UPWARD TREND OF MORALITY.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 65, 18 March 1908, Page 6

UPWARD TREND OF MORALITY.

(By P. J. Dolliver)

There has grown up in the last few years, in the United States a criticism directed against the entire fabric ofv the social and >T>olitical order which we have inherited from our fathers* That criticism is not aimed at the defects of society or at the abuse of government, but at the foundation upon which the entire platform of our social and political order has j been . comfortably resting for unr ■ counted generations; and that school of criticism, it seems to me, is undertaken for the purpose of propagating its theories, to, overstate, to exaggerate the defects and infirmities of o'ur^ affairs, until millions of people are sad in their hearts, because they think American ' institutions are' going steadily to the bad, though . some of my warm friends seem to think so. I myself am a humble but not a reluctant, witness to the gradual rise of^ the moral level of public life. When I first went to Washington, a country youth from one of the cornfield districts of lowa, I had many high notions of the dignity of the government of the ■- tJnited States, especially the House of Representa- j tives and Senate.' I shall never forget the sense of shame and humiliation that entered my heart when I saw the drunken men staggering around the floor of the House and within the precincts of the Senate Chamber of .. the United States. To-day such a spectacle is morally incredible. I was amazed to see the public saloon in full blast in connection with the House of Representatives and Senate. Within the twenty years since then those odious institutions have been abolished by the unanimous vote of both Houses, not only in the capitol, but in all the public buildings of the United States throughout the world.. Twenty years ago you could not post a regiment of the army of the United States at home or abrodd without the first thing opening an ordinary American saloon for retailing intoxicant liquors, sometimes cheerfully described under the curious title of the army canteen, and for service in the

little institution our soldier boys were detailed in tbieir uniform' to wait on their brethren—boys ; f rotii the V.M.C.A. or from the Sunday school, in the uniform1 of the United States army. I saw Congress abolish that institution by a practically unanimous vote of both Houses, and while I notice in the newspapers evidence that some officers of the army expect to see that institution revived under \ authoritative national legislation, I have made up my mind that they will |be on the retired list before that ever | comes to pass. After all, in my opinion, the largest evidence or the moral progress of the American people lies in the recognition, now well nigh universal, that at heart all the problems of society are not s,imply problems of politics and government, but are in reality questions of applied religion.