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The Second Era
1895-1921
The Ethical Movement Continues Action
Walter Russell was twenty-four years of
age in 1895, when he joined the Twilight Club. Between that time and
1921, leading workers in this ethical movement were:
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Walter Russell
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James Howard
Bridge
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Edwin Markham
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Helen Knox
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Charles De Kay
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Alexis Carrel
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Dan Beard
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John Dewey
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Andrew Carnegie
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Robert
Collier
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Richard La Gallienne
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Cornelius
Vanderbilt
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Sophie Irene Loeb
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Mrs. Harry P.
Whitney
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August Heckscher
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Irving
Bacheller
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Rudyard Kipling
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Ralph Waldo
Trine
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Hamlin
Garland
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Theodore Roosevelt
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Lee De Forest
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Calvin Coolidge
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John
Habberton
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George Gould
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Irvin Cobb
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Louis Tiffany
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Walter
Damrosch
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Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler
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Jesse Laskey
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Ernest Thompson Seton
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Michael Pupin
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Adolph Ochs
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William
Childs
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During the second era, the Twilight
Club members met at various houses in New York, most frequently at the
home of Richard Watson Gilder. Various members and invited guests
presided as speakers at these meetings, Andrew Carnegie, Edwin Markham,
Walter Russell and Theodore Roosevelt being among these.
Andrew Carnegie strongly advocated the necessity of spreading the seeds
of culture, morality and ethics. He promised to endow millions for
educational purposes—particularly through building libraries. He also
organized the Authors’ Club, providing a house on 34th Street in New
York, entirely free of charge providing that each member of the club
agreed to write something every year that had a direct bearing on and
reference to the moral code of ethics.
The Twilight Club movement inspired many written works related to the
code. Others besides writers became equally engaged in action. Out of
this visionary effort came the Scout movement, started by Lord
Baden-Powell in England and Dan Beard in America. The Chicago group was
inspired to form a branch of the Twilight Club, which included an
Authors’ Club. As their meetings were ‘rotated’ from house to house,
they eventually named their group the Rotary Club, now the Rotary Club
International, with millions of members all over the world devoted to
service. Other service clubs followed, such as the Kiwanis and the
Lions.
Others inspired by the Twilight Club vision, such as Edwin Markham and
Sophie Irene Loeb, worked to bring about change in social conditions,
such as the elimination of sweatshops, compulsory education and child
labor laws. Eugene Grace, president of the Bethlehem Steel Company, and
Adolph Ochs, owner of the New York Times, worked to establish
advertising censorship. Thomas J. Watson and Walter Russell campaigned
for the elimination of the caveat emptor practice of business, which
eventually led to the establishment of the Better Business Bureaus.
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"Build
thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
That thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Til then at length are free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."
-from The Chambered Nautilus,
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior
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