Presto

20
August 8, 1925.
PRESTO
out in the open and uphold publicly the views they en-
dorse privately.
"If you and your friends want to have some real sport
with them, why not form a 'welfare' organization to ex-
pose and oppose the corrupt and corrupting modern sex
teachings, and ask these posers to denounce said teach-
ings, and the teachers, from their pulpits? Why not
ask them to uphold Miss Willard's view of 'ideal' sex
living and see what they say? You will get many a
good laugh out of the alibis and excuses they will offer,
and will get plenty of ammunition to use in discrediting
them as wise advisers and leaders, if you want to show
them up for the moral cowards and hypocrites they are.
"If you want it, I can furnish you with an abundance
of information regarding- the books containing these cor-
rupt and corrupting sex teachings and the people who
write, publish, recommend or circulate them. Some of
this information will greatly surprise you and your
friends, I know. One old ba.ttler who has been engaged
in reform work for over thirty years, trying to abolish
existing evils by more drastic law enforcement, was
astounded and dumbfounded by this information when it
was brought to his attention. He has tried to interest
deacons, ministers, bishops and others in the subject,
but 1 have not heard of their doing anything as yet.
"In my opinion they won't do anything until you. or
some other man with wealth and influence, gets after
them and demands that they state the reasons for their
apathy, indifference and inactivity.
His Fighting Qualities.
"One of these posers has gone out of his way te say
of you, your views and 'your crown': 'Such raving** as
this have but one reason behind them—namely, "I like
my liquor, ami I want my friends to have it; I do not
like to have to be known as a law breaker in order to
carry out my own desire." Your crowd should realize,
etc' I don't know anything about the fighting qualities
of other members of 'your crowd,' but your answer to
this poser's insulting letter most conclusively proves that
you are not going to tamely submit to being discredited
by him and his 'crowd.'
"My fighting ancestors were among the so-called
.'traitors to their king and country.' who fought for, won,
and passed on to their descendants the rights and privi-
leges the people of this 'pacifist' poser's caliber now want
to voluntarily surrender. I imagine you come of the
same old revolutionary stock, and respect for Good laws
because they are good, not all laws merely because they
are laws. I imagine you also request and honor good
women and girls because they are good, not all women
and girls merely because they are females.
"I hope you will pardon the length of this communi-
cation. This is a very large and very important subject,
and it is easier to write a book or shelf of books about
it than it is to write a short letter.
"Yours most sincerely,
"(Signed) A. W. YEATER."
After Drake Dinner.
Mr. Bent also reviewed the correspondence which
appears in these pages, concluding with the letter
from Mr. B. C. Roloff, extracts from which also
appear in a foregoing letter to the Rev. Putnam,
and concluding as follows:
"Let me add that the morning after the dinner in
the Drake, I was approached by a lady in the rotunda.
Evidently someone had pointed me out to her, for
she came up and shook my hand most cordially.
She didn't give her name, but she said: 'I want to
shake hands with a man who has got the courage at
least to stand up and tell what the Eighteenth
Amendment and the Volstead Act are doing to the
youth of this country.' Those are her very words.
It seems people are afraid to tell what they know.
I am not.
"I now have great pleasure in introducing my
friend, Mr. Harry F. Atwood, who spoke to us at
the dinner on June 9 at the Drake."
ADDRESS OF MR. HARRY F. ATWOOD.
I am sure it is a pleasure to meet the members of
the Piano Club. I have been going about the country
for something like seven years, talking almost daily
on the Constitution of the United States. My wife
says that I am getting to be a bore socially, because
I have to get on to this subject in some way wher-
ever I am. She said that if I kept on my friends
. would feel like the prisoner down in Texas who had
been convicted of murder and when brought into
court the judge said: "If you have anything to say
why sentence of death should not be pronounced
upon you, you have five minutes." The prisoner re-
plied: "I have nothing particular to say." Then a
man crowded to the bench and said: "Your Honor,
if there is no objection, I would like to utilize that
five minutes with a talk on the single tax." The
judge looked down at the prisoner and said: "Have
you any objection, sir?" He replied: "None what-
eevr, only I would like to be executed first."
(Laughter.)
Now, when you hear the average person talking
about the Constitution, he talks about the Declara-
tion of Independence and the Constitution as though
they were the same thing. Of course, they are just
as different as day and night. The Declaration of
Independence was written a year and a day after
Washington was sworn in as commander-in-chief of
the army, and while they talked about liberty or
death, they were careful not to get on the battlefield.
It simply contains phrases that have appeared in
political documents ever since government was dis-
cussed.
The Constitution, on the other hand, was a docu-
ment written by men who, after winning the Revo-
lutionary War, and for five years living under chaotic
conditions, sought by the lessons of history to work
out a plan of government.
Causes of Misunderstanding.
Another reason for the prevailing misunderstand-
ing is that 1 don't think there has ever been a good
definition of the Constitution. The dictionaries and
encyclopedias say the Constitution is the organic law,
which suggests the question, what is an inorganic
law? Or they say the Constitution is the fundamen-
tal law, which suggests the question, are the other
laws unfundamental?
I made a statement in Cleveland about four years
ago. I said: "1 will let you take an audience of a
hundred people, college presidents, superintendents
of schools, members of the bar, anyone you want; I
will make a speech of 40 minutes and I will make
twenty-five statements that are not true, and if any
one of the audience recognizes any one of the mis-
statements I will pay the cost of the dinner."
The assistant superintendent of schools came to my
office and said: "I have been wanting to see you a
long time. That statement you made in Cleveland
appeared in the paper."
If you take our Constitution, you will find it is
just this: It is a statement of purposes, followed by
a plan for setting up a mechanism to administer gov-
ernment in harmony with the purposes set forth.
A lot of people think of the Constitution as deter-
mining what is right and what is wrong. In the
original Constitution you won't find even a sugges-
tion of such a sort of thing.
The impression of the average person is that some
wonderful people several centuries ago came over
here, God-guided, as it were, with very high ideals
and wonderful aspirations for better things and be-
gan building very wisely day by day, until they
reared a great governmental structure.
Several years before the Constitution was written,
conditions were such that the mob drove our Con-
gress from Philadelphia into New Jersey, Shay's
rebellion assaulted the court houses in Massachusetts,
money was worth two and a half cents on the dollar,
we hadn't any credit anywhere, and trade was para-
lyzed.
Washington was getting to be an old man, and he
said in 1786. "Unless something is done, I see noth-
ing ahead but the black night of anarchy."
Under those conditions, these men met and wrote
the Constitution.
Rapid Restoration.
In three years all that was changed, we had orderly
government and our credit was firmly established.
People in all countries were asking, what happened
over there that brought that might change? After
the Constitution was adopted there were more inven-
tions given to the world in seventy-five years than
in all the thousands of years before.
It couldn't be that people became suddenly much
wiser, or gifted with more inventive ability. It
simply meant that under the Constitution there was
safety and the individual was made secure in the en-
joyment of his rewards for his inventions. We de-
veloped here a people of great initiative, and the Con-
stitution was responsible for all those things.
Any amendment would be proper that was de-
signed to change the mechanism of the Constitution.
Amendment 11 is a very proper amendment, because
it made it impossible for the people of one State to
sue another State, or for the people of another coun-
try to sue a State. All they had to do was to strike
out twelve words in Section 1 of the Judiciary. But
instead -of that, they put it on as an appendix.
I am one who after seven years' study feel it was
just as absurd to put on the first ten amendments to
the Constitution as it would be if you had a fine
automobile, ready to run, and someone came along
who didn't know anything about the making of it but
wanted to get some credit and suggested putting a
trailer on it with ten tin cans, and when the auto-
mobile went down the street the trailer and the ten
tin cans would get all the attention.
When people talk about the Constitution they
usually begin referring to the first ten amendments.
I could take any one of them and show that the
very thing suggested is as much better provided for
in the original Constitution, as a building erected on
cement pillars instead of on tooth-picks. Of course,
that statement would take a lot of time to develop.
Another thing they did that they were very posi-
tive about: they established a representative gov-
ernment. We have talked a great deal about de-
mocracy for ten years. The men who founded this
Republic knew the dangers of democracy and warned
us against them. They said, in Federalist No. 10:
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence
and contention. They have ever been found incom-
patible with personal security or the rights of prop-
erty, and have in general been as short in their lives
as violent in their deaths."
Much Talk, Little Action.
Now if we talked about throwing stones at this
window (indicating) but never did it, the window
would not suffer much. So we did a lot of loose
talking about rights and very little about duties and
responsibilities. But until twenty-five years ago we
never introduced any laws for direct action. About
that time we began nutting on laws for the initiaive,
referendum, recall, and recall of judicial decisions.
As soon as we got direct action, we began talking
about all these questions ourselves—things that we
didn't know anything about.
There isn't anything new about democracy. All
the democracies history knows of have had a stroke
of paralysis.
There never has been such an alarming change in
the history of any country as there has been here
the past twenty-five years in the lowering of public
morals.
Mr. Bent: What about electing senators direct?
Mr. Atwood: That is included in my statement.
The Senate, notwithstanding its shortcomings, was
regarded all over the world as the greatest delibera-
tive body in the world, and today, after twenty-five
years of this nonsense, a good many people think
it is a pretty good place to start a mental sanitarium.
The tendency in selecting public men during recent
years, instead of weighing them as you would an
architect, engineer, piano maker or anything of that
kind, has been to select people who are popular.
That is, we assume they are popular, although I don't
think any man ever lived, including Jesus Christ, who i
had followers who would follow him against their '
real convictions.
j
Since direct action has come upon us, demagogues J
have sprung up who have been all the time talking !
about the people. In every interview they talk J
about their love for the people and their intention to :
guard the people. They don't know anything about :
fundamental propositions.
,
The Constitution says: "We guarantee to every
State a republican form of government." When they
provided for submitting the Constitution to the States,
they said: "When nine States in convention ratify
this Constitution," and in providing for amendments,
they said: "When three-quarters of the State legis-
latures ratify it."
The Referendum.
In other words, you will not find the faintest hint)
of democracy in the original Constitution. No one
would think of having a referendum for a surgical
operation.
There is nothing new in it. It was the way Christ
was tried. Outside of the Constitution there is
nothing that throws so much light on this question
as the trial of Christ. He was out on the street, an j
innocent man doing good. A mob seized him and >
took him before Pontius Pilate, and he, standing ; .:
there in a representative capacity as a judge, said:
"I find no fault in this man." In a representative ;
government, Jesus would have been walking the :
street again in five minutes, a free man. But the
crowd said they wanted a referendum. Pilate per-
mitted a judicial recall, which meant the crucifixion
of Jesus.
The Constitution is an elastic thing. People say:
"You know we are living in different times and
under different conditions, and those men could not
have foreseen this industrial age."
When they wrote the scale of music, do you think
they knew there would ever be radios and phono-!
graphs? But it makes no difference to the scale of
music. When the man first invented the ten digits, i
did he foresee adding machines and the building of:
skyscrapers?
In the Constitution they didn't provide for the'
amount of salary to be paid an official of the govern-!
ment, or the number of cabinet officers. They left;
such things to be determined by future conditions.:
But they drew up a mechanism just as adaptable to^
all future needs of government as the scale of music;
or the ten digits in music and mathematics.
j
W. H. COLLINS MAKES
TOUR OF EASTERN TRADER
Sales Manager of Seeburg Piano Co., and
M. Lenenoff, Seeburg Eastern Representa-
tive, Busy Expanding Seeburg Line.
W. H. Collins, sales manager of the J. P. Seeburg
Piano Co., 1510 Dayton St., Chicago, recently de-
parted for an extended tour of the Eastern trade,
where he will study conditions in the automatic field
with the view of expanding the Seeburg line in that
territory.
Accompanying Mr. Collins is M. Lenenoff, eastern
representative of the J. P. Seeburg Company, and
through whose efforts the Chicago firm is enjoying a
steady demand in the eastern states. Mr. Lenenofl
has given the customary Seeburg service and co-
operation to dealers, who have shown their appre-
ciation with liberal orders.
The many styles and models of the Seeburg lint
afford the dealer an unlimited choice of automatic
instruments. New styles with additional features
were added to the already wide line early in the
summer and have proven conclusively that the See-
burg slogan, "The Key to Positive Profits," is not i
myth.
LARGE DELEGATION VISITS
LESTER PIANO CO. FACTORY
Representatives of J. H. Troup Music House, o
Harrisburg, Inspect Factory.
On Jury lx>th fourteen men from the sales organi
zation of the J. H. Troup Music House, Harrisburg
Pa., Lester piano representatives at the city named
motored by automobile from Harrisburg to Lester
and spent the day there going through the factory
The Harrisburg daily papers published a good re
port of the event which will be reproduced in Presti
next week. A photograph was taken containing sev
enteen figures. Fourteen of these are men of thi
J. H. Troup Music House organization, and th
other three are George Miller, treasurer of the Les
ter Piano Company; Jacob Schiller, vice-president o
sales; and George L. Miller, vice-president of manu
facturing.
The J. H. Troup Music House is one of the mos
active in the East—or anywhere else for that mat
ter. And the fact that the group of fourteen repre
sentatives who visited the Lester factory embrace
four Troups seems to prove an unusual family cc
operation in sustaining the progress of the Harris
burg house.
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