To the patriotically inclined, the callousness of the public conscience
to reforms freely demanded by the popular welfare is indeed alarming.
Consider for example the supine indifference of the country at large
over the ignominious defeat in Kansas of a great moral measure to enact
the ten commandments into law! And that it was accomplished in the teeth
of a united support of a large, active and pious Methodist,
Congregationalist and Presbyterian lobby!
And who does not recall the humiliating failure of the Georgia patriot
to have passed a bill to protect the long neglected interests of bull
bats, turtles and other game birds hitherto and still entirely ignored
by that presumably enlightened commonwealth?
And while there was a low and sullen popular rumble in Tennessee against
a shameless lobby of centralized bachelors that by bribes, imprecations
and cajoleries smothered a _pro bono publico_ measure to tax their
immunity from the strenuous life, public sentiment is once more callous
and numb.
As a climax in corporate effrontery, however, as well as an extreme
illustration of popular lethargy, a Missouri bill to prohibit the
criminal practice of tipping waiters in hotels, restaurants and cafés
was ingloriously snowed under and that, too, in the face of the
lynx-eyed young governor. A cunning realization by the beef trust of the
impossibility of getting its unrighteous commodity before the eating
public with such a regulation in vogue, is no doubt responsible for this
grave popular misfortune.
Hence the inquiry, what of the times when the public continues
indifferent and when those who alone have the courage to essay the
people’s relief from the thrall of mammon and general unrighteousness
are to be derided as freaks or purchased, and nothing done about it!
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