The Cheapest Commodity
By E. G.
The Cheapest Commodity.—The Portland Oregonian says that "the cheapest commodity in the United States to-day is human life. It is protected by no tariff; it is monopolized by no trust. Even the courts which are instituted primarily to safeguard life make it of less account than property. Mr. Justice Brewer says very frequently that the chief duty of the Supreme Court is to protect property, but it is difficult to recall anything he has ever said about its obligation to protect life. . . . The wholesale murder and holocaust of a family excites a little passing attention even in Marion County, where murder is one of the common pastimes of excitable citizens." And so the article goes on; tells us that the death of a child under painfully suspicious circumstances is not worth investigating, and asks, "Are we returning to savagery? Not even Italy, the land of brigandage, where the knife is thrust into the enemy's back on the slightest provocation, can compare with our record of homicides." Referring to suggested causes, the Oregonian admits that it looks as tho inherent "cussedness" had a good deal to do with it. "We like to praise our national good temper, but a country which can show more murders to the thousand than any other in the world must shelter a certain amount of temper which is not so good." And this charge of the Oregonian in the Northwest is in harmony with that of the Atlanta Constitution from the Southeast which we quoted in our last issue, under the heading, "Our National Shame." The word of God bares the secret of it all when it declares that in the last days lawlessness (disregard of God's law) shall abound; and when men lose regard for God's law we may expect a harvest of crime against human law. E. G.