Bars and Shadows by Ralph Chaplin
page 10 of 42 (23%)
page 10 of 42 (23%)
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Then it is that the real test comes between the old world and the new. The old world holds power--economic, social, political. It holds in its hands income, respectability and preferment, with which it seeks first to buy, and later to destroy all who oppose its will. Buying is the easiest, the safest, and in the long run the cheapest method of gaining the desired end. Each generation contains some men and women possessed of unusual endowments--as organizers and enterprisers, as spokesmen, as singers, as seers and prophets. These gifted ones the old order sets out to win--lavishing upon them gratitudes, favors, rewards; filling their lives out of the horn of economic and social plenty; teasing their vanities and gratifying their ambitions; soothing, cajoling, flattering. By these means the rulers succeed in bringing under their control the strong thinkers, the capable executives, the sensitive, the talented--all in fact who are worth buying, and who can be bought for income and for social preferment, even though they may have been born into the families of the humblest and most oppressed of the workers. Most men and women go where income promises and social preferment beckons. But not all! There are some whose love of justice, truth and beauty; whose yearning for betterment and increased social opportunity, outweighs the tempting bait of ease and respectability. Them the established order smites. The strength of the old order is measured superficially by the extent of its control over the means of common livelihood and by the |
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