Title: Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
Author: Brisbane, Arthur
Language: English
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EDITORIALS from the HEARST NEWSPAPERS  {Arthur Brisbane}



CONTENTS
Why Are All Men Gamblers?
No Man Understands Iron
We Long for Immortal Imperfection--We Can't Have It.
Three Water-Drops Converse
Did We Once Live on the Moon?
William Henry Channing's Symphony
The Existence of God--Parable of the Blind Kittens
Have the Animals Souls?
Jesus' Attitude Toward Children
Study of the Character of God
The Fascinating Problem of Immortality
Discontent the Motive Power of Progress
The Automobile Will Make Us More Human
Let Us Be Thankful
The Harm That Is Done by Our Friends
Shall We Tame and Chain the Invisible Microbe As We Now Chain
Niagara?
The Elephant That Will Not Move Has Better Excuses Than We Have
for Folly Displayed
Let Us Be Thankful
What Will 999 Years Mean to the Human Race?
The Azores--A Small Lost World in a Universe of Water
No Napoleonic Chess Player on an Air Cushion
A Girl's Face in the Gaslight
The "Criminal" Class
The Wonderful Magnet
Who Is Independent? Nobody
When We Begin Using Land Under the Oceans
Where Your Body Came From
How Marriage Began
Man's Willingness to Work
The Human Brain Beats the Coal Mines
How the Other Planets Will Talk to Us
Shall We Do Without Sleep Some Day?
The Three Best Things in the World
The Value of Solitude
There Should Be a Monument to Time
A Mother's Work and Her Hopes
Your Work Is Your Brain's Gymnasium
The Steeple, Moving Like the Hand of a Clock
Cultivate Thought-Teach Your Brain to Work Early
The Wind Does Not Rule Your Destiny
One of the Many Corpses in the Johnstown Mine
"Limiting the Amount of a Day's Work"
Catching a Red-Hot Bolt
The Trusts and the Union--How Do They Differ?
France Has Learned Her Lesson
Union Men as Slave Owners
Again the Limited Day's Work
To the Merchants
What About the Chinese, Kind Sir?
150 against 150,000--We Favor the 150,000
To-day's World-Struggle
White-Rabbit Millionaires and Other Things
No Happiness Save in Mental and Physical Activity
The Owner of a Golden Mountain
The Human Weeds in Prison
Crime Is Dying Out
The Value of Poverty to the World
600 Teachers Now, 600,000 Good Americans in the Future
Education--The First Duty of Government
Poverty Is the Father of Vice, Crime and Failure
The Importance of Education Proved in Lincoln's Case
Knowledge Is Growth
A Whiskey Bottle
Those Who Laugh at a Drunken Man
Law Cannot Stop Drunkenness--Education Can
The Drunkard's Side of It
Drink a Slow Poison
To Those Who Drink Hard--You Have Slipped the Belt
Try Whiskey on Your Friend's Eyeball
What Are the Ten Best Books?
The Marvelous Balance of the Universe--A Lesson in the Texas Flood
The Earth Is Only a Front Yard
Last Week's Baby Will Surely Talk Some Day
The Good That Is Done by the Trusts
Trusts and the Senate
The Promising Toad's Head
Trusts Will Drive Labor Unions Into Politics
The Trusts Are National School Teachers
A Woman to Be Pitied
When Will Woman's Mental Life Begin?
The Cow That Kicks Her Weaned Calf Is All Heart
Respectable Women Who Listen to "Faust"
Why Women Should Vote
Astronomy- Woman's Future Work
Woman's Vanity Is Useful
To Editorial Writers--Adopt Ruskin's Main Idea
Imagination Without Dreaming the Secret of Material Success
The One Who Needs No Statue
The Vast Importance of Sleep
Woman Sustains, Guides and Controls the World
The Story of the Complaining Diamond
Don't Be in a Hurry, Young Gentlemen
hen the Baby Changed Into a Fourteen-year-old
The Eye That Weighs a Ton
What Animal Controls Your Spirit?
From Mammoths to Mosquitoes--From Murder to  Hypocrisy
The Monkey and the Snake Fight
Too Little and Too Much
Do You Feel Discouraged?
Two Kinds of Discontent
What the Bartender Sees
What Should Be a Man's Object in Life?
Cruel Frightening of Children
It Is Natural for Children to Be Cruel
Two Thin Little Babies Are Left
A Baby Can Educate a Man


The articles in this book were published originally in the
editorial columns of the various Hearst newspapers throughout the
country.

These articles may have some interest for the student of modern
happenings, because of the fact that the newspapers publishing
them have an aggregate daily circulation of two millions of
copies, and are read each day by no fewer than five millions of
men and women. Such wide circulation of identical opinions on
current events, in different parts of the country, is a new
feature of our national life. The character of such writings, and
their probable influence upon the public mind, whatever their
lack of intrinsic merit, may be of sufficient importance to
justify the publication of this collection of ephemeral writings.



WHY ARE ALL MEN GAMBLERS?

The annual report of the gambling house at Monte Carlo shows a
profit of about $5,000,000.

A large collection of human beings travel from all parts of the
world to Monte Carlo for the sake of giving $5,000,000 to the
gambling concern there.

Wherever you look on earth to-day or in the past you find human
beings gambling, and you will find the gambling instinct stronger
than any other--stronger than the love of drink, infinitely
stronger than the love of normal, honest gain.

 * * *

Christopher Columbus's sailors gambled on the way over, and the
Indians on this side were gambling while waiting to be
discovered.

In an office overlooking Trinity graveyard, in New York City, an
old man, past eighty, with a fortune of at least $50,000,000,
gambles every day with all the excitement of youth.  The
fluctuations in his game bring to his sallow cheeks the color
that no other human emotion could bring there.

On his way home this old man passes crowds of children in the
streets and looks down, concerned and sorrowful, to find that
they, too, are gambling.

They are matching pennies or shaking dice.

* * *

Clergymen are startled and amazed to find that women are gambling
heavily.

They have gambled heavily ever since civilization has progressed
far enough to give them large sums to gamble with.

Marie Antoinette staked thousands of louis at a time at
Versailles.

She was so wrapped up in gambling she could not see that her neck
was in danger.

When the lava came down from Vesuvius it buried Pompeiians who
were gambling.

The men who dig up the old monuments in Africa find gambling
instruments crumbling away side by side with appliances for
taking human life.

* * *

Nowhere in the lower forms of animal life, so far as we know, is
there the slightest indication of the gambling instinct.

The monkey, the elephant, love whiskey, and easily become
drunkards.

The passion for alcohol seems innate in animal life; even the
wise ant can be readily induced to disgrace himself if alcohol is
put near him.

For all the human weaknesses and mainsprings--ambition,
affection, vanity, drunkenness, ferocity, greediness, cunning--we
can find beginnings among the lower animals.

But man appears to have evolved from within himself the gambling
instinct for his own especial damnation.

Where did the instinct come from?  Why was it planted in us?

Like every other instinct with which intelligent nature endows
us, it must have its good purpose, and it must not be judged
merely in the corrupted form in which we study it at Monte Carlo
or in Wall Street.

Perhaps the spirit of gambling is really only an atrophied,
perverted form of the spirit of adventure.

Columbus staked his life and gambled, when he started across the
water.

The leaders of the American Revolution expressly staked their
lives, their fortunes and their "sacred honor" in signing the
Declaration of Independence.  They were noble gamblers, working
for the welfare of their fellows.

Perhaps gambling is only a perverted form of intelligent
ambition--we are all natural gamblers because we have within us
the quality which makes us willing to risk our own comfort,
security and present happiness for a result that seems better
worth while.

The universality of the gambling instinct in human beings is
certainly worthy of our study.



NO MAN UNDERSTANDS IRON
HOW CAN WE HOPE TO UNDERSTAND GOD?

Is there laughter in heaven--or can nothing move the eternal
heavenly calm?

If mirth exists among the perpetually blissful, how must the
angels laugh when in idle moments they listen to our speculations
concerning the Divinity?  They peer down at us as we look at ants
dragging home a fragment of dead caterpillar. They hear us say
things like this:

If God exists, why does He not reveal himself to ME?

How could God exist before He created the world?  Force cannot
exist or demonstrate its existence without matter.  How could a
creator exist except with creation around him?

Where did He live before He made heaven?

If He is all-powerful, could He in five seconds make a six
months' old calf?  If He made it in five seconds it would not be
six months old.

Nonsense more subtle comes from the educated, from those who know
enough to be preposterous in a pretentious way.

Hear the wise man:

God does not exist, because I cannot prove His existence:  I can
prove everything else.  With my law of gravitation I point to a
speck in space and say:  "You'll find a new planet there," and
you find it.  If a God existed could I not also point to Him?  If
I can trace a comet in its flight, could I not trace the comet's
maker?

Huxley says:  "The cosmic process has no sort of relation to
moral ends."  That's a philosopher's way of saying something
foolish.  Lalande, the astronomer, remarked that he had swept the
entire heavens with his telescope and found no God there.  That's
funnier than any ant who should say:  "I've searched this whole
dead caterpillar and found no God, so THERE IS NO GOD."  The
corner of space which our telescopes can "sweep" is smaller,
compared to the universe, than a dead caterpillar compared with
this earth.

Moleschott, an able physiologist, believed that phosphorus was
essential to mental activity.  Perhaps he did prove that.  But he
said:  "No thought without phosphorus," and thought he had wiped
the human soul out of existence.  Philosophers do not laugh at
Moleschott.  But they would laugh at a savage who would say:

"I have discovered that there is a catgut in a fiddle.  No fiddle
without catgut--no music without cats.  Don't talk to me about
soul or musical genius--it's all catgut."

We peek out at this universe from our half-developed corner of
it.  We see faintly the millions of huge suns circling with their
planet families billions of miles away.  We see our own little
sun rise and set; we ask ourselves a thousand foolish questions
of cause and Ruler--and because we cannot answer, we decry faith.

Wise doubter, look at a small piece of iron.  It looks solid.
You suppose that its various parts touch.  But submit it to cold.

You make it smaller.  Then the particles did not touch.  Do they
touch now?  No; relatively they are farther apart than this
planet from its nearest neighbor.

That piece of iron, apparently solid, consists of clusters of
atoms wonderfully grouped, each cluster called a molecule.  The
molecular cluster is invisible, millions of clusters in the
smallest visible fragment.  The atom is accepted by science as
the final particle of matter.  Its name indicates that it is
supposed to be indivisible.  When science gets to the atom it
calmly gives up and says:  "That is so small that it can no
longer be divided."  A reasonable enough conclusion on the
surface, considering that you might have millions of atoms of
iron in one corner of your eye and not know it.

But why should the atom be incapable of further division?  If it
is any size at all it can be thought of as split.

Where does the divisibility of matter end, if anywhere?  What is
there SOLID about iron?  Nothing in reality, except that it seems
to us solid.  Already, with the X-ray, we can look through it.
Forces such as heat and electricity pass through it more readily
than through free air.

Science, which gradually finds things out, denying as it goes
along everything one step beyond, tells you truly that the
clusters of atoms in iron float in a sea of ether, just as do our
planets going round the sun.  Heat the iron intensely.  What
happens?  You get what you call white heat.  The white heat and
the white light come from the increase of wave motion in this
ether, and this ether, absolutely imponderable, of a tenuity
inconceivable, possesses elasticity greater and more powerful
than that of coiled steel.  ----

So much for one small piece of iron, such as you would kick to
one side in a junk heap.  If it interests you, read pages 159 to
162 of John Fiske's admirable little book, "Through Nature to
God." You will finish the book the day you get it.

If you are surprised to learn how much you did not know about
iron--after living near bits of iron all your life--is it not
just possible that your mind may be too feeble to conceive of
God?

For the fly buzzing about the edge of Niagara Falls, the falls do
not exist.  The fly's brain cannot grasp their grandeur.  It can
understand only the speck of spray that falls on its wing.

You live with God around you, hopelessly incapable of perceiving
His existence save through that faint spark of unconscious faith
that was mercifully planted in you.  Snuff that out with dull
efforts at reason, and you have nothing.



WE LONG FOR IMMORTAL IMPERFECTION-- WE CAN'T HAVE IT.

All our longings for immortality, all our plans for immortal life
are based on the hope that Divine Providence will condescend to
let us live in another world as we live here.

Each of us wants to be himself in the future life, and to see his
friends as he knew them.

We want to preserve individuality forever and ever, when the
stars shall have faded away and the days of matter ended.

But what is individuality except imperfection?  You are different
from Smith, Smith is different from Jones.  But it is simply a
difference of imperfect construction.  One is more foolish than
another, one is more irresponsibly moved to laughter or
anger--that constitutes his personality.

Remove our imperfections and we should all be alike--smooth off
all agglomerations of matter on all sides and everything would be
spherical.

What would be the use of keeping so many of us if we were all
perfect, and therefore all alike?  One talks through his nose,
one has a deep voice.  But shall kind Providence provide two sets
of wings for nose talkers and chest talkers?  Why not make the
two into one good talker and save one pair of wings?

Why not, in fact, keep just one perfect sample, and let all the
rest placidly drift back to nothingness?  Or, better, why not
take all the goodness that there is in all the men and women that
ever were and melt it all down into one cosmic human being?  ----

The rain drops, the mist and the sprays of Niagara all go back to
the ocean in time.  Possibly we all go back at the end to the sea
of divine wisdom, whence we were sent forth to do, well or badly,
our little work down here:

Future punishment?  We think not.

One drop of water revives the wounded hero--another helps to give
wet feet and consumption to a little child.  It all depends on
circumstances.

Both drops go back to the ocean.  There is no rule that sends the
good drop to heaven and the other to boil forever and ever in a
sulphur pit.  ----

Troubles beset us when we think of a future state and our reason
quarrels always with our longings.  We all want--in heaven--to
meet Voltaire with his very thin legs.  But we cannot believe
that those skinny shanks are to be immortal.  We shall miss the
snuff and the grease on Sam Johnson's collar.  If an angel comes
up neat and smiling and says "Permit me to introduce myself --I
am the great lexicographer," we shall say "Tell that to some
other angel.  The great Samuel was dirty and wheezy, and I liked
him that way."

And children.  The idea of children in heaven flying about with
their little fluffy wings is fascinating.  But would eternal
childhood be fair to them?  If a babe dies while teething, shall
it remain forever toothless?  How shall its mother know it if it
is allowed to grow up?

Listen to Heine--that marvellous genius of the Jewish race:

"Yes, yes!  You talk of reunion in a transfigured shape.  What
would that be to me?  I knew him in his old brown surtout, and so
I would see him again.  Thus he sat at table, the salt cellar and
pepper caster on either hand.  And if the pepper was on the right
and the salt on the left hand he shifted them over.  I knew him
in a brown surtout, and so I would see him again."

Thus he spoke of his dead father.  Thus many of us think and
speak of those that are gone.  How foolish to hope for the
preservation of what is imperfect!

How important to have FAITH, and to feel that reality will
surpass anticipation, and that whatever IS will be the best thing
for us and satisfy us utterly.



THREE WATER DROPS CONVERSE

Three drops of water, stranded in a crevice on the side of an
inland mountain, talked in this way:

First Drop--"They say there is an ocean whence we came and to
which we shall return."

Second Drop--"They say we three drops are made in the image of
that ocean; that as far as we go, which is not far, we are
miniature oceans."

Third Drop--"Bosh and nonsense.  There is no ocean.  It is all
superstition.  Before we were born here, from the mist, what were
we?  When we evaporate in a few minutes what becomes of us?  You
two drops make me feel sorry for you.  I know that when I cease
reflecting that white cloud up there, that ends ME.  I have no
delusions about oceans or going back to anything." ----

You know what happened.  The cloud formed into rain and our three
drops were washed into a tiny trickling stream.  The thin stream
of rain ran into a brook, the brook into a river.  Soon the three
drops were back in the ocean--possibly without knowing it.

Shall we some day go rolling back to the ocean of cosmic wisdom
whence we came?

Is it possible that man is indeed made in the image of God, as
drops are made in the ocean's image--the individual men, like the
individual drops, being sent forth to do necessary cosmic work
through the universe, going back to the ocean after each errand
is done, and so going back and forth, forever and ever?

That would not be such a mean destiny, we should say.  It would
certainly be a very democratic form of cosmic government.  ----

Inferior men, inferior women, unworthy of comparison with
perfect, cosmic wisdom?

Not at all.  Not inferior men and women, but inferior mediums,
inferior brains, bodies and planets through which to work.

Is one drop of water inferior to another?  Is any inferior to the
purest drop in the ocean?

No.  But one drop runs through the gutter of a stable, another
rolls from a mountain spring, a third carries in solution the
germ of typhus.  But all three came pure from the ocean and all
will go back to the ocean pure.



DID WE ONCE LIVE ON THE MOON?
AND SHALL WE MOVE ON TO THE SUN SOME FINE DAY?

The most interesting questions are such as these:

Whence did we come?

Whither are we going?

And, by the way, what are we?  Are we of any true importance?
Are we a permanent part of the universal scheme, privileged to
move along through the ages and see the end as we have seen the
beginning?  Or are we, as advanced science says, merely like the
weevil in the biscuit--no part of the Baker's plan?

Are we indestructible specks of cosmic intelligence, lighting up
and animating one material body after another--never
destroyed--or do we play on this earth the passing part of the
microbe in the Brie cheese, which gives that cheese its flavor?
----

A great scientist, coldly analyzing the chemical processes
essential to the creation of each new human being, scoffs at any
possibility of immortality.  With the microscope at his eye, he
magnifies nature's mysteries; he sums up the investigations of
the Hertwig brothers; he discourses learnedly of the nucleolus of
the Cytula--or progeny cell.  He declares that science is able to
watch the creation of a human being, as it watches the progress
of a chick in the egg.  He asserts that each new creature is
merely the result of a chemical process blending qualities of the
mother and father.  Having a "final beginning," man must have a
final end.  Man--a mixture of two sets of qualities--has no more
chance of immortality than has beer, which is a mixture of malt
and hops.

Read and think over this cold summing-up of our mean, limited
destiny as science farthest advanced now sees it:

"It must appear utterly senseless now to speak of the immortality
of the human person, when we know how this person, with all its
individual qualities of body and mind, has arisen.  How can this
person possess an eternal life without end?  The human person,
like every other many-celled individual, IS BUT A PASSING
PHENOMENON OF ORGANIC LIFE.  With its death, the series of its
vital activities ceases entirely, just as it began."

That certainly is discouraging to a man who for fifty years has
sung "I want to be an angel."

Yet that is what Haeckel has to say about our chance of
immortality.  But the other side of the grave has the LAST say,
and we think it will discredit Haeckel.  We should even undertake
to do that now and here in two columns of a yellow journal.  But
we are DETERMINED before the column ends to ask you what you
think of our moon-earth-sun transmigration notion.

The sun is now a blazing mass, inconceivably huge, inconceivably
fierce in our eyes.  Its flames leap hundreds of thousands of
miles into space.  If our earth fell to the sun, it would melt as
a snow-flake falling upon a blazing forest.  We certainly do not
readily look upon the sun as our future home, if we accept its
present condition as permanent.

But once upon a time, hundreds of millions of years back, this
earth used to look TO THE MOON, on a smaller scale, as the sun
now looks to us.  If there were on the moon at that time inferior
human beings, in a low state of cosmic evolution, they
undoubtedly had to thank the earth for their life, as we thank
the sun.  To them the earth, then incandescent, blazing with the
heat that now reveals itself through volcanoes, was simply a
whirling ball of fire, put in its place to warm them.

They could no more think that men would ever come to live here
than we can now think of moving on to the sun.  ----

In course of time this earth cooled off.  It cooled so thoroughly
that the moon died of cold.  Life could no longer continue there.

The dead satellite's destiny thenceforward was to show gratitude
for past heat by moving our tides and cheering our poets.  As
life died out on the cold moon which had given us temporary
hospitality, life sprang into being on this planet, now fitted to
support it.

Here, on a larger sphere, with greater opportunities, mankind is
growing, and will far outstrip all that it could have done on the
poor little moon.

Meanwhile, as we struggle on, improving slowly, the sun, as
science proves, is cooling off in its turn.  The flames become
less fierce as the thousands of centuries roll by.  When we shall
have developed as much as possible on this limited planet, our
home will be cooled and ready on the sun, centre of our life in
this corner of space.

We shall move up a step--as boys do in the public schools.  We
shall have been moon men, earth men, and shall graduate into sun
men.  Think of a home so vast! On that grand star we shall lead
lives worth while, and justify Huxley's belief that men exist
somewhere compared to whom we should "be as black beetles
compared to us."

The excitement of meeting our brothers from other planets as they
move up to the sun in batchcs will be great.



WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING'S SYMPHONY

THE THOUGHT--

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than
luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy,
not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and
birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to
think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry
never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common--this is my symphony.

             WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING.

TO LIVE CONTENT WITH SMALL MEANS.

This means to realize to the full the possibilities of life.
Contentment means ABSENCE OF WORRY.  It is only when free from
worry that the brain can act normally, up to its highest
standard.  The man content with small means does his best work,
devotes his energies to that which is worth while, and not to
acquiring that which has no value.

TO SEEK ELEGANCE RATHER THAN LUXURY.

The difference between elegance and luxury is the difference
between the thin, graceful deer, browsing on the scanty but
sufficient forest pasture, and the fat swine revelling in
plentiful garbage.

REFINEMENT RATHER THAN FASHION.

The difference between refinement and fashion is the difference
between brains and clothing, the difference between an Emerson or
a Huxley and a Beau Brummel or other worthless but elaborately
decked carcass.

TO BE WORTHY, NOT RESPECTABLE.

In other words, to be like Henry George, and not like the owner
of a trust.

WEALTHY, NOT RICH.

The man who has a good wife and good children, enough to take
care of them, but not enough to spoil them, is WEALTHY.  He is
happier than the man who is RICH enough to be worried, rich
enough to make it certain that his children will be ruined by
extravagance, and perhaps live to be ashamed of him.

TO LISTEN TO STARS AND BIRDS, BABES AND SAGES, WITH OPEN HEART.

This means to enjoy the noblest gifts that God has given to man.
He is happy who takes more pleasure in a beautiful sunset than in
the sight of a flunky with powdered hair, artificial calves and
lofty manners, handing him something indigestible on a plate of
gold.

TO STUDY HARD; TO THINK QUIETLY, ACT FRANKLY, TALK GENTLY.

To exercise in this way the brain that is given to us is to lead
the life of a MAN, a life of self-control, a life that is worth
while, that leads to something and helps forward the improvement
of the race.

In the words which we have quoted at the top of  this column
William Henry Channing has given a recipe for wise living.  ----

WHO WAS CHANNING?

He was a good man, and a wise man.  He was one of the most
eloquent clergymen ever born in this country, and as sincere a
friend of individual man and of the race in general as ever
lived.

He was an enthusiast and an optimist--admirable combination.

He was born in 1810, and died in 1884.  His biography has been
written by Octavius B. Frothingham.

Channing saw the world through generous, charitable eyes.

He was an ardent admirer of Charles Fourier, and appreciated the
philosophy and social law-giving of that gigantic intellect.

The quotation we print above is an index to his whole character,
just as one flower tells the story of the beautiful garden in
which it grew.

Channing, unlike many sayers of fine things, was personally as
fine as the things he said.  He was worthy even of his own best
thoughts, and that can be said for few fine thinkers.

Admire him.  Read some of his sermons and other writings if you
have the chance.



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD--PARABLE OF THE BLIND KITTENS

The notion that small things, the petty details of life, such as
money getting, marriage questions, etc., are uppermost in the
modern human brain is entirely false.

If an editor asks:  "Is marriage a failure?" he receives just so
many answers, and then the interest dies out.

If he asks:  "Should a wife have pin money?" or "What is the
easiest way for a woman to earn a living?" he ceases to receive
answers after a short time.

But to questions concerning the immortality of the soul, the
existence of God, and man's destiny here and hereafter, the
answers are endless.  Letters on such matters have been received
here by thousands.  Every day the mail brings new and intelligent
contributions to the questions that have kept men praying,
thinking, fighting and hoping through the centuries:

"IS THERE A GOD, AND WILL MY SOUL LIVE FOREVER?" ----

Very interesting are the expressions of faith which fill a
majority of the letters.  Interesting also are the letters of
doubters atheists, agnostics and the many intoxicated with a very
little knowledge, who have decided to substitute their own wisdom
and doubt for the belief of the ages--the belief in God and in
personal immortality.

Many think science has discovered that we could get on very well
without a God.  But science has done just the contrary.  And
here, if you please, we shall build up a sort of parable:  ----

A Man had a box full of motherless blind kittens.  He was very
kind to them.  He put their box on wheels and moved it about to
keep it in the sun.  He gave them milk at regular intervals.
With loving kindness he drove away the dog which growled and
scared the little kittens into spitting and back raising.

The kittens trusted the Man, loved him and felt that they needed
him.  That was the age of faith.

One day a dog got a kitten and tore it to pieces.

The kitten had disobeyed orders and laws.  It had crawled away
from the box.

Another kitten, with one eye now partly open, got thoughtful and
said:  "There is no such thing as Man.  Or, if there is such a
thing, he is a monster to let little Willie get torn up.  Don't
talk to me about Kitten Wiliie being a sufferer through his own
fault.  I say there is no such thing as a Man.  We kittens are
bosses of the universe and must do our own fighting."

That speaker was the Ingersoll kitten.

A kitten of higher mental class opened both eyes just a little
and actually made observations.

Said he:  "I am a scientist.  I discover that we owe nothing to
Man's kindness.  We are governed by laws.  This box is on wheels.

It rolls around in the sunlight of its own volition.  True, I do
not know who shoves it, but no Man could do it.  Further, I
discover that there is such a thing as the law of 'milk-passing.'
Milk comes this way just so often.  Its coming is nature's law.
It has always come.  It always will come.  Good-night, I am going
to sleep.  But don't talk to me any more about a kind Man.  It's
all law, and I am certainly great, for I saw the laws first."

That was the Newton kitten, but he lacked the Newton faith.

We have no time to tell what the Darwin kitten said.  He was very
long-winded.

But this happened.  The kittens grew up--such as did not perish
through their own fault.  They got their eyes fully opened.  They
saw the Man, recognized him and asked only to be allowed to stay
in his house.  "Excuse us," they said, "for being such foolish
kittens.  But you know our eyes were not quite open."

"Don't mention it," said the kind Man.  "Go down cellar and help
yourselves to mice."

That's the end of the parable.  We are all blind kittens, and our
few attempts at explaining nature's wonders and kindness only get
us into deeper and deeper mysteries.

We discover that the earth goes round the sun.  But the greatest
scientist must admit his inability to tell or guess why it goes.
"Give me the initial impulse," he says, "and all the rest is
easy."

The blind kittens in their wagon say:  "Give our wagon just one
shove and we'll explain the rest."

The kitten gets hold of a law of "milk-passing" and substitutes
that for man's individual kindness.

The feeble-minded agnostic seizes the law of gravitation and
thinks he can discard God with gravity's help.

But the great mind that defined gravity's law was a religious
mind--too profound to see anything final in its own feeble power.

Newton was no atheist.  None better than he knew the mysterious
character of his law.  That it has worked from all eternity
"directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the
distance" he knew and told his fellow-creatures.  That is all he
knew and all that any man knows about it.

To-day Lord Kelvin, a worthy follower in Newton's steps, is asked
to explain WHY gravity acts.  He can only say:

"I accept no theory of gravitation.  Present science has no
right to attempt to explain gravitation.  We know nothing about
it.  We simply know NOTHING about it."

Darwin asks, without answering his question:

"Who can explain what is the essence of the attraction of
gravitation?" ----

To our doubting friends we say:  Doubt if you must.  But doubt
intelligently and doubt first of all your own blind kitten
wisdom.  Remember that you at least know absolutely nothing.
Study and think.  Read.  But don't let the half-developed wisdom
of others choke up your brain and leave you a mere clogged-up
doubting machine.

Whatever you do, never interfere with the faith of others.
Spread KNOWLEDGE, spread FACTS.  Keep to yourself the doubts that
would disturb others' happiness and do them no good.  Tell what
you KNOW.  Keep quiet about what you GUESS.



HAVE THE ANIMALS SOULS?

"For that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts;
even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the
other; YEA, THEY HAVE ALL ONE BREATH; SO THAT A MAN HATH NO
PRE-EMINENCE ABOVE A BEAST:  for all is vanity.

"Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the
SPIRIT of the beast that goeth downward to the earth."
--Ecclesiastes iii., 19-21.

The surface of the earth, the air as high as we can study it, the
depths of the sea, swarm with animal life.

The earth rolls around the sun bathed in its warm light.
Millions of creatures die with every revolution of the little
planet which is their home.  And man "going to and fro in the
earth, and walking up and down in it" rules the little animals
and the big ones and calls himself sole heir of immortality.  He
says:  "For ME this earth was made and balanced in its wonderful
journey; for ME alone the marvels of future life are reserved."

He digs up the strange creatures from the slimy depths of the
ocean, studies and labels them.

He dissects one animal to study his own diseases.  He skins
another to cover his feet with leather.  He eats one ox and
hitches its brother to the plough.  He uses nature's explosive
forces to bring down the bird on the wing.  He sweeps the rivers
with his nets.

The stomach of the well-fed man is the graveyard of the animal
kingdom.

When his dinner is finished, the man well fed strokes his stomach
contentedly and says to himself:

All is well.  For I have a soul and THEY have none.  They
have died to feed me.  I am happy and they should be satisfied.
----

What is the nature of the spirit that directs our humble animal
brothers and sisters?  They cover the earth as long as we let
them, give place to us as the human race increases, and, without
any thought of organized resistance, die that we may live.

HAVE THESE ANIMALS SOULS?

You have seen the bird grieving over the destruction of its nest.

You have studied the pathetic eyes of the lost dog, and the sad
submission of the tired, beaten horse.

Is there not soul in those stricken creatures, and spiritual
feeling deeper than that displayed by many men?

First came all ANIMAL life, as we know it, and then came MAN.

Science and religion agree on this point, at least.

All owe their being to the same eternal FORCE.  On this point
again religion and science agree.

Is the life in animals merely a passing dream, or does it express
in its humble way the promise of life eternal?

In Italy a scientific villain experimented on a dog to ascertain
the power of maternal affection.

The dog was most cruelly tortured.  Its newborn puppy was beside
it.  Its nerves were racked, its spine injured, BUT WHENEVER
PERMITTED TO DO SO, THE POOR TORTURED, ANIMAL MOTHER TURNED ITS
HEAD TOWARD ITS WHINING CHILD AND LICKED IT AFFECTIONATELY.

Until it died there was nothing that could overcome maternal love
in the heart of that poor dumb mother.

Is there not soul in such love as that?



JESUS' ATTITUDE TOWARD CHILDREN
A SUNDAY SERMON

"Suffer the little children to come unto me; and forbid them not;
for of such is the Kingdom of God."--Mark X., 14.

Jesus gave to the child its place in the world's society.

With all the power of divine authority He built around the
feeblest among us a wall that has protected them through the
ages.

Before His day the child existed only by sufferance.  It had no
rights.

It was but a counter, an infinitesimal atom.  It was considered
simply the property of the parent.  Its father had power of life
and death over it.  The homeless dog that roams the streets
to-day is more effectively shielded from cruelty than was the
friendless child before Jesus came to live and to die for the
weak and poor.

The law had said:

"The parent is ruler of the child, and may dispose of it as he
sees fit."

But Jesus said--and these are the most beautiful and affecting
words in all the moral law of the world:

"Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I
say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the
face of my Father which is in heaven."--Matthew xviii., 10.

No threats so terrifying as those aimed at men who should harm
little children:

"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about
his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the
sea."--Matthew xviii., 6.

It is impossible now to conceive the horrid indifference to
childhood's rights which preceded the birth of Christianity.

Infanticide was not the exception, but a settled custom.  So much
so, that in Rome the "exposure" of children in desert places was
almost a virtue, since it gave the child some slight chance of
surviving.

Not a few, but thousands and tens of thousands of children were
thus "exposed."  They fell a prey to wild beasts, or to the human
beasts, still more ferocious, who took the children to make
slaves or criminals of them.

Jesus came, and a miracle was worked--a miracle that no man will
deny.

This was the miracle:

Jesus said:

"For I say unto you, their angels behold the face of my Father
which is in heaven."

Jesus spoke, and thousands of millions of men, through nineteen
centuries, have believed, and obeyed the command.

Every man was warned that the child dying goes straightway into
the presence of God, and there, looking upon His face, bears
witness to the treatment meted out to him here.

Well might it be said of the man who mistreated such a child:

"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about
his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

Every man should study with awe and reverence the sad, lonely
misunderstood life of Jesus, the friend of children.  He had no
home, and for companions only a few humble fishermen, to whom He
spoke in simple parables, as to children.

"The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests
but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head."--Matthew
viii., 20.

It was this childless, homeless Man that ever used His marvellous
power to protect children.

It was He who gave to children their definite share in the
kingdom of God.

Before His coming the wisdom of the world was devoted to telling
the child ITS duty.

But Jesus explained to grown men THEIR duty toward children.

The family life was His ideal.

All men were His brothers, and, with Him, sons of God.

The loving kindness shown by God toward helpless men and women
THEY should show to helpless children.

Neither the rights nor the WISDOM of children must be despised:

"I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast
revealed them unto babes; even so, Father; for so it seemed
good in thy sight."--Luke x., 21.

Wherever Jesus went, children followed Him, and the tiniest
little soul, in its mother's arms or tottering along in wide-eyed
curiosity, could arrest His loving attention.

How beautiful is the picture that the Bible story presents to the
mind!

Jesus is at Capernaum, on the sunny shore of the Sea of Galilee.

The Disciples--simple, honest men, often excited as to precedence
and filled with deep longing to stand first in the Master's
esteem--ask Him:

"Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"--Matthew
xviii., 1.

Around them is gathered the typical Oriental group, and many
olive-skinned women, with their children:

"And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the
midst of them and said:  'Verily I say unto you, except ye be
converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into
the kingdom of heaven.

"'Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little
child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

"'And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name
receiveth me.'"

Teach your children to think of and to love the divine Soul that
pleaded their cause.  Teach them that in all the words He uttered
there can be found only love for them.  No threats, no warnings--
only love.



STUDY OF THE CHARACTER OF GOD

"Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said . . . .
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if thou hast understanding."--Job xxxviii. 1, 4.

Since men have lived on earth their feeble intellects have
struggled to realize the majesty of God.

Succeeding nations and civilizations have expressed through laws
or religions their puny conceptions of the power that controls
the universe.

As mental and moral standards have improved, there has been
constant improvement in the conception of God.

The Greeks and Romans imagined a variety of gods, and attributed
to these the vices and weaknesses of men.

The Fijians worshipped a god who devoured the souls of the dead,
inflicting torture in the eating, but mercifully releasing souls
from pain when the meal was ended.

The ancient Mexicans went to war "because their gods demanded
something to eat." Their armies fought "only endeavoring to take
prisoners, that they might have men to feed those gods." ----

Even with the birth of the one great idea--THE UNITY OF GOD--the
personality of the universal Creator was but a reflection of His
worshippers.

He was a "jealous" God, a "man of war."  "God Himself is with us
for our captain."-- Chron. xiii., 12.

God dwelt in a city made of nothing cheaper than gold and
precious stones.  For His own glory, He maintained a court
Oriental in form, with strange beasts to sing His praises, and He
tortured forever and ever creatures that He had made.

The present conception of an omnipotent God has changed greatly
since the old days, when cruelty was the rule and was admired.
There is to-day insistence on God's LOVE, on His JUSTICE, on His
MERCY that "endureth forever"--there is practically no teaching
of the old belief that a creature, born of circumstances, and
good or bad as circumstances may determine, is to suffer endless
torment under never-changing conditions of horror.  ----

The writing of this editorial is based upon frequent reading of
the book of Job.  In that ancient and wonderful book, as in no
other writing, the Jewish forces of poetry and of prophecy are
exhausted in the effort to portray God's majesty.

All of the old prophet's knowledge of the world, all of his
mystic notions of sidereal government, are used in the effort to
glorify his Creator.

"Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days?

"Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto
thee, Here we are?

"Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow?

"Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks?

"Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?

"Will he make many supplications unto thee?  Will he speak
soft words unto thee?

"Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?  or hast
thou seen the treasures of the hail?"

Thus through chapters of greatest beauty the primitive mind seeks
to portray for the benefit of other primitive minds the
omnipotence of the world's Ruler.  ----

What hope has man of conceiving, even approximately, the great
law-giving Force that rules the universe?  Shall we ever do more
than attribute to Him those qualities which our own pygmy minds
admire?  Shall we forever conceive Him as a glorified
"individual"?

We believe that in the Book of Job there is suggested the method
of studying God that alone can aid us to a better, higher
conception.

The study of God must be prosecuted through the study of
astronomy, and this the old prophet foreshadows clearly:

"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose
the bands of Orion?

"Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?  or canst
thou guide Arcturus with his sons?"

Long years ago children were taught to admire a god who created a
leviathan, a unicorn, and "Behemoth."

Children of the future will be told:

You live on a globe twenty-five thousand miles round.  It travels
ceaselessly through space at a speed of eighteen miles a second.
Compared to the huge sun that lights and gives us life, our earth
is but a pinhead, and the sun itself is but one tiny dot in the
ocean of space.  Through that space the sun rushes on an errand
unknown, carrying us with it.

Everything moves, revolves, rushes ceaselessly, yet a balance
registering the one-thousandth part of a grain is not adjusted as
nicely as these huge behemoths of limitless space.  Laplace shows
positive proof that the earth, travelling eighteen miles per
second, has not changed the period of its rotation by the
hundredth part of a second in two thousand years.

The mind of the future, imbued with respect for the Force that
controls, conducts and makes the laws for the universe, will
attain more nearly to a conception of God.  But a study of God
will remain man's chief and constant effort while he lives here.
That study is never-ending.



THE FASCINATING PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY

(If you read this you will probably feel that you have wasted
time.)

If you travel back far enough you can see in your mind's eye a
primitive man with long, red hair, shivering in some icy pool.
He has taken refuge there from a pursuing bear or other foe.  He
sees that he must die of cold or of the bear's teeth.  His dark
mind--product of a brain primitive and poor in
convolutions--contemplates vaguely the prospect ahead of him.  He
hopes that after death he may through some mysterious kindness be
permitted to meet again the red-haired women and the wolfish cave
children left behind.

There, in the cave man's mind, is the first craving for
immortality.  Born in that poor brain long centuries ago, it has
steadily grown stronger with man's mental development.  ----

No man looks at death without looking beyond it.  None but has a
craving for a future life, with consciousness of his personality
AND WITH RECOLLECTION OF FRIENDS, FACES AND DEEDS HERE.

Say to a man, "You shall be immortal, but you shall not know that
you are you."  He will not give you thanks for such immortality.

So strong is man's craving for personal, individual immortality
that hell with its fires would be preferred by many to
annihilation.  The strongest argument against immortality--weak
and ignorant at best--is but a frantic attempt of the mind to
prove negatively the existence of what it covets.

Fortunately for human happiness in general, FAITH, covers the
requirements of millions.  They live and die contented, the
instinct within them fortified by the teachings of a faith not to
be questioned.  ----

But what of the men and women who ask for evidence, or at least
for plausible argument, proving the reasonableness of
immortality?  What can be said to please them?

Not much, alas! Probably because we are still so undeveloped
that it would be, for many reasons, unsafe to let us know how
great a future is before us.  Strongest in hope is the
argument of Charles Fourier, based on what he declared to be
a natural law.

"Attractions are proportionate to destinies."

By this Fourier meant that a universal longing among human
beings was certain proof that their ultimate destiny involved
the fulfilment of the longing.  The little girl fondling a doll
foretells maternity.  The hectoring boy foretells the soldier's
career.  No universal attraction, save with a destiny
proportionate.  ----

The human race since it began to think and believe has thought of
and believed in immortality.  The half wise declare that belief
in immortality and a spirit world came to savage peoples through
dreams, that it has been kept alive through superstition and the
power of religion.  Trivial, certainly, is such an explanation of
a phenomenon as wide as mankind's existence.  ----

A very consoling fact for the doubter is this.  The strongest
minds born on the earth have almost invariably, at some stage
of development, rejected belief in immortality--only to return
to the belief, or at least to the HOPE, with fuller age and riper
wisdom.  That no great mind has seen any positive argument
against the hope of immortality is certainly comforting to all
of us.  Intelligence can always refute improbability and
falsehood.
----

What about the nature of immortality?  The Indian hopes for dogs
and hunting, the Turk for a life of which the least said the
better.  The Christian, borrowing his ideas from the writings of
the old Hebrews, looks forward to what may be called a solid gold
existence--everything made of gold or of something more
expensive.

We do not think that religious docility demands implicit belief
in any of the published details of our future existence.  Gold is
not comfortable; jasper would not well replace the green turf.

Is it not more reasonable to assume, since immortality is to be
ours, that it is ours now and always has been?  We cannot imagine
creation of the indestructible.  Is it not sensible to take
literally that most beautiful invocation:  "Thy kingdom come ON
EARTH as it is in heaven"?

We know that heaven cannot be above us or hell below; because as
we whirl round in each twenty-four hour period those abodes would
have to whirl also--quite unreasonable.  ----

This earth would make a very good heaven--properly improved and
managed.  Wipe out human selfishness, and the Sahara and other
deserts.  Establish universal philanthropy, regulate the climate,
confine human manual labor to the pushing of an electric
button--all quite possible--and you have the sort of heaven that
man would select if left to choose.

Why should we not come back here again and again, taking varying
human forms, doing our duty well or badly each time
according to our start in life, and finally enjoying perfect
terrestrial happiness here as a finished race of immortal
beings--immortal in the sense of being indestructible and of
possessing the gift of perpetual reincarnation?  ----

Now, this earthly reincarnation idea is what we have been driving
at since the beginning of this particular article.  What is the
argument against prior and subsequent existence here?  It is
this:

"If I am to live here again, I must have lived here before.  If I
have lived here before I do not know it, and I do not look
forward with pleasure to future existence here in which I shall
not know myself."

This is a reasonable objection, certainly.  Reincarnation without
consciousness of former existences would miss half the fun.  ----

But it is possible to be in too much of a hurry.  Let us suppose
that as yet we are not sufficiently developed to carry from
one existence to another the memory of former existence.  Suppose
the time is to come when we shall suddenly advance as far beyond
this intellectual stage as this stage of intellect is beyond that
of the Bushman.  Is it not conceivable that we may suddenly be
enabled to recall all former existences and to remember all the
various happenings of our former lives?  May we not say, "There
is Mrs. Jones.  I was married to her six million years ago, and
we quarrelled"?  It seems quite hopeable.

You cannot deny that it is possible.  For instance:  You now
lead a continuous existence.  You know that you were alive three
days ago and you remember what you did then.  But a baby four
weeks old does NOT know that he was alive three days ago and he
does not know what he did then.  He has not reached a stage where
his mind can grasp even the fact of continuous existence.  We may
not have reached a stage enabling us to grasp continuous
reincarnation.

Think of this, and see if you cannot get some comfort, or at
least some amusing speculation out of it.  ----

Science admits and thinks it proves that the inorganic atom of
matter is indestructible--that it persists forever.  Why should
we not admit--and ultimately prove--that the atom of organic
force called a soul is indestructible and exists forever?

Every atom of matter, every particle of force, existing in the
visible universe will continue to exist billions of centuries
after the universe shall have melted and lost its present shape.
The nail on your finger will exist as separate atoms when the
Milky Way shall have faded from the heavens.  How does that
strike you for immortality?

We predict that the mysterious force-atom called your soul will
exist AND KNOW ITSELF AND ITS FRIENDS ten thousand billions of
centuries from now and be as young as ever.



DISCONTENT THE MOTIVE POWER OF PROGRESS

At first the baby lies fiat on his back, eyes staring up at the
ceiling.

By and by he gets tired of lying on his back.  DISCONTENT with
his condition makes him wriggle and wriggle.  At last he succeeds
in turning over.

If he were contented then, there would be no men on earth--only
huge babies.  But DISCONTENT again seizes him, and through
discontent he learns to crawl.

Crawling--travelling on hands and knees--satisfied lower forms of
animal life.  It used to satisfy us, in the old days of early
evolutionary stages.

But the human infant--thanks to inborn cravings--is DISCONTENTED
with crawling.  With much trouble and risk and many feeble
totterings, he learns to walk erect.  He gets up into a position
that takes his eyes off the ground.  He is able to look at the
sun and stars and takes the position of a man.  DISCONTENT is his
mainspring at every stage.  ----

What discontent does in the limited life of a child, it does on a
much larger scale in the life of a man--and on a scale still
larger in the life of a race.

You can always tell when a man has reached the limit of his
possible development.  He ceases to be discontented--or at least
to show discontent actively.

Contentment, apathy, are signs of decadence and of a career ended
in either a man or a nation.

If a baby lies still, no longer wiggling or trying to swallow his
toe, you may be sure that he is seriously ill.  The nation that
no longer wiggles is in a condition as serious as that of the
motionless infant.  ----

The man or newspaper which imparts dissatisfaction--wise
discontent to a nation or to individuals, gives them the motive
power that brings improvement.

Ruskin as a young man declared that his one hope in life was to
arouse "some dissatisfaction."

The constant aim of men in talking to each other, in writing for
newspapers, even in writing novels, should be to arouse
discontent.

In this column, as our readers will have noticed, the constant
aim is to make the great crowd dissatisfied.

Only through discontent can changes come and are there not causes
enough for discontent and need enough for changes?

A majority of the people half educated, and tens of thousands
half fed.

Children run over daily because they have no playground but the
gutter.

Men of noble aspirations kept down by hard work and poverty.

Children left locked up alone all day while their mothers work
for a pittance.

Men, uncertain of their future and of their children's future,
engage in a constant struggle for wealth that is not needed--a
struggle that develops in the end a passion as useless as it is
degrading.

Unless you believe that the world is perfect because YOU happen
to have enough to eat and to wear, you should be discontented.

You should remember that the world's achievements and great
changes have all come from discontent, and you should be, in as
many ways as possible, a breeder of discontent among the human
beings around you.



THE AUTOMOBILE WILL MAKE US MORE HUMAN

One of the commonest and most disagreeable sights in a big city
is that of a strong, brutal human being beating a weak and
overworked horse because it refuses to do what it cannot do.

Brutality inflicted upon horses is atrocious.  But the bad effect
of such unkind treatment of animals on HUMAN CHARACTER is far
more serious than the actual physical suffering inflicted.  ----

The perfection of the automobile will do much to improve human
beings by taking away from their control and from brutal coercion
submissive animals.

Everybody knows that the moral standard is raised immediately in
a country when slavery is abolished.

In America we have abolished the slavery of human beings, but we
still adhere to horse slavery, accompanied by all the worst forms
of the old negro slavery.  The faithful slave may be beaten and
driven to death.  The driver MUST BE BRUTALIZED.

Every day, on every street, you may see stupid, muscular boys and
men jerking with all their might on the tender mouths of poor
horses, only too willing to do their best.

This brutal indifference to the sufferings of animals makes us
brutal and indifferent in other directions.

With the advent of the automobile and the disappearance of horses
from our cities, horse slavery will be abolished and men,
compelled to use their brains in dealing with machinery, will
soon become more nearly human than they are at present.  The
practical abolition of the street-car horse is one great step in
advance.

The abolition of the truck horse, carriage horse, cab horse, soon
to come, will complete the dream of those modern and highly
deserving abolitionists, the automobile inventors and
manufacturers.



LET US BE THANKFUL

Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1902.

Let us be thankful first of all for one great right:

The right, when dissatisfied, to SAY that we are dissatisfied,
and to try to make things better.

Let us be thankful that every man--with few exceptions--has a
holiday to-day.

However bad our national affairs may seem, let us be thankful
they are no worse.  And above all let us be thankful that we have
the power and the constitutional right to change things, just as
soon as we become wise enough to use our ballots.  ----

Let us be devoutly thankful for the PUBLIC SCHOOLS, for the fact
that every child is taught to read and encouraged to think.  The
nation now declares that a child has a right to food for the
mind, as long as the child behaves properly.  We are not so far
from the day when human decency will declare that every child and
every human being has a right to food for the BODY also, as long
as they behave, and are ready for honest work.  Let us be
thankful for the constantly growing recognition of human rights.


The workingmen of America are better paid than they have ever
been before.  More of them than ever are at work, and the unions
which protect them are more powerful than ever--let us be
thankful for these facts.  The whole nation prospers when the
workers of the nation are busy and well paid.

Science has been, and is, making wonderful progress, explaining
for us daily the problems of the universe.  Every man must be
thankful that highly specialized brains are constantly at work
piling up knowledge for him.

As a nation we are too big to fear successful attack, and we are,
it is to be hoped, too sensible to seek trouble with others.  Let
us be thankful that all things point to continued national,
mental development on peaceful lines, free from the horrible
wholesale murders, called war, that have bled and weakened all
people through the ages.  ----

Each of us individually has reason for thankfulness.

If you can feel that you are honestly trying to do your duty,
that is much to be thankful for.

If you are dissatisfied with yourself, you should be thankful for
the power of self-condemnation-- and thankful especially that you
have long and blessed TIME ahead of you to make up for your
mistakes and improve your record.

We live in a wonderful age--wonderful in the  fact that life and
liberty are fairly secure; wonderful in freedom of conscience.

You can believe in Heaven, Hades, Christian Science, or in
nothing at all--and as long as you do not interfere with others,
no one can imprison you, or question, or burn you at the stake.
----

We should all be especially thankful for the steady awakening of
the national mind.  We all pursue wealth--and doubtless
circumstances compel us to pay too much attention to that line of
effort.  But we are all THINKING also.  There are a thousand
times more thinking, reading men and women to-day in America
alone than lived on earth half a century ago.  Love of knowledge
is spreading, and with love of knowledge, love of justice and a
sense of fairness will always be found.

Our material prosperity is great.  But it is out- balanced by our
mental prosperity.  We are becoming a nation of THINKING men and
women, and since that means real development, we have all reason
to be thankful.



THE HARM THAT IS DONE BY OUR FRIENDS

Thought lives through the ages, flies about over the earth, and
goes on visiting fresh minds, after the mind that gave it birth
has gone back to dust and nothingness.

An Italian wrote words to this effect:

"Man is commanded to forgive his enemies.  Nowhere is imposed on
him the far more difficult task of forgiving his friends."

Francis Bacon, the philosopher, read in England the words of the
Italian and quoted them.

Vincent W. Byars, a very able thinking man of St. Louis, read
Bacon's quotation out there, and now, coming to New York, he says
to this writer:

"Why don't you make an editorial on that old Italian saying
quoted by Bacon?"

Italy--England--St. Louis--New York--thus the idea has hopped
about, until to-day you get it in this column.  A million of you
read it, or at least glance at it; and so, if the idea has any
value, it will go hopping on all over the earth's surface long
after the steel press that prints this paper shall have crumbled
away.  ----

How little your ENEMIES can hurt you! How little harm they do,
even when they try!  You are warned against them and on your
guard.  The world knows they are your enemies, and discredits
what they say.

It is quite easy to forgive our enemies, for they do us
comparatively little harm.

But to forgive our friends would be hard indeed if we could
realize how much harm they do us.  ----

THE DRUNKARD'S FRIENDS

Who makes the drunkard?  His enemies?  No.  The drunkard is made
by his friends.

When it is known that he is inclined to drink no enemy is so
vicious as to lead him on.  No enemy slaps him on the back and
begs him to take "just another drink."  No enemy laughs down his
poor, feeble attempts at reform.  No enemy tells him that it will
not hurt him "just this time," and that he really must not refuse
to be a good fellow "just for once."

The drunkard is MADE a drunkard, is pushed into the last depths
of drunkenness, by his friends.

And it is his friends who kick him and leave him and despise him
when he has sunk into the mire.

Did ever the drunkard's enemy hurt him as much as the friend has
hurt him?  ----

AMBITION KILLED BY FRIENDS

A young man starts out to succeed in life.  His enemy may lie
about him, may call him worthless.  He may think he is hurting
him.  If there is anything in the young man, the enemy's lies and
discouraging words only spur him on to greater effort.  They do
him good.

It is the friend that ruins the young man by false, injudicious,
unearned praise.

As artist, poet, writer, clerk, or in any other effort, the young
man begins his work.

It is his friends who tell him that he is a splendid success,
when he needs to be told that, at best, he has some slight chance
of success, and that everything depends on desperate effort.

Look at the young, conceited fool who, instead of struggling on,
rails at the world, feels that he is not appreciated.  He is a
failure--a sad, foolish failure.  He has been made a failure, not
by the attacks of his enemies, but by the more dangerous praise
of his friends.  ----

The lonely and friendless often succeed amazingly.  "Multum
incola fuit anima mea" ("My spirit hath been much alone") said
the great Bacon.  His mind fed on loneliness, on failure, and
even on disgrace.

How much success is due to freedom from that harm which
friendship does?

The reader can finish this editorial for himself with hundreds of
other arguments.  This is enough for a sample.



SHALL WE TAME AND CHAIN THE INVISIBLE MICROBE AS WE NOW CHAIN
NIAGARA?

When Solomon was gathering his materials to build the Temple,
his, large cedar trunks from Lebanon and his costly materials
from everywhere, he used oxen, mules, camels.

With all his wisdom, he little dreamed that the day would come
when his descendants, instead of using mules and huge beasts of
burden, would heat water and with steam develop a force
sufficient to tear his Temple from its foundation.

Still less did he dream that steam would eventually be
superseded, as clumsy and primitive, by the invisible force of
electricity.

When the thunder roared, the lightning flashed and his conscience
troubled him, Solomon, turning away from his thousand wives and
his numerous other doubtful associates, put his head under the
richly embroidered pillow, worked, perhaps, by Sheba's own fair
hands--it did not enter his mind that that lightning could be
tamed and put to work.

Man has been gradually controlling and employing the various
animals on the earth's surface.  He taught the elephant to haul
wood and water and to fight his battles.  He trained the horse,
the dog.  He even taught falcons to bring him back birds from
beyond the clouds, and otters to catch fish in the bottom of
lakes and rivers.

Gradually he has made himself independent of his animal partners.

The rifle made the falcon useless; steam destroyed the importance
of the horse and the ox.

But apparently we have only begun using animal life.  We must run
the whole gamut of the marvels of creation before conquering
conditions on this earth.  ----

We used to train the biggest dogs to kill wolves.  The Government
of the United States is now breeding darning-needles to kill
mosquitoes.

A certain kind of wasp, with a black and white striped body,
spends his time killing house-flies, and this creature could be
bred and used to destroy the disease-spreading pests.

Even the invisible insect life can be made most useful to man and
to his health.

The latest plan for disposing of city sewage involves the
cultivation of microbes, to be employed as disinfectors.

Several towns in Illinois and in Wisconsin have established
plants for the purification of sewage by means of microbe life.
The collections of organisms invisible to the naked eye are to be
kept in great antiseptic tanks, and employed in the purification
of the city 's refuse.

Mosquitoes will ultimately be destroyed, undoubtedly, by breeding
among them smaller creatures fatal to their existence.

Man, in his conquest and use of animal life, will run the gamut,
from the biggest elephant, employed as a public executioner in
India, to the invisible microbe, doing a work ten thousand times
more important all over the globe.

These infinitesimal microbes, bred and controlled by science,
will do regularly and methodically the work which buzzards and
vultures have done on land, which sharks and dogfish have done at
sea, throughout endless centuries.

To the marvellous workings of nature we cannot possibly give too
much thought or too great admiration.  Gardens are filled with
beautiful flowers, and fields are fertile to-day because hundreds
of years ago sea birds were devouring the carcasses of dead fish,
acting as nature's scavengers, and building up the great guano
fields of South America.

There is a Peruvian millionaire in his big yacht, and there is a
rose in full bloom--the millionaire's money, the beauty of the
rose, come from those birds that picked up the dead fish five
hundred years ago.

It's an interesting world.



THE ELEPHANT THAT WILL NOT MOVE HAS BETTER EXCUSES THAN WE HAVE
FOR FOLLY DISPLAYED

This is an editorial which we shall merely suggest, and which
each reader will write out for himself.

In the Zoological Garden of New York a poor elephant has stood in
chains for years.  The animal was thought to be vicious, and was
kept fastened tightly to one spot, that it might have no leeway
to do damage.

A short time ago its keeper became convinced that the elephant
would do no harm and might safely be unchained.  The chains were
taken off, and the keeper thought with satisfaction that the poor
beast would now enjoy freedom and be made happy by the
possibility of moving freely about its large inclosure.

The elephant did not move.  The chains were gone, it was no
longer tied, but it stood, and it still stands, in just the same
spot.

The habit of slavery, of monotony, had become too strong.  The
elephant, though free, stands still,  sadly swaying its heavy
head, ignorant of the freedom that has come to it.

Men and women and children who see the elephant, and other men
who write paragraphs for the newspapers, dilate on the poor
animal's "stupidity."

"The elephant has been called the most intelligent of animals,"
says one writer, "but this elephant, that doesn't know when the
chains are off, seems to prove that the elephant can be a good
deal of a fool."

How easy it is for us human beings to see the faults in others,
our fellows, and the animals below us.

But which one of us can truly say that he is not in exactly the
same position as that poor elephant, fixed to one spot by the
chains of long ago?

Are we not still standing as a race just as we stood years and
centuries ago, ignorant of the freedom that has come to us?

Thousands of splendid men have worked, lived and died to free us
from superstition, from credulity, from ignorance, yet still we
stand in the same place, and fail to appreciate the freedom that
is ours.  ----

Millions of us, tied down by foolish superstition, are like that
elephant--the chains are off, but we stand still.

The road to peace, happiness and universal progress has been
shown us in the teachings of great leaders, but we still stand in
the same old place, fighting, hating, cheating, suspecting,
harming one another.

Here and there there is a little progress; gradually we begin to
appreciate and enjoy the freedom that has been given to us with
the striking away of old mental chains.  The process is slow.

Look into your own mind.  Do you take advantage of all the
possibilities that are before you?  Do you use your brain to
control your existence, acts and habits for your own benefit and
the benefit of others?

If not, you ought to sympathize with this poor elephant, and
realize that as your brain exceeds his in bulk proportionately,
so do you exceed him in the folly that misses opportunity.



LET US BE THANKFUL

You get tired of reading editorials in which one man, spouting
from his editorial pulpit, lays down the law for you--without
giving you a chance to reply or contradict.

So let us write this editorial together.

There you sit--the reader--in your street car, or perhaps
clinging to a strap, and here we sit, impersonal editorial
creature, thinking over thankfulness,
Thanksgiving Day, and what reasons we have for feeling thankful.

Let us talk as few platitudes as possible, and try to get at a
few of the inside workings of human life.  ----

You look across the car and hate the fat man who lounges and
spreads his feet around so boorishly.

LET US BE THANKFUL THAT WE SO READILY PERCEIVE THE SHORTCOMINGS
OF OTHERS.

Much comfort is derived from others' failings.  In the quiet
evenings we talk of our neighbors' weaknesses and we enjoy them.
By contrast we admire ourselves.

LET US BE THANKFUL THAT WE NEVER APPRECIATE OUR OWN LIMITATIONS.

Each man's children are beautiful and promising in his view.

He cannot see the hopeless construction of their foreheads, nor
can he read in their eyes the sad absence of "speculation."

Let us be thankful for that.  The future depends on the good care
awarded to almost worthless specimens now.  ----

FOR THE UNIVERSAL INSTINCT OF THANKFULNESS, LET BE DEEPLY
THANKFUL.

The thick-lipped negro on the Congo finds a dead hippopotamus,
half eaten by wild beasts, and in his woolly brain a dim, misty
feeling of THANKFULNESS is born.

The Tartar bandit surprises mild Chinese conducting a tea caravan
across the stony desert.  He murders the mild Celestials and
feels THANKFUL as he contemplates the booty.

A great Trust manager finds ways to add some millions to those
which he already has and does not need.  In THANKFUL mood he
gives two millions or three to education.

As inborn, as instinctive as the beating of the heart in the
human being is THANKFULNESS.

Thankfulness is the unconscious acknowledgment of a Higher Power.

It is the indestructible evidence of man's permanent belief in
just government of the universe.

It is the most hopeful, the most promising feature of man's
character.

For THANKFULNESS itself we should be thankful.  ----

If you want to succeed, cultivate a feeling of hopeful
thankfulness.

Hopefulness, thankfulness and success are as near akin as light,
heat and motion--the same force underlies, makes up the first
trio, as it does the second.

If you find it hard to be thankful, read a little of history, and
thankfulness will come.  Thousands of millions of men have lived
and suffered to make your existence here at least bearable.  You
may not be satisfied, but you have comforts that were not dreamed
of by the luckiest a few centuries back.  You think the
prosperous have too many privileges.

Perhaps they have.  But when your great-grandfather was a young
man a nobleman could order his lackeys to seize Voltaire the
greatest mind in Europe--and beat him almost to death.  Voltaire
was locked up in the Bastile for complaining.

Thanks to the eternal row that Voltaire kicked up, you can never
be treated as he was.  So be thankful to Voltaire.

Be thankful to the long line of plucky men and fighters--not
forgetting Christopher Columbus--who have gone before you.

Be thankful that you are alive in an interesting age with
interesting events happening.

Be thankful also that with thankfulness you combine the feeling
of dissatisfaction, of unrest that will push you ahead and give
you cause for fresh thankfulness next year.  ----

We are thankful to have you for a reader.

We are thankful for the criticisms and friendly comments that you
occasionally send.

We hope that you will enjoy your dinner to-day and not regret it
to-morrow.



WHAT WILL 999 YEARS MEAN TO THE HUMAN RACE

The street railroad company in the Borough of Brooklyn has just
executed some leases to endure 999 years.  Leases of property
have also been made for the same period, though, of course, a
lease of 999 years will be about as binding 999 years from now as
would a lease of the great pyramid executed the day after it was
finished, if such a lease should be presented at present to the
Egyptian Government.

These preposterous leases are interesting because they bring
vividly before the human mind the certainty of wonderful and
splendid changes in human affairs.

The street railroad leases are especially fascinating to the
imaginative mind.

They deal with present conditions and will seem inconceivably
primitive hundreds of years before the leases will have ended.

These leases deal with miserable little electric cars crawling
slowly over the face of the earth, at either end an underpaid,
overworked man, and in the middle a crowd of poor, dissatisfied,
ill-housed human beings.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine years from now the human race will
not by any means have accomplished its destiny.  It will still be
struggling on toward the goal of real civilization.

But it will have grown far beyond the savage condition of life
that marks the execution of these long leases.

Before these street railroad leases expire Brooklyn and all other
cities as they now exist will have disappeared from the earth.

Perfect transportation, underground, overground and through the
air, will enable human beings, if they choose, to live as far
from their work as does the seagull or the eagle.

It will no longer be necessary to crowd together in miserable
tenements, and homes will be scattered.  Human beings undoubtedly
will dwell in huge, splendidly managed structures, each in the
centre of its own park, far from the noise and the brutality of
modern city life.

Before the leases expire the combined cities of New York and
Brooklyn and Yonkers and Coney Island and Montauk Point will have
grown into an enormous, hideous human aggregation of fifty
million or more human beings.

Even the city of a hundred millions may be seen.

But as that huge, monstrous city will have grown, so it will have
died, as the monsters of former geological epochs grew and died
in their turn.

The site of the vanished great city will be covered with gardens,
and children in schools will be taught that human beings who once
lived in the cliffs in the Far West afterward gathered together
in horrible municipal ant-hills in the East, called cities,
before they learned how to live comfortably.  ----

Before those street railroad leases expire the present temporary
mania for money will have run its course.

Once every important man felt that a certain number of slaves
must be murdered at his funeral.  Sometimes his favorite horse
was shot.  In scores of millions of cases his wife was burned
alive with his corpse.  We have outgrown that.  Nowadays the
great man who dies must leave behind him an accumulation of
millions, which means that thousands of men have worked to give
him what he did not need.  Before these leases shall have expired
that form of financial barbarism will have ceased to exist.

It is reasonable to hope that the coming thousand years will have
seen the end of industrial feudalism, which has had its birth in
our day, and which will run its course as did the military
feudalism of the Middle Ages.

What a marvellous picture the world will present one thousand
years from now!

The earth will be adequately populated.

Science will have conquered disease almost entirely.  Each woman
will be the mother of two children.  She will not bring five or
six into the world in order that two or three may live.

Competition will be replaced by emulation.  The intelligent
servant of government will work as loyally and enthusiastically
for his government and for the people as the boy at college now
works for his college football team.

The human mind will have wandered on many leagues in its search
for a satisfying religion, getting always nearer to a clear
conception of the grandeur of the universe, and further away from
the superstition necessary to the moral control of a brutal
semi-civilization.

Human beings will have learned that the noblest thing one man can
do is to work for others.

Each will gladly contribute all his talent and strength to the
welfare of all.

All will gladly recognize, applaud and richly reward the special
ability of the individual.

There will be no poverty.  Willingness to work will insure a
comfortable livelihood.  Education will have developed the
average human intellect far beyond our conception.  Nine-tenths
of the human race have been able to read only within the past few
years.  What will a thousand years of universal education do?
----

The end of the leases of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company will
find many of our problems solved.

It will find, however, the real work of man just beginning.  The
abstract work of the intellect, the proper organization of
society as expressed in human passions, the study of the
wonderful and beautiful universe outside of our own little
planet, will then begin with the conquest of our material
conditions.



THE AZORES--A SMALL LOST WORLD IN A UNIVERSE OF WATER

As you cross the Atlantic by the Southern route the "sighting of
the Azores" is one incident of your voyage.  Just before daybreak
the ship is shaking and the passengers roused by the deep tones
of the big steam whistle.

One by one shivering forms straggle up from below, like reluctant
spirits answering a premature last call.  Bare feet in slippers,
and shivering forms with overcoats over nightgowns, gradually
line the rails.

On the left there appears, apparently, a heavy, dark bank of
clouds:

"The Azores!" shouts down from the bridge your yellow-whiskered
captain, looking as cheerful and warm as though it were noon.

You watch, shiver and blink as the light grows stronger behind
the pinkish clouds in the east.  The dark cloud settles into
solid land.  You see it clearly.  Sharply outlined against the
sky stands, forty miles long, a mammoth saw with huge teeth,
irregular, sharp.  The power of old-time volcanoes made all of
that land, and those sharp saw-teeth,  pointing toward the sky,
are the destroyers of long ago, cold and dead now, but telling
ominously of the power that lies hidden below.

Between you and the brightening sunrise, suspended in the "crow's
nest," half way up the mast, stands the sailor who watches the
sea for you through the night.  He calls out, and ahead to the
left you see a small boat filled with human beings that seem
scarcely as big as your finger.  Your ship could plough through
miles of such small boats-- but out there in the ocean, just as
well as inside the biggest court-house, LAW rules, and the big
ship must turn out for the small fishing boat.

You realize the power and beauty of law, as our governor and
sustainer.  You see that laws of little men reach out two
thousand miles into the sea.  You think of the laws of the
universe that stretch across the immeasurable distances of time
and space, protecting ALL, and insuring ultimate fulfilment
of the destinies of all the worlds.

As those fishermen of the Azores work safely, under full
protection, in their little lost corner of the great ocean, so
we, in our little world, our little insignificant corner of
space, work out our tiny problems safely under the splendid
protection of Divine Law and wisdom sent to us from some far- off
point of which we know nothing.

The light of the rising sun brings out from shore many other
small boats, each with its load of men who wave their arms to the
steamship and cheer against the sound of the waves and wind.  To
them that ship is like the fast express that passes the country
railroad station, or the comet that whirls round our sun and off
again.

Those fishermen feel that THEY are the REAL world; the steamship
and outside creation are only half imagined, interesting
phenomena.  You look down from the deck and the fishermen seem
unreal little ornaments of your European excursion.  And so the
two sets of human beings go their ways--to each nothing is
important, save that which each is doing.

There are great planets and suns that roll past us across this
cosmic ocean of ether.  Our pathetic little round earth looks to
them as that fishing-boat of the Azores looks to you.  And WE
think of those great interstellar travellers as the fisherman in
his little boat thinks of the ocean liner--the great star to us
is merely an interesting feature of OUR sky.  And we actually
wonder whether there is any thought on that big, distant sun; any
intelligence on the vast ship that ploughs the ocean of limitless
space.  ----

The high ridge of volcanic peaks and the others near it are made
fertile and green by soil gradually developed through the
centuries by seeds brought across the ocean by winds and birds.

The tops of the mountains are black lava.  Lakes of black water
fill some of the quiet craters.  Only, here and there, the rising
sulphur smoke from rocky fissures tells of heat and power
smouldering.

The last great eruption of the volcanoes occurred a little more
than two hundred years ago--so the inhabitants laugh if you speak
of danger.  They forget that two hundred years in the earth's
life is as two minutes in the life of a man--and that what a man
did two minutes since he may do again.

Fences are built across the fields of thin soil that cover the
lava.  Each inch of that land thrown up by fire "belongs" to some
man.  White houses stand at the edges of deep lava canyons
running from the mountain tops to the sea's edge canyons made by
pouring lava or by the splitting of the mountains under fearful
pressure.

Children play about the blocks of lava--and all their lives, no
matter where they may go, those children will think of that
far-off island as the only real home, and of black lava blocks as
the only REAL kind of stone.

From your passing boat you cannot see these children.  Their
little lives, lost in the far-off sea, seem as unimportant as the
lives of the fish that swim below you.

But some child playing there to-day may be like that other island
child, Napoleon, and live to make the rest of the world talk
about the island that bred him.  Or, better still, some one of
those children, with a brain made powerful by solitude and noble
thought, may have the idea that shall help us all, teach us more
and more to think kindly of each other and help each other,
instead of passing each other coldly and indifferently as the big
ship passes the little, far-off island.



NO NAPOLEONIC CHESS PLAYER ON AN AIR CUSHION
ZANGWILL'S IDEA IS FALSE--WHY CHESS PLAYING STUNTS GENIUS

Mr. Zangwill's keen intellect, straining hard for striking
pictures and word effects, sees falsely the great general of the
future.  He says:

"The Napoleon of the future will be an epileptic chess player,
carried about the field of battle on an air cushion."

In this condensed, picturesque fashion Mr. Zangwill expresses
sententiously a number of mistaken ideas.  He thinks that the
game of war is like the game of chess, and that the future world
conqueror will be a great chess player, using men as pawns and
the world as his chess-board.

He observes the curious and interesting historical fact that of
the world's great conquerors many, including the two greatest,
Napoleon and Alexander, were afflicted with that mysterious
disease, epilepsy.  He concludes that the great general of the
future will probably be a confirmed epileptic.

The ability of a fighting man to-day resides largely, of course,
in the brain.  The general's MUSCLES no longer count as a
fighting factor.  His battles are won or lost inside of his
SKULL.  Mr. Zangwill concludes that the future great general will
have a mind developed to an abnormal extent at the expense of the
body--he sees in the future world conqueror an abnormal creature,
a giant brain perched on a miserable, wasted body, so feeble and
delicate that it must be carried about the field of battle on an
air cushion to prevent shocks.  ----

The quotation from Zangwill which we print above contains only
twenty-one words.  Rarely have so many errors, so many
fundamental yet plausible errors, been crowded into so little
space.

The Napoleon of the future, the great conqueror, will NOT be a
chess player.  The real Napoleon whom we know had no love for
chess or any other waste of time, or any other form of self-
indulgence.

Chess is no game for a Napoleon, or for any other man who wants
to embody real accomplishment in the story of his life.

CHESS IS A WEAK GAME, FOR IT ADMITS ALL KINDS OF RULES AND ALL
KINDS OF FOREORDAINED IMPOSSIBILITIES.

The man who makes the world's great success will not be bound by
rules.  The great men of the world are great because they refuse
to ADMIT impossibilities.

The man who plays chess has two knights, and these knights he can
only send two squares in one direction and one square in another,
or one square in one direction and two squares in the other.  His
two bishops can only move diagonally across the board, one on the
white and one on the black.  His castles lumber along on straight
lines.  His king cannot be touched or taken, and the game ends
when the king is in fatal danger.  The queen, in the dull game we
call chess, can do almost anything.

But Napoleon was really a great man, and the game of life that he
played was very different from the chess game.

When the king was in hopeless danger, Napoleon's game had just
begun.  Others before him had looked upon kings on the board of
life as the chess player looks upon the wooden or ivory king
before him.

But to Napoleon kings were pawns, to be moved around and made
ridiculous.  When he felt like it, he made pawns into kings--the
descendant of one of his pawn-kings reigns to-day in Sweden.

Napoleon's game deprived the queen of all power--she was less
than a pawn.  HIS game sent the bishops hopping back and forth,
diagonally or at right angles, as he saw fit.  He created knights
to his heart's content, and he taught them to move as he wanted.

Napoleon was great because there was nothing of the chess player
about him.  He did not admit of regular, foreordained moves on
the chess-board or on the board of life.  HE REFUSED TO CONSIDER
ANYTHING IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL HE HAD TRIED IT.  He tells us himself
that he deserved credit for crossing the Alps, not that he
accomplished a difficult feat, but because he refused to believe
those who declared the feat impossible.

If anybody said "Check" to Napoleon, he kicked over the
chess-board and began a new game of his own--that was what
surprised the poor, dull old Austrian generals in Italy.

No; the real great man is no chess player, he has no chess
player's mind.  And do you, Mr. Reader, waste no time at chess,
if you have any idea of being WORTH WHILE in a big or a little
way.  ----

The Napoleon of the future will be no epileptic.  That terrible
disease has afflicted many of the noblest intellects, and it is
undoubtedly a disease brought on, or at least intensified, by
great intellectual activity and a lack of co-ordination between
the mental and physical operations of the body.  But some great
men have been great, not because of that terrible disease, but in
spite of it.  Science will conquer that trouble, as it has
conquered others, and the scientist to do this work will be,
himself, one of the world's great men.  ----

The Napoleon of the future will be no huge-brained dwarf, with
feeble body, carried on an air cushion.

It is true that many great men of to-day are relatively small in
body.  The gigantic muscle, thick legs, broad shoulders and hairy
chests of the  successful Viking have nothing to do with modern
achievement.

But it is also true that to-day, as always, the healthy mind
lives in a healthy body, and lives ON a healthy body.

As well expect to find the most perfect fruit on a withered,
half-dead tree, as to find the most able brain in a withered,
half-dead body.  The blood is the life of the brain, and unless a
HEALTHY body supplies HEALTHY blood the brain's chance is small.

Napoleon, it's true, was at one time a physical wreck--BUT DON'T
FORGET THAT HIS GREATNESS WAS ALSO A WRECK AT THAT TIME.

The GREAT Napoleon operated in a body tireless and powerful
enough to remain thirty consecutive hours on horseback.  It was a
body so powerful that criminal neglect and stupid ignorance of
the laws of health were powerless against it for many years.

The Napoleon that went to St. Helena dwelt in a worn-out body, a
fat, degenerate perversion of the Napoleon that conquered the
world.

The great conqueror of the future, ladies and gentlemen, will be
a splendidly original brain, working through a perfectly
developed body, AND WORKING FOR THE MASS OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THEIR
FARE, NOT FOR THEIR CONQUEST AND OPPRESSION.

All of which is respectfully submitted to our readers for
discussion and criticism.



A GIRL'S FACE IN THE GASLIGHT AND AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE
WORLD'S WORK

On a corner of Rector street, down near the river, a loud drum
was beating.  A guitar and a tambourine competed shrilly with the
drum's dull booming.  Slowly a careless crowd gathered round the
Salvation Army workers.

There were bare-headed women, little girls holding little babies
in their arms, sailors drunk, and one or two sober, 'longshoremen
pleased with the sound of the drum, and a few of the thin, hungry
faces that disturb our well-fed happiness.

The man beat his drum, standing erect and proud in his army
uniform.

The two thin, nervous young women played on guitar and tambourine
with all their force, striving to gather the crowd whom they
hoped to make better men and women.

Thirty or forty people gathered--glad to accept any noise and
excitement in their dull lives.

The music stopped, and a young girl stepped to the centre of the
circle.

She was frightened.  Her voice was weak at first.  Gradually her
thin, pale face grew animated.

Her blue eyes dilated.  In dull, routine way, doing her best,
earning respectful silence from the night crowd, she told her
story:

"I was bad.  I tried to be good.  But I couldn't do it with my
own strength.  I asked God to save me.  He did save me.  He will
save you, if you will ask Him."

She spoke with a strong German accent.  With all her deep,
earnest soul, with all her poor, limited mental force, she longed
to help the men and women around.  As she spoke she bent her head
farther and farther back, until her eyes looked up to the sky.
There, with perfect faith, she saw the God whose work she was
humbly doing in the muddy streets and flickering gaslight of the
riverside.

While she could control her voice and her deep emotion she talked
on her one theme--the power of God to help the helpless.  But she
BELIEVED, and she FELT what she said.  Soon the tears ran over
from her upturned eyes, and she could speak no more.

Then a man began--thickset, earnest, with a strong Scotch accent.

He talked to the men about him in a rough way that appealed to
them.  ----

As the crowd stood listening many passed.  A few were
contemptuous; the majority were indifferent.

If you see these workers you ask perhaps:

"What good do they do?"

That is the question that may be asked of every man that ever
lived, and only One can answer it.

The thin, white-faced girl, playing, singing and PREACHING in the
dirty street, does this:

She touches the heart of a half-drunken man.  Turning from the
saloon door he goes home, and takes to his wife and children as
much of his wages as is left, a feeling of repentance, good
resolutions.

Her tears are answered by the tears of miserable girls and women
who sink back into the shadow as they watch her pure face.
Through them she helps to undo the horrible, soul-destroying work
of brutal civilization.  ----

Mysteriously, diversely, the work of the world is done.

The storm, endless in its power, washes down the mountain-tops to
fertilize the valley.

The tiny earthworm works in darkness, crumbling up its little
patch of earth to make it fit food for plants.

Each does its work.

The mighty intellect with cyclonic force gives to mankind grand,
general views of cosmic grandeur, and introduces to minds
prepared the "eternal silences," and the vast serene fields of
divine law.



THE "CRIMINAL" CLASS
DID THIS VIEW OF IT EVER OCCUR TO YOU?

Much interest just now in CRIMINALS.

Much horror aroused by depravity.

Many plans more or less appropriate for making the air pure.

Many good men, politicians, women and bishops, who spent the
Summer at the seaside willing now to spend a few days wiping
"CRIME" off the earth.  ----

What is CRIME?  Who are the criminals?  Who makes the criminals?

Do criminals viciously and voluntarily arise among us, eager to
lead hunted lives, eager to be jailed at intervals, eager to
crawl in the dark, dodge policemen, work in stripes and die in
shame?  Hardly.

Will you kindly and patiently follow the lives, quickly sketched,
of a boy and a girl?

THE GIRL

Born poor, born in hard luck, her father, or mother, or both,
victims of long hours, poor fare, bad air and little leisure.

As a baby she struggles against fate and manages to live while
three or four little brothers and sisters die and go back to kind
earth.

She crawls around the halls of a tenement, a good deal in the
way.  She is hunted here and chased there.

She is cold in Winter, ill-fed in Summer, never well cared for.

She gets a little so-called education.  Ill-dressed and ashamed
beside the other children, she is glad to escape the education.
No one at home can help her on.  No one away from home cares
about her.

She grows up white, sickly, like a potato sprouting in a cellar.
At the corner of a fine street she sees the carriages passing
with other girls in warm furs, or in fine, cool Summer dresses.

With a poor shawl around her and with heels run down she peers in
at the restaurant window, to see other women leading lives very
different from hers.

Steadily she has impressed upon her the fact, absolutely
undeniable, that as the world is organized there is no especial
place for her--certainly no comfort for her.

She finds work, perhaps.  Hours as long as the daylight.

Ten minutes late--half a day's fine.

At the end of the day aching feet, aching back, system ill-fed,
not enough earned to live upon honestly--and that prospect
stretches ahead farther than her poor eyes can see.

"What's the charge, officer?"

"Disorderly conduct, Your Honor."

There's the criminal, good men, politicians, women and bishops,
that you are hunting so ardently.

THE BOY

Same story, practically.

He plays on the tenement staircase--cuffed off the staircase.

He plays ball in the street--cuffed, if caught by the policeman.

He swings on the area railing, trying to exercise his stunted
muscles--cuffed again.

In burning July, with shirt and trousers on, he goes swimming in
the park fountain--caught and cuffed and handed over to "the
society."

A few months in a sort of semi-decent imprisonment, treated in a
fashion about equivalent to that endured by the sea turtle turned
over on its back in the market.

He escapes to begin the same life once more.

He tries for work.

"What do you know?"

"I don't know anything; nobody ever taught me."

He cannot even endure the discipline of ten hours' daily
shovelling--it takes education to instil discipline, if only the
education of the early pick and shovel.

He has not been taught anything.  He has been turned loose in a
city full of temptation.  He had no real start to begin with, and
no effort was ever made to repair his evil beginning.  ----

"What's the charge, officer?"

"Attempted burglary; pleads guilty."

"Three years in prison, since it is his first offence."

In prison he gets an education.  They teach him how to be a good
burglar and not get caught.  Patiently the State boards him, and
educates him to be a first-rate criminal.

There's your first-rate criminal, Messrs. Bishops, good men,
politicians and benevolent women.  ----

Dear bishops, noble women, good men and scheming politicians,
listen to this story:

In the South Sea Islands they have for contagious diseases a
horror as great as your horror of crime.

A man or woman stricken with a loathsome disease, such as
smallpox, is seized, isolated, and the individual sores of the
smallpox patient are earnestly scraped with sea shells--until the
patient dies.  It hurts the patient a good deal--without ever
curing, of course--but it relieves the feelings of the outraged
good ones who wield the sea shells.

You kind-hearted creatures, hunting "crime" in great cities, are
like the South Sea Islanders in their treatment of smallpox.

You ardently wield your reforming sea shells and you scrape very
earnestly at the sores so well developed.  ----

No desire here to decry your earnest efforts.

But if you ever get tired of scraping with sea shells, try
vaccination, or, better still, try to take such care of youth, to
give such chances and education to the young, as will save them
from the least profitable of all careers--CRIME.  ----

Rich good men, nice bishops, comfortable, benevolent
ladies--every man and woman on Blackwell's Island, every wretched
creature living near a "red light," would gladly change places
with any of you.

Scrape away with your sea shells, but try also to give a few more
and a few better chances in youth to those whom you now hunt as
criminals in their mature years.

God creates boys and girls, anxious to live decently.

YOUR SOCIAL SYSTEM makes criminals and fills jails.



THE WONDERFUL MAGNET
HOW WILD SUPERSTITION SETTLES DOWN INTO SCIENTIFIC REALITY

Everybody knows something of the peculiarities of the magnet.  As
a boy you led tiny painted ducks around the water basin, holding
a magnet in your hand, or you owned a horseshoe magnet that would
pick up nails and needles.

You know now in a general kind of way that the magnet is a very
useful as well as a somewhat mysterious thing.

The old Greeks and Romans simply knew that some remarkable iron
ore found in Lydia, near the town of Magnesia, and hence called
magnet, was capable of drawing and holding pieces of metal.

The ancients had the wildest theories concerning the magnet, just
as we have wild theories about things that are new and strange to
us to-day.

They thought that the magnet could be used in cases of sickness,
that it could attract wood and flesh, that it influenced the
human brain, causing melancholy.  They believed that the power of
a magnet could be destroyed by rubbing garlic on it, and that
power brought back again by dipping the magnet in goat's blood.
They believed that a magnet could be used to detect bad conduct
in a woman; they believed that it would not attract iron in the
presence of a diamond.  They believed much other nonsense quite
as ridiculous as the nonsense that we believe to-day.  ----

It must have seemed a great waste of time in wise men in the old
days to discuss the magnet or think about it at all.  Please
observe how the apparent nonsense of early speculation finally
ripens into actual utility, and learn to respect those who deal
as best they can with questions that seem beyond our
comprehension.

First the magnet was made actually and wonderfully useful in the
compass.  Who discovered the compass nobody knows.  It was
probably invented by the Chinese and brought to Europe through
the Arabs.  Anyhow, some genius found out that a small needle
brought in contact with the so-called lodestone, or magnetic ore,
absorbs the qualities of the lodestone, and when placed on a
pivot will always point to the north.

In the magnet there were and there still are many mysteries.  A
form of perpetual motion seems to be embodied in the principle of
magnetism.  One strange fact is this, that the weight of the
metal is exactly the same before it is magnetized and after it is
magnetized.

Early students thought that the magnet pointed toward some
particular spot in the sky, perhaps  some magnetic star.  One
genius felt sure that there must be huge mountains of lodestone
near the North Pole.  This suggestion was followed by ingenious
yarns to the effect that in the extreme North ships had to be
built with wooden nails, instead of iron nails, as the magnetic
mountains would draw the iron nails out of the ship.

After this came the more rational conception that our own earth
is a great magnet, and that the little magnet in the compass
simply obeys in pointing, the greater force of the earth magnet.
----

This editorial generalizing on the magnet is brought about by an
incident telegraphed from Vallejo, California.  John Gettegg,
apprentice in the Navy Yard, had imbedded in his cheek a flying
piece of steel.  To get it out would apparently have demanded a
painful and difficult surgical operation, as the piece of steel
had entered the bone.  But the head electrician, Petrio, simply
placed near the wounded boy's face an electro-magnet capable of
lifting five hundred pounds, and the sharp piece of steel
instantly flew out of the cheek and attached itself to the
magnet.

So much for one proof of the value of developing what may seem at
first to be a foolish set of experiments.

In thousands of ways to-day this magnetic power is utilized.

You can buy strawberries in baskets very cheap, partly because
the baskets cost very little for labor.  The man who tacks them
together uses a magnetized tack hammer.  This magnetic tack
hammer picks up the tacks of its own accord, and the man drives
them in the basket as fast as he can touch the magnet to the
heads of the tacks and strike the basket.

In the great steel works where armor plate is made powerful
magnets are used to carry the hot plates from one place to
another.  The magnet lifts up the hot, soft metal without denting
it or damaging it and drops it down where it is wanted.  The
power which moves trolley cars through the streets is nothing in
reality but an application of the force of the magnetic
principle.  ----

That the earth itself is a great magnet cannot be questioned.
And there is no doubt that each of us human beings is a compound
magnet on his own account, depending for his welfare on magnetic
force.

The millions of red corpuscles in the blood, each with its
infinitesimal particles of iron, absorb in the lungs and
distribute throughout the body the electric forces on which we
depend, and with which we do our work.

When you read of men and women dealing in a blundering kind of a
way with abstract, abstruse speculations and problems, do not
laugh at them too heartily.  They are no more ridiculous than the
old Greeks who thought that a magnet could be regulated by garlic
or goat's blood.  And their wild theories of to-day may settle
down into great utility centuries from now.  This applies to
Christian Science, faith cures, telepathy, and the many other
speculations of the present day.  There is unquestionably much
future fruit and value in many or all of them.



WHO IS INDEPENDENT?  NOBODY

We all have our moments of imagining ourselves INDEPENDENT
characters.  We take pride in our independence and are never as
foolish as when trying to prove how independent we are.

Every man, to begin with, is born absolutely at the mercy of his
ancestry.  You have not a thing in you, and you never will have a
thing in you, that you did not inherit from some one of the
thousands and thousands of ancestors, all of whom are dimly
stored away in your complex make-up.

You may develop marvellously the faculties which they gave you.

But you ARE DEPENDENT on those who brought you into the world,
and upon those back of them.

The Kaffir, sober, industrious, honest, with all the virtues
rolled up within him, has not a fragment of one chance in ten
thousand billions of equalling the achievements of a tenth-rate
white man whose ancestral start was better.  ----

After birth you start with dependence on your ancestors, and
after youth you are dependent on your education.

Facts are your tools, and you can't work without them.

If your mind has the right formation, if your brain is provided
with the deep convolutions, and good luck has supplied you with a
good education in youth, the whole thing is dependent on your
health--on your liver, your stomach, or some other part of your
internal machinery.

Very often your success is dependent on your temper and tact.
These depend on your digestion.  Digestion, of course, depends on
your cook, and the cook's attention to business may depend on the
politeness of the policeman in front of the house.

You may FEEL absolutely independent and THINK you are
independent, when as a matter of fact you are miserably dependent
on the mood of the policeman who has snubbed the lady who cooks
your food.



WHEN WE BEGIN USING LAND UNDER THE OCEANS
BIG WORK AHEAD FOR MAN, KIND FRIENDS

There is a great deal of water on this earth of ours and a great
deal of land underneath it.

All the treasures of these hidden plains are simply put away for
our future use by bountiful nature, as prudent parents put money
in the savings bank for their young ones.  ----

Already in Chili they are mining coal under the bed of the
Pacific Ocean, and the traveler may ride on electric cars through
solid tunnels of coal beneath the waters of the greatest ocean.

The tin mines in Wales extend far out beneath the sea.

Workers in the Calumet and Hecla mines work beneath the waters of
Lake Superior.

Oil wells are worked out beyond the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
You may see the oil derricks just off Santa Barbara's surf.

In the bay of San Francisco artesian wells, going through the
preliminary depths of salt water, bring the water of fresh
submarine springs to the surface.

But these little enterprises are but faint beginnings of the
great work that man has to do in exploiting the wealth beneath
the waters covering two-thirds of the earth's surface.

This earth will be quite a romantic abode when sub-oceanic
exploitation reaches full development, when the great gold mines
beneath the waters are indicated simply by latitude and
longitude.

Mars, with his huge canals distributing a planet's waters
scientifically, will be matched perhaps by our network of tunnels
under the water from here to Asia, and by our boring, with the
aid of cooling mediums, toward the earth's centre and bringing up
metals in a molten state.

Before he finishes with her, man will make old earth know that he
is at work "in her midst."  He will make the harnessing of a tiny
Niagara or the boring of a poor little isthmus seem feeble
efforts.



WHERE YOUR BODY CAME FROM
LET IT BE SCATTERED AS IT WAS GATHERED

Did you ever think about the construction of the body which you
inhabit?  Did it ever occur to you that your shoulders and hands
and chest and legs and lungs are made of contributions from
widely different parts of the earth?

Your brain, a wonderfully complex machine, the seat of thought
and of the will, is packed away in darkness in the bony skull.

The heart, working ceaselessly, pumps the blood that feeds the
brain and makes possible its work.

The eyes, with the aid of the nerves that perceive light, guide
you.  The ears, with the nerves that interpret sound waves, tell
their story.

Like a central operator with a million wires leading to him, your
INDIVIDUALITY, a wonderful mystery without form, matter or name,
sits in your brain guiding the body.  ----

Where did the body come from?

Part of it came from potatoes grown on Long Island, and part of
it from spices grown in Ceylon.

In your nerves there is the extract of tea leaves gathered by a
Chinese girl on the other side of the world.  Your blood is
purified and made red by the wind that blew across the Rocky
Mountains only a few hours ago.  That current of oxygen has
helped build up your strength.

A month ago an ox was eating grass in Texas.

Many millions of years ago the pollen of huge fern trees was
falling to the earth in the carboniferous era and making coal.

To-day, part of the backbone of the ox from Texas with the meat
attached is laid on the fire of coal made by those fern trees,
and the Texas ox and the fern pollen combined help to build up
your body.

That same body is three-quarters water, and of that water part
was once the Pacific Ocean; part, perhaps, was drunk up by a
whale before it reached you; and part floated in clouds over the
Southern Sea.  ----

Your imagination can carry the picture as far as it will--to the
fisherman catching your sardines in the North, and the dark man
gathering your oranges in the South or your dates in some oasis.

We want to suggest this idea to you.

Since the body is gathered from all parts of the world, from all
corners of our little speck of the material universe, should it
not be scattered, at death, as it was gathered during life?

Is not the destruction of the body by fire far better than
hideous burial in the earth?

The body that fire destroys goes back to nature, instantly
reduced to its original elements.  Is not such disposition of the
body more in accord with nature's laws and with respect for the
dead than our present custom?

Would it not be pleasanter to think that one we cared for had
gone back to the air, with only a handful of ashes remaining,
than to think of the dark, close, lonesome grave far below the
sunlight, clogging and uselessly occupying part of the earth,
which should be devoted to growth and cheerfulness?



HOW MARRIAGE BEGAN
HAPHAZARD REFLECTIONS ON GRAVE TOPICS.

At stated times we mortals have stated visitations.

One day it is the grippe, next day the financial problem.

Just now it is the marriage and divorce question, with much
learned expounding by the good and the pure, such as bishops and
members of Sorosis.  ----

What is marriage?  How did it begin?  Whence does it come?

Why is it a feature of human life wherever that life is found.

You must begin with such questions.  Always study beginnings.
Nothing can be learned by taking hold of a thing in the middle
and examining its imperfections.

The first priest to join man and woman together was no benign
being with lawn sleeves and soul-stirring words.

Marriage was brought about on this earth by the will and wisdom
of God Almighty working through primitive babyhood.

In the old days, when the world was cruder, men and women ran
wild through forests and swamps.  They fought nature, fought each
other, as savage as other beasts around them.  There was no love;
there was no marriage.  The instincts of self-preservation and
of reproduction worked alone to keep the race here through its
hard childhood.  ----

But in cold stone caves or in rough nests under fallen tree
trunks savage children were born and nursed by their savage
mothers with savage affection.

Through those infants of the stone age, or of ages much earlier,
marriage and pure affection came into the world.

It is not hard to reproduce in our minds the picture of the first
marriage.

A savage woman, half human, half ape, with rough, matted locks
hanging round her face, sits holding her new-born baby,
protecting it from wind and cold.

It is a queer baby, covered perhaps with reddish hair, its brow
no higher than a rat's.  Its jaw protrudes; its tiny, grimy hands
clutch with monkey power all things within reach.

Along comes the father, full of plans to kill a mammoth or a cave
bear; interested in his stone-tipped club, but caring nothing for
the mother, who has been for some time only a whining nuisance.

He stops for a second to look at the small creature which he has
added to earth's animal life.

Its misshapen skull, ferret eyes, miniature shoulders--something
about it reminds him of his royal self, as studied in the pool.
He stoops to look closer.  His bristly hairs are grabbed, and a
weird, insane, toothless grin lights up the little monkey face.

Then the savage takes a new view of life; there the marriage
institution and the marriage problem are born simultaneously.

Says the mammoth hunter, with whistling words and hoarse throat
sounds half articulated:

"I like this baby.  He's like me.  Let me hold him.  Don't you go
out with him looking for food, and don't leave him alone while
I'm gone.  I've got a bear located.  No one can beat me killing
bears.  I'll bring the bear's heart to you this evening.  You can
give this baby some of the blood.  It will do him good.  Don't
have anything to say to that mammoth hunter in the next swamp.  I
want you to stick to me.  I'll look after you.  I have taken a
fancy to that baby.  He looks very much like me."

Off goes the father, and that savage mother, in a primitive way,
is a wife.  Hereafter she is to be cared for.  Bears will be
killed for her, even while she has children to keep her busy and
unattractive.  Society takes a new turn and the red-haired baby
has done it.

To childhood, helpless and beautiful, we owe marriage and all
that growth of morality which is gradually making us really
civilized.

The basis of all real growth is altruism; and altruism, the
inclination to think more of others than of yourself, came into
the world through the cradle.

We owe such civilization as we have acquired to children.

"A softened pressure of an uncouth hand, a human gleam in an
almost animal eye, an endearment in an inarticulate voice--feeble
things enough.  Yet in these faint awakenings lay the hope of the
human race." ----

The influence of childhood has transformed mere animal attraction
into unselfish affection.  It has substituted family life for
savage life.  The interests of childhood demand that marriage and
its responsibilities be held sacred.

Duty to future generations demands that divorce be made difficult
and considered a misfortune.

Marriage, brought into the world through the influence of
children, should be dissolved only with due regard for the
interests of children.  ----

An unhappy marriage is earth's worst affliction.  Quite true.
But it is not affliction wasted.

Examples are needed to warn the young against the matrimonial
recklessness which underlies most unhappy marriages.

Unhappy wives and husbands are human light-houses--lonely, but
useful.

If a gentle little Alderney calf should marry a sleek young zebra
and afterward get kicked to death for her pains, we should all
sympathize with her.  But we should expect other mild-eyed
Alderneys after that to beware of zebras.

As a matter of fact, this present divorce talk, which sets the
good to fluttering, really interests a very unimportant class.

The man who spends his life spending what he didn't earn, feeding
his physical senses, who goes from rum to the races, from the
races to the opera, and from the opera to roulette, wears out his
nervous sensations.

He then thinks that he is unhappily married.  He has possibly
driven his wife to being seven kinds of a fool.

But that is not her fault.

A man who marries a woman undertakes to make her happy and keep
her busy.  If he keeps his contract, she will keep hers.

If he fails, he has no right to experiment on another
unfortunate.  The divorce class is a self-indulgent, malformed
class, not worth notice.  ----

Professor Cope, an earnest man and serious thinker, believed that
marriages should be contracted on probation--say for five years,
with the right on both sides to refuse a renewal.

Theoretically, this would be beautiful.  It would make courtship
permanent, abolish curl-papered wives in the morning, and tipsy,
bragging husbands at night.

But it wouldn't work.  It would be all right for women.  They are
only too willing to be faithful and permanent.

But men cannot be trusted.  The animal in them, so essential long
ago, when the race was struggling for a foothold, has not been
obliterated.  They have got to be MADE responsible and HELD
responsible.  ----

As a matter of fact, there really is no marriage or divorce
problem which sensible beings need consider.

At present men are not good enough to be trusted with liberal
marriage or divorce laws.  When they are good enough the laws
will not be wanted.  For the man fully developed and fully moral
will know what he is doing when he goes into a marriage contract.

His stability of character will insure permanency.  There will be
no need of laws.

At one time the English laws regulated the conditions under which
a man might beat his wife.  "The stick," said the law, "must not
be thicker than the husband's thumb."

Some Englishmen have very thick thumbs, and the law was doubtless
hard on some thin, worn-out women.

But that law is no longer needed.

Men have outgrown the need of regulations in wife-beating.  In
time they will outgrow the need of laws regarding infidelity and
lack of self-respect.



MAN'S WILLINGNESS TO WORK

What a fortunate thing it is that men want to work and like to
live!  Suppose for a moment that the out-of-work, hungry, unlucky
creatures, numbering one hundred thousand in New York City,
should suddenly change their character.

It is a harmless supposition, as it implies that a great body of
good, though unlucky, men should be suddenly metamorphosed.  But
suppose, for instance, that one hundred thousand men should have
a meeting and say:

"The State provides food, lodging and good care for every thief.
It does not provide anything for us.  Let us therefore accept the
situation like philosophers and become thieves."

Suppose the hundred thousand men thereupon, very quietly, without
any show of violence, should each proceed to steal something and
then announce the intention to accept the consequence by pleading
guilty.  It would embarrass the State and the reigning powers,
would it not?

What could society do with a hundred thousand self-confessed
thieves to take care of?  It could not lock them up.  It could
not let them go.  It could not nominally sentence them and have
the Governor pardon them, because the hundred thousand would then
proceed to steal something else.

What could be done?  Nothing.  There is no punishment save
imprisonment for theft, and the wholesale thieves would ask for
and demand imprisonment with the usual rations.

We think society is well balanced and that everything is
ingeniously provided for.

So it is; but everything hinges on the extraordinary fact that
the hungry, thin, common, shiftless, luckless man at the very
bottom is still a MAN.  He will not be a thief, and he will die
of hunger and cold, as poor fellows do almost every winter day,
rather than take the food that society guarantees to the thief.

We attribute much to our own wisdom and the wisdom of our laws.
But we owe almost everything to the instinct of self-preservation
and to that second, very peculiar, instinct called pride.



THE HUMAN BRAIN BEATS THE COAL MINES

For six million years, during the carboniferous period, the tree
ferns dropped their pollen dust to the earth forming coal beds
which now cook our dinners and incidentally make J. Pierpont
Morgan so prosperous.

A good deal of useless anxiety has been devoted to the questions:

What will the human race do when the coal gives out?  Shall we
freeze, or begin planting huge forests of wood, or what?

In the first place, coal will not give out for a long, long time.

In the second place, its disappearance will not make the
slightest difference, for in the few cubic inches of the human
brain nature has stored up treasures greater than all those
hidden in the depths of the earth.  The creation of the human
brain took more years than the creation of the coal fields, but
the brain's resources are inexhaustible.

A German workman now comes along who has discovered a chemical
substitute for coal, better than coal in many ways, and before
this German shall have been dead many years some other will find
a further substitute far better and cheaper than his.

There is endless heat power in the action of the tides, in the
rush of Niagara, in the winds, and in endless chemical
combinations.  Heat is motion, and the Universe is motion.  Men
will soon cease lighting tiny bonfires to obtain crude heat in a
crude way.  Electricity or the sun's own rays, concentrated for
heating purposes, will do the work without any digging in mines
by men, or delving in ashes and clinkers by women.

The story of antiquity, more or less fictitious, of the burning
of a fleet with the aid of a glass and the sunbeams, will be
matter-of-fact reality long before the coal shall have been
exhausted.



HOW THE OTHER PLANETS WILL TALK TO US

We talk of civilization as though it necessarily implied
improvement.

Civilization means the school and the library, but it also means
the prison and the poorhouse.

Two short stories illustrate different views of what we call
civilization:

Aristippus was a young Greek gentleman of large means, genuine
intellectual power, a sense of humor and a reputation as a
philosopher.

He was on his way to Corinth with a young lady named Lais, or
possibly he was coming from Corinth with her.  Anyhow, he was
wrecked on the voyage.  If you know anything about the reputation
of Lais, you know that the philosopher was badly employed, and
that the Greek gods doubtless wrecked his vessel to impress upon
his mind the importance of morality.

Thrown ashore on a barren stretch of sand, the philosopher was
very sad at first.  He observed on the sand the remains of
certain geometrical drawings, and instantly exclaimed:  "There is
help near.  Here I see signs of thinking men, of civilization."
----

Voltaire tells of wrecked individuals thrown on a lonely coast,
and also much distressed and frightened.

They saw no geometrical tracings in the sand.  But on a bleak
moor in the twilight they saw the black beams of a gibbet, and
below the cross-piece, swinging in the wind, they saw a human
skeleton with bony wrists and ankles chained together.

Prayerfully the wanderers dropped on their knees and exclaimed
with upturned eyes:

"Thank God, we have got back to civilization." ----

Thus, you see, there are varying signs of civilization.  There is
a great gulf between the signs perceived by Aristippus--signs of
the mental activity which engages in geometrical
demonstrations--and Voltaire's sign of civilization--the brutal
execution of a brutal criminal.  ----

Those accustomed to waste time in speculations that cannot bring
a financial return may be interested in the following application
of the sign of civilization which Aristippus immediately
recognized back in the days of two thousand years ago.

We know that some day the inhabitants on Mars or some other
planet will want to talk to us.  They have doubtless been
studying us and consider us still too barbarous and primitive to
be worth talking to.

But when we become semi-civilized, in the cosmic sense of the
word, the older and wiser planets will get ready to open
communication with us.

How will they go about it?  They are perhaps absolutely different
from us, in shape, in manner of thought, in every conceivable
way, including language, customs, and so on.

BUT GEOMETRICAL, MATHEMATICAL FACTS ARE THE SAME THROUGHOUT THE
UNIVERSE.

Will not the wise Martian who wants to speak to us and decides to
flash some message down here on our clouds, or on the surface of
the water, utilize the universality of geometrical truths in
order to make us understand that thinking beings are trying to
talk to us?

The sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right
angles.

That is true of every triangle, no matter what its shape, no
matter whether it be drawn on this earth or on the most distant
sun.

Therefore, when the Martian gentleman gets ready to talk to us he
need only repeatedly place before us two right angles followed by
a triangle, or a triangle followed by two right angles.
Instantly, like Aristippus, we can say there is civilization in
Mars, or wherever that sign comes from, or at least there is
organized thought.  The mind that is flashing that sign knows
something about geometry.

Of course, we should also recognize "signs of civilization" if
the Martians should project upon our atmosphere a skeleton
hanging in chains.  But it is to be hoped that the Martians have
got beyond that particular evidence of civilization.



SHALL WE DO WITHOUT SLEEP SOME DAY?

A half-developed being like man, hanging midway between primitive
barbarism and ultimate perfection, should study the insect tribes
which appear to have realized the possibilities of development in
their line.

The study of the ant and the bee, the spider and the scorpion
should fill us with hope.  We should say to ourselves:

"If these tiny fragments of life can develop so highly, what may
not WE hope for in the way of ultimate possibilities?  Our
beginning is so much more full of promise than the beginnings of
our tiny insect brothers." ----

This writer, taking his own advice, which is most unusual, has
been trying to get acquainted with some insects in the hope of
cheering himself and getting new ideas.

From the female scorpion we acquire fresh veneration for the
possibilities of maternal devotion.

The mother of the Gracchi has been well advertised because she
preferred her sons to jewelry.  The Russian mother who feeds
herself to the wolves, instead of throwing her boy over the back
of the sleigh in the usual way, is also highly praised.  But
their devotion shrinks to nothing when compared with that of any
poor mother scorpion of Mexico's sandy tracts.

As soon as her young scorpions arrive, they climb to her back,
half a hundred of them or more.  She moves about with them,
protecting them, avoiding danger, giving them the sunlight.
Meanwhile they are feeding on her body.  Her movements get
gradually slower and slower; finally they cease.  The young
scorpions depart leaving the mother scorpion simply an empty
shell.  We should dislike to see any such exhibition of
tenderness among human beings, but we can't help admiring the
scorpion.

Mr. Scorpion, placed as was Captain Dreyfus, would sting himself
to death.  They are a determined race.  ----

Spiders who construct tiny balloons with little cars all complete
are wonderful creatures.  They cross chasms in their balloons,
throwing out bits of trailing web which seem to act as rudders.
In their little way and in a perfectly adequate fashion they have
solved aerial navigation, which still puzzles us.  We admire
spiders and kill only those with yellow stomachs, which are
"poison." ----

But up to the present we have found the ant the most
interestingly suggestive creature.  He has developed and
understands stirpiculture--the improvement of the race by careful
breeding--which with us is as yet mere theory, and as we look
down at the ant, we look up to him because the strangely active
creature manages to do without sleep.

We human beings drowse through thirty years of our threescore and
ten, but the ant is awake and working all the time.

If the ant has managed to live without sleep, if he has acquired
the faculty of lifelong wakefulness, why should we not do as much
in time?  We take it for granted that sleep is essential, as we
take everything else for granted.  We used to take it for granted
that the earth was flat, but we have stopped that.  Sleep was at
one time forced upon man and other animals.

The earth in its rollings turned away from the sun once in every
twenty-four hours.  In the darkness of the beginning man said to
himself:  "If I go walking around, I shall fall into a hole, so I
shall lie down and wait until the sun comes again."

He did as all the animals did before him for millions of years.
Since that time, man has conquered darkness.  Why should he not
ultimately conquer sleep?

We know that thin men, nervous, highly organized, do with far
less sleep than others.  We know that old age requires less sleep
than youth.

Can we not cultivate and develop the characteristics which make
sleep less necessary?  Higher races of apes have abolished tails.

Can't we abolish sleep?  ----

As old age needs less sleep than babyhood, so in our maturity as
a human race we shall probably demand less sleep than now in our
racial babyhood.  Perhaps none at all will be needed.

If that happens our lives will be doubled in value, they will be
complete.  The hours of sunlight will be devoted to examination
and admiration of nature's beauties on this earth.

The hours of darkness, given up to sleep no longer, will be
devoted to the study of space, to investigation among other
worlds.

That kind of life will be worth while.  Bear in mind that we
shall only really begin to live on this earth when we shall have
settled all the little social and material questions here and
shall have begun in earnest the study of the universe in which we
are a speck.

The days of the future will be given up to artistic enjoyment of
the beautiful.  The nights will be devoted to intellectual
development and research.

Man will LIVE.



THE THREE BEST THINGS IN THE WORLD

If you had choice of all qualities which man can possess, which
three would you declare most important?

This question is submitted as interesting every man.  We give our
answer; if yours is different, send it here.  ----

SELF-CONTROL.

JUSTICE.

IMAGINATION.

Those we think the most important elements in the human
character.  A man fully and evenly equipped with all three would
be greater than any the world has known.  ----

SELF-CONTROL you must start with.

It makes life worth while.  It frees you from the danger of
remorse, the wasted time of self- reproach.  It sees
opportunities as they come; saves you from damaging temptation.
It is as important to a brain as is physical equilibrium to a
work of masonry.

A man without self-control, a building out of plumb, cannot
endure.

JUSTICE.

It is the foundation of all reputation worth the having.  It is
to man as necessary as the compass to a ship.  It is the compass.

Justice will give reputation for greatness though you create
nothing great.  It will win affectionate reverence in life and a
gratifying gravestone at life's end.  ----

IMAGINATION.

Greatest gift to man.  It finds him grovelling here a pithecoid
littleness.

The rough hair is gone from his body.  His thumb has lost its
monkey smallness; he walks flat on his feet.

But beyond that he has naught else to thank material nature for.

All the rest comes to him from imagination.  Marvellous work she
performs.  She takes naked man with his low forehead, with his
gruntings and whistlings through his teeth, and makes of him what
man was meant to be.

Very slowly she works, but ceaselessly.  Her task is not nearly
ended.  At her first glimmerings man's real life begins.  He
learns from her to add wood to a fire.  No monkey ever did it.
That stamps him a man.

Soon, with her help, he leaves the earth and travels off ten
thousand million miles into space.  He counts the suns in the
Milky Way; travels in the air, under the water; harnesses
lightning, controls nature.  By IMAGINATION he is made
CAPTAIN of this earthen ship on which he travels through space.

IMAGINATION separates Archimedes, working at his problems in the
sunlight, from the vile soldier that slaughtered him.

Shakespeare rattling his ale pot and Johanna, the ape, shaking
her bars at the Zoo are alike, save for difference of
imagination.

SELF-CONTROL to balance you.

JUSTICE to guide you.

IMAGINATION to lend creative power.

"Equilibrium, Direction, Creation."

The TRINITY ardently to be desired.  ----

Long ago Plato announced that apparent differences are deceptive;
that all things existing come from one casting--the mind of
God--which he names "idea."

Similarly to-day the solemn-thinking German tells you that matter
and force are identical, that the interchangeable character of
forces--heat light, magnetism, etc.--is part of the a, b, c of
proved phenomena.

Haeckel stops digging up old bones and classifying sea
microscopic organisms long enough to write "Monism," expressing
his belief that God is anything and everything from Orion to a
tumble- bug.

It is quite easy to show that the selected three--self-control,
justice and imagination--are in reality one.  Each exists as part
of the others.  Each is made up of the other two.

But this column is not devoted to any save simple things.

The question is this, once more:

What are man's three most useful qualities--which three would
you possess?

Do not call this question idle or believe that we cannot change
ourselves.  We CAN.

Napoleon said:  "Never believe that a man ever changed his
temperament."

But Napoleon often said what was foolish.

It ought to delight you to know that you can change yourself if
you want to, as you can change the arrangement of your back
parlor.

Try it.  It is hard work, but good exercise.



THE VALUE OF SOLITUDE

We inflict a piece of advice upon our readers.  It is intended
especially for the young, who have still to get their growth,
whose characters and possibilities are forming.

GET AWAY FROM THE CROWD WHEN YOU CAN.  KEEP YOURSELF TO YOURSELF,
IF ONLY FOR A FEW HOURS DAILY.  ----

Full individual growth, special development, rounded mental
operations--all these demand room, separation from others,
solitude, self-examination and the self-reliance which solitude
gives.

The finest tree stands off by itself in the open plain.  Its
branches spread wide.  It is a complete tree, better than the
cramped tree in the crowded forest.

The animal to be admired is not that which runs in herds, the
gentle browsing deer or foolish sheep thinking only as a fraction
of the flock, incapable of personal independent direction.  It's
the lonely prowling lion or the big black leopard with the whole
world for his private field that is worth looking at.

The man who grows up in a herd, deer-like, thinking with the
herd, acting with the herd, rarely amounts to anything.  ----

Do you want to succeed?  Grow in solitude, work, develop in
solitude, with books and thoughts and nature for friends.  Then,
if you want the crowd to see how fine you are, come back to it
and boss it if it will let you.

Constant craving for indiscriminate company is a sure sign of
mental weakness.

Schopenhauer--a sour genius, BUT a genius--speaks contemptuously
of the negroes herded in small rooms unable to get "enough of one
another's snub-nose company." ----

If you enter a village or small town and want to find the man or
youth of ability, do you look for him leaning over the village
pool table, sitting on the grocery store boxes, lounging in the
smelly tavern with other vacant minds?

Certainly not.  You find him at work, and you find him by
himself.

Think how public institutions dwarf the brains and souls of
unhappy children condemned to live in them.  No chance there for
individual, separate development.  Millions of children have
grown up in such places millions of sad nonentities.  ----

Here is what Goethe says:

"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in
dem Strome der Welt." (Talent is developed in solitude, character
in the rush of the world.)

You wonder why so much ability comes from the country--why a
Lincoln comes from the backwoods while you, flourishing in a
great city, can barely keep your place as a typewriter.

The countryman has GOT to be by himself much of the time whether
he wishes to or not.  If he has anything in him it comes out.

Astronomy, man's grandest study, grew up among the shepherds.
You of the cities never even see the stars, much less study them.

----

Don't be a sheep or a deer.  Don't devote your hours to the
company and conversation of those who know as little as you do.
Don't think hard only when you are trying to remember a popular
song or to decide on the color of your Winter overcoat or
necktie.

Remember that you are an individual, not a grain of dust or a
blade of grass.  Don't be a sheep; be a man.  It has taken nature
a hundred million years to produce you.  Don't make her sorry she
took the time.

Get out in the park and walk and think.  Get up in your hall
bedroom, read, study, write what you think.  Talk more to
yourself and less to others.  Avoid magazines, avoid excessive
newspaper reading.

There is not a man of average ability but could make a striking
career if he could but WILL to do the best that is in him.

Proofs of growth due to solitude are endless.  Milton's greatest
work was done when blindness, old age and the death of the
Puritan government forced him into completest seclusion.
Beethoven did his best work in the solitude of deafness.

Bacon would never have been the great leader of scientific
thought had not his trial and disgrace forced him from the
company of a grand retinue and stupid court to the solitude of
his own brain.

"Multum insola fuit anima mea." (My spirit hath been much alone.)
This he said often, and lucky it was for him.  Loneliness of
spirit made him.

Get a little of it for yourself.

Drop your club, your street corner, your gossipy boarding-house
table.  Drop your sheep life and try being a man.

It may improve you.



THERE SHOULD BE A MONUMENT TO TIME

Time has no real existence.  Yet time is man's most precious
possession.

Time is defined as a "succession of events."  What we call an
hour means certain movements in the machinery of a watch.  What
we call a day means one revolution of the earth upon its axis,
the turning of its surface toward the light of the sun.  Time is
the most mysterious factor in our lives and thoughts.  It never
had a beginning, it cannot possibly have an end.

Time only exists for us in the actual moment in which we live.
Yet our thoughts are in the time of past and future, and hardly
ever on the actual reality of the moment.

With the ceasing of our own consciousness, time ceases, so far as
we are concerned.  If you go to sleep and sleep soundly, you
cannot tell when you awake whether you have slept a minute or an
hour.  Time stops when YOU cease to observe the succession of
events.  In dying, we duplicate on a big and prolonged scale our
little daily sleeps in life.

If a man were told that after death his soul would not regain
consciousness for a thousand millions of years, he would worry,
and complain of the "long time."  But it would make no difference
to him whether the time were a thousand millions of years or
forty seconds--time would not exist for him; he would not know
the difference.

There is little doubt that to the ephemeridae, creatures that
live but for a day, that day must seem as long as our century,
for in their life of incessant activity and agitation every
second is a long space.  And there is no doubt that to the giant
turtles of the Galapagos Islands, heavy monsters that live ten
centuries or longer, a week is a fraction of time far less
important than an hour to us.  ----

A mysterious thing is time and its divisions.  Man manufactures a
watch capable of registering a fraction of a second.  And in the
force called light we have a power that can go seven times around
the world in one second.

We estimate our time by years.  It takes one year for our little
earth to spin round the sun.  And during that year it turns three
hundred and sixty-five times on its own axis.  While the entire
body of our earth flies through space, accompanying the sun on
its journey, the northern extremity of our planet has a separate
circular motion of its own.  This circular motion takes
twenty-seven thousand years to complete one circle, and as it
moves in this inconceivably slow journey our pole selects for us
and points out the various suns which in turn we call the North
Star.

We have written thus much to fix the attention of readers on the
question of time.  Now, how does it affect you?  Time represents
your only chance, your only wealth, your only possibility for
achieving anything.

The man who lasts fifty years lives about four hundred and
thirty-eight thousand hours.  Sleep takes at least one-third, or
one hundred and forty-six thousand hours.  The processes of
eating, washing, dressing, getting up and going to bed take up at
least three hours per day, or fifty-four thousand seven hundred
and fifty hours.

In addition to all this TIME cut out of our lives there is the
time devoted to amusement, the time devoted to idle dreaming--and
yet millions of people are wondering how they can "PASS THE
TIME."

In every great city and in every small town there should be a
monument to time.  Young children should be taken to see it,
clergymen should preach at the foot of it on the sacred
importance of the few hours of activity given to us here.  As the
sand runs through an hour glass, so you run your short race on
this earth.  That passing sand means the passing of your chances
for making your life worth while.  Instead of thinking how you
WILL pass the time, cross-examine yourself and ask yourself how
you HAVE passed the time thus far.

What did you do last year--what use did you make of the time as
it went by?  What did you do yesterday?  What are you going to do
to-day?  You possess a mind organized for practically unlimited
thinking and studying.  How many of your hours do you live as a
thinking, studying man?  How many do you live on a par with an ox
chewing his cud in the field?

The ox does not waste HIS time.  It is his business to grow fat
and produce beef.  He uses every hour.  It is your business to
use your time in the development of your mind, in dealing with
the duties and problems that are put before you.

Every young man can make a success if he will really look upon
each hour as an OPPORTUNITY, and cease to look upon the hours as
useless things, to be thrown away.

One hour will give you a knowledge of some good book, or wisely
spent, with a purpose of improving your health, it will make your
brain more efficient and add to the value of all future hours.

If you have a horse, a bicycle, a gun, you feel that because you
HAVE it you ought to USE it.

How much more should you feel that you ought to use your TIME, in
using which you use your own brain!  Surely, your brain is more
important and more worthy of conscientious use than a bicycle or
a gun.

Talk to children on this question of time.  Teach them that
respect for time means respect for their own lives and success in
life.



A MOTHER'S WORK AND HER HOPES

This editorial is not written for women.  It is written for MEN,
and for boys; for the millions who fail to appreciate the work
that mothers do, for the millions that ignore the self-sacrifice
and devotion upon which society is based.

On a hot night, in the dusty streets of a dirty city, you see
hundreds of women sitting in the doorways, TAKING CARE OF BABIES.

In lonesome farm houses, far out on monotonous plains, with the
late sun setting on a long day of hard work, you find women,
cheerful and persevering, TAKING CARE OF BABIES.

In the middle of the night, in earliest morning, when MEN sleep,
all over the world, in ice huts North, in southern tents, in big
houses and in dingy tenements, you find women awake, cheerfully
and gladly TAKING CARE OF BABIES.  ----

We respect and praise the man selfishly working for himself.

If he builds up a great industry and a great personal fortune, we
praise him.

If he risks his life for personal glory and for praise, we praise
him.

If he shows courage even in saving his own carcass from
destruction, we praise him.

There was never a man whose courage, or devotion, could be
compared with that of a woman caring for her baby.

The mother's love is unselfish, and it has no limit this side of
the grave.

You will find ONE man in a thousand who will risk his life for a
cause.

You will find a THOUSAND women in a thousand who will risk their
lives for their babies.

Everything that a man has and is he owes to his mother.  From her
he gets health, brain, encouragement, moral character, and ALL
his chances of success.

How poorly the mother's service is repaid by men individually,
and by society as a whole!

The individual man feels that he has done much if he gives
sufficient money and a LITTLE attention to her who brought him
from nothingness into life and sacrificed her sleep and youth and
strength for his sake.

Society, the aggregate of human beings, feels that its duty is
done when a few hospitals are opened for poor mothers, and a
little medicine doled out in cold-hearted fashion to the sick
child.

Fortunately, it may truly be said that the great man is almost
always appreciative of his greater mother.

Napoleon was cold, jealous of other men, monumentally egotistical
when comparing himself with other sons of women.  But he
reverenced and appreciated the noble woman who bore him, lived
for him, and watched over him to the end.  He said:

"It is to my mother, to her good principles, that I owe my
success and all I have that is worth while.  I do not hesitate
to say that the future of the child depends on the mother."
----

The future of the individual child depends on the individual
mother, and the future of the race depends on the mothers of the
race.

Think what has been done for mankind by thousands of millions of
perfectly devoted mothers.

Every mother is entirely DEVOTED, entirely HOPEFUL, entirely
CONFIDENT that no future is too great for her baby's deserts.

The little head--often hopelessly ill-shaped--rolls about feebly
on the thin neck devoid of muscles.  The toothless gums chew
whatever comes along.  The wondering eyes look feebly, aimlessly
about, without focus or concentration.  The future human being,
to the cold-blooded onlooker, is a useless little atom added to
the human sea of nonentity.

But to the mother that baby is the marvel of all time.  There is
endless meaning in the first mumblings, endless soul in the
senile, baby smile, unlimited possibilities in the knobby
forehead and round, hairless head.  She sees in the future of the
baby responsibilities of government, and feels that one so
perfectly lovely must eventually be acclaimed ruler by mankind.

As a result of perfect confidence in its future, the mother gives
to every baby perfect devotion, perfect and affectionate moral
education.  Each child begins life inspired by the most beautiful
example of altruism and self-sacrifice.

Kindness has gradually taken the place of brutality among human
beings, because every baby at its birth has found itself
surrounded by absolute kindness.

The mother's kindness forms moral character.

The mother's confidence and encouragement stimulate ambition and
inspire courage.

The mother's patient watchfulness gives good health, and fights
disease when it comes.

The mother's wrathful protection shields the child from the stern
and dwarfing severity of fathers.

Truly, a man may and should be judged by his feeling toward his
own mother, and toward the mothers of other men--of ALL men.

In the character of Christ, whose last earthly thought on
Golgotha was for His Mother, as in the character of the
hard-working, ignorant man whose earnings go to make his mother
comfortable, the most beautiful trait is devotion to the mother
who suffers and works for her children, from the hours that
precede their birth through all the years that they spend on
earth together.

Honor thy father and THY MOTHER.

And honor the mothers of other men.  Make their task easier
through fair payment of the men who support the children, through
good public schools for their children, through respectful
treatment of ALL women.

The mother is happy.  For she knows "the deep joy of loving some
one else more than herself."

You honor yourself, and prove yourself worthy of a good mother
and of final success, when you do something for the mothers of
the world.



YOUR WORK IS YOUR BRAIN'S GYMNASIUM

For "buyers" in big stores,

For clerks in little stores,

For office boys,

For typewriters, reporters, car conductors, household domestics,
for all who are hired to work for others, this article is
intended.

There is no greater mistake than skimping your work--BECAUSE YOU
ARE WORKING FOR ANOTHER, AND FEAR YOU MAY DO TOO MUCH.

For your own sake remember that whatever you do in the way of
honest concentrated work you do FIRST OF ALL FOR YOURSELF.

Only one thing in the world can improve you and better your
condition, and that thing is your own effort.

You begin life with certain mental faculties, and with certain
muscular faculties.  Their development or decay depends entirely
on yourself.

No work that you do is worthless.  It will NEVER pay you to
neglect or slur the task that you have undertaken.

You may be idle, in the thought that you are indulging yourself
at the expense of your employer.  It is a dishonest thought, and
it is a stupid thought at the same time.

You may rob your employer of the time that he pays for, but when
you shirk your work you rob yourself first of all.  ----

You may say that your employer pays you too little.  Perhaps he
does.  But that is no reason for hurting your moral character
through dishonesty.  It is no excuse for failing to develop
yourself.

The store, or factory, or office in which you work is to your
mind what a gymnasium is to your muscles.

You enter a gymnasium AND PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF WORKING
THERE.

You do not say to yourself:  "This gymnasium belongs to another
man.  The profits go to him, and so I'll not work hard."

On the contrary, you realize that the owner of the gymnasium
gives you the chance to develop your muscles, and you thank him,
although he makes you pay for the privilege.  And you do your
very best, on the trapeze, rings, parallel bars, or in any other
direction.

Act in your work as you do in your gymnasium hours.

There is no kind of work that can fail to make you a better and
more successful man if you work at it honestly and loyally.

If you sweep an office, sweep it well.  And begin punctually each
day, remembering that punctuality acquired in sweeping an
office may be used later in governing a city.

Train your mind through your work, whatever it is.

Study the lives of those who have succeeded.  You will see that
they did whatever they did as well as they could.

Edison was an ordinary telegraph operator.  But he was not
content with merely working as others worked.  He worked very
hard, devised means to make more valuable the instruments of his
employers.  Soon he was an employer himself, and what is far
better than being an employer, he was a creator of new ideas and
a benefactor of the world.  ----

Intelligent readers will not misinterpret this advice to mean
that they should OVERWORK themselves, or work regardless of
their own physical welfare.

The right course is this:

Do as much as you can in the present, without drawing on your
future reserves.

Don't work all night and then go on the next day.  Such effort
impairs permanently your store of vitality, and that vitality is
your capital.

But never form the habit of neglecting work, of shamming and
lying instead of achieving honestly.

You may deceive one employer, or ten.  But 36> you can't deceive
nature, and you can't deceive yourself.

You can form good habits only through regular work.  You can
develop your faculties only through exercising them honestly and
systematically.  ----

MERELY WORKING "FAIRLY WELL" IS NOT ENOUGH.

If you want to run a mile fast, you do not merely jog.  You try
every day to run the mile faster than you did the day before.  If
you want to learn to jump high, you strain your muscles and try
over and over to do what you can't do.  Ultimately you achieve
it.

Keep that in mind when you work.  Remember that you must wind
yourself up.  The most watchful employer may discharge you.  But
he cannot wind you up.

Be a self-winding machine, and keep yourself wound up.

Your hardest effort may fail to achieve greatness.  But honest
work will at least make it impossible for you to be a failure.

Train your brain, nerves and muscles to regular, steady,
conscientious effort.  Make up your mind that FOR YOUR OWN
SAKE you will make every effort your best effort.

You will soon find yourself a more successful, more
self-respecting, abler man or woman.

And here is an argument that should be more powerful with you
than self-interest:

Remember that the world needs honest, conscientious men and
women, able to do good work themselves and to people the earth
with children born of honest parents.

Make up your mind to be one of the world's HONEST citizens.

To improve the world begin by improving yourself.



THE STEEPLE, MOVING LIKE THE HAND OF A CLOCK

If you live in the suburbs you devote perhaps two hours each day
to travel.  Two hours per day means practically one-fifth of your
active life.

How many readers make any use of those two hours, and feel each
day that they have been well spent?  ----

Instead of being wasted, those hours should be among your best.
Never mind if you are clinging to a strap because companies are
licensed to exploit you.  Never mind if you are tired and weary
when the day is ended.  The tired brain often thinks better than
the fresh one.  And man, so recently descended from the monkey
who had to think while hanging head down, ought to have no
trouble thinking as he hangs from his strap--head up.  ----

Some in the cars play cards as they travel homeward.  Others talk
gossip, and tens of thousands waste too much time on this and
other newspapers.

Try this experiment:  Make up your mind to devote your hours of
travel to thinking.  The brain, like the muscles, needs definite
and well-planned exercise.  It must be methodical and regular.
There is no limit to its possible results.  You would be glad to
spend your two travelling hours in a gymnasium on wheels.  Make
of your homeward car a mental gymnasium.  Each night or morning,
take up some one line of thought and follow it to its end--or as
far as your mind can take you.  Learn to observe, to study, to
reflect.  Don't look at your fellow passengers as calves look at
each other on the way to the slaughter house.

Look, as a human being, at other human beings.  There they sit or
stand or hang.  Some chatter, others scowl, fret, fume, complain,
brag, grin or otherwise express the strange emotions that move us
here.

They are all ghosts, as Carlyle tells you, imprisoned for a time
in coverings of flesh, and a car packed full of real ghosts
passing over the earth on their quick journey to the grave ought
to stir you.  ----

The giggling shopgirls whose life of misery is still a joke to
them--blessed youth!--should interest you deeply.  And the negro,
too, with a tired black face, resting for the next day's
slavery--slavery on a wage basis, but slavery all the same.
Possibly you despise his thick lips.  But those lips are carved
on every sphinx in Egypt's sand, and if you could go back far
enough you would find the ancestors of that negro, before the
days of the Pharaohs, laying the foundations of your religion and
locating the stars in heaven.  At that time your forbears were
gibbering cave savages, sharpening bones and gnawing raw flesh.
When you see the negro on the opposite seat, the ill-starred one
who has gone down in the human race while we have gone up, think
about him, study him, speculate as to his ultimate end--and your
own.  Don't merely say to yourself, "That's a plain negro," and
go on chewing gum.  ----

The pictures that flash by your car windows should help you to
think.

The train rumbles over the switches, and in the dusk a swinging
lantern tells you that a man is at work, guiding you safely when
your work is done.  Can't you take an interest in that human
atom, representing the Power that swings our tiny sun in space,
lighting us on our journey toward the constellation Hercules?
----

A black steeple is outlined against the dark-blue sky of the
evening.  That is a finger of stone, built by man to point
everlastingly toward Infinite Power.  It now points "upward." In
twelve hours--as the earth slowly turns--it will be pointing
"downward." But there is no upward or downward in the carpentry
of the universe.  In the twenty-four hours, as it turns round
with the earth, that steeple points toward all the corners of
space, and constantly it points toward Eternal Wisdom and Justice
in every corner.  ----

This is tiresome?  All right, then we'll stop.  But whether we
tire or interest you, remember:

As a man thinks, so he grows.  Think, study, use all the hours
that separate your croupy cradle from your gloomy grave.  Those
hours are few.



CULTIVATE THOUGHT--TEACH YOUR BRAIN TO WORK EARLY

Two centuries back a young man of twenty-three sat in the quiet
of the evening--THINKING.

His body was quiet; his vitality, his life, all his powers, were
centred in his brain.

Above, the moon shone, and around him rustled the branches of the
trees in his father's orchard.

From one of the trees an apple fell.

No need to tell you that the young man was Newton; that the fall
of the apple started in his READY brain the thought that led
to his great discovery, giving him fame to last until this earth
shall crumble.

How splendid the achievement born that moment!  How fortunate for
the world and for the youth Newton, that at twenty-three his
brain had cultivated the HABIT OF THOUGHT! ----

Our muscles we share with everything that lives--with the oyster
clinging to his rock, the whale ploughing through cold seas, and
our monkey kinsman swinging from his tropical branch.

These muscles, useful only to cart us around, help us to do
slave work or pound our fellows, we cultivate with care.

We run, fence, ride, walk hard, weary our poor lungs and gather
pains in our backs building the muscles that we do not need.

Alone among animals, we possess a potentiality of mind
development unlimited.

And for that, with few exceptions, we care nothing.  ----

Most of us, sitting in Newton's place and seeing the apple fall,
would merely have debated the advisability of getting the apple
to eat it--just the process that any monkey mind would pass
through.

A Newton, a BRAIN TRAINED TO THINK, sees the apple drop, asks
himself why the moon does not drop also.  And he discovers the
law of gravitation which governs the existence of every material
atom in the universe.  ----

Young men who read this, start in NOW to use your brains.
Take nothing for granted, not even the fact that the moon stays
in her appointed place or that the poor starve and freeze amid
plenty.

Think of the things which are wrong and of the possibilities of
righting them.  Study your own weaknesses and imperfections.
There is power in your brain to correct them, if you will
develop that power.

As surely as you can train your arm to hold fifty pounds out
straight, just so surely can you train your brain to deal with
problems that now would find you a gaping incompetent.

You may not be a Newton.  But if you can condescend to aim at
being an inferior Sandow, can't you afford to try even harder to
be an inferior Newton?

Don't be a muscular monkey.  Be a low-grade philosopher, if you
can't be high-grade, and find how much true pleasure there is
even in inferior brain gymnastics.  ----

Take up some problem and study it:

There goes a woman, poor and old.  She carries a heavy burden
because she is too sad and weak to fight against fate, too honest
to leave a world that treats her harshly.

There struts a youngster, rich and idle.

How many centuries of hell on earth will it take to put that
woman's load on that other broad, fat, idle back?

Answer that one question, better still, TRANSFER THE LOAD, and
your life will not have been wasted.  ----

It is THOUGHT that moves the world.  In Napoleon's BRAIN
are born the schemes that murder millions and yet push
civilization on.  The mere soldier, with gold lace and sharp
sword, is nothing--a mere tool.

It is the concentrated thought of the English people under
Puritan influence that makes Great Britain a sham monarchy and a
real republic now.

It is the thought of the men of independent MIND in this country
that throws English tea and English rule overboard forever.

Don't wait until you are old.  Don't wait until you are ONE DAY
older.  Begin NOW.

Or, later, with a dull, fuzzy, useless mind, you will realize
that an unthinking man might as well have been a monkey, with fur
instead of trousers, and consequent freedom from mental
responsibility or self-respect.



THE WIND DOES NOT RULE YOUR DESTINY

"There be three things which are too wonderful for me; yea, four
which I know not.

"The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon
a rock; THE WAY OF A SHIP IN THE MIDST OF THE SEA, and the way
of a man with a maid."

At sunset a long train of cars waited on a bridge as a sailing
ship passed through the draw.

The ship sailed up the river toward the cold Winter sun; another
ship sailed past it going in the OPPOSITE direction.

Only ONE wind was blowing.  Yet, of those two ships blown by
the same wind, moved by the same power, one sailed EAST and
one WEST.

It may be of use to you in your career to think for a few minutes
about these two ships and the lesson which they teach--especially
to young men.  ----

The man who has sailed, in his life's journey, toward failure and
disaster looks always with envy, sometimes with hatred, and very
often with an intense sensation of injustice, at the man who
passes him going in exactly the opposite direction.

Yet the FORCES that move men bound toward success are exactly
the same as those that move other men to failure, humiliation and
defeat.

It is all a question of the way in which you use the forces
within you--just as on shipboard it is all a question of the use
of the common wind which blows.

IT IS A QUESTION OF THE USE OF THE RUDDER.

Two ships pass, each with its sails filled out by the same wind.
The difference in direction is accounted for by the handling of
the rudder and the adjustment of the sails.

What the force of the wind is to the ship, our varying emotions,
passions, ambitions, appetites and aspirations are to us.  All of
these constitute the power which may be called HUMAN FORCE.

This power differs in different individuals, as the wind differs
on different days.  It may blow from the east or the west or the
north or the south.  However it may blow, it can be forced, by
proper steering, to send the ship in any direction desired.

It is harder to beat against the wind, of course, and many men
have hard struggles to steer themselves to a good port in the
face of an adverse start, a hard beginning, or inclinations
difficult to overcome.  ----

But in all of us the force exists which can be made to move us in
the right direction--the force within us can be MADE to obey
our will, if the will be strong and the hand on the rudder
steady.  This can be proved--for instance:

There is a certain force in human beings called LOVE.  This
force leads sometimes, and happily it leads usually, to
domesticity, morality, care of children and lifelong devotion.
Then the force is used properly.

The same human passion leads to murder, suicide, theft, to almost
all forms of crime.

There is another human passion called AMBITION.

This human force of ambition, with a Lincoln's conscience to
guide it, saves a republic.

The same force guided by Benedict Arnold seeks to betray the
nation.  ----

Consider yourself a ship launched on the sea of life under
certain conditions--but with the essential condition in your own
control.

The wind may be feeble, you may drift for a while or move very
slowly--move at least in the right direction.

The wind may blow a gale, and you may feel, as so many do, that
you cannot control your emotions and your appetites.  But if that
comes show at least as much interest in yourself as a sailor does
in his ship.  Take in sail and fight the storm, instead of going
willingly to destruction.  ----

Four things puzzled and impressed the wise man that wrote the
nineteenth verse of the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs.

Think to-day about the third of these things:

"The way of a ship in the midst of the sea"

The way of a human being in the midst of life is like that of a
ship on the ocean.

Make up your mind that your own way at least shall be controlled
by the rudder of conscience, and learn from the passing ships a
lesson of use in your own life.



ONE OF THE MANY CORPSES IN THE JOHNSTOWN MINE

The widow says to the mine owner:  "Here he is, dead--killed
working for you.  Where were you when he was killed?  Driving in
your carriage, enjoying the difference between his EARNINGS
and his PAY.  Was one dollar and thirty cents per day too much
to pay him for this risk?  Was it too much to let him save
something for us--who now have nothing?  Is there nothing to
arbitrate when the man who risks his life and gets nothing asks
arbitration of the man who risks nothing and gets all?  ----

There are many men in America--honest and sincere--who believe
that strikers are nearly always right, that failure of a strike
is a calamity.

Other men, less numerous, but also honest and sincere, consider
strikes an evil.  They believe that labor unionism threatens
"capital," threatens national energy, and our national industrial
supremacy.  ----

Let us endeavor to take a clear view of the strike question, and
to discuss--as free from bias as may be possible--some of the
main viewpoints of those interested.

We may, at the start, accept two statements as sound:

First.  The employer wants as much money as he can possibly get.

Second.  The workman wants as much money as HE can possibly get.

It is impossible for both or for either to win absolutely.  The
success of one must leave the other penniless.

Let us look at the matter of a coal strike only, for simplicity's
sake.

In a coal mine you have three factors:

First.  The COAL given to men--presumably for the use of mankind
in general--by Divine Providence.

Second.  The WORKMEN who dig the coal, haul it, screen it, etc.

Third.  The OWNER, who through money, or intelligence, or both,
gets control of mines and works them for his profit.

The mine owner resents the suggestion that he and his men are
partners.

Ought he to resent that suggestion?  We think not.

Miners without any capitalist could certainly get coal out of the
ground.

The capitalist without miners could not possibly get coal out of
the ground.

The labor is at least as important as the mine.  ----

The capitalist who wishes to acquire a mine is willing to grant
certain rights and conditions to him who has the MINE for sale.
He treats with that person as with an equal.

WHY WILL HE NOT GRANT RIGHTS AND EQUALITY TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE
LABOR FOR SALE?

If a hundred men own the mine, and elect a certain agent to
represent them in the sale, the capitalist will willingly treat
with that agent EVEN THOUGH HE BE NOT ONE OF THE ACTUAL MINE
OWNERS.  It becomes simply a question of the agent's AUTHORITY.

Why does the capitalist haughtily refuse to treat with the
accredited agent of the men who have the LABOR for sale,

Is it not because he resents the workman's attempt at
emancipation and equality?  Is it not because the capitalist in
his heart demands SUBMISSION from the man who works for a
daily wage?

Is it not because the powerful among us fail to admit that
workers have passed from slavery to equality?

A man owns vast mining properties.  He lives in New York and in
Newport.  Comfortably, and at a distance, he runs and rules his
mines.  He is good-natured enough, kind-hearted.  He means well.
He does not see the corpses brought up from the fire-damp. He
does not notice the hollow chests of young children with the
pores of their skin and the pores of their lungs full of coal
dust.

This owner--who rules and draws his profits from Newport--has one
bitter complaint against his striking men.  He cannot forgive
them BECAUSE THEY CALL IN A LABOR LEADER FROM CHICAGO TO SETTLE
A LABOR DISPUTE IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Imagining himself most condescending, he expresses willingness to
treat personally and individually with his men.  But he will not
tolerate interference "with my business" on the part of the
workmen's agent, whom he calls "an agitator from Chicago."

WHY should he feel so badly about it?

If the Pennsylvania workman is willing to let a NEWPORT man
manage the capitalistic end, should not that Newport man allow a
CHICAGO labor leader to manage the labor end?

Is not one explanation the fact that the owner considers his
workmen, in every possible respect, financially, morally,
legally, ethically and eternally, his inferiors?

If one mine owner disagrees with another, each will treat with
the other's chosen agent, whether he be Tom Reed, corporation
lawyer from Maine; Joe Choate, corporation lawyer from New York,
or Levy, corporation lawyer from Chicago.

Why not accord to the workman the right to choose his accredited
representative?

So much for the much-talked-of "interference in MY business by
labor agitators."

What about the interests of the country?  There are in
Pennsylvania, let us say, one hundred square miles of coal lands
OWNED BY ONE MAN, and WORKED BY TEN THOUSAND MEN.

The working of this mining region develops an annual net profit,
perhaps, of five million dollars, AFTER the workmen have been
paid as little as they will work for.

The owner lives in a house of a hundred rooms.

The miner's family lives in two rooms.  The owner has a yacht, a
private car, a fast automobile, fine carriages, many servants.

The miner WALKS.  He has a wife who cooks, sews, scrubs,
washes, mends while he and his boys work in the mines.

We wish to arouse no "maudlin sympathy" for the miner, no
"anarchist loathing" of the owner.

We ask an answer to this question:

Which would be better for America:  to let one man have five
millions a year, and keep ten thousand men on the edge of want;
or to let the one (and, if you choose, SUPERIOR) man have one
million a year, and divide the four millions among ten thousand
families, adding four hundred dollars to the income of each
family?  That is a plain, simple question.

Remember, we suggest and advocate no COMPULSION.  We state a
situation.  The STRIKER is trying to get a little more for
himself and family.  The OWNER is trying to keep the vast sum
for himself and his family.  Each is convinced of the
righteousness of his cause.  The striker does not try to TAKE
AWAY money or property from the owner.  He simply strikes,
saying:

"I will not work for less than such a sum, unless you starve
me into working."

He calls upon YOU, the public, to give him moral support.  He
entreats other workmen not to take his place while he strikes.

It is for YOU, the public, and for YOU, the idle, hard-pressed
workmen, to answer conscientiously the question:

Is it better for one man to have four extra MILLIONS a year, or
for each of ten thousand families to have four extra HUNDREDS a
year, that they need sadly and sorely?

If this question were answered as Christ would answer it, there
would be no smug respectabilities scoffing at the striker.  There
would be no heartless scabs taking the places of men struggling
to support wives and children.

Leave out sentimentality, if you will, and Christianity, and our
hollow pretence of following Him who called every poor man "my
brother."

What about the cold utility?  Four millions more for an owner
mean what?

Some bogus antiquities, and perhaps a bogus title brought to
America.

Another palace, with a dissatisfied owner.

A dissipated son; money spent by this son to promote vice, and by
the father to corrupt legislation.  Four hundred dollars more for
a workman's family mean wholesome food for children.  And the
children go to school and have a chance.

This sum means a self-respecting life for a father, and for the
mother it means everything.  She can hire some woman to help her
when her babies come.  She can give her husband and her children
good food, rejoice in their comfort, add good, healthy citizens
to the nation.  ----

The owner in his struggle makes various statements of which only
a few must be answered, and very briefly, for the sake of the
impatient reader.

"If capital goes on granting the demands of union labor there
will be no more capital, no more big manufactures, our prosperity
will die as England's prosperity is dying--killed by union
labor!"

Thus speaks the indignant, would-be patriotic and unselfish
capitalist.  Let us see:

What becomes of the established FACT that a nation is
prosperous in proportion as the average individual citizen
(NOT its few millionaires) is prosperous?  There are nowhere
on earth stronger labor unions than in the United States.  There
are no such unions in Mexico, none such in South America, none
as powerful in Canada.  Why are we not eclipsed industrially by
those countries?

You say that labor unions have killed English industry?  No.
They have kept England alive in the face of fierce competition.
Millions upon millions of Englishmen live on a little foggy
northern island incapable of supporting them.  By their courage,
their mental power, their genius, their UNION, they have kept
the nation great.  It is as though in one corner of New York
State we had the greatest industrial power on earth.  What the
Gulf Stream has been to England's agriculture, labor unionism has
been to England's industry.

It is not the English WORKINGMAN who has been beaten.  The
English workmen did not sell the English mercantile navy to J.P.
Morgan.  English capitalists did that.

Get this in your heads, you who talk against unions.  Morgan and
his fellow American capitalists have formed themselves into
financial UNIONS, which we call trusts.  And they have beaten
the English capitalist, who did not know enough to take lessons
from his workman and form unions of his own.

The American FINANCIAL union, not the English LABOR union, has
beaten England in the race for industrial supremacy.

Union is strength everywhere and forever.  The remaining strength
of England is in her labor unions, which give men time to think,
food to grow on, and give real men to the nation.  You say that
powerful unions kill nations.

Why is not China a great industrial power?

She has vast fortunes and no unions.  Li Hung Chang was richer
than Morgan, and could cut off the head of any striker.  His
coolies got five cents a day and worked fourteen hours--is THAT
your ideal system?  ----

Last of all (and we apologize for this unforgivably long
editorial), let us discuss the question of foreign labor.  The
capitalist complains that the Hungarian, "the brutal, ignorant
foreigner," makes much of the trouble, and "wants as much as an
American."

Loud is this cry against the foreign laborer.  And the ignorant,
know-nothing American workman joins in the cry only too
willingly.

Who brings in those foreign laborers by the shipload, Mr.
Mineowner?

Who rounds up cargoes of Slavs on the other side and brings them
here to cut the wages and the living of the native-born?

Who shrieks dolefully, Mr. Miner, when the Slav shows that he is
a MAN brave and willing to prove worthy of freedom by joining
the army of union labor?

The Slav and the Hungarian ARE HERE, and their children will
be here when we are dead.

Which is better, to underpay them, treat them like cattle, fill
them with just hatred of unjust discrimination, or give them a
chance to be men?

Shall their children grow up ignorant mine slaves?  Or shall they
go to that factory of honest citizenship--the public school--to
be improved as we have all been improved, whether we came
originally from Hungary, Ireland, England, France, Russia, or
elsewhere?

The struggle of the strikers, like all great struggles, is
sometimes unjust.  It has not always the wisest or the most
unselfish leaders.

But it is an effort to improve the AVERAGE CONDITION OF
HUMANITY.  Help that effort.



"LIMITING THE AMOUNT OF A DAY'S WORK"
THERE'S A GOOD DEAL OF NONSENSE TALKED ON THIS SUBJECT

An honest, well-meaning clergyman talked the other day on labor
unions, and wandered out of his depth.  As a rule, clergymen,
having studied the teachings of Christ, are aware that they ought
to be on the side of the workingman.  Hence the strongest
supporters of the union are found among the clergy.

The mistake of the clergyman whom we mention is discussed here,
because it is often made by well-meaning, but narrow-minded,
citizens.

He spoke of "the custom union labor has of limiting a day's work
AND OTHER DISHONEST PRACTICES."

By limiting a day's work, the reverend gentleman referred to the
rule existing in certain unions regulating the maximum day's
labor.

That rule does exist, and sometimes undoubtedly--labor union men
not being angels or cherubim--the rule may be pushed to extremes.

But on the whole the rule is necessary, and it works for good.

We shall tell this clergyman and other citizens one special
reason for limiting the day's work.

The contractors want to make all the money they can.  When the
unions forced them into recognition of certain hours of labor as
constituting a day's work, THAT was looked upon as a dishonest
practice.  It was felt in the old days that a workman should be
only too glad to get out of bed at daybreak and work until dark.
Now even the stupidest and most selfish have come to recognize
limited hours as a feature of American industry.  And the
enlightened gladly admit that the well-paid, well-rested,
independent worker usually does more in his eight or nine hours
than he used to do in his twelve or fourteen.

After the inauguration of the limited-hour day the contractors
invented what is known as a "rusher."

The "rusher" is a young workman, in his prime, marvellously quick
in his work as compared with the ordinary, good, capable workman.

On a job of bricklaying, carpentering, or other work, it was
customary for the shrewd contractor to hire one or more
"rushers."  Nominally the "rusher" was paid regular union wages.
But secretly the contractor paid him double wages, or more than
double wages.  The "rusher" worked at high pressure hour after
hour, day after day.  The others could not possibly have kept up
with him had he worked his fastest.  But his instructions
were to keep just a little ahead, that the others might struggle
and do their best to keep even in their task, in order not to
lose their work for apparent idleness.  Thus the "rusher," a man
of unusual skill, getting double wages, went along well within
his forces, while the others were working themselves to death in
order to keep up and not lose their jobs.

The limitation of the day's output is based originally on the
desire to squelch this "rusher" idea, or to put the quietus on
the very young and able workman anxious to curry favor with his
"boss" by making the pace too hot for the men working beside him.

----

Our friend, the clergyman, and many others say that it is
dishonest to limit the day's output.  But is it dishonest?  What
is the difference between limiting the DAY'S output and
limiting a YEAR'S output?

In the middle of the Summer the clergyman says, "I have worked
enough; I ought to go to Europe," and he goes.

The bricklayer does not criticise the clergyman for limiting his
YEAR'S output to forty sermons.  He does not say to him, "You
are ABLE to preach fifty-two sermons a year.  If you preach
only forty, you are dishonest and rob your parishioners."

What business is it of the clergyman's if the bricklayers, among
themselves, decide that it is better for them in the long run to
set only a given number of brick per day?

The trouble with some clergymen and many others is that they
forget one important thing--namely, THAT THE WORKINGMEN NOW
HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY.

When it comes to a question of laying brick, it is no longer the
squire or the local clergyman who decides what shall be done.
The BRICKLAYER DECIDES WHAT SHALL BE DONE.

And when it comes to carpenter work, the CARPENTER decides what
shall constitute a day's work.

In olden times the clergymen, the lawyers, the rich, the lucky
class in general, decided for THEMSELVES what THEY should do, and
then they decided for their so-called inferiors what those
INFERIORS should do.

Our prosperous class are having a very painful time indeed
getting into their minds the fact that such a thing as the right
of the majority REALLY EXISTS.  And they find it very hard indeed
to believe that the doctrine of human equality is to be taken
seriously in matters of business.

Labor unions are performing an important educational function
when they drive into the heads of these would-be superiors the
fact that this nation is becoming actually a republic in which
the workingmen shall decide for themselves questions affecting
themselves, and in which they shall no longer be guided by the
whims or financial interests of would-be "superiors."



CATCHING A RED-HOT BOLT

Men were working on the roof of a Pennsylvania ferryhouse,
overhanging the North River on the Jersey side.

The passengers on one of the big ferryboats watched with
admiration the work of the fearless young mechanics.

The men stood on a board not more than a foot wide.  They had
nothing to hold to.  Sixty feet below them was a mass of rough
piles.  A misstep would have meant death.

One of the men, standing perfectly at ease on his narrow ledge,
swung a heavy sledge-hammer, while the other held in place the
bolt to be driven home in the iron-work.  ----

The work on that bolt was finished, and one of the young men, a
wiry giant over six feet tall, picked up in his arms a small
wooden keg which stood on the board beside him.  It was a keg
such as nails are packed in.  About forty feet away from the
bridge, up among the iron beams, a smith was at work heating the
bolts red-hot.

This smith saw the young man on the narrow board holding the
wooden keg in his arms.  He knew that another bolt was needed.

The bolt, white-hot, was seized with a pair of tongs, thrown
violently through the air, sending off a shower of white sparks
as it went.

As the white bolt shot toward the metal worker, he held out the
wooden keg in a matter-of-fact way, caught the bolt, picked it
out of the keg with a pair of pincers, and soon the heavy sledge-
hammer was at work driving the metal, still white-hot, into the
hole.  ----

Passengers who make their living in a less exciting way watched
with great excitement as one after another of these heavy red-hot
bolts came flying through the air, each in its turn caught by the
mechanic standing on the narrow board.

If the bolt had struck or burned him, he must almost inevitably
have fallen.  He must have fallen had he made a misstep reaching
out the wooden keg to catch the flying iron.

Among those who watched him were very prosperous men come in from
the seaside on the flying express, bound for Wall Street.  These
men were sorry when their boat pulled out, so deeply interested
were they in the skill and courage of the mechanics working so
high up on so narrow a footing.

If their opinion had been asked then and there they would have
said that no reasonable rate of pay would be too high for such
mechanics, and that eight hours of work catching red-hot bolts
and driving them home, on a narrow plank sixty feet in the air,
ought to be considered a fair day's work.

We trust that if these men read in the future that the structural
iron-workers or the house-smiths are striking for a little more
pay and for eight hours' work they will remember those men
working on the ferryhouse, and remember that all of these
iron-workers, like all miners, and many others, earn their bread
at the risk of their lives.

We hope that those who watched the red-hot bolts flying through
the air will remember their sensations when they hear of a strike
among those men, and not say, as they usually do:

"The impudence of union labor must be suppressed.  The men are
lazy; that's what's the matter with them.  It is all nonsense to
talk about working eight hours.  Union labor, if it keeps on,
will ruin this country's commercial supremacy."  ----

The trouble with human beings is that their lives are widely
separated and sympathy is killed by ignorance.

The banker does not see, therefore cannot appreciate, the courage
of the man working on an iron beam at the top of a steel frame
300 feet in the air.

The mechanic cannot understand, and therefore cannot appreciate,
the worry, the mental stress of the money man, who must make ends
meet, pay bills, arrange mortgages, find tenants and settle his
union troubles at the same time.

Better acquaintance with each other is what human beings need.

It would be well if more very rich men had seen that young
mechanic catching his red-hot bolts.

It would be well if more young mechanics who like their beefsteak
and onions could see John D. Rockefeller sipping his glass of
milk and seltzer (his whole dinner), or know what Rockefeller
feels when he lies awake half the night.  He has found pretty
well-paid employment for a hundred thousand men who sleep soundly
while he tosses and turns and feels the weight of a ton on his
chest.



THE TRUSTS AND THE UNION-- HOW DO THEY DIFFER?

A letter signed "Several Democrats from St. Paul" reads, in
part, as follows:

"In order to convert several rank Republicans it is necessary
that we should be able to explain the difference between a trust
and a labor union.  Will you kindly, through your columns, make a
clear explanation of this distinction?  Our opponents holdthat
both trusts and unions are combinations, which appears to be
true, but there is apparently a weak point in our ability to
definitely show the difference, and we beg that you explain it."
----

Trusts and unions are both combinations, beyond question.  But a
pronounced difference distinguishes them, and we shall endeavor
to make it clear.

You see a horse after a hard day's work grazing in a swampy
meadow.  He has done his duty and is getting what he can in
return.

On the horse's flank you may see a leach sucking blood.

The LEACH is the trust.

The HORSE is the labor UNION.

Possibly you have read "Sindbad the Sailor," with its story of
the Old Alan of the Sea.  The Old Man of the Sea rode round on
the sailor's back squeezing his neck with his tightly twisted
legs.

The OLD MAN is the TRUST.

The SAILOR is the labor UNION.  ----

In Chicago two combinations are fighting.  One is a combination
of citizens--the Citizens' Union.  The other is a combination of
public robbers--the Gas Trust.  Each combination is trying to get
what it wants.  Surely you can see the difference between the two
combinations.

The citizens are striving in a purely legitimate way to obtain
their RIGHTS.

Similarly, Labor Unions, when soundly organized, are striving
properly and legitimately to obtain their RIGHTS.

Gas Trusts and other Trusts endeavor improperly and
illegitimately to obtain what does not belong to them.  ----

In old times, on the high seas, there were two classes of
vessels.  The great majority were honest vessels of commerce,
doing good to the world, while striving, of course, to benefit
their crews and owners.

Those honest SHIPS were the Labor UNIONS.  On the same waters
there sailed other ships--fast, daring--manned by unscrupulous,
although able, men.

Those were the pirate ships.

The TRUSTS compared to Labor UNIONS are the pirate ships
compared to honest ships of commerce.



FRANCE HAS LEARNED HER LESSON

The employes on the Paris underground railroad had a strike and
have settled their strike.

The terms of the settlement amaze the outside world.  The terms
are especially amazing to the American--and well they may be.

The employes of the underground railroad in Paris are GOVERNMENT
employes.

Their strike inconvenienced the public, and even the radical
French people were annoyed with the strikers.

In other European countries and in this country, as the news
reports very truly say, the strike of those Government employes
would have been dealt with very summarily.  Three engines of
civilization would have been brought into play effectively.

"First the police, second the cavalry, third Gatling guns." ----

But the police, the cavalry and guns were tried on the French
people long ago, and that little matter was fought out and
settled.  The men who govern France know that at a certain stage
in the proceedings a courageous people will not stand Gatling
guns, cavalry or police.  They have found out in France that the
way to deal with striking workmen is just the way the Government
official would like to be dealt with himself if he were a
striking workman instead of a well-paid public officer.

The striking men complained that their day's work was too long
and their pay too small.  The pay was increased and the day
shortened--which was perfectly right.

Each employe is now allowed one day off in seven, and ten days'
vacation every year with full pay--which is perfectly right.

The young men employed on the road are compelled to do twenty
days' work in the army each year.  Their wages are paid while
they are doing this compulsory military work--which is perfectly
right.

If a man is ill through no fault or vice of his own he gets his
pay as long as he is ill up to three hundred and sixty-five days,
and the company in whose service he has become ill pays his
doctor's bill, his drug store bill and any extra expenses
involved--which is perfectly just and fair.

No striker is to be dismissed because of having taken part in the
strike.  A benefit fund is provided for the employes of this
Government enterprise--and the company pays the membership
subscription to the benefit fund with NO DEDUCTION FROM THE
WORKMEN'S PAY.

The above seems a horrible narrative to the energetic American
exploiter of labor.

It would have seemed very stupid, in fact quite incomprehensible,
to the French Government at any time before the Revolution.

But the Revolution taught France and some other people that a
nation, like any other structure, is insecure when its foundation
is agitated.  The foundation of a nation is the enormous mass of
working people, and that foundation the French have learned to
respect and treat well.

We shall learn as much here some day.  Let us hope we shall learn
it more peaceably than the French did.



UNION MEN AS SLAVE OWNERS
WHAT PLANS HAS THE FIVE-DOLLAR-A-DAY MAN MADE TO HELP HIS POORER
FELLOW-CREATURES?

Every addition within reason to wages, every reasonable reduction
of working hours, must help the whole nation.  Working human
beings have been looked upon through the ages as slaves, either
on an actual slave-owning basis or on an insufficient wage
basis--which is about the same thing.  Each recognition of the
worker's rights moves us a little farther from slave days.  Every
time a new class earns decent treatment by hard fighting we see
increased the number of those who may properly be called men.

The blind employer asks:  "Shall men be allowed to fix their own
wages?"

OF COURSE they shall.  And until they do fix their own wages they
are not men at all.  The ox does not fix his hours of labor or
the quantity of his corn.  But the man does.  The man controlled
like an ox is nearer an ox than a man.

We delight in the efforts of unions.  We are advocates of every
movement that tends to divide among a still larger class the good
things of the world.

But this newspaper is no mere labor union organ.  We care more
for the welfare of the humblest, non-organized, underpaid,
underfed citizen than for the finest, most highly paid, most
intelligent mechanic.

The man who is least well off needs our help most.  He needs,
above all men, some practical PROOF that he lives where men
are equal.  He should be the object of earnest thought on the
part of the five-dollar-a-day man.

It is the five-dollar-a-day man, the able mechanic, whom we
address to-day:  ----

Many of your thoughts and words, Mr. Five-Dollar Man, are
devoted to plutocrats.  You are not free from envy.  You
consider, and with perfect justice, that you do not--even with
your five dollars--get your share of the world's good things.

But, for a change to-day, will you look DOWN instead of UP?
You work hard at five dollars per day "to fatten in comfort the
happy millionaire employer."  All right; admitted.

But did you ever think who works hard to fatten YOU?

Did it ever occur to you that you are a plutocrat, and a very
numerous and decided plutocrat?  Do you ever wonder what you will
answer when the time comes for those whom you underpay to demand
eight hours and fair wages of YOU?

You keep a servant girl to help your wife.  Does she work eight
hours a day?  No; she works about fourteen, and hears a good deal
of grumbling because she does not do better.  Does she get union
wages?  No; she gets about thirty cents a day.  Does she get
double pay on holidays?  Can she put on any substitute if she
chooses to wander off for two or three days a week?

The woman who works to make your life comfortable works just as
many hours as you can make her work, and she gets just as little
pay as you can get her to take.  Is that all right?  ----

And the servant girl is not the only one.  Some farmer's hand
works to raise the wheat, the potatoes that you eat.  What is he
paid?  What are his hours?  Fifty cents a day, twelve or fourteen
hours of work.  And your bootmaker in the factory, and the
sweat-shop slave who makes your coat, and the long list of other
poor devils who work for about one-tenth of your salary.  Do you
know why you are comparatively well off?  Simply because the man
for whom YOU work pays you ten times as much as you pay the
men and women who work for YOU.

You pay indirectly?  True.  But what difference does that make?
You are well-to-do because you purchase without question the
product of men who are really slaves.  You have brains, and by
combination have FORCED your employer to treat you decently.
Yes, and you deserve credit.  But you are not fundamentally
superior to the other men around you.  What are you going to do
when they demand treatment as good as yours?  What are you going
to reply when they class you with the other plutocrats?

You enjoy the work of only ten or twenty underpaid men--that is
so.  But you are in the same class with the plutocrat who enjoys
the profit on the work of ten or twenty thousand men.

Utter disregard of others--where it does not affect your own
wages--is your rule, and you know it.  What better joke is there
than the joke about the union label?  How many hats on your rack
have union labels in them?  How many of you can swear no
sweatshop ever saw your clothes?  How many of you would apologize
for not offering your friend a "union-made" cigar?

It is the nature of man to think earnestly of only one thing at a
time.  If one pursuit really engrosses his attention he has
little time to think of anything else.  In the hard struggle for
a living the workingman has little time for any thought save for
his OWN wage, his OWN stomach, his OWN welfare.

As union men you will continue to struggle for your five dollars
a day--restricting apprentices, that others may be shut out from
your field; opposing changes threatening you, however beneficial
they may be generally.

But as individuals you must THINK.  You study, and, being
free from the grind of real poverty, you should be less hardened
than the unfortunate, and inclined to feel for others.

You have made a good fight against the slavery that used to
oppress you.  In England you destroyed mills, endured shooting
and hanging.  All over the world, by hard fighting and wise
voting, you have established the fact that the top class of
mechanics must no longer be treated as cattle.

Now, what are you going to do for the others who are still
cattle?  You have demanded in the name of holy justice that
others help you.  In the same name, what do you propose to do for
those still oppressed?  Will you use your big voting power for
the millions who are still at the bottom?

Will you combine for the benefit of the vast army as you have
combined for your OWN benefit?

Or will you wait--as did the employers--to be FORCED into
decency?  Will you free your own collection of underpaid,
overworked slaves, or wait for them to organize and beat you into
decency, as your representatives did with your oppressors long
ago?

Take a look downward once in a while.  Study those below you.
Glance over your own little collection of "wage slaves" in your
kitchen and wherever your money is spent.

There is a problem there for you when you shall have finished
hurrahing for your own eight hours.



AGAIN THE LIMITED DAY'S WORK
WISELY HANDLED, IT MEANS EMANCIPATION FROM INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY.

We refer again to the much discussed rule in labor unions
limiting the amount of work that a man shall do in a day.  As a
matter of fact, in many unions no such rule exists.  In some it
does exist, and MUST exist.

There is nothing in the notion that limiting the day's work will
diminish the excellence of American workmen.  On the contrary,
the BEST work is done slowly and carefully.  The WORST work is
done at high speed.

That very aristocratic financier who denounces the regulations as
to a day's output will say to the man who is doing something
FOR HIM, "Take your time; I want this done very carefully."

Why should not EVERYBODY'S work be done carefully?

But it is not merely careful work that is involved in the
regulating of the day's work.  The welfare of the nation and of
the nation's future is involved.

Go with the man who denounces labor unions for limiting the
amount of work that a good American mechanic should do in one
day, to the stable in which that man keeps his fine horses.  You
can easily bring about this dialogue:

"That mare in the box stall is a beautiful horse.  Is she fast?"

Rich Owner--"Yes, very fast.  I value her more highly than any
horse I have.  "

"How many miles do you drive her every day?"

"Oh, I don't drive her EVERY day.  I drive her one day, and
have her jogged quietly the next.  When I do drive her, I jog her
for two or three miles to warm her up, then speed her a mile or
two, and then take her home.  She covers perhaps six or seven
miles in an entire day's work."

"But you COULD drive her twenty-five miles, couldn't you, and
drive her as far as that EVERY day?"

"Oh, yes, I COULD, of course, if I was only thinking of using
her up and getting all I could out of her now.  But, you see, I
mean to use her for a brood-mare; I expect to get some splendid
colts from her, and I don't want to wear out her vitality.  I
might get a little more fun or a little more work out of her just
now, BUT I WOULD LOSE IN THE LONG RUN." ----

Now, gentlemen, the labor union rule limiting a day's work simply
considers the workingman as that imaginary rich person considers
his beautiful horse.

And the feeling of the labor unions should be shared by the
entire country.

The highly skilled American mechanic is one of the chief assets
of this country; the intelligent, scientific, up-to-date American
farmer is another highly important asset.  These two classes of
citizens ARE THE UNITED STATES.  Between them they are more
important than all the rest of the nation put together.

AND YET THEY ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS THEIR CHILDREN.

The workingman of to-day is the father of the future.

The trouble with us is that the employer, unlike the owner of the
fine horses, has no interest in that workingman's future or in
his future family.

He employs and treats the workingman as the casual heartless
customer would treat that fine horse if it were rented by the day
at a livery stable.

There is much to be said, no doubt, on the side of harassed
employers, many of whom are fair-minded men, and many of whom
are put to unjust annoyance by some of the labor unions'
mistakes.

But, first of all, the employer must realize the RIGHTS and
the EQUALITY of his workmen.  And as a patriotic citizen he must
realize that the welfare of the future is in the health and
vitality of parents to-day.

By limiting the amount of work which they do in one day our
mechanics enable themselves to preserve some of their vitality
for mental work, for educating talks with their children.  THEY
GIVE TO THEIR CHILDREN THE VITALITY WHICH THE SWEATSHOP SLAVE CAN
NEVER GIVE.

What are our laws against sweatshops but laws acknowledging the
justice of regulating the amount of the day's work?

And why do we refuse to permit unions to do for themselves what
we do on a sentimental, philanthropic, haphazard basis, through
our "sweatshop laws," for the miserable, unorganized workers of
the slums?



TO THE MERCHANTS
PLEASE LISTEN PATIENTLY TO A DISCUSSION OF THE LABOR UNION FROM
YOUR POINT OF VIEW.

We invite the merchants to consider the question of unions and of
high wages from THEIR OWN point of view.

If we err in our statements or conclusions we shall be glad to
print replies and criticisms from responsible merchants over
their own signatures.

This we maintain:  THAT IN PROMOTING THE WELFARE AND INCREASING
THE WAGES OF THE GREAT BODY OF WORKINGMEN, WE PROMOTE THE WELFARE
AND INCREASE THE PROSPERITY OF ALL LEGITIMATE MERCHANTS AND
BUSINESS MEN.

The unions make mistakes.  The employers make mistakes.  The
unions are often unreasonable.  The employers are unreasonable
sometimes.

No doubt in America the workingman is more exacting and more
highly paid than anywhere else.

But in America, also, the merchant is more quickly and numerously
successful than anywhere else.  ----

As a subject for our text to-day we shall take the street-car
lines--surface, underground or elevated--of any great American
city.

The success of every street-car system is made BY ALL THE
INHABITANTS OF THE CITY.  Every woman who brings a baby into the
world in a great city adds so much value to the stock of that
city's street railroads.  She increases the gross income of that
railroad by about three dollars and sixty-five cents a year with
each child to which she gives birth.

Therefore the street railroad should properly serve the public
that gives the road its value.

Next in importance to the traveling public come the human beings
that work on the street railroad--the conductors, motormen,
gatemen, gripmen, engineers, etc.

This newspaper fights constantly to improve within reason the pay
and the hours of work of the street railroad employes.

This we do for the sake of the employes themselves, and for no
other reason.  We demand better pay for the men that they may
lead decent American lives, feeding and clothing their wives and
children, and educating their children properly.  We demand short
hours for them, that they may live part of the twenty-four hours
WITH their families, knowing their own children and bringing a
little pleasure and companionship into the lives of their patient
wives.

We are proud of the fact that we have helped in a small way to
increase the prosperity and happiness of many tens of thousands
of honest families, that we have increased the OPPORTUNITIES of
many thousands of children.

We want the merchants to remember that, while we have thus
striven to protect those masses of the people whom we represent
and whose ADVOCATE we are, we have also advanced enormously,
although without premeditation, the fortune and quick success of
every capable and legitimate merchant.

Who owns the stock in the street railroads?  A few individuals--a
Widener, an Elkins, a Yerkes, a Whitney, or some other energetic
private individual.

One street railroad system, let us say, employs ten thousand men.

They struggle to add one dollar per day to their pay.  We help
them with moral support and publicity, and they succeed.  TEN
THOUSAND FAMILIES have each ONE DOLLAR a day more to spend, or
ten thousand dollars a day in all.

What becomes of that ten thousand dollars added daily to the
living-money of ten thousand families?

EVERY DOLLAR OF IT GOES INTO THE HANDS OF THE MERCHANT, THE
LANDLORD, OR THE SAVINGS BANK.

If the men had not got that increase in wages, what would have
become of that ten thousand dollars daily, or $3,650,000 A YEAR?

Would it have gone to the merchants of the great cities?  Would
it have gone to build up thousands of comfortable little homes in
all the suburbs of the great towns?  Would it have enabled
thousands of American boys and girls to stay in school instead of
going in their infancy to the mills and factories?

No!

If that money were not distributed among the people in the shape
of good American wages for good American work, it would go to
build big race tracks, where thieves and gamblers are
manufactured.  It would go to buying foolish bogus antiquities
that no man needs.  It would go to building ridiculous and
uncalled-for palaces where human mushrooms without a sense of
humor imitate in their idleness the active types of the past.
----

When this newspaper adds to the payroll of a great corporation,
it adds to the happiness of a great many families; and therein
lie its pride and its excuse for being.  And at the same time
this increase in the payroll of the Trust or the monopolizer of
public privileges means an increase in the income, the
prosperity, the legitimate reward of the enterprising merchant,
builder and general business man.

We do not lack criticism from well-meaning friends who conduct
great stores or other business enterprises.  We appreciate all
criticisms and suggestions.  We offer a suggestion in return:

Let the builder who dislikes unions GO TO CHINA and build his
apartment houses.  He will find patient workmen at ten cents a
day.  He will find laws that suppress the unions, and laws that
suppress the newspaper which takes the side of the poor.

He will find a non-union Utopia.

But he will not find tenants for his buildings, because in a
land where men don't get high wages they can't pay high rents,
and when the few Li Hung Changs have built their palaces the
building boom is over.

Let the great merchant who deplores unions start a DEPARTMENT
STORE IN CHINA.

He will never see a walking delegate; he will never be bothered
by the dark cloud of unionism.

He will find a perfect heaven in the way of low wages.

BUT HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL GOODS.

His department store will dwindle into a store for selling rice,
and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will
get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend forty
cents in a year.

In the land where men are not well paid THEY CAN'T SPEND MONEY.

The best friend of the American merchant, builder, lawyer,
doctor, property owner, banker and general business man is the
individual or the newspaper that helps the people to get high
wages, AND THUS GIVES THEM MONEY TO SPEND.



WHAT ABOUT THE CHINESE, KIND SIR?

A prosperous and old New York merchant assures a conference of
workingmen that England's great strikes have caused that country
to lose its leadership in exports of machinery.

If England's wonderful system of trades unionism has hurt its
exports of machinery, if abundance of very cheap slave labor
means great industrial superiority, we beg to ask this question:

WHY IS NOT CHINA THE GREAT EXPORTING COUNTRY OF THE WORLD?

There are scores of millions of men in China glad to work for a
few pennies per day.

There are no labor unions in China, and in some districts the
employer can have his workmen beheaded for demanding an increase
of pay.  If the venerable old New York merchant is right, China
ought to be certainly a marvellously successful country
industrially.

As a matter of fact, China is dead, and there is no better proof
of her complete deadness than the fact that among all her
millions of coolies there is not enough spirit for the formation
of a labor union.

The energy of the British workman established England's
industrial greatness and fought for and won the great
trades-union system which the workmen of this country are
developing so ably.  ----

Suppose it were true that trades unionism, with its higher wages
and shorter hours, decreases exports--what of it?

Is it not more important to have ten million workmen well paid,
with reasonable leisure and decent lives, than to have a handful
of iron masters and coal-mine owners piling up millions of pounds
and producing sons like the famous "Jubilee Juggins"?

Wouldn't it be better for China if her several hundred millions
of citizens were well paid, well fed and well educated, even
though Li Hung Chang and the other prosperous viceroys should all
be paid a little less money, and own fewer square miles of rice
fields and tea plants?  ----

In Huxley's admirable biography, written by his son, you may read
of a 'longshoreman who, thanks to reasonably short hours of work
and a little leisure, took up the study of scientific subjects.

He was aided by Huxley, who lent him a microscope, and ultimately
this common 'longshoreman's researches were of real value to the
scientific world.

Isn't it well to have a trades-union system which curbs the
avariciousness of employers and gives workmen a chance to
develop the best that is in them?

Isn't it better for England to have that 'longshoreman develop
into a scientist than to let some man who employs him make an
extra shilling a day out of his labor, even though it should add
a little to the exports of England?  ----

A country's greatness depends on the quality of the men that live
in the country, not on goods manufactured to sell to outside
nations.

Rome was doing little exporting when she ruled the world.

She was breeding men, independent and brave, who could bring the
products of the world to her.

She did not need to worry about exports, nor does any other
country need to worry about them.

The thing to worry about is the condition of your citizens, the
education of children, the decent treatment of women, the
equality of laws.

Other things take care of themselves.



150 AGAINST 150,000--WE FAVOR THE 150,000

It should not take long to convince a man fit to live in a
republic that public welfare demands the support of Union Labor.

No better proof of that could be asked than a spectacle presented
in Chicago.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY contractors have practically locked out ONE
HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND men.

The contractors want bigger profits--to be got through
underpaying and overworking their employes.

The men want better pay and shorter hours.  ----

Leave out sentiment if you choose.  Ignore the fact that on one
side the few who enjoy everything are industriously squeezing the
many who have little enjoyment.

Look at things purely from the standpoint of benefit to the
nation and the nation's future.

If the hundred and fifty win, they will have a little more money.

Their wives and daughters will dress a little more grotesquely.
Their families will be able to go abroad oftener and stay longer.

Their heirs will be able to make more complete idiots of
themselves--and that is all.  Personally we should like to see
all contractors' families prosperous--all American families
prosperous.  No man's wife or daughter can be too happy to suit
us, provided things more important be not neglected.  ----

If Union Labor wins, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families
will be able to lead at least decent American workingmen's lives.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND wives will be able to dress
their children comfortably and to dress themselves respectably.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families of children will be
brought up more nearly as American children ought to be.

Which is more important:

THE WELFARE OF 150 CONTRACTORS' FAMILIES?  (They will have
enough anyhow.)

Or THE WELFARE OF 150,000 WORKINGMEN'S FAMILIES?  (They will
have only a decent living at best.)

Perhaps you have drifted away from the early American idea, and
refuse to admit that one family is as good as another.  It may
seem anarchistic to suggest that the workingman's wife, who acts
as wife, mother, cook, washwoman, nurse and housekeeper, is as
good as the lady who has less to attend to.

But admitting--which we don't--that one hundred and fifty
contractors' families are more important than one hundred and
fifty workingmen's families, surely all will agree that ONE
HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND of the alleged inferiors ought to
offset the 150 alleged superiors.  ----

If the contractors win, the Paris dressmakers will be richer, and
a few families will have a little added to what they do not
really need.

If the workingmen win, the future of hundreds of thousands of
men, women and children will be made brighter, and the
citizenship of the future made stronger by men better fed, better
clothed and better educated.  ----

This newspaper hopes for labor union victory and means to help it
along, BECAUSE THE PUBLIC WELFARE DEMANDS IT.



TO-DAY'S WORLD-STRUGGLE

Far off in the distance shines the goal of present human
ambition.

It is a shining, golden light.  Toward that light the millions
struggle, trampling each other, sacrificing everything in the
harsh fight for the dollar.

Here and there a preacher thunders, here and there a philosopher
proses against the money struggle.  But they might as well
whisper at the brink of Niagara.  And often the preacher changes
his thundering when a RICH church calls him, often the
philosopher grasps the first chance to forget philosophy in Wall
Street.

The men admired to-day are the men who have made millions--some
are admired because they find excitement in giving the millions
away, others because they silently pile more millions upon the
others already gained.

"Society," the class devoted to pleasure, consists now, in
America, of those who have much money.

Literary success depends upon the money which the writer
accumulates.

The man talked about is he who has SOLD a hundred thousand
books.

The rich boy at school is followed by toadies.  In college he
learns contempt for human nature from the sycophancy of others.

"Representatives" of the People may be found dogging the
footsteps of those who need to buy laws, or to steal the people's
rights.  ----

It is a fierce and remorseless climb up the steep road to wealth.

There are many corpses, many crimes, many broken hearts, haggard
faces and bitter disappointments on that road.

The man with the "Good-money-making idea" struggles on with it
over the bodies of suicides and of those who have fallen in
despair.

At the bottom of the road the murderer plies his trade with knife
or poison--to make money.  And the murderer who has tried for
MUCH money calls forth special interest and special
privileges, special new trials, special newspaper headings.

At the top of the road to wealth, another, more intelligent
class, work with equally remorseless energy.  They murder no
individual.  But they rob entire classes of society.

They tax others to fatten their pockets--they add to the cost of
food that children eat--they coin human life into cash--smoothly
and nicely, using law-makers as tools.  Envy and admiration are
theirs--such admiration as the retail murderer can never earn.
----

The struggle for money is the struggle of THE WHOLE WORLD to-day.

And of the money-making movement, as of ALL WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENTS,
there is a side that is good and necessary.

Divine wisdom guides the world, and the human race, working out
its destiny in seeming blindness, is not allowed to wander from
the track of actual progress.

The money-making mania is one phase of human advancement.

This is the age of industrial progress.  Money is simply the
means of perfecting industry.  It is human labor condensed and
put into compact, transferable shape.

The man with the hundred millions can build the great railroad
across the continent.  There is no more important work now than
the building of that road.

The man with the thousand millions can control the great oil
trust and a dozen other trusts.  He taxes the people--but his
hundreds of millions do an important and necessary work.

It is well for us all that such a man has sacrificed health,
digestion, happiness and all idea of self-indulgence to the
accumulation of a vast industrial army of dollars.

The scramble for money, looked at without understanding, is a
horrid sight.  But horrid also is the sight of a battle that
frees slaves.

When the battle of money shall end, the score will be on the
right side of humanity's ledger.

A few forgotten billionaires will have struggled and died.  Some
millions of men will have died disappointed.

But industry will have been brought to perfection.  Universities,
libraries and other benefactions will abound, pleading for
recognition of the money-making dyspeptics.  Human ingenuity will
have contrived some means for freeing men's minds from the dread
of destitution.

The money struggle will have ended and humanity will be much
better off, much further advanced--as it is at the end of all
great and painful struggles.



WHITE-RABBIT MILLIONAIRES AND OTHER THINGS

The most wonderful thing in America is--what do you think?  It is
the absolute nullity of the man of many millions.  It is the
vapid colorlessness, the dull inactivity, the total lack of
imagination among men whose power is unlimited.  What
possibilities are spread out before the man who by signing his
name could set to work in any direction a million of his fellow
men!  The world stands ready to obey his orders; every law says
that he shall have whatever he demands.  Any conception born in
his brain can become reality as soon as conceived.  But there is
no conception there.

These comments are written, not to scold, or complain, or
suggest, but simply to express wonder.

What man of millions does anything that a white rabbit does not
do?

One man--of a hundred millions at least--has become recently very
conspicuous among his golden fellows.

How?

By undertaking a scheme to irrigate the desert of Sahara and give
millions of fertile acres to humanity?

No.

By calling together, at his expense, the ablest thinkers of the
world to discuss and to solve, if possible, the social questions
that so deeply concern the millionaire's future?

No.

By seeking, through study and experiment, to abolish child-labor,
to promote public education, to encourage science art or American
inventiveness?

No.

This millionaire, much discussed because of his piquant
originality, has put on a dress coat with two pointed tails
behind, and, geared in a white shirt front and white tie, with
silk socks highly colored and patent leather shoes, this splendid
American product has led a cotillon and has led a cakewalk.

Grand, splendid, magnificent, inspiring, isn't it?

What lop-eared, mild-eyed rabbit dancing in a clover field with a
full paunch need fear comparison with this man of millions?

Old Jacques Coeur, of France, giving his fleets to his
country--there was a man of millions and imagination combined.
But his kind has died out, and in his place we have a herd of
overfed, sleek, timorous, hopping white rabbits, hoarding their
piles of gold, shivering at the mention of change or innovation,
asking only for peaceful possession, as free from thought as
the fat oyster in his bed.

What wonderful things, what useful things, what dangerous things
could these all-powerful men do?

What could they not do?  They DO nothing.



NO HAPPINESS SAVE IN MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY.

Bresci, who murdered the Italian King, is sentenced to solitary
confinement for life.  While you read this he sits on a narrow
plank in a cell not much bigger than a sleeping-car section.

If you talk to any friend about Bresci--and especially if you
mention the subject to any young man inclined to be idle--call
attention to this point.  You can amplify what must be presented
briefly here.

Bresci's imprisonment is torture--why?

Because it sentences him to DO NOTHING.

Every man put on this earth is put here for a purpose.  He is put
here to work, to struggle, to interest himself in his fellows, to
share the pleasures and disappointments of others.  The wise laws
ruling the universe fill us with a DESIRE to do that which we
were meant to do.  It is intended that we should be active here,
and, therefore, although we often fail to realize it, our
happiness lies in activity.

Bresci is to be tortured beyond the power of imagination because
he will be forbidden to follow nature's law.  He will be
forbidden to fulfill man's destiny here.  His brain, his muscles,
his sentiments must lie idle until death or insanity shall
come to relieve him.  ----

Bresci will live on bread and water--but it is not the bread and
water that will make his life worse than death.  He could be
happy on such simple fare if his mind had work to do.  Many a man
has done his good work and enjoyed life's greatest pleasures
while suffering mere hunger or poor fare.

Many men would be happier if they could see Bresci, the murderer,
forced into that idleness which is sometimes ignorantly desired.

In his prison Bresci is protected from the sun and the rain and
the cold.  He can sleep as many hours as he likes.  No duns can
trouble him.  He pays no rent.  There is absolutely nothing that
he MUST do.  But there is absolutely nothing that he CAN do.

The saddest slave in Morocco toiling under the heaviest load
would win Bresci's gratitude if only he would let Bresci carry
that load.

The most desperate man, harassed by cares of all kinds, would
seem blissfully happy in Bresci's eyes, for he has at least full
play for his sentiments, for his activities.  ----

To punish Ravaillac's attack on the life of the French King, long
ago, they tried ingenious devices.  They broke him on the wheel.
They tortured him slowly.  Finally they poured melted lead
into his stomach through his navel.  It was a hard death.

But they did not punish Ravaillac as severely as Bresci is to be
punished.

The minutes, the hours, the weeks, months and years will drag
along.

Idleness, idleness, idleness.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

No human smile or voice to measure time.

Sleep, bread and water; sleep, bread and water.

Gradually madness will come and bring relief.

Be glad that you are active, you who work willingly.

And you young man who rebel against labor and long for the chance
to do nothing, study Bresci's case and take up your load gladly.

The decree condemning us to earn our bread in the sweat of our
brow was merciful, not stern.  For that same power which
sentences all to work also causes happiness to be found in work
alone.



THE OWNER OF A GOLDEN MOUNTAIN

An old man sits at the end of his life, with money piled up on
all sides of him.  Years ago he was working hard.  All his
ability was strained to the utmost pushing back those who strove
to pass him on the road up the golden mountain.

He enjoyed the conflict, he enjoyed the sight of beaten rivals.
His delight was in work, in ACQUISITION.  His growing surplus
added new zest to his life.  He pitied "the poor fool" who wasted
time at anything save money-making.

But he is at the top of the heap of money now.  He looks about,
and none compete with him.  A few strugglers--too far away to be
heard--strive for a little of his useless accumulation.  Legal
sharpers struggle and get a little, and in return keep away those
who try to climb up near him.

The interest has gone out of life.  Where he used to see
competitors, he now sees only old memories.  The old associates
have gone--it is even too late to help them--and he will soon go,
too.

He looks out over the land, and sees, when it is too late, all
that he has missed while he thought he was doing the thing most
important.

He has made a hundred millions of dollars, but not one human
friend.

He can hire almost any man to do anything.  But there is not
enough money in the world to hire any one to miss him sincerely
when he is gone.

Such a man as this--an actual individual, with wealth far
exceeding one hundred millions--has insured his life for half a
million.  To those who asked "why" he replied:  "I want some
insurance company to be sorry when I die.  No one else will be
sorry."  Possibly he thought he was joking.  But there was truth
in what he said.

The man who piles up money builds a solid wall that shuts out the
world from him.  Sycophants climb over the wall--but their
flattery and fawning grow tiresome.  Old age and cessation of
strong feeling cause the mind to see clearly--and hypocrisy no
longer deceives in the old, pleasant way.

The most depressing fact in the old man's life is the
hopelessness of trying to change.  His mind has worked so long in
one direction that it can no longer work in any other.  He would
like, perhaps, to begin now and live as others live, but he
cannot do it.

There are men whose great wealth is earned WITH PART OF THEIR
ABILITY, leaving them force and strength for other things.  Such
a man was Peter Cooper.

But the man most frequently seen in America is the man who
accumulates money for money's sake.  His is a sad heart when he
looks over the past and ahead into the short future.

If he has children, he has hardly known them--and HIS MONEY
has separated them from each other.

When his son was a little child the rich man made himself think
that he was piling up the money for that boy.  What became of
that boy?

Ask the Keeley Cure, the public gambling houses, Monte Carlo, the
divorce court--and the other "resources" of the sons of the very
rich.

Thousands envy him, and he knows it.  But there is little in
being envied when old age makes a lonely life unbearable, and
when the next striking event in his career will be a funeral.

There are hundreds of thousands of men with their thoughts fixed
absolutely on money making.  They hate what threatens money.
They love those who sympathize with money.  They live, work,
vote, talk, marry and cheat their friends for money.

If they fail--as most of them do--they die unhappy.  If they
succeed, money cheats THEM, and for all their devotion gives
them nothing.

"For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul?"

The man wastes his soul who devotes its forces only to
accumulating wealth.



THE HUMAN WEEDS IN PRISON

How shall we approach a prison to see it fairly and to study it
intelligently?

Let us imagine ourselves visitors from a world outside of this.

Far off in infinite space there is a small whirling planet--our
earth.

Little creatures move about this planet, chained to it by the
force of gravity.  But they MOVE as they choose, and they call
themselves FREE.

There are millions of free square miles, and hundreds of millions
of free human beings.

But there just below us is the prison at Auburn.  There the human
beings are not free.  There suffer those who for any reason have
violated the established rules of the little globe that supports
them.

They have not even the freedom of the little patch of soil fenced
in for them.  They cannot walk, speak, sit down, lie down, or
stand up as they please.

They have broken some of the rules established for the protection
of all.  They have misused their freedom, and in punishment their
freedom is taken away from them.

They live in small cells, in a very big prison.

Gray stone, iron bars, striped suits, enforced silence, enforced
work, enforced regularity of life--all these punish most keenly
those whose first crime was lack of self-control and lack of
regularity.  ----

In every prison and in every prisoner there are lessons for each
of us.  You will not waste time to-day if you walk through this
great Auburn prison and think of the men there think why they
came there, think how they could have been saved, think what will
gradually empty prisons and make them unnecessary.

A man with one arm opens the first iron gate--his mutilated body
foreshadows the mutilated minds and souls within.

Before the door of the prison there are bright flowers--the name
of the prison itself stands out in brightly colored blossoms to
prove the gardener's ability and strange sense of the
appropriate.  Many of the causes that bring men there are written
out in just such bright colors--when first seen--and many a
prisoner must have thought of that as he passed through the iron
door.

A party of six or seven go through the prison with you.

There is a woman of middle age, stout and cheerful, in a bright
purple dress.  There are two children, a moon-faced man, a
tall, thin man, and others whom you do not notice.

Carelessly they look at a nervous woman sitting in the reception
room talking to a convict.  They take no interest in her, no
interest in the convict.  To you the prison guide says:

"She comes here to see him as often as the rules allow.  She's
his wife.  She's been coming for seven years.  I tell you,
women get the hard end of it in this world."

Women do indeed get the hard end of it.  There are twelve hundred
men in that prison--and every one of them has caused some woman
to suffer.  And every one has broken the heart of one other
woman--his mother.

Through a narrow door you travel with your fellow-visitors.

At every step you marvel at the curious indifference of average
humanity to the one interesting thing--their fellow-man.

There are shown to you piles upon piles of loaves of bread--fresh
and brown.  The guide says:  "We bake every day.  Nine hundred
loaves a day."

The stout woman in purple sighs with amazement, the children
gape, the man with the round face has an anxious look--he seems
to be a taxpayer.

But not one looks at or thinks of the convict who turns quickly
away to hide a thin, white face.  To you the guide says:  "He's a
forger.  You can see he's sensitive about being here.  Some of
them never seem to get used to it." ----

The stout woman in purple is delighted with the enormous copper
vats for making the convicts' coffee.  She is charmed with the
great iron pots for boiling soup.

But you will be more interested in these facts:

There is a great chapel--BUT NO CONVICT IS COMPELLED TO ATTEND.

There is a huge wash room--fitted with showers for the hardy,
with porcelain tubs for the old and crippled--AND EVERY MAN IS
COMPELLED TO TAKE HIS BATH.

How much of progress, how much that is hopeful for humanity, is
told in those words!

Religious services are optional--no more compulsion of man's soul
or of his belief.

Bathing IS COMPULSORY.  Truly, we progress, and the prison rules
prove it.

There were showers in every prison and in every insane asylum one
hundred years ago--but those showers were used only to torture
the criminal or the lunatic.  He was doused with cold water until
senseless.

There were chapels in the old-time prisons, and all were forced
to accept and profess such views as the majority or the ruler
chose to profess.

That prison at Auburn is a monument to humanity's sorrows and
weaknesses.  But it tells in every department of human decency
and of a constant striving by those who are fortunate to help
others.

In the prison yard a squad of convicts are marching.  The
lock-step is there no longer.  Prison reform has ended that.  The
convict is no longer forced into a gait which stamps him ever
after.

There are electric lights in the hundreds of cells--and there is
absolute cleanliness throughout the vast structure.  No hotel is
cleaner, if any be as clean.

The convicts get their letters twice a week.  They have pictures
in their cells--and they may have musical instruments if they
wish; and many a man, beside his narrow plank bed, has a strip of
rag carpet made at home.  Their lives are horrible--for
confinement kills men's souls; and one has said who knew prison
life:

"It is only what is GOOD in man
That wastes and withers there;
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair." ----

While you go through the prison you see the things
mentioned--electric lights, clean halls, bathing apparatus, and
the rest.  But you STUDY the human beings working at their
fixed tasks, or moving about in their dismal, heavy suits of
stripes.

Just as many kinds of faces as you see in a city street you see
in that prison--but there you see more than elsewhere the
failures, the human weeds.

But at least there is a striving to make things better.  Society
no longer willingly tortures its failures.  It controls,
punishes, but does not hate them.  There are no beatings, no
tortures, no close-cropped heads, even, for the convict may grow
his hair as he chooses.

Every man who knows no trade is taught one.  There is a feeling
of moral responsibility to the criminal, and a desire at least to
make him NO WORSE.

The prisoners are divided into two classes:  those whose faces
and skulls tell of evil birth and predestined failure, and those
who are simply like others--average men, victims of chance, of
temptation, of ability ill-balanced, of ignorance, of drink, or
even of accident.

In one great room the convicts are weaving--working at hand
looms.  The work is desperately hard.  Both hands and both feet
are going constantly.  Human power is used, that the greatest
amount of labor and least competition with the outside working
world may be simultaneously achieved.

At one loom sits a poor creature, a dismal human failure.  His
forehead is half an inch high and a bony ridge-telling of
unfortunate prenatal influence--runs high along the top of his
head.  His small eyes are close together.  His exaggerated
chin protrudes; only a cunning look directed now and then toward
the watchful warden tells that any thinking goes on in that
miserable being.  His best place, perhaps, is there.  He is
protected against himself, and society has no other way of taking
care of him.

Near him sits a young boy in his teens.  His face is intelligent;
he is not a born criminal.  He is above the average in
intelligence, and in him there are all possibilities of success
and usefulness.

A boyish piece of criminal foolishness brought him there--and he
must now spend years degenerating into real criminality under the
influences around him.

There are the two extreme samples of humanity in that cage which
we build to protect ourselves against ourselves.

It is a dismal garden set apart for human weeds and in it many a
good plant is hopelessly driven into the weed class.

Of the men in that prison may truly be said what a great student
of plant life--Luther Burbank-- says of the poor weeds that we
despise among plants:

There is not one weed or flower, wild or domesticated, which
will not, sooner or later, respond liberally to good cultivation
and persistent selection.  * * * Weeds are weeds because they are
jostled, crowded, cropped and trampled upon, scorched by fierce
heat, starved, or, perhaps, suffering with cold, wet feet,
tormented by insect pests or lack of nourishing food and
sunshine.

Most of them have no opportunity for blossoming out in luxurious
beauty and abundance.  * * * When a plant once wakes up to the
new influences brought to bear upon it the road is opened for
endless improvement in all directions.

More pitiable than any weeds in a garden and more worthy of
sympathy are those poor human weeds in the great prison.

Crowded and kept ignorant in youth, tempted, ill-fed, cold and
worried in after years, their lot was hard--and their fall almost
inevitable.  They must be confined, they must be protected
against themselves, they must suffer for the poor start given to
them.

But the duty of those who are FREE and fortunate is to treat
kindly those who fall, and especially to deal in such fashion
with the young as shall minimize the crop of weeds later.

Fortunately, it may truly be said that humanity begins to realize
its responsibilities in both lines of effort.

Kindness reaches the convict in his prison.

And Education, the thrice blessed AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL, does
steadily the work that makes useful plants of growing youth,
diminishing year by year the crop of weeds.

Kindness and EDUCATION--go to Auburn prison and you will
realize how much work they have still to do in our country.



CRIME IS DYING OUT

Many of us feel that crime is the striking feature of modern
life, that this century sits among the skulls of crime's victims,
and that Father Time, after all his ages of travel, sees no
improvement.

But those discouraged by modern crime misunderstand the meaning
of events and fail to make a just comparison between the past and
the present.

It is true that crime to-day is shocking in its frequency.  Each
day we see spread out before us murders.

But first of all remember this:

We often mistake widespread NEWS of crime for increase in crime
itself.  The newspapers are multiplied in number by tens of
thousands, and they all tell what happens.  It seems as though
crime had increased, whereas in reality we have simply increased
facilities for letting all the people know what goes on among us.
----

We are shocked occasionally by crimes of poisoning.  Go back a
few centuries and you find men and women making a regular
business of selling poison to those who want to commit murder.
The crimes that fill us with horror would not have been noticed
in those days.

We hear of a father killing his own child, and we declare that
humanity is going to destruction.  Yet but a few centuries back
and THE LAW RECOGNIZED EVERY FATHER'S RIGHT TO KILL HIS CHILD IF
HE CHOSE.

We shudder when we hear that a mother has exposed a new-born
child on a doorstep or thrown it into an ash barrel.  That is a
horrid and unbelievable crime.

But in Rome, before the days of Christianity, there were
appointed places where mothers might legally expose their
children to destruction.  The wild beasts or dogs ate the
children thus exposed, and no one was shocked.  Whoever might
care to take such an exposed child could keep that child for a
slave forever.  That kind of crime we have outgrown certainly.

The Presbyterian teaching of infant damnation seems to us
horrible.  We shudder at the statement that God would condemn a
helpless baby to eternal punishment simply because it had not
been baptized.  The idea seems cruel now.  But it was invented by
the well-meaning early Christians in order to make women give up
the legal practice of infanticide.  The mother was made to
believe that her unbaptized child went to hell, and that she must
follow later on for not having had it baptized.  Thus women were
afraid to expose their children secretly, and infanticide was
stamped out by a Christian doctrine which now seems so brutal.
----

And note one thing above all:  Crime still lingers among us.  But
it is now LABELED AS CRIME.  We no longer have horrible crimes
sanctioned by law.

We read that a criminal has tortured some old man or woman for
money--and then murdered the victim.  We can scarcely believe in
such atrocity.  But only a little while ago--barely two
centuries-- IT WAS THE REGULAR LEGAL CUSTOM TO TORTURE OLD
PEOPLE AND YOUNG.

Poor old women, falsely accused of witchcraft, were burned alive
and ducked in this country, while clergymen and magistrates
looked on and applauded.

All over Europe innocent witnesses could be tortured to make them
give testimony at a trial.

Men accused of no crime whatever were tortured to make them give
testimony against others--often when they had no testimony to
give.  They were hung up by the thumbs, the bones of their legs
were crushed in a boot of steel, the soles of the feet were
roasted over a brazier of red-hot coals--to make them help
convict another.

The noble leaders of the French Revolution abolished such torture
of witnesses in France, and they were criticised for doing so by
the respectabilities.

"How are you going to convict criminals if you do not torture
witnesses?" the respectable element asked.  We have got beyond
that state of affairs.  We hear of murders based on jealousy--
perverted affection.  We hear of crimes based on envy--perverted
ambition.  All of the best elements in man, when perverted and
thwarted, lead to crime.

And these perverted passions will continue to breed crime until
men shall have learned to regulate society on a basis that will
give full and natural play to the forces within us.  But
organized murder on a really vast scale is practically done away
with.

Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon and others like them had great
ambition.  To gratify their ambitions they forced millions of men
to die for them.

Human beings have protected themselves against the murderous
ambitions of their great leaders.

The Napoleon of to-day must get a Congress to give him his
soldiers.

Public opinion, the ballot and financial science have pulled the
teeth of the greatest instrument of crime--the conquering army of
ambition.

It is horrible to witness the assassination of a national leader.

The murder of McKinley or Carnot makes republican hopes seem
chimerical.

But it must be remembered that not so long ago the head of a
government who ESCAPED assassination was the exception. A few
centuries back, and murder was the natural end of the average
ruler.  ----

Murder results first from control of the brain by animal
passions.  Almost every animal is a murderer, and at stated times
murders its own kind.  Primitive man is always murderous.  Murder
results, in the second place, from misdirected forces within us.

Crime will diminish through education, as the mind takes control
of us, and through society better organized, which shall give men
a chance to develop normally.  Thanks to education and to
improving social conditions, crime is disappearing, NOT
increasing.  Even our despondency is comforting.  It proves that
we have progressed so far as to be horrified at that which we
should have taken for granted a few centuries back.



THE VALUE OF POVERTY TO THE WORLD
ASK YOUR FRIEND WHAT HE WOULD DO IF HE HAD A MILLION

A majority of men long for a great deal of money.

Each man will tell you that he is struggling along in uncongenial
employment; that if he had his way his life would be arranged
very differently.

Put to any friend this question:

     "What would you do if you had a million dollars?"

You will learn that, first of all, he would get rid of the useful
daily plodding that occupies him.  Instead of living to work he
would live to enjoy himself.

A majority of men are usefully employed because they must work to
live.

If we all had our way we should do as we chose, and there would
be no progress.  Fortunately, the wisdom of Providence keeps the
great majority of men poor and usefully busy.  ----

This writer asked an able business man, who manages the material
success of a great newspaper, what he would do if he had a
million dollars.  He replied without hesitation:  "I would go
abroad and spend the rest of my life collecting artistic things
and enjoying them."

By his newspaper work, which helps to disseminate truth and to
fight privilege, this man renders the greatest possible service
to the world.  He is head of the commissariat department of an
army of righteousness.  How fortunate that he cannot abandon his
useful work to collect artistic trash that would only make him
useless and enrich a few unscrupulous dealers! ----

Joseph Jefferson as an actor has done great good for the world.
He has filled hundreds of thousands of young and old hearts with
kindly sympathy.  He has set a good example to all the actors of
the world.  He is truly a public benefactor.

If Joseph Jefferson had had a great fortune he would have spent
his life painting pictures, for he believes that he was meant to
be a painter.

He was not meant to be a painter; if his life had been devoted to
painting it would have been wasted.

How lucky that he was not rich enough to be able to waste his
life! ----

Often the world marvels that the sons of great and successful men
accomplish so little.

The world is foolish.  It should marvel that the sons of the rich
accomplish anything at all.

For genius has truly been called the capacity to take infinite
pains.  It is the splendid fruit that grows on the tree of HARD
WORK.

Infinite pains and hard work are distasteful to human beings.
They are avoided by those who can avoid them.  It is lucky for
the world that the number of those who can shirk is limited.
----

Dryden tells you in four lines what the actual man would amount
to if he had his way.

"My next desire is, void of care and strife,
To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life.
A country cottage near a crystal flood,
A winding valley and a lofty wood."

Every man who could afford it would live for himself, to indulge
some useless little tenth-rate part of his brain activity.  ----

The world progresses because the wisdom of the universe compels
every man to work directly or indirectly for every other man.

If we had our way, if hard necessity did not compel us to do the
disagreeable work for which we are fitted, we should all live for
ourselves; we should all be mere human sponges, absorbing
personal gratification--the progress of the human race would
stop.

Let this fact console you when you contemplate with bitterness
the few who accumulate great fortunes.

You are a disappointed drop in a great ocean of useful human
beings.  The interest of the whole ocean demands that you and the
vast majority of all other drops should fail to get what you
crave--

THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE USELESS.



600 TEACHERS NOW, 600,000 GOOD AMERICANS IN THE FUTURE

On one single day 600 teachers, representing and devoted to the
American public school system, sailed for the Philippine Islands.

These 600 teachers, men and women, will do more than 6,000 or
6,000,000 soldiers could do with cannon and Gatling guns to
civilize and Americanize the new possessions.

They will teach the inhabitants FACTS.  They will give them
solid knowledge in place of degrading ignorance and superstition.

They will teach them that the world is round and that every man
on it has the same chance, if he will use his brain; that if he
himself cannot seize the opportunity it can he seized by the
children whose success is as dear to him as his own.

Like all wars, the conquest of the Philippines has had many
discouraging and some disgraceful features.  The killing of
ignorant men and women, the burning of houses, the unnecessary
severity, will all be forgotten when the school teachers of
America shall have done their work.  ----

A great many thoughtless people imagine that the world is
retrograding, that times are not as good as they used to be.

We are still far from perfect.  But as a matter of fact we are
angels compared to the men of olden times.  A few years ago the
usual course was as follows:

First, soldiers were sent to subdue the people.

Then tax collectors followed with the public executioner, the
noose and various ingenious instruments of torture to extract
cash payments.

We still send soldiers, but with them we send physicians to cure
the wounded; and when the soldiers' work is done we do not send
tax collectors or other civil vampires.

We send school teachers, publishers of newspapers, organizers of
labor unions.  We send those agencies which shall enable the
people conquered to make themselves equal or superior to their
conquerors.



EDUCATION--THE FIRST DUTY OF GOVERNMENT

We wish to discuss with our readers in this and in later editions
of this newspaper the great and serious question of education.

It is a question as broad as the ocean, and as deep.  It is a
question so vast that organized discussion of it seems hopeless.

The greatest minds of the world have devoted their powers to the
intricate question of developing the human brain, and the problem
has been scarcely touched.

The greatest works on education in the history of the world are
undoubtedly Plato's "Republic," Spencer's "Education" and
Rousseau's "Emile."  The last is the greatest of all.  It should
be read by every father and mother and by every earnest citizen.

Other works that may be earnestly recommended are Aristotle's
"Politics," Pestalozzi's "How Gertrude Teaches Her Children" and
Froebel's "Education of Man."

To Rousseau undoubtedly belongs the high honor of having thought
and written most powerfully, most originally and most practically
on the greatest of problems.  His brain is the cornerstone of the
structure of intelligent educational methods.

He foreshadowed in his "Emile" Fourier's splendid principle of
"attractive industry." ----

THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY DEPENDS UPON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
HUMAN BRAIN THROUGH EDUCATION.

The intricate processes of thinking separate mankind from other
members of the animal creation.

Man is far from the animal in proportion as his brain is
cultivated.  Even the animals themselves rank in their kingdom in
proportion to their brain activity.

William T. Harris said truly:  "If man had let himself alone he
would have remained the monkey that he was.  Not only this, but
if the monkey had let himself alone he would have remained a
lemur, or a bat, or a bear, or some other creature that now
offers only a faint suggestion of what the ape has become."

The elephant and the ape, among our humble animal brothers,
appear to have reached their limits of possibility in the way of
educational development.  They still remain, and always will
remain, vastly inferior to their microscopic comrades--the ants
and bees and other insects.

The human race has barely begun the systematic study of the
problem of application, and systematic application of the truths
discovered and agreed upon.  In proportion to our stature and
possibilities we are hideous ignoramuses compared with the ant in
the garden path.

The education of children is regulated not by their brain
formation and possible development, but by the wealth of their
parents, the parsimony of municipalities, the baleful influences
of tradition and the colossally stupid idea that thorough brain
cultivation is in some way antagonistic to material success.

The greatness of a nation depends upon the average mental power
of the nation's citizens, and mental power depends absolutely
upon education.

The man who doubts the importance of educating his son
thoroughly--if any such man now exists--is invited to consider
the following brief statement of facts:

The holders of slaves in the Southern States and outside of
America desired to keep their slaves down.  They wanted them to
be content with slavery.  They wanted them and their children to
remain willing, humble, helpless machines.

THEY PUNISHED AS A CRIMINAL ANY MAN WHO TAUGHT A SLAVE TO READ.
THEY KNEW THAT SLAVERY AND EDUCATION COULD NOT LONG ENDURE IN THE
SAME HUMAN BEING.  ----

The ignorant man who has succeeded through natural force and
lucky opportunity is fond of asking these questions:

"What is the good of education?  Of what practical use is
scientific training?" These men are admirably answered by Herbert
Spencer, to whose work they are referred.

A collection of Englishmen ruined themselves in the sinking of
mines in search of coal.  They might have saved their money had
they known that a certain fossil which they dug up in abundance
belongs to a geological stratum below which no coal is ever
found.  They went on digging cheerfully and wasting their money.
An acquaintance with that fossil and its meaning would have saved
their cash.

Some individuals spent one hundred thousand dollars trying to
save the alcoholic byproduct that distils from bread in baking.
They would have saved their money had they known that only a
hundredth part of the flour is changed through fermentation.

The study of biology is essential in the successful fattening of
cattle.

An "entozoon" seems to the practical man a foolish, imaginary
creature.  But millions of sheep have been saved by the discovery
that one of these fancy scientific entozoa, pressing on the
brain, caused the sheep's death.  When you know the entozoon you
can dig him out and save the sheep's life.

"My son's going to be an artist," says one proud father.  "He
does not need to study a lot of scientific rubbish."

This parent does not know that the difference between a good and
a bad sculptor or painter is often based on knowledge or
ignorance of anatomy and mechanical principles.  ----

Education is important to the individual because it means
development of the brain, development of capacity for production
and increased chances of success.

Education is important to the State because it means not only
COMPETENT citizens, but MORAL citizens.

The animal in us yields to the influence of education.  Knowledge
and brutality are enemies.  They do not dwell together.

The most important institutions in this country are the public
schools--the gymnasiums of human brains.  The most important
citizens of the nation are the teachers.

The greatest criminals are the employers of child labor, because
they deny education, cut down in childhood the citizen's chance
of progress and success.

Work and vote for more and better public schools.



POVERTY IS THE FATHER OF VICE, CRIME AND FAILURE

These are days when men do their hardest work for money, when
they scramble and struggle and strike each other down in the
effort to reach wealth.  And it is not possible to blame them.
They are trying to escape from poverty, from a disaster worse
than any prairie fire or other physical danger.

Dire poverty is the worst of curses.  It combines every kind of
suffering, physical, mental, moral, and in the end it means
either death or degradation.

The great task of humanity is the abolition of poverty.  The
great benefactors of humanity are the great industrial organizers
of this day, because, in spite of individual selshness,{sic} they
are planning production on a scale that will in the end provide
for all.

It is worth while to discuss and to realize what real poverty
means.  If we can realize its meaning every one of us must be
more anxious to relieve, as far as we can, the poverty around us,
and especially anxious to work for the social betterment that
shall one day wipe out poverty forever

Poverty means dirt.

The thoughtless and comfortable have a way of saying:  "The poor
might at least be clean." But cleanliness is a LUXURY; it
demands leisure and peace of mind, as well as bathtub, soap, hot
water and good plumbing.  The very poor cannot be clean.

Poverty means ignorance, and it means ignorance handed down from
father to son.

Poverty means drunkenness.  The pennies of POOR men and POOR
women pay for more than half the vile whiskey, gin and other
poisons that men buy to help them forget.

Poverty and its sister, Ignorance, fill the jails and the insane
asylums.

Poverty is the mother of disease, and it fills the hospitals.

Tens of thousands of consumptives alone are murdered every year
by poverty.  They are too poor to do that which is required to
save their lives.  ----

The great men of the world do not emerge from poverty, from
squalor.

They come from very modest homes, from the log cabin, and from
the towpath, as advertised.  They come from those whose fathers
and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers had at least enough
to eat, and enough fresh air to give them pure blood and proper
nourishment for their brains.

Poverty destroys ambition, inventive power and the capacity to
struggle.

A starved body produces a starved brain.  The greatest genius
that ever lived could not think better than a child of ten if you
deprived him of food for ten days.

What can you expect of the inferior minds that have been half fed
through a lifetime, or through several generations?

Do you know what made the Revolution and changed conditions in
France?  It was not poverty.  Not a single poor man was a leader
in that Revolution.  Every one of them was well fed, had a well-
nourished brain--Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins,
Mirabeau--every one a well-fed brain in a vigorous body.

The labor unions and the great strikes, although sometimes unwise
and unreasonable, are great blessings to the Nation.  They compel
the worker to get such pay as will feed himself and his children,
giving the Nation well-fed brains.  The Union is the enemy of
poverty, and for that reason especially it is an agent for good.
----

As poverty breeds ignorance, so ignorance breeds poverty.  The
greatest enemy of poverty is the Public School.  Work and vote,
therefore, for public school betterment.

Miserable women walk the streets by thousands on cold Winter
nights--poverty has put them there.

Hundreds of thousands of children are born only to struggle for a
few years through a stunted infancy--poverty digs their graves.

For one genius that has fought and conquered in spite of poverty
ten thousand have sunk out of sight in the fight against the
worst of enemies.

Don't waste time extolling the blessings of poverty--use your
energies to diminish poverty's curse, and to improve humanity by
giving it the full efficiency which freedom from worry alone can
give.



THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION PROVED IN LINCOLN'S CASE

The very old and very foolish saying, "A little knowledge is a
dangerous thing," is disproved every day.  Whenever you hear a
man talk about "a little knowledge" ask him what he thinks about
the danger of a great deal of IGNORANCE.  Tell him this:

"THE SCHOOLING OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ALL TOLD DID NOT AMOUNT TO AS
MUCH AS ONE YEAR."

The teaching was elementary, including reading, writing,
ciphering, and very little of each one.  It was picked up at odd
times, when he could be spared from daily labor.  Remember that
when he was a lad his father used to hire him out to work on
other men's farms for very little money.

With that little learning he built himself up into one of the
greatest men in history, saved the nation, ended once and for all
civilized recognition of slavery.

A little learning might possibly have been dangerous had he been
one of the idiotic kind of men.  It might have made him feel
dissatisfied with the hard labor for which he was fit, without
stimulating him to better things.

But Lincoln's little learning gave him no rest--it kept him
constantly adding more learning to his little supply.  ----

The self-pitying young man who thinks he has no chance may be
interested in Lincoln's methods of getting ahead.  He walked
about twenty miles through the wilderness to borrow an English
grammar.  He could get no other books, so he read and re-read the
statutes of Indiana.  He wanted to teach himself to write well
and think closely.  He had never heard Bacon's saying:  "Writing
maketh an exact man," but he felt the truth of the fact for
himself, and he was bound to write.  He had no paper and could
not afford to buy any.

At night, when his work was done, he would bend his huge
six-foot-four frame close down by the firelight to write and
cipher ON THE BACK OF A WOODEN SHOVEL.

When the back of the shovel was covered with writing he would
shave a thin layer from it and begin writing once more.  ----

It is a very useful thing for men occasionally to feel ashamed of
themselves.  If you want to feel ashamed of yourself, if you are
complaining and whining, just picture to yourself Abraham Lincoln
in his father's little hut, with no windows and no flooring,
crouching by the fire and developing his mind by laborious
writing on the back of a wooden shovel.

Children of twelve in schools, precocious little girls even of
seven or eight, know much more than Abraham Lincoln knew when he
was twenty-one years old.

With his "little knowledge" he grew and did the work that was to
improve the condition of millions of men.

Don't be ashamed of your "little knowledge."

But do be ashamed if you do not add to it whenever you can, and
especially if you fail to make it useful to your fellow-men.



KNOWLEDGE IS GROWTH

Consider to-day the CHEERFUL side of conditions on earth.

Every human being has his troubles and worries.  The luckiest of
us all yearns for what cannot be had, and sees much to regret.

But one splendid fact should always be borne in mind:  THE
PROGRESS OF HUMANITY IS INCESSANT.  WE ARE INFINITELY BETTER OFF
NOW THAN WE HAVE BEEN BEFORE ON THIS EARTH, AND UNLIMITED
POSSIBILITIES OF IMPROVEMENT ARE AHEAD OF US.

The progress of humanity has been like that of an individual
climbing the paths of a steep mountain.  At every turn there are
fresh dangers and difficulties to be overcome, fresh
complications for which the traveler is prepared only by his
courage and determination.

But every step takes the traveler higher up, out of the dark
valley, toward the light at the top, and every danger overcome
makes it easier to deal with the dangers to follow.

In its long fight the human race has encountered many enemies.

At one time in Europe one single epidemic destroyed half of
all the population.  But we have struggled on; through science we
have almost conquered disease, and the plagues of the past are
unknown among us.

In olden times brutal superstition, disguised as religion,
dwarfed men's minds, punishing, with atrocious cruelty, the crime
of independent thought and apparently making impossible any
mental growth in the face of bigotry and monstrous persecutions.

But to-day bigotry begins to give place to true religion; the
burning alive and protracted torture which disgraced all the
religions of Europe until recently have ceased, probably forever.

Mankind in its travels has progressed as far as the stage of
independent thought.  If a creature still lives that would take
the life of another because that other thinks differently from
himself he dares not confess his criminal thought.

A few centuries ago the great majority of all human beings were
slaves or serfs.  The noblest of human brains, those of the Greek
philosophers, wrote and lived in the midst of slavery.  Even as
great a man as Aristotle could not conceive a society based on a
non-slave-holding system.

But except in some African jungle, here and there among savage
and semi-savage races, no man is a slave now.  And where slavery
does exist it exists in stagnant pools of humanity, and it exists
side by side with the other monsters, cruel superstition and
widespread disease, that progressive humanity has left behind.
----

Every century of which the history has been preserved shows us
its horrid side of life, its cruelties, its sufferings without
number.  But each succeeding century shows also some one point
gained, some one hideous feature of life eliminated.

The enemy of the world to-day, the monster in the path of
progress, is organized greed, the insane desire of a few men to
take from others, and for themselves, what they do not need.

The trust, seeking through capital to reintroduce slavery under
another form, and to establish the tyranny of money in place of
the tyranny of swords and bullets, represents the present
problem.

This problem, like all the others, will be solved in its turn.
It will be found that the great danger did good as well as harm,
and that, on its overthrow, only good was left behind it.

The diseases that once destroyed men forced them to live a decent
life of cleanliness.  Those diseases frightened human beings out
of filth into respect for themselves as the rulers of the world.

We owe the cleanness and decent temperate living of to-day, as
well as our knowledge of medical science, to the diseases that
formerly destroyed the people.

The hideous travesties called religion which relied for their
power on superstition, fire and sword appeared to block all
spiritual development among men.  These religions have passed
away; only the vital, true religious principle is left--the
command laid upon men to feel toward each other as brothers, to
worship the ONE and benevolent power that rules the world.

A few years or centuries from now the trust problem will be
solved, and that particular monster will lie dead on its ledge of
rock back in the pages of history.  And men will know that to the
great danger and brutality of to-day they owe much of their
progress and happiness.

When the trust goes commercial greed will go with it.  It will
have killed the hideous theory of competition, with its swindling
of the public, its cutting of wages, its general mean, petty,
treacherous tradesmen's warfare.  ----

Every human being should read history intelligently, if only for
the encouraging effect on the mind.

In every direction, and in spite of foolish croakers, the human
race has improved.

Good men and women deplore the drunkenness of to-day, and they do
right.  But for their own satisfaction and encouragement they
should know that in comparison with former times the drunkenness
of to-day amounts to nothing.

Where one man drinks too much in these days, a thousand men and a
thousand women were frightfully drunk a few years ago.

Drunkenness, which formerly attacked the most useful of human
beings--doctors, statesmen, poets, the best mechanics--is
confined now to a feeble fragment of humanity made weak by
disease, hereditary influence, discouragement or imperfect
organization.

More important than this encouraging development is the changed
attitude of the public mind toward the drinking habit.
Twenty-five centuries ago a Greek philosopher, to make heaven
attractive, described the table at which heroes sat in a
never-ending, blissful state of drunkenness.

To-day even the meanest man is ashamed to have it known that he
is drunk, and the most hopeless drunkard would ask no greater
favor than that some one should make it impossible for him ever
to drink again.

There is a criminal conspiracy, called the Beef Trust, which
thrives on the needs and privations of the whole people.  It is a
blot on humanity.  Do what you can to destroy this evil.  But do
not be made bitter by it.  Your age is a happier one than others.

In France, not so long ago, human beings were punished for eating
the bodies of men that had died of the plague, and strict laws
were issued to stop that kind of cannibalism.  The Beef Trust age
is an improvement on that age, is it not?  High prices are
bad, but not as bad as hideous, widespread starvation.  ----

Human selfishness and heartlessness are criticised to-day, and
the criticism is just.  Yet, MORALLY, the human race has
improved more than in any other way.

We see to-day callous, heartless men spending millions upon their
personal pleasures, paving insufficiently the laborers whose work
enriches them, and robbing the public whose patience makes the
great fortunes possible.

But the worst plutocrat of to-day is an angel compared with the
mildly vicious men of olden times.

Your selfish man to-day only asks for a yacht and some race
horses, mild forms of dissipation.  A thousand years ago the
vicious man demanded and exercised the power of life and death
over those who surrounded him, and his mildest fit of irritation
cost the life of some helpless human being.

Men are ill-paid to-day, but their condition is Paradise compared
to the slavery of their predecessors.  ----

You should daily criticise yourself and others, and do what you
can in your little sphere as preacher, politician, editor or
private individual to help along humanity's progress.

But remember always for your encouragement that the world is
improving steadily.  It never stands still; it never goes
backward.  And there are no limits to our future improvement,
thanks to our inborn love of what is right and to the steady
influence of EDUCATION.



A WHISKEY BOTTLE

How should a whiskey drinker talk to his son?  If he talked as he
feels he would hold up the flat, brown bottle and say:

"My boy, you know that I am a poor man and have nothing to leave
to you or your mother.

"The difference between myself and the successful men who have
passed me is this:

"I have gone through life with this bottle in my hand or in my
pocket.  They have not."

A man comes into the world prepared to do his share of the
world's work, well or ill, as his brain and his physical strength
may decide.  Of all his qualities the most important practically
is BALANCE.

The whiskey in that bottle destroys balance, mental and physical.

It substitutes dreaming and foolish self-confidence for real
effort.

It presents all of life's problems and duties in a false light.
It makes those things seem unimportant which are most important.

IT DULLS THE CONSCIENCE, WHICH ALONE CAN MAKE MEN DO THEIR DUTY
IN SPITE OF TEMPTATION, AND STRUGGLE ON TO SUCCESS IN SPITE OF
EXHAUSTION.

Keep away from this bottle, and keep away from those who praise
it.  He who hands it to his fellow man is a criminal, and he
who hands it to a young man is a worse criminal and a villain.
----

It is a well-established fact that in the usual order of events
drunkenness would be handed down from father to son, and hundreds
of thousands of families would be ultimately wiped out by
whiskey.

It is not true, fortunately, that the son of a drunkard actually
inherits drunkenness fully developed.  But a drunkard gives to
his son weakened nerves and a diminished will power, which tend
to make him a drunkard more easily than his father was made a
drunkard before him.

The great safeguard of a drunkard's children undoubtedly lies in
the warning which they see every day in their home and in the
earnest advice which the man who drinks will give to all young
people if he have any conscience left.

If the man who drinks would save his own children from the same
danger, he can do so better than any other.  He need not lose
their respect by telling them of his own mistakes, if these
mistakes have been hidden from them.  Let him simply tell them,
without personal reference, what he knows about whiskey, its
effects on a man's happiness, success, self-respect and physical
comfort.

Whiskey gives a great many things to men.  Of these gifts here
are a few:

Lack of friends, lack of will, lack of self-respect, lack of
nervous force--lack of everything save the hideous craving that
can end only with unconsciousness, and that begins again with
increased suffering when consciousness is restored.  ----

Fathers and mothers blessed with self-control and with good
children should use the picture of a drinking man as a useful,
moral lesson in talking to boys and girls from seven to twenty
years of age.

Children are impressed most easily through their imaginations.
An intelligent father or mother can produce upon a child's
receptive mind an impression that will last for years.

With the fear of whiskey there should be impressed upon children
sympathy and sorrow for the unfortunate drunkard.

One of the ablest men, and one of the most earnest in America,
said to his friends very recently:

"I never drink, as you know.  But when I see a man lying drunk
in the gutter, I know that he has probably made that very day
a harder effort at self-control, a nobler struggle to control
himself, than I ever made in my life.  He has yielded and fallen
at last, but only because all of his strength is insufficient to
overcome the disease that possesses him."

Teach your children that drunkenness is a horrible disease, as
bad as leprosy.  Teach them that it can be avoided, that the
disease is contracted in youth through carelessness, and that it
is spread by those who encourage drinking in others.  Tell them
that the avoiding of whiskey is not merely a question of morals
or obedience to parents, but a question involving mental and
physical salvation, success in life, happiness, and the respect
of others.



THOSE WHO LAUGH AT A DRUNKEN MAN

How often have you seen a drunken man stagger along the street!

His clothes are soiled from falling, his face is bruised, his
eyes are dull.  Sometimes he curses the boys that tease him.
Sometimes he tries to smile, in a drunken effort to placate
pitiless, childish cruelty.

His body, worn out, can stand no more, and he mumbles that he is
GOING HOME.

The children persecute him, throw things at him, laugh at him,
running ahead of him.

GROWN MEN AND WOMEN, TOO, OFTEN LAUGH WITH THE CHILDREN, nudge
each other, and actually find humor in the sight of a human being
sunk below the lowest animal.

The sight of a drunken man going home should make every other man
and woman sad and sympathetic, and, horrible as the sight is, it
should be useful, by inspiring, in those who see it, a
determination to avoid and to help others avoid that man's fate.
----

That reeling drunkard is GOING HOME.

He is going home to children who are afraid of him, to a wife
whose life he has made miserable.

He is going home, taking with him the worst curse in the
world--to suffer bitter remorse himself after having inflicted
suffering on those whom he should protect.

AND AS HE GOES HOME MEN AND WOMEN, KNOWING WHAT THE HOME-COMING
MEANS, LAUGH AT HIM AND ENJOY THE SIGHT.  ----

In the old days in the arena it occasionally happened that
brothers were set to fight each other.  When they refused to
fight they were forced to it by red-hot irons applied to their
backs.

We have progressed beyond the moral condition of human beings
guilty of such brutality as that.  But we cannot call ourselves
civilized while our imaginations and sympathies are so dull that
the reeling drunkard is thought an amusing spectacle.



LAW CANNOT STOP DRUNKENNESS-- EDUCATION CAN

Everybody knows that until recently the average statesman, the
majority of prominent men, in England, drank to excess.

Pitt was a drunkard--and Pitt was the most remarkable statesman
in England.

Fox was a drunkard.

In fact, to write a list of England's greatest men, who lived
more than a hundred years ago, would be to make a list of famous
drunkards.

To-day the drunkard in public life is practically unknown in
England, as well as in America.  No legal pressure has been
brought to bear upon the prosperous drunkard.

He was not badgered by policemen or by blue-laws.

He could get ALL that he wanted to drink WHENEVER he wanted
it--yet, OF HIS OWN ACCORD, the prosperous drunkard has
reformed and become temperate.  ----

Our own great Daniel Webster was a drunkard, as were many other
great Americans.  No man to-day could be a drunkard and at the
same time be respected.

Education, experience and common sense have done their work, and
drunkenness is now left to self-indulgent fools, or to those
whose lives are made dull by poverty, to whom alcohol affords the
only escape from horrible monotony.

It would, perhaps, be worth while for the advocates of temperance
to study the causes which have practically eliminated drunkenness
from the most intelligent classes of men.

Education undoubtedly is the greatest factor.

In nearly all the public schools now the evil effects of alcohol
are taught.

These evil effects are taught, not in a lackadaisical way, with
sentiment or religious duty as a basis.  They are taught as
FACTS.

Facts appeal to the mind, and they persist in their effect in
later life, when moral suasion and religious appeals are
forgotten.

Teach every child that alcohol destroys his chances of success,
impairs his muscular efficiency, inflames the substance of the
brain and prevents development--MAKE HIM FEEL THAT A DRINKING
MAN IS A SECOND-CLASS MAN, AND YOU WILL HAVE DONE MUCH TO DESTROY
THE DRUNKENNESS OF THE FUTURE.  ----

As a matter of fact, drunkenness, like dirt, is mainly an
accompaniment of poverty and a sad, hopeless life.

For the man or woman given to drinking, when the troubles of
life are no longer to be borne, some relief must be had.

Make the lives of human beings more comfortable, make good food
more plentiful, spread education--and you will solve the problem
of excessive drinking.



THE DRUNKARD'S SIDE OF IT

You lucky, well-balanced ones talk much, and sincerely, of the
horrors of drink, and of the drunkard's weakness.

You think the whiskey drinker ought to stop.

Do you ask yourself whether or not he CAN stop?

Let us consider to-day the drunkard's side of the case.  ----

Very often physical weakness causes drunkenness.  Many a man
takes a drink because the task put upon him is heavier than he
can bear.  The whiskey does not help him--it hurts him.  But it
cheats him and makes him THINK that he is helped.

You realize that whiskey drinking as a settled habit must be
fought with weapons of some kind.

WILL POWER is the great weapon to use in our own behalf.  You
tell the drunkard to use his will power.

But you forget that the first thing that whiskey attacks is will
power.

You remind the drunkard that his weakness brings suffering on
others, and you appeal to his conscience.  But you forget that
whiskey weakens conscience even more than it weakens the nerves.
You forget, too, that whiskey makes its victims suffer.  If
he could free himself he would do so, if only for his own sake.

And you must not forget that whiskey argues ingeniously, in
addition to its telling of lies.

A man is overcome with some great grief.  Whiskey makes him
forget, or at least it makes him not care.

A man is suffering some great humiliation, some sense of personal
shortcoming, that is intolerable to him.  Whiskey offers to
relieve him, and for the moment it does relieve him.  ----

YOU who talk nobly of temperance and advocate laws governing
other men are apt to be proud of your own self-control.

Perhaps you have been a drinking man and have stopped.  But you
do not know how much lighter whiskey's hold may have been upon
you than upon others.

Suppose you worked hard every day, every week and every year.

Suppose you had no pleasure in life, save the fictitious pleasure
and excitement that come from whiskey.  Suppose you failed, and
failed and failed again--and suppose that whiskey was always
ready to praise you, make you feel proud of yourself, make you
hold others responsible for your failures--are you sure you could
let it alone?  ----

In your condemnation of those who persist in whiskey drinking
you must remember that what is easy for one man is very hard for
another.

Suppose you should urge two animals to go without meat--one of
the animals being a tiger and the other a sheep.  Would you
praise the sheep for its faithful keeping of the promise?  Would
you blame the tiger for breaking its word, if the temptation to
eat meat were offered?

In men's nervous systems, in their craving for alcohol, there is
as great a difference between different temperaments as between
the appetites of the sheep and the tiger.  One man is dragged
toward the gulf by whiskey with a force of which you have no
conception.

You look with contempt at a hopeless drunkard, shuffling along
toward destruction.

THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF SUCH MEN WHO EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES
MAKE AN EFFORT OF THE WILL OF WHICH YOU WOULD BE INCAPABLE.

But that effort, great as it is, is not great enough to save
them--whiskey drags them too hard in the other direction.

Fortunately, we can all congratulate ourselves on the steady
falling off in drunkenness.  To drink to excess is no longer
respectable.  Once it was a leading sign of respectability.
Doctors in the old days wrote their prescriptions illegibly,
because when called late at night they were usually drunk.
To-day a drunken doctor cannot possibly survive.

Work as hard as you can against drunkenness, for drunkenness
harms every one, even the saloon-keeper himself.  The drunkard
soon comes to ruin and ceases to be a profitable customer.

Argue with young men, and talk to children ABOUT THEIR OWN
WELFARE in the matter.

But remember also that the drunkard often has tried harder than
you could try to overcome the enemy that has conquered him.
Remember that unless you have lived his life you cannot know his
excuse and cannot judge him.



DRINK A SLOW POISON

Often a man talks about like this:

"I am a regular but moderate drinker.  No one ever saw me drunk,
and yet I drink every day.  And what's the harm of it?  Can you
see anything the matter with me?"

The man would seem to have the advantage of you.  You cannot SEE
anything wrong with him.  So far as outward appearances go the
case is squarely against you.  The man APPEARS to be all right.

But is he?  The effects of drink upon the system do not show
themselves to the extent of attracting very marked attention, at
least until the conditions are fairly ripe.

In the man who comes out on to the street after a PROTRACTED
DEBAUCH the effects of whiskey are visible; even the little
children notice him.

He may not be drunk.  It may have been hours since he touched a
drop.  But any one can see that his physical system has received
a severe shock.

In the moderate drinker these signs are not visible, but the
alcohol which he daily imbibes is doing its work, and slowly but
surely his constitution is being undermined.

Now and then we run across some old man who is hale and
hearty, notwithstanding the fact that he has been a moderate
drinker all his life.

But no one will think of denying the fact that this old man is an
exception--a very rare exception.

Many old men who SHOULD be hale and hearty are suffering from
ailments born of the drink habit, by which, in their earlier
days, they were enslaved.

In the "rheum, the dry serpigo and the gout" which rack their
frames, make their bones ache and render miserable and thankless
the evening days which should be so full of peace and beauty,
they are reaping the fruits of their "harmless" moderate
drinking.

Two or three weeks ago we made reference to the report by Mr.
Mesureur, Director of the Department of Charities, Paris, upon
the results of alcoholism in France.

That report was no sooner made public than the French liquor
dealers were up in arms against it.  Indignation meetings were
held.  The mails were flooded with all sorts of protests against
the truth of Mesureur's claim that alcoholism was slowly but
surely destroying the French people.

The discussion at last became so heated that the government took
it upon itself to subject the offensive report to a careful
scrutiny, with the result that it was CONFIRMED in every
particular.

We quote from a poster, issued by the "Investigation Council for
Promoting the Public Welfare," and now displayed all over France:

"Alcoholism is the chronic poisoning resulting from the constant
use of alcohol, even if it does not produce drunkenness.

"It is an error to say that alcohol is a necessity to the man who
has to do hard work, or that it restores strength.

"The artificial stimulation which it produces soon gives way to
exhaustion and nervous depression.  Alcohol is good for nobody,
but works harm to everybody.

"Alcoholism produces the most varied and fatal diseases of the
stomach and liver, paralysis, dropsy and madness.  It is one of
the most frequent canses of tuberculosis.

"Lastly, it aggravates and enhances all acute diseases, typhus,
pneumonia, erysipelas.

"THESE DISEASES ONLY ATTACK A SOBER MAN IN A MILD DEGREE, WHILE
THEY QUICKLY DO AWAY WITH THE MAN WHO DRINKS ALCOHOL.

"The sins of the parents against the laws of health visit their
offspring.  If the children survive the first months of their
lives they are threatened with imbecility or epilepsy, or death
carries them away a little later by such diseases as meningitis
or consumption.

"Alcoholism is one of the most terrible plagues to the individual
health, the existence of the home, and the prosperity of the
nation."



TO THOSE WHO DRINK HARD-- YOU HAVE SLIPPED THE BELT

Men have explained variously their reasons for drinking to
excess.

An able architect drank too much every night.  He said that he
HAD to drink.  If he went to bed perfectly sober his mind went
on working and dreaming, after he had gone to sleep, and he woke
up fatigued and unable to attend to his work.

"I don't want to drink," said he, "but in order to do my
work I must have the sleep that follows what is ordinarily
called taking too much."

Other men explained excessive drinking as follows:

"I must have the mental excitement that comes from drinking."

"You can't imagine the delightful agility of the mind under
the influence of alcohol."

"The brain works more quickly, more energetically, more freely."

"After drinking a certain amount I can live more in an hour than
I could ordinarily in a month," etc.  ----

These men who believe that alcohol improves the mind, stimulating
it to better effort, constitute a very large class, perhaps the
largest class of those who drink to excess.

We wish we could persuade such men that they are mistaken in
believing that excessive alcohol feeds the brain.

The man who has drunk too much, and thinks that his mind is
working splendidly, might learn something by studying any sort of
machinery when the belt slips off the wheel, or the screw of a
steamer when the power of the waves throws the screw out of the
water.

While the belt is securely attached, doing its works, it turns
slowly and monotonously.

While the screw is buried in the water, fighting its way and
pushing its load ahead, it turns slowly and laboriously.

When the belt slips off or the screw comes out of the water, the
whole thing is changed.  The screw whizzes around like lightning.

The belt rattles and dances.

The screw in the water and the machinery doing its work properly
are like the sober brain.

The brain that is made abnormal by alcohol is simply the screw
out of water, the misplaced machine belt.  The brain is no longer
connected with the working realities of life.  It has lost its
balance and its function.  It works rapidly and aimlessly.  It
moves with wonderful swiftness, but it accomplishes nothing.

Let men who drink too much, believing that the action of their
minds is improved by drinking, think over this proposition about
the machinery and see if there is not something in it to
interest them.

How much actual work does this alcoholized brain turn out?  What
do they actually DO "next day"?



TRY WHISKEY ON YOUR FRIEND'S EYEBALL

Your friend drinks too much, or drinks temperately but unwisely.

You may entreat, or argue, or abuse, or threaten.

You may show your friend the happy home where rum never enters.

You may lead him through the alcoholic ward at Bellevue.

Such sights may produce an impression.  But usually they do not.

The man who possesses, indulges and keenly enjoys an overwhelming
passion--for drink or any other vice--is rarely moved by your
fine talk, for the reason that he believes in his wily soul that
you do not know what you are talking about.

Mr. Lecky, in his history of European morals, page 135, volume
I., observes:

"That which makes it so difficult for a man of strong, vicious
passions to unbosom himself to a naturally virtuous man is not so
much the virtue as THE IGNORANCE OF THE LATTER."


You are naturally virtuous.  Your drinking friend is naturally
and proudly bad.  He thinks you do not know what you are talking
about when you ask him to give up drink.  ----

When you start out to cure a vicious friend by arguing with
him, do you ever reflect how little you know what goes on within
him?  Suppose that in his nerves there is a craving ten thousand
times louder and stronger than your most virtuous arguments?
What good will those arguments do?  No use whispering poetry to a
man in a boiler shop.  No use humming a love song in a whirlwind.

The poetry, the song, are out of place.  Any sort of argument
save the most powerful is wasted on a man whose soul is filled
with the racket of a dominating passion, such as drink or
gambling.  ----

Just two things can cure a drunkard--two things, and nothing else
on earth.

First, his own cold reason and strength of will.

Second, the growth within him of some passion stronger than his
love of drink.

Love of his children, love of a woman, will cure a drunkard (but
we earnestly advise any woman to make sure he is cured before
trusting her future to him).  Ambition--which includes every form
of vanity and self-delusion--will cure a drunkard, and has cured
many thousands.  Even the miser's passion of economy may outweigh
love of drink and cure the lesser desire.  ----

To cure a drunkard, try to arouse within him some desire stronger
than his desire to drink.  Any boy will stop smoking to play
football or to excel in any sort of athletics.  You reach his
vanity.  What preaching could produce the same effect?

If you feel that you must use argument, try such arguments as
will appeal to the man himself, not such as seem sound to you in
your fine state of virtue.

The American drunkard is usually manufactured by the vile
American habit of drinking pure whiskey or cocktails.  No other
race, except among the most degraded classes, absorbs crude
spirits as stupidly as this race.  ----

Suppose you have a young friend whose tendency to drink
"straight" whiskey makes you nervous.  You see what it is leading
to.  Instead of trying to make a teetotaler of him, try to
transform him into a sensible drinker.  ----

When your friend orders his whiskey, start off as follows:

Tell him you take it for granted that he knows all about the
mucous membrane.  He will say that he does--for it is our
American mania to want to appear wise.

Casually state that of course he knows the covering of his
eyeball is identical in all important respects--especially as
regards sensitiveness--with the lining of his stomach; in fact,
of his whole interior from his mouth down.

He will assent and gravely pour out his poison.

Then say to him:

"Just dip the tip of your finger in that whiskey and put the
finger to your eye-ball."

If he does so he will feel the eye smart.  The eyeball will
become inflamed, and sight for a moment will be difficult.

Then let him dilute the whiskey with water--four or five parts
water to one of whiskey.  That dilution, rubbed into the other
eye, instead of irritating it, will act as a gentle stimulant.
It will produce an agreeable effect.

When your friend has experimented with the whiskey "straight" and
diluted, deliver to him this little lecture:

"One drop of pure whiskey on your eyeball makes it hard to use
the eye.  That glass of whiskey that you are now pouring into
yourself would blind you absolutely, at least for a time.  If
straight whiskey has such an effect on the covering of the
eyeball, must not its effect be equally injurious to the covering
of the stomach and intestines, which is the same as that of the
eye?

"If diluting your whiskey makes it so much better as an eye-wash,
would not diluting it make it better also as a 'stomach-wash'?"

One other thing:  When you argue with a drunkard don't tell him
that any man can cure himself if he will "only be a man."  The
drunkard knows that that is not so.  Tell him, on the contrary,
that not one man in fifty, not one woman in a hundred, can
overcome the drink habit.

He will wink his tired eyes at you and say:  "I want you
distinctly to understand that I'm one in a hundred."  Tell him
how difficult it is--not how easy--and thus stir up his ambition.
----

Above all, when you start out to admonish or despise the victim
of bad habits, just remember that you have no notion whatever of
what you criticise.  Not one drunkard in a hundred has will power
to cure himself.  Not one "virtuous" man in a thousand has
imagination enough to realize the drunkard's temptation and
suffering.  We offer to your consideration this other extract
from Lecky's book, quoted above:

"The great majority of uncharitable judgments in the world may be
traced to a deficiency of imagination.  * * * To realize with any
adequacy the force of a passion we have never experienced, to
conceive a type of character radically different from our own, *
* * requires a power of imagination which is among the rarest of
human endowments."



WHAT ARE THE TEN BEST BOOKS?

An interesting discussion progresses in Chicago.  Mr. Sam T.
Clover has asked this startling question:

"If you were bound for a desert island, and could take with
you only ten books, which ten books would you select?"

Whoever is refined and well read in Chicago seems to have
answered Mr. Clover's question.  Mr. Clover introduces each
guesser with a graceful speech; then the guesser solemnly names
ten books.

The selections are, from the moral viewpoint, admirable.  The
Bible is omitted rarely, and the Rubaiyat never.  It is amazing
to see how many inhabitants of Cook County would be unhappy on a
desert island without Col. Omar.  ----

It may not be permissible for a Yellow Editor to break into a
Cook County literary fiesta.  We dislike to run the risk--but we
shall run it.

First we remark that a man living on a desert island needs no
books at all.

Reading books is an idle occupation unless you make your reading
profitable to other human beings, and that you cannot do on a
desert island.

The trouble with many readers is this:  They read as though they
WERE on a desert island.  They sop up literature or facts as a
sponge sops up water; then, like human sponges, do nothing with
their wisdom.  They read for themselves; they read to increase
their egotism and self-approval, and for no other purpose.  ----

But, after walking into an intellectual parlor above our station
in life, it certainly does not become us to be finicky.

We'll tell as quickly as possible what it is that surprises us:

NOT ONE COOK COUNTY THINKER MENTIONS A BOOK ON ASTRONOMY.

A man on a desert island has a little sand, some goats and a few
miles of ocean around him--nothing else in sight.

But above him, and on the low plains of the horizon, the great
universe is spread out.  Vega flashes overhead, beckoning to this
little solar system that is rolling on toward her.

The old, benevolent stars look through cold space at our little
sun that was not even hatched in their yesterday.

The Milky Way, that Mississippi of the sky, rolls across the
thousands of billions of miles of space.

The messenger-boy comets go on their long, elliptical errands.
The colored planets and moons, the nebular masses and the cold,
dead worlds lying in the silent morgue of eternity tell the
wonderful story of cosmic grandeur.

We should think that a man on a desert island, living constantly
in contemplation of God's real work, would want to study that
work.

The greatest book ON MEN that ever was written on this earth
is but an analysis of the emotions of imperfect human minds.  A
good ASTRONOMY is a guide book of GOD'S kingdom.

Many Cook County litterateurs select Carlyle for a desert island
companion.  Have they not observed that Carlyle's mind was fixed
on contemplation of the universe?--"the eternal silences" were
his friends.  And when he seeks monkeyfied human soldiers, booted
and spurred, he asks, "What thinks Bootes of them, as he leads
his hunting dogs across the zenith in a leash of sidereal fire?"

O, Cook County thinkers, inhabitants of a small corner of this
small ant-hill, drop your alcohol-loving tentmaker--Omar--forget
your half-hearted fondness for Milton.  Buy "Ball's Story of the
Heavens," or even some simpler astronomy; spend four dollars and
four weeks finding out how grand is our real home, the boundless,
beautiful universe.



THE MARVELLOUS BALANCE OF THE UNIVERSE--A LESSON IN THE TEXAS
FLOOD

A tidal wave and hurricane combined have destroyed thousands of
lives in one small corner of the globe.

After the first excitement and horror, the creditable outpouring
of help, there should be thankfulness in the hearts of the many
millions who live on safely.

Do you ever think of the wonderful protection, the marvellous
precision in celestial mechanics that guard you as you travel
through space?  ----

The oceans, seas and lakes contain water enough to cover the
entire surface of the earth to a depth of six hundred feet, if
the earth's surface were actually round.

In huge reservoirs, which we call oceans, the earth's waters are
stored for our use.  Those vast volumes of water rest on the
surface of a whirling sphere travelling through space at fearful
speed.  The slightest derangement, the slightest lack of balance
in our motion round the sun, the slightest shifting of the poles,
and mountains of water miles high would sweep over the continents
and wipe out--not only one small city--but the entire human
race.  ----

Our existence here requires a precision so great that our minds
can but feebly grasp it.  Change the temperature of your body by
but a few degrees and you die.  But you travel through space
safely, with a freezing ocean of ether about you.  You travel in
company with suns that throw out endless billions of degrees of
heat.  You are protected in a travelling hothouse, regulated
exactly to suit your feeble strength and all your wants.  ----

Did you ever see the small, black nose of a pug dog pressed
against the window of a flying express train?

Have you ever seen that pug barking at the landscape whirling by?

Have you ever reflected on the utter inability of that pug to
realize the marvellous intelligence and power that are whirling
him along as he barks and wags his tail and enjoys himself
calmly?

Kind reader, you and all of us, whirling along in this
magnificently conducted express train called the earth--whirling
onward to a destiny worthy of our habitation--are so many poor
little pug dogs looking out at nature's marvels and looking out
with less than pug-dog appreciation.



THE EARTH IS ONLY A FRONT YARD

The philosophers, political economists, lawmakers, editors,
sociologists, and all the other would-be deep thinkers of this
earth, are really engaged in a pretty small business.

We are like a swarm of human beings cast away on some desert
island.  This earth is our island, a little island in space, and
it is a desert island and a badly arranged island in more ways
than one.  Many of us lack good dwellings, some of us lack food,
all of us are worried about the future.  The island is infested
with mosquitoes and with diseases that we have not learned to
conquer.  There are many criminals on it that prey upon the
honest people--criminals at the top and criminals at the bottom
of society.

And all of those who think and sympathize with their fellow
creatures are busy with the problem of putting things right on
this little desert island that carries us along in the wake of
the sun.

Most of us imagine that the most important work for men is the
organization of life on this little planet.  That is a very small
and mean idea of man's real destiny.

When a man builds a house, the planning of sanitary arrangements
must first be attended to.  After that begin the real life
and the real interests.  That real life and those real interests
are not confined to the front yard or the back yard of the man
that owns the house.  ----

So it will be some day with us who are now engaged in the
detailed organization of the little home which we call the earth.

We are fixing up our moral plumbing--fighting poverty, injustice,
and, above all, ignorance.  We are fighting the meanness that
comes of competition and the greater meanness that is based upon
the dread of poverty in the future.  Some of us are piling up
millions that we can never use, while others suffer for lack of
that which could be abundantly supplied.

All these little earthly questions that seem so big will be
settled in time.

But a few years in the sight of Time--a few hundred centuries,
perhaps, as we count them--and our earthly habitation will have
been made fit to live in.  We shall have eliminated the
unfit--not by killing them off, but by educating them.  We shall
have solved the question of poverty by solving the question of
production, and especially of distribution.  We shall have
developed a citizenship capable of earnest work, of sobriety and
of moral decency, without the spur of want, imprisonment or the
scaffold as necessary adjuncts.

In time the human race will have solved its little problems
here--the problems that seem so vast to-day.

When that time comes we shall be like the man who has put his
house in order, and our thoughts will not be confined to this
little piece of ground.  Then we shall appreciate the cosmic
wisdom which has divided our day into darkness and light--the
light for the enjoyment of the material beauties of our earthly
home; THE NIGHT FOR THE STUDY AND ENJOYMENT OF THE VAST,
MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE SPREAD OUT AROUND US.

Everybody knows that the aged require less sleep than the young.
In the future, this will make old age what it ought to be, a
blessing, because it will give to the old more hours of the night
for contemplation of the Infinite and all its wonders.

Those of us who now think themselves very abstract when they
speculate on the North Pole, or when they discuss the possibility
of reclaiming the Desert of Sahara, will have their minds many
millions of miles away from this earth a great deal of the time.

We shall communicate, perhaps, with our sister-planet, Venus--the
planet most like ours in physical arrangement.  We shall be
intensely interested in that world, where it is always night on
one side of the planet, and always day on the other.

We shall realize with deepest envy the fact that the constant,
terrific currents of air whirling around Venus, in consequence of
the extreme heat and the extreme cold on opposite sides of the
planet, have developed a race as far superior to us as the trout
in the swift-flowing brook is superior to the heavy-eyed catfish
in the bottom of the pond.  ----

We shall humbly beg for information from the superior inhabitants
of other worlds, and perhaps wait with impatience for release
from duty here which shall take us to a higher planetary
existence.  If we look backward at all, we shall consider our
present selves simply as refined cannibals, who lived upon the
labor and the suffering of our fellows instead of feeding upon
their bodies.  ----

It may seem ridiculous to predict that the time will come when
the intelligent man's interests will be nearly all outside of the
earth on which he lives.

But to the savage of the Congo, squatted beside a decaying
hippopotamus, gorging himself with the meat, with not a thought
beyond that carcass or beyond the edge of the river, it would
seem preposterous to speak of men whose interests range out over
the entire world.

We look upon a man as very small to-day unless all knowledge
interests him, unless his mind roams daily all over the civilized
globe, sharing in the interests of all nations, in the
literature, the discoveries and the activities of all nations.

To-day we, with our minds on little, material problems, our
thoughts centred on this one little planet, as we lead our
selfish lives, are like that Congo savage hacking away at the
dead hippopotamus.

When night comes, we shut our eyes like the chickens, waiting for
the light that means money-making or pleasure of the senses; or
we go to theatres or to balls, or elsewhere, to shut out as far
as possible all knowledge of that marvellous, unlimited creation
to which we belong, and which it is our greatest privilege feebly
to study.  ----

The geography class of the future will be a class in astronomy.
The real problems of the future will be the problems outside of
this earth, and the real interests of the future will be
interests connected with the universe at large.

We shall make of this earth a beautiful garden, inhabited by
safe, happy human beings.  We shall take pride in it, and enjoy
it by day.  Our intellectual lives will begin with the going down
of the sun and the gradual appearance of those mighty neighbors
in space that alone will interest the thinking man of future
days.



LAST WEEK'S BABY WILL SURELY TALK SOME DAY

It is believed by scientists that the planet Mars may be striving
at this moment to communicate with us.  Lines of light are seen
on her surface--on the border of that part of Mars known as Lake
Iscarie--and men of learning believe that the Martians are trying
to signal our earth.

Possibly they are trying.

Of this you may be sure:  Sooner or later we shall communicate
with all the planets, and perhaps through the giant sun receive
news of outside solar systems.

We have lived comparatively but a few hours on this earth.  The
civilization on Mars is millions of years older than our own.

Although we are still primitive savages, we have done wonders
already.

We can talk instantaneously with a Chinese sitting cross-legged
on the under (or upper) side of our earth.  We can send a message
around the earth in a few seconds.

Of course we shall talk to Mars as soon as we get out of our
cradle down here.

Look into an ordinary cradle where a week-old baby lies nursing
his wrath or trying to talk to his toe.  There are around him
eighty millions of other human beings--fourteen hundred
millions if you count all on earth--and he, the baby, cannot say
one word to any of them.  He does not even know his own mother.

Like humanity on this earth, he is busy growing up.  He has not
had time to spread out and get an interest in his surroundings.

His liver must get small--at the end of his milk diet.  His legs
must get straight and strong.  He must learn to creep and walk.
After a period as extensive in his life as a thousand centuries
in the life of the race, he begins to talk to those about him.

We do not believe that the time has yet come for us to talk to
the Martians, or to the inhabitants of any other older planet.

They may possibly be signalling to us up there, as a man
inexperienced will signal to a new-born baby or even try to make
it understand what he says.

It is probable, however, that Mars, far advanced in science, as
superior to us as we are to new-born infants, would use the light
only to attract our interest and let us know that when the time
comes we have an old brother planet anxious to chat with this
baby earth.

It will be most interesting when the talking time does come.  The
men who have lived, studied, experimented millions of years ahead
of us will be able to tell us many things that we need to know.

Like the baby in the cradle, we are compelled now to discover
everything for ourselves.  Our old brother Mars, as soon as we
can understand, may help us to take giant steps forward, just as
a younger brother, as soon as he can speak, is taught by his
elder in one of our families.  ----

It will be interesting, also, to observe how we shall probably
reject the good advice given us, as the young person here rejects
the words of experience.

Suppose we could talk to Mars, and suppose the wise old people up
there should tell us that millions of years of experience had
made clear the fact that making money is a foolish occupation.
How many of us would cease striving for money?  The very
scientist giving us the message would patent his interstellar
talking process and die happy with a huge fortune.

How cheerful also will it be a million or so years hence!  We
shall then be like a very young child among the planets.  Two of
the older worlds will be talking, and we shall be permitted to
listen, but not to interrupt.

We shall hear questions put as to our origin and destiny.

We know now that the sun, flying through space, is dragging us
toward some unknown spot in the universe.  Our older brothers in
space will have definite ideas as to where we are going and
why we are going there.

It will be interesting to follow their speculations, and
occasionally, if permitted, to offer our feeble little ideas, as
the smart boy occasionally speaks up before his elders.

Our future as one of a family of planets freely communicating
with each other cannot be doubted.

He must have a dull imagination who believes that the eternal Law
regulating matters here has put such limits to our possible
development as would shut us out from a share in the big solar
family life to which we belong.



THE GOOD THAT IS DONE BY THE TRUSTS
THE MAMMOTH MADE OUR FIRST PATHS THROUGH THE FOREST

Every big movement in this world in some way or other does solid
good in the long run, however irritating it may be before it is
understood.

The saddest period in a child's life is undoubtedly the period of
teething.  If you saw a baby for the first time and didn't
understand that period, you would denounce the cruelty which
inflamed its gums, upset its digestion, kept it awake, condemned
it to incessant torture.  But we all know that a full set of
teeth under the control of the child is to reward the suffering
of teething, and this reconciles us to the teething age.

We tell you--and we don't want you to forget this--that all the
trust impositions and suffering and thievery now agitating us
constitute a teething process through which we must pass.  The
result will be a full set of industrial teeth owned and
controlled by the nation, which now suffers the torments of the
teething baby.  ----

You will realize that individuals must at first do that which
nations do later.

The despotic, irresponsible rule of the savage chief, of the
able individual fighter, was a forerunner of the present system
of government.

We have now taken the governing power from the individual,
bestowing it on the whole people, but at first we had to have our
Attilas, our Napoleons and Alexanders.  ----

As individual control of the government has been superseded by
collective control, so individual control of industries will be
followed by collective control.  That is the natural order.

Why does not the government take full charge at once?

Why does not the hen lay a hen all covered with feathers, instead
of laying an egg?  Everything must have its crude beginning and
its perfect ending, for on this basis we are organized.

The French government to-day makes millions from the national
control of the match industry.  But a solitary individual working
in Batavia, New York State, had to create the match and make his
little money out of it before the French government could take it
and make its millions.

That same French government derives millions from its tobacco
business, incidentally giving the people good tobacco cheap
instead of poisonous tobacco dear.  The red Indian dodging bears
and using his squaws as slaves had to start that great tobacco
industry before the French government could get it.

Don't waste your time and energy joining the thoughtless crowd
that howls against trusts.  Use your vote and your voice to put
those trusts under government control as soon as may be.  Be glad
that an old Vanderbilt had brains enough to build great railroad
systems.  Don't denounce him or begrudge him the fortune he made.

His work was worth the money.

Let us say to his little descendants the pee wee Vanderbilts of
to-day:

"You have had enough now.  Although you have done nothing,
we shall pay you generously for what your great-grandfather
did, and with your kind permission, or without it, we shall
transfer these roads to the people whose patronage gives
them value."  ----

In due time this pleasant message of just appropriation will be
delivered to all the various trust owners.  They will all be well
paid for their work.  They deserve to be, for they have done as
individuals the work which the collective commonwealth could not
do.

But they will be made to see that they cannot forever keep what
they have created.  If a man invents a steam engine worth to the
world at large ten thousand billions, he is allowed to keep his
property only seventeen years, under our patent laws.  Shall we
allow a clever highway robber of a commercial organizer to keep
the proceeds of his energy for himself and his descendants
forever?  ----

We had almost forgotten the mammoth mentioned at the top of this
article.  That mammoth, dead and forgotten, is the forerunner of
to-day's trust.  The mammoth was hated by all created things
around him.  An accidental blow from his left hind foot would
break up any family in existence.

But his vast weight and power ploughed the first paths through
the swamps and forests.  The paths made by the mammoth through
unexplored tracts were a great boon to half-savage man.  In fact,
man followed along those paths after awhile and learned how to
kill the mammoth very neatly.

The trusts are marking out organized paths through the hitherto
chaotic, disorganized systems of industry.  Those paths will be
useful to all men through all time.  The trust will be killed
when his day comes, as the mammoth has been killed.

Let us be patient meanwhile, and not forget that, though a
monster, he was a monster absolutely necessary and very useful.



TRUSTS AND THE SENATE

If you are willing to assume your responsibilities as an American
citizen you should study seriously the question of the trusts.

Already trust organization has assumed very real and very
threatening proportions.

Every family in the United States knows of the existence of the
Meat Trust, which cuts down the food supply of the people to add
to its bank account.

Every merchant feels keenly the existence of half a dozen trusts
on which he is absolutely dependent, and from which there is no
escape.

We all have seen the Coal Trust keeping ready armed men to shoot
working citizens whenever it should give the order.  This Coal
Trust, in a calm, matter-of-fact way, boasted that it would, if
necessary, "call out the United States Government troops" to
shoot the miners.  Here is one trust already talking as though it
controlled the army and all the other forces of Government.  The
trusts believe themselves already in control, and their national
power is very great.

The crisis of trust development has not been reached.  The
present power of concentrated, organized money is very great, but
it is nothing to the power which money will exert in the
future.

This future development of the trust force should be discussed
and studied calmly, rationally and dispassionately by all
Americans.

There is no use in denouncing or in hating the trusts.  It is
true that they are entirely selfish; it is NOT true that they
represent evil, pure and simple.

The trust is a necessary development in humanity's journey toward
organization, concentration and the simplifying of industry.

The first locomotive ever built was a trust.  It performed the
work of a thousand four-horse teams, deprived four thousand
horses and a thousand drivers of a livelihood.

The railroad trust is simply an extension of the concentration of
labor, the simplifying of industrial operation, represented in
the building of the first locomotive.

THE TRUSTS IN THE END WILL DO INFINITE GOOD.

They will destroy the mean competition which for centuries has
made liars, swindlers and slavedrivers of men.

They will practically eliminate the great number of large private
fortunes, and thus compel men to devote their energies to
pursuits nobler than the accumulation of money.

At first a few enormous fortunes will dominate the nation--the
beginning of these great fortunes you may see already.

Then will come the owning of the trusts--that is to say, of all
the great national industries--by the nation itself.

The people of the land will own and operate their own
necessities.  These necessities, instead of making a few men
enormously rich at the expense of many, will contribute to the
comfort of many without injustice to the few.  ----

The development of trusts must run its course, like every other
great feature of human history.

Its beginning--in corrupt legislation, watered stocks, human
selfishness--was inevitable.

Its ending--in national ownership, competition eliminated, and
industrial life vastly improved--is also inevitable.

But thousands of struggles, thousands of economical battles,
thousands of ruined men, will mark this evolution of human
industry from the control of individual selfishness to the
service of the nation.

The duty of the people is to study and, as far as possible, to
foresee and regulate this enormous and inevitable development of
the trusts.

The trusts cannot be destroyed, and they should not be destroyed.

But they can be regulated, and with proper vigilance they can be
kept from commanding and controlling absolutely this nation,
which sees the birth of their great development.  ----

We believe that the most pressing public duty at present is
the reorganization of the Senate of the United States on the
basis of popular election.

It has been said truthfully:  "You cannot indict an entire
people," and, fortunately for us, it may truthfully be said, "You
cannot PURCHASE an entire people."

The trusts of the United States base their hopes of continued and
growing power upon the United States Senate.

The trusts own absolutely many United States Senators.  Of those
Senators whom the trusts do not own, many are deeply interested
in the trusts, which is the same thing as though the trusts did
own them.

Under the present system, the public elects State Legislatures,
and these Legislatures choose the United States Senators.

If a trust can buy the Legislature--which, as we all know, it
usually can--the trust can control the Senatorial representatives
of the State.

The State of New York in the National Congress at Washington is
represented by thirty-four Congressmen and two Senators.  The
thirty-four Congressmen are elected by the people and two
Senators are chosen by the trusts.  And with these two Senators
the trusts can absolutely veto every bill passed by the
thirty-four Representatives elected by the people.

Does anybody believe that Mr. Depew and Mr. Platt could possibly
have been elected to the United States Senate by the PEOPLE of
the State of New York?

Does anybody question the outrageousness of a system which forces
upon the people as representatives two Senators whom they would
not have chosen and whom they actually believe to be inimical to
their interests?

This condition prevails practically throughout the Union.

The upper house of our National Legislature is the real ruling
power in the United States.

It controls all of the President's appointments.

According to the Constitution, he is compelled to appoint "by and
with the advice and consent of the Senate."

The trusts buy the Legislatures, they own the Senators, and
therefore the Constitution of the United States now reads
practically as follows:

"The President appoints national officers by and with the
advice and consent of the trusts."

As an American voter, you have no more important duty than to
work for the election of Senators by the people.

You should not tolerate the selection of Judges of the Supreme
Court, United States Ambassadors, Federal Judges throughout the
country, and all the great executive forces subject to the
approval of the trusts that notoriously make, break and destroy
laws.

A small trust can buy the Legislature of the State of New York.

But the biggest trust can scarcely buy New York's six million
inhabitants.  And, thanks to our secret voting system, we are
protected even against ourselves and our own selfishness.

If a trust buys the ordinary voter it cannot be sure that it gets
what it buys.

But if a trust buys the legislators it can count votes and secure
delivery of the goods purchased.

Use your influence to curb the power of the trusts by taking away
from venal legislators that power to sell to trust managers the
Senate of the United States.

This subject you should discuss with your neighbors.  You should
urge it upon all of those voters with whom you come in contact.

You should influence legislators in your State to vote for a
Constitutional amendment causing popular election of
Senators--and no legislator will resent your suggestion if he be
an honest man.

Everybody knows that the United States Senate to-day does not
represent the people.  There are exceptions among the Senators,
but they are in the minority.  Every year the Senate is less and
less representative of the nation, more and more representative
of organized capital.  Good Americans, irrespective of party,
will strive to work for this change in the national machinery.
Take away from the trusts now the power to tamper with national
laws through the Senate.



THE PROMISING TOAD'S HEAD

The head of a toad, like the head of a trust, is superficially a
hideous thing to look at.

Sometimes it is alleged that valuable jewels are found in a
toad's head, and on this account the hideousness even of the
far-famed horned toad of the West becomes less repulsive.

The trust toad, as you will find by examining it closely and
studying events, has a head equipped with jewels of a very fine
quality.  Many years from now men will be very glad that the
trust toad was born, because of the good that will come from it.
----

Already we see that the trusts are inevitably strengthening labor
unions.  They are bringing the men into closer relationship and
forming them into greater and more closely united bodies of
workmen.

The trusts organize admirably the great industries and prepare
the day when all of these industries will be owned by the
Government--that is to say, by the people themselves.

The trusts eliminate competition, which is a stupid, out-of-date
form of barbarism, leading to cheating, thievery and
adulteration.

The trusts do away with the vast armies of middlemen, and, by
diminishing every day the number of those who live on the work of
others, they compel an ever-growing number to enter the fields of
useful production.  ----

Just at present the jewel that stands out most prominently in the
ugly trust toad's head is "FREE TRADE."

Men have argued and fought and voted and made speeches and
paraded for Free Trade--and all in vain.  The more they talked
and paraded, the heavier were the duties.

But when the TRUSTS want Free Trade, they will have it, for the
trusts control legislation.

And we SHALL have Free Trade, for the trusts WILL want it very
soon.

A trust engaged in manufacturing wants to buy as cheaply as it
can the raw materials used.

The trusts will soon own all the industries, all the
manufactures, and they will want freedom from the duties which
are now paid on the material.

Already there is in process of formation a great Clothing Trust.

The small man who makes clothing now must pay a duty on wool to
protect the American farmer who raises sheep.

How long do you think the Clothing Trust will tolerate this duty
on wool?

How long do you think the Trust engaged in making cloths in
America will tolerate a duty on wool that makes the industry so
expensive?

Some of the duties will be retained, of course--at least until
the trusts shall be powerful enough even to despise foreign
competition.

But one thing after another the trusts will want free from duty,
and these things will be freed as fast as the trusts' order is
given.  ----

The trusts are going to do a great deal of good to the masses of
the people in time.  They will end by forcing universal
Government ownership of monopolies upon the people.



TRUSTS WILL DRIVE LABOR UNIONS INTO POLITICS

A workman should use the best tools at his command--the
workman's best tool is his ballot.  Everything that men want it
can give them if used intelligently.  The reasons urged against
its use by labor unions are conscientious but not strong.  They
are based upon the fact that labor men fear to trust each other,
and fear especially to trust their leaders.  They will not vote
as unions because they fear that they may be sold out--that is
the plain, unpleasant fact.

We cannot believe that their fears are well founded.  We know
that leaders both able and honest can be found among American
workingmen, and we say that they should be found and trusted
promptly.  ----

For mark this:

THE TRUSTS WILL INEVITABLY COMPEL THE LABOR UNIONS TO BECOME
POLITICAL UNIONS.

TRUSTS WILL MAKE IT CLEAR TO UNIONS THAT THEIR ONLY HOPE IS IN
POLITICAL ACTION WHICH SHALL GIVE THEM THE POWER TO CONTROL
LEGISLATION.

When individual firms are competing the injustice of one firm may
be punished and controlled by a strike.

THE TRUST WILL RENDER THE STRIKE LAUGHABLE AND USELESS.

Suppose all the shops or manufactories of a certain kind to be
under the control of one trust.  What good will a strike do?  The
concern in which the strike occurs will simply stop work.  Its
business will go to other concerns in the trust; the firm in
which the strike occurs will calmly draw its share of the trust
profits and laugh at the strikers.  The latter will lose their
wages and time--no one else will lose anything.

What does one paper mill care for a strike if all the other mills
in the Paper Trust are running, and making the money which it
nominally loses?  ----

Perhaps the workingmen think they can stop ALL the manufactures
of a certain kind.  In the first place they probably cannot--with
trusts that reach across 3,000 miles of country.

And if they could, what about the TRUST OF TRUSTS?

If the trusts are not already formed into a formal union for
mutual support they soon will be.  And the union of trusts
already exists so far as practical sympathy goes.

Havemeyer will gladly spend millions of trust money--not his
own--to help Morgan in a coal-trust fight.

Rockefeller will spare a few hundred thousand if necessary to buy
a small State Legislature and prevent passage of laws threatening
a weak little trust now and dangerous to him in the long run.
----

Jealousy, mistrust, and the lack of really competent leaders may
delay political union among workmen for a time.

But the political union must come.  Bigger work must be done by
American workmen than chattering about little local wage
regulations or quarreling about hours or overtime.

The question at issue is:

SHALL ORGANIZED CAPITAL CONTROL THE PEOPLE, OR SHALL THE PEOPLE
CONTROL ORGANIZED CAPITAL AND LIMIT ITS POWER?

The workingmen are the people.  They are the interested parties,
and they have got to vote together pretty soon or fight together
a little later.



THE TRUSTS ARE NATIONAL SCHOOL TEACHERS

Look at the coal strike, the opinions that it calls forth, and
notice how respectability dances and hops from one foot to the
other when the RESPECTABLE shoe pinches and the RESPECTABLE
toe suffers.

A little while ago the man who spoke against trusts and general
monopolies of public necessities was called demagogue, socialist,
anarchist, inciter of the masses against the classes, and so on.

But along comes the Beef Trust and begins to punish even the
respectable "upper" classes.  Double prices for food mean a
serious difference even in a very respectable income.

Then you have the respectabilities also suddenly developing signs
of demagogism, socialism and anarchy.

They want the tariff taken off of foodstuffs.  They want the
managers of the Food Trust put in jail.

The Beef Trust teaches the nation one interesting lesson--namely,
that by excessive extortion the trusts will lose soon their
respectable friends and unite all of the people against them.

The Beef Trust also teaches that the language called socialistic
and anarchistic, when confined to working people, becomes
profound political economy when uttered by some
respectability with a pinched toe.  ----

The Coal Trust is a later and even more radical national teacher.

The respectable individual who a short time ago could see no
difference between advocating Government ownership of national
resources and communism or thievery has seen a wonderful light
while gazing on his coal fire at Twelve Dollars a ton.

Judges on the bench, eminently respectable newspapers--by which
we mean those newspapers representing the interests of men who
think with their pockets--are expressing the most radical
out-and-out socialistic ideas.

One of the mildest suggestions made by these respectabilities is
that the Government should seize the coal mines and work them for
the benefit of the people, setting aside the preposterous claims
of the Coal Trust.

Papers like the Springfield Republican, the Philadelphia
Ledger and other solemn organs of antiquity are advocating,
without knowing it, ideas which mean inevitably universal
government ownership of monopolies.

The Coal Trust as a public educator is an undoubted success, more
of a success than it would like to be if it could understand the
nature of its teachings.

If the Government has a right to seize coal mines and work them
for the people, as respectability now declares, why has it not a
right to seize railroads, telegraphs and all the other great
industries whose value depends entirely upon the national
population?  ----

Many men in this world hated their teachers while they were being
whipped in the old- fashioned way, but look back with gratitude
later on to those same teachers and those same whippings.

Our national teachers, the trusts, are severe teachers.  Their
lessons are hard lessons, and they believe in very unpleasant
forms of corporal punishment--inflicting hunger and cold upon
their pupils.

This nation in time will look back with gratitude to the lessons
and to the whippings of the trusts.

The trusts are teaching us inevitably that competition is
antiquated; that organization is the real basis of industry.
They are teaching us that it is feasible and necessary for the
nation eventually to take possession of and manage its own
properties, industrial as well as others.



A WOMAN TO BE PITIED

Why is it that comparatively few women find intense enjoyment in
life after middle age?

Why is it that you cannot duplicate among women such careers in
old age as the careers of Spencer, Gladstone, Huxley, or any of
the great men whose interest lies in mental activity and mental
achievement?

One reason is this:  A great majority of women are inclined to
accept and adopt without question the ideas formed for them.

THEY GIVE UP THINKING EARLY IN LIFE.

When a human being stops thinking, that human being's life
practically ends.

All over the country you may see thousands and hundreds of
thousands of calm, settled, placid-faced, middle-aged women.

They admire themselves and they are admired generally.  They
ought to be pitied.

They think now on all subjects just as they thought ten or
twenty or thirty years ago.

They view with horror things which they know nothing about.  They
reject opinions which they don't understand; they have unlimited
faith in matters of which they know absolutely nothing.  ----

Every one pities a man whose existence and enjoyments are limited
to the physical, sentimental side of life.

We all feel that a man of fifty, unless hard conditions and want
have ground interest and vitality out of him, ought to be at his
best.  He ought to be active, alert, OPEN TO NEW IDEAS.

His mind is his one asset, and he should be constantly adding to
his knowledge, to his observation, and therefore he should be
constantly changing his mental point of view.

Many women suffer undoubtedly from the sentimental, physical and
intellectual reaction caused by the cessation of the
responsibility of maternity.

Such passionate affection, devotion and self-sacrifice are
lavished upon the children that when they grow up nothing more
seems worth while except to set them a good example.

Many other things are worth while:  And as improving civilization
frees women more and more from the endless cares of the petty
household and the worries of poverty, the field for their mental
development will steadily expand.

When woman shall have accomplished her greatest material duty,
that of fully populating the earth, big families will no longer
be known, not more than two years of any woman's life will be
devoted to the worries of infancy, and then woman will have to do
her share of the world's thinking and its original intellectual
work.  ----

For her own sake and for the sake of those about her, every
woman, whatever her age, should realize that there is no old age
for the brain well cared for.

Many men and women view with sentimental reverence the picture of
a middle-aged lady, old before her time, sitting in her
rocking-chair, knitting placidly, without one original thought in
a month.

This sentimental idea is a false one.

The type of woman to be admired is Mrs. Julia Ward Howe,
eighty-four years old, filling Carnegie Hall with her wonderful
voice, thrilling with admiration all of those who listened to
her, reciting with the greatest mental power her splendid battle
hymn, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord."

THERE is a woman who enjoys her life.  It is safe to say that
the eighty-fourth year of her existence is as happy as any year
that preceded it.

She is an old woman, and to most women that means sorrow and
dulness.  But she is happy, admired and useful, BECAUSE SHE
THINKS.

There are in the United States hundreds of thousands of splendid
brains going to waste among our women, because they do not
realize the duty of using, to the last, all the intellectual
power within them.


WHEN WILL WOMAN'S MENTAL LIFE BEGIN?

It is pathetic to hear women of intelligence arguing in support
of woman's claim to "equality" with man.

Of course, woman is really man's superior in important matters.
She is vastly superior morally, beyond any question.

She does the greatest work in the world; she gives to earth its
thinking population and creates every one of the great men that
move civilization along.  ----

But otherwise, in the way of MATERIAL accomplishment, woman
cannot be said to equal man at present, and she cannot be said
ever to have equaled him.

Many of the most intelligent women demand recognition for woman
as equal or superior to man in all ways.

They are deeply hurt if in gentle, patient reply you ask them to
mention a female equivalent to a Newton, Archimedes or
Shakespeare.  It annoys them to tell them that a million
autopsies prove fundamental differences between male and female
brains in favor of the former--at least as regards volume and
depth of cerebral convolutions.

Sometimes, after you have listened to a proud, high-spirited
woman trying to prove that women would equal men in material
accomplishment, if only they had a chance, you get so sad that
you find yourself helping her out--digging up De Sevignes,
De Staels, and other "great" women who  have made up in brains
for what they perhaps lacked in femininity.  ----

It is necessary to bear in mind that this earth, when man was
turned loose upon it, was really a sort of desert island.  It was
a conglomeration of swamps, forests, deserts--all filled with
wild beasts.  Even the human beings, struggling feebly toward
better days, were not far from the beasts at first.  (They are
not very far from them even now.)

Two kinds of work had to be done.  The men had to fight, dig,
hunt, drain marshes and murder each other.

The women had to SUPPLY THE MEN to do all the working and
fighting and killing.

Beasts, wars, fevers killed off the sons of women almost as fast
as they could bear them.  Women must supply the demand for
soldiers and workers and at the same time a surplus big enough to
populate the globe.  Thus far she has put on earth fourteen
hundred millions of her own kind.  Quite an achievement, we
should say, when the career of a Napoleon or an Alexander called
for a couple of million of men extra, or a plague like the
black death, due to man's stupid lack of cleanliness, wiped out
two-thirds of Europe's people.  ----

Men were the material workers--of course they exceeded in
material achievement the women nursing babies at home.

But woman, caring for her children, sacrificing her life for
them, developed on earth the moral sentiments, started each
generation on its career a little better than its predecessor.
She could not do all this and do the material things as well.  In
fact, she could not even THINK except on matters very near to
her cradle, or her affections.

Remember that throughout the world's history it has been the lot
of a vast majority of women to be constantly caring for young
infants, or young children.  Families of twenty children, or even
more, have been common.  It is probable that woman from the
beginning of our racial existence until now has been the mother
of from fifteen to twenty-five children on an average.

The dullest mind can see what that means.

Atrocious suffering.  Endless worry about the children.  Constant
warfare against the man's selfish brutality.

How could woman rear her twenty children and at the same time do
other work?  How could she keep every thought, every effort of
her brain on her offspring and develop her mind in other ways at
the same time?

Give a man one young child to take care of FOR ONE DAY, and when
you return to him you find a semi-imbecile, half-tearful
creature.

In every great man's life you hear some remark of this sort:
"How can I work, Maria, if you let the children make such a
noise?"

Well, how could the millions of Marias work with the children
hanging to their skirts all through history?  ----

But a better day is ahead for woman, and we are proud to point it
out to her.

Wise men begin to wonder what we shall do when the earth is fully
peopled?  Shall we kill surplus babies, or what shall we do?

There will be no surplus babies.  Nature will arrange that.

For every two human beings on earth two new ones will be born.

Wars will be ended.  Common sense will have done away with the
unnecessary illness which now robs millions of mothers.

No woman will have more than two children.  Education will be
understood.  Women will not be slaves to their babies.  They will
be admired and thanked and made happy before the babies arrive
--instead of being half ashamed, as at present.

The rearing of children will be simple.  Each woman, instead of
devoting twenty years of her life to child slavery, will have
practically her whole life to devote to other things.  She will
be able to cultivate her mind.  She will have more of a hold on
Mr. Selfish Man, and he will have to pay more attention to her.

WOMAN'S hour of full mental development will arrive with the
final and complete population of the globe, just as man's day of
real mental growth will come after he shall have mastered the
forces of nature and learned the elements of true social science.

----

Even then we do not anticipate that repulsive "equality" between
men and women which is so much prated about.

The complete human being is not A MAN, nor is it A WOMAN.  The
COMPLETE human being is a man AND a woman.  The TWO MAKE ONE.
Each
will contribute a share to the perfection of the whole.  That was
the way it was planned from the beginning, and we think we could
prove it, if this column were six feet longer.



THE COW THAT KICKS HER WEANED CALF IS ALL HEART

An estimable and very intelligent lady criticises modern
education, saying, "So much brain is forced into the girl
nowadays that it crowds out her heart." ----

At the risk of shattering the foundations of romance and poetry,
it must be said here once and for all that the heart has nothing
whatever to do with the emotions.  It is simply a pump, and a
large part of its work consists in pumping blood to the brain.
The greater the brain, the greater and more active the heart must
be.  A serpent, with little or no brain and a cold disposition
all around, gets along very nicely with little or no heart.

Those who speak of the heart as opposed to the mind mean to speak
of unreasoning sentiment as opposed to intellectual strength.

The lady quoted and many others say that the woman and mother
should be all affection, and that development of the mind
diminishes the affection.

We wish to lay down a few rules; we invite criticism.

The best thing, the only important thing about a woman, a man, a
baby, or any other human being, is the intellect.

Affection is a beautiful thing, but affection is BORN in the
brain and CONFINED to the brain.

A young woman looks at a splendid creature in a soldier's
uniform.  Her heart beats fast, and she imagines, as all
antiquity has imagined, that the heart is the seat of the
emotions.  Nonsense!

The emotion is in the BRAIN, which has just received, through
the optic nerve, a conception of the lovely vision in brass
buttons.  The heart is ordered to pump more blood to the head of
the young girl, to supply mental activity and the becoming blush.

If you hear bad news you feel the effect on your heart; sometimes
you fall unconscious.  That is because the brain sensation is so
strong as to interfere with the heart's action.  You feel the
shock that the brain sends to the heart.  ----

The idea that cultivation of the mind interferes with a woman's
moral, sentimental, or motherly qualities is foolish twaddle.

The idea that mere sentiment, ignorant, vague affection are
sufficient without education to make a first-class human mother
is false and feeble.

Have you ever seen a cow follow the wagon that carries her calf
to the butcher shop?  It is a very sad sight, the plaintive
lowing of the poor mother as she follows behind begging for
her child to be restored.  Every farmer knows that there is no
necessity for hitching the cow to the wagon when her calf is
inside.  She will follow that calf until she drops.

There is your loving, devoted mother without education.  The
cow's heart, to use the old expression, is all right.  Her mental
equipment is perfectly suited to a cow.  Nature and society
require that she should give the utmost love to her calf this
year, and give all of that same love to another calf next year.

Bring back in three months that calf that she follows now with
such pitiful appeals.  If the weaned calf tries to re-establish
the old relationship, its mother, "all heart and no head," will
kick it in the ribs and then butt it across the lot.  ----

It's all right for the COW to be all heart and no head; she
does not need the higher education.

It is all right for the humble savage mother in the dark African
jungle to be built on the same lines.  Like the cow, all that she
has to do is to take care of the baby until it is able to run
around and forage for itself.

But the civilized mother, the woman who must do her duty in the
present and in the future as well, requires a good mind, love
based upon knowledge and a sense of justice, affection that
follows the child from the cradle to maturity, gradually
substituting for intense motherly physical care an equally
intense and loving intellectual companionship and guidance.  ----

It is important, of course, that mothers of all kinds, human or
animal, should be cheerful, and above all healthy, able to feed
their babies themselves and feed them well.

But as the brain in a human being is above the stomach, so the
intellect in a mother is above the mere maternal affection
inspired by babyhood.

The great mothers are those who, when they cease feeding the
child's body, can begin to feed the child's brain.

The great men are great, and they were lucky, because they had
mothers who did not cease to feed them when they were weaned, but
kept on feeding them mentally into their manhood.  ----

The woman with a big brain is the best IN EVERY WAY.

She is better before she is married, for she attracts the man of
intelligence, and establishes a family of intelligent beings.

She is better as a young wife, because the ambition and
intelligence in her call out the ambition and intelligence in her
husband.

Hers is the happy home that needs no divorce lawyer.  Pink
cheeks, small feet, squeezed waists, curly hair and such things
disappear or get tiresome.  And all pink cheeks are very much
alike, as Dr. Johnson said of the green fields.

But intelligence never gets tiresome; no two brains are ever at
all alike if well developed.  A woman of intelligence always
develops new qualities; she can never be monotonous.

There is no such thing as too much education, although educating
us primitive men and women is apt to develop unexpected
littleness.  and thus create prejudice.  ----

Note this important fact:  The bigger the brain, the bigger the
heart, not only physically, but sentimentally and morally.  It
takes brain to feel real emotion; a well-developed mind to
develop real sentiment, real affection.

A foolish, ignorant young woman may be pleasant enough to look
at, but she is like a white, pink-eyed rabbit--ornamental, but a
poor companion.



RESPECTABLE WOMEN WHO LISTEN TO "FAUST"

You know what happens in Gounod's great opera, "Faust," which is
based on Goethe's work.

An old man--his name is Faust--yearns for youth.  He gets the
youth, makes the devil's acquaintance, sells his soul to the
devil for the devil's help.  In the opera the devil is politely
called Mephistopheles.  Everybody is beautifully dressed, from
the devil and Faust, the peasant girls and the ballet dancers, to
the old grandmothers, with their diamonds and pearls, in the
boxes.

If you want to study human nature, you ought to look at the
respectable old and young women at the opera while "Faust" is
sung.

The centre of the whole thing is a young woman named Marguerite.
When the curtain goes up she has the best of intentions, the best
character, the prettiest of faces, and two long, yellow braids
down her back.  She is dressed very prettily indeed, and in the
opera house she has a high-sounding name, like Melba, Nordica,
Calve or Patti.

Every night that "Faust" is sung this young woman goes to the
bad.

Every night that "Faust" is sung every woman in the audience
sympathizes with Marguerite, who behaves so badly.  Many shed
tears over her misfortune.  All forgive her, feel sorry for
her, and know that she is not to blame.

The most severe old woman in the most expensive box would put her
arms around Marguerite's neck and tell her not to fret.  ----

How does that old lady act if on the way to her carriage she
finds the sidewalk obstructed by some unfortunate creature who
has Marguerite's sorrows without Marguerite's good clothes?  Does
she not say that it is an outrage for the police to allow such
things?

Possibly she will observe that in the opera Marguerite has not a
fair chance.

Faust has such beautiful silk tights, one leg striped and the
other leg covered with spangles; and, besides, he has a devil to
bring a box of jewels to tempt Marguerite.

But we should like to tell the conservative old lady that the
erring housemaid whom she may have judged so severely had greater
temptation and a better excuse than did Marguerite, even though
she could not get her voice up quite so high.

Mephistopheles is just as busy with housemaids and poor,
overworked shopgirls as with any Marguerite that ever lived.  And
his work is made easier by long hours, dull routine and hopeless
future.

It is strange and sad that moral women find it so easy to
sympathize with the Marguerite whose sins and life end in the
beautiful "Anges purs, anges radieux" aria written by Gounod, and
not with the Marguerite who ends in the hospital, the morgue and
the Potter's Field.

It makes a great difference, apparently, to moral and virtuous
women whether the erring Marguerite has a famous tenor on one
side of her and a famous basso on the other, or whether she has
on one side of her Bellevue Hospital and on the other side
Blackwell's Island.



WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

In this country and throughout the world women progress toward
the full possession of the ballot, and toward equality with men
in educational facilities.

In one State after another women are beginning to practise law,
they are obtaining new suffrage rights, they flock to newly
opened schools and colleges.

In England and Scotland, but a few years ago, only a few men in
the population were allowed to vote--money was the requisite
quality.  To-day, in those countries, women vote at county
elections, and in many cases at municipal elections.  In Utah,
Colorado and Idaho women as voters have the same rights as men.
They have certain rights as voters in nine other States.  In the
great Commonwealth of New Zealand, so far ahead of all the rest
of the world in humanity and social progress, the wife votes
absolutely as her husband does.  ----

The woman who votes becomes an important factor in life, for a
double reason.  In the first place, when a woman votes the
candidate must take care that his conduct and record meet with a
good woman's approval, and this makes better men of the
candidates.

In the second place, and far more important, is this reason:

When women shall vote, the political influence of the good men in
the community will be greatly increased.  There is no doubt
whatever that women, in their voting, will be influenced by the
men whom they know.  But there is also no doubt that they will be
influenced by the GOOD men whom they know.

Men can deceive each other much more easily than they can deceive
women--the latter being providentially provided with the X-ray of
intuitional perception.

The blustering politician, preaching what he does not practise,
may hold forth on the street corner or in a saloon, and influence
the votes of others as worthless as himself.  But among women his
home life will more than offset his political influence.

The bad husband may occasionally get the vote of a deluded or
frightened wife, but he will surely lose the votes of the wives
and daughters next door.

Voting by women will improve humanity, because IT WILL COMPEL
MEN TO SEEK AND EARN THE APPROVAL OF WOMEN.

Our social system improves in proportion as the men in it are
influenced by its good women.

As for the education of women, it would seem unnecessary to urge
its value upon even the stupidest of creatures.  Yet it is a fact
that the importance of thorough education of girls is still
doubted--usually, of course, by men with deficient education of
their own and an elaborate sense of their own importance and
superiority.

Mary Lyon, whose noble efforts established Mount Holyoke College,
and spread the idea of higher education for women throughout the
world, put the case of women's education in a nutshell.  She
said:

"I think it less essential that the farmers and mechanics
should be educated than that their wives, the mothers of their
children, should be."

The education of a girl is important chiefly because it means the
educating of a future mother.

Whose brain but the mother's inspires and directs the son in the
early years, when knowledge is most easily absorbed and
permanently retained?

If you find in history a man whose success is based on
intellectual equipment, you find almost invariably that his
mother was exceptionally fortunate in her opportunities for
education.

Well educated women are essential to humanity.  They insure abler
men in the future, and incidentally they make the ignorant man
feel ashamed of himself in the present.



ASTRONOMY WOMAN'S FUTURE WORK

In the centuries to come, perhaps a thousand centuries from now,
perhaps a little sooner, woman will get her chance on earth.
Population will have reached its normal limit, and nature's wise
law, dealing with a really civilized race, will automatically
limit children to two in each family.

Schools and nurseries will be scientific and perfect.  The care
of children will be the duty of the State.  Very poor women will
be unknown, and unknown will be the woman burdened with the
isolated care of children in an isolated household.

In those distant days woman will do her share of the world's
intellectual and artistic work.  Physical work of all kinds will
have been practically annihilated by machinery.  Our big,
muscular bodies, developed hitherto with an eye to pursuing wild
animals, carrying heavy burdens and fighting each other like
dog-apes in the forest, will be refined and very different from
their present brutality.

It will be an agreeable earth, a very agreeable and much improved
human race.  ----

Those millennial days, which are sure to come, will find us with
our little earthly problems solved.  We shall have outgrown
our infancy, and, like a child that has learned to walk and
balance itself, we shall understand the forces of nature and use
them.

Our principal occupation will be harmonious life on this planet
and persistent investigation of the marvels of the universe
outside of our own little sphere.

As centuries have gone by on earth, power has dwelt with
different classes of human beings.  In the days of the
Troglodytes, when one gentleman would crack another gentleman's
thigh-bone to get at the marrow, the most important man of course
was the one best able with physical force to murder his fellows.
At various times the great explorer, the great military
strategist, has been the most important of men.  To-day the most
important man is the organizer of industry.  He is really the
most important, not only in the size of his reward, but in the
service which he renders.  Nature gives the biggest reward to him
who does the most important work.

A thousand centuries from now the most important human being will
be the most efficient astronomer.

The man who shall bring us accurate news of other worlds will be
welcomed as was Christopher Columbus or Drake or Raleigh in his
day.

Women will be very important factors in astronomical research.

The work of the astronomer is especially the work of patience, of
enthusiasm, of devotion.

Patience, enthusiasm and devotion are more highly developed in
women than in men.

Already, in view of her extremely limited opportunities, woman
has done admirably well in the field of astronomy.  We note that
it is a woman at Cambridge whose stellar photographs first
located the new star in Perseus.  In England, in Germany and in
France women astronomers are doing work almost equal to that of
the best men.

Everybody will remember the faithful labor of Herschel's sister,
working all through the night and sleeping through the day, month
after month and year after year, helping her great brother in his
studies.

There is a kind of small-fry man who dislikes the idea of mental
development among women.  He is a mouselike kind of creature, so
thoroughly conscious of his own smallness, so thoroughly in love
with his own importance, that he dreads the intellectual woman,
who makes him feel microscopic.

Despite the protests of such men, some of whom are editors, women
are making progress.  When they shall give to science, especially
to astronomy, the passionate, devoted attention which they have
given for ages to the care of children, they will rank among the
highest on earth.



WOMAN'S VANITY IS USEFUL

We'll waste no time in proving that women, from the cradle to the
grave, at all hours and all ages, are sincerely interested in
their personal appearance.

No man should object to this--the constitutional guarantee
referring to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness covers
the ground fully.

But it is not enough for men NOT TO OBJECT to woman's various
innocent vanities.

Every man should be delighted that women are vain.  Each man
should do what he can to keep the vanity alive.

FOR WOMAN'S VANITY, DEARLY BELOVED, IS THE ONE AND INDISPENSABLE
PRESERVER OF HER HEALTH.

A woman cannot be pretty, according to her own notions, unless
HEALTHY.

If too fat, she is not pretty--and she is miserable until,
through self-control, she gets thin.

If too thin, she is not pretty.  At present she has a crazy sort
of idea that to be "skinny" is to be attractive.  That is a
passing delusion.  In the long run women realize that there is
nothing beautiful about a female living skeleton, and they strive
through normal living to become normal.

Above all, no woman can have a good complexion unless she have
good health and live normally.  This one absorbing question of
complexion does more for woman's health; it gives us more strong
mothers, and more sensible girls, than all the preachings,
beseechings, prayers and expostulations of all the world's male
advisers.

A woman's instinct is to eat buckwheat cakes, adding boiling hot
coffee and iced water.  She likes to eat candy between meals, and
her idea of a fine luncheon is lobster salad and ice cream.  But
small spots appear.  Those fine pink cheeks get too pink or too
pale, and sensible eating is adopted as a life rule.

Even the hideous corset squeezing is counteracted by the power of
complexion.  Woman likes to look like a wasp, and if she could
she would move her poor system all out of place for the sake of a
waist hideously small.

But, providentially, a waist squeezed too mercilessly gives a
bright pink tip to the end of the nose; and for the sake of the
color of that nose-tip the poor waist gets a rest--the corset is
let out.

It cannot be denied that among idle, nervous women to-day there
is a tendency to take stimulants to excess, and even to smoke
abominable cigarettes.

Alcohol, fortunately, ruins the complexion.  And for the sake of
their looks women often deny themselves and show a strength of
resolution that would not be called forth by any moral appeal.

Cigarettes in short order make the face sallow, spoil the shape
of the mouth, make the eyes heavy, fill the hair with permanently
unpleasant nicotine suggestions, develop a mustache--and women
are cured of cigarette smoking by a look in the glass, when they
could not be cured by tearful appeals of the wisest philosophers.

----

Do not, therefore, O men, despise the vanity of women.  Praise
and cherish it rather.  Be grateful that nature works in a
wonderful way through the power of attraction, making woman do
for good looks' sake that which is most important to her welfare.

If you want to cure your wife or some other female relative of
lacing, don't moralize.  Say to her six or seven times:

"Isn't the end of your nose a little red?"

Should she act in any way unwisely, staying up too late, living
foolishly, trying the silly and unwomanly habit of cigarette
smoking, don't criticise the habit.

Criticise her complexion, or the look of her eyes, or her general
lack of youthfulness.  She will soon be cured, if you can follow
this advice astutely.



TO EDITORIAL WRITERS--ADOPT RUSKIN'S MAIN IDEA

His pen is rust, his bones are dust (or soon will be), his
soul is with the saints, we trust.

Ruskin is to be buried in Westminster Abbey.  It is a fine home
for a dead man, with Chatham and his great son Pitt in one tomb,
and the other great skeletons of a great race mouldering side by
side so neighborly.

The death of a wolf means a meal for the other wolves.  The death
of a great man means a meal--mental instead of physical--for
those left behind.  Wolves feed their STOMACHS--we feed our
BRAINS--on the dead.

There is many a meal for the hungry brain in Ruskin's remains.
We offer now a light breakfast to that galaxy of American talent
called "editorial writers."

Editorial writing may be defined in general as "the art of saying
in a commonplace and inoffensive way what everybody knew long
ago."  There are a great many competent editorial writers, and
the bittern carrying on his trade by the side of some swamp is
about as influential as ten ordinary editorial writers rolled
into one.

Why is it that we are so worthless, O editorial writers?  Why
do we produce such feeble results?  Why do we talk daily through
our newspapers to ten millions of people and yet have not
influence to elect a dog catcher?

Simply because we want to sound wise, when that is impossible.
Simply because we are foolish enough to think that commonplaces
passed through our commonplace minds acquire some new value.  We
start off with a wrong notion.  We think that we are going to
lead, that we are going to remedy, that we are going to DO THE
PUBLIC THINKING FOR THE PUBLIC.

Sad nonsense.  The best that the best editorial writer can
achieve is to make the reader think for himself.  At this point
we ask our fellow editorial men--our superiors, of course--to
adopt Ruskin's idea of a useful writer.

In a letter to Mrs. Carlyle, written when he was a young man, he
outlined the purpose which he carried out, and which explains his
usefulness to his fellow-men:

"I have a great hope of disturbing the public peace in various
directions."

This was his way of saying that he hoped to stir up
dissatisfaction, to provoke irritation, impatience and a
determination to do better among the unfortunate.  He did good,
because he awoke thought in thousands of others, in millions of
others.

Editorial writers, don't you know that stirring up
dissatisfaction is the greatest work you can do?

Tell the poor man ten thousand times:

"There is no reason why you should be overworked.  There is no
reason why your children should be half-fed and half-educated.
There is no reason why you should sweat to fatten others."

Tell them this often enough, stir up their determination
sufficiently--they will find their own remedies.

If you want to drive out the handful of organized rogues that
control politics and traffic in votes, don't talk smooth
platitudes.  Tell the people over and over again that the thieves
ARE thieves, that they should be in jail, that honest government
would mean happier citizens, that the INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN is
responsible.  Keep at it, and the country will be made better by
those who alone can make it better--the people. ----

On the front platform a fat policeman said, after deep thought:

"Well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good."

The driver, this writer and an Italian workman looked at the
policeman in deep admiration.  It was so evident that he had the
making in him of an expensive editorial writer.  He could say so
solemnly and authoritatively what every living man knew by heart.

Suppose you stop spouting platitudes, editorial gentlemen, and
try your hand at stirring up plain, everyday antagonism to
existing false conditions.  "Disturb the public peace," as Ruskin
put it.  You must know that you can't win the fights
individually, so be like the Norse maidens that stirred up the
real fighters to do their duty.  Keep singing to the public that
it is their duty to fight.  They will fight and win, and thank
you for the suggestion.



IMAGINATION WITHOUT DREAMING THE SECRET OF MATERIAL SUCCESS

"Marconi has imagination without being a dreamer."

Thus Mr. Serviss gave an explanation of material achievement and
material success on big lines.

WITHOUT imagination a man may prosper relatively.  He may live
comfortably and die contented.

But at best such a man will only follow in beaten paths.  He will
only do what others have done before him.

He will not receive any of the great rewards which humanity
offers to those whose IMAGINATION opens for the benefit of all
new fields of thought, of successful material effort.  ----

In material achievement there are two elements--executive force
(which may be sub-divided into an indefinite number of
classifications) and the great creative power, IMAGINATION.

Imagination enabled Marconi to see the possibility of sending
electric messages without wires.

Had he been a dreamer, had he allowed his imagination to wander
on indefinitely into notions of talking to other planets, the
power of his imagination might have been in vain.

His imagination enabled him to SEE the possibility, and the
lack of the dreamer's quality enabled him to REALIZE it.

There were many men centuries ago who, in an abstract kind of
way, knew that the earth was round.  Their imaginations led them
to the discovery of facts--and long before Galileo's recantation
many men knew vaguely the truth of what he taught.

It took Galileo, a man of great imagination, not a dreamer, to
demonstrate his truth to all the world.

It took Columbus, with imagination and courage, but none of the
dreamer about him, to sail around the world to America and prove
practically what is now known to every child.

Wherever you see great material success on a new line, you see
imagination without dreaming.  It took real power of imagination
in Rockefeller to conceive and execute the construction of the
Standard Oil monopoly.

It took the financial imagination of Morgan to conceive the idea
of taking $500,000,000 worth of steel mills and welding them into
the Steel Trust--no dreamer could have done this thing.

Many a dreamer had foreseen the steam engine, the steamboat and
other great inventions, without result.  At the right moment
a man of imagination like Fulton came along and did the actual
work that the dreamer could not do.

If you want to succeed in the world, cultivate your imagination.
And if you want your children to succeed encourage them in the
development of their imaginations.

But let your imaginings and the imaginings of your children stop
this side of dreamland.

Your brain's activity is divided into the conscious and
sub-conscious departments.  The conscious side of your mentality
puts you into communication with the world, enables you to meet
and to cope with conditions and individuals.

If you are to succeed materially the conscious mind must control,
direct and limit the activities of the sub-conscious mind with
which the imagination does its work.

If your sub-conscious brain, in the departments of abstract
thought, imagination and dreaming, be allowed to run away with
the practical side, you may be a very great man in the
far-distant future, but you may be sure that you will not succeed
now.  ----

THE EARTH'S GREATEST MEN ARE DREAMERS.

The world never recognizes these dreamers.  The successful man
admits limitations.  He accepts conditions as they are.  He uses
his imagination only as long as it can carry him to individual
success and comfort.

But the very greatest spirits among men are the spirits of
dreamers.

These are the men who refuse to acknowledge any limitations save
the limitations of absolute truth and of absolute possibility.

When nine-tenths of human beings were slaves, these dreamers
refused to recognize slavery, and they died for their belief.
Every man who led a great moral reform ahead of his time was a
dreamer.  And these dreamers, whose lives are scattered through
history, each a tragedy and each a milestone on the path of
civilization, did for civilization what a frontiersman does for a
new country.

Jesus Christ was a dreamer.  He saw the truth and preached it,
although it meant death, and He knew that it meant death.  The
brotherhood that He preached nineteen hundred years ago has not
yet been realized, but it WILL be realized in His name, and
His teachings and His death will be eternal factors in its
realization.

Slowly through the centuries the men of imagination who do not
dream are working and striving, each doing his little part to
realize the prophecies of the Great Dreamer.

Each compared to Him is as a tiny tallow dip compared to the
noonday sun, but each is necessary.



THE ONE WHO NEEDS NO STATUE

A movement is started in Italy to celebrate religiously the close
of the nineteenth century.

The idea is to erect at different points on the Peninsula
nineteen colossal statues of Christ.  The statues, one for each
century, are to be of cast-iron, gilded, heroic in size.

There can be no objection to the idea, since it gives expression
to proper religious feeling.  But should it fail of execution,
that would be quite as well.  ----

For one Man only in all the history of the world no statue is
needed.  To the glory of one Man we can add nothing save through
obedience to the laws which He brought on earth.  ----

Where a weak woman is kindly treated, where children are received
with tenderness, where the hungry are fed and the old cared for,
there is a monument to Christ--such a monument as He would ask to
have built.

The wisdom of Confucius, the self-abnegation of Gautama, the
lofty idealism of Zoroaster, may be fitly commemorated and
perhaps magnified by human monuments or human praise.

But men can build nothing that shall add to the glory of that
life which is the basis of good among all men.



THE VAST IMPORTANCE OF SLEEP

MIschievous stories are told about the ability of great men to do
without sleep.

The foolish young man reads that Napoleon slept only three or
four hours at night--and he cuts down his hours of sleep.  He
might better open a vein and lose a pint of blood than lose the
sleep, which is life itself.

Most of the stories told about great men doing without sleep are
mere lies.  Some of them are true.  For instance, it is
undoubtedly true that Napoleon--an inconceivably foolish,
reckless man in matters affecting his physical welfare--did
deprive himself of sleep in his early years.  But he paid for it
dearly.  In his last battles his power of resistance was so
slight that he actually went to sleep during the fighting.
Chronic drowsiness weakened his brain, weakened his force of
character.  The foundation of his final ruin was laid in Russia,
when lack of sleep, and unwise living generally, had taken away
his mental elasticity and deprived him of the power to form and
carry out resolutions.  ----

It is mainly the young man who needs the lecture on sleep, for
the experience of years soon proves to every human being the
folly of cheating nature by adding a few hours of drowsy
consciousness to the day.

You begin life with a certain amount of vitality, a certain
initial vital VELOCITY, which carries you through life and
makes possible certain accomplishments.  When you deprive
yourself of sleep you squander this original capital.  Just as
surely as the young spendthrift ruins himself financially when he
throws away his money, just so surely you bring irreparable loss
upon yourself when you go without sleep.

THE FOOD WHICH YOU EAT IS DIGESTED AND TRANSFORMED INTO NEW
TISSUE, INTO BLOOD, NERVE, MUSCLES AND BRAIN WHILE YOU ARE
SLEEPING.

Look at the men who engage in the atrocious six-day walks and
bicycle races.  They eat enormously, absorbing in one day five
times as much as the ordinary man can possibly swallow.  But the
end of their task finds them extremely emaciated.  Lack of sleep
has made it impossible for them to TRANSFORM THE FOOD INTO NEW
TISSUE.

Any man or woman who has suffered from insomnia will confirm this
statement, that lack of sleep decreases weight and diminishes
vitality more quickly than anything else.  ----

Remember this when you brag foolishly about going without sleep!

A man can go forty days without solid food.  He can live seven
days, or even longer, without food or water.  He cannot live
seven days without sleep.  The Chinese, ingenious in torments,
discovered no worse death than killing their victims by
depriving them of sleep.

Of course, every young man can go without sleep for a whole night
occasionally and go on with his work.  He can do this because,
from his father and mother, he has inherited a certain amount of
vitality, which, if he knows no better, he can squander stupidly,
just as he can squander, if he will, what money is left to him.

But no man can deprive himself of sleep, or sleep irregularly,
without suffering permanently, without diminishing his chances of
success in the world.  ----

Many a woman among those called "fashionable" looks at the
healthy child of a gardener, and wonders that her child is so
different.

The reason is simple.  The gardener's wife did not cheat her
child by giving to balls and late hours the vitality needed by
her babies.

The woman who loses sleep will make a failure of her children.

The man who loses sleep will make a failure of his life, or at
least diminish greatly his chances of success.



WOMAN SUSTAINS, GUIDES AND CONTROLS THE WORLD

Of all events here on earth, the greatest is the birth of a baby.

Great battles are fought, won and lost.  Nations and religions
rise and fall.  Great cities flourish to-day, and to-morrow the
sand lies heavy over them.  And of all these events the eternal
Niagara of new babies is the first and essential foundation.

He knows little of real life, its greatest happiness, deepest
devotion, intensest suffering, who has never witnessed the
arrival of a new human being in this life of progress and
struggle.

There lies the new baby at last, its black face gradually turning
pink, its first gasping breaths changing the color of its blood,
its tiny fists opening and closing--reaching out for nourishment
already, its face tying itself into the first philosophical,
cosmos-interrogating knot.  Its feet turn inward and its legs are
crooked.  Its head is so shapeless as to discourage any one but a
mother; it has three years of gurgling, ten years of childhood,
ten years of foolishness, ten years of vanity--and possibly a
few years of real usefulness ahead of it.

Some one must be patient, hopeful, interested, proud, never
discouraged, always devoted, through all these years.

That "some one," the mother, lies there weak and white on the
bed.

Her forehead and all her body are wet with agony--but she thinks
no longer of that.

She has heard her baby's first cry, and whether it be her first
or her tenth, the feeling is the same.  Her feeble, outstretched
arms and her hollow, loving eyes are turned toward the helpless
little creature.

Those arms and that love will never desert it as long as the
mother shall live.

The mother's weak hand supports the heavy, dull baby head and
guides it to its rest on her breast.

And that hand which supports the head of the new-born baby, the
mother's hand, supports the civilization of the world.



THE STORY OF THE COMPLAINING DIAMOND

The Rev. David James Burrell, in "A Quiver of Arrows," presents
a very interesting parable on the benefit of trials.

Here is the parable:

Trials are profitable.

The rough diamond cried out under the blow of the lapidary:
"I am content; let me alone."

But the artisan said, as he struck another blow:

"There is the making of a glorious thing in thee."

"But every blow pierces my heart."

"Ay; but after a little it shall work for thee a far more
exceeding weight of glory."

"I cannot understand," as blow fell upon blow, "why I should
suffer in this way."

"Wait; what thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter."

And out of all this came the famous Koh-i-noor to sparkle in the
monarch's crown.  ----

There is a lesson in the story of the diamond for every man, and
there is an ESPECIALLY good lesson for the young man who is
succeeding too fast.

That diamond became the extraordinarily beautiful stone that we
read about, and that many of us would foolishly like to own,
because of the trials through which it passed.

We do not mean to suggest that men, to succeed, should
NECESSARILY undergo repeated poundings and hammerings,
although, as a matter of fact, the really great men of the world
have undergone such grinding and polishing and hard knocks as no
diamond was ever submitted to.  But we do say distinctly that
almost every man needs in the course of his life a FIRST-CLASS
FAILURE.

No man is more unfortunate than he who succeeds too quickly and
too easily.  His success makes him exaggerate his own importance
and ability.  It makes him underestimate the strength of those
who compete with him, and the difficulty of winning in the long
run.

The world is full of all kinds of disappointed beings--artists,
writers, business men--workers of all sorts, who lead
disappointed lives.

Of these men, a great many started out hopefully and promisingly.

But fate failed to do for them the work of the polishing lapidary
that we all need.

They succeeded too soon, they made money too easily, they rose
too suddenly.

Failure at the right time would have made them think, work and do
better.  But failure came too late, and when the energy to fight
and overcome was no longer there.

If every young man who thinks well of himself will realize that
he mistakes good fortune for great ability, and that the failure
that has been put off will come sooner or later, unless he
thinks of it and struggles to improve himself in spite of
success, many disappointments will be saved in the future.

Discount your failure.  Don't wait for it to discount you.



DON'T BE IN A HURRY, YOUNG GENTLEMEN

There are many young men on earth who fail because they lack
ambition and determination to advance.  There are many more whose
trouble is hasty ambition.  They fail to realize their present
chances in their hurried reaching out for something better.  You
may see in any club, pool-room or other resort for wasting time
crowds of young men smoking and deploring their lack of success.

"I've been working three years at the same job and the same
salary," one will say, "and I don't see what chance I have for
getting ahead."

The young man who talks in this way does not realize that success
depends on developing the qualities which are in him.  He can
develop them if he will, no matter what his place in the world.
Once he is ready to do good work, once he is developed, the work
will find him out.  ----

When Napoleon Bonaparte was resting from his labors at St. Helena
he used to tell this story:

"One day on parade a young lieutenant stepped out of the ranks
much excited to appeal to me personally.  He said to me that he
had been a lieutenant for five years and had not been able to
advance in rank.  I said to him, 'Calm yourself.  I was seven
years a lieutenant, and yet you see that a man may push himself
forward, for all that.' " ----

Napoleon, when he preached this lesson to the young, dissatisfied
officer, was the self-made Emperor of the French and of a great
many other nations.  He had come to Paris a thin, hollow-cheeked,
under-sized boy from the conquered and despised island of
Corsica.  He stuck in the humble grade of lieutenant for seven
years.  When the time came he blossomed out.

When he was lieutenant he was developing himself.  He studied and
mastered the art of war.  He wrote the history of Corsica, and no
one would publish it.  He wrote a drama which was never acted.
He wrote a prize essay for the Academy of Lyons, and did not win
the prize.  On the contrary, his effort was condemned as
incoherent and poor in style.  These were a few failures; enough
to make your ordinary young man throw up his hands and say:
"I've done all I can do; now let the world look out for me."

Just as he became hopeful about the future when he knew that he
had real military genius, he was dismissed from the army, and his
career seemed to be ended.  He made the thin soup upon which he
and his brother lived.  He could afford to change his shirt only
once a week.  He said:

"I breakfasted off dry bread, but I bolted the door on my
poverty."

He kept at it, and all the time, successful or otherwise, he was
developing himself.  He developed into an emperor.  Young men
will please notice that fact, and the fact that Napoleon worked
and tried under adversity and monotony instead of grumbling.
----

The newspaper reporter who does not get ahead very fast, the
author whose manuscripts are treated as were Napoleon's first
efforts, may study with considerable profit a young American
writer named Richard Harding Davis.  That young man had been a
reporter in Philadelphia for seven years when he went to work on
a New York evening newspaper at a small salary.  He had written
and was writing some of his best stories, but could not get
ahead, apparently.  Nevertheless, he kept on trying, and
developed himself.  When other young men were busy talking about
themselves or deploring their lot Davis was writing and grinding
away out of working hours at the effort to get out and realize
what was in him.  He succeeded.  ----

A few cases have been mentioned for young men to think over.
They are selected at random.  No young man need worry about
himself so long as he can honestly say that he is doing his best.

Being in the same place at the same salary for seven years can do
you no harm, if you are developing during that time what is in
you.  But you may well worry if you are drifting aimlessly,
pitying yourself, making no effort.  If your mind stays in the
same spot for years, that is dangerous.  But don't worry about
anything else.



WHEN THE BABY CHANGED INTO A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD

Nothing is more common than to hear men--especially great and
moral men--deplore the results of civilization, of mechanical,
industrial and scientific progress.  We quote a typical lament by
a noble and sincere man, the Reverend Charles Wagner, author of
an admirable book called "The Simple Life."  The author says:

"If it had been prophesied to the ancients that one day humanity
would have all of the machinery now in use to sustain and protect
natural existence, they would have concluded therefrom, first, an
increase of independence, and in the second place, a great
decrease in the competition for worldly possessions, They would
have thought that the simplification of life would have been the
result of such perfected means of action, that there would follow
the realization of a higher standard of morality.  Nothing of
this sort has come to pass--not happiness, nor social peace, nor
energy for good has increased."

Naturally, from a superficial point of view, it is discouraging
to see poverty, ostentation of wealth, injustice and the love of
money increasing, instead of declining, with the great
developments in human power.

Suppose it had been said two hundred years ago that some day one
single man, with a loom, would be able to make cloth enough
to clothe scores in one day; that a few children working in a
stocking factory would be able to produce more stockings than a
million women could knit.

It would, of course, have been prophesied that when these great
inventions came everybody would be well clothed, every woman and
child would have warm stockings--and so on.

But we find, as society's powers increase, as machinery improves,
and the means of producing and distributing wealth develop, that
the struggle for existence and the display of avarice are
accentuated.

The pessimistic man, observing these conditions, is filled with
despair for the future of humanity.  He predicts worse and worse
times ahead, while he longs for the peaceable old days before the
steam engine had appeared among us.  ----

Now, in order to map out a parable, we must ask you to do a good
deal of supposing.

Suppose, in place of the human race, one single human baby.
Suppose that its mother had never seen another baby, and had no
idea of the laws governing a baby's development.

And suppose, as the helpless baby lay on its back in the cradle,
waving its arms, kicking its legs, gasping and blinking, that the
following prophecy had been made to the mother:

"Some day that baby of yours will be five feet high.  Some day it
will be able to walk and run, and throw stones, and carry
weights, and fight, and do all kinds of things."

Of course, the mother, hearing this, would have been very much
rejoiced, saying to herself:

"My baby now is feeble and helpless, and I must watch it all the
time to see that it does not roll out of the cradle, or that the
cat does not bite it.  When my baby gets to be five feet high and
able to fight and run and jump, of course it will be free from
danger, it will live happily, and I shall be free from anxiety."

Now, suppose that fourteen years have passed.  The mother has
seen the baby grow to be five feet high and fourteen years old,
and the prophecy is fulfilled.

Is the mother happy?  She is weeping bitterly.  The baby has
certainly improved in its powers most wonderfully.  It can run
and jump and fight.  As a result of its abilities, it comes back
one day with a black eye, the next day with a broken nose, the
next day with a sore toe.  It is always in trouble.  It has even
developed vicious traits of its own.  It tells lies, it steals,
it is even disrespectful to its mother.

You supposed, don't forget, that this mother never saw another
baby, and knew nothing about the development of human beings
along certain lines.  Would she not be horrified at her child's
condition?  Would she not think it getting worse and worse,
and that it must end horribly and tragically?  Would she not sigh
for the old days of the cradle, and wish that her baby might go
back to its babyhood and live comfortably once more, on its back,
with its hands and feet in the air and a vacant look in its eyes?

----

The human race has gone ahead, as that supposititious baby goes
ahead in fourteen years.  We have obtained many new forces, many
new accomplishments.  We have learned to use steam and
electricity, as the child learns to use its legs and its hands.
But, like the child of fourteen, we have not developed morally or
mentally in proportion to our physical development.

But just as surely as the child passes on from childhood, with
its follies, its quarrels, and its accidents, to mature,
self-respecting manhood, just so surely will the human race go
through its babyhood, through its boyhood, and on into years of
wisdom, justice, self-control and real accomplishment.  ----

At present we are in a childish condition as a race, just about
able to walk and run around a little.  We do not see our future
clearly, and many of us look back regretfully to the simple days
of industrial babyhood.

But those days can never be brought back, even if we wanted to
bring them back.  The thing for us to do is to remember that
great progress and a great future are ahead of us, and do all we
can to prepare for the future and hurry it along.  We should
refrain especially from feelings of pessimism.  We should study
and work to control ourselves as well as we can, and look ahead
into the future.

Remember this very true saying and apply it in your attitude
toward the world:

"It is not enough to believe in God; one must believe in man, in
humanity and its future."



THE EYE THAT WEIGHS A TON

All our fussing and fuming about little matters must end in time.

It is a comfort to feel sure that the time will come when
questions of wages, starvation, justice, supply and demand,
finance, and all the miserable worries of to-day, from
Presidential elections to the digging of sewers, will be things
of the past.

Had we been intended for such things exclusively, we might as
well have been put in a hole in the ground or in some cool corner
of Hades to fight out our troubles.  We should not have needed
for our home a beautiful globe, swinging through endless space,
bathed in sunlight or blessed with the companionship of other
suns and planets whirling with us on mysterious errands.

Man's work of to-day--the fighting, the sweating, the starving,
the cheating and lying, the miserable births and the dull,
stupid, monotonous living--will end soon.  Real HUMAN life
will dawn and end the period of savage life.

Control of nature's forces will supply every man with what he
needs to keep his body alive, his soul and his brain free from
care.

Then men will cease their animal lives, cease eating to live and
living to eat.  They will live to think.  The brain, which
differentiates them from the animals, will give the real interest
to their lives.  Mental work--art, science and things worth
while--will occupy them.  ----

Does it not seem probable that when the day of organized life
comes our chief interest will be the study of the universe--the
other worlds outside of our own?

The great man will be he whose genius shall cross interstellar
space as Columbus crossed the ocean.  The great newspaper editor
will be the first to get a signed statement from Mars.

The discoverer of that day will get from some older planet
information millions of years ahead of our own.

As the dull mind of the field-plodder now looks toward the great
cities--toward the vast movement outside his own little life--so
shall men look away from this little, limited, but by that time
well regulated, planet, to the mysteries and the grandeurs of the
worlds outside.

Life will be complete in those coming days.  Men will look back
with pity to the time when they quarreled about little metal
money tokens, locked each other up in jail, or choked each other
to death legally.

Let us hope and believe that we may come back then to share the
pleasure of the world's mature days, since we are sentenced to
exist here to-day in the greasy, clammy period of struggle and
half-bakedness.  ----

While the infant sits drawing milk, with never a dream of solid
food, the teeth are growing beneath its gums.  And while we crawl
around here now, with no conception of our future state, some of
the forces at work among us are preparing for the days when real
life shall begin.  Among these forces you may count the
constructors of the great cosmic eye--the huge telescope that is
now building in Paris.  Compared with all other exhibits at the
Paris Fair, that great instrument will be as a giant among
babies, a Corliss engine among children's toys.

It is the precursor of the great instruments which in the future
will take man on his travels through space.  Imperfect as it is,
it fills the mind with awe and the imagination with delight.
----

Think of the great celestial eye, flint and crown glass lenses
more than four feet in diameter, weighing a ton, and suspended at
the end of a tube one hundred feet long! It will reach out
thousands of billions of miles into space, giving us, perhaps,
new secrets of the universe.  Yet it is but a child's toy
compared to the instruments which must follow it.

And you who read this, if your mind is fresh and your imagination
not jaded, may be the man who shall add to the power of this
instrument as Galileo added to that given to the world by
Lippershey, the humble Dutchman.

We invite the young American of ambition to study this latest
proof of man's growing skill, and see whether he can imagine
anything to add to it.  ----

"I have not seen it" say you.  If you are the right man, you do
not need to SEE it.  Galileo only HEARD of Lippershey's
discovery.  He thought hard on the problems of refraction for one
night, and as a result produced a telescope capable of magnifying
threefold.  He finally produced a telescope of thirty-two-fold
power.

This French telescope magnifies six thousand times, but it is
only a baby telescope, full of faults.  It is rendered imperfect
by the wavy motion of the air, which affects our sight just as
the motion of the waves affects the sight of a fish.  It lacks
any adequate arrangement for light supply.  The great trouble of
the astronomer is the getting of more light in his telescopes.
You may be the man to tell him how to do it without adding to the
diameter of his object glass.

Anyhow, think about the big telescope.  If it does not make you
an astronomer or a great inventor, it may stir up your brain to
the pitch of inventing a really good chicken coop.  That is still
lacking, and in great demand.



WHAT ANIMAL CONTROLS YOUR SPIRIT?

Of all animals upon earth man came last.

All of earth's animal creations are bound up in man.

As to the first statement there is no difference of opinion.

The Bible and Darwin agree that man was created last of all the
animals.

Very superficial observation will convince you that man contains
in his mental make-up all of the "inferior" animals, or at least
a great many of them.

You, Mr. Jones, or Smith, who read this are in your single self
a sort of synthesis of the entire animal creation.

If you could be divided into your component animal parts there
would be a menagerie in your house, and you, Smith or Jones,
would be missing.  That thing we call a "soul" would be floating
around, impalpable, looking for its house to live in.  ----

Of course, you can see the animal make-up in your neighbor more
readily than in yourself.

How do men describe each other?  Do they not speak as follows,
and mean exactly what they say

"He is as sly as a fox."

"He eats like a pig."

"He has dog-like faithfulness."

"He is as brave as a lion."

"He is as treacherous as a snake."

"He was as hungry as a wolf," etc.  ----

Our good and our bad qualities alike are mapped out in our humble
animal relations.

The horse stands for ambition, which strives and suffers in
silence.  The dog represents friendship, which suffers and
sacrifices much, but whines loudly when injured.

We have no doubt that of the twelve passions which enter into
Fourier's complex analysis of man each has its prototype in some
one animal.  ----

To rebel at the animal combination which makes up a man would be
folly.

The Maker of us all, from ants to anti-imperialists, naturally
gathered together the various parts in lower animal form before
finishing the work in man.

A harmoniously balanced mixture of all the animals is calculated
undoubtedly to produce the perfect man.  ----

Therefore, study your animal make-up.  Analyze honestly and
intelligently the so-called "lower" creatures from whom you
derive your mental characteristics.  If you have not yet done so,
study at once some good work on embryology, and learn with
amazement and awe of your marvelous transformations before birth.

Then do your best to control the menagerie that is at work in
your mind.

Stultify Mr. Pig, if he is too prominent.  Circumvent Mr. Fox,
if he tries to rule you and make of you a mere cunning machine.
Do not let your Old Dog Tray qualities of friendship lead to your
being made a fool.

In short, study carefully the animal qualities that make up your
temperament and prove in your own person the falseness of
Napoleon's irritating statement that a man's temperament can
never be changed by himself.  ----

It may interest you to note that when man becomes insane, the
fact is at once made apparent that his mind, dethroned, had acted
as the ruler of a savage menagerie.  Many crazy men imagine
themselves animals of one sort or another.  Nearly all of them
display the grossest animal qualities, once their mind is
deranged.  Women of the greatest refinement sink into dreadful
animalism when insane.  Heine tells of a constable who, in his
boyhood, ruled his native city.  One fine day "this constable
suddenly went crazy, * * * and thereupon he began to roar like a
lion or squall like a cat."

Heine remarks with calculated naivete:  "We little boys
were greatly delighted at the old fellow, and trooped, yelling,
after him until he was carried off to a madhouse."

There is, by the way, much of the natural animal in "little
boys." It takes years to make a fairly reasonable creature of a
young human.  For that reason many ignorant parents are foolishly
distressed at juvenile displays of animalism, which are perfectly
natural.  ----

The same Heine, whose writings you ought not to neglect,
describes beautifully a human menagerie.  We'll quote that, and
then let you off for the day.  Heine was living in Paris in the
forties, and used to visit a curious revolutionary freak named
Ludwig Borne.  Of this man's house Heine wrote:

"I found in his salon such a menagerie of people as can hardly be
found in the Jardin des Plantes (the Paris zoological garden).
In the background several polar bears were crouching, who smoked
and hardly ever spoke, except to growl out now and then a real
fatherland 'Donnerwetter' in a deep bass voice.  Near them was
squatting a Polish wolf in a red cap, who occasionally yelped out
a silly, wild remark in a hoarse tone.  There, too, I found a
French monkey, one of the most hideous creatures I ever saw; he
kept up a series of grimaces, each of which seemed more lovely
than the last," etc.

If Heine's polar bears, wolf and monkey had studied themselves,
as we advise you to study yourself, they might have escaped the
sarcasm of the sharpest tongue ever born in or out of Germany.



FROM MAMMOTHS TO MOSQUITOES --FROM MURDER TO HYPOCRISY

You are standing with this writer on the edge of a stagnant pool
in Northern Europe, fifty thousand years ago.

The trees are strange, the life is strange.  There are certain
familiar things visible.  For instance, on one side of the pool
there is an angry mammoth, with long hair and long tusks.

He is a huge, savage beast, monster of power with tiny, vicious
eyes, and a curled trunk of unlimited force.

You recognize his resemblance to the modern elephant, and you
feel at home.

In the middle of the pool, standing up to his waist in water,
there is another queer creature.  He has long, red hair, and
through his lips you can see that in his rage he is grinding a
large set of teeth with the canine incisors abnormally developed.

He is a shaggy, savage-looking brute, with a bloody and an
apprehensive eye.  You will recognize him as a human being.

As he stands in the pool there is a familiar slap of his right
hand on the back of his left shoulder--he has killed a mosquito.

That is the picture.  We leave the mammoth, primitive man and the
mosquito to settle their troubles.

We call your attention to this.  If you really witnessed that
scene you would have undoubtedly said to the red-eyed savage in
the pool:

"My friend, you can kill that mosquito easily, and possibly in
time you will kill all the mosquitoes.  But that MAMMOTH is a
problem that you will not solve for a long time, if ever."

Had you known that the red-eyed human animal in the middle of the
pool was sent there by Providence to regulate the globe,
cultivate it, destroy the noxious forms of animal life, etc., you
would certainly have believed that that person would have got rid
of the mosquitoes long before getting rid of the mammoth.

As a matter of fact, the mammoth has gone, the woolly rhinoceros
of Northern Europe has gone, the sabre-toothed tiger prowls no
more.  Even wolves have disappeared, and the mosquito is still
flourishing in his millions and billions.

We have only just learned that it is he who gives us malaria,
that it is he who spreads yellow fever and undoubtedly many other
diseases.

The human race, which in its earliest, incapable childhood easily
managed to dispose of the mammoth and his huge fellow-monsters,
still stands helpless before the little mosquito, deadliest of
VISIBLE animals on earth.

Is it not interesting to realize that the hardest work of the
human race, as of the individual, is the most minute work; that
the intellect, which easily copes with the heaviest and the
biggest problems, is baffled by the tiniest?

Ultimately, and perhaps soon, we shall send the mosquito, the
house-fly and the other buzzing pirates to join in the grave's
silence their big brothers--the mastodon and the rest.

Then our fight will begin against invisible animal life, against
the actual microbes of disease which the mosquito has been
carrying around and injecting into us.  It is a long fight, but,
of course, we shall win it.  ----

And is it not interesting, also, to reflect that in the moral, as
in the physical, battles of life man requires the longest time to
deal with his smallest enemies?

Morally we are still primitive savages.  We are still combating
murder, arson, theft--like the cave-dweller fighting the
physical mammoth, we are fighting the mammoths of moral
deformity.

Eventually they will disappear.  Murder will be unknown, and
theft, rendered unnecessary by decent social organization, will
have disappeared also.

At that time we shall be fighting the smaller and more dangerous,
more elusive and more persistent moral troubles--HYPOCRISY,
CONCEIT, UNCHARITABLENESS.  These are the mosquitoes and flies
of the world of immorality that will pursue us when the big
fellows--murder and theft--shall have been killed off.



THE MONKEY AND THE SNAKE FIGHT

We wish to tell you of the monkey and the snake fight, described
by a witness in the Lahore Tribune.  ----

Before men arrived on earth, when all the animals were racing for
supremacy, the monkey seemed to have the smallest chance.  No one
would have guessed that the descendants of this feeble,
defenseless little brute would eventually rule the earth, killing
off tigers, lions and the other huge monsters at pleasure.

We have before called your attention in this column to the fact
that the monkey, or some animal like him, had the honor of
contributing our proud human services as the world's rulers
BECAUSE HE COULD USE HIS BRAIN.

That fight between the monkey and the cobra illustrates this
quite clearly.

The monkey was a little monkey, with scarcely enough muscle to
strangle a hen.

His little black finger-nails could hurt nobody.  His teeth were
fit only to nibble fruit or to chatter in rage at his fellow
monkeys.

This monkey had the misfortune to annoy a huge cobra.

Mr. Cobra is the most dangerous, the most formidably armed, of
all living animals.  He is a solid mass of muscle, gifted with
lightning speed.  The slightest touch of his fangs means death.

The brain of the cobra is about as big as a mustard seed.  The
brain of the monkey--even a small one--is several hundred times
as big as the brain of the largest snake.  We refer to the
cerebrum, the front brain, which does the thinking.

The monkey annoyed the snake, and the snake chased him.  Mr.
Monkey, shrieking and chattering, rushed over the ground until he
came to a rock.  He stood still in front of the rock.

The snake dashed its head at him to annihilate him; the monkey
jumped to one side and let the snake beat its head against the
rock.

Over and over, this operation was repeated, the monkey with
lightning speed avoiding the dart of the snake, and the snake,
with never-ending stupidity, dashing its head against the rock.

Eventually the powerful, dangerous snake was stretched out at
full length, bleeding and tired out.

The monkey was not bleeding and not tired.  He was extremely
cheerful.  He seized the snake by the neck, just back of the
head, and placidly proceeded to rub its head off on the stone.

When he had rubbed the head to a pulp.  incidentally destroying
its primitive brain, he left the dead snake lying there, and
gratefully accepted the Indian corn and sugar-cane donated by
the admiring humans-his relatives-who had witnessed his
performance.  ----

The monkey used his brain--the snake did not.

The monkey did not say, but he might as well have said:

"You need not wonder that my half-sister, Eve, crushed the
serpent's head.  We monkeys and humans have soft hands and no
poison sacs, but WE KNOW HOW TO MAKE OUR BRAINS WORK, and
that means that we rule creation."



TOO LITTLE AND TOO MUCH

Here is a quotation from a very wise person called Aristotle.

This Greek philosopher was the teacher of Alexander the Great,
and incidentally he has been the teacher of millions of men since
he began to talk philosophy, more than twenty centuries ago.

"First of all, we must observe that in all these matters of
human action the too little and the too much are alike ruinous,
as we can see (to illustrate the spiritual by the natural)
in the case of strength and health.  Too much and too little
exercise alike impair the strength, and too much meat and drink
and too little both alike destroy the health, but the  fitting
amount produces and preserves them....  So, too, the man who
takes his fill of every pleasure and abstains from none becomes a
profligate; while he who shuns all becomes stolid and
insusceptible."

The next time you fall into a philosophical mood, and begin
reviewing the causes of your troubles, see if you can't find some
useful suggestion in the common-sense statement of Aristotle we
give today.

How about the "too much" of one thing and "too little" of
another?

Are you quite sure that you don't do too much talking and too
little thinking?

Are you sure that you don't do too much drinking and playing and
idling, and too little reading?

Are you sure that you don't do too much of things you like that
do you no good, and too little of things that you ought to like,
and that would help you to succeed?  ----

We believe that every one of our readers has some friend or
brother or son who can be really helped by the reading of this
quotation from the old Greek wise man.

You can state to any young man or woman to whom you send this
advice that the man who gave it formed the character and judgment
of Alexander, the world's most successful young man.



DO YOU FEEL DISCOURAGED?

A young man lost his money in stocks the other day and killed
himself.  Other young men lose heart when things go against them
and drift through life helpless, useless derelicts.  Let us give
such men a bit of advice:

Don't let failure discourage you.  Almost all the brilliantly
successful characters of history have known early trials and
reverses.  The great philosopher, Epictetus, was a slave.  Alfred
the Great wandered through the swamps as a fugitive and got
cuffed on the ears for letting the cakes burn.  Columbus went
from court to court like a beggar to try to raise money for the
discovery of the New World and when he finally won the favor of
the Spanish Queen he was so poor that he could not go to court
until Isabella had advanced him money enough to buy decent
clothes.

When Frederick the Great was fighting all Europe he fell into
such desperate straits that he carried a bottle of poison about
with him as the last way of escape from his enemies.  If he had
taken that dose the whole history of our time would have been
different.  Instead of shaking a "mailed fist" at the world,
young William of Hohenzollern might have been a mediatized
princelet on the lookout for an American heiress; there might
never have been a Leipzig or a Waterloo, as there certainly would
not have been a Sedan, and the heirs of Napoleon might now have
been ruling over an empire covering all Central Europe, from
the Tiber to the Baltic.

Nobody ever had greater cause for discouragement than George
Washington had when he led the straggling remnants of his army
across the Delaware in December, 1776.  But in the very darkest
hour, when absolute ruin seemed inevitable and a British gallows
appeared the probable ending of his career, he struck a blow that
cleared the way to the highest place in the world's history.

Andrew Jackson was born in a cabin, suffered every sort of
adversity, lost his mother and two brothers from the sufferings
of war, was cut with a sword for refusing to clean a British
officer's boots, and grew up almost without education.

Abraham Lincoln, poor, ignorant, sprung from the lowliest stock,
deprived of all advantages for culture or for money making,
distressed by domestic troubles, might have had some excuse for
discouragement.  But he kept on, with what results the world
sees.

If ever there was a man who seemed doomed to failure it was U. S.
Grant in the spring of 1861.  He had cut loose from the
profession for which he had been trained, and, after drifting
from one occupation to another and failing in all, he was now, at
thirty-nine years old, a clerk in a country store and unable to
make ends meet at that.  Three years later he was
Lieutenant-General of the armies of the United States, and five
years after that he was President.

Solon said it was never safe to call any man happy until he was
dead.  Unhappiness is equally uncertain.  If you are poor now you
may be rich to-morrow.  If you are unknown now you may be famous
to-morrow.  If you are even in the penitentiary now you may be
running a street-car system to-morrow.

So don't be discouraged if your fortunes are in temporary
eclipse.  The savage is in despair when the sun goes into the
moon's shadow, for he thinks that some monster has swallowed it,
and that there will never be any daylight again.  But to the
astronomer an eclipse is merely an interesting opportunity to
make scientific observations.  Be as sure of the coming of
daylight as the astronomer is, and your moments of darkness will
trouble you no more than his trouble him.



TWO KINDS OF DISCONTENT

Emerson says:

"Discontent is the want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of
will."

Another individual, at least as solemn if not as wise as Emerson,
says:

"Discontent is the foundation of all human effort."

Both are right, for there are two kinds of discontent.

Almost everybody is afflicted with one kind of discontent or the
other.

It would be well for you, Mr. Reader, to decide what kind of
discontent afflicts you.  If you have the wrong kind, hurry and
get the other as fast as possible.

          THE DISCONTENT THAT WHINES

This is the kind of discontent which Emerson refers to when he
says that "discontent is the want of self-reliance."

The WHINING discontent ruins many lives; it is used as the
excuse for much foolish conduct, much neglect of duty.

It is the discontent which reflects the feeble soul, the
self-indulgent, worthless being.

A young man who gets drunk or dissipates otherwise, who offers as
an excuse, "Well, I was feeling kind of DISCONTENTED and had to
do something,"  is afflicted with the wrong kind of discontent in
its most virulent form.

The office boy with small wages who is caught smoking cigarettes,
or evading his duties, or undermining his moral character by
gambling, will also say, "I was discontented and had to do
something."

If you have THAT discontent, try to get rid of it and get the
other kind.

          THE DISCONTENT THAT MEANS AMBITION

Alexander the Great lived and died discontented, but Emerson
would scarcely have attributed that gentleman's discontent to
lack of self-reliance.

Alexander was discontented, first, because he could not conquer
the whole world, and, second, because there were no others that
he could conquer.  He was a vast genius, almost humorous in his
ambitious discontent sometimes--especially when he looked at the
stars and said, as alleged, that he was ashamed to look at all
those other worlds when he had barely conquered this one little
world that he lived on.

If you have in you Alexander's brand of discontent you may well
be grateful.

You are still more to be envied if you have the discontent which
has impelled thousands of great men to devote their lives
ceaselessly to the discovery of truth, working for others.  ----

When Taglioni, the great ballet dancer, was a little girl, with
skinny legs and a skinnier future, being extremely homely and
with no prospects of success, she was discontented.

Other skinny-legged little ballet dancers of her class were
discontented also.

But Taglioni's discontent impelled her to spend every spare
moment whirling on her big toe, practicing her entrechat, or
laboring over the art of smiling, naturally, with aching toes,
aching back, aching thighs, and solar plexus almost exhausted
from the unnatural strain.

The other skinny-legged discontented ones exercised their
discontent on their patient mothers, instead of exercising it on
their own big toes.  THEY never were heard of, whereas Taglioni
pranced on HER big toe before every court in Europe, and her
smile, which ultimately became natural, attracted the opera
glasses of all the great men.

There are thousands of young musicians, young business men, young
singers, young electricians--thousands and hundreds of thousands
of human beings engaged in all kinds of effort in all directions.

ALL OF THEM ARE DISCONTENTED.  Those that have the right kind of
discontent will go at least as far as their natural capacity can
take them, and those that have the wrong kind will collapse,
achieve nothing and devote wasted lives to wasting pity on
themselves.  ----

Try to acquire the discontent of Alexander, Carlyle, Pagallini,
Taglioni, or even that of the honest bootblack who "shines them
up" so hard that the perspiration comes through his check jumper
in cold weather.



WHAT THE BARTENDER SEES

A young man with a cold face, much nervous energy and a
tired-of-the-world expression leans over the polished,
silver-mounted drinking bar.

You look at him and order your drink.

You know what you think of him, and you think you know what he
thinks of you.

Did you ever stop to think of ALL THE STRANGE HUMAN BEINGS
besides yourself that pass before him?

He stands there as a sentinel, business man, detective, waiter,
general entertainer and host for the homeless.

In comes a young man, rather early in the day.

He is a little tired--up too late the night before.  He takes a
cocktail.  He tells the bartender that he does not believe in
cocktails.  He never takes them, in fact.  "The bitters in a
cocktail will eat a hole through a thin handkerchief--pretty bad
effect on your stomach, eh?" and so on.

Out goes the young man with the cocktail inside of him.

And the bartender KNOWS that that young man, with his fine
reasonings and his belief in himself, is the confirmed drunkard
of year after next.  He has seen the beginning of many such
cocktail philosophers, and the ending of the same.

The way NOT to be a drunkard is never to taste spirits.  The
bartender knows that.  But his customers do NOT know it.  ----

At another hour of the day there comes in the older man.  This
one is the fresh-faced, YOUNG oldish man.

He has small, gray side-whiskers.  He shows several people--whom
he does not know--his commutation ticket.

He changes his mind suddenly from whiskey to lemonade.  The
bartender prepares the lemon slowly, and the man changes his mind
back to whiskey.

Then he tries to look more dignified than the two younger men
with him.  In the midst of the effort he begins to sing "The
Heart Bowed Down with Weight of Woe," and he tells the bartender
"that is from 'The Bohemian Girl.'"

He sings many other selections, occasionally forgetting his
dignity, and occasionally remembering that he is the head of a
most respectable home--partly paid for.

The wise man on the outside of the bar suggests that the oldish
man will get into trouble.  But the bartender says:  "No; he will
go home all right.  But he won't sing all the  way there.  About
the time he gets home he'll realize what money he has spent, and
you would not like to be his wife."

The bartender KNOWS that the oldish man--about fifty-one or
fifty-two--has escaped being a drunkard by mere accident, and
that he has not quite escaped yet.

A little hard luck, too much trouble, and he'll lose his balance,
forget that there IS lemonade, and take to whiskey
permanently.  ----

At the far end of the bar there is the man who comes in slowly
and passes his hand over his face nervously.  The bartender asks
no question, but pushes out a bottle of everyday whiskey and a
small glass of water.

The whiskey goes down.  A shiver follows the whiskey and a very
little of the water follows the shiver.  The man goes out with
his arms close to his sides, his gait shuffling and his head
hanging.

It has taken him less than three minutes to buy, swallow and pay
for a liberal dose of poison.

Says the bartender:

"That fellow had a good business once.  Doesn't look it, does
he?  Jim over there used to work for him.  But he couldn't let it
alone."

The "it" mentioned is whiskey.

Outside in the cold that man, who couldn't let it alone, is
shuffling his way against the bitter wind.  And even in his poor,
sodden brain reform and wisdom are striving to be heard.

His soul and body are sunk far below par.  His vitality is gone,
never to return.

The whiskey, with its shiver that tells of a shock to the heart,
lifts him up for a second.

He has a little false strength of mind and brain and that
strength is used to mumble good resolutions.

He THINKS he will stop drinking.  He thinks he could easily
get money backing if he gave up drinking for good.  He feels and
really believes that he WILL stop drinking.

Perhaps he goes home, and for the hundredth time makes a poor
woman believe him, and makes her weep once more for joy, as she
has wept many times from sorrow.

But the bartender KNOWS that that man's day has gone, and that
Niagara River could turn back as easily as he could remount the
swift stream that is sweeping him to destruction.  ----

Five men come in together.  Each asks of all the others:

"What are you going to have?"

The bartender spreads out his hands on the edge of the bar,
attentive and prepared to work quickly.

Every man insists on "buying" something to drink in his turn.
Each takes what the others insist on giving him.

Each thinks that he is hospitable.

But the bartender KNOWS that those men belong to the Great
American Association for the Manufacture of Drunkards through
"treating."

Each of those men might perhaps take his glass of beer, or even
something worse, with relative safety.  But, as stupidly as
stampeded animals pushing each other over a precipice, each
insists on buying poison in his turn.  And every one spends his
money to make every other one, if possible, a hard-drinking and a
wasted man.  ----

You, Sir. Reader, have seen all these types and many others, have
you not?

WHY did you see them?  What REASON had you for seeing them?

The bartender stands studying the procession to destruction,
because he must make his living in that way.  He is a sort of
clean-aproned Charon on a whiskey Styx, ferrying the multitude to
perdition on the other side of the river.  But what is YOUR
business there?

You might as well be found inside an opium den.

The drink swallowed at the bar braces you, does it?  If you think
you need a drink, you REALLY need sleep, or better nourishment,
or you need to live more sensibly.  Drink will not give you what
you need.  It may for a moment make your nerves cease tormenting
you.  It may do in your system for an hour what opium does in the
Chinese for a whole day.  But if it lifts you up high, it drops
you down HARD.

And remember:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MODERATE DRINKING AT A BAR.

You THINK you can take your occasional drink safely and
philosophize about the procession that passes the bartender.

But the bartender KNOWS that you are no different from the
others.  They all began as you are beginning.  They all, in the
early stages, despised their own forerunners.

They were once as you are, and the bartender KNOWS that the
chances are all in favor of your being eventually like one of
them.

Even like the poor, thin, nervous drinker of hard whiskey, who
once wondered why men drink too much.  ----

The bartender's procession is a sad one, and you who still think
yourself safe are the saddest atom in the line, for you are there
without sufficient excuse.

It is a long procession, and its end is far off.

It is born of the fact that life is dull, competition is keen,
and ambition so often ends in sawdust failure.

A better chance for strugglers, a more generous reward for hard
work, better organization of social life, solution of the great
unsolved problem of real civilization, will end the bartender's
procession.

Meanwhile, keep out of it if you can.  And be glad if it can be
suspended, temporarily at least, on Sundays.



WHAT SHOULD BE A MAN'S OBJECT IN LIFE?

Sermons in stones are familiar, but few take the trouble to dig
them out.  Certainly none looks for sermons in a one-cent evening
newspaper.

At the same time, will you kindly think over and answer the
question that heads this column?

Here we are, marooned for a few days on a flying ball of earth.
We don't know how we got here.  We don't know where we are going.

We are full of beautiful and satisfying FAITH.  But we don't
KNOW.

Into this Universe, and WHY not knowing,
Nor WHENCE, like Water, willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it as Wind along the Waste,
I know not WHITHER, willy-nilly blowing.

That's the way Omar, the old tent-maker, puts it.  ----

We drift from dinner to the theatre, thence to bed, thence to
breakfast, thence to work, and so on.  Or, if in hard luck, we
struggle and wail, "cursing our day," or more frequently cursing
society.

We rarely stop to think what it is all about, or what we are here
for.  ----

We know the pig's object in life.  It has been beautifully and
permanently outlined in Carlyle's "pig catechism." The pig's life
object is to get fat and keep fat--to get his full share of swill
and as much more as he can manage to secure.  And his life object
is worthy.  By sticking at it he develops fat hams inside his
bristles, and WE know, though he does not, that the production of
fat hams is his destiny.  ----

But our human destiny is NOT to produce fat hams.  Why do so many
of us live earnestly on the pig basis?  Why do we struggle
savagely for money to buy our kind of swill--luxury, food, etc.
--and cease all struggling when that money is obtained?

Is fear of poverty and dependence the only emotion that should
move us?

Are we here merely to STAY here and EAT here?

A great German scientist, very learned and about as imaginative
as a wart hog, declares that the human face is merely an
extension and elaboration of the alimentary canal--that the
beauty of expression, the marvellous qualities of a noble human
face, are merely indirect results of the alimentary canal's
strivings to satisfy its wants.

That is a hideous conception, is it not?  But it is no more
unworthy than the average human life, and the average existence
has much to justify the German's speculations.

What SHALL we strive for?  MONEY?

Get a thousand millions.  Your day will come, and in due course
the graveyard rat will gnaw as calmly at your bump of
acquisitiveness as at the mean coat of the pauper.

Then, shall we strive for POWER?

The names of the first great kings of the world are forgotten,
and the names of all those whose power we envy will drift to
forgetfulness soon.  What does the most powerful man in the world
amount to standing at the brink of Niagara, with his solar plexus
trembling?  What is his power compared with the force of the wind
or the energy of one small wave sweeping along the shore?

The power which man can build up within himself, for himself, is
nothing.  Only the dull reasoning of gratified egotism can make
it seem worth while.  ----

Then what IS worth while?  Let us look at some of the men who
have come and gone, and whose lives inspire us.  Take a few at
random:

Columbus, Michael Angelo, Wilberforce, Shakespeare, Galileo,
Fulton, Watt, Hargreaves--these will do.

Let us ask ourselves this question:  "Was there any ONE THING
that distinguished ALL their lives, that united all these men,
active in fields so different?"

Yes.  Every man among them, and every man whose life history is
worth the telling, did something for THE GOOD OF OTHER MEN.

Hargreaves, the weaver, invented the spinning-jenny, and his
invention clothes and employs hundreds of millions.

Galileo perfected the telescope, spread out before man's
intellect the grandeur of the universe.  Wilberforce helped to
awaken man's conscience.  He freed millions of slaves.  Columbus
gave a home to great nations.  We thrive to-day because of his
noble courage.  Michael Angelo and Shakespeare stirred human
genius to new efforts, and fed the human mind--a task more worthy
than the feeding of the human stomach.  We ride in Fulton's
steamboats, and Watt's engine pulls us along.

Men who are truly great have DONE GOOD to their fellow-man.  And
the greatest Soul ever born on earth came to urge but one thing
upon humanity, "Love one another." ----

Get money if you can.  Get power if you can.  Then, if you want
to be more than the ten thousand million unknown mingled in the
dust beneath you, see what good you can do with your money and
your power.

If you are one of the many millions who have not and can't get
money or power, see what good you can do without either.

You can help carry a load for an old man.  You can encourage and
help a poor devil trying to reform.  You can set a good example
to children.  You can stick to the men with whom you work,
fighting honestly for their welfare.

Time was when the ablest man would rather kill ten men than feed
a thousand children.  That time has gone.  We do not care much
about feeding the children, but we care less about killing the
men.  To that extent we have improved already.

The day will come when we shall prefer helping our neighbor to
robbing him--legally--of a million dollars.

Do what good you can NOW, while it is unusual, and have the
satisfaction of being a pioneer and an eccentric.



CRUEL FRIGHTENING OF CHILDREN

The most acute suffering is that produced by FEAR, and those who
suffer most acutely from fear are YOUNG children.

Who does not remember the intense agony in youth based upon the
superstitious teachings of some foolish older person?

And how many children are made miserable through the hideous fear
that comes from threats and from punishment postponed?

If a man should be whipped incessantly for three or four hours he
would think his tormentor a monster of brutality.

Yet you say to a child:

"I will whip you for that to-morrow."

You sentence that child to hours of the most acute mental
suffering, and if the child be nervous and unusually sensitive,
you may permanently injure its health.  ----

Here is a scene unfortunately not rare in this country:

A thin, nervous little boy, perhaps ten years old, was walking
along a suburban street.  Suddenly, on turning a corner, he was
confronted by a man, apparently his father.

The child stood trembling.  The man, in a voice of cold,
concentrated anger, said:

"Didn't I tell you to come early.  You go to the house and WAIT
THERE TILL I COME BACK AND FIX YOU."

The man walked on, to get the drink of beer or whiskey that
should add to his natural cruelty, and the poor child, without a
word, started for home to await the coming punishment.

No more cruel treatment was ever endured by any human being than
the punishment inflicted by that thoughtless man on the nervous,
helpless child placed in his power.

Later, of course, there followed the punishment; a huge, powerful
man striking repeatedly the delicate body of the child,
emphasizing the brutality of his blows with more brutal words,
and feeling when it was over that he had gloriously done his duty
as a typical American father.

Of course, the actual brutal beating was only a small part of the
child's ordeal.

The most horrible part was the waiting for the punishment.  No
man in the death cell ever suffered more than thousands of
children suffer every day waiting for the brutality which is to
exemplify our savage notions concerning the education of
children.

If such a monstrous parody on a father should be met in some
lonely wood by a huge gorilla and treated as that father treats
his own son, he would complain bitterly of the gorilla's
ferocity.  Yet it would not equal in any way his own brutal and
less excusable cruelty.  ----

If a parent says that he cannot bring up his children and control
them without beating them, you may say to that parent:

You never struck a child in your life except when you were angry,
and you would not have dared to strike it if it had been of your
own size.

Children born of decent parents can be brought up, and ARE
brought up, without beatings, and if yours are a different kind
of children it is a reflection on YOU, and on your whole brood
and family.

The poor, ignorant hen can teach its young ones to scratch and
hunt worms, and acquire whatever education they need without
hurting them, and a human being should be able to do for his own
as much as a hen can do.



IT IS NATURAL FOR CHILDREN TO BE CRUEL

You have perhaps read that Mrs. Isabelle Bailey, of Palmyra,
N.J., was cruelly tortured by three little girls.

The unfortunate woman was eighty-five years old, paralyzed, and
confined to her bed.

The three children, two of them eight and one eleven years old,
tormented the poor woman in a brutal manner, of which details
shall not be published here.

The helpless woman ultimately died, and the children were charged
with murder.  ----

This horrible story is mentioned in the hope of concentrating the
minds of mothers and fathers on the fact that children are
naturally more cruel, more vicious, than grown people.

The children mentioned in this case were, perhaps, abnormal and
unusual monstrosities.  But they serve to illustrate the fact
that infancy and childhood duplicate, in the individual, the
primitive animal life on earth.

Many children are brutally punished and ruined for life because
ignorant parents imagine that childhood is naturally pure and
innocent and good, and that a child which misbehaves must be
abnormally wicked.

If parents knew more about the physical and mental development of
their children, they would be better fitted to have charge of
them.  ----

It is a fact taught by embryology that the human body before its
birth passes through numerous stages of development which
correspond exactly with the lower forms of animal life.

After birth the child develops MENTALLY in the same way, passing
through inferior mental stages and reaching a state of
benevolence, honesty, truthfulness and self-restraint only as a
result of long education and wise control.

A perfectly truthful child probably never existed.  All childish
races of savages are incessant liars and thieves.  All children
passing through the primitive stages of mental development are
naturally given to deception, and even to theft, especially when
they are frightened by the consequences of truth, and when things
which they desire are denied them.

All children are cruel--and there is no greater brutality than
confiding a helpless animal to the tender mercies of a young
child.

There may be a few exceptions, but they are very rare, and there
is no reason why parents should expect their particular children
to be the exceptions.

You may see a man of mature age, kind-hearted, absolutely
benevolent and just.  And you may learn that when he was a baby
he bit his nurse, lied, and was cruel to animals and to other
children.

But parents are stupidly egotistical, and believe that their
pretty children ought to be born morally perfect.

This moral perfection can be obtained only as the result of
education.

Don't expect your children to be models of virtue.

Don't brutalize them by punishments and contempt because you
discover that their primitive mental life duplicates the mental
conditions of inferior animals.

Set them a good example, and by education make them what you want
them to be.

The ignorant and stupid belief that children are born naturally
good accounts for the brutality of many fathers and the ruin of
many young lives, making cowards of children, accentuating their
untruthfulness and cowardice and their cruelty through a desire
for revenge.



TWO THIN LITTLE BABIES ARE LEFT

The authorities of New York City, at this writing, have two
babies to give away.

A few days since there were about two hundred babies in the city
foundling asylum to be had for the asking.

Of all these little ones there remain but two whom nobody seems
to want.

These two forlorn little things are described as "thin and
nervous; inclined to cry, and not taking kindly to those who come
to pick out free babies for adoption."

Hundreds of women anxious for children have gone to the asylum,
have passed by the two little skinny babies, and have asked to be
informed as soon as fat babies should be on hand.

Presently we shall tell childless persons--especially
bachelors--why they should get a baby and bring it up.

But first, learn that the best possible choice would be one of
those two despised "thin" babies.

In all the world's history, the greatest men have begun life as
THIN babies.

You must know from common observation that in babyhood the head
is big out of all proportion to the rest of the body.

A baby one year old has in its brain alone at least one-third of
all the blood in its body.

THE BIGGER AND MORE ACTIVE THE BRAIN the more blood is required
to nourish it, and THE MORE THE REST OF THE BODY SUFFERS.

A baby luckily born may combine a good brain and a fat body.  But
such luck is very rare.

Nine times out of ten the best baby MENTALLY is the
poorest-looking baby PHYSICALLY.

We have told you in this column about the pathetic babyhood of
the great Voltaire.  Had he been in the foundling asylum during
the recent selection of babies, he would surely be among the
despised and rejected.  Yet what a glory to have picked out and
raised the wonderful Voltaire!

Voltaire, whose name as a baby was Arouet, was the thinnest and
most nervous of babies.  He had a disease very much like rickets;
he cried night and day, and there was little hope of keeping him
alive.

Pitt, the great British Prime Minister, was as sick and skinny a
baby as was ever seen.  Pope, when a baby, would not have seemed
worth keeping alive to anybody but a loving mother.

We advise the women who have spurned the two thin babies in the
asylum to take another look at them.  They may be the best two
babies in the entire lot.



A BABY CAN EDUCATE A MAN

If you will read Drummond's beautiful work "The Ascent of Man,"
you will learn that we owe to children the good that is in us.
It is the child that educates the father and mother.

If you are a solemn bachelor, gradually drying up in your selfish
life, try having a baby around for a while.

Get a despised thin one from the asylum.  Get some good, kind old
woman to take care of it.  Give the woman and the baby the
quietest room in your house or flat, and then watch the
improvement in your character.

You can feed the baby for the cost of one or two cocktails daily.

Your health will improve if you give up the cocktails, and watch
the effect of their substitute, milk, on the little child.

When you get up in the morning, if the hour is early, you will
find the old woman giving the baby its bath.  The poor, little
thin thing will wriggle joyously in the warm water, once it gets
used to the daily bathing.  Its head will be soaped first, then
sponged.  It will be dried with a warm towel, and you can hit the
tin bathtub with your keys to keep it from crying while its
clothes are put on.

Hold the baby for a while each morning, letting its head rest on
your shoulder that its neck may not be strained.  (This will give
the nurse a chance to prepare the bottle that follows the bath.)

It will get used to you after a few mornings.  The first time it
shows affection for you, you will be the proudest man in your
office.

If asked to take a cocktail you will say:

"No, thank you.  My cocktail money is spent to make a thin baby
fat."

If others boast of their friends, you will know that YOU have a
friend whom money cannot influence, one skinny little admirer at
home whose affection is genuine.

If a man shows delight in the love of his dog, you will say to
yourself:

"Any dog will like any man.  But there are few that could get a
baby to like them in six days as that thin Jimmy likes me."

If you go home early, before the baby is put to bed, you will
find him trying to crawl along the floor, or trying to eat the
pattern in the carpet.  He will look at you out of his pale,
little, blue eyes and reach his skinny arms toward you.

See if that does not make you glad that you tried the baby
experiment.

Gradually the thin body will get fatter, and the small, busy
mouth will begin a mumbling language of its own.  The old nurse
will pretend to understand everything it says and will insist
that it knows your name.

The first tooth piercing the heated, suffering gum; the first
feeble steps with the help of a chair; the first tottering effort
all alone, with arms outstretched toward you, ending in a flabby
collapse, will delight you more than much experimenting with race
horses, if you are the right sort of man.

It will not be long before you will decide that the bringing up
of babies is your destiny, and a good one.

But when you bring a wife into the house, and she brings you
other babies, thin or fat, of your own, don't forget the original
thin Jimmy baby.  Provide for the old nurse and for the
youngster.  Say to your wife:

"Be fond of that Jimmy baby, for it was he who taught me that I
could not get along without you."


[End LibraryBlog Etext of Editorials from the Hearst
Newspapers by Arthur Brisbane]


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