtain gold and silver and lead and copper and
I v wool and wheat, but as peopled by a race who
1 really have no conception of sound political prin
ciples, or the finer graces of civilization.
Though the old English barons, not many of
whom could read or write, or knew how to handle
a knife and fork, at the breakfast table, rallied
P around a characterless king and compelled "him
f to sign the great charter, always seemed per
fectly natural to the men of England in our rev
i jp olutionary days, but that their wild colonists
should be moved by tho same clear intuitions
, seemed to them an outrage. So the war came
i and the colonists won out. Then they improved
on Magna Charter and framed n government
4 wherein no man was to be king, but every citizen
a sovereign. Then the world saw the wonderful
spectacle of a nation of perfect liberty, only that
t liberty was liberty under the laws which they
i had created and continued to enforce. Then tho
oppressed of the earth began to hail the flag of
this new land as a symbol of tho new enlighten
ment which was to change the face of tho earth,
fa. and began to join in its building up. For -a hun
dred years there was enough to do to subdue the
wilderness, secure a needed transportation to
make the interior of the vast area available and
to round states into form.
' At first most of the comers wer.o from the
!
British Isles; then the Scandinavians and Ger
mans followed in force; later southern Europe
began to supply her tens of thousands. Among
these last there are vast numbers who cannot
comprehend a freedom which is subject to righte
ous laws. In tho meantime all these different
races have been intermarrying until the Ameri
can nation is a new nation under the sun. But
men are like horses fn one respect. Some great
family founds a race, like the Bostons in Ken
tucky, the Morgans in New York, or the Hamble
tonians in the middle states.
So in different states we have certain families
of men and women who have been a distinct
strain for four generations. Again other families
owe their distinction to some old grandmother of
their race, making plausible the Arab belief that
colts must not be half as much judged by the
merits of their sires as by the qualities of their
dams.
Again, one of the features of this new race
of Americans is their subserviency to Wealth,
hence there are certain other famines wno,
through their wealth, claim a prestige and com
mand an influence because of their money which
is drawing great hosts of our people away from
the original severe principles upon which the Re
public was founded, until the laws are not
everywhere fairly enforced and tho ancient in
tegrity of the people is too often beaten down
by the mace of gold. And many of the poor com
plain that the old-time equality Is shattered and
money counts for vastly inore than character.
This is all true, and the anxiety is, what is to
come of it all?
The first thing is a wiser discipline, the sec
ond such improvements in the schools as will
fit every boy and girl for some useful work
which the world will need. Our belief is that two
years' compulsory military training for every
healthy youth In tho land, with a training at the
same time that would give those students a thor
ough knowledge of the political history of the
country, a knowledge of its constitution and laws
and how laws are legitimately created and an
nulled; and likewise a training in tho duties and
responsibilities of citizenship would, in ten
years, steady the nation and restore It to the old
ideals. It would moreover Insure It against attack
from outside enemies, and give our nation the
place among the nations that was intended fot
it from the first
The Dirty Scrubs
IT seems that those Socialists who went over
the border Into lower California to gobble
the wonderful Imperial Valley and to establish
an Ideal Socialistic Republic where every man
who did not work was to draw a large salary and
declare dividends as often as they needed more
money, find It difficult to agree as to just whom
shall be the distributing officers. They have long
advocated tho Initiative, the referendum and the
recall, but the recall came too quickly for those
temporarily in power, and they object strenuously
to tho vote of want of confidence in their follow
ers. One of them openly defies both the govern
ments of Mexico and the United States, and tells
how he proposes, If worst comes to the worst, to
show both nations how magnificently ho can die
for a principle. It Is a problem what to do with
his kind. If he was a dog he would be just fit
to turn over to small boys with instructions IH
to turpentine him. If he was a coyote, it would IH
bo fun to see a few boarhounds run him down. I
The trouble is he is like any other skunk people jH
would like to have him go away, for the person H
Who shoots blm even at long ( range, cuimui. alto-
gether escape his revenge, especially if tho wind M
is coming from his way. Honest labor is the most
honorable of titles but the I. W. W.'s should be M
rated as public enemies and treated accordingly. M
Needs Of Citizenship H
THE clause In the constitution of the United .H
States and in the constitutions and statutes H
of most states, commanding the absolute
separation of church and state is most profound H
in its wisdom. M
A glance at the past and present of Europe M
should be sufficient to satisfy" every fair-minded H
liberty-loving man of that fact But there should H
be a moral code taught In every school, the M
teaching of partisan politics in any school would
justly raise an insurrection, but in every school M
a knowledge of our government and the prln- fl
clples on which it was founded, should be an im- M
peratlve study, that all boys might grow up Amer- fl
leans; that all girls might grow up fitted to be H
American wives and mothers. M
The ignorance of the average American voter M
on these subjects is appalling, aud should end M
with this generation. If any one will go out and
ask the first one hundred men that he meets why M
the fathers fixed it that state legislatures sfcpuld M
elect United States senators, ana what senators M
represent in congress, the answers would, we pre-
diet, convince him that there Is no hurry to
change the present form. M
This reminds us that if it was the law In every M
state that conviction for buying or selling a vote M
should disfranchise both the buyer and seller for M
life, thoro would bo no more complaint on that
score. So soon as the moral courage of men Is M
advanced to the point of directly snubbing a man M
who buys or sells a vote, it will not be practiced M
any more. So soon as men reach the point when M
they can fulfill their full duty as citizens quite HH
half the things in public life which men complain fM
of now, will disappear. M
The Ages Of Art And Literature H
MR. ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON, an H
accomplished English critic in the Atlantic M
Monthly, thinks America must patiently M
wait for the future to develop an art and a liter- M
ature characteristic of her spirit and race, because
art is a product of tradition and nature and Amer- M
ica has not yet had time enough to form trad J- M
tlon or to devote to nature. We suspect that there M
Is much in that, but a simpler reason, it seems
to us, would bo that, so far, Americans have ex- M
hausted their talents on other things. Wo are M
not short at all of traditions, but so far as art M
is concerned, Americans have placed those tra- M
ditions, so to speak, in cold storage to keep until M
they get a few other things off their minds. What
other things, may bo asked. Well, the settle- jH
ment of 3,000,000 square miles of wiiuerness is M
one thing; the effort of every man to become a
millionaire is another; to raise the finest horses M
was another a fev -jcarc ago; to own an auto-
mobile Is another, and when once obtained to see
how near the driver can run it to a pedestrian
without knocking him out. jH