Such was news according to the New York “Sun” of Charles A. Dana’s time; the sort of news from which I got all my political ideas during boyhood. Seven times every week I would read articles and editorials in that tone, and laugh with glee over them; and then, every Sunday morning and evening I would go to church, and listen while the preacher read the words of Jeremiah and Isaiah and Micah and Elijah and Amos and John the Baptist, and I would accept them all as the divinely inspired words of God. How was I, poor lad, to know that the very same prophets were back on earth, living the very same lives and making the very same speeches--trying to save America, as of old they had tried to save Judea, from the hands of the defilers and the despoilers? CHAPTER XII KANSAS AND JUDEA How did it happen that political agitators, living in the Mississippi Valley at the end of the nineteenth century, were identical in spirit with religious prophets in Asia Minor five hundred years before Christ? The answer is that civilizations rise and fall, and history repeats itself. Let me describe one historic process, and you watch my statement phrase by phrase, and see if you can tell whether I am referring to ancient Judea or to modern Kansas. A people traveled for a long distance, fleeing from despotism and seeking religious liberty. They were a primitive, hardy people, having a stern faith in one God who personally directed their lives. They came to a rich land, and conquered it by hard fighting, under this personal direction of their God. They built homes, they gathered flocks and herds, they accumulated wealth; and they saw this wealth pouring into cities, to be absorbed by governing and trading classes. Their agricultural democracy evolved into a plutocratic imperialism. The landlords and the tax collectors left them nothing but a bare living; the fruits of their labor paid for palaces and temples with golden roofs, and for golden calves and monkey dinners, and rulers with a thousand chorus girls. So there was revolt in the country districts, and one after another came prophets of discontent. Always these prophets were radical in the economic sense, voicing the wrongs of the poor and helpless, the widows and the orphans. Always they were conservative in the social and religious sense, calling the people back to simplicity and honesty of life, to faith in the one true God. Always they used the symbols of the old tribal creed; repudiating new-fangled divinities such as Baal and Darwin, and gathering at Armageddon to battle for the Lord. Throughout their lives they were stoned and persecuted and covered with ridicule; when they died they became their country’s glory, and their words were cherished and embodied in sacred records which school children were made to study. Now, how much of that is Judea, and how much is Kansas?