Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1910 — PAPERSBY THE PEOPLE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PAPERSBY THE PEOPLE

SECRET FRATERNITIES IN SCHOOLS.

By Robert G. Wilson, Jr.

There baß been much bitter discussion in recent years concerning secret fraternities in the high schools of the country, and much may be Bald on both sides. Of course secret fraternities are of two kinds. Certain fraternities are primarily formed merely'as a source of recreation and sport. They soon become a discredit to any school, for even the members themselves look

upon their organization with growing disrespect. Such fraternities are sufficient to prejudice public opinion and aoon, in the public mind, the word “frat” represents a party of worthless young men gathered together merely for a good time. And such is sometimes tbeimfortunate truth. But such parties of young men deserve and can claim no such name Us “fraternity.” The word “fraternity,” coming from the original Greek, signifies a brotherhood. Men are bound to join In some bond of friendship; we have large organizations, from the Masonic order down. College men have their fraternities. But the high school fraternity takes ths growing .boy at a comparatively early age; at that time •when his character is really in the mold. The boy is certain to become associated with many of his fellows when his character, in most cases, is yet as putty. It can still be molded for better or for worse. The right kind of fraternity expects to prove a benefit to both its members and to the school. Such an organization of the students themselves can change more of the disagreeable features of school life in a year than the masters and instructors can ferret out in twice the time.

NEW IDEALS ARISE AS .MAN PROGRESSES,

By Ada May Krecker.

The old men sigh for the good old time 6. Their minds are senilely unfit. They look at yesterday with a microscope. The youths bum for the better new times. Their minds are puerilely unfit. They look at to-morrow with a telescope. Somewhere there is a mellow philosopher who sees every day as a yesterday and a to-morrow. He is agreeable to the old man’s faded glory and to the youth’s

prophetic grandeur. But he finds to-day as good as either of them. No, Grecian and Roman glory do not dazzle him. He knows that every civilization has its bud. And that in comparisons bud must be matched with bud, bloom with bloom, shriveled stem with shriveled stem. Our civilization is seedling. The American race is yet unborn. It will only begin to be born when the many divers people from everywhere gathering here will have mingled and blended, and fused into A wonderful one people. But when our flower time has come it will be followed duly by the fruit and harvest time, and then the winter barrenness and death. And after us another civilization as much greater than we as we are and shall be greater than Greece and Rome or any other past marvel that

you will. And after this greater civilization a still greater, which 'will distance the greater as the greater has distanced us. _ We must somehow get Joy out of the pain of life. We must see the beauty and the wonder of the world misery. We must admire the evil as we admire the good. Wo must lick the dust with the homage that we pay the heavens. We must realize the sweet in struggle, in defeat, in destitution. We must know the world as perfect in its imperfectness, as finished in its incompleteness, as satisfying in its unsatisfactoriness. Working for our fellows as purP° Bel y a* we will, we must realize that they need no working for. That we need only to love and enjoy them which is true. While looking to a better day we must perceive that it will never come. That it is here.

FAITH IN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

By E. A. Van Valkenburg.

Belief that there is continuous increase of materialistic wisdom, and confidence lin its certain consequences, are not idle dreams of optimistic visionaries. They are certainties •foreshadowed, not to the novices, but to the shrewdest of the scarred experts in the game of practical politics. They constitute the political creed of the most useful citizens in America to-day—the short-term pessimists

who are long-distance optimists. These are the true teachers of the time. These are the men who see the rottenness cankering the whole social and business fabric of our modern civilization, but who never for a moment arc disheartened, because they know the nature of the plain, everyday, average American; and, by the grace of that knowledge, the certainty has been given them of the ultimate triumph in this nation of right ideas and idealp. They propose to cleanse what foulness exists, and not to Ignore nor to gild it. For they are not deluded by the ancient lie that "whatever is is right.”—Success Magazine.

WASTE IN RELIGIOUS WORK.

By Edward Tallmadge Root.

Theri is $500,000,000 sunk in needless church buildings, and $100,000,000 a year is needlessly spent in their maintenance and erection. But this is a small item of waste compared with those of which society as a whole is guilty. How petty it seems in comparison with the $2,000,000,000 spent for intoxicants and tobacco —needless luxuries, to say the least! Or in comparison with the 200,000,-

000 tons of coal annually wasted in improper methods of mining, with the similar waste of water power, forests and all our resources. There is probably not a dollar more expended ia church property than is actually needed somewhere. Tha trouble is that it is not expended to meet real needs; that It ia wasted so far as the real Interests of the kingdom of God are concerned. —The Delineator.