The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 3, 1904, Page 13

THE SAN FRA NCISCO SUNDAY CALL Jrsror FPorTER. TWENTY YERRS AGO. ~ — Trnar PorrER 11 Doar & IS HOPLE Iy THE LN DACISS', BISHOP POTTER SAYS: NATIONAL LUXURY PAVES THE WAY TO NATIONAL DISHONCOR. wWHILE wWE SCORN THE FRENCH MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE IN NAME, WE HALLOW AND OBSERVE IT MOST RELIGIOUSLY IN FACT UNLIMITED PERSONAL INDULGEKCE MEANS ENFEEBLED MAN- #OOD AND DECAYING INTELLIGENCE. HAVE NO SYMPATHY WITH A RADICALISM OF FEMALE REFORM. CHRIST DENOUNCED NOT WEALTH, BUT THE LUST FOR RICHES. nt pr —with their the rce, as dominated by problem recent- President Charles Cuth- f the Union Theological s to be a vital deterioration of American life— Potter, o the on abroad, de- e interview, that their love of led with the > make life more ess rugged than the laws were rapidly paving Rugged in Mind and Body. ged himself in mind and body, sixty-eight years as in the prime of life, g and admonition have be- he force of one of the most s in this country. seen in his hand- nth street and > which he moved hen he married the widow of the e Ce Clark. Seated in ¥ 1y overlooking the H 2 Palisades and sur- als of his labors the distinguished led his warning to n tones with mental sected the body s city and country, b here and applying tice there, as he tpok vely the following vital fons: moral and standard of Ameri- teriorating? e growing so prevalent as to ngerous ~enace to the welfare tion? ques age for r money a minor or jor evil in American life? /ill women ever be desirable factors in public life—and is public life, or shoulder-to-shoulder competition with men, robbing nhood of its great- est charm and redness? Is there really any danger of racial suicide in this country? If so, what are the primary cause Are there any seeds of revolution in the war between capital and labor and when will the harvest be reaped? And is Immense wealth a curse or a blessing? That Bishop Potter is perhaps better able to answer these vital questions we wisely a rtialy than any other n life may be inferred rly equipment, nce extending rector of Grace s Bishop of New York, as head of a great labor arbitra- tion committee and as a profound stu- dent of the great social and political questions of the day. Perhaps his most enduring monument is the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, now building in this city. Its vastness may be con- Jectured in that the huge plle on Wash- ington Heights will not be completed for another generation. Bishop Potter’s Career. Bishop Potter was born in Schenec- tady in 1836. His father was then president of Union College and later became Bishop of Pennsylvanla. Henry C, Potter studied at the Episcopal Academy at Philadelphia until ill- health drove him into commercial life. This proving incompatible with his temperament, the future prelate pre- pared for his life work at a Virginia theological institution. His first im- portant call was to Trinity Parish in Boston, where the forcefulness of his sermons and his tremendous mental ability soon earned him promotion. This came in his transfer to the me- tropolis, where in 1883 he was made Bishop Coadjutor of New York. Upon the death of his uncle, Bishop Hora- tion Potter, four years later, he was vested with full episcopal honors. Bishop Potter has achieved promi- nence not only in the prelacy and in literature but also in the great move- ments for the betterment of the soctal conditions of the people. He is a keen observer and commentor upon current events. Soon after his ordination he married Miss Ellz‘a R. Jacob, who died in 1801, leaving one son and five daugh- ters, As a sequel to his co-operation with the widow of Alfred Corning Clark in her vast charitable enterprises their marriage was solemnized some months ago—a marriage, as it has been said, of mind and millions. Never before has Bishop Potter ex- pressed himself so fully and compre- hensively upon such a wide range of absorbing problems. Praising where praise is due and denouncing where, as he declared, there is need for Amer- ican men and women to take warning, his voice is a ringing bugle call on the eve of the approaching Presidential campaign. . BY BISHOP HENRY C. POTTER. I have been asked to discuss some of the bravest and most opportune problems which now confront the American people—problems dealing with the welfare of the people at large, with the sacredness of the home and family and with the happiness of men and women as individuals. It is impossible to deal with such a wide and important range of subjects at this time and in this manner, except in the most cursory way. But in discussing the pitfalls and dangers assalling us as a people, one Americay: - Rinaing Warning Propie cannot overlook the love of display, the craving for luxuries, the wide- spread disposition to make life more ornate and less rugged, more smooth and less satisfying than when the foundations of this country were lald. Explain as you choose that the aus- tereness of the fathers has provoked the luxury of the children; appeal to the age as placing greater luxury within easy range of a greater num- ber—the fact remains that on the whole our habits are not simple, our training is not frugal, and our social customs are not plain nor inexpensive. This national love of luxury is terribly enervating. We need not go back to Rome to see that national luxury paved the way for national dishonor. France discovered it in the reign of the Louises. England experienced it in the time of Charles. = Costliness of living and wunlimited personal in- dulgence mean enfeebled manhood and decaying intelligence. The Decay of Honor and Honesty. Buf in our case it means something ‘more 'and worse. It means the growth of a relaxed sense of individual honor - and common honesty. It means a disposition that will have luxuries by paying for them if it can, but which will have them at any cost. Is there any degradation more ab- ject and slavery more absolute than they are now sure to involve? Every now and then the community stands aghast at some vast system of pillage or some tragedy of horror, in which a poor wretch rather than face his cred- itors drowns himself or blows out his brains. A dozen of his fellowd, has- tily gathered and as hastlly dismissed, register their verdict of suicide oc- casioned by financial difficulties and the story is soon forgotten. I am called to treat scores of peo- ple with shattered brains and nerves —but they are not the fruits of over- work. The most fruitful sources of physical derangement and mental and nervous disorders in America to-day are pecuniary embarrassments and family dissensions. The Home Against Itself. Far oftener than we imagine those two things lie close together. A father, crowded beyond endurance by the strain to maintain a scale of living long ago pitched too high, a mother consclously degraded by the petty eva~ sions and domestic dishonesty that draws money from wages or marketing and spends it for dress, the sons and daughters taught prodigality by exam- ple and upbraided for it in speech— what can come to such a home or fam- {ly save mutual recrimination and per- sonal allenation? How can love reign in a household where mutual confl- dence and mutual sacrifices, where the tralts that insplre respect and kindle affection are equally and utterly want- ing? Where shall we look for a corrective? I answen, in a higher ideal of the true wealth and welf ing in our day cc as money. Nefther the j the tragedy of death are separate from a query as to how much shall be in- berited or bequeathed. While we scorn the French marriage of convenience In name, we hallow and observe it most religiously in fact. Pov- erty if not a disgrace is somehow ac- counted an impertinence, and the vul- garities of ostentatious display are par- donable, and even admirable, In precise proportion to the size of the fortune that indulges them. Love is not for sale, and that mys- terious sentiment which must be won and deserved—not purchased—never goes along with the jointure nor can be made over with transfers of real estate. One of the greatest tragedies in modern life is the desperate effort to put heart in such transactions and S0 ennoble a bargain with an emotion. And women? Do we not know that there are thousands of them to whom a home is as impossible a thing as a castle in Spain? Do we not know that there are thousands of them who have no human being except themselves to depend upen? Especially on this Eastern sea coast women are redund- ant. I have no sympathy with a radi- calism of female reform, but some- thing must be done. Our American women, thank God, have never re- cruited the ranks of that dismal col- ony that borders on Salt Lake, which, though American in name, is really foreign in the emigration that has peo- pled it. What is needed is that the sphere of woman be so widened that g ¢> Lot DL 0GR OF BUor Forrar . whatever work she can do modestly she shall be permitted and encouraged to attempt. As to Race Suicide. As for our mothers, it is certainly regrettable that Am and men of the young repu came from large familles. It was the assoclation of large familles of chil- dren w the doing for each other and their mutual bits of self-denial that made the men ef er and the women of s of other genera- each other, strong cha noble domest tions. I am asked if the women of this country my opinion, have too much independence. Our American women have their more largely than the women of any other country in the world. English women come next in point of liberty—personal freedom. In France they have less independence, and when one reaches Italy he finds the freedom of women there even more curtailed, The Peril of Divorce. It is at once needful and needless to point out the danger of the divorce habit which is assailing us. As in the disaffections between capital and labor, the differe betwen husband and wife can, in a great majority of cases, be settled outside the court of last re- sort. A If more patience and con- sideration vn each other will large- Iy e e this great and growing danger to American progress and wel- fare as a nation. Taking up the relation of the citizen to the industrial situation, this matter of arraying class aga exceptional interest just now, not only because such differ es be e acute in the warmer rather than the colder seasons, but because we are on the eve of a natjonal election. This sullen class hatred, which is quite as acute here under our Democratic or Repub- of government as in the nst mass is of gether certain industrial interests, but our whole social fabric. The Lust of Riches. There is much to be said on both sides. Christ did not dengpunce wealth any more than he denounced pauper- ism. He did not abhor money—he used it. He did not abhor the com- pany of rich men—he sought it. What he denounced was the love of wealth; the lust of riches; the vulgar snob- bishness that chose exclusively the fellowship or the ways of rich men— greed and luxury and self-indulgence. But it is quite another question when we have to do with that class of cap- {talists whose manipulations of val- ues have essentially no quality that is different from the legerdemain of the card sharper. Their directorial chi- canery in connection with great cor- porations is one of the deepest stains on our commercial honor. Those Whom the Honest Will Avoid. These are the capitalists with whom honest men can hold no intercourse: (a) Managers and directors who, by manipulation of the stock market in collusion with others, artificially de- press values to the loss of fellow in- vestors. (b) Managers or directors of vast corporations who withhold reg- ular reports for their own personal advantage. (c) Managers or directors who employ intricate and obscure sys- tems of bookkeeping which mislead or deceive. By such methods as these great for- tunes have been made which de not honestly beiong to *ir possessors. As certainly as the tendency of the age is to combine or focus interests in the field of capital there will and must be a similar movement among the peo- ple at large. The trads union has come to stay and it is a tremendous force which’ must be reckoned with in a sane, careful and respectful way. The man who does not wish to join a union must not be forced to, but neither must the man who is a union- ist be compelled to forego his union while the employer is at liberty to join a trust. (Copyright, 1904, by Central News and Press Exchange)