Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 36.djvu/79

 of faithful and efficient labor, the confidence and support of patrons of many years. Have these people no rights that should be considered? Dissatisfaction, alienation, distrust, feelings of suspicion, resentment and discontent have resulted from this method of doing business. Lynching bees, the beastly cruelties of the mob, riots, night riders, indifference to human life, contempt of authority, disregard of law, the miscarriage of justice, the barbarism of greed—all these things have to be reckoned with. In feudal days in England and prior to the French Revolution strong men dealt with arms and force and lorded it over and oppressed the masses. Looking upon them as their natural prey and as subservient to their will, the same class of men in this day and generation deal with money, stocks and combines and the manipulation of vast properties and business and the corruption of lawmakers. These strong men and corporations claim they are above the law—that they are a law unto themselves! The conduct of business by a favored few, regardless of obedience to statutes, to the detriment of those who are required to comply with the law. The inequality of punishment for crime. The power and immunity of wealth from correction are signs of decadence and warnings of approaching danger, promoting socialism and fostering the growth of anarchy. The sky is calm, the waters still as they ripple in the passing breeze, but the faint rumbling of the thunders of unrest upon the quiet air portend a storm that will darken the sky of prosperity and lash the quiet waters into a seething rage of ungovernable fury, that like a besom of destruction may sweep away old landmarks and lighten the heavens with the fires of revolution. I am not a pessimist nor an alarmist, but it behooves us to look at facts and conditions squarely in the face and not, like the ostrich, stick our heads in the sands and imagine we are immune to danger. The Constitution ratified by the Convention of 1788 so pleased Washington that he styled it "the most perfect system ever before established by the wisdom of man." De Tocqueville, the great political philosopher of France, declared the theory of government embodied in the instrument "a great discovery in modern political science." Lord Brougham, the distinguished