Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures Part 5

"That will be fine," was all the comfort she gave me.

Though I have traveled close to a million miles behind the iron horse I cannot ride backwards on a railroad train. In that respect I am like the husband who when about to die said to his wife: "I want to make a special request of you, and that is, see that I am buried face down; it always did make me sick to travel backwards." When a boy I could not swing as could other boys. My head is not level on my shoulders. I have never crossed the ocean and never will. I cannot ride the rolling waves. Some years ago when out on a little coast ride for pleasure, (if that's what you call it) I said to the captain: "How long till we reach the sh.o.r.e?" When he answered forty minutes, I felt I couldn't live that long. But I did, and when the boat touched the wharf I felt as the old lady did who landed from her first ocean trip saying: "Thank the Lord, I'm on vice-versa again."

When Mrs. Bain had seated herself on one side of that hand car I fixed myself on the other, gripping the edge of the car. Off went the brake and we started. In a few minutes I said to myself: "Farewell vain world, I'm going home." As we ran along the wrinkle of the mountain, and swung out toward the point of a crag with seemingly no way to dodge the mighty abyss below, I was reminded of the preacher's mistake, when in closing a meeting with the benediction he said: "To Thy name be ascribed all the praises in the world with the end out."

Around frost-filed mountain crags, over spider bridges, through sunless gorges, we went down that mountain like an eagle swooping from a storm. When we reached Boulder, Mrs. Bain jumped from the car like a school-girl and while she was thanking our host, I was thanking kind Providence that we were back in Boulder. On our way to the hotel I said: "Were you not frightened when we started down that mountain?"

"Why not at all," Mrs. Bain replied; "I knew the superintendent would not invite us to take the ride unless it was safe."

I said: "Well, you had more confidence in him than you have in me.

When I call at the door with a new horse in the carriage or phaeton, you won't get in until you know all about the horse."

"Yes," she said, "but I know _you_."

I do not regret having had that thrilling experience, but I _do_ feel by that hand car ride, as the Dutchman felt about his twin babies. He said: "I wouldn't take ten thousand dollars for dot pair of twins, and I wouldn't give ten cents for another pair."

That evening I gave my last lecture at Boulder and in closing said: "I suppose you who live mid these mines would like to know how I stand on the money question." They cheered, showing their desire to know my views on the then popular question, and I proceeded to dodge by saying: "Last evening I stood on yonder veranda watching the sun as it went down over the mountain's brow, leaving its golden slipper on Flag Staff Peak. Colorado clouds, sh.e.l.l-tinted by the golden glory of the setting sun, were hanging as rich embroideries upon the blue tapestry of the sky, and soon the full moon began to pour its _silver_ on the scene. As I stood gazing at the picture painted by the _gold_ of the sun, and _silver_ of the moon, I felt whatever may have been my views on the money question, the sun's gold-standard glory, and the moon's free-silver coinage, as seen from these Colorado Chautauqua grounds make me henceforth a Boulder bi-metalist."

On leaving the platform an old miner said: "How do you stand on the money question? You got your views so mixed up with the sun and moon I couldn't understand you."

So if some one should say to me: "Do you believe in imperialism of humanity:" If asked: "Do you believe in expansion," my answer is; "I believe in the expansion of human brotherhood." "I believe there's a destiny that shapes our ends," and since the Philippine Islands were pitched into our lap in a night, it may be it was done that the home, the church and the school might have a chance under civil liberty in the Philippine Islands. With boundless resources and immense means, are linked great responsibilities, and we who live in freedom's land, and humanity's century, are under obligations to help carry the light of Christian civilization to the darkest corners of the earth.

Along with the Christian missionary goes that other "pathfinder of civilization," the commercial traveler, who is known as the "evangel of peaceful exchange" that makes the whole world kin. When the Filipinos are fit for self-government, let us do as we did Cuba, make them as free as the air they breathe, but keep the key to Manila Bay as our doorway to the Orient; for whatever may be said of the old "Joss House" kingdom with all her superst.i.tions, she possesses today the "greatest combination of natural conditions for industrial activity of any undeveloped part of the globe." By building the Suez Ca.n.a.l England secured an advantage of three thousand miles, in her oriental trade over the United States. The Panama Ca.n.a.l wipes out this advantage and places the trade of New York a thousand miles nearer than that of Liverpool.

Now let the United States build her own merchant marine, then with her own s.h.i.+ps, loaded with her own goods, in her own harbor at Manila, she has easy access to the Orient, with its seven hundred and fifty millions of people, who purchased last year more than a billion and a half dollars worth of the kind of goods we have to sell, and much of it cotton goods, which means future employment for the growing millions of negroes in the South. While it may be best to confine our territorial domain within our ocean ditches, we must encourage commercial expansion, for we have already one hundred millions of people; soon we will have one hundred and fifty millions, and experts tell us when the present century closes there will be three hundred millions in this country. If this republic would build for the future she must strive to create a world-wide business fraternity, through which will go and grow the spirit of the n.o.blest civilization of the world.

Another swing of the searchlight and it falls upon The Labor and Capital Question.

After all the years of education, agitation and legislation, we find capital combining in great corporations on one hand, and labor organizing in great trade unions on the other. Like two great armies they face each other, both determined to win. While capital is expanding on one side, the wants of the laboring cla.s.ses are expanding on the other. They see excursion trains bound for world's fairs; they want to go. They see stores crowded with the necessaries and luxuries of life; they want a share. They live in days of startling p.r.o.nouncements, they can read, they want the morning papers. They live in a larger world, and knowing their brains and brawn helped to create the larger world they feel they deserve a larger share in its fortunes. When they see avenues lined with the mansion homes of capital, and the toiling world crowded into tenement quarters, and these tenements owned by capital, not five in fifty of the country's wage-earners owning their homes, they naturally conclude there is something wrong somewhere.

Over an inn in Ireland hangs a picture representing the "FOUR ALLS;" a king with a scepter in his hand saying, "I rule all;" a soldier with a sword in his hand saying, "I fight for all;" a bishop with a Bible in his hand saying, "I pray for all," and a working man with a shovel in his hand saying, "I pay for all."

"G.o.d bless them, for their brawny hands Have built the glory of all lands; And richer are their drops of sweat, Than diamonds in a coronet."

I must say, however, all the fault for present conditions must not be charged to capital. There are faults within I wish the laboring world would see and correct. I travel the country over and note the men who file in and out the saloons. Are they bankers or leading business men?

No, they are laborers from factories, furnaces, fields and work-shops, spending their money for what is worse than nothing and giving it to a business that pays labor less and robs more than any other capitalization in the world.

The New York Sun says: "Every successful man in Wall Street is a total abstainer. He knows he must keep his brain free from alcohol when he enters the Stock Exchange, where his mind goes like a driving wheel from which the belt has slipped." The laboring man needs brain as clear and nerves as steady as the capitalist if he expects to win in this age of sharp compet.i.tion.

What the laboring cla.s.ses in this country spend for liquor in twelve months would purchase five hundred of the average manufactories of the land; what they spend in ten years would purchase five thousand, and what they spend in twenty years would control the entire manufacturing interests of the country.

A few years ago a strike occurred with the Pullman Palace Car Company.

What the laboring cla.s.ses spend for intoxicating liquors in three months would purchase the Pullman Palace Car Company and all its rolling stock. Instead of a strike, in which laboring men are out of work and families suffering for the necessaries of life, why not stop drinking beer and whiskey for ninety days, buy the whole business and let the Pullman Company do something else. How to husband the resources of the poor is far more important than the right use of the fortunes of the rich. There is less danger in the ma.s.sing of money by the rich than there is in wasting the wages of the working world in saloons.

Now I have already thrown the searchlight upon enough problems for you to realize I have given you an incongruous picture. You must be impressed with the conflicting forces at work upon our republic. Never have we had so many advocates of peaceful arbitration for differences between nations and never such armament for war; never such an acc.u.mulation of comforts, never such a multiplication of wants; never so much done to make men honest, never so many thieves. In 1850 seven thousand in our penitentiaries; in 1860 twenty thousand; in 1870 thirty-two thousand; in 1880 fifty-eight thousand; in 1890 eighty-two thousand, and in 1900 one hundred thousand. In London, England, last year with over seven millions of people, twenty-four murders; in Chicago, one hundred and eighteen. There are more murders in this republic than in any civilized land beneath the sky. Yet in face of all these unsettled questions, with advancement along all social, moral, intellectual and religious lines I have faith to believe this twentieth century American citizens.h.i.+p will prove itself sufficiently thoughtful, testful and tactful to deal with all national issues as one by one they come within reach of practical politics, and that this country is big enough, brave enough, wise enough and just enough to solve every problem vexing us today.

Some have not this faith. They see an army of three hundred thousand tramps eating bread by the sweat of other men's brows; the slums of great cities, cradles of infamy where children are trained to sin; the "fire-damp of combination trusts" stifling the working world; gambling brokers cornering the markets in the necessaries of life; the wages of working girls being such as to lead many from life's Eden of purity; a great battle on between labor and capital and in this combination of threatening dangers they see the overthrow of free government.

If these pessimists would take a view from the nether standpoint and see what we have come through as a country their fears would be dispelled.

Look backward fifty years from today and see the republic wrapped in the throes of civil strife; the soil of our Southland soaked with blood and tears; the nation overwhelmed with debt; four million negroes turned loose penniless in the South to beg bread at the white man's door, and he already on "Poverty row;" Abraham Lincoln dead in the White House, shot down by an a.s.sa.s.sin; the Secretary of War bleeding from three stab wounds the same night; and Columbia reeling on her throne.

Now see the harmonious a.s.sociation of all sections; a firmer establishment of this "government of the people, by the people and for the people" than was ever known. Look over the ocean and see Turkey's ma.s.sacre of the Armenians, Russia with her Siberian horrors, Spain with her cruelty to the Moors and Jews; or look closer home over the Mexican border and see the government torn to tatters and public men shot down like dogs. Then turn and note our country's magnanimous dealings with Cuba; her teachers schooling Filipinos into n.o.bler life; our President leading the armies of Russia and j.a.pan out of the rivers of blood; slavery gone, lottery gone, polygamy outlawed, the saloon iniquity tottering to its fall; hospitals nestled in shadows of bereavement, hungry children fed on their way to school, and men who know how to make money, giving it away for the relief of suffering and uplift of mankind as never before. Don't tell me the world is getting worse.

I was in New York City for two weeks at the time of the t.i.tanic disaster. On Sat.u.r.day evening before the ocean tragedy I stood on the elevated at the corner of Thirty-third and Broadway. The "Great White Way" was thronged with pleasure-seekers, crowding their way to theatres and picture shows. It seemed to me I never saw the great city so gay. But, on Monday morning after, there came on ether waves the appalling news that the finest s.h.i.+p in the world had gone down, and sixteen hundred human beings had gone with it. I never witnessed such a transformation. It seemed to me every woman had tears in her eyes, and every man a lump in his throat. Actors played to empty houses that evening; a pall hung over the great Metropolis. But when details came, with them came the triumph of humanity. The rich had died for the poor, the strong had died for the weak.

John Jacob Astor had turned away from his fine mansion on Fifth Avenue, his summer home at Newport, his hundred millions of dollars in wealth, and was found spending his last moments saving women and children. All honor to the brave young bridegroom who carried his bride to a life boat, said, "good-bye sweetheart," kissed her and stepping back went down with the s.h.i.+p. All hail to that loyal loving Hebrew wife and mother, Mrs. Straus, who holding to her husband's arm said: "I would rather die with you than live without you." Like Ruth of old, she said: "Where thou goest, I will go; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried." There side by side at the ocean gateway to eternity these old lovers went down together.

Ah! this republic will never perish while we have such manhood and womanhood to live and die for its honor.

It has been said: "We live in a materialistic age; that all human activities are born of selfishness; that manhood is dying out of the world." All over the land at midnight, men lean from the saddles of iron horses, peering down the railroad track, ready to die if need be for the safety of those entrusted to their care. Firemen will climb ladders tonight and their souls will go up in flames, like Jim Bludsoe's, to save the lives of imperiled women and children.

Look at the orchestra on board the t.i.tanic. When the supreme moment of danger came, they rushed to the deck, not to put on life belts, not to get into lifeboats but to form in order, and send out over the icy ocean, the music of the sweet song, "Nearer, my G.o.d, to Thee." When the s.h.i.+p lifted at one end and started on its headlong dive of twenty-seven hundred fathoms to the depths of the salty sea, those brave men, without a discordant note, sent out the sweet refrain;

"Now let the way appear Steps unto Heaven; All that Thou sendest me, In mercy given; Angels to beckon me, Nearer, my G.o.d to thee; Near to Thee."

May we not hope those brave musicians and those who died that others might live, "On joyful wings cleaving the sky," ocean and icebergs forgot _did_ upward fly, and on their flight to the spirit world continued the song, "Nearer, my G.o.d, to Thee."

Manhood is not dying out of the world.

Students of history are asking, "Will the fate of Rome be repeated in the history of this republic?" The answer is, we have saving influences in this republic Rome never knew. Rome never had an asylum for her blind or insane; she never had a home for widows and orphans; her "golden house" of Nero never had an equal, but nowhere in her dusty highways could be found footprints of mercy. In Rome the soldier was the cohesive power, while socially everything was isolated. In this republic there is an interlacing and binding together in bonds of human brotherhood. A Methodist here bound to Methodists everywhere, Presbyterian to Presbyterian, Baptist to Baptist, Disciple to Disciple, Lutheran to Lutheran, Catholic to Catholic, Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Red Men, Maccabees, Woodmen, Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, Y.M.C.A.'s, W.C.T.U.'s, and many other fraternities, making up an interdependent, together-woven, G.o.d-allied and G.o.d-saving influence ancient empires never dreamt of.

These are the moral lightning rods that avert from this republic the wrath of G.o.d.

Am I putting too much stress upon the humanity side of national life?

Do you tell me money is the great question of this country, tariff the great question? Bring me the Bible and what do I find? Only a very few pages given to the creation of the material universe, with all its gold and silver, suns and systems, but I find page after page, chapter after chapter, and book after book, given to the healing of the lame, the halt and the blind, teaching a kindred spirit of sympathy to meet the common woes of humanity.

What I am about to say may seem more like sermon than lecture, but I believe it will be the best thing I have said when the lecture closes.

In the formula of human touch, laid down in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, there is more saving influence for national endurance than in all the wealth of our country's treasury.

From the time His beautiful mother wrapped Him in coa.r.s.e linen, and cradled Him on cattle straw in that Bethlehem barn, on up to His death on the cross, He was ever touching the ma.s.ses, healing their diseases, soothing their sorrows and teaching the lesson, "the more humanity you place at the bottom the better citizens.h.i.+p you will have at the top."

In the golden rule of this human touch lies the hope of this home of the free.

A little boy boarded a car in New York City. A few feet from him sat a finely-dressed lady and as the boy stared at her, he moved nearer and nearer until he was close beside her.

"What do you mean by getting so close to me? Don't you see you have put mud on my dress from your shoes? Move away," said the lady.

The little urchin replied: "I'm so sorry I got mud on your dress; I didn't mean to do it."

"Where are you going, all by your little self, anyway?"

"I'm going to my aunt's where I live."

"Have you no mother?"

"No mam; she died four weeks ago. I ain't got any mother now, and that's why I was settin' up close to you to make believe you wuz my mother. I'm sorry 'bout the mud, you'll 'scuse me, won't you, good lady?"

The woman extending her hand said: "Yes I will; come here," and soon her arm was about him, and tears in her eyes, and the boy could have wiped his feet on any dress in that car without rebuke. We want more of human touch in national and individual life.

A tramp called at a fine home for his supper. The owner said: "You can have something to eat provided you do some work beforehand."

"What can I do," asked the "hobo."