The Anaconda Standard

DANGER CONFRONTS US
Questions Involved In the Permanency of American Civilization
LABOR'S RIGHTS AND DUTIES
A Thoughtful, Interesting and Suggestive Sermon by President Reid on Modern Social Systems.

Butte, Dec. 31.--The pulpit of the Presbyterian church was occupied this evening by James Reid, president of the College of Montana, who addressed an interested and large audience by a lecture on "The Rights and Duties of Labor." The text was Deuteronomy XXIV., 14: "Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant." The speaker said: "It may seem unpatriotic to express alarm in the presence of social problems and questions which are calling for solution in our American civilization, and which involve the national weal or woe. However this may be, he lacks entirely the spirit which every true patriot ought to possess who can look unmoved on social wrongs and gathering discontent, and who never troubles himself to ask why such a state of things exist or how they came to be. If we were to draw conclusions from the history of the nations in the past, it would seem that even the highest civilization bears within it the elements of dissolution and decay. The civilization of Rome was at its highest point when disintegration began. As civilization advances, social life becomes more complex, and takes on new forms which require new adjustments, if the social machine would move on without friction. There is a striking analogy between the development of society and animal life. As among the lower forms of animal life there are but few wants, so it is with the lower developments of society. The law is that increasing complexity and more delicate organization, which give greater capacity and power, are accompanied by increased wants and dangers. What a gulf lies between the lowest and rudest savagery and the highest human civilization. The more complex the civilization the more numerous are the causes of discontent.

"Two processes have been working through the ages, contributing to the march of progress. The divine purpose through the centuries is carried on by evolution and revolution. The law of progress never hurries. It takes cycles of ages to complete a world. Guizot in his history of civilization has fitly said: 'Providence in nature is like the gods of Homer in space. It takes but a step and ages have rolled away,' it takes 15 years,' said a great English preacher, 'to get an idea to take roots in the minds of my people.' How often it requires generations of times to impress a new thought in the minds of the people. The human consciousness unfolds through tardy years and centuries, and reformers and enthusiasts live to impress one idea and die of broken hearts with their hopes unrealized. and according to the divine purpose it evolves slowly. Revolution threw up these great mountains, but the rocks of which they are formed are the result of long geologic ages by the process of evolution. Revolution is as swift as the lightning, evolution as gentle as the zephyrs of spring; the one is the bursting of a tempest, the other is the gentle sunshine; the one is the avalanche which rushes down the mountain steep bearing death and destruction in its course. the other is the rain or snow, which falls on rugged slopes forming the glacial river that moves quietly, imperceptibly, grinding its path way to the sea.

"We see both doing their work in nature and in social life. Go where you will over the face of the earth, and it tells you of cataclysm and earthquake and tempest. You may go to the bleak north, and where mountains of ice are piled, there once bloomed the flowers unharmed by winter's frost or chilling breeze. and birds of brilliant plumage warbled their love notes, and the great monsters of land and sea pushed their way through tropical jungles or rovelled in summer seas. So it has been in human history. Go to Egypt, and its pyramids and temples and obelisks and monuments tell of a civilization that existed before the dynasties of the Pharaohs, before Abraham lived, before the child Moses pillowed his head upon the bosom of the Nile. Why could not Egypt have lived? Could there be more favorable conditions of climate and soil for a great and permanent civilization. But Egypt is gone, the Egypt that was, her temples that threw their silver sheen across the Nile, all are gone, and the winds sigh dirges among her ruins.

"So it was with Greece. Her art has been the inspiration of the centuries. Her sculpture made the cold marble speak the disdain of the gods and the emotions of the human soul. There stood Athens in her queenly glory and beauty. Grand beyond all speech stood her marble temples and her theaters and statues; there walked Plato and Aristotle, Solon and Socrates. Why should not Greece have lived? But her glory, too, has departed. 'Fair Greece, sad relic of departed worth! Immortal though no more; though fallen, great.'

"Rome was mistress of the world, yet Byron in his 'Childe Harold' says of her The Niobe of nations, there she stands. An empty urn within her withered hands. Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; The Scipio's tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres are tenantless of their heroic dwellers.

"How natural the question that arises in our minds. And is this to be the destiny of our American civilization? We have seen at work in our social and political fabric. forces and influences which presage dissolution and decay. The rapid progress of our nation has no parallel in history. Our civilization is in some respects the grandest of all time. The transformation which has taken place within the memory of living men transcends the imagination. The vision of the white city on the shore of Lake Michigan is a type of what has been going on for a century in the growth and development of our civilization. God forbid that the type should be applicable as it vanishes away. The great danger in a rapidly advancing civilization such as ours lies in the fact that we cannot adapt ourselves to rapidly changing conditions. The great resources, combined with the rush of inventive genius and discovery in art and science, have resulted in a fabulous increase of wealth. With the increase of wealth the gulf has been growing wider between the rich and the poor. We hear from all sides the mutterings of discontent, The vast army of the unemployed is adding to the dangers and perplexity of the situation. Men are looking and waiting with bated breath, wondering whether the forces that builded our great republic may not in their reaction cripple or destroy it. Our growth and prosperity have depended very largely upon the continual stream of emigration from other lands. It has been said that the prayer of the young republic has been for labor, and that every vessel which landed its precious human freight at Castle garden was an answer to that prayer. Now we are facing new conditions which have been intensified by financial depression.

[Continued on the Seventh Page].