Educational institutions may educate and reforma
tories reform, but without the influence of home
with a mother’s love and' a father’s care, we may
well despair of the nation.
Napoleon Bonaparte once said ; “What France
needs is mothers. ’ ’ As the homes are, so is the na
tion. The nation is embraced by the home wheos
royal queen is mother. Home is the channel of
woman’s influence. The degree of a nation’s pros
perity and liberty corresponds to the degree of
sanctity accorded to womanhood. This sanctity,
inbred for generations among a people, becomes
a national instinct. All hail to womanhood invio
lable in America ! French mothers look with as
tonishment at the liberty of our young girls. En
glish girls at 16 are in the nursery while young
American spirit is enjoying the frolics that only
youth can know. In this country the relations of
mother and daughter are much larger, the same as
those of sister to sister in which lies the secret of
the possibility of the safe and sacred freedom of
our young people. While our women can go from
New England to California alone in safety, it is a
notorious fact that in England women travel alone
but 20 miles in their compartment carriages at ex
treme peril. To day in many of the European
countries woman is man’s drudge. In England
and France she is ornamental. In our hotness he
is man’s equal. To this fact we owe very largely
the complexion of our nation’s history.
But the day has never been in our history when
some vexed question was not calling for attention.
The outlook of our land is yet fraught with danger;
gigantic evils rise in the path of our future ; there
is the problem of foreign immigration. The exclu
sion act as recently passed virtually closes but the
one back gate of the Pacific, leaving practically un
guarded’the many open portals of the Atlantic.
Has not the time come when we should be more
conservative ? Statistics show a net increase of il
literacy in five states ofthe Union within a decade;
notwithstanding our increased educational advan
tages. This startling revelation is statistically
proven due to the influx of ignorant foreigners.
THE FREE LANCE.
Besides the wide spread of ignorance due to for
eign immigration, we cannot lose sight of the dan
gerous elements to politics and degraded standard
of citizenship due to the same cause.
Our politics should grow purer and better as
our people grow in numbers and intelligence. But
this wide, free, rich country of ours, spreading out
like a mammoth lawn, broken by rich forests here
and vast mineral resources there, is yearly inunda
ted, covering, us with a vitiating sediment. We
awaken each successive year to find the carefully
worked ground of the previovs season now strewn
with un cultivated material.
Again, intemperance is an evil that threatens
our national well-being.
In this bright land of ours thousands are de
stroyed annually, who are as clearly the victims of
the war that intemperance wages against society,
as are the slain found upon the field of battle, vic
tims of a conflict at arms. Can we as a nation
harbor this deadly poisonous germ and not be con
taminated thereby ?
Another monster is monopolies, which flaunt
the threatening red flag of disintegration over
against the stars and stripes.
Once more we mention a menace to the nation’s
fair future—’tis mormonism. Though we believe
that mormonism never could succeed in America,
controverting gas it does, the American ideas in
turning back to sensualism for its inspiration and
despotism for its model, yet under the leadership
of men at once so sagacious and unscrupu
lous as they have proven themselves to be,
and when allied by men like President Elliot of
Harvard, to commend their deeds, and liken their
vice-ridden, crime permeated career to the victo
rious steerage of the Mayflower, in which were
borne the seeds of the Republican tree under which
millions of freemen now repose, is it not high time
that the smouldering evils be crushed under the
foot of indignant virtue?
Such as these are the clouds against the after
noon sky of the 19th century. Who can foretell
their growth ? Who can say that they will not