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THE NEBRA8KAN
63
duties? Have you admired him for his skill
and thought him the type of industrial per
fection? There are hundreds of such men
in almost every community ; and though
some of them are true types, many of them
illustrate perfectly this very evil of irrespon
sible power. The hand is indeed skilled but
there is no heart back of it. How to get the
weekly stipend and how to spend it are the
absorbing questions that shut out all higher
considerations. No thought here of intellect
ual development, no thought of country or of
fellow-men, or of God only of self: an in
dustrial giant, an intellectual and moral
dwarf.
The growth of individualism, so percepti
ble in our modern life, is a legitimate result
of a growth and exercise of patriotism. This
self-development, however, is but the first
step. The theory of individual rights, so
triumphantly established in 1775 and again
in 1863, leads on, in the evolution of human
ity, to the spirit of fraternity, the brother
hood of man.
Social equity, the relations of industrial to
political life, and most imperative of all, the
relation of individual to individual, are the
questions that cry today for a solution. They
cried out at Homestead, when misunder
standing, ignorance, greed, fanaticism met
in deadly struggle. They cried out when
Jay Gould died, leaving an accumulation of
wealth beside which the treasures of medi
aeval Venice would pale. A cry, not because
he called that wealth his and grasps it even
from the grave, but he amassed it regardless
of his fellow man's needs and claims, and
disposed of it without a sign that he recog
nized any brotherhood in his humanity.
Each day there goes up to Heaven the cry of
misery and suflering wrought everywhere in
the earth by the unthinking intellect and the
hardened spirit upon our brothers the mis
erable. All things and all thought are compre
hended in these three nature, man, God.
Natural laws are simple, harmonious, un
yielding ; human laws, conflicting and com
plex ; divine laws, infinite, and difficult for
human comprehension. For five thousand
years men have been patiently seeking the
clues to natural law. Today a few have been
grasped : some feet are passing across the
threshold into the realm of Nature. Two
thousand years ago, because, I believe, God
knew that divine laws were too infinite and
difficult for man to comprehend without
clearer help from Him, the Christ came, and
when he had said, "One is vour Father, even
God," he had unwrapt all mysteries and de
clared the brotherhood of man.
The national character must be nurtured
intellectually and morally, so that every man,
woman and child will appreciate the inesti
mable value of the birthright America has
given to all her children, of political and re
ligious freedom and equality before the law.
Too many today would sell this birthright
for a mess of pottage ; too many arc ignorant
of their privileges and of their opportunities ;
too many would forget to be patriots and ig
nore the claims of brotherhood to secure sel
fish ends. Industrial and political problems
are fast approaching each other, both in dif
ferent ways, hampering the march of social
progress. How shall the confused, conflict
ing claims of capital and labor become recon
ciled? Into the raging, seething cauldron of
the present what potion shall be poured that
shall unify it, yet leave its components fit for
grander uses in the future than their past has
known. Is not this potion found when, to
the patriotism of the fathers we add a faith
in the brotherhood of man, strong enough to
serve as a working rule for every problem of
national and civil life?
With the development of the industrial
world, conditions are growing favorable for
an international, world-,vide commonwealth.
The whole world's intellect and heart and
soul are responding, with vibrations more and
more distinct, to the magnetic touch of in
dustrial progres . The nations are being
woven together into an inseparable, eternal
union of strength and peace. Commerce
industry, social intercourse, and literature are
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