People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1896 — Uses of Adversity. [ARTICLE]

Uses of Adversity.

The Silver Knight calls for the impeachment of Mr. Cleveland as a traitor. That may all be, but Messrs. Cleveland, Sherman and Carlisle have done a service for the progress of human society that no other agency could have accomplished. Stay with me a minute while I give the reasons for the faith that is in me. The people of this nation are a money-worshipping, thoughtless people. In their greed for property, they have not recognized right or justice among each other. They could only be interested in an idea that had $ attached to it. They became careless of their liberty. They conld not be made to comprehend the evils of a competitive system. They could not comprehend the fact that a cooperative system could banish want or fear of want and give to each a hundred fold more pleasures of life than the present anarchy or individualistic method or lack of method of living. If every man could get work at from'sl to $lO a day no power on earth could educate them that a better system could be devised. They would never inj vestigate to find a better system, and would go on in the same way they have been or were ten and twenty years ago, satisfied. But this social system has served the purposes for which it was created in the evolution and development of man and must be replaced by a better or higher one. It required just such effects as the great national crimes now being committed to force the people to stop in their mad career of plundering each other and examine intp the cause of so much crime andfdistress among themselves. No man who' is “doing well” is looking for the cause of the universal woe. But the great majority are distressed and therefore are looking for a remedy. These men ih Washington have forced the people to think. Had Cleveland adopted the policy of the party, or had carried Out the ideas that friend and foe expected of him, there would have been a temporary relief, things would have apparently prospered, people would have sunk back into their old ways, and this system of injustice and strife would have gained a new lease of power. But the greed of the rich in grasping for more, and the action of these men have done the work that needed to be done. They have unwittingly played into the hands of the people. Their treachery is producing pain that will force the people to abandon the old and cry for a New Social Order. The occasion will produce the men who will create the New Order. It was always so, and so will it be again.—Appeal to Reason.