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+Project Gutenberg's The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 22, 2005 [EBook #15876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW
+
+VOL. II, NO. 3
+
+JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1914
+
+
+Published Quarterly at 35 West 32d Street, New York, by
+
+HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  Unsocial Investments                                A.S. Johnson
+  A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism                       The Editor
+  An Experiment in Syndicalism                        Hugh H. Lusk
+  Labor: "True Demand" and Immigrant Supply           Arthur J. Todd
+  The Way to Flatland                                 Fabian Franklin
+  The Disfranchisement of Property                    David McGregor Means
+  Railway Junctions                                   Clayton Hamilton
+  Minor Uses of the Middling Rich                     F.J. Mather, Jr.
+  Lecturing at Chautauqua                             Clayton Hamilton
+  Academic Leadership                                 Paul Elmer More
+  Hypnotism, Telepathy, and Dreams                    The Editor
+  The Muses on the Hearth                             Mrs F.G. Allinson
+  The Land of the Sleepless Watchdog                  David Starr Jordan
+  En Casserole
+    Special to our Readers--Philosophy in Fly Time--Setting Bounds
+    to Laughter (A.S. Johnson)--A Post-Graduate School for Academic
+    Donors (F.J. Mather, Jr.)--A Suggestion Regarding
+    Vacations--Advertisement--Simplified Spelling
+
+
+
+
+UNSOCIAL INVESTMENTS
+
+
+The "new social conscience" is essentially a class phenomenon. While it
+pretends to the rôle of inner monitor and guide to conduct for all
+mankind, it interprets good and evil in class terms. It manifests a
+special solicitude for the welfare of one social group, and a mute
+hostility toward another. Labor is its Esau, Capital its Jacob. Let strife
+arise between workingmen and their employers, and you will see the new
+social conscience aligning itself with the former, accepting at face value
+all the claims of labor, reiterating all labor's formulæ. The suggestion
+that judgment should be suspended until the facts at issue are established
+is repudiated as the prompting of a secret sin. For, to paraphrase a
+recent utterance of the _Survey_, one of the foremost organs of the new
+conscience, is it not true that the workers are fighting for their
+livings, while the employers are fighting only for their profits? It would
+appear, then, that there can be no question as to the side to which
+justice inclines. A living is more sacred than a profit.
+
+It is virtually never true, however, that the workers are fighting for
+their "living." Contrary to Marx's exploded "iron law" they probably had
+that and more before the trouble began. But of course we would not wish to
+restrict them to a living, if they can produce more, and want all who
+can't produce that much to be provided with it--and something more at the
+expense of others.
+
+It may be urged that the employer's profits also represent the livings of
+a number of human beings; but this passes nowadays for a reactionary view.
+"We stand for man as against the dollar." If you say that the "dollar" is
+metonymy for "the man possessed of a dollar," with rights to defend, and
+reasonable expectations to be realized, you convict yourself of reaction.
+"These gentry" (I quote from the May _Atlantic_) "suppose themselves to be
+discussing the rights of man, when all they are discussing is the rights
+of stockholders." The true view, the progressive view, is obviously that
+the possessors of the dollar, the recipients of profits and dividends, are
+excluded from the communion of humanity. Labor is mankind.
+
+The present instance is of course not the only instance in human history
+of the substitution of class criteria of judgment for social criteria.
+Such manifestations of class conscience are doubtless justified in the
+large economy of human affairs; an individual must often claim all in
+order to gain anything, and the same may be true of a class. Besides, the
+ultimate arbitration of the claims of the classes is not a matter for the
+rational judgment. What is subject to rational analysis, however, are the
+methods of gaining its ends proposed by the new social conscience. Of
+these methods one of wide acceptance is that of fixing odium upon certain
+property interests, with a view to depriving them immediately of the
+respect still granted to property interests in general, and ultimately of
+the protection of the laws. It is with the rationality of what may be
+called the excommunication and outlawing of special property interests,
+that the present paper is concerned.
+
+In passing, it is worth noting that the same ethical spirit that insists
+upon fixing the responsibility for social ills upon particular property
+interests--or property owners--insists with equal vehemence upon absolving
+the propertyless evil-doer from personal responsibility for his acts. The
+Los Angeles dynamiters were but victims: the crime in which they were
+implicated was institutional, not personal. Their punishment was rank
+injustice; inexpedient, moreover, as provocative of further crime, instead
+of a means of repression. On the other hand, when it appears that the
+congestion of the slum produces vice and disease, we are not urged by the
+spokesmen of this ethical creed, to blame the chain of institutional
+causes typified by scarcity of land, high prices of building materials,
+the incapacity of a raw immigrant population to pay for better
+habitations, or to appreciate the need for light and air. Rather, we are
+urged to fix responsibility upon the individual owner who receives rent
+from slum tenements. Perhaps we can not imprison him for his misdeeds, but
+we can make him an object of public reproach; expel him from social
+intercourse (if that, so often talked about, is ever done); fasten his
+iniquities upon him if ever he seeks a post of trust or honor; and
+ultimately we can deprive him of his property. Let him and his anti-social
+interests be forever excommunicate, outlawed.
+
+
+II
+
+In the country at large the property interests involved in the production
+and sale of alcoholic beverages are already excommunicated. The unreformed
+"best society" may still tolerate the presence of persons whose fortunes
+are derived from breweries or distilleries; but the great mass of the
+social-minded would deny them fire and water. In how many districts would
+a well organized political machine urge persons thus enriched as
+candidates for Congress, the bench or even the school board? In the
+prohibition territory excommunication of such property interests has been
+followed by outlawry. The saloon in Maine and Kansas exists by the same
+title as did Robin Hood: the inefficiency of the law. On the road to
+excommunication is private property in the wretched shacks that shelter
+the city's poor. Outlawry is not far distant. "These tenements must go."
+Will they go? Ask of the police, who pick over the wreckage upon the
+subsidence of a wave of reform. Many a rookery, officially abolished, will
+be found still tenanted, and yielding not one income, but two, one for the
+owner and another for the police. The property represented by enterprises
+paying low wages, working men for long hours or under unhealthful
+conditions, or employing children, is almost ripe for excommunication.
+Pillars of society and the church have already been seen tottering on
+account of revelations of working conditions in factories from which they
+receive dividends. Property "affected by a public use," that is,
+investments in the instrumentalities of public service, is becoming a
+compromising possession. We are already somewhat suspicious of the
+personal integrity and political honor of those who receive their incomes
+from railways or electric lighting plants; and the odor of gas stocks is
+unmistakable. Even the land, once the retreat of high birth and serene
+dignity, is beginning to exhale a miasma of corruption. "Enriched by
+unearned increment"--who wishes such an epitaph? A convention is to be
+held in a western city in this very year, to announce to the world that
+the delegates and their constituencies--all honest lovers of mankind--will
+refuse in future to recognize any private title to land or other natural
+resources. Holders of such property, by continuing to be such, will place
+themselves beyond the pale of human society, and will forfeit all claim to
+sympathy when the day dawns for the universal confiscation of land.
+
+
+III
+
+The existence of categories of property interests resting under a growing
+weight of social disapprobation, is giving rise to a series of problems in
+private ethics that seem almost to demand a rehabilitation of the art of
+casuistry. A very intelligent and conscientious lady of the writer's
+acquaintance became possessed, by inheritance, of a one-fourth interest in
+a Minneapolis building the ground floor of which is occupied by a saloon.
+Her first endeavor was to persuade her partners to secure a cancellation
+of the liquor dealer's lease. This they refused to do, on the ground that
+the building in question is, by location, eminently suited to its present
+use, but very ill suited to any other; and that, moreover, the lessee
+would immediately reopen his business on the opposite corner. To yield to
+their partner's desire would therefore result in a reduction of their own
+profits, but would advance the public welfare not one whit. Disheartened
+by her partners' obstinacy, my friend is seeking to dispose of her
+interest in the building. As she is willing to incur a heavy sacrifice in
+order to get rid of her complicity in what she considers an unholy
+business, the transfer will doubtless soon be made. Her soul will be
+lightened of the profits from property put to an anti-social use. But the
+property will still continue in such use, and profits from it will still
+accrue to someone with a soul to lose or to save.
+
+In her fascinating book, _Twenty Years at Hull House_, Miss Jane Addams
+tells of a visit to a western state where she had invested a sum of money
+in farm mortgages. "I was horrified," she says, "by the wretched
+conditions among the farmers, which had resulted from a long period of
+drought, and one forlorn picture was fairly burned into my mind.... The
+farmer's wife [was] a picture of despair, as she stood in the door of the
+bare, crude house, and the two children behind her, whom she vainly tried
+to keep out of sight, continually thrust forward their faces, almost
+covered by masses of coarse, sunburned hair, and their little bare feet so
+black, so hard, the great cracks so filled with dust, that they looked
+like flattened hoofs. The children could not be compared to anything so
+joyous as satyrs, although they appeared but half-human. It seemed to me
+quite impossible to receive interest from mortgages upon farms which might
+at any season be reduced to such conditions, and with great inconvenience
+to my agent and doubtless with hardship to the farmers, as speedily as
+possible I withdrew all my investment." And thereby made the supply of
+money for such farmers that much less and consequently that much dearer.
+This is quite a fair example of much current philanthropy.
+
+We may safely assume that, however much this action may have lightened
+Miss Addams's conscience, it did not lighten the burden of debt upon the
+farmer, or make the periodic interest payments less painful, and it
+certainly did put them to the trouble and contingent expenses of a new
+mortgage. The moral burden was shifted, to the ease of the philanthropist,
+and this seems to exhaust the sum of the good results of one well
+intentioned deed. Do they outweigh the bad ones?
+
+So, doubtless, there are among our friends persons who, upon proof that
+factories in which they have been interested pay starvation wages, have
+withdrawn their investments. And others who, stumbling upon a state
+legislature among the productive assets of a railway corporation, have
+sold their bonds and invested the proceeds elsewhere. It is a modern way
+of obeying the injunction, "Sell all thou hast and follow me." And not a
+very painful way, since the irreproachable investments pay almost, if not
+quite, as well as those that are suspect.
+
+It is not, however, impossible to conceive of a property owner driven from
+one position to another, in order to satisfy this new requirement of the
+social conscience, without ever finding peace. Miss Addams put the money
+withdrawn from those hideous farm mortgages into a flock of "innocent
+looking sheep." Alas, they were not so innocent as they seemed. "The sight
+of two hundred sheep with four rotting hoofs each was not reassuring to
+one whose conscience craved economic peace. A fortunate series of sales of
+mutton, wool and farm enabled the partners to end the enterprise without
+loss." Sales of mutton? Let us hope those eight hundred infected hoofs are
+well printed on the butcher's conscience.
+
+And the net result of all these moral strivings? The evil investments
+still continue to be evil, and still yield profits. Doubtless they rest,
+in the end, upon less sensitive consciences. Marvellous moral gain!
+
+
+IV
+
+We are bound to the wheel, say the sociological fatalists. All our efforts
+are of no avail; the Wheel revolves as it was destined. Not so. Our
+strivings for purity in investments, puny as may be their results in the
+individual instance, may compose a sum that is imposing in its
+effectiveness. How their influence may be exerted will best appear from an
+analogy.
+
+It is a settled conviction among Americans of Puritan antecedents, and
+among all other Americans, native born or alien, that have come under
+Puritan influence, that the dispensing of alcoholic beverages is a
+degrading function. This conviction has not, to be sure, notably impaired
+the performance of the function. But it has none the less produced a
+striking effect. It has set apart for the function in question those
+elements in the population that place the lowest valuation upon the esteem
+of the public, and that are, on the whole, least worthy of it. In
+consequence the American saloon is, by common consent, the very worst
+institution of its kind in the world. Such is the immediate result of good
+intentions working by the method of excommunication of a trade.
+
+This degradation of the personnel and the institution proceeds at an
+accelerated rate as public opinion grows more bitter. In the end the evil
+becomes so serious, so intimately associated with all other evils, social
+and political, that you hear men over their very cups rise to proclaim,
+with husky voices, "The saloon must go!" At this point the community is
+ripe for prohibition: accordingly, it would seem that the initial stages
+in the process, unpleasant as were their consequences, were not
+ill-advised, after all. But prohibition does not come without a political
+struggle, in which the enemy, selected for brazenness and schooled in
+corruption, employs methods that leave lasting scars upon the body
+politic. And even when vanquished, the enemy retreats into the morasses of
+"unenforcible laws," to conduct a guerilla warfare that knows no rules.
+Let us grant that the ultimate gain is worth all it costs: are we sure
+that we have taken the best possible means to achieve our ends?
+
+In the poorer quarters of most great American cities, there is much
+property that it is difficult for a man to hold without losing the respect
+of the enlightened. Old battered tenements, dingy and ill lighted
+tumbledown shacks, the despair of the city reformer. Let us say that the
+proximity of gas tanks or noisy railways or smoky factories consign such
+quarters to the habitation of the very poor. Quite possibly, then, the
+replacement of the existing buildings by better ones would represent a
+heavy financial loss. The increasing social disapprobation of property
+vested in such wretched forms leads to the gradual substitution of owners
+who hold the social approval in contempt, for those who manifest a certain
+degree of sensitiveness. The tenants certainly gain nothing from the
+change. What is more likely to happen, is a screwing up of rents, an
+increasing promptness of evictions. Public opinion will in the end be
+roused against the landlords; the more timid among them will sell their
+holdings to others not less ruthless, but bolder and more astute. Attempts
+at public regulation will be fought with infinitely greater
+resourcefulness than could possibly have been displayed by respectable
+owners. Perhaps the final outcome will be that more drastic regulations
+are adopted than would have been the case had the shifting in ownership
+not taken place. There would still remain the possibility of the evasion
+of the law, and it is not at all improbable that the progress in the
+technique of evasion would outstrip the progress in regulation, thus
+leaving the tenant with a balance of disadvantage from the process as a
+whole.
+
+The most illuminating instance of a business interest subjected first to
+excommunication--literally--and then to outlawry, is that of the usurer,
+or, in modern parlance, the loan shark. To the mediæval mind there was
+something distinctly immoral in an income from property devoted to the
+furnishing of personal loans. We need not stop to defend the mediæval
+position or to attack it; all that concerns us here is that an opportunity
+for profit--that is, a potential property interest--was outlawed. In
+consequence it became impossible for reputable citizens to engage in the
+business. Usury therefore came to be monopolized by aliens, exempt from
+the current ethical formulation, who were "protected," for a
+consideration, by the prince, just as dubious modern property interests
+may be protected by the political boss.
+
+Let us summarize the results of eight hundred years of experience in this
+method of dealing with the usurer's trade. The business shifted from the
+control of citizens to that of aliens; from the hands of those who were
+aliens merely in a narrow, national sense, to the hands of those who are
+alien to our common humanity. Such lawless, tricky, extortionate loan
+sharks as now infest our cities were probably not to be found at all in
+mediæval or early modern times. They are a product of a secular process of
+selection. Their ability to evade the laws directed against them is
+consummate. It is true that from time to time we do succeed in catching
+one and fining him, or even imprisoning him. For which risk the small
+borrower is forced to pay, at a usurer's rate.
+
+Social improvement through the excommunication of property interests is
+inevitably a disorderly process. Wherever it is in operation we are sure
+to find the successive stages indicated in the foregoing examples. First,
+a gradual substitution of the conscienceless property holder for the one
+responsive to public sentiment. Next, under the threat of hostile popular
+action, the timid and resourceless property owner gives way to the
+resourceful and the bold. The third stage in the process is a vigorous
+political movement towards drastic regulation or abolition, evoking a
+desperate attempt on the part of the interests threatened to protect
+themselves by political means--that is, by gross corruption; or, if the
+menaced interest is a vast one, dominating a defensible territory, by
+armed rebellion, as in our own Civil War. If the interest is finally
+overwhelmed politically, and placed completely under the ban of the law,
+it has been given ample time to develop an unscrupulousness of personnel
+and an art of corruption that long enable it to exist illegally, a lasting
+reproach to the constituted authorities.
+
+
+V
+
+Suppression of anti-social interests by the methods in vogue amounts to
+little more than their banishment to the underworld. And we can well
+imagine the joy with which the denizens of the underworld receive such new
+accessions to their numbers and power. For in the nature of the case, it
+is inevitable that all varieties of outcasts and outlaws should join
+forces. The religious schismatic makes common cause with the pariah; the
+political offender with the thief and robber. Such association of elements
+vastly increases the difficulty of repressing crime. The band of thieves
+and robbers in the cave of Adullam doubtless found their powers of preying
+vastly increased through the acquisition of such a leader as David. The
+problem of mediæval vagabondage was rendered well-nigh incapable of
+solution by the fact that any beggar's rags might conceal a holy but
+excommunicated friar.
+
+Let us once more review our experience with the usurer. As an outcast he
+offers his support to other outcasts, and is in turn supported by them.
+The pawnbroker and the pickpocket are closely allied: without the
+pawnshop, pocketpicking would offer but a precarious living; without the
+picking of pockets, many pawnshops would find it impossible to meet
+expenses. The salary loan shark often works hand in glove with the
+professional gambler; each procures victims for the other. The
+"hole-in-the-wall" or "blind tiger" provides a rendezvous for all the
+outcasts of society. "Boot-legging" is a common subsidiary occupation for
+the pander, the thief and the cracksman. Where it flourishes, it serves to
+bridge over many a period of slack trade. Franchises whose validity is
+subject to political attack, bring to the aid of the underworld some of
+the most powerful interests in the community. The police are almost
+helpless when confronted by a coalition of persons of wealth and
+respectability with professional politicians commanding a motley array of
+yeggs and thugs, pimps and card-sharpers.
+
+Let us suppose that the developing social conscience places under the ban
+receipt of private income from land and other natural resources, and that
+a powerful movement aiming at the confiscation of such resources is under
+way. It is superfluous to point out that the vast interests threatened
+would offer a desperate resistance. The warfare against an incomparably
+lesser interest, the liquor trade, has taxed all the resources of the
+modern democratic state--on the whole the most absolute political
+organization known. In no instance has the state come out of the struggle
+completely victorious; the proscribed interest is yielding ground, if at
+all, only very slowly. What, then, would be the outcome of a struggle
+against the vastly greater landed interest? Perhaps the state would be
+victorious in the end. But for generations the landed interest would
+survive, if not by title of common law, at least by title of common
+corruption. And in the course of the conflict, we can not doubt that
+political disorder would flourish as never before, and that under its
+shelter private vice and crime would develop almost unchecked.
+
+We should disabuse ourselves of the notion that the will of a mere
+majority is absolute in the state. The law is a reality only when the
+outlawed interests represent an insignificant minority. Arbitrarily to
+increase the outlawed interests is to undermine the very foundations of
+society.
+
+
+VI
+
+The trend of the foregoing discussion, it will be said, is reactionary in
+the extreme. There are, as all must admit, private interests that are
+prejudicial to the public interest. Are they to be left in possession of
+the privilege of trading upon the public disaster--entrenching themselves,
+rendering still more difficult the future task of the reformer? By no
+means. The writer opposes no criticism to the extinction of anti-social
+private interests; on the contrary, he would have the state proceed
+against them with far greater vigor than it has hitherto displayed. It is
+important, however, to be sure first that a private interest is
+anti-social. Then the question is merely one of method. It is the author's
+contention that the method of excommunication and outlawry is the very
+worst conceivable.
+
+We are wont to hold up to scorn the British method of compensating liquor
+sellers for licenses revoked. It is an expensive method. But let us weigh
+its corresponding advantages. The licensee does not find himself in a
+position in which he must choose between personal destitution and the
+public interest. He dares not employ methods of resistance that would
+subject him to the risk of forfeiting the right to compensation. He may
+resist by fair means, but if he is intelligent, he will keep his skirts
+clear of foul. If his establishment is closed, he is not left, a ruined
+and desperate man, to project methods for carrying on his trade illicitly.
+On the contrary, the act of compensation has placed in his hands funds in
+which he might be mulcted if convicted of violation of the law. And if
+natural perversity should drive him to illegal practices, he would not
+find himself an object of sympathy on the part of that considerable
+minority that resent injustice even to those whom they regard as
+evil-doers.
+
+There can be little doubt that by the adoption of the principle of
+adequate compensation, an American commonwealth could extinguish any
+property interest that majority opinion pronounces anti-social. We may
+have industries that menace the public health. Under existing conditions
+the interests involved exert themselves to the utmost to suppress
+information relative to the dangers of such industries. With the principle
+of compensation in operation, these very interests would be the foremost
+in exposing the evils in question. It is no hardship to sell your interest
+to the public. Does any one feel aggrieved when the public decides to
+appropriate his land to a public use? On the contrary, every possessor of
+a site at all suited for a public building or playground does everything
+in his power to display its advantages in the most favorable light.
+
+And with this we have admitted a disadvantage of the compensation
+principle--over-compensation. We do pay excessively for property rights
+extinguished in the public interest. But this is largely because the
+principle is employed with such relative infrequency that we have not as
+yet developed a technique of compensation. German cities have learned how
+to acquire property for public use without either plundering the private
+owner or excessively enriching him. The British application of the Small
+Holdings Acts has duly protected the interests of the large landholder,
+without making of him a vociferous champion of the Acts.
+
+Progressive public morality readers one private interest after another
+indefensible. Let the public extinguish such interests, by all means. But
+let the public be moral at its own expense.
+
+A revolting doctrine, it will be said. Because men have been permitted,
+through gross defect in the laws, to build up interests in dealing out
+poisons to the public, are they to be compensated, like the purveyors of
+wholesome products, when the public decrees that their destructive
+activities shall cease? Because a corrupt legislature once gave away
+valuable franchises, are we and our children, and our children's children,
+forever to pay tribute, in the shape of interest on compensation funds, to
+the heirs of the shameless grantees? Because the land of a country was
+parcelled out, in a lawless age, among the unworthy retainers of a
+predatory prince, must we forever pay rent on every loaf we eat--as we
+should do, in fact, even if we transformed great landed estates into
+privately held funds? Did we not abolish human slavery, without
+compensation, and is there any one to question the justice of the act?
+
+We did indeed extinguish slavery without compensation to the slave owners.
+But if no one had ever conceived of such a policy we should have been a
+richer nation and a happier one. We paid for the slaves, in blood and
+treasure, many times the sum that would have made every slave owner eager
+to part with his slaves. Such enrichment of the slave owner would have
+been an act of social injustice, it may be said. The saying would be open
+to grave doubt, but the doctrine here advanced runs, not in terms of
+justice, but in terms of social expediency.
+
+And expediency is commonly regarded as a cheap substitute for justice. It
+is wrongly so regarded. Social justice, as usually conceived, looks to the
+past for its validity. Its preoccupation is the correction of ancient
+wrongs. Social expediency looks to the future: its chief concern is the
+prevention of future wrongs. As a guide to political action, the
+superiority of the claims of social expediency is indisputable.
+
+
+VII
+
+In the foregoing argument it has been deliberately assumed that the
+interests to be extinguished are, for the most part, universally
+recognized as anti-social. Slavery, health-destroying adulteration, the
+maintenance of tenements that menace life and morals, these at least
+represent interests so abominable that all must agree upon the wisdom of
+extinguishing them. The only point in dispute must be one of method. It is
+the contention of the present writer that when even such interests have
+had time to become clothed with an appearance of regularity, the method of
+extinction should be through compensation. By its tolerance of such
+interests, the public has made itself an accomplice in the mischief to
+which they give rise, and accordingly has not even an equitable right to
+throw the whole responsibility upon the private persons concerned.
+
+Interests thus universally recognized to be evil are necessarily few. In
+the vast majority of cases the establishment of interests we now seek to
+proscribe took place in an epoch in which no evil was imputed to them. At
+first a small minority, usually regarded as fanatics, attack the interests
+in question. This minority increases, and in the end transforms itself
+into a majority. But long after majority opinion has become adverse, there
+remains a vigorous minority opinion defending the menaced interests. A
+hundred years ago the distilling of spirituous liquors was almost
+universally regarded as an entirely legitimate industry. The enemies of
+the industry were few and of no political consequence. Today in many
+communities the industry is utterly condemned by majority opinion. There
+is, however, no community in which a minority honestly defending the
+industry is absolutely wanting. Admitting that the majority opinion is
+right, it remains none the less true that adherents of the minority
+opinion would regard themselves as most grievously wronged if the majority
+proceeded to a destruction of their interests.
+
+Where moral issues alone are involved, we may perhaps accept the view that
+the well considered opinion of the majority is as near as may be to
+infallibility. But it is very rarely the case that the question of the
+legitimacy of a property interest can be reduced to a purely moral issue.
+Usually there are also at stake, technical and broad economic issues in
+which majority judgment is notoriously fallible. Thus we have at times had
+large minorities who believed that the bank as an institution is wholly
+evil, and ought to be abolished. This was the majority opinion in one
+period of the history of Texas, and in accordance with it, established
+banking interests were destroyed by law. It is only within the last
+fifteen years that the majority of the citizens of that commonwealth have
+admitted the error of the earlier view.
+
+In the course of the last twenty-five years, notable progress has been
+made in the art of preserving perishable foods through refrigeration.
+There are differences of opinion as to the effect upon the public health
+of food so preserved; and further differences as to the effect of the cold
+storage system upon the cost of living. On neither the physiological nor
+the economic questions involved is majority opinion worthy of special
+consideration. None the less, legislative measures directed against the
+storage interests have been seriously considered in a large number of
+states, and were it not for the difficulties inherent in the regulation of
+interstate commerce, we should doubtless see the practice of cold storage
+prohibited in some jurisdictions. Those whose property would thus be
+destroyed would accept their losses with much bitterness, in view of the
+fact that the weight of expert opinion holds their industry to be in the
+public interest.
+
+What still further exacerbates the feeling of injury on the part of those
+whose interests are proscribed, is the fact that the purity of motives of
+the persons most active in the campaign of proscription is not always
+clear. Not many years ago we had a thriving manufacture of artificial
+butter. The persons engaged in the industry claimed that their product was
+as wholesome as that produced according to the time-honored process, and
+that its cheapness promised an important advance in the adequate
+provisioning of the people. We destroyed the industry, very largely
+because of our strong bent toward conservatism in all matters pertaining
+to the table. But among the influences that were most active in taxing
+artificial butter out of existence, was the competing dairymen's interest.
+
+It is asserted by those who would shift the whole burden of taxation onto
+land that they are animated by the most unselfish motives, whereas their
+opponents are defending their selfish interests alone. Yet a common Single
+Tax appeal to the large manufacturer and the small house-owner takes the
+form of a computation demonstrating that those classes would gain more
+through the reduction in the burden on improvements than they would lose
+through increase in burden on the land. Let it be granted that personal
+advantage is not incompatible with purity of motives. The association of
+ideas does not, however, inspire confidence, especially in the breasts of
+those whose interests are threatened.
+
+Extinction of property interests without compensation necessarily makes
+our legislative bodies the battleground of conflicting interests. Honest
+motives are combined with crooked ones in the attack upon an interest;
+crooked and honest motives combine in its defense. Out of the disorder
+issues a legislative determination that may be in the public interest or
+may be prejudicial to it. And most likely the law is inadequately
+supported by machinery of enforcement: it is effective in controlling the
+scrupulous; to the unscrupulous it is mere paper. In many instances its
+net effect is only to increase the risks connected with the conduct of a
+business.
+
+When England prohibited importation of manufactures from France, the
+import trade continued none the less, under the form of smuggling. The
+risk of seizure was merely added to the risk of fire and flood. Just as
+one could insure against the latter risks, so the practice arose of
+insuring against seizure. At one time, at any rate, in the French ports
+were to be found brokers who would insure the evasion of a cargo of goods
+for a premium of fifteen per cent. At the safe distance of a century and a
+half, the absurd prohibition and its incompetent administration are
+equally comic. At the time, however, there was nothing comic in the
+contempt for law and order thus engendered, in the feeling of outrage on
+the part of those ruined by seizures, and in the alliance of respectable
+merchants with the thieves and footpads enlisted for the smuggling trade.
+
+
+VIII
+
+It is a common observation of present day social reformers that an
+excessive regard is displayed by our governmental organs for security of
+property, while security of non-property rights is neglected. And this
+would indeed be a serious indictment of the existing order if there were
+in fact a natural antithesis between the security of property and security
+of the person. There is, however, no such antithesis. In the course of
+history the establishment of security of property has, as a rule, preceded
+the establishment of personal security, and has provided the conditions in
+which personal security becomes possible. Adequate policing is essential
+to any form of security. Property can pay for policing; the person can
+not. This is a crude and materialistic interpretation of the facts, but it
+is essentially sound.
+
+How much personal security existed in England, five centuries and a half
+ago, when it was possible for Richard to carve his way through human flesh
+to the throne? The lowly, certainly, enjoyed no greater security than the
+high born. How much personal security exists in the late Macedonian
+provinces of the Turkish Empire, or in northern Mexico? It is safe to
+issue a challenge to all the world to produce an instance, contemporary or
+historical, of a country in which property is insecure and in which human
+life and human happiness are not still more insecure. On the other hand,
+it is difficult to produce an instance of a state in which security of
+property has long been established, in which there is not a progressive
+sensitiveness about the non-propertied rights of man. It is in the
+countries where the sacredness of private property is a fetich, that one
+finds recognition of a universal right to education, of a right to
+protection against violence and against epidemic disease, of a right to
+relief in destitution. These are perhaps meagre rights; but they represent
+an expanding category. The right to support in time of illness and in old
+age is making rapid progress. The development of such rights is not only
+not incompatible with security of property, but it is, in large measure, a
+corollary of property security. Personal rights shape themselves upon the
+analogy of property rights; they utilize the same channels of thought and
+habit. One of the most powerful arguments for "social insurance" is its
+very name. Insurance is recognized as an essential to the security of
+property; it is therefore easy to make out a case for the application of
+the principle to non-propertied claims.
+
+Some may claim that the security of property has now fulfilled its
+mission; that we can safely allow the principle to decay in order to
+concentrate our attention upon the task of establishing non-propertied
+rights. But let us remember that we are not removed from barbarism by the
+length of a universe. The crust of orderly civilization is deep under our
+feet: but not six hundred years deep. The primitive fires still smoke on
+our Mexican borders and in the Balkans. And blow holes open from time to
+time through our own seemingly solid crust--in Colorado, in West Virginia,
+in the Copper Country. It is evidently premature to affirm that the
+security of property has fulfilled its mission.
+
+
+IX
+
+The question at issue, is not, however, the rights of property against the
+rights of man--or more honestly--the rights of labor. The claims of labor
+upon the social income may advance at the expense of the claims of
+property. In the institutional struggle between the propertied and the
+propertyless, the sympathies of the writer are with the latter party. It
+is his hope and belief that an ever increasing share of the social income
+will assume the form of rewards for personal effort.
+
+But this is an altogether different matter from the crushing of one
+private property interest after another, in the name of the social welfare
+or the social morality. Such detailed attacks upon property interests are,
+in the end, to the injury of both social classes. Frequently they amount
+to little more than a large loss to one property interest, and a small
+gain to another. They increase the element of insecurity in all forms of
+property; for who shall say which form is immune from attack? Now it is
+the slum tenement, obvious corollary of our social inequalities; next it
+may be the marble mansion or gilded hotel, equally obvious corollaries of
+the same institutional situation. Now it is the storage of meat that is
+under attack; it may next be the storage of flour. The fact is, our mass
+of income yielding possessions is essentially an organic whole. The
+irreproachable incomes are not exactly what they would be if those subject
+to reproach did not exist. If some property incomes are dirty, all
+property incomes become turbid.
+
+The cleansing of property incomes, therefore, is a first obligation of the
+institution of property as a whole. The compensation principle throws the
+cost of the cleansing upon the whole mass, since, in the last analysis,
+any considerable burden of taxation will distribute itself over the mass.
+The principle is therefore consonant with justice. What is not less
+important, the principle, systematically developed, would go far toward
+freeing the legislature from the graceless function of arbitrating between
+selfish interests, and the administration from the necessity of putting
+down powerful interests outlawed by legislative act. It would give us a
+State working smoothly, and therefore an efficient instrument for social
+ends. Most important of all, it would promote that security of economic
+interests which is essential to social progress.
+
+
+
+
+A STUBBORN RELIC OF FEUDALISM
+
+
+There is a persistent question regarding the distribution of property
+which is of peculiar interest in the season of automobile tours and summer
+hotels. Most thinking people acknowledge a good deal of perplexity over
+this question, while on most parallel ones they are generally
+cock-sure--on whichever is the side of their personal interests. But in
+this question the bias of personal interest is not very large, and
+therefore it may be considered with more chance of agreement than can the
+larger questions of the same class which parade under various disguises.
+
+The little question is that of tipping. After we have squeezed out of it
+such antitoxic serum as we can, we will briefly indicate the application
+of it to larger questions.
+
+Tipping is plainly a survival of the feudal relation, long before the
+humbler men had risen from the condition of status to that of contract,
+when fixed pay in the ordinary sense was unknown, and where the relation
+between servant and master was one of ostensible voluntary service and
+voluntary support, was for life, and in its best aspect was a relation of
+mutual dependence and kindness. Then the spasmodic payment was, as tips
+are now, essential to the upper man's dignity, and very especially to the
+dignity of his visitor. This feudal relation survives in England today to
+such an extent that poor men refrain from visiting their rich relations
+because of the tips. In the great country-houses the tips are expected to
+be in gold, at least so I was told some years ago. And in England and out
+of it, Don Cesar's bestowal of his last shilling on the man who had served
+him, still thrills the audience, at least the tipped portion of it.
+
+Europe being on the whole less removed from feudal institutions than we
+are, tipping is not only more firmly established there, but more
+systematized. It is more nearly the rule that servants' places in hotels
+are paid for, and they are apt to be dependent entirely upon tips. The
+greater wealth of America, on the other hand, and the extravagance of the
+_nouveaux riches_, has led in some institutions to more extravagant
+tipping than is dreamed of in Europe, and consequently has scattered
+through the community a number of servants from Europe who, when here,
+receive with gratitude from a foreigner, a tip which they would scorn from
+an American.
+
+In the midst of general relations of contract--of agreed pay for agreed
+service, tipping is an anomaly and a constant puzzle.
+
+It would seem strange, if it were not true of the greater questions of the
+same kind, that in the chronic discussion of this one, so little
+attention, if any, has been paid to what may be the fundamental line of
+division between the two sides--namely, the distinction between ideal
+ethics and practical ethics.
+
+An illustration or two will help explain that distinction:
+
+First illustration: "Thou shalt not kill" which is ideal ethics in an
+ideal world of peace. Practical ethics in the real world are illustrated
+in Washington and Lee, who for having killed their thousands, are placed
+beside the saints!
+
+Second illustration: Obey the laws and tell the truth. This is ideal
+ethics, which our very legislatures do much to prevent being practical.
+For instance; they ignore the fact that in the present state of morality,
+taxes on personal property can be collected from virtually nobody but
+widows and orphans who have no one to evade the taxes for them. So the
+legislatures continue the attempt to tax personal property, and a judge on
+the bench says that a man who lies about his personal taxes shall not on
+that account be held an unreliable witness in other matters.
+
+Or to take an illustration less radical: it is not in legal testimony
+alone that ideal ethics require everybody to tell the truth, the whole
+truth, and nothing but the truth--that the world should have as much truth
+as possible; and if the world were perfectly kind, perfectly honest and
+perfectly wise (which last involves the first two), that ideal could be
+realized. For instance, in our imperfect world a man telling people when
+he did not like them, would be constantly giving needless pain and making
+needless enemies, whereas in an ideal world--made up of perfect people,
+there would be nobody to dislike, or, pardon the Hibernicism, if there
+were, the whole truth could be told without causing pain or enmity. Or
+again, in a world where there are dishonest people, a man telling
+everything about his schemes, would have them run away with by others,
+though in an ideal world, where there were no dishonest people, he could
+speak freely. In fact, the necessity of reticence in this connection does
+not even depend on the existence of dishonesty: for in a world where
+people have to look out for themselves, instead of everybody looking out
+for everybody else, a man exposing his plans might hurry the execution of
+competing plans on the part of perfectly honest people.
+
+Farther illustration may be sufficiently furnished by the topic in hand.
+
+In the case of most poor folks other than servants, what to do about it
+has lately been pretty distinctly settled: the religion of pauperization
+is pretty generally set aside: almsgiving, the authorities on ethics now
+generally hold, should be restricted to deserving cases--to people
+incapacitated by constitution or circumstance from taking proper care of
+themselves.
+
+Now is tipping almsgiving, and are servants among the deserving classes?
+
+How many people have asked themselves these simple questions, and how many
+who are educated up to habitually refusing alms unless the last of the
+questions is affirmatively answered, just as habitually tip servants?
+
+Is tipping almsgiving? Not in the same sense that alms are given without
+any show of anything in return: the servant does something for the tipper.
+Yes, but he is paid for it by his employer. True, but only sometimes: at
+other times he is only partly paid, depending for the rest on tips; and
+sometimes the tips are so valuable that the servant pays his alleged
+employer for the opportunity to get them. Yet I know one hotel in Germany,
+and probably there are others, there and elsewhere, where the menus and
+other stationery bear requests against tipping. But in that one hotel I
+know tipping to be as rife as in hotels generally: the customers are not
+educated up to the landlord's standard. And here we come to the
+fundamental remedy for all questionable practices--the education of the
+people beyond them. But this is simply the ideal condition in which ideal
+ethics could prevail. Meanwhile we must determine the practical ethics of
+the actual world.
+
+The servant's position is different from that of most other wage-earners,
+in that he is in direct contact with the person who is to benefit from his
+work. The man who butchers your meat or grinds your flour, you probably
+never see; but the man who brushes your clothes or waits on your table,
+holds to you a personal relation, and he can do his work so as merely to
+meet a necessity, or so as to rise beyond mere necessity into comfort or
+luxury. Outside of home servants, the necessity is all that, in the
+present state of human nature, his regular stipend is apt to provide; the
+comfort or the luxury, the feeling of personal interest, the atmosphere of
+promptness and cheerfulness and ease, is apt to respond only to the tip.
+Only in the ideal world will it be spontaneous. In the real world it must
+be paid for.
+
+And why should it not be--why is it not as legitimate to pay for having
+your wine well cooled or carefully tempered and decanted, as to pay for
+the wine itself? The objection apt to be first urged is that it degrades
+the servant. But does it? He is not an ideal man in an ideal world,
+already doing his best or paid to do his best. You are not degrading him
+from any such standard as that, into the lower one of requiring tips: you
+are simply taking him as he is. True, if he got no tips, he would not
+depend upon them; but without them he would not do all you want him to;
+before he will do that, he must be developed into a different man--he must
+become a creature of an ideal world. You may in the course of ages develop
+him into that, and as you do, he will work better and better, and tips may
+grow smaller and smaller, until he does his best spontaneously, and tips
+have dwindled to nothing. But to withdraw them now would simply make him
+sulky, and lead to his doing worse than now.
+
+Another objection urged against tips is that they put the rich tipper at
+an advantage over the poor one. But the rich man is at an advantage in
+nearly everything else, why not here? The idea of depriving him of his
+advantages, is rank communism, which destroys the stimulus to energy and
+ingenuity that, in the present state of human nature, is needed to keep
+the world moving. In an ideal state of human nature, the man with ability
+to create wealth may find stimulus enough, as some do to a considerable
+extent now, in the delight of distributing wealth for the general good;
+but we are considering what is practicable in the present state of human
+nature.
+
+Another aspect of the case, or at least a wider aspect, is the more
+sentimental one where the tip is prompted as reciprocation for spontaneous
+kindness.
+
+But in the service of private families, as distinct from service to the
+general public or to visitors it is notorious that constant tipping is
+ruinous. Occasional holidays and treats and presents at Christmas and on
+special occasions are useful, as promoting the general feeling of
+reciprocation. But from visitors the tip is generally essential to
+ensuring the due meed of respect. Yet we can reasonably imagine a time
+when it may not be; and even now, for the casual service of holding a
+horse or brushing off the dust, a hearty "thank you" is perhaps on the
+whole better than a tip.
+
+Considering the morality of the question all around--the practical ethics
+as well as the ideal, the underlying facts are that no man ought to be a
+servant in the servile sense, and indeed no man ought to be poor; and in
+an ideal world no man would be one or the other. Just how we are to get a
+world without servants or servile people, is perhaps a little more plain
+than how we are to get Mr. Bellamy's world without poor people, which,
+however, amounts to nearly the same thing. At least we will get a less
+servile world, as machinery and organization make service less and less
+personal. Bread has long been to a great extent made away from home; much
+of the washing is also done away in great laundries, and organizations
+have lately been started to call for men's outer clothes, and keep them
+cleaned, repaired and pressed. There is a noticeable rise, too, in the
+dignity of personal service: witness the college students at the summer
+hotels, and the self-respecting Jap in the private family. These
+influences are making for the ideal world in relation to service, and
+_when_ we get it, no man will take tips, and nobody will offer them.
+
+But in our stage of evolution, the tip, like the larger prizes, is part of
+the general stimulus to the best exertion and the best feeling, and is
+therefore legitimate; but it, like every other stimulus, should not be
+applied in excess, and the tendency should be to abolish it. The rich man
+often is led by good taste and good morals to restrain his expenditure in
+many directions, and there are few directions, if any, in which good taste
+and good morals more commend the happy medium than in tips. Excess in
+them, however, is not always prompted by good nature and generosity and
+reciprocation of spontaneous kindness, but often by desire for comfort,
+and even by ostentation. But all such promptings require regulation for
+the same reason that, it is now becoming generally recognized, the
+promptings of even charity itself require regulation.
+
+The head of one of the leading Fifth Avenue restaurants once said to the
+writer, substantially: "We don't like tips: they demoralize our men. But
+what can we do about it? We can't stop it, or even keep it within bounds.
+Our customers will give them, and people who have too much money or too
+little sense, give not only dollar bills or five dollar bills, but fifty
+dollar bills and even hundred dollar bills. We have tried to stave off
+customers who do such things: we believe that in the long run it would pay
+us to; but we can't."
+
+When all the promptings of liberality or selfishness or ostentation are
+well regulated, we will be in the ideal world. Until then, in the actual
+world, it is the part of wisdom to regulate ideal ethics by practical
+ethics--and tip, but tip temperately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now to apply our principles to a wider field.
+
+The ideal is that all men should have what they produce. The ideal is also
+that all men should have full shares of the good things of life. These two
+ideals inevitably combine into a third--that all men should produce full
+shares of the good things of life. But the plain fact is that they
+cannot--that no amount of opportunity or appliances will enable the
+average day laborer to produce what Mr. Edison or Mr. Hill or even the
+average deviser of work and guide of labor does. Then even ideal ethics
+cannot say in this actual world: Let both have the same. That would simply
+be Robin Hood ethics: rob the man who produces much, and give the plunder
+to the man who produces little. Hence comes the disguising of the schemes
+to do it, even so that they often deceive their own devisers. What then do
+practical ethics say? They can't say anything more than: Help the less
+capable to become capable, so that he may produce more. But that is at
+least as slow a process as raising the servant beyond the stage of tips.
+Meantime the socialists are unwilling to wait, and propose to rob the
+present owners of the means of production, and take the control of
+industry from the men who manage it now, and put it in the hands of the
+men who merely can influence votes. These men certainly are no less
+selfish and dishonest than the captains of industry, and are vastly less
+able to select the profitable fields of industry, and organize and
+economize industry; whatever product they might squeeze out would be
+vastly less than now, and it would stick to their own fingers no less than
+does what the politicians handle now. Dividing whatever might reach the
+people, without reference to those who produced it, could yield the
+average man no more than he gets now. That's very simple mathematics. One
+of the saddest sights of the day is the number of good people to whom
+these facts are not self-evident.
+
+In no state of human nature that any persons now living, or the grandchild
+of any person now living, will witness, could such conditions be
+permanent. Their temporary realization might be accomplished; but if it
+were, the able men would not be satisfied with either the low grade of
+civilization inevitable unless they worked, or with being robbed of the
+large share of production that must result from their work. The more
+intelligent of the rank and file, too, would rebel against the conditions
+inevitably lowering the general prosperity, and they would soon realize
+the difference in industrial leadership between "political generals" and
+natural generals. Insurrection would follow, and then anarchy, after which
+things would start again on their present basis, but some generations
+behind.
+
+But I for one do not expect these experiences, especially in America: for
+here probably enough men have already become property holders to make a
+sufficient balance of power for the preservation of property. If not, the
+first step toward ensuring civilization, is helping enough men to develop
+into property holders, and _continue_ property holders, which general
+experience declares that they will not unless they develop their property
+themselves.
+
+
+
+
+AN EXPERIMENT IN SYNDICALISM
+
+
+During the last twenty years New Zealand has tried many social and
+economic experiments; these experiments have been made by her own
+Legislature, and her own people; and as a rule they have been remarkably
+successful: during the last few months she has had the experience of a new
+one conducted by strangers, and made at her expense. Fortunately there is
+reason to believe that this one will be found to have resulted in benefit
+to New Zealand and its people, while it may prove of service to older and
+larger countries. It is probable that the most widely known of New
+Zealand's experiments is that which aimed at doing justice to employers
+and employees alike by the substitution for the Industrial strike of a
+Court of Arbitration, fairly constituted, on which both Workers and
+Employers were equally represented. This law has been branded by the
+supporters of the usual Strike policy with the name of "Compulsory
+Arbitration," the object being to discredit it in the eyes of the workers,
+as an infringement of their liberty. The title is unfair and misleading.
+Unlike most laws, it never has been of universal application either to
+Workers or Employers, but only to those among them that chose to form
+themselves into industrial Unions, and to register those Unions as subject
+to the provisions of the Statute. The purpose of the Statute was an appeal
+to the common sense of the people, by offering them an alternative method
+of settling disputes and securing that fair-play for both parties which
+experience had shown could seldom be secured by the strike. The law, which
+was first introduced in 1894, had gradually appealed both to workers and
+employers, as worth trying, and before the close of the last century it
+had rendered the country prosperous, and had attracted the attention of
+thoughtful people in many other parts of the world to the "Country Without
+Strikes." Efforts were made in several countries to introduce the
+principle of the New Zealand Statute, but with very little success, as it
+was generally opposed both by workers and employers:--the workers feeling
+confident they could obtain greater concessions by the forceful methods of
+the strike, and the employers suspecting that any Court of Arbitration
+would be likely to give the workers more than, without arbitration, they
+could compel the employers to surrender.
+
+In the mean time the statutory substitute for the strike continued to
+succeed in New Zealand. Nearly every class of town workers, and some in
+the country, had formed Unions, and registered them under the arbitration
+law. With a single trifling exception, that was speedily put an end to by
+the punishment of the Union with the alternative of heavy fine or
+imprisonment, the country was literally as well as nominally a country
+without a strike. And it was something more than that: its prosperity
+increased year by year, and its production of goods--agricultural,
+pastoral, and manufactured--increased at a pace unequalled elsewhere. Yet
+the prosperity was most apparent in its effect on the conditions of the
+workers: under the successive awards of the arbitration court, wages had
+steadily increased until they had reached a point as high as in similar
+trades in America, while the cost of living was very little more than half
+the rate in any town in the United States. To all intelligent observers
+these facts were evident, and could not be concealed from the workers in
+other countries, especially in Australia, as the nearest geographically to
+New Zealand and commercially the most closely connected.
+
+The effect, however, on the workers of Australia was not what might have
+been expected. Attempts had been made by some of the State Legislatures to
+introduce arbitration laws more or less like the New Zealand statute, but
+with very partial success. From the first these laws were opposed by the
+leaders of the Labor Unions, who naturally saw a menace to their influence
+in the fact that they became subject to punishment if they attempted to
+use their accustomed powers over their fellow unionists. The example of
+New Zealand was lauded in the Australian Legislatures and newspapers, and
+even in the courts, till at last a feeling of strong antagonism was
+developed among the more advanced class of socialistic Labor men, and it
+was decided by their leaders to undertake a campaign in the neighboring
+Dominion against the system of settling industrial questions by courts,
+and in favor of substituting the system of strikes, with their attendant
+power and profit to the Labor leaders. The first steps taken were sending
+men from Australia or England on lecturing tours through New Zealand, to
+create dissatisfaction with the Arbitration Courts by representing them as
+leaning to the side of the employers, and ignoring the claims of the
+workers. When this had gone on for about a year, workers of various
+classes were induced to cross from Australia, and join the Unions in New
+Zealand, for the purpose of influencing their fellow unionists to
+disloyalty towards the system under which they were registered. These men
+were generally competent workers and clever agitators, and many of them
+soon obtained prominence and official position in the Unions. As was
+natural, a good many of these new-comers were miners--either for coal or
+gold--and many of them joined the miners' union at the great gold mine
+known as the Waihi, from which upwards of thirty million dollars worth of
+gold had been dug, and which was still yielding between three and four
+million dollars a year. There were nearly a thousand miners employed
+there, and all of them were members of a Union that was duly registered
+under the Arbitration statute.
+
+There had been several questions in dispute between the miners and the
+owners, and these had been referred to the Arbitration Court some time
+before the arrival of the new Australian miners. The result, while it
+favored the Union in some respects, favored the Company in others, and
+this fact was used by the new-comers to convince the older hands that the
+Court had been unfair, and that they could secure much better terms for
+themselves if they would cease work, and so inflict immense loss by
+permitting the lower levels of the mine to become flooded. After a few
+months the Union decided to take advantage of the provision of the law
+which enabled any registered Union to withdraw its registration at six
+months' notice. When the time had expired, the Union repeated the demand
+which had been refused by the Court, and on the refusal of the Company to
+agree, a strike was at once declared, and the whole of the miners ceased
+work. This had the effect, within a very short time, of rendering all the
+deeper levels of the mine unworkable. Close to the mine was a prosperous
+little town occupied chiefly by the miners and their families, most of the
+houses being the property of the mining company, and the men continued to
+occupy the houses while the strike was in progress. Other miners were
+found who were ready to take their places, but the men in possession
+refused to move out, and threatened with violence any miners that should
+attempt to work the mine. The men who had been prepared to work, finding
+this to be the position, withdrew. As there was no actual violence shown,
+there seemed to be a difficulty in the way of any interference by the
+Government: so several months passed, during which the mine lay idle while
+the miners on strike continued to occupy the houses and pay the very
+moderate rents demanded from employees of the company. This they were able
+to do partly from their savings, partly from the sympathetic contributions
+from Australia, and partly by some of the miners having scattered over the
+country and got work on the farms, and throwing their earnings into the
+common fund.
+
+After repeated appeals by the mine-owners to the Government, an
+arrangement was made that the Company should employ miners willing to
+become members of a new Union registered under the Arbitration statute,
+and that the Government should send a police force sufficient to protect
+these in working the mine, and also to enforce the judgment of the local
+court in dispossessing the occupants of the houses belonging to the
+Company. An attempt was made by the strikers to defy this police force and
+prevent the new Union from working the mine; but when most of the new
+unionists had been sworn in as special constables, and a number of the
+militant strikers had been arrested, the others saw that they could not
+continue the struggle, and within a week or two abandoned the district,
+giving place to the members of the arbitration Union in both the mine and
+town.
+
+Thus the first strike organized by the "Federation of Labor" in New
+Zealand resulted in a failure, but the miners thus defeated and driven
+from the little town that had been their home, in many cases for a good
+many years, were naturally embittered by their failure, and became an
+element of mischief in other districts, and especially in the coal mines,
+to which they turned when they found it hard to obtain employment in any
+of the gold mines.
+
+The Australian Federation of Labor and its branch in New Zealand fully
+appreciated the fact that their first attempt to establish a system of
+Unionism opposed to the one recognized by the law, having proved a
+failure, it was necessary either to give up the attempt altogether or to
+make it more deliberately and on a much wider scale. The method they
+adopted was one that did credit to their foresight and determination. The
+Australian Federation is, and has always been, highly socialistic in its
+policy, and latterly its leaders have adopted and preached syndicalism, as
+promising to give the workers the control of society. New Zealand, alone
+among self-governing countries, having struck at the very root of their
+policy by trying to substitute a statute and a Court for the will of the
+associated workers, was a very tempting country for syndicalism. An island
+country which, owing to climate and soil, was specially suited for the
+production of all kinds of agricultural wealth beyond the needs of its own
+people, must depend on free access to the ports of other countries. This,
+it seemed plain, could be prevented by well managed syndicalism. It would
+be only necessary to organize the seamen who worked the vessels that kept
+the smaller harbors of such a country in touch with the larger ports at
+which the ocean going ships loaded and unloaded; and to organize also the
+stevedores at the larger ports. The bitterness of feeling that had
+followed the destruction of the Waihi Union, and the loss to its members
+not only of a good many months of good wages but of the homes they and
+their families had occupied for years, was a valuable asset in such a
+campaign. At first, of course, some of the working classes blamed the
+agents of "The Federation of Labor" who were responsible for the
+disastrous strike, but it was not difficult to turn attention from the
+past failure of a single strike, to the certain success that must attend a
+great syndical strike that would involve all the industries of the
+country. Most, indeed nearly all, of the disappointed Waihi strikers were
+ready to join with enthusiasm in carrying out the plans of The Federation,
+and removed to the places where they could be most effective in preparing
+the way for what they looked upon as a great revenge. Thus they either
+joined the old Unions at the principal ports, especially Auckland and
+Wellington, or formed new Unions, no longer registered under the
+Arbitration statute, but openly affiliated to The Federation of Labor,
+which had been established in New Zealand, but was really a branch of the
+Australian Federation. The four principal ports of New Zealand, indeed the
+only ports much frequented by the large export and import vessels, are
+Auckland, Wellington, Lyttleton, and Dunedin, the two first named being in
+the north island, and the other two in the south. Auckland is considerably
+the largest city in The Dominion, containing at least 25,000 more
+inhabitants than Wellington, which is not only the capital of the
+Dominion, but also the great distributing centre for the South island and
+the southern part of the North island, at the southern extremity of which
+it is situated. The remarkable situation of Auckland, on a very narrow
+isthmus about a hundred and eighty miles from the northern point of the
+country, is no doubt largely responsible for the growth of the city, which
+is the chief centre of the young manufactures of the Dominion, and the
+largest port of export for almost all the country produces, except wool
+and mutton, which are mainly raised in the South island. Thus it happens
+that Auckland and Wellington are at present the chief shipping ports of
+the Dominion, and it was to them that the Federation of Labor turned its
+chief attention when its leaders had definitely decided to undertake the
+campaign of syndicalism against the system of arbitration which had
+prevailed for sixteen years.
+
+There had already been formed Unions of Waterside Workers and Seamen at
+each of these ports; but they were in all cases registered under the
+arbitration law, and of course subject to its penalties against both
+officials and members in cases of any breach of the statute. The
+Federation's agents proceeded to collect the members of these unions who
+were in any way dissatisfied with the existing awards of the Arbitration
+Courts, and to form them into new Unions outside the statute. They had
+little difficulty in persuading the men that the new Unions would be free
+to act in many directions that were barred to the members of the old
+Unions. A good many of the men were thus persuaded to resign their
+membership in the existing Unions, and as they were very often the most
+active members, they gradually persuaded others to leave with them. There
+was nothing either in the law or custom of the ports to prevent unionists
+and non-unionists working together on the wharves or the coasting vessels;
+so within a comparatively short time the members of the new Federation
+Unions were more numerous than those that clung to the older ones. When
+this became the case, the officials of the new Unions approached the
+shipping companies with proposals for an agreement between them and the
+Federation Unions in some respects more favorable to the employers than
+the arbitration award under which the older Unions were working, and in
+this way gained a position which enabled them to undermine the old Unions,
+till they either died out for want of members or withdrew their
+registration, and at the end of their six months' notice merged their
+Unions in those of The Federation. The Federation's plans had been so
+carefully prepared that there was little or no suspicion on the part of
+the employers or of the public generally as to the true meaning of the
+movement. It was evident, of course, that it indicated a revolt against
+the arbitration law, but as the new unions appeared ready to give the
+employers rather better terms than the old ones, many reasons were found
+by employers for defending what began to be called the "Free Unions." In
+this way things had gone on at the shipping ports for about two years from
+the failure of the gold miners' strike at Waihi, before anything happened
+to open the eyes of the public to the real meaning of what The Federation
+of Labor had been doing. In that time the new Unions at each of the
+principal ports of the country had quietly obtained the entire control of
+the hands at waterside and local shipping, as well as of the Carters
+Unions. The time had arrived when the syndicalists believed themselves
+able to compel the public to submit to any demands they might see fit to
+make.
+
+The occasion finally arose, as might have been expected, at Wellington,
+where the Federation of Labor had established its head-quarters. There was
+no definite dispute between the employers and workers, but for a few weeks
+there had been an uneasy feeling in relation to the Waterside Workers who,
+it was said, were growing more lazy and slovenly in handling cargo on the
+wharves and piers. A meeting had been called by The Federation to discuss
+some grievances of the coal miners at Westport, from which most of the
+coal landed in Wellington is brought. The meeting was called for the noon
+dinner hour, and a number of the waterside workers engaged in discharging
+cargo from a steamer about to sail, at once went to the meeting, and did
+not return to work in the afternoon. The shipping company at once engaged
+other men to finish their work, and when the men came back some hours
+later, they found their places filled up. The new men belonged to the same
+Union, but the men dispossessed demanded that the new ones should be
+dismissed at once. When the company refused the demand, the men appealed
+to the Council of the Federation, who at once called on the Waterside
+Workers and Seamens Unions at Wellington to cease work. Within a few days
+the position looked so serious that the Premier invited both parties to a
+conference, at which he presided in person, in the hope of bringing about
+an agreement to refer the matters in dispute to an arbitrator to be
+mutually agreed upon. The officials of The Federation, however, said there
+was nothing to submit to an arbitrator: they had made a demand, and unless
+it was complied with by the shipping company and the Union of merchants at
+Wellington who were in league with the Company in victimizing the men who
+took part in the meeting in aid of the Coal-miners, the strike must go on.
+The Merchants and Shipping Company's Unions pointed out that what had been
+done was in direct opposition to the terms of the formal agreement signed
+less than a year before, and they refused to have anything more to do with
+the Federation on any terms. The conference thus ended in an open
+declaration of war. The time had evidently come for the Federation of
+Labor to make good the assertions so often made by its lecturers and
+agitators, of its power to force the rest of the community to submission.
+It would be difficult to imagine a more favorable position for carrying
+such a policy into effect: New Zealand, it must be borne in mind, is a
+country without an army. For some years past, it is true, a system of
+military training for all her young men between eighteen and twenty-five
+has been enforced by law, but except for training purposes, there is no
+military force in the Dominion, either of regulars or militia; and it is
+now forty-five years since the last company of British soldiers left its
+shores. Law has been maintained, and order enforced, by a police force
+under the control of the Government of the Dominion, and while the force
+is undoubtedly a good and trustworthy one, its numbers have never been
+large in proportion to the population. This year the entire force
+throughout the country is very little more than 850, which includes
+officers as well as men. It can hardly be wondered at that the officials
+of The Federation of Labor were convinced that, if they could arrange a
+general strike of the workers, the police force would be powerless to deal
+with it. On the failure of the attempt of the Premier to bring about a
+settlement between the parties by arbitration, the Federation proclaimed a
+general strike of all Unions affiliated to themselves throughout the
+country, and of all other Unions that were in sympathy with them in their
+policy of giving united Labor the control of society. The order to cease
+work was at once obeyed, as a matter of course, by all the Federation
+Unions, which practically meant all the workers engaged on vessels
+registered in the Dominion and trading on the coast, all workers on
+wharves and piers, carters in the cities, and coal miners throughout the
+country. The appeal for sympathetic assistance from Unions unconnected
+with the Federation was largely successful in the chief centres, though it
+was, of course, a direct defiance of the arbitration law under which they
+were registered. It has since been discovered that in nearly every case it
+was brought about by the unprincipled scheming of the secretaries,
+assisted by a few of the officials, who called meetings, of which notice
+was given only to a selected minority, and at which the question of
+joining a sympathetic strike was settled by a large majority of those
+present, but in fact in many cases a small minority of the whole
+membership. The sympathetic strike of Arbitration Unions was mainly
+confined to the cities, and Auckland, as the largest city, was the most
+affected by it. In Auckland the members of practically every Union ceased
+work, somewhere about ten thousand persons going on strike simultaneously.
+
+The result during the first days of the strike seemed likely to confirm
+the expectations of the Federation orators. Industry was practically dead.
+At every port vessels lay at anchor, having been withdrawn from the
+wharves before they were deserted by their crews, and the wharves were in
+the possession of the Waterside strikers. The streets of the cities were
+empty, and a large proportion of the stores were closed, partly owing to
+want of business, and partly from fear of violence in case they kept open.
+These first few days in both New Zealand and Australia were days of
+triumph for the Federation leaders but the triumph was a short-lived one.
+The Government of the Dominion did not interfere, indeed, but the public,
+through their municipal authorities, did. The people of New Zealand have
+throughout their history been accustomed to manage their own affairs, and
+within four days of the declaration of war by the syndical Federation,
+steps were taken to meet the emergency. At Auckland and Wellington it had
+been evident from the first that the small police force available could
+not safely attempt to cope with the main body of strikers, or do more than
+prevent acts of aggressive violence to the citizens and their property.
+The local authorities, however, had confidence in the general public, and
+at Auckland, and afterwards at Wellington, the Mayor of the city appealed
+to the public to come forward as volunteers to maintain law and order, by
+acting as Special Constables. In both cities the appeal was responded to
+readily, nearly two thousand young men coming forward at Auckland in
+twenty-four hours, and upwards of a thousand at Wellington. These were at
+once sworn in as special constables, and armed with serviceable batons,
+while all the fire-arms and ammunition for sale in the city was taken
+charge of and withdrawn from sale by the municipal authorities. In this
+way the maintenance of order was fairly provided for, and the temporary
+closing of all licensed hotels by order of the city magistrates removed
+the danger of riot as the result of intemperance.
+
+There had been some rioting in Wellington, though with little serious
+injury, but there was nothing that could be called a riot in Auckland. The
+Federation Unions waited, under the impression that time was on their
+side, owing to the impossibility of doing anything or getting anything
+done without the help of the associated workers. This had been the basis
+of their scheme, but like all such schemes it failed to take into account
+the instinct of self-preservation on the part of the people outside the
+Unions. As long as the strike leaders could point to the fleet of vessels
+lying idle in the harbor, the mills silent, and the street railroads
+without a moving car, and almost deserted by carts, it was easy for them
+to persuade their followers that complete victory was only a matter of
+days, or at most of weeks; they had not remembered that there were others
+besides themselves and their fellow townsmen interested in the question of
+a paralyzed industry. The trade that has been making the people of New
+Zealand increasingly rich during the last twenty years has been mainly
+derived from the land. Small holdings and close settlement have been the
+rule, and the rate of production has been increasingly rapid. The
+exports--mainly the produce of the land--have grown in proportions quite
+unknown in any other country, and the farmers knew that the prosperity of
+the country, and most directly of all the workers on the land, depended on
+the freedom and facilities for shipment of their ports. It was the workers
+on the land, accordingly, that came to the rescue, and solved the
+industrial problem. An offer was made by the President of The Farmers'
+Cooperative Union to bring a sufficient number of the members into the
+cities to work the shipping and to prevent any interruption of the work by
+the men on strike. The offer was at once accepted by the municipal
+authorities at Auckland and Wellington, and within two days fully eighteen
+hundred mounted farmers rode into Auckland, and nearly a thousand into
+Wellington, all prepared to carry on the work and protect the workers.
+Their arrival practically settled the question. New Waterside Unions were
+formed at every port, and registered under the provisions of the
+Arbitration Statute; such of the country workers as were able to do so,
+enrolled themselves as members of the new Unions; the wharves and water
+fronts were taken possession of and guarded by the special constables
+enlisted in the cities, while the streets were patrolled by parties of the
+mounted volunteers. Within twenty-four hours of their arrival, some of the
+vessels in harbor had been brought to the wharves, and the work of
+unloading them was begun.
+
+At first there were many threats of violent opposition on the part of the
+strikers, and crowds assembled in the principal streets and in the
+neighborhood of the wharves; but these were dispersed before they became
+dangerous, by the mounted constables, and a proclamation having been
+issued by the mayor calling attention to the fact that collections of
+people that obstructed traffic in the streets were contrary to law, the
+police and mounted constables cleared the streets, and forcibly arrested
+any persons who attempted opposition. Within two or three days, at each of
+the principal cities, new Unions of seamen and of carters had been formed
+and registered under the arbitration law, and those members of the old
+Federation Unions who were not enthusiastic, and began to see that the
+assurances of success were not likely to be realized, began to resign and
+apply for admission to the new Unions. After about two weeks the Council
+of The Federation of Labor, recognizing the failure of the sympathetic
+strike, invited the Unions that were not connected with them to declare
+the strike at an end, and tried by confining the strike to their own
+members, to maintain a solid front, which, with the help of the Australian
+Federation both in money for the strikers and in refusing to handle any
+goods either from or for New Zealand, they still hoped would carry them to
+at least a compromise, if not to the victory they had expected. The hopes
+of the Federation of Labor were not realized. Within a week or two a large
+proportion of the members of their own Unions, seeing their places filled,
+and their work being done, not by free labor, which they might hope to
+deal with, but by new Unions, whose members would be entitled, under the
+arbitration law, to preference and many other privileges, began to desert
+and to seek admission to the Arbitration Unions that had taken their
+place. For a time this was fiercely denied by the Federation officials,
+but as the days went on, and business of every kind was resumed in the
+cities, the groups of strikers at street corners and around the Federation
+head-quarters dwindled away; the hotels were reopened, the shops and
+stores were busy, the mills were at work, and even the coastal steamers
+were manned and running, and the federationists were forced to admit that
+they were hopelessly defeated. For a time they still hoped that the
+Australian Boycott might save them from absolute disaster, and the Labor
+Ministry of New South Wales tried to help the Federation by making an
+appeal to the New Zealand Government to arrange an arbitration to settle
+the dispute between The Wellington Waterside Workers and the merchants and
+shipping companies. The absolute refusal of the New Zealand Government to
+recognize The Federation of Labor, or to interfere with the new Unions
+under the Arbitration Act that had taken their place, finally settled the
+question, and completed the defeat of the strikers. The officials of the
+Federation declared the strike at an end, and the Australian Federation
+announced that the boycott was also at an end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At first sight it may seem that, after all, the experiment in syndicalism
+was on a small scale, and that its lesson can hardly be of great value to
+a country like America. A little consideration may correct such a
+misapprehension. New Zealand was deliberately selected by the Syndicalists
+as a test case, for two reasons. In the first place it was the only
+country that had for years adopted a policy of justice according to law
+for both workers and employers, and from the syndicalist's point of view
+it was therefore the only country that seriously attacked their own policy
+by showing that it was unnecessary. In the second place New Zealand was
+the only country with a population of British origin that could be dealt
+with practically by itself. With the aid of an Australian boycott it
+seemed as if her people must be helpless in the hands of the Federation.
+The result proved to be not only the defeat of the principle of lawless
+syndicalism, but the destruction of the industrial association that
+represented it in the country. No compromise was accepted, and except it
+may be in name, no Union attached to the Federation of Labor remains at
+work. The question, of course, suggests itself: What was the reason? Minor
+reasons may be found, no doubt, to account for failure where success was
+so confidently expected; but there can be little doubt that the real cause
+is the policy pursued by the Legislature and people of New Zealand for the
+last twenty years. Syndicalism, like all plans for the over turn, or
+reform, as their advocates would perhaps prefer to call it, of existing
+institutions, depends for success on the existence of wrongs by which part
+of the people is impoverished, while another, and very small part, has
+more than enough. The workers of our own race, at any rate, have enough
+common-sense to understand, at least when they are not hysterically
+excited, that imaginary wrongs are not a sufficient reason for great
+sacrifices. New Zealand's legislation has not created an ideal society, it
+is true; but for twenty years it has proceeded step by step in the
+direction of righting the wrongs of the past, and giving opportunity to
+that part of its people that needed it most, on the single condition that
+they would use it, and respect the rights of others. To such a people,
+increasing steadily, year by year, in all that makes for well-being, the
+wild denunciations, and if possible wilder promises, of paid agitators can
+have little attraction. It may be possible by careful generalship to stir
+a small section of such a people to the hysterical excitement of an
+industrial war, but the mass of the people would be certain to resent it,
+and the movement will be doomed to a speedy collapse.
+
+Other countries have been less enlightened and less fortunate than New
+Zealand in their legislation, and perhaps still less fortunate in the
+administration of the laws passed for the betterment of the masses of
+their people. They have done little to convince the great majority that
+they are aware of the wrongs that have been done that majority in the
+supposed interest of the small class of the over rich. They have not
+provided opportunity for those who hitherto have had none, nor have they
+even provided a reasonable alternative for industrial warfare. Had they
+done these things in the past, or were they even to begin honestly to
+provide for them in the future, they might confidently expect that the
+reign of industrial warfare, which exasperates their people, and retards
+the prosperity of their nation, would be as easily and effectually
+suppressed as the experiment of the Syndicalists has just been in New
+Zealand.
+
+
+
+
+LABOR: "TRUE DEMAND" AND IMMIGRANT SUPPLY
+
+A RESTATEMENT OF THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF IMMIGRATION POLICY
+
+
+Recent historians and economists have been showing that it was anything
+but pure and unadulterated sense of brotherhood that prompted many of our
+forefathers' fine speeches about opening the doors of America to the
+down-trodden and oppressed of Europe. Emerson, fifty years ago, in his
+essay on _Fate_ noted the current exploitation of the immigrant: "The
+German and Irish millions, like the Negro, have a great deal of guano in
+their destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic, and carted over
+America, to ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to lie down
+prematurely to make a spot of green grass on the prairie." Indeed it would
+not be hard to show that there was always a real or potential social
+surplus back of our national hospitality to the alien.
+
+The process began long before our great nineteenth century era of
+industrial expansion. Colonial policies with regard to the immigrant
+varied according to latitude and longitude. Most of the New England
+colonies viewed the foreigner with distrust as a menace to Puritan
+theocracy. New York, Pennsylvania, and some of the Southern colonies were
+much more hospitable, for economic reasons. That this hospitality
+sometimes resembled that of the spider to the fly is evident from
+observations of contemporary writers. That it included whites as well as
+negroes in its ambiguous welcome is equally evident.
+
+John Woolman writes in his _Journal_ (1741-2): "In a few months after I
+came here my master bought several Scotchmen as servants, from on board a
+vessel, and brought them to Mount Holly to sell." Isaac Weld, traveling in
+the United States in the last decade of the eighteenth century, noted
+methods of securing aliens in the town of York, Pennsylvania: "The
+inhabitants of this town as well as those of Lancaster and the adjoining
+country consist principally of Dutch and German immigrants and their
+descendants. Great numbers of these people emigrate to America every year
+and the importation of them forms a very considerable branch of commerce.
+They are for the most part brought from the Hanse towns and Rotterdam. The
+vessels sail thither from America laden with different kinds of produce
+and the masters of them on arriving there entice as many of these people
+on board as they can persuade to leave their native country, without
+demanding any money for their passages. When the vessel arrives in America
+an advertisement is put into the paper mentioning the different kinds of
+people on board whether smiths, tailors, carpenters, laborers, or the like
+and the people that are in want of such men flock down to the vessel.
+These poor Germans are then sold to the highest bidder and the captain of
+the vessel or the ship holder puts the money into his pocket."
+
+These may be, it is true, extreme cases of the economic motive for
+immigration. But they are quite in line with eighteenth century
+Mercantilist economic philosophy. Josiah Tucker, for example, in his
+_Essay on Trade_, 1753, urges the encouragement of immigration from
+France, and cites the value of Huguenot refugees. "Great was the outcry
+against them at their first coming. Poor England would be ruined!
+Foreigners encouraged! And our own people starving! This was the popular
+cry of the times. But the looms in Spittle-Fields, and the shops on
+Ludgate-Hill have at last sufficiently taught us another lesson ... these
+_Hugonots_ have ... partly got, and partly saved, in the space of fifty
+years, a balance in our favour of, at least, fifty millions sterling....
+And as England and France are rivals to each other, and competitors in
+almost all branches of commerce, every single manufacturer so coming over,
+would be our gain, and a double loss to France."
+
+The obverse side of the case appears in British hindrances to the free
+emigration of artisans during the eighteenth and early nineteenth
+centuries. Laws forbade any British subject who had been employed in the
+manufacture of wool, cotton, iron, brass, steel, or any other metal, of
+clocks, watches, etc., or who might come under the general denomination of
+artificer or manufacturer, to leave his own country for the purpose of
+residing in a foreign country out of the dominion of His Britannic
+Majesty. Recall the difficulty early American manufacturers encountered in
+introducing new English improvements in cotton manufacture; a virtual
+embargo was laid upon the migration of either men or machinery. Recall,
+too, an expression of American resentment in our Declaration of
+Independence at this English attitude: "He has endeavored to prevent the
+population of these states; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for
+naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage
+migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of
+lands."
+
+On the whole, the economic motive seems to have been uppermost in the
+minds of both those who fostered and those who opposed foreign immigration
+into the United States, up to, say, 1870. Likewise in perhaps more than
+ninety-nine of every hundred cases the economic motive holds in the mind
+of the present day immigrant, or his protagonist. Escape from political
+tyranny or religious persecution, at least since the revolutionary period
+of 1848, has operated only as a secondary motive. The industrial impulse
+is all the more striking in the so-called "new immigration" from the
+Mediterranean and South-Eastern Europe. The temporary migrant laborer, the
+"bird of passage," roams about seeking his fortunes in much the same
+spirit that certain Middle Age Knights or Crusades camp followers sought
+theirs. This is in no way to his discredit. It is simply a fact that we
+are to reckon with when called upon to work out a satisfactory immigration
+policy. At least its recognition would eliminate a good deal of wordy
+sentimentality from discussions of the immigration problem.
+
+Professor Fairchild discovered that three things attract the Greek
+immigrant. First and foremost, financial opportunities. Second, corollary
+to the first, citizenship papers which will enable him to return to
+Turkey, there to carry on business under the greater protection which such
+citizenship confers. There is a hint here to the effect that mere
+naturalization does not mean assimilation and permanent acceptance of the
+status and responsibilities of American citizenship. Third, enjoyment of
+certain more or less factitious "comforts of civilization."
+
+But the Greeks are by no means untypical. The conclusion of the
+Immigration Commission as to the causes of the new immigration is that
+while "social conditions affect the situation in some countries, the
+present immigration from Europe to the United States is in the largest
+measure due to economic causes. It should be stated, however, that
+emigration from Europe is not now an absolute economic necessity, and as a
+rule those who emigrate to the United States are impelled by a desire for
+betterment rather than by the necessity of escaping intolerable
+conditions. This fact should largely modify the natural incentive to treat
+the immigration movement from the standpoint of sentiment, and permit its
+consideration primarily as an economic problem. In other words, the
+economic and social welfare of the United States should now ordinarily be
+the determining factor in the immigration policy of the Government."
+
+This delimitation of the immigration problem to its economic aspects led
+the Immigration Commission to recommend a somewhat restrictionist policy.
+That they were not without warrant in so delimiting it is evident from the
+utterances of such ardent opponents of restriction as Dr. Peter Roberts
+and Max J. Kohler. The latter, writing in the _American Economic Review_
+(March, 1912) said: "In fact, the immigrant laborer is indispensable to
+our economic progress today, and we can rely upon no one else to build our
+houses, railroads and subways, and mine our ores for us." Dr. Roberts'
+plea is almost identical.
+
+What a glaring misconception of the whole economic and social problem is
+here involved will appear if we add a clause or two to Mr. Kohler's
+sentence. He should have said: "We can rely upon no one else to build our
+houses, railroads and subways, and mine our ores for us _at $455 a year;
+for workers of native birth but of foreign fathers would cost us $566, and
+native born White Americans $666 a year_." (See Abstracts of Rep. of
+Immigr. Comm. vol. i., pp. 405-8.) These are the facts. This is the social
+situation as it should be stated if a candid discussion of the problem is
+sought.
+
+Now what are the economic arguments for restricting somewhat the tide of
+immigration? Several studies of standards of living among American
+workingmen within the past ten years have shown that a large proportion of
+American wage earners fall below a minimum efficiency standard. Studies of
+American wages indicate that only a little over ten per cent of American
+wage earners receive enough to maintain an average family in full social
+efficiency. The average daily wage for the year ranges from $1.50 to $2.
+One-half of all American wage earners get less than $600 a year;
+three-quarters less than $750; only one-tenth more than $1,000.
+
+Take in connection with these wage figures the statistics for
+unemployment. The proportion of idleness to work ranges from one-third in
+mining industries to one-fifth in other industries. In Massachusetts,
+1908, manufacturers were unemployed twelve per cent of the working time.
+Professor Streightoff estimated three years ago that the average annual
+loss in this country through unemployment is 1,000,000 years of working
+time. Perhaps one-tenth of working time might be taken as a very
+conservative general average loss. But the worst feature of the whole
+problem is that, in certain industries at least, the tendency to seasonal
+unemployment is increasing. Ex-Commissioner Neill in his report on the
+Lawrence strike said: "... it is a fact that the tendency in many lines of
+industry, including textiles, is to become more and more seasonal and to
+build to meet maximum demands and competitive trade conditions more
+effectively. This necessarily brings it about that a large number of
+employés are required for the industry during its period of maximum
+activity who are accordingly of necessity left idle during the period of
+slackness." (Senate Document 870, 62d Cong., 2d sess., 1912.)
+
+If we recall still further that the casual laborer, who suffers most from
+seasonal unemployment, is the chief stumbling block in the way to a
+solution of the problem of poverty; that he furnishes the human power in
+"sweated trades:" that immigrants form the majority of unskilled and
+sweated laborers; if we remember that there is not a shred of evidence
+(except the well-meant enthusiasm of the protagonists of the immigrant) to
+show that immigration has "forced-up" the American laborer and his
+standard of living, instead of displacing him downward; if we remember
+that probably 10,000,000 of our people are in poverty, and that though the
+immigrant may not seek charity in any larger proportions than the poor of
+native stock, yet he does contribute heavily to our burden of relief for
+dependents and defectives: we are justified in assuming that an analysis
+of the causes of poverty confirms the evidence from studies of wages and
+standards of living as to the depressing effect of the new immigration, in
+particular, upon working conditions for the American laborer.
+
+Consider, too, the question of "social surplus." Several American
+economists, among them Professors Hollander, Patten and Devine, agree that
+we are creating annually in the United States a substantial social
+surplus. But it is evident from the figures of wages and standards of
+living quoted above that the American laborer is not participating as he
+might expect to participate in this economic advantage. Three factors
+conspire against him. First, we have yet no adequate machinery for
+determining exactly what the surplus is, or how to distribute it
+equitably. Mr. Babson with his "composite statistical charts" has made a
+beginning in the mathematical determination of prosperity; but it is only
+a beginning. Second, organized labor is not yet sufficiently organized nor
+sufficiently self-conscious to perceive and demand its opportunity for a
+larger share. The significant point here is that recent immigration has
+hampered and hindered the development of labor organizations, and thus
+indirectly held back the normal tendency of wages to rise. Third,
+inadequate education, particularly economic and social education. The
+adult illiterate constitutes a tremendous educational problem. Over 35 per
+cent of the "new immigration" of 1913 was illiterate, and this new
+immigration included over two-thirds of the total. Ignorance prevents the
+laborer from demanding the very education that would give him a better
+place in the economic system; it hinders the play of intelligent
+self-interest; and it actually prevents effective labor-organization,
+which is one of the surest means of labor-education. Jenks and Lauck,
+after experience with the Immigration Commission, concluded that "the fact
+that recent immigrants are usually of non-English speaking races, and
+their high degree of illiteracy, have made their absorption by the labor
+organizations very slow and expensive. In many cases, too, the conscious
+policy of the employers of mixing the races in different departments and
+divisions of labor, in order, by a diversity of tongues, to prevent
+concerted action on the part of employés, has made unionization of the
+immigrant almost impossible."
+
+For these reasons, and others, we are driven to the conclusion that future
+policies of immigration must be based on sound principles of social
+welfare and social economy, and not upon the economic advantage of certain
+special industries. Whether we want the brawn of the immigrant must be
+determined by what it will contribute to the general social surplus, and
+not by what it adds to A's railroads or B's iron mines.
+
+We are told that the three classes of our population demanding
+unrestricted immigration are large employers of unskilled labor,
+transportation companies, and revolutionary anarchists. Since this is by
+definition an economic and not a philosophical question, we may neglect
+the third class. To the other two classes should be directed certain brief
+tests of economic good faith. Take at its face value their claim that
+European brawn by the ship-load is indispensable to American industry. It
+is becoming an accepted maxim that industry should bear its own charges,
+should pay its own way. American industry has long fought the
+contract-labor exclusion feature in current immigration law. Suppose we
+frankly admit that it is much better for the immigrant to come over here
+to a definite job than to wander about for weeks after he arrives, a prey
+to immigrant banks, fake employment agents, and other sharks. Suppose,
+accordingly, we repeal the laws against contract-labor. Let the employer
+contract for as many foreign laborers as he likes or says he needs. But
+make the contractor liable for support and deportation costs if the
+laborers become public charges. Also require him to assume the cost of
+unemployment insurance. Exact a bond for the faithful performance of these
+terms, guaranteed in somewhat the same way that National Banks are
+safeguarded. Immigration authorities now commonly require a bond from the
+relatives of admitted aliens who seem likely to become public charges, but
+who are allowed to enter with the benefit of the doubt. Customs and
+revenue rules admit dutiable goods in bond. Hence the principle of the
+bond is perfectly familiar, and its application to contract-immigrants
+would be in no sense an untried or dangerous experiment. It would
+establish no new precedent: for precedents, and successful ones, are
+already established, accepted and approved. It would be understood that
+all admissions of aliens can be only provisional, with no time limit on
+deportation. It would be understood further--and the plan would work
+automatically if the contractor were made such a deeply interested
+party--that intending immigrants must be rigidly inspected, that they be
+required to produce consular certificates of clean police record, freedom
+from chronic disease, insanity, etc.
+
+The result of such a scheme would probably cut away entirely
+contract-labor; for it would not longer pay. But this does not mean
+barring the gate to all foreign labor. As an aid to the employer and to
+our own native workingman, we must, sooner or later, and the sooner the
+better, establish a chain of labor bureaus throughout the Union. The
+system must be placed under Federal direction, largely because the
+Department of Labor would be charged, _ex officio_, with ascertaining the
+"true demand" for immigrant labor, and it could only accomplish this end
+effectively through such an employment clearing system. This true demand
+would, of course, be based not only upon mere numerical excess of calls
+for labor over demands for jobs, but would also take into account the
+nature of the work, working conditions, and above all the prevailing level
+of wages. According to this true demand the Department would adjust a
+sliding scale of admissions of immigrant laborers.
+
+Much might be said in favor of an absolute embargo upon all immigration
+until such a body as the Industrial Relations Commission has time to make
+an authoritative economic survey of the whole country, or until the
+Unemployment Research Commission recently called for by Miss Kellor could
+make the three years' study contemplated by her as the only way out of the
+unemployment morass. Twenty years ago men of the type of General Walker
+frankly urged that the immigration gates be closed for a flat period of
+ten years or so. But the sliding scale plan contemplates no such radical
+step. Indeed it is radical in no sense whatever. The proposed immigration
+act now before Congress (The Burnett Bill, H.R. 6060) paves the way for
+it, and provides a working principle, which apparently is accepted on all
+sides. Section 3 includes this clause: "That skilled labor, if otherwise
+admissible, may be imported if labor of like kind unemployed can not be
+found in this country, and the question of the necessity of importing such
+skilled labor in any particular instance may be determined by the
+Secretary of Labor...." A really workable test for immigration, superior
+by far to the literacy test or any other so far suggested, might easily be
+developed by simply enlarging the scope of this clause, making it include
+unskilled as well as skilled labor. No machinery other than that
+contemplated by the present act would be required.
+
+The immigration problem can never be satisfactorily handled until we fix
+upon some such means of determining just what the economic need is. There
+is no danger of hindering legitimate industrial expansion in times of
+sudden business prosperity: for the transportation companies may be safely
+trusted to supply in three or four weeks aliens enough to fill all the
+gaps in the industrial army. Neither would injustice be done to the
+immigrant himself. On the contrary, he would be assured of a job and
+respectful consideration when he arrived. The "dago" or the "bohunk" would
+acquire a new dignity and a more enviable status than he now occupies. The
+selective process thus involved would much improve the quality of the
+immigrant admitted, and would incidentally render assimilation of the
+foreigner all the easier.
+
+The precise details of selection, and the machinery, are mere matters of
+detail. But the consular service, as long ago suggested by Catlin,
+Schuyler and others, seems to offer the proper base of operations. We have
+already recommended charging consuls with viséing certificates from
+police, medical, and poor-relief authorities. We should further require
+that declarations of intention to migrate be published (somewhat as
+marriage banns are published) at local administrative centers
+(arrondissement, Bezirk, etc.) and at United States consular offices; the
+consular declaration should be obligatory; perhaps the other might be
+optional, though in all probability foreign governments would coöperate in
+demanding it. These validated declarations of intention should be filed in
+the consular offices. When notice comes from the United States Department
+of Labor that so many laborers will be admitted from such and such
+district, the declarations are to be taken up in the order of their
+filing, and the proper number of persons certified for admission. The
+apportionment of admissions from each country might be calculated on a
+basis of its population, also upon the nature of the employment offered,
+and upon the desirability of the alien himself, his general
+assimilability, his willingness to become naturalized, to adopt the
+English language and the American standard of living among efficient
+workers, etc.,--all as proved by past experience with his countrymen. This
+plan, in so far as it provides for a sliding scale of admissions, is in
+line with that proposed by Professor Gulick. He advocates making all
+nations eligible for admission and citizenship, but would admit them only
+in proportion as they can be readily assimilated. This would admit
+annually, say, five per cent of those already naturalized, with their
+American children. The principle here seems to be that we can assimilate
+from any land in, and only in, proportion to the number already
+assimilated from that land. But the difficulty of applying such a test
+lies in the complexity of the assimilative process. No measure yet exists
+for assimilation. Anthropologists are convinced that various strains in
+the populations, for example of France, or Great Britain, which have been
+dwelling together for centuries, are not by any means assimilated. Mere
+naturalization is not a sufficient test of assimilation; it is only the
+expression of a desire to be assimilated; and it may only be a device for
+the promotion of business success here or in foreign parts, as we have
+already indicated in the case of the Greeks. Hence in working out the
+basis of a sound immigration policy, it would seem more practicable to
+consider first the question of economic utilization rather than
+assimilation. This, of course, does not exclude from the Secretary of
+Labor's judgment the category of assimilability as one of the factors in
+determining the apportionment of admissions.
+
+It will appear that the plan outlined above limits immigration policy to
+purely national and economic considerations. But it is, as matters now
+stand, a national question. And it must remain so for some time to come,
+even if we are reproached with a narrow Mercantilist economics. The
+admission of aliens is not yet a fundamental international _right_, or
+_duty_; it is only an example of _comity_ within the family of nations.
+And the matter must rest in this state of limbo until we develop some
+institution or method of registering our sentiments of internationalism,
+and especially of determining _international surplus_. As it is idle to
+talk or dream of abolishing poverty until at least the concept of social
+or national surplus is pretty clearly fixed and its realization either
+actually at hand or fairly imminent, just so is it vain to expect an
+international adjustment of the immigration problem on economic grounds
+until the existence of an international surplus is demonstrated, and the
+methods of apportioning it worked out.
+
+How soon we may expect these things it is not our province to predict. It
+is too early to pass final judgment on Professor Patten's dictum that
+inter-racial coöperation is impossible without integration, and that races
+must therefore stand in hostile relations or finally unite. But it is
+perfectly apparent that we have a long way to travel before the path to
+integration is cleared. Such assemblages as the First Universal Races
+Congress which met in London in 1911 can do much to prepare the way. But
+it must not be forgotten that the German representative at that Congress
+pleaded for the maintenance of strict racial and national boundaries, and
+summed up his plea in the rather ominous sentence: "The brotherhood of man
+is a good thing, but the struggle for life is a far better one." Meanwhile
+we need not anticipate serious international difficulties in the way of
+the sliding-scale plan; for foreign governments are watching the tide of
+immigration with mixed feelings. They welcome the two or three hundred
+million dollars sent home annually by alien residents in the United
+States. But they also resent the dislocations of industry, the fallow
+fields, the dodging of military service, and the disturbance of the level
+of prices which such wholesale emigrations inflict upon the mother
+country.
+
+Since the protagonists of unrestricted immigration have taken largely an
+economic line of argument, it seemed desirable to accept their terms, and
+meet them on their own ground. But I should not wish to be misunderstood
+as limiting the immigration question to its economic phases. When we have
+said that the _latifondisti_ of Southern Italy are in despair at the
+scarcity of laborers to work their lands at starvation wages, and that the
+railway builders and mine operators of America are equally anxious to have
+those selfsame South Italian laborers for their own exploitive
+enterprises, we have told a bare half of the tale. There remain all those
+cultural, educational, political, religious and domestic variations and
+adjustments which make up the general problem of assimilability of the
+alien and of the strength of our own national digestion. America had a
+giant's undiscriminating appetite in the great days of expansion from 1850
+to 1890. But there are many signs, economic and other, that we can no
+longer play Gargantua and continue a healthy nation. An unwise engineer
+sometimes over-stokes his boilers, and courts disaster. Is it not equally
+possible that national welfare may suffer from an over-dose of human fuel
+in our industry?
+
+
+
+
+THE WAY TO FLATLAND
+
+
+"The next great task of preventive medicine is the inauguration of
+universal periodic medical examinations as an indispensable means for the
+control of all diseases, whether arising from injurious personal habits,
+from congenital or constitutional weakness, or from social and vocational
+conditions." That this declaration by the Commissioner of Health of the
+city of New York is not the mere expression of an individual opinion,
+there is abundant evidence. And no one who has watched the growth of other
+movements towards such regulation of life as only a few years ago would
+have seemed wholly outside the domain of practical probability can doubt
+that the "Life Extension" movement, as thus outlined, will rapidly grow
+into prominence. Nor is there much room for doubt that, whether explicitly
+contemplated at present or not, compulsion as well as universality is
+tacitly implied in the movement.
+
+I say that the movement is sure to grow into prominence, that it is a
+thing which must be seriously reckoned with; I do not say that it will
+march straight on to victory, or even that it is sure to prevail in the
+end. It is instructive, in this regard, to hark back to a recent
+experience in a more special, but yet an extremely important, domain.
+Several years ago a report on university efficiency was issued under the
+auspices--though, it should be added, without the official endorsement--of
+the Carnegie Foundation. The central feature of this report lay in its
+advocacy of the application to universities of those principles of system
+and of standardization which have been successfully applied on a large
+scale to the promotion of industrial efficiency, and are generally
+referred to by the catch-word, "scientific management." In spite of the
+merits of the report in certain matters of detail, and of the high
+standing of the expert who wrote it in his own department of industrial
+engineering, the report evoked an almost universal chorus of contemptuous
+rejection not only in university circles, but also from those organs of
+public opinion which have any claim to be regarded as enlightened judges
+in questions of education and culture. The thing seemed to have been
+laughed out of court. And yet it turned out that a year or two afterwards
+a full-fledged scheme for carrying out some of the crudest and most
+objectionable features of this "efficiency" program was presented to the
+professors of Harvard University, apparently with the expectation that
+they would fall in with its requirements without hesitation or protest.
+For some days there seemed to be real danger that this would actually
+happen. It turned out to be a false alarm; the faculty of the foremost of
+American universities were guilty of no such supineness. The project was
+ignominiously shelved, with some sort of explanation that the springing of
+it on the professors was due to an error or misunderstanding. But that the
+attempt should have been made, and in a manner that argued so total a lack
+of any sense of its grossness and crudity, is a significant warning of the
+extent to which the notions underlying it have fastened upon the general
+mind.
+
+The story of the eugenics movement in this country affords a striking
+illustration at once of the almost startling rapidity with which
+innovating ideas as to the regulation of life gain acceptance, and of the
+fact that this rapidity is by no means conclusive proof that their
+progress will be continuous. The one thing clear is that there is a large,
+active, and influential element in the population that is extremely
+hospitable to such ideas, and manifests a naïve, an almost childish,
+readiness to put them into immediate execution. Since, in the nature of
+things, this element is lively and active--since, too, what is novel and
+in motion is more interesting than what is old and at rest--at first there
+is almost sure to be produced a deceptive appearance that the new thing is
+sweeping everything before it. Just now there is evidently a lull in the
+onward march of legislative eugenics. This is sufficient proof of the
+conservatism of the people as a whole; we may be quite sure that anything
+beyond a very restricted application of eugenical notions will take a long
+time to get itself established in our laws or even in our customs.
+Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that even the more
+extreme forms of eugenical doctrine are not forces to be reckoned with as
+affecting practical possibilities of a not distant future. Though no
+results may appear on the surface, the leaven is working. It is consonant
+with tendencies which in so many directions are becoming more and more
+dominant. So long as those tendencies continue in anything like their
+present strength, there can be little doubt that the idea of control in
+the direction of eugenics, like that of the regulation of human life in
+other fundamental respects, will continue to make headway, and may at any
+time become one of the central issues of the day.
+
+To adduce prohibition as an illustration of this same character in the
+thought and the tendencies of our immediate time may seem like forcing the
+point. It is true, it may be said, that there has been within the past few
+years a rapid spread of prohibition in almost every part of the country;
+but the thing itself is sixty years old, has had its periods of advance
+and recession, and is now, in the fullness of time, reaping the fruits of
+two generations of agitation, investigation, and education. But to say
+this is to overlook the distinctive feature of the present situation
+regarding prohibition in the United States. A Constitutional amendment
+providing for the complete prohibition of the sale of liquor throughout
+the Union is pending in Congress. A year ago--probably six months
+ago--there was hardly a human being in the United States, other than those
+in the councils of the Anti-saloon League, who had so much as thought of
+national prohibition as a question of present-day practical politics.
+Suddenly it is announced that there is a distinct possibility of a
+prohibition amendment being passed by Congress in the near future; and one
+of the foremost representatives of the Anti-saloon League states, and with
+good show of reason, that if the amendment be passed by Congress, its
+ratification by the Legislatures of three fourths of the States can be
+only a matter of time. What the probabilities actually are, I do not
+undertake to say; neither am I concerned at this moment with the merits of
+the issue itself. What I _am_ concerned with is the simple fact that in
+this situation, brought upon the country with dramatic suddenness, nobody
+seems to have been in the least startled, or so much as disturbed in his
+equanimity. There will of course be a great struggle over the question,
+sooner or later. But neither in Congress nor in the press has there as yet
+been any sign of such an assertion of the claims of personal liberty as,
+at any time previous to the past ten years, would have been sure to be
+made in such a situation. This collective silence, on an issue affecting
+so intimately the lives, the habits, the traditions of millions of people,
+is, in my judgment, by far the most impressive proof of the degree in
+which the public mind has grown accustomed to the inroads of regulation
+upon the domain of individuality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A number of years ago, when the mathematical concept of space of more than
+three dimensions was attracting great popular interest, an ingenious
+writer undertook to make the idea intelligible to "the general" by
+picturing the state of mind in regard to three dimensions of a race of
+beings whose life and whose sensual experience was limited to space of two
+dimensions. He gave his little book the title "Flatland," and it gained
+wide attention. In his Commencement address at Columbia last year,
+President Butler had the happy thought of applying the term in the
+characterization of certain aspects of the intellectual and political life
+of our time. He was speaking particularly of that absorption in the
+immediate problems of the day which makes almost impossible a true study
+and contemplation of the lasting concerns of mankind as embodied in
+history and literature. "Every ruling tendency," he said, "is to make life
+a Flatland, an affair of two dimensions, with no depth, no background, no
+permanent root." That this is a literal truth probably neither Dr. Butler
+nor anyone else would contend; but it hits off with great force and with
+substantial accuracy the prevailing character of thought in the circles
+most active and most influential in almost every department of human
+activity at the present time. And the tendency which President Butler
+describes as arising out of our absorption in current problems is still
+more manifest in the spirit of our actual dealings with those problems
+themselves. On every hand we find a surprising readiness to accept views
+which explicitly tend to take out of life that which gives it depth and
+significance and richness. Each one of the four movements we have
+mentioned affords an illustration of this: in following any one of them we
+travel straight toward Flatland. They differ very much, one from another;
+they have very different degrees and kinds of justification; it may be
+difficult in the case of some of them to strike a balance between the gain
+and the loss. The remarkable thing--the ominous thing, if we are to
+suppose that the present tone of thought will long persist--is that the
+loss involved in the flattening of life, as such, apparently almost wholly
+fails to get consideration. I say apparently, because there is, no doubt,
+a deep and strong undercurrent of opposition which, sooner or later, will
+manifest itself; in speaking of "ruling tendencies" we are apt to mean
+merely the tendencies that are most in evidence. But after all, it is to
+these that criticism of contemporary life and thought must, of necessity,
+be chiefly directed.
+
+As I have already indicated, the attack on individuality and personal
+dignity in the universities was met in a spirit that is highly gratifying,
+and which is quite out of keeping with the tendency that I am discussing
+and deploring. Yet it is doubtful whether, outside the circle of the
+universities themselves, and of those individuals who are thoroughly
+imbued with the university spirit, there is any true realization of what
+it is that constituted the head and front of that offending. If some
+bureau of research were to present a formidable array of figures showing
+that the "output" of professorial work could be increased by so and so
+many per cent. through the adoption of some definitely formulated system
+of "scientific management," it is by no means certain that the scheme
+would not receive powerful support in the highest quarters of efficiency
+propaganda. We should be told just how many millions of dollars a year we
+are spending on university education, and just how many of these millions
+go needlessly to waste. Even the opponents of the "reform" would probably
+find themselves compelled to use as their most powerful argument this and
+that example of great practical results which have flowed from letting men
+of genius go their own way. It would be pointed out that many an
+investigation which, to the authorities of the time, appeared wholly
+unpromising, turned out to be of cardinal value. We should be warned that
+what we gain in a thousand cases through time-clock and card-catalogue
+methods, might be lost ten times over through the shackling of the
+initiative of a single man of unrecognized genius. And all this would be
+very much to the purpose; but it is not upon any such special pleading
+that the case ought to be made to rest. The loss that would be suffered
+transcends all these concrete and definable instances of it. It would be
+pervasive, fundamental, immeasurable. Grievous as might be the injury
+caused by the prevention of specific achievements of exceptional
+importance, this would be as nothing in comparison with the intellectual
+and spiritual loss entailed by the lowering of the human level, the
+devitalizing of the intellectual atmosphere, which must inevitably follow
+upon the application of factory methods to university life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The case of the eugenics propaganda is far more complex. In its origin,
+and doubtless in some of its present manifestations, it may lay claim to
+being directed toward aims which are particularly concerned with the
+higher interests of life. The author of "Hereditary Genius" certainly
+could not be accused of indifference to the part played in the past, or to
+be played in the future, by exceptional minds and characters; nor is it
+necessary to charge any of the present promoters of the propaganda with
+explicit failure to appreciate the importance of such minds and
+characters. The criticism is often made, from this standpoint, that the
+hard-and-fast rules which the eugenists propose would, in point of fact,
+have put under the ban some of the most illustrious names in the annals of
+mankind--men whose genius was accompanied with some of the very traits
+which they hold should most positively be prevented from appearing. But,
+however weighty this objection to the methods of eugenics may be, it is to
+be looked upon rather as an item on the debit side of the reckoning than
+as marking an ingrained defect, a fault at the very heart of the matter.
+The eugenists may well challenge those who urge merely this kind of
+objection to show that the losses thus pointed out are great enough to
+offset the gains, in the very same direction, which they regard their
+program as promising. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, they can at
+least set up the contention that, as a mere affair of quantity, genius
+will do better under their system than without it.
+
+What brings the eugenics movement into the Flatland category is not its
+attitude toward the question of genius, or perhaps even of singularity,
+but its attitude toward the life of mankind as a whole--if indeed it can
+be said to have any attitude toward the life of mankind as a whole. The
+profound elements of that life seem not to come at all within the range of
+its contemplation. Of course this does not apply to everything that comes
+from the eugenics camp, nor to every person that calls himself a eugenist.
+But on the other hand it is by no means only of the crude projects of
+half-educated reformers, or the outgivings of the prophets of our popular
+magazines, that it _is_ true. The agitation has derived much of its
+impetus, directly or indirectly, from the teachings of men of high
+scientific eminence who have attacked the question without any apparent
+realization of its deeper bearings on the whole character of human life.
+This influence often comes in the shape of exhortations, or suggestions,
+addressed to the public at a time when attention is centered upon some
+conspicuous crime or some particular phase of evil in the community;
+sweeping and radical regulation of the right of parenthood being urged as
+necessary for the prevention of all such distressing phenomena. Thus,
+after the attempted assassination of Mayor Gaynor, there was much talk of
+a "national campaign for mental hygiene," which should have the effect of
+"preventing Czolgoszes and Schranks." Its program was thus indicated by
+one of the foremost professors of medicine in the United States:
+
+    Provision must be made for the birth of children whose brains
+    shall, so far as possible, be innately of good quality; this means
+    the denial of the privilege of parenthood to those likely to
+    transmit bad nervous systems to their offsprings.
+
+What the carrying out of such a programme would mean to mankind at large,
+how profoundly it would modify those ideas about life, those standards of
+human dignity and human rights, which are so fundamental and so pervasive
+that they are taken for granted without express thought in every act and
+every feeling of all normal men and women--this does not seem ever to
+trouble the mind of the devotee of universal regulation. He sees the
+possibility of effecting a certain definite and measurable improvement;
+that the means by which this is accomplished must fatally impair those
+elemental conceptions of human life whose value transcends all
+measurement, he has not the insight or the imagination to recognize. The
+distinctions of social class, of wealth, of public honor, leave untouched
+the equality of men in the fundamentals of human dignity. They do not go
+to the vitals of self-respect; they do not interfere with a man's sense of
+what is due to him, and what is due from him, in the primary relations of
+life. If nature has been unkind to him in his physical or mental
+endowments, he does not therefore feel in the least disqualified, as
+regards his family, his friends, his neighbors, the stranger with whom he
+chances to come into contact, from receiving the same kind of
+consideration, in the essentials of human intercourse, that is accorded to
+those who are more fortunate; nor does he feel in any respect absolved
+from the duty of playing the full part of a man. Under the régime of
+medical classification--and the "mental hygiene" programme can mean
+nothing less than that--all this would disappear. Some men would be men,
+others would be something less. It is true that, so far as regards the
+imbecile, the insane, and the criminal, such a state of things obtains as
+it is; but this stands wholly apart from the general life of the race, and
+has no influence whatever on the habitual feelings and experiences of
+human beings. The normal life of mankind is shot through and through with
+the idea that a man's a man; all that is highest in feeling and conduct is
+closely bound up with it. Lessen its sway over our feelings and thoughts
+and instincts, and how much benefit in the shape of "preventing Czolgoszes
+and Schranks" would be required to compensate for the loss in nobleness,
+in depth, which human life would suffer?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The prohibition movement belongs, in the main, to a wholly different order
+of things. The fight against the evils of drink, as it has been carried on
+for a century or more, has been animated by a moral fervor which classes
+it rather with the fight against slavery, or with the great revivals of
+religion, than with those movements which owe their origin to a
+calculating and cold-blooded perfectionism. Its leaders have been fired
+with the ardor of a war directed against a devastating monster, to whose
+ravages was to be ascribed a large part of the misery and wickedness that
+afflict mankind. It is true that the economic and physiological aspects of
+the drink question were not ignored; the total-abstinence men were glad
+enough to have this second string to their bow. But the real fight was not
+against alcohol as one of many things concerning which the habits of men
+are more or less unwise; it was a fight against the Demon Rum, the ally of
+all the powers of darkness. The plea of the moderate drinker was rejected
+with scorn, not because there was any objection to moderate drinking in
+itself, but because total abstinence was the only true preventive of
+drunkenness, and drunkenness must be stamped out if mankind was to be
+saved. The moderate drinker was censured not because he was wasting his
+money, or failing to "conserve his efficiency," but because for the sake
+of a trivial self-indulgence he was giving countenance to a practice which
+was consigning millions of his fellow men to wretchedness in this world
+and to everlasting damnation in the next.
+
+Now this remarkable thing about the present extraordinary manifestation of
+growth and strength in the prohibition movement is that it is not in the
+least due to a strengthening of this sentiment. On the contrary, it is
+safe to say that feeling about drunkenness, about the drink evil in the
+sense in which it was understood a generation ago, is far less intense
+than it was then. The prohibition movement in its present stage is not the
+old prohibition movement advancing to triumph through the onward march of
+its proselyting zeal; of true prohibitionist zealots the number is
+probably less, in proportion to the population, than it was forty years
+ago. Its great accession of strength has come from the growth of that
+order of ideas which is common to all the "efficiency" movements of the
+time. And that growth helps it in two ways. On the one hand, to the little
+army of crusaders against the Demon Rum there has come the accession of a
+host of men who are not thinking about demons at all, but who calmly hold
+that the world would be better off without drinking, and that this is an
+all-sufficient reason for prohibiting it. And on the other hand, millions
+of persons who, in former days would have cried out against this way of
+improving the world--against the impairment of personal liberty and the
+sacrifice of social enjoyment and social variety--have no longer the
+courage of their convictions. The temper of the time is unfavorable to the
+assertion of the value of things so incapable of numerical measurement.
+Against the heavy battalions led by the statisticians, and the
+experimental psychologists, and the efficiency experts, what chance is
+there for successful resistance? On the opposing side can be rallied only
+such mere irregulars as are willing to fight for airy nothings--for the
+zest and colorfulness of life, for sociability and good fellowship, for
+preserving to each man access to those resources of relaxation and
+refreshment which, without injury to others, he finds conducive to his own
+happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that, in taking up these various movements,
+no attempt has been made at anything like comprehensive discussion of
+their merits. Whatever may be the balance between good and ill in any of
+them, they all have in common one tendency that bodes danger to the
+highest and most permanent interests of mankind; and it is with this alone
+that I am concerned. What that tendency is has, I trust, been made
+sufficiently clear; but it will perhaps be brought out more distinctly by
+a consideration of the "Life Extension" propaganda more detailed and
+specific than that given to the other three.
+
+Conspicuous in the literature of this propaganda is the appeal to standard
+modern practice in regard to machinery. "Those to whom the care of
+delicate mechanical apparatus is entrusted," says the New York
+Commissioner of Health, "do not wait until a breakdown occurs, but inspect
+and examine the apparatus minutely, at regular intervals, and thus detect
+the first signs of damage." "This principle of periodic inspection," says
+the prospectus of the Life Extension Institute, "has for many years been
+applied to almost every kind of machinery, except the most marvelous and
+complex of all,--the human body." To find fault with the drawing of this
+comparison, with the utilization of this analogy, would be foolish. That
+many persons would be greatly benefited by submitting to these inspections
+is certain; it is not impossible that they are desirable for most persons.
+And the analogy of the inspection of machinery serves excellently the
+purpose of suggesting such desirability. What is objectionable about its
+use by the Life Extension propagandists is their evident complacent
+satisfaction with the analogy as complete and conclusive. Yet nothing is
+more certain than that, even from the strictly medical standpoint, it
+ignores an essential distinction between the case of the man and the case
+of the machine. The machine is affected only by the measures that may be
+taken in consequence of the knowledge arising from the inspection; the man
+is affected by that knowledge itself. Whether the possible physical harm
+that may come to a man from having his mind disturbed by solicitude about
+his health is important or unimportant in comparison with the good that is
+likely to be done him by the following of the precautions or remedies
+prescribed, is a question of fact to which the answer varies in every
+individual case. It may be that in the great majority of cases the harm is
+insignificant in comparison with the good. However that may be, the
+question is there, and it is of itself fatal to the conclusiveness of the
+_argumentum ex machina_. That this is not a captious criticism, that it is
+based on substantial facts of life, ordinary experience sufficiently
+attests; but it may not be amiss to point to a conspicuous contemporary
+phenomenon which throws an interesting light on the matter. The Christian
+Scientists regard the _ignoring_ of disease as the primary requisite for
+health and longevity. That the Christian Science doctrine is a sheer
+absurdity, no one can hold more emphatically than the present writer; but
+it cannot be denied that in thousands of cases its acceptance has been of
+physical benefit through its subjective effect upon the believer.
+Personally, I would not purchase any benefit to my physical life at such
+sacrifice of my intellectual integrity; I mention the point only by way of
+accentuating the undisputed fact that the presence or absence of concern
+about health may have a potent influence on one's bodily welfare.
+
+Although it is a still further digression from the main purpose of this
+paper, I must permit myself a few words on another point relating to the
+strictly medical claims of the plan of "universal periodic medical
+examination." It is natural that its advocates say nothing about the
+danger of errors in diagnosis; everybody knows that this danger exists,
+but sensible men do not allow it to deter them from consulting a
+physician; in this, as in other affairs of life, they do not cry for the
+moon, but do the best they can. But it seems to be wholly overlooked by
+the advocates of the propaganda of "universal periodic examination" that
+the extent of this danger under present conditions affords no indication
+at all of what it would be under the system they contemplate. Its cardinal
+virtue, they constantly proclaim, would be the detection of the very
+slightest indication of impairment: "The task before us is to discover the
+first sign of departure from the normal physiological path, and promptly
+and effectually to apply the brake." The consequence must necessarily be
+that for one case of false alarm that occurs today there will be a score,
+or a hundred, under the new régime. For, in the first place, the
+individuals seeking advice will not be, as they now are in the main,
+selected cases in which there is some antecedent presumption that there is
+something wrong; and secondly, the examiner, bent upon the one great
+object of overlooking nothing, however slight, will give warnings which,
+whether technically justifiable or not, will in great numbers of cases
+have a wholly unjustifiable significance to the mind of the subject. Who
+shall say how many persons will thus be made to carry through life a
+burden of solicitude about their health from which, if left to their own
+devices, they would have been wholly free?
+
+But it is not my design to find fault with this scheme as a matter of
+medical benefit; if I have ventured to point out some drawbacks, it is
+only by way of showing that, even from the strictly medical standpoint the
+cult of uniformity, of standardization, of mechanical perfection, is not
+free from fault. But the great objection against that attitude of mind
+which is typified in the appeal to the analogy of machinery is far more
+vital. Our only interest in a machine is that we shall get out of it as
+much, and as exact, work as possible. Our interest in our bodies is not so
+limited. We may deliberately choose to forego the maximum of mechanical
+perfection for the sake of living our lives in a way more satisfactory to
+us than a constant care for that perfection would permit. Even the most
+ardent of health enthusiasts--unless he be an insane fanatic--draws the
+line somewhere. What he forgets is that other people prefer to draw the
+line somewhere else. They choose to run a certain amount of risk rather
+than have their health on their minds. To compel--whether by legal means
+or by social pressure--every man to take precautions concerning his own
+body which he deliberately prefers not to take; to make impossible, in
+this most intimate and personal of all human concerns, the various ways of
+acting which the infinite varieties of temperament and desire may
+dictate--this would be such an invasion of personal liberty, such a
+suppression of individuality, as would strike us all as appalling, had we
+not grown so habituated to the mechanical, the statistical, measurement of
+human values--to the Flatland view of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What gives to these movements that I have been discussing the character
+which I have been ascribing to them is not so much the specific things
+which they severally aim to accomplish, but the spirit in which they are
+carried on, and perhaps still more the spirit, or want of spirit, with
+which they are met. It is not that a balance is falsely struck between the
+benefit of the concrete, circumscribed, measurable improvement aimed at
+and the injury done to some deeper, more pervading, and quite immeasurable
+element or principle of life; it is that the balance is not struck at all.
+The subtler, the less tangible, element is simply ignored. It was not
+always so. It was not so in the last generation, or the generation before
+that. The phenomenon is one that is closely bound up with the ruling
+tendency of thought and action in all directions; it is not an accident of
+this or that particular agitation. Perhaps in no direction is it more
+convincingly manifested than in the prevailing tone of opinion, or at
+least of publicly expressed opinion, in regard to the objects and ideals
+of universities. That in the present state of the world's economic and
+social development on the one hand, and of the various sciences on the
+other, "service"--that is, service directly conducive to the general
+good--should be regarded as one of the great objects of universities, is
+altogether right; that it should be spoken of as their _only_ object,
+which is the ruling fashion, is most deplorable. The object of a
+university, said Mill, is to keep philosophy alive; yet it would go hard
+with the present generation to point to any one more truly and profoundly
+devoted to the service, the uplifting, of the masses of mankind than was
+John Stuart Mill. Were he living he would recognize, as thoroughly as the
+best efficiency man of them all, that the universities of today have
+opportunities and duties which were undreamed of half a century ago. But
+he would know, too, that in those activities which are directed to the
+promotion of practical efficiency, the university is but one of many
+agencies, and that if it were not doing the work some other means would be
+found for supplying the demand. Its paramount value he would find now, as
+he did then, in the service it renders not to the ordinary needs of the
+community but to the higher intellectual interests and strivings of
+mankind. That so few of us have the courage clearly to assert a position
+even distantly approaching this--such a position as was mere matter of
+course among university men in the last generation--is perhaps the most
+significant of all the indications of our drift toward Flatland.
+
+
+
+
+THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF PROPERTY
+
+
+I
+
+It is Hawthorne, I think, who tells us that when he was a boy he used once
+in a while to go down to the wharves in Salem, and lay his hand on the
+rail of some great East India merchantman, redolent of spices, and thus
+bring himself in actual touch with the mysterious orient. But there is
+nothing strange in this: almost anything that we can feel or see may start
+the flight of fancy, and open to us prophetic visions. This is even true
+of such dry symbols as figures, for our journalists would never publish
+statistics as they do, unless they knew that their readers liked to see
+them. Travellers from other parts of the world have often laughed at our
+fondness for revelling in the marvellous accounts of our material
+dimensions, but they should remember that people who do not have a taste
+for poetry may yet have a taste for romance, and that big figures do
+appeal to the imagination.
+
+It is true that there may be something portentous in bigness. "Tom" Reed,
+as he was affectionately called, said many wise things in a jesting way.
+At a certain crisis in our history he exclaimed: "I don't want Cuba and
+Hawaii; I've got more country now than I can love." A foreigner might
+suppose that our politicians had similarly become terror-stricken at the
+extent of our wealth and the rate at which it was growing. They may well
+give the impression that there has been created in the "money power," a
+Frankenstein monster, the control of whose murderous propensities has put
+them at their wit's end.
+
+Figures are notorious liars; they may arouse emotion if looked at in any
+light, but they must be looked at in many lights if we would get an
+emotional effect that is truly worth while. Some very large figures
+relating to Savings Banks have lately been published. The deposits in
+these banks amount to over four and two-thirds billions of dollars, and
+the number of separate accounts is about ten and two-thirds millions.
+Savings deposits in all banks are about $7,000,000,000, the number of
+accounts being 17,600,000. Probably the interest paid on the savings banks
+deposits is 160 millions of dollars a year. I confess that these figures
+give me much pleasure. I like to think that so many men have taken pains
+to guard their wives and children against miserable want; that so many
+women have to some extent made sure of their independence. It would not be
+surprising to find that twelve millions of families, possibly half the
+people of the country, were in this way protected against extreme penury.
+Viewed in this light, the growth of wealth does not seem so terrible. One
+might paraphrase Burke and say that such wealth as this loses half its
+evil through losing all its grossness. Indeed one might go further and say
+that if there were twice as much of this wealth, and every person in the
+country had an interest in it, it would lose all of its evil.
+
+To young people, this is all dry enough. They like to think of spending
+money, not of saving it. But it is not at all dry to their elders. It is
+what St. Beuve said of literary enjoyment, a "pure délice du goût et du
+coeur dans la maturité." It is a "Pleasure of the Imagination" that can be
+appreciated only by those like the old Scottish lawyer, who justified his
+penurious prudence by saying that he had shaken hands with poverty up to
+the elbow when he was young, and had no intention to renew the
+acquaintance. We have not, at least in the Northern part of our country,
+had the terrible experiences of the people of Europe, who are even now
+hiding their money in a vague apprehension of danger, inherited from
+centuries of rapine; but there are few of those who have given hostages to
+fortune who have not had many hours, and even years, of distressing
+anxiety concerning the future of their families. The greater the provision
+made against this heart-corroding care by a people, the happier should
+that people be.
+
+It seems so unselfish a luxury to revel in these comfortable statistics,
+that one is tempted to broaden his vision, and take in the four or five
+billions of assets heaped up by the six or seven millions of people who
+have insured their lives, and the one hundred and fifty or two hundred
+millions of dollars paid out yearly to lighten the distress attending the
+death of husbands and fathers of families,--to say nothing of a much
+greater sum repaid policy-holders. In many cases, happily, death causes no
+actual want; but against these cases we may offset the stupendous number
+of policies insuring against industrial accidents, possibly twenty-five
+millions of them, representing one quarter of the people of the
+country--for we may be sure that there are few payments made under these
+policies that do not actually alleviate suffering. We have here a colossal
+aggregate of altruism on the part of the policy-holders, an intangible
+national asset grander than all the material wealth which it represents;
+for the sordid element in all these savings is necessarily small. There is
+a point in the old story of the gambler on the Mississippi steamboat who
+listened attentively to the persuasive arguments of a life-insurance
+agent; he "allowed" that he was willing to bet on almost any kind of game,
+but declined to take a hand in one where he had to die to win. It is
+painful to think of the infinity of petty economies, of all the grievous
+deprivations, the positive hardships, undergone in so many millions of
+families, day by day, and year by year, to secure these policies of
+insurance; but, as Plato said, "the good is difficult." There is no
+heroism where there is no self-sacrifice. Whoever is disquieted by the
+growth of "materialism" may be relieved by reflecting that when so many
+millions of people are denying themselves present enjoyments in order that
+others may be spared pain in the future, there is such a leaven of high
+motive among us as may leaven the whole lump.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be easy to keep on in this exalted strain, but perhaps it is a
+little too much in the style of a life-insurance advertisement. We may
+correct any such impression, by changing our point of view. When we
+consider the difficulties and the hindrances in the way of laying up these
+savings, while the moral effect of the self-sacrifice hitherto involved is
+enhanced, the question comes up whether this altruistic exertion can be
+maintained in the future. How many of the ten millions of depositors in
+the savings banks have considered that their rulers at Washington give
+away every year in military pensions a sum equal to all, and more than
+all, the income earned by the four billions of dollars in the banks? When
+after many years, it seemed that this burden might at last begin to be
+lightened, it was suddenly increased by the last Congress perhaps thirty
+millions a year. Why should so many people scrimp, year in and year out,
+when the equivalent of all the toil and all the self-denial is thus swept
+away?
+
+Senator Aldrich has told the country that its affairs could be carried on
+for three hundred millions of dollars a year less than it now pays. He is
+a very competent witness, and no one has contradicted him. If the attempt
+had been made, he could perhaps have shown--he could certainly show
+now--that three hundred millions was an understatement. But this sum is
+nearly equal to the income earned by the investments of all the savings
+banks and all the life-insurance companies of the country. If our rulers
+had borrowed ten billions of dollars at three per cent. and had wasted it
+all, the country would be financially about where it is now. They have not
+borrowed this ten billions of dollars, but if Mr. Aldrich is right, they
+are spending the interest on it. They have in effect mortgaged the wealth
+of the people to the extent of all their deposits in the savings banks,
+and all their investments in life-insurance companies, and are wasting the
+income of these funds faster than it is earned. If anyone thinks this is
+stating the case too strongly, he may add the waste of our state and
+municipal rulers to that of those at Washington, and Mr. Aldrich's figure
+will seem moderate enough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+People who are comfortably off will reply to all this that we are getting
+on pretty well, and seem to be on the whole doing better from year to
+year. There is a well known passage in Macaulay's History which may be
+thought to give support to optimism of this kind. "No ordinary
+misfortune," he said, "no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make
+a nation wretched as the constant progress of physical knowledge, and the
+constant effort of every man to better his condition will do to make a
+nation prosperous."
+
+No one will deny that the history of England justifies this statement; but
+let us remember the reason that Macaulay gave for this insuperable
+prosperity. "Every man has felt entire confidence that the State would
+protect him in the possession of what had been earned by his diligence and
+hoarded by his self-denial."
+
+It is impossible to maintain that every man now feels this entire
+confidence. The income "earned by his diligence" is henceforth to be taxed
+at a progressive rate, and the demagogues are already complaining that the
+rate is not high enough. The inheritance of his family, "hoarded by his
+self-denial," protected by the State until within a few years, now pays
+taxes which amount to the interest on a billion of dollars. We are assured
+by a railroad officer that three measures of legislation have increased
+the expenses of his corporation alone by a sum equal to the interest on
+$32,000,000, with no appreciable benefit to the public. The number of such
+laws is incalculable, and the cost of complying with them has become an
+almost intolerable burden. The income of the railroads declines, while
+their taxes increase, in some cases two or three fold. Lawyers and office
+holders thrive and are cheerful; investors suffer and tremble.
+
+The people of New York seem just now to be in a way to find out how the
+enormous taxes which their rulers have levied on them are expended; but
+New York has no monopoly of corrupt rulers, and the cost of investigating
+extravagance is itself extravagant. And yet people wonder at the increased
+cost of living! Unfortunately the oppressions of government do worse than
+discourage business enterprise; they tend to demoralize society. There are
+too many men who hesitate to marry because they do not have confidence in
+the future, too many married people who do not dare to have more than one
+or two children, if they dare to have any, to make it possible to maintain
+that there is now no dread of more than ordinary misgovernment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is difficult to ascertain the total wealth of the country. The census
+bureau is notoriously dilatory. Its latest estimate was for 1904, when
+this aggregate was computed to be $107,000,000,000, or about $1,300 _per
+caput_. Assuming this ratio, the wealth of our people should now be over
+$120,000,000,000; but the figures are largely conjectural. It happens,
+however, that we possess some figures that are altogether trustworthy. In
+the year 1909 the Federal Government imposed a tax of one per cent. on the
+net income of every corporation, joint stock company, or association,
+including insurance companies, organized for profit, whenever this net
+income is over $5,000. There are some other exemptions, but they are not
+sufficient to demand consideration, and may be disregarded. Now we may be
+absolutely certain of one thing, and that is that the net income of those
+concerns will not be overestimated. Their net income may be more than what
+they report for the purposes of taxation, but it surely cannot be less.
+For the past year it seems probable that this tax will produce nearly
+thirty-five millions of dollars net income, after deducting all expenses,
+losses, depreciation, interest on debts and on deposits paid by banks, and
+dividends from other companies subject to the tax.
+
+It may be more, but it cannot be less. Here our certainty ends. Guesses
+will vary, but in view of what we know in a general way of the conditions
+of business during the past year, we may perhaps venture to assume that
+the net income of these concerns is six per cent. of their real wealth. If
+this assumption is correct, their total wealth is 60 billions of dollars,
+or one half of the total wealth of the nation.
+
+This estimate may be confirmed to some extent by other statistics. Calling
+the physical value of the railroads fourteen billions, their net earnings
+at five per cent. would be 700 millions, which corresponds well enough
+with the figures of the government, although some railroad men would make
+their net earnings much less. We do not know the net income of the untaxed
+corporations. Their returns would show its amount, but the government does
+not supply the information. As there must be now nearly 250,000 such
+corporations, if their average income is only $2,000 a year, the total
+could be $500,000,000. If it is $4,000, their income would be almost a
+billion dollars. On a 5 per cent. basis, the wealth of these corporations
+would be nearly 20 billion dollars. It seems, on the whole, that the
+wealth held by corporations is probably more than half our total wealth
+rather than less.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bearing of these figures on our subject is now apparent. All of this
+property is disfranchised. It is, economically, to a very great extent
+disfranchised; politically, it is altogether disfranchised. What I mean by
+this is that the owners of this wealth, as owners, have very little to
+say, and nothing to do, about its care and management. Probably more than
+half of our people are directly or indirectly interested in it as owners.
+They have been attracted by a desire to share, however humbly, in big and
+famous enterprises, by the freedom from liability of the portion of their
+estates outside the particular investments, and by the freedom at death or
+withdrawal of associates from appraisals and accountings and probable
+closing of the business, as is the inevitable practice in mere
+partnerships. Two centuries ago people who saved money could hardly find
+ways to invest it. The practice of incorporation has enormously increased
+our wealth by putting a stop to hoarding without interest, stimulating
+saving, and broadening industry. The number of individual owners of the
+bonds and stocks of corporations is incalculable, and their holdings added
+to those of savings banks, insurance companies, trust companies and other
+fiduciary institutions, churches, hospitals, and colleges, make up a total
+of almost fabulous extent. It is true that large sums are loaned to
+persons, and on mortgages of real estate; but for most people such
+investments are not desirable or convenient, and they are altogether
+inadequate to absorb the vast sums that are available. In fact probably
+most investments of this character are now made by corporations who gather
+the savings of little depositors and premium payers; and it would cost
+much more to make them in any other way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Corporations, therefore, are necessary, but they necessarily separate the
+ownership of wealth from its management. To invest is generally to entrust
+your money to another, and those who invest in corporations, unless they
+control them, are economically disfranchised, because the stockholders in
+all large corporations almost never influence the management of their
+property, and as a rule do not know anything about it. They don't because
+they can't. A few years ago a very large number of people were much
+worried by the exposure of some scandalous doings by the managers of
+certain great life-insurance companies. They would have been very glad to
+combine and choose better managers if they could; but they couldn't. Laws
+were passed for the purpose of enabling the policy-holders to select their
+trustees, but the only result has been a ridiculous and rather expensive
+fiasco. As in politics, the rank and file select the managers selected for
+them by a few men who understand the situation. When many thousands of
+people own stock in a concern, they live all over this continent and in
+foreign parts, and it is a physical impossibility to bring them together.
+They do not know one another, and very few of them know much about the
+affairs of the concern, and if they know anything of the candidates that
+may be suggested, it is generally only by hearsay.
+
+How many of the eighty-eight thousand stockholders in the Pennsylvania
+Railroad, for instance, have ever attended a meeting? For that matter, how
+many of them have ever studied the report of the railroad? Not one in ten
+could spare the time to read it, perhaps not one in a hundred could master
+it. The report may be read in a few hours; it would take as many months,
+if not years to verify it. Very nearly half these stockholders are women;
+the average holding is 120 shares, (par $50), and one-sixth of the
+stockholders own less than 10 shares each. Ten thousand of them are
+abroad. Much stock is held by trustees, whose beneficiaries are probably
+very numerous, and totally incompetent to understand railroad management.
+There are also more than twenty thousand holders of stock in subsidiary
+corporations controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad. No one can tell the
+number of bondholders; perhaps there are as many as there are employees,
+making an aggregate of almost half a million.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sometimes trustees abuse their office; but on the whole they have done
+pretty well, and whether they have or not, there is no other way in which
+large capitals can be managed. All civilization rests on confidence. Such
+a vast fabric could not be built on confidence unless confidence was
+deserved. As a matter of fact, a man invests his money just as he invests
+in a surgeon. He does not think of directing the surgeon how to operate.
+If the operation does not succeed, he tries another surgeon next time--if
+there is a next time.
+
+Of course all this applies chiefly to the large corporations. There are
+many thousands of small ones, having few stockholders, who reside where
+the business is established. These stockholders know more or less of the
+details of the business; they can judge to some extent how it is carried
+on, they are often acquainted with the managers, or are the managers
+themselves, and if not, they are able sometimes to combine and change the
+management. And I will anticipate a little and say here that the property
+of such a corporation located in a small town is often to some extent not
+politically disfranchised, because the people of the town understand that
+they are directly interested in the prosperity of the business. But it
+seems almost impossible for the stockholders to change the management of a
+large corporation. It has been done a few times. Mr. Harriman notoriously
+did it by using the money of one concern to buy the stock of another, and
+that is almost the only way in which it has been done. No doubt there has
+been an immense deal of combination which has resulted in change of
+management, but this has not been because the stockholders combined to
+oust their trustees, but because they thought they saw a good chance to
+sell their stock to those who would pay high for the control, or to
+participate in these combinations. There have been a good many cases where
+an enterprising speculator has managed to get hold of a majority of the
+stock and change the control, and powerful bankers can sometimes get
+proxies enough to put a stop to bad management; but spontaneous movements
+of this kind on the part of the mass of the stockholders are extremely
+rare.
+
+Beyond dispute then, the great mass of wealth held by corporations is
+almost wholly under the control of their managers, and not the mass of the
+owners. Mr. Hill has recently testified that he never knew a stockholder
+to attend a meeting except to make trouble; by which he perhaps meant that
+when a single stockholder appeared, it was to get paid for not making
+trouble.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It need hardly be said that no such thing as legitimate representation of
+corporate wealth is known in our politics, and the representation of
+individual wealth is very limited. The theory of government by manhood
+suffrage, so far as there is any theory, is now entirely personal. In
+early times the freemen of the town, or little commune, met and legislated
+according to their needs. To be a freeman one had to own property; to
+"have a stake in the country." Nowadays nearly all the men who have no
+property can vote, and some that have property cannot. In England, they
+are doing away with "plural voters." Heretofore it was thought just, when
+a man owned land in more than one place, that he should have his say in
+the government of all; but this is now forbidden. The right was never
+recognized in this country, partly because formerly men seldom owned
+property in two places, but as transportation improved the conditions
+changed. The "commuters" are legion. Their business and their capital are
+under one jurisdiction and their dwellings and families under another; but
+they can vote in only one. Many thousands of men own houses in both city
+and country. They could help in the government of both, but are
+disfranchised in one or the other. Under our complicated systems of
+registration, they are often disfranchised at both.
+
+Of course when population increases, the town meeting becomes a physical
+impossibility. There is no more direct legislation; it has to be
+delegated. The power is transferred to the city councils, and to the state
+and national legislatures. In other words, the interests of the owners of
+wealth are put in charge of trustees. According to Hamilton, the theory of
+our government is that the people will "naturally" choose the wisest of
+their number to represent them. There is not much basis for this
+assumption. Rousseau scouted it. According to him, the _volonté générale_
+could be ascertained only in the town meeting, and he seriously maintained
+that the ideal government for the Roman empire was by the gangs of rioters
+that the politicians marshalled in the Forum at Rome under the name of
+_comitia_. All that the theory of our government requires, is that our
+rulers shall be such men as are designated by the majority of the voters.
+That they should be wise and good men may accord with the theory of
+aristocracy; it is no part of the theory of democracy, and is certainly a
+very small part of the practice.
+
+When I say that half of the property of this country is disfranchised, I
+mean that the nature of this property is such that it is peculiarly
+subject to the power of rulers, and that the owners of it have hardly any
+legitimate way of defending it against the arbitrary exercise of this
+power. The corporation is created by the legislature; men cannot combine
+their capitals and avoid unlimited liability for the debts of the
+combination, unless the law specifically authorizes the proceeding. Of
+course, if the legislature has power to make such grants, it must have
+power to alter them. In short, property held by a corporation is held at
+the will of the legislature, and in a way and to an extent that property
+held by an individual is not. It is not very easy for the legislature to
+plunder or blackmail individuals, even when they are disfranchised,
+because it has to be done by general laws, and direct methods arouse
+direct opposition. But, as we have seen, stockholders as a class cannot
+defend their rights, and as things are now, their trustees cannot have
+much to say concerning the laws that affect their property. Managers of
+large corporations are now commonly denounced as unfit to be legislators,
+and are practically excluded from the halls of legislation. In some states
+they are even specifically disfranchised, so far as holding office is
+concerned, and, under the new despotism, ironically dubbed the new
+freedom, every man whose wealth and ability make his aid important to many
+enterprises, is to be forbidden to participate in more than one. Yet
+property is almost entirely subject to the disposition of the legislature!
+not entirely, for the courts afford some protection; but even this is now
+threatened: we may "progress" so far as to make it unconstitutional for a
+judge to declare any law unconstitutional.
+
+It goes without saying that half the property of the country will not
+submit to spoliation without a struggle. If it cannot have representation
+legitimately, it will try to get it illegitimately or extra legitimately.
+The managers of corporations have in the past found many ways to influence
+legislation. Despite the prejudices against them, some of them have had
+themselves chosen as legislators; even as judges. Some have brought about
+the election of legislators who would act in their favor, and have even
+bribed legislators. Until recently it was not even unlawful for these
+managers to use the money of their stockholders in political
+contributions; some managers acted on the "Good Lord! Good Devil!"
+principle. Probably most of the politicians paid no railroad fares. Many
+of them got passes for their families and their friends; and it was
+certainly to be expected that they should listen to the requests of those
+who granted these favors. The situation became grotesque when a great
+ruler, seeking a nomination to office with the proclaimed purpose of
+enforcing the laws against rebates and passes, required the railroad
+managers to furnish him free transportation on his righteous mission.
+
+There were obvious objections to these practices, and public opinion
+finally compelled our rulers to pass laws prohibiting them. Theoretically
+the managers of corporations are now effectually disfranchised. They dare
+not offer themselves as candidates for office. They scarcely dare to
+favor, even secretly, the choice of rulers who will listen to them.
+Fortunately, however, they hardly longer dare to offer bribes. Anyone on
+friendly terms with them is politically a suspicious character. Any lawyer
+who has been employed by them becomes unavailable as a candidate for
+office. Our legislators, as was to be expected, at once showed the effect
+of release from restraint. It has been uncharitably said that in revenge
+for the loss of their passes and other favors, they attacked the
+railroads; but there has been considerable voting of more mileage, and our
+congressmen at least voted themselves ample indemnity in larger salaries,
+and they opened fire on corporations in general and railroads in
+particular, with a broadside of statutes. Against this fire the property
+of millions of small holders in the corporations has been almost
+defenceless. Some of these statutes are so drawn that the plain business
+man does not know whether he is a criminal or not; if he could afford to
+consult the best of lawyers it would not help him much. The only safe
+course to pursue is to agree with the adversary quickly; to plead guilty
+to whatever charge is made, and beg for mercy. That one is innocent is
+immaterial. The expense of litigation is nothing to the rulers of the
+United States; but it may be ruinous to their subjects. The cost of the
+commissions and investigations and prosecutions of the last few years has
+been enormous. Only lawyers can contemplate it without consternation.
+
+True, the managers of large corporations can make their protests heard.
+They can publish their pleas in the newspapers, and issue pamphlets, and
+they can appear before committees and commissions, and submit arguments.
+The managers of small corporations cannot afford such measures. You might
+as well refer a servant-girl who couldn't collect her wages, to the Hague
+Tribunal, as to send a plain business man to Washington to plead his
+cause.
+
+The animus of these statutes is hostility to great corporations. But it is
+impossible to legislate against great corporations without hitting the
+small ones. Take the case of the recent corporation income tax; the
+244,000 corporations exempt from the tax had to make out their inventories
+and keep their books and report their proceedings precisely as if they
+were liable to the tax. A fine of from $1,000 to $10,000 and a 50 per
+cent. increased assessment were the penalties for failure. But the cost of
+complying with all the requirements of the law, for a corporation having
+an income of two or three thousand dollars, cannot be figured at much less
+than the tax. Many corporations have no net income. The managers of these
+concerns are not expert book-keepers, and their returns must be in many
+cases so inaccurate as to expose them to prosecution if the game were
+worth the candle. If we assume that the average cost of making out the
+return is only ten dollars, we have a bill of $2,400,000, which the
+stockholders, or the employees, or the customers, must pay for the
+privilege of demonstrating that the small corporations are not liable to
+pay anything at all.
+
+The corporation income tax law was really an act of popular dislike of
+corporations exercising great monopolies. Grouping all the little
+corporations with them was an absurdity and a cruelty.
+
+Corporations have no feelings. They are not wounded by the hostility of
+legislatures. The managers of corporations of large capital have feelings,
+and some of them are wounded in their pride by this hostility. But they
+need not suffer in their pockets. They are abundantly able to protect
+their own property; they know how to make money on the short side of the
+market as well as the long side. But the managers of the concerns of small
+capital are seldom able to do this. Oppressive laws cause suffering to
+them, to the mere holders of stock in all corporations, to the creditors
+of all, to the employees, and to the customers. Many of these laws profess
+to be meant to favor small people as against big people--to restrain the
+rich corporations so that the poor ones may have more liberty. There is no
+evidence to show that this result is attained, or that the country would
+be better off if it were attained. But there is plenty of evidence to show
+that half the people of the country are suffering from these legislative
+attacks on their property. The men who manage the great corporations,
+whatever their faults, are men of enterprise and courage. They are the
+true progressives; the prosperity that they diffuse among the whole people
+is ordinarily more than can be destroyed by our progressive politicians.
+They are now beginning to feel that their rulers are discriminating
+against them as a class, and are uneasy and disheartened, and reluctant to
+embark in new enterprises; and the progress of the country is halted by
+their apprehension. It is not the rich who suffer most: it is "the
+unemployed," and the millions of dumb, helpless, struggling thrifty men
+and women whose hard earned savings constitute a large part of the capital
+of the corporations; and who are already alarmed at the shrinking value of
+these savings. It is, perhaps most of all, the mass of ignorant unthrifty
+poor, whose chief wealth is the wages paid them by the corporations which
+they are taught to look on as their oppressors.
+
+
+
+
+RAILWAY JUNCTIONS
+
+
+In his illuminating essay on _The Lantern-Bearers_, Stevenson complains of
+the vacuity of that view of life which he finds expressed in the pages of
+most realistic writers. "This harping on life's dulness and man's meanness
+is a loud profession of incompetence; it is one of two things: the cry of
+the blind eye, _I cannot see_, or the complaint of the dumb tongue, _I
+cannot utter_." And then, with a fine flourish, he declares:--"If I had no
+better hope than to continue to revolve among the dreary and petty
+businesses, and to be moved by the paltry hopes and fears with which they
+surround and animate their heroes, I declare I would die now. But there
+has never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet; if it were spent
+waiting at a railway junction, I would have some scattering thoughts, I
+could count some grains of memory, compared to which the whole of one of
+these romances seems but dross."
+
+"If it were spent waiting at a railway junction" ... Here, with his
+instinct for the perfect phrase, Stevenson has pointed a finger at the one
+experience which is commonly accepted as the acme of imaginable dulness.
+This man, who could be happy at a railway junction, could not have found a
+prouder way of boasting to posterity that he had never "faltered more or
+less in his great task of happiness."
+
+It is because railway junctions are the most unpopular places in the world
+that they have been singled out for praise in THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW. Poor
+places, lonely and forlorn, cursed by so many, celebrated by so
+few,--surely they have waited over-long for an apologist.... But first of
+all, in order to be fair, we must consider the customary view of these
+points of punctuation in the text of travel.
+
+Far up in Vermont, at a point vaguely to the east of Burlington, there is
+a place called Essex Junction. It consists of a dismal shed of a station,
+a bewildering wilderness of tracks, and an adjacent cemetery, thickly
+populated (according to a local legend) with the bodies of people who have
+died of old age while waiting for their trains. This elegiac locality was
+visited, many years ago, by the Honorable E.J. Phelps, once ambassador of
+the United States to the court of St. James's. He was allotted several
+hours for the contemplation of the cemetery; and his consequent
+meditations moved him to the composition of a poem, in four stanzas, which
+is a little classic of its kind. Space is lacking for a quotation of more
+than the initial stanza; but the taste of a poem, as of a pie, may
+conveniently be judged from a quadrant of the whole.--
+
+  With saddened face and battered hat
+    And eye that told of blank despair,
+  On wooden bench the traveller sat,
+    Cursing the fate that brought him there.
+  "Nine hours," he cried, "we've lingered here
+    With thoughts intent on distant homes,
+  Waiting for that delusive train
+    That, always coming, never comes:
+      Till weary, worn,
+      Distressed, forlorn,
+  And paralyzed in every function!
+      I hope in hell
+      His soul may dwell
+  Who first invented Essex Junction!"
+
+It was apparently the purpose of the writer to convey the impression that
+his period of waiting had been passed without pleasure; but yet we may
+easily confute him with another quotation from _The Lantern-Bearers_. "One
+pleasure at least," says Stevenson, "he tasted to the full--his work is
+there to prove it--the keen pleasure of successful literary composition."
+Was this honorable author ever moved to such eloquence by an audience with
+Queen Victoria? Never; so far as we know. Was not Essex Junction,
+therefore, a more inspiring spot than Buckingham Palace? Undeniably. Then,
+why complain of Essex Junction?
+
+For, indeed, the pleasure that we take from places is nothing more nor
+less than the pleasure we put into them. A person predisposed to boredom
+can be bored in the very nave of Amiens; and a person predisposed to
+happiness can be happy even in Camden, New Jersey. I know: for I have
+watched American tourists in Amiens; and once, when I had gone to Camden,
+to visit Walt Whitman in his granite tomb, I was wakened to a strange
+exhilaration, and wandered all about that little dust-heap of a city
+amazing the inhabitants with a happiness that required them to smile. "All
+architecture," said Whitman, "is what you do to it when you look upon
+it;... all music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the
+instruments": and I must have had this passage singing in my blood when I
+enjoyed that monstrous courthouse dome which stands up like a mushroom in
+the midst of Camden.
+
+I have never been to Essex Junction; but I should like to go there--just
+to see (in Whitman's words) what I could do to it. Imagine it upon a windy
+night of winter, when a hundred discommoded passengers are turned out,
+grumbling, underneath the stars,--coughing invalids, and kicking infants,
+and indignant citizens, scrambling haphazard among tottering trunks, and
+picking their way from train to train. Imagine their faces, their voices,
+their gesticulations: here, indeed, you will see more than a theatre-full
+of characters. Or, if human beings do not interest you, imagine the
+mysterious gleam of yellow windows veiled behind a drift of intermingled
+smoke and steam. Listen, also, to the clang of bells, the throb and puff
+of the engines, and the shrill shriek of their whistles. Or peer into the
+station-shed, made stuffy by the breath of many loiterers; and contrast
+their death in life with the life in death of those others who loiter
+through eternity beneath the gravestones of the cemetery. I can imagine
+being happy with all this (and even writing a paragraph about it
+afterwards): but, above all, I should like to gather those hundred
+discommoded passengers upon the station-platform, and to rehearse and lead
+them in a solemn chant of the refrain of Phelps's poem. Imagine a hundred
+voices singing lustily in unison,
+
+      "I hope in hell
+      His soul may dwell
+  Who first invented Essex Junction,"
+
+under the vast cathedral vaulting of the night, until the adjacent dead
+should seem to stand up in their graves and join the anthem of
+anathema.... Who is there so bold to tell me that enjoyment is impossible
+in such a place as this?
+
+There is very little difference between places, after all: the true
+difference is between the people who regard them. I should rather read a
+description of Hoboken by Rudyard Kipling than a description of Florence
+by some New England schoolmarm. To the poet, all places are poetical; to
+the adventurous, all places are teeming with adventure: and to experience
+a lack of joy in any place is merely a sign of sluggish blood in the
+beholder.
+
+So, at least, it seems to me; for not otherwise can I explain the fact
+that, like my beloved R.L.S., I have always enjoyed waiting at railway
+junctions. I love not merely the marching phrases, but also the commas and
+the semi-colons of a journey,--those mystic moments when "we look before
+and after" and need not "pine for what is not." I have never done much
+waiting in America, which is in the main a country of express trains, that
+hurl their lighted windows through the night like what Mr. Kipling calls
+"a damned hotel;" but there is scarcely a country of Europe except Russia
+whose railway junctions are unknown to me. In many of these little
+nameless places I have experienced memorable hours: and because the less
+enthusiastic Baedeker has neglected to star and double-star them, I have
+always wanted to praise them, in print somewhat larger than his own. Space
+is lacking in the present article for a complete guide to all the railway
+junctions of Europe; but I should like to commemorate a few, in gratitude
+for what befell me there.
+
+There is a junction in Bavaria whose name I have forgotten; but it is very
+near Rothenburg, the most picturesquely medieval of all German cities. It
+consists merely of a station and two intersecting tracks. When you enter
+the station, you observe what seems to be a lunch-counter; but if you step
+up to it and innocently order food, a buxom girl informs you that no food
+is ever served there--and then everybody laughs. This pleasant
+cachinnation attracts your attention to the assembled company. It consists
+of many peasants, in their native costumes (which any painter would be
+willing to journey many miles to see), who are enjoying the delicious
+experience of travel. They are great travelers, these peasants. Once a
+month they take the train to Rothenburg, and once a month they journey
+home again, to talk of the experience for thirty days. All of them have
+heard of Nuremberg [which is actually less than a hundred miles
+away],--that vast and wonderful metropolis, so far, so very far, beyond
+the ultimate horizon of their lives. They would like to see it some
+day--as I should like to see the Taj Mahal--but meanwhile they content
+themselves with the great adventure of going to Rothenburg,--a city that
+is really much more interesting, if they could only know. In the very
+midst of these congregated travelers, I casually set down a suit-case
+which was plastered over with many labels from many lands; and this
+suit-case affected them as I might be affected by a messenger from Mars.
+They spelled out many unfamiliar languages, and a murmur of amazement
+swept through the entire company when one of them discovered that that
+suit-case had been to Morocco. Morocco, they assured me, was a place where
+black men rode on camels; and I had no heart to tell them that it was a
+country where white men rode on mules. Then another of these travelers--an
+old man, with a face like one of Albrecht Dürer's drawings--discovered a
+label that read "Venezia." "Is that," he said, "Venedig?" with a little
+gasp. "Yes; Venedig," I responded, "where the streets are water." Slowly
+he removed his hat. "Ach, Venedig!" he sighed; and then he stooped down,
+and, with the uttermost solemnity, he kissed the label.... And then I
+understood the vast impulsion of that _wanderlust_ which has pushed so
+many, many Germans southward, to overrun that golden city that is wedded
+to the sea. I have forgotten the name of that junction, as I said before;
+but I have never been so happy in Munich as in this lonely station where
+there is no food.
+
+Speaking of food reminds me of Bobadilla, in southern Spain. Bobadilla
+sounds as if it ought to be the name of a medieval town, with ghosts of
+gaunt imaginative knights riding forth to tilt with windmills; but there
+is no town at all at Bobadilla,--merely two railway restaurants set on
+either side of several intersecting tracks. For some mysterious reason,
+passengers from the four quarters of the compass--that is to say, from
+Cordoba, Granada, Algeciras, or Sevilla--are required to alight here, and
+eat, and change their trains. I remember Bobadilla as the place where you
+spend your counterfeit money. Many of the current coins of southern Spain
+are made of silver; and the rest are made of lead. For leaden five-peseta
+pieces there is a local name, "Sevillan dollars," which ascribes their
+coinage to the crafty artisans of the capital of Andalucia. These pieces,
+which are plentiful, are just as good as silver dollars--when you can
+persuade anyone to take them. The currency of any coinage, except gold,
+depends entirely upon the faith of those who pass and take it and has no
+reference to its intrinsic value; and, in southern Spain, the leaden
+dollars serve as counters for just as many commercial transactions as the
+dollars made of silver. The only difference is that they are commonly
+accepted only after protest. In every Spanish shop, a slab of marble is
+built into the counter, and on this slab all proffered coins are slapped
+before they are accepted by the merchant. The traveler soon learns to
+fling his change upon the pavement; and many merry arguments ensue
+regarding the _timbre_ of their ring. I remember how once, in the wondrous
+town of Ronda, when a beggar had imposed himself upon me as a guide and
+led me into a church where High Mass was being chanted, I gave him a
+peseta to get rid of him, and at once he flung it upon the pavement of the
+church, and chased it, listening, across the nave. Thereafter, he
+protested loudly that the piece was lead, and disrupted the intoning of
+the priests. "Very well," said I, "it is, in any case, a gift; if you
+don't want it, I will take it back": and he accepted it with bows and
+smiles, and allowed the weary priests to continue their intonings. But
+Bobadilla is the one place in southern Spain where money is never jingled
+upon marble. There is no time between trains to quibble over minor
+matters; and a "Sevillan dollar" accepted from one passenger is blithely
+handed to another who is traveling in the opposite direction. I discovered
+this fact on the occasion of my first visit to this interesting junction;
+and on subsequent occasions I have eaten my fill at one or another of the
+railway restaurants and settled the account with all the leaden money
+garnered up from weeks of traveling. There is surely no dishonesty in
+observing the custom of a country; and Bobadilla may be treasured by all
+travelers as a clearing-house for counterfeit coins.
+
+Again, in northern France, it was merely by some accident of changing
+trains that I discovered the lovely little town of Dol. I found myself in
+Saint Malo, for obvious reasons; and I desired to go to Mont Saint-Michel,
+for reasons still more obvious--Mother Poulard's omelettes, and
+architecture, and the incoming of the tide. Between them--the map told
+me--was situated Dol. I made inquiries of the porter in the Saint Malo
+hotel. He responded in English,--the English of _Ici on parle anglais_.
+"Dol," said he, "is a dull place." He pronounced "Dol" and "dull" in
+precisely the same manner, and smiled at his sickly pun. I did not like
+that smile; and I alighted at the town that he despised. It was a little
+picture-book of a place, with many toy-like medieval houses clustered side
+by side around a market-place where peasants twisted the tails of cows. I
+strolled to the cathedral--and found myself mysteriously in England. It
+was a manly Norman edifice, sane and reticent and strong, set in a
+veritable English green, with little houses round about, reminding one of
+Salisbury. I entered the Cathedral; and found the nave to be composed in
+what is called in England the "decorated" style, and the choir to give
+hints of "perpendicular." And then I remembered, with a start, that the
+ancestors of all that is most beautiful in England had migrated from
+Normandy, and that here I was visiting them in their antecedent home.
+"Saxon and Norman and Dane are we;" and all that was Norman in me reached
+forth with groping hands to grasp the palms of those old builders who
+reared this little sacrosanct cathedral in the far-off times when one
+dominion extended to either side of the English Channel.
+
+It was by a similar accident--desiring to transfer myself from Bourges to
+Auxerre--that I discovered the wonderful junction-town of Nevers, which,
+despite the guide-books, is more interesting than either of the others. It
+possesses a Gothic cathedral with an apse at either end, that looks as if
+two churches had collided and telescoped each other. There is also a
+Romanesque church at Nevers which is just as simple and as manly as either
+of the famous abbeys in Caen; and a chateau with rounded towers, which
+once belonged to Mazarin. But the most amusing feature of this town is
+that, though Bourges packs itself to bed at ten o'clock, Nevers sits
+blithely up till twelve, listening to music in cafés, and watching
+moving-pictures; and this amiable incongruity in a medieval town makes you
+bless that complication of the time-table which has forced you, against
+forethought, to stay there over night.
+
+It is difficult for me to remember a railway junction in which there was
+nothing to do; but perhaps Pyrgos, in Greece, comes nearest to this
+description. At this point, you change cars on your way from Patras to
+Olympia. The town is made of mud: that is to say, the single-storied
+houses are built of unbaked clay. There is nothing to see in Pyrgos. But I
+amused myself by addressing the inhabitants, in the English language, with
+an eloquent oration that soon gathered them under my control; and
+thereafter I set a hundred of them at the pleasant task of trying to push
+the train for Olympia on its way to take me to the Hermes of Praxiteles. I
+knew no word of their language, nor did they of mine; but they understood
+that that train should be started, if human force were sufficient to help
+the cars upon their way: and finally, when the engine puffed and snorted
+with a tardily awakened sense of duty, the train was cheered by the entire
+population as I waved my hand from the rear platform and quoted one of
+Daniel Webster's perorations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is it--I have often wondered--so difficult as people think, to be happy in
+an hour "spent waiting at a railway junction"?... The kingdom of happiness
+is within us; or else there is no truth in our assumption that the will of
+man is free: and I am inclined to pity a man who, being happy in
+Amalfi--the loveliest of all the places I have ever seen--cannot also
+manage to be happy in Pyrgos--or in Essex Junction--and to communicate his
+happiness to his responsive fellow-travelers.
+
+The true enjoyment of traveling is to enjoy traveling; not to relish
+merely the places you are going to, but to relish also the adventure of
+the going. The most difficult train-journey I remember is the twenty-hour
+trip from Lisbon to Sevilla, with a change of cars in the ghastly early
+morning at the border-town of Badajoz and another change at noon at the
+sun-baked, parched, and God-forsaken town of Merida; and yet I relish as
+red letters on my personal map of Spain a pleasant quarrel over the price
+of sandwiches at Badajoz and the way a muleteer of Merida flung a colored
+cloak over his shoulder and posed for an unconscious moment like a
+painting by Zuloaga.
+
+And this philosophy has a deeper application to life at large: for all
+life may be figured as a journey, and few there are who are natively
+equipped for the enjoyment of all the waste and waiting places on the way.
+The minds of most people are so fixed upon the storied capitals that are
+featured in those works of fiction known as guidebooks that they are
+impeded from enjoying the minor stations on their journey. "Hurry me to
+Sevilla," cries the traveler--and misses the sight of my muleteer of
+Merida. In America, our society is crammed with people who fail to enjoy
+life on five thousand a year because their minds are fixed upon that
+distant time when they hope to enjoy life on twenty thousand a year. And
+if ever they attain that twenty thousand they will not enjoy it either;
+but will merely peer forward to a hypothetical enjoyment at fifty thousand
+a year. And this is the essence of their tragedy:--they have not learned
+to wait with happiness.
+
+Is there any reason for this inordinate ambition to "get on"? Louis
+Stevenson was happier, as a small boy with a bull's-eye lantern at his
+belt, than any king upon his throne. The secret of enjoyment is to learn
+to look about us, to value what our destiny has given us, to transform it
+into magic by some contributory gift of poetry or humor, to consider with
+contentment the lilies of the field. The zest of life is in the living of
+it; and "to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."
+
+How often, in the roaring and tumultuary tide of life, we meet a man who
+sighs, "If only I could have a single day in which there was nothing that
+I had to do, nothing even that I had to think of, how happy I should be!"
+and yet this self-same man, if set down at a railway junction, will at
+once bestir himself to seek something to think of, something to do, and
+will spurn the gift of leisure. The incessant hurry of our current life
+has tragically lured us to forget the art of loitering. We are no longer
+able--like Wordsworth, on his "old gray stone"--to sit upon a trunk at
+some railway junction of our lives and listen reverently to the "mighty
+sum of things forever speaking."
+
+One of the loveliest women I have ever known--the late Alison
+Cunningham--told me a little anecdote of the author of _The
+Lantern-Bearers_ which, so far as I know, has never yet been published.
+When little Louis was about five years old, he did something naughty, and
+Cummy stood him up in a corner and told him he would have to stay there
+for ten minutes. Then she left the room. At the end of the allotted
+period, she returned and said, "Time's up, Master Lou: you may come out
+now." But the little boy stood motionless in his penitential corner.
+"That's enough: time's up," repeated Cummy. And then the child mystically
+raised his hand, and with a strange light in his eyes, "Hush...," he said,
+"I'm telling myself a story...."
+
+And, in the _Christian Morals_ of Sir Thomas Browne, we may read the
+following passage:--"He who must needs have company, must needs have
+sometimes bad company. Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of
+solitude, and the society of thyself; nor be only content, but delight to
+be alone and single with Omnipresency. He who is thus prepared, the day is
+not uneasy nor the night black unto him. Darkness may bound his eyes, not
+his imagination. In his bed he may lie, like Pompey and his sons, in all
+quarters of the earth; may speculate the universe, and enjoy the whole
+world in the hermitage of himself."
+
+Wordsworth sitting quiescent and receptive in a lakeside landscape, little
+Louis standing in a corner, Sir Thomas Browne enjoying the whole world in
+the hermitage of himself:--what a rebuke is offered by these images to
+those who fret and fume away the leisure that is granted them at all the
+waiting places of their lives!... These disgruntled travelers _nel mezzo
+del cammin di nostra vita_ miss their privilege and duty of enjoying life
+merely because they miss the point that life is, in itself, enjoyable.
+They are so busy reading guide-books to the vague beyond that they shut
+their minds to all that may be going on about them, or within them, at
+way-stations. They close their eyes and ears to the immediate. They veto
+all perception of the here and now. But life itself is always here and
+now; and, truly to enjoy it, we must learn to look forever with
+unfaltering eyes into the bright face of immediacy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And there is another point about railway junctions that reveals an
+important application to the larger journey of our life. A friend of mine,
+who is a great lover of painting, had occasion once (and only once) to
+change trains at Basle, in the course of a journey from Lucerne to
+Heidelberg. He had to wait two hours at this railway junction; and this
+time he pleasantly expended in eating many dishes at a restaurant, and
+amusing the lax porters by teaching them a method of economizing energy in
+shifting trunks. It should be noted that this friend of mine was not
+trying to "kill time;" for, like all genuine humanitarians, he of course
+regards that tragic process as the least excusable of murders. He was
+entirely happy for two hours in that railway station. But--having packed
+his guide-book in a trunk--it was not until he reached Darmstadt, some
+days later, that he discovered that several of the very greatest works of
+Holbein are now resident in Basle. The two hours that he had spent playing
+and eating might have been devoted to an examination of many masterpieces
+of that art which, more than any other, he had crossed the seas to seek.
+He has never yet been able to return to Basle; but for a sight of those
+lost portraits of the most honest and straightforward of all German
+painters, he would gladly sell his memories of both Lucerne and
+Heidelberg.
+
+Here we have a record of a great disappointment that was occasioned merely
+by the common habit of despising railway junctions, and presuming them to
+be inevitably dull. But this same unfortunate presumption, applied to life
+at large, leads many people to overlook the nearness of some great
+adventure. Interrogate a thousand men, and you will find that none of them
+has first set eyes upon his greatest friend in the Mosque of Cordoba or in
+Trafalgar Square. Every adventure of lasting consequence has confronted
+all of them, without exception, in some hidden nook or cranny of the
+world,--some place unknown to fame. Anybody is as likely to meet the woman
+who is destined to become his wife, at Essex Junction on a wintry night,
+as in the Parthenon by moonlight in the month of May. The most romantic
+places in the world are often those that promised, in advance, to be the
+least romantic.
+
+Since this is so, how can anybody ever dare to shut his eyes to that
+incalculable imminency of adventure which environs him even when he is
+merely changing trains on some island-platform of the New York Subway? In
+our daily living we are never safe from destiny; and who can ever know in
+what vacuous and sedentary period of his experience he may suddenly be
+called upon to entertain an angel unawares? It is best to be prepared for
+anything, at any hour of our lives,--even at those moments that must,
+perforce, be "spent waiting at a railway junction."
+
+
+
+
+MINOR USES OF THE MIDDLING RICH
+
+
+To assert today that the rich are for the most part entirely harmless is
+to dare much, for the contrary opinion is greatly in favor. Such wholesale
+condemnation of the rich assumes a more general and a more specific form.
+They are said to be harmful to the body politic simply because they have
+more money than the average: their property has been wrongly taken from
+persons who have a better right to it, or is withheld from people who need
+it more. But aside from being constructively a moral detriment from the
+mere possession of wealth, the rich man may do specific harm through
+indulging his vices, maintaining an inordinate display, charging too much
+for his own services, crushing his weaker competitor, corrupting the
+legislature and the judiciary, finally by asserting flagrantly his right
+to what he erroneously deems to be his own. Such are the general and
+specific charges of modern anti-capitalism against wealth. Like many deep
+rooted convictions, these rest less on analysis of particular instances
+than upon axioms received without criticism. The word spoliation does
+yeoman service in covering with one broad blanket of prejudice the most
+diverse cases of wealth. But spoliation is assumed, not proved. My own
+conviction that most wealth is quite blameless, whether under the general
+or specific accusation, is based on no comprehensive axiom, but simply on
+the knowledge of a number of particular fortunes and of their owners. Such
+a road towards truth is highly unromantic. The student of particular
+phenomena is unable to pose as the champion of the race. But the method
+has the modest advantage of resting not on a priori definitions, but on
+inductions from actual experience; hence of being relatively scientific.
+
+Before sketching the line of such an investigation, let me say that in
+logic and common sense there is no presumption against the wealthy person.
+Ever since civilization began and until yesterday it has been assumed that
+wealth was simply ability legitimately funded and transmitted. Even modern
+humanitarians, while dallying with the equation wealth = spoliation, have
+been unwilling wholly to relinquish the historic view of the case. I have
+always admired the courage with which Mr. Howells faced the situation in
+one of those charming essays for the Easy Chair of _Harper's_. Driving one
+night in a comfortable cab he was suddenly confronted by the long drawn
+out misery of the midnight bread line. For a moment the vision of these
+hungry fellow men overcame him. He felt guilty on his cushions, and
+possibly entertained some St. Martin-like project of dividing his
+swallowtail with the nearest unfortunate. Then common sense in the form of
+his companion came to his rescue. She remarked "Perhaps we are right and
+they are wrong." Why not? At any rate Mr. Howells was not permitted to
+condemn in a moment of compassion the career of thrift, industry and
+genius, that had led him from a printer's case to a premier position in
+American letters, or, more concretely, he received a domestic dispensation
+to cab it home in good conscience, though many were waiting in chilly
+discomfort for their gift of yesterday's bread. The why so and why not of
+this incident are my real subject. For Mr. Howells is merely a
+particularly conspicuous instance of the kind of prosperity I have in
+mind. We are all too much dazzled by the rare great fortunes. The newly
+rich have spectacular ways with them. By dint of frequently passing us in
+notorious circumstances, they give the impression of a throng. They are
+much in the papers, their steam yachts loom large on the waters, they
+divorce quickly and often, they buy the most egregious, old masters. By
+such more or less innocent ostentations, a handful stretches into a
+procession, much as a dozen sprightly supernumeraries will keep up an
+endless defile of Macduff's army on the tragic stage. Let us admit that
+some of the great wealth is more or less foolishly and harmfully spent; my
+subject is not bank accounts, but people; and very wealthy people
+constitute an almost negligible minority of the race. Their influence too
+is much less potent than is supposed. A slightly vulgarizing tendency
+proceeds from them, but in waves of decreasing intensity. Their vogue is
+chiefly a _succès de scandale_. Sensible people will gape at the spectacle
+without admiration, and even the reader of the society column in the
+sensational newspapers keeps more critical detachment than he is usually
+credited with. In any case neither the boisterous nor the shrinking
+multimillionaire has any representative standing. He is not what a poor
+person means by a rich person. Ask your laundress who is rich in your
+neighborhood, and she will name all who live gently and do not have to
+worry about next month's bills. True pragmatist, she sees that to be
+exempt from any threat of poverty is to all intents and purposes to be
+rich. Her classification ignores certain niceties, but corresponds roughly
+to the fact, and has the merit of corresponding to government decree. Rich
+people, since the income tax, are officially those who pay the tax but not
+the surtax. Families with an income not less than four thousand dollars
+nor more than twenty thousand comprise the harmless, middling rich. Let us
+once for all admit that in the surtaxed classes there are many cases of
+quite harmless wealth, while in the lower level of the rich, harmful
+wealth will sometimes be found. Such exceptions do not invalidate the
+general rule that all but a negligible fraction of the rich are included
+in the first class of income taxpayers--on from four to twenty thousand,
+that most of the property here held is blamelessly held in good
+hands--wealth that in no fair estimate can be regarded as harmful. In
+terms of British currency, our category of the middling rich would include
+the poorer individuals of the upper classes, the richer persons of the
+lower middle class, and the upper middle class as a whole. This comparison
+is made not to apply an alien class system which holds very inadequately
+here in America, but simply to avow the difficulty of my task of apology.
+The bourgeoisie is equally suspect among radicals, reactionaries, and
+artists. My middling rich are nothing other than what an European essayist
+would quite brazenly call the _haute bourgeoisie_. It is quite a
+comprehensive class, made up chiefly of professional men, moderately
+successful merchants, manufacturers, and bankers with their more highly
+paid employees, but including also many artists, and teachers of all
+sorts. Incidentally it is an employing and borrowing class in various
+degrees, hence especially subject to the exactions of the labor union at
+one end, and of the great capitalist and the Trust at the other.
+
+The general harmlessness of the wealth of this class rests upon the fact
+that it is in small part inherited, but mostly earned by individual
+effort, while such effort has usually been honestly and efficiently
+rendered and paid for at a moderate rate. In fact the amount of capacity
+that can be hired for the slightest rewards is simply amazing. It is the
+distinction of this class as compared both with the wage earning and the
+capitalist class--both of which agree in overvaluing their services and
+extorting payment on their own terms--that it respects its work more than
+it regards rewards. Consider the amount of general education and special
+training that go to make a capable school superintendent, or college
+professor; a good country doctor or clergyman--and it will be felt that no
+money is more honestly earned. This is equally true of many lawyers and
+magistrates, who are wise counsellors for an entire country side. It is no
+less true of hosts of small manufacturers who make a superior product with
+conscience. For the wealth, small enough it usually is, that is thus
+gained in positions of especial skill and confidence, absolutely no
+apology need be made. I sometimes wish that the Socialists for whom any
+degree of wealth means spoliation, would go a day's round with a country
+doctor, would take the pains to learn of the cases he treats for half his
+fee, for a nominal sum, or for nothing; would candidly reckon his normal
+fee against the long years of college, medical school and hospital, and
+against the service itself; would then deduct the actual expenses of the
+day, as represented by apparatus, motor, or horse service--I can only say
+that if such an investigator could in any way conceive that physician as a
+spoliator, because he earned twice as much as a master brick-layer or five
+times as much as a ditch digger--if, I say, before the actual fact, our
+Socialist investigator in any way grudges that day's earnings, his mental
+and emotional confusion is beyond ordinary remedy. And such a physician's
+earnings are merely typical of those of an entire class of devoted
+professional men.
+
+We do well to remind ourselves that the great body of wealth in the
+country has been built up slowly and honestly by the most laborious means,
+and accumulated and transmitted by self-sacrificing thrift. A rich person
+in nine cases out of ten is merely a capable, careful, saving person,
+often, too, a person who conducts a difficult calling with a fine sense of
+personal honor and a high standard of social obligation. We are too much
+dazzled by the occasional apparition of the lawyer who has got rich by
+steering guilty clients past the legal reefs, of the surgeon who plays
+equally on the fears and the purses of his patients, of the sensational
+clergyman who has made full coinage of his charlatanism. All these types
+exist, and all are highly exceptional. Most rich persons are
+self-respecting, have given ample value received for their wealth, and
+have less reason to apologize for it than most poor folks have to
+apologize for their poverty.
+
+Furthermore: for the maintenance of certain humdrum but necessary human
+virtues, we are dependent upon these middling rich. It has been frequently
+remarked that a lord and a working man are likely to agree, as against a
+bourgeois, in generosity, spontaneous fellowship, and all that goes to
+make sporting spirit. The right measure of these qualities makes for charm
+and genuine fraternity; the excess of these qualities produces an enormous
+amount of human waste among the wage earners and the aristocrats
+impartially. The great body of self-controlled, that is of reasonably
+socialized people, must be sought between these two extremes. In short the
+building up of ideals of discipline and of habits of efficiency and of
+good manners and of human respect is very largely the task of the middle
+classes. Whereas the breaking down of such ideals is, in the present
+posture of society, the avowed or unavowed intention of a considerable
+portion of laboring men and aristocrats. The scornful retort of the
+Socialist is at hand: "Of course the middle classes are shrewd enough to
+practice the virtues that pay." Into this familiar moral bog that there
+are as many kinds of morality as there are economic conditions of mankind,
+I do not consent to plunge. I need only say that the so-called middle
+class virtues would pay a workman or a lord quite as well as they do a
+bourgeois. Moreover, while workmen and lords are prone to scorn the
+calculating virtues of the middle classes, there is no indication that the
+_bourgeoisie_ has selfishly tried to keep its virtues to itself. On the
+contrary there is positive rejoicing in the middle classes over a workman
+who deigns to keep a contract, and an aristocrat who perceives the duty of
+paying a debt. In fine we of the middle classes need no more be ashamed of
+our highly unpicturesque virtues than we are of our inconspicuous wealth.
+
+So far from being in danger of suppression, we middling rich people are
+likely to last longer than the capitalists who exploit us in practice, and
+the workmen who exploit us on principle. Theoretically, and perhaps
+practically, the very rich are in danger of expropriation. Theoretically
+the course of invention may limit or almost abolish all but the higher
+grades of labor. The need of the more skilful sort of service in the
+professions, in manufacture, in agency of all sorts, is sure to persist.
+The socialists expect to get such service for much less than it at present
+brings, that is to make us poor and yet keep us working. Such a scheme
+must break down, not through the refusal of the middling rich to keep at
+work;--for I think there is loyalty enough to the work itself to keep most
+necessary activities going after a fashion, even under the most untoward
+conditions;--but because to make us poor is to destroy the conditions
+under which we can efficiently render a somewhat exceptional service. Our
+wealth is not an extraneous thing that can be readily added or taken away.
+It is our possibility of self-education and of professional improvement,
+it is the medium in which we can work, it is our hope of children. To take
+away our wealth is to maim us. There is nothing humiliating in such an
+avowal. It is merely an assertion of the integrity of one's life and work.
+As a matter of fact no class is so well fitted to face the threat of a
+proletarian revolution as we harmless rich. It is the class that produces
+generals, explorers, inventors, statesmen. A social revolution with its
+stern attendant regimentation would bear most heavily on the relatively
+undisciplined class of working people. The disciplined class of the
+middling rich is better prepared to meet such an eventuality. Accordingly
+it is no mere selfishness or complacency that leads the middling rich to
+oppose the pretensions of proletarianism on one side and of capitalism on
+the other. It is rather the assertion of sound middle class morality
+against two opposite yet somewhat allied forms of social immorality--the
+strength that exaggerates its claims, and the weakness that claims all the
+privileges of strength.
+
+We are useful too as conserving certain valuable ideas. When I mention the
+idea of the right of private property, I expect to be laughed at by a
+large class of enthusiasts. Yet all of civilization has been built up on
+the distinction between _meum_ and _tuum_. Without this idea there is not
+the slightest inducement to persistent individual effort nor possibility
+of progress for the individual or for the race. The fruitful diversities,
+the germinative inequalities between men all depend on this right. And
+today the right to one's own is doubly under attack from the violence of
+laboring men, and the guile of those in positions of financial trust. The
+strikers who offer as an argument the burning of a mine or wrecking of a
+mill, and the directors who manipulate corporation accounts to pay
+unearned dividends, are both undermining the right of property. Against
+such counsels of force and fraud, the representatives of the common sense
+and funded wisdom of mankind are the middling rich. It is an unromantic
+service--doubtless breaking other people's windows or scaling their bank
+accounts is much more thrilling--it is a public service obviously tinged
+with self-interest, but none the less a public service of high and timely
+importance. The business of keeping the sanity of the world intact as
+against the wilder expressions of social discontent, and the uglier
+expressions of personal envy and greed, may seem to lack zest and
+originality today. History may well take a different view of the matter.
+It would not be surprising to find a posthumous aureole of idealism
+conferred upon those who amid the trumpeting of money market messiahs, and
+the braying of self-appointed remodellers of the race, simply stood
+quietly on their own inherited rights and principles.
+
+Such are some not wholly minor uses for the middling rich. Should they be
+abolished, many of the pleasanter facts and appearances of the world would
+disappear with them. The other day I whisked in one of their motor cars
+through miles of green Philadelphia suburbs dappled with pink magnolia
+trees and white fruit blossoms--everywhere charming houses, velvety lawns,
+tidy gardens. The establishing of a little paradise like that is of course
+a selfish enterprise--a mere meeting of the push and foresight of real
+estate operators with the thrift and sentiment of householders, yet it is
+an advantage inevitably shared, a benefit to the entire community, an
+example in reasonable working, living, and playing.
+
+On the side of play we should especially miss these harmless rich. The
+sleek horses on a thousand bridle paths and meadows are theirs, the
+smaller winged craft that still protest against the pollution of the sea
+by the reek of coal and the stench of gasoline; of their furnishing are
+the graceful and widely shared spectacles not only of the minor yacht
+racing but of the field sports generally. They constitute our militia. The
+survival in the world of such gentler accomplishments as fencing,
+canoeing, and exploration rests with the middling rich. They write our
+books and plays, compose our music, paint our pictures, carve our statues.
+The pleasanter unconscious pageantry of our life is conducted by their
+sons and daughters. To be nice, to indulge in nice occupations, to express
+happiness--this is not even today a reproach to any one. Indeed if any
+approach to the dreamed socialized state ever be made, it will come less
+through regimentation than through imitation of those persons of middle
+condition who have managed to be reasonably faithful in their duties, and
+moderate in their pleasures. To keep a clean mind in a clean body is the
+prerogative of no class, but the lapses from this standard are
+unquestionably more frequent among the poor and the very rich.
+
+It is instructive in this regard to compare with the newspapers that serve
+the middling rich, those that address the poor, and those that are owned
+in the interest of well understood capitalistic interests. The extremes of
+yellow journalism and of avowedly capitalistic journalism, meet in a
+preference for salacious or merely shocking news, and in a predilection
+for blatant, sophistical, or merely nugatory and time-serving editorial
+expressions. Between the two really allied types of newspapers are a few
+which exercise a decent censorship over questionable news, and habitually
+indulge in the luxury of sincere editorial opinion. There are some
+exceptions to the rule. In our own day we have seen a proletarian paper
+become a magnificent editorial organ, while somewhat illogically
+maintaining a random and sensational policy in its news columns. But
+generally the distinction is unmistakable. Imagine the plight of New York
+journalism if four papers, which I need not mention, ceased publication.
+It would mean a distinct and immediate cheapening of the mentality of the
+city. Then observe on any train who are reading these papers. It is plain
+enough what class among us makes decent journalism possible.
+
+Much is to be said for the abolition of poverty, and something for the
+reduction of inordinate wealth. Poverty is being much reduced, and will be
+farther, the process being limited simply by the degree to which the poor
+will educate and discipline themselves. We shall never wholly do away with
+bad luck, bad inheritance, wild blood, laziness, and incapacity: so some
+poverty we shall always have, but much less than now, and less dire. The
+fact that the large class of middling rich has been evolved from a world
+where all began poor, is a promise of a future society where poverty shall
+be the exception. But such increase of the wealth of the world, and of the
+number of the virtually rich, will never be attained by the puerile method
+of expropriating the present holders of wealth. That would produce more
+poor people beyond doubt--but its effect in enriching the present poor
+would be inappreciable. You cannot change a man's character and capacity
+simply by giving him the wealth of another. In wholesale expropriations
+and bequests the experiment has been many times tried, and always with the
+same results. The wealth that could not be assimilated and administered
+has always left the receiver or grasper in all essentials poorer than he
+was before. Wealth is an attribute of personality. It is not
+interchangeable like the parts of a standardized machine. The futility of
+dispossessing the middling rich would be as marked as its immorality.
+
+This essentially personal character of wealth must affect the views of
+those who would attack what are called the inordinate fortunes. I hold no
+brief for or against the multi-millionaire. In many cases I believe his
+wealth is as personal, assimilated and legitimate as is the average
+moderate fortune. In many cases too, I know that such gigantic wealth is
+in fact the product of unfair craft and favoritism, is to that extent
+unassimilated and illegitimate. Yet admitting the worst of great fortunes,
+I think a prudent and fair minded man would hesitate before a general
+programme of expropriation. He would consider that in many cases the
+common weal needs such services as very wealthy people render, he would
+reflect on the practical benefits to the world, of the benevolent
+enterprises for education, research, invention, hygiene, medicine, which
+are founded and supported by great wealth. In our time The Rockefeller
+Institute will have stamped out that slow plague of the south, the hook
+worm. To the obvious retort that the government ought to do this sort of
+thing, the reply is equally obvious, that historically governments have
+not done this sort of thing until enlightened private enterprise has shown
+the way. Our prudent observer of mankind in general, and of the very rich
+in particular, would again reflect that, granting much of the socialist
+indictment of capital as illgained, common sense requires a statute of
+limitations. At a certain point restitution makes more trouble than the
+possession of illegitimate wealth. Debts, interest, and grudges cannot be
+indefinitely accumulated and extended. It is the entire disregard of this
+simple and generally admitted principle that has marred the socialist
+propaganda from the first. From the point of view of fomenting hatred
+between classes, to make every workingman regard himself as the residuary
+legatee of all the grievances of all workingmen, at all times, may be
+clever tactics, it is not a good way of making the workingman see clearly
+what his actual grievance and expectancy of redress are in his own day and
+time.
+
+With increasingly heavy income and inheritance taxes, the very rich will
+have to reckon. Yet the multi-millionaire's evident utility as the milch
+cow of the state, will cause statesmen, even of the anti-capitalistic
+stamp, to waver at the point where the cow threatens to dry up from
+over-milking. If the case, then, for utterly despoiling the harmful rich,
+is by no means clear, the prospect for the harmless rich may be regarded
+as fairly favorable. For the moment, caught between the headiness of
+working folk, the din of doctrinaires, and the wiles of corporate
+activity, the lot of the middling rich is not the most happy imaginable.
+But they seem better able to weather these flurries than the windy,
+cloud-compelling divinities of the hour. From the survival of the middling
+rich, the future common weal will be none the worse, and it may even be
+better.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURING AT CHAUTAUQUA
+
+
+To render any real impression of the Chautauqua Summer Assembly, I must
+approach this many-mooded subject from a personal point of view. Others,
+more thoroughly informed in the arcana of the Institution, have written
+the history of its development from small beginnings to its present
+impressive magnitude, have analyzed the theory of its intentions, and have
+expounded its extraordinary influence over what may be called the
+middle-class culture of our present-day America. It would be beyond the
+scope of my equipment to add another solemn treatise to the extensive list
+already issued by the tireless Chautauqua Press. My own experience of
+Chautauqua was not that of a theoretical investigator, but that of a
+surprised and wondering participant. It was the experience of an alien
+thrust suddenly into the midst of a new but not unsympathetic world; and,
+if the reader will make allowance for the personal equation, some sense of
+the human significance of this summer seat of earnest recreation may be
+suggested by a mere record of my individual reactions.
+
+I had heard of Chautauqua only vaguely, until, one sunny summer morning, I
+suddenly received a telegram inviting me to lecture at the Institution. I
+was a little disconcerted at the moment, because I was enjoying an
+amphibious existence in a bathing-suit, and was inclined to shudder at the
+thought of putting on a collar in July; but, after an hour or two, I
+managed to imagine that telegram as a Summons from the Great Unknown, and
+it was in a proper spirit of adventure that I flung together a few books,
+and climbed into the only available upper berth on a discomfortable train
+that rushed me westward.
+
+In some sickly hour of the early morning, I was cast out at Westfield, on
+Lake Erie,--a town that looked like the back-yard of civilization, with
+weeds growing in it. Thence a trolley car, climbing over heightening hills
+that became progressively more beautiful, hauled me ultimately to the
+entrance of what the cynical conductor called "The Holy City." A fence of
+insurmountable palings stretched away on either hand; and, at the little
+station, there were turn-stiles, through which pilgrims passed within.
+Most people pay money to obtain admittance; but I was met by a very
+affable young man from Dartmouth, whose business it was to welcome invited
+visitors, and by him I was steered officially through unopposing gates. I
+liked this young man for his cheerful clothes and smiling countenance; but
+I was rather appalled by the agglomeration of ram-shackle cottages through
+which we passed on our way to the hotel.
+
+I say "the hotel," for the Chautauqua Settlement contains but one such
+institution. It carries the classic name of Athenæum; but the first view
+of it occasioned in my sensitive constitution a sinking of the heart. The
+edifice dates from the early-gingerbread period of architecture. It
+culminates in a horrifying cupola, and is colored a discountenancing
+brown. The first glimpse of it reminded me of the poems of A.H. Clough,
+whose chief merit was to die and to offer thereby an occasion for a grave
+and twilit elegy by Matthew Arnold. Clough's life-work was a continual
+asking of the question, "Life being unbearable, why should I not
+die?"--while echo, that commonplace and sapient commentator, mildly
+answered, "Why?": and this was precisely the impression that I gathered
+from my initial vista of the Athenæum between trees.
+
+On entering the hotel I was greeted over the desk (with what might be
+defined as a left-handed smile) by one of the leading students of the
+university with which I am associated as a teacher. He called out,
+"Front!" in the manner of an amateur who is amiably aping the
+professional, and assigned me to a scarcely comfortable room.
+
+My first voluntary act in the Chautauqua Community was to take a swim. But
+the water was tepid, and brown, and tasteless, and unbuoyant; and I felt,
+rather oddly, as if I were swimming in a gigantic cup of tea. From this
+initial experience I proceeded, somewhat precipitately, to induce an
+analogy; and it seemed to me, at the time, as if I had forsaken the roar
+and tumble of the hoarse, tumultuous world, for the inland disassociated
+peace of an unaware and loitering backwater.
+
+With hair still wet and still dishevelled, I was met by the Secretary of
+Instruction,--a man (as I discovered later) of wise and humorous
+perceptions. By him I was informed that, in an hour or so, I was to
+lecture, in the Hall of Philosophy, on (if I remember rightly) Edgar Allan
+Poe. I combed my hair, and tried to care for Poe, and made my way to the
+Hall of Philosophy. This turned out to be a Greek temple divested of its
+walls. An oaken roof, with pediments, was supported by Doric columns; and
+under the enlarged umbrella thus devised, about a thousand people were
+congregated to greet the new and unknown lecturer.
+
+I honestly believe that that was the worst lecture I have ever imposed
+upon a suffering audience. I had lain awake all night, in an upper berth,
+on the hottest day of the year; I had found my swim in inland water
+unrefreshing; and, at the moment, I really cared no more for Edgar Allan
+Poe than I usually care for the sculptures of Bernini, the paintings of
+Bouguereau, or the base-ball playing of the St. Louis "Browns." This
+feeling was, of course, unfair to Poe, who is (with all his emptiness of
+content) an admirable artist; but I was tired at the time. It pained me
+exceedingly to listen, for an hour, to my own dull and unilluminated
+lecture. And yet (and here is the pathetic point that touched me deeply) I
+perceived gradually that the audience was listening not only attentively
+but eagerly. Those people really wanted to hear whatever the lecturer
+should say: and I wandered back to the depressing hotel with bowed head,
+actuated by a new resolve to tell them something worthy on the morrow.
+
+That afternoon and evening I strolled about the summer settlement of
+Chautauqua; and (in view of my subsequent shift of attitude) I do not mind
+confessing that this first aspect of the community depressed me to a
+perilous melancholy. I beheld a landscape that reminded me of Wordsworth's
+Windermere, except that the lake was broader and the hills less high,
+deflowered and defamed by the huddled houses of the Chautauqua settlers.
+The lake was lovely; and, with this supreme adjective, I forbear from
+further effort at description. Upon the southern shore, a natural grove of
+noble and venerable trees had been invaded by a crowded horror of
+discomfortable tenements, thrown up by carpenters with a taste for
+machine-made architectural details, and colored a sickly green, an acid
+yellow, or an angry brown. The Chautauqua Settlement, which is surrounded
+by a fence of palings, covers only two or three square miles of territory;
+and, in the months of July and August, between fifteen and twenty thousand
+people are crowded into this constricted area. Hence a horror of unsightly
+dormitories, spawning unpredictable inhabitants upon the ambling, muddy
+lanes.
+
+There have been, in the history of this Assembly, a few salutary
+fires,--as a result of which new buildings have been erected which are
+comparatively easy on the eyes. The Hall of Philosophy is really
+beautiful, and is nobly seated among memorable trees at the summit of a
+little hill. The Aula Christi tried to be beautiful, and failed; but at
+least the good intention is apparent. The Amphitheatre (which seats six or
+seven thousand auditors) is admirably adapted to its uses; and some of the
+more recent business buildings, like the Post Office, are inoffensive to
+the unexacting observer. A wooded peninsula, which is pleasantly laid out
+as a park, projects into the lake; and, at the point of this, has lately
+been erected a _campanile_ which is admirable in both color and
+proportion. Indeed, when a fanfaronnade of sunset is blown wide behind it,
+you suffer a sudden tinge of homesickness for Venice or Ravenna. It is
+good enough for that. But beside it is a helter-skelter wooden edifice
+which reminds you of Surf Avenue at Coney Island. Indeed, the Settlement
+as a whole exhibits still an overwhelmment of the unæsthetic, and appalls
+the eye of the new-comer from a more considerative world.
+
+On the way back from the lovely _campanile_ to the hotel, I stumbled over
+a scattering of artificial hillocks surrounding two mud-puddles connected
+by a gutter. This monstrosity turned out to be a relief-map of Palestine.
+Little children, with uncultivated voices, shouted at each other as they
+lightly leaped from Jerusalem to Jericho; and waste-paper soaked itself to
+dingy brown in the insanitary Sea of Galilee.--Then I encountered a wooden
+edifice with castellated towers and machicolated battlements, which called
+itself (with a large label) the Men's Club; and from this I fled, with
+almost a sense of relief, to the hotel itself, now sprawling low and dark
+beneath its Boston-brown-bread cupola.
+
+Thus my first impression of Chautauqua was one of melancholy and
+resentment. But, in the subsequent few days, this emotion was altered to
+one of impressible satiric mirth; and, subsequently still, it was changed
+again to an emotion of wondering and humble admiration. I had been assured
+at the outset, by one who had already tried it, that, if I stayed long
+enough, I should end up by liking Chautauqua; and this is precisely what
+happened to me before a week was out.
+
+But meanwhile I laughed very hard for three days. The thing that made me
+laugh most was the unexpected experience of enduring the discomfiture of
+fame. Chautauqua is a constricted community; and any one who lectures
+there becomes, by that very fact, a famous person in this little backwater
+of the world, until he is supplanted (for fame is as fickle as a
+ballet-dancer) by the next new-comer to the platform. The Chautauqua Press
+publishes a daily paper, a weekly review, a monthly magazine and a
+quarterly; and these publications report your lectures, tell the story of
+your life, comment upon your views of this and that, advertise your books,
+and print your picture. Everybody knows you by sight, and stops you in the
+street to ask you questions. Thus, on your way to the Post Office, you are
+intercepted by some kindly soul who says: "I am Miss Terwilliger, from
+Montgomery, Alabama; and do you think that Bernard Shaw is really an
+immoral writer?" or, "I am Mrs. Winterbottom, of Muncie, Indiana; and
+where do you think I had better send my boy to school? He is rather a
+backward boy for his age--he was ten last April--but I really think that
+if, etc."
+
+Then, when you return to the hotel, you observe that everybody is rocking
+vigorously on the veranda, and reading one of your books. This pleases you
+a little; for, though an actor may look his audience in the eyes, an
+author is seldom privileged to see his readers face to face. Indeed, he
+often wonders if anybody ever reads his writings, because he knows that
+his best friends never do. But very soon this tender sentiment is
+disrupted. There comes a sudden resurrection of the rocking-chair brigade,
+a rush of readers with uplifted fountain-pens, and a general request for
+the author's autograph upon the flyleaf of his volume. All of this is
+rather flattering; but afterward these gracious and well-meaning people
+begin to comment on your lectures, and tell you that you have made them
+see a great light. And then you find yourself embarrassed.
+
+It is rather embarrassing to be embarrassed.
+
+One enthusiastic lady, having told me her name and her address, assaulted
+me with the following commentary:--"I heard you lecture on Stevenson the
+other day; and ever since then I have been thinking how very much like
+Stevenson you are. And today I heard you lecture on Walt Whitman: and all
+afternoon I have been thinking how very much like Whitman you are. And
+that is rather puzzling--isn't it?--because Stevenson and Whitman weren't
+at all like each other,--were they?"
+
+I smiled, and told the lady the simple truth; but I do not think she
+understood me. "Ah, madam," I said, "wait until you hear me lecture about
+Hawthorne...."
+
+For (and now I am freely giving the whole game away) the secret of the art
+of lecturing is merely this:--on your way to the rostrum you contrive to
+fling yourself into complete sympathy with the man you are to talk about,
+so that, when you come to speak, you will give utterance to _his_ message,
+in terms that are suggestive of _his_ style. You must guard yourself from
+ever attempting to talk about anybody whom you have not (at some time or
+other) loved; and, at the moment, you should, for sheer affection, abandon
+your own personality in favor of his, so that you may become, as nearly as
+possible, the person whom it is your business to represent. Naturally, if
+you have any ear at all, your sentences will tend to fall into the rhythm
+of his style; and if you have any temperament (whatever that may be) your
+imagined mood will diffuse an ineluctable aroma of the author's
+personality.
+
+This at least, is my own theory of lecturing; and, in the instance of my
+talk on Hawthorne, I seem to have carried it out successfully in practice.
+I must have attained a tone of sombre gray, and seemed for the moment a
+meditative Puritan under a shadowy and steepled hat; for, at the close of
+the lecture, a silvery-haired and sweet-faced woman asked me if I wouldn't
+be so kind as to lead the devotional service in the Baptist House that
+evening. I found myself abashed. But a previous engagement saved me; and I
+was able to retire, not without honor, though with some discomfiture.
+
+This previous engagement was a steamboat ride upon the lake. When you want
+to give a sure-enough party at Chautauqua, you charter a steamboat and
+escape from the enclosure, having seduced a sufficient number of other
+people to come along and sing. On this particular evening, the party
+consisted of the Chautauqua School of Expression,--a bevy of about thirty
+young women who were having their speaking voices cultivated by an admired
+friend of mine who is one of the best readers in America; and they sang
+with real spirit, so soon as we had churned our way beyond remembrance of
+(I mean no disrespect) the Baptist House. But this boat-ride had a curious
+effect on the four or five male members of the party. We touched at a
+barbarous and outrageous settlement, named (if I remember rightly) Bemus
+Point; and hardly had the boat been docked before there ensued a
+hundred-yard dash for a pair of swinging doors behind which dazzled lights
+splashed gaudily on soapy mirrors. I did not really desire a drink at the
+time; but I took two, and the other men did likewise. I understood at once
+(for I must always philosophize a little) why excessive drinking is
+induced in prohibition states. Tell me that I may not laugh, and I wish at
+once to laugh my head off,--though I am at heart a holy person who loves
+Keats. This incongruous emotion must have been felt, under this or that
+influence of external inhibition, by everyone who is alive enough to like
+swimming, and Dante, and Weber and Fields, and Filipino Lippi, and the
+view of the valley underneath the sacred stones of Delphi.
+
+Within the enclosure of Chautauqua one does not drink at all; and I infer
+that this regulation is well-advised. I base this inference upon my
+gradual discovery that all the regulations of this well-conducted
+Institution have been fashioned sanely to contribute to the greatest good
+of the greatest number. That is my final, critical opinion. But how we did
+dash for the swinging doors at Bemus Point!--we four or five
+simple-natured human beings who were not, in any considerable sense,
+drinking men at all.
+
+Then the congregated School of Expression tripped ashore with nimble
+ankles; and there ensued a general dance at a pavilion where a tired boy
+maltreated a more tired piano, and one paid a dime before, or after,
+dancing. One does not dance at Chautauqua, even on moon-silvery summer
+evenings:--and again the regulation is right, because the serious-minded
+members of the community must have time to read the books of those who
+lecture there.
+
+And this brings me to a consideration of the Chautauqua Sunday. On this
+day the gates are closed, and neither ingress nor egress is permitted.
+Once more I must admit that the regulation has been sensibly devised. If
+admittance were allowed on Sunday, the grounds would be overrun by
+picnickers from Buffalo, who would cast the shells of hard-boiled eggs
+into the inviting Sea of Galilee; and unless the officers are willing to
+let anybody in, they can devise no practicable way of letting anybody out.
+Besides, the people who are in already like to rest and meditate. But
+alas! (and at this point I think that I begin to disapprove) the row-boats
+and canoes are tied up at the dock, the tennis-courts are emptied, and the
+simple exercise of swimming is forbidden. This desuetude of natural and
+smiling recreation on a day intended for surcease of labor struck me (for
+I am in part an ancient Greek, in part a mediæval Florentine) as strangely
+irreligious. All day the organ rumbles in the Amphitheatre (and of this I
+approved, because I love the way in which an organ shakes you into
+sanctity), and many meetings are held in various sectarian houses, the
+mood of which is doubtless reverent--though all the while the rippling
+water beckons to the high and dry canoes, and a gathering of many-tinted
+clouds is summoned in the windy west to tingle with Olympian laughter and
+Universal song. How much more wisely (if I may talk in Greek terms for the
+moment) the gods take Sunday, than their followers on this forgetful
+earth!
+
+But we must change the mood if I am to speak again of what amused me in
+the pagan days of my initiation at Chautauqua. Life, for instance, at the
+ginger-bread hotel amused me oddly. To one who lives in a metropolis
+throughout the working months, the map of eating at Chautauqua seems
+incongruous. Dinner is served in the middle of the day, at an hour when
+one is hardly encouraged to the thought of luncheon; and at six P.M. a
+sort of breakfast is set forth, which is denominated _Supper_. This Supper
+consists of fruit, followed by buckwheat cakes, followed by meat or eggs;
+and to eat one's way through it induces a curious sense of standing on
+one's head. After two days I discovered a remedy for this undesired
+dizziness. I turned the _menu_ upside down, and ordered a meal in the
+reverse order. The Supper itself was a success; but the waitress (who, in
+the winter, teaches school in Texas) disapproved of what she deemed my
+frivolous proceeding. Her eyes took on an inward look beneath the
+pedagogical eye-glasses; and there was a distinct furrowing of her
+forehead. Thereafter I did not dare to overturn the _menu_, but ate my way
+heroically backward. After all, our prandial prejudices are merely the
+result of custom. There is no real reason why stewed prunes should not be
+eaten at three A.M.
+
+But this philosophical reflection reminds me that there is no such hour at
+Chautauqua. At ten P.M. a carol of sweet chimes is rung from the Italian
+_campanile_; and at that hour all good Chautauquans go to bed. If you are
+by profession (let us say) a writer, and are accustomed to be alive at
+midnight, you will find the witching hours sad. Vainly you will seek
+companionship, and will be reduced at last to reading the base-ball
+reports in the newspapers of Cleveland, Ohio.
+
+At the Athenæum you are passed about, from meal to meal, like a one-card
+draw at poker. The hotel is haunted by Old Chautauquans, who vie with each
+other to receive you with traditional cordiality. The head-waitress steers
+you for luncheon (I mean Dinner) to one table, for Supper to another, and
+so on around the room from day to day. The process reminds you a little of
+the procedure at a progressive euchre party. At each meal you meet a new
+company of Old Chautauquans, and are expected to converse: but many
+(indeed most) of these people are humanly refreshing, and the experience
+is not so wearing as it sounds.
+
+But you must not imagine from all that I have said that the life of the
+lecturer at Chautauqua is merely frivolous. Not at all. You get up very
+early, and proceed to Higgins Hall, a pleasant little edifice (named after
+the late Governor of New York State) set agreeably amid trees upon a
+rising knoll of verdure; and there you converse for a time about the
+Drama, and for another time about the Novel. In each of these two courses
+there were, perhaps, seventy or eighty students,--male and female, elderly
+and young. I found them much more eager than the classes I had been
+accustomed to in college, and at least as well prepared. They came from
+anywhere, and from any previous condition of servitude to the general
+cause of learning; but I found them apt, and interested, and alive.
+
+Now and then it appeared that their sense of humor was a little less
+fantastic than my own; but I liked them very much, because they were so
+earnest and simple and human and (what is Whitman's adjective?) adhesive.
+
+And now I come to the point that converted me finally to Chautauqua. I
+found myself, after a few days, liking the people very much. In the
+afternoons I talked in the Doric Temple about this man or that,--selected
+from my company of well-beloved friends among "the famous nations of the
+dead"; and the people came in hundreds and listened reverently--not, I am
+very glad to know, because of any trick I have of setting words together,
+but because of Stevenson and Whitman and the others, and what they meant
+by living steadfast lives amid the hurly-burly of this roaring world, and
+steering heroically by their stars. Some elderly matrons among the
+listeners brought their knitting with them and toiled with busy hands
+throughout the lecture; but they listened none the less attentively, and
+reduced me to a mood of humble wonderment.
+
+For I have often wondered (and this is, perhaps, the most intimate of my
+confessions) how anybody can endure a lecture,--even a good lecture, for I
+am not thinking merely of my own. It is a passive exercise of which I am
+myself incapable. I, for one, have always found it very irksome--as
+Carlyle has phrased the experience--"to sit as a passive bucket and be
+pumped into." I always want to talk back, or rise and remark "But, on the
+other hand..."; and, before long, I find myself spiritually itching. This
+is, possibly, a reason why I prefer canoeing to listening to sermons. Yet
+these admirable Chautauquans submit themselves to this experience hour
+after hour, because they earnestly desire to discover some glimmering of
+"the best that has been known and thought in the world."
+
+These fifteen or twenty thousand people have assembled for the pursuit of
+culture--a pursuit which the Hellenic-minded Matthew Arnold designated as
+the noblest in this life. But from this fact (and here the antithetic
+formula asserts itself) we must deduce an inference that they feel
+themselves to be uncultured. In this inference I found a taste of the
+pathetic. I discovered that many of the colonists at Chautauqua were men
+and women well along in life who had had no opportunities for early
+education. Their children, rising through the generations, had returned
+from the state universities of Texas or Ohio or Mississippi, talking of
+Browning, and the binominal theorem, and the survival of the fittest, and
+the grandeur and decadence of the Romans, and the _entassus_ of Ionic
+columns, and the doctrine of _laissez faire_; and now their elders had set
+out to endeavor to catch up with them. This discovery touched me with both
+reverence and pathos. An attempt at what may be termed, in the technical
+jargon of base-ball, a "delayed steal" of culture, seemed to me little
+likely to succeed. Culture, like wisdom, cannot be acquired: it cannot be
+passed, like a dollar bill, from one who has it to one who has it not. It
+must be absorbed, early in life, through birth or breeding, or be gathered
+undeliberately through experience. A child of five with a French governess
+will ask for his mug of milk with an easier Gallic grace than a man of
+eighty who has puzzled out the pronunciation from a text-book. There is,
+apparently, no remedy for this. Love the _Faerie Queene_ at twelve, or you
+will never really love it at seventy: or so, at least, it seems to me. And
+yet the desire to learn, in gray-haired men and women who in their youth
+were battling hard for a mere continuance of life itself, and founding
+homesteads in a book-less wilderness, moved me to a quick exhilaration.
+
+Most of the people at Chautauqua come either from the south or from the
+middle west. They pronounce the English language either without any _r_ at
+all, or with such excessive emphasis upon the _r_ as to make up for the
+deficiency of their fellow-seekers. In other words, these people are
+really American, as opposed to cosmopolitan; and to live among them
+is--for a world-wandering adventurer--to learn a lesson in Americanism.
+Mr. Roosevelt once stated that Chautauqua is the most American institution
+in America; and this statement--like many others of his inspired
+platitudes--begins to seem meaningful upon reflection.
+
+At one time or another I have drifted to many different corners of the
+world; but my residence at Chautauqua was my only experience of a
+democracy. In this community there are no special privileges. If the
+President of the Institution had wished to hear me lecture (he never did,
+in fact--though we used to play tennis together, at which game he proved
+himself easily the better man) he would have been required to come early
+and take his chance at getting a front seat; and once, when I ventured to
+attend a lecture by one of my colleagues, I found myself seated beside
+that very waitress in the Athenæum who had disapproved of my method of
+ordering a meal. All the exercises are open equally to anybody--first
+come, first served--and the boy who blacks your boots may turn out to be a
+Sophomore at Oberlin. Teachers in Texas high-schools sweep the floors or
+shave you, and the raucous newsboy is earning his way toward the
+University of Illinois. All this is a little bewildering at first; but in
+a day or two you grow to like it.
+
+This free-for-all spirit that permeates Chautauqua reminds me to speak of
+the economic conduct of the Institution. The only charge--except in the
+case of certain special courses--is for admission to the grounds. The
+visitor pays fifty cents for a franchise of one day, and more for periods
+of greater length, until the ultimate charge of seven dollars and fifty
+cents for a season ticket is attained. On leaving the grounds, he has to
+show his ticket; and if it has expired he is taxed according to the term
+of his delinquent lingering. Once free of the grounds, he may avail
+himself of any of the privileges of the Assembly. Lectures, on an infinite
+variety of subjects, are delivered hour after hour; and a bulletin of
+these successive lectures is posted publicly and printed in the daily
+paper. Every evening an entertainment of some sort is given in the
+Amphitheatre, and this is eagerly attended by swarming thousands. The
+Institution owns all the land within the bounding palisades. Private
+cottages may be erected by individual builders on lots leased for
+ninety-nine years; but the Institution owns and operates the only hotel,
+and exercises an absolute empery over the issuance of franchises to
+necessary tradesmen. The revenue of the corporation is therefore rich; but
+all of it is expended in importing the best lecturers that may be
+obtained, and in furthering the general good of the general assembly. The
+entire system suggests the theoretic observation that an absolute
+democracy can be instituted and maintained only by an absolute monarchy.
+If all the people are to be free and equal, the government must have
+absolute control of all the revenue. Here is, perhaps, a principle for our
+presidential candidates to think about.
+
+But I do not wish to terminate this summer conversation on a serious note;
+and I must revert, in closing, to some of the recreations at Chautauqua.
+The first of these is tea. Every afternoon, from four to five o'clock, the
+visitor lightly flits from tea to tea,--making his excuses to one hostess
+in order to dash onward to another. This is rather hard upon the health,
+because it requires the deglutition of innumerable potions. I have always
+maintained that tea is an admirable entity if it be considered merely as a
+time of day, but that it is insidious if it be considered as a beverage.
+At Chautauqua, tea is not only an hour but a drink; and (though I am a
+sympathetic soul) I can only say that those who like it like it. For my
+part, I preferred the concoction sold at rustic soda-fountains, which is
+known locally as a "Chautauqua highball,"--a ribald term devised by
+college men who make up the by-no-means-despicable ball-team. This
+beverage is compounded out of unfermented grape-juice and foaming
+fizz-water; and, if it be taken absent-mindedly, seems to taste like
+something.
+
+But the standard recreation at Chautauqua is the habit of impromptu eating
+in the open air. Every one invites you to go upon a picnic. You take a
+steamer to some point upon the lake, or take a trolley to a wild and deep
+ravine known by the somewhat unpoetic name of the Hog's Back; and then
+everybody sits around and eats sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and
+considers the occasion a debauch. This formality resembles great good
+fun,--especially as there are girls who laugh, and play, and threaten to
+disconcert you on the morrow when you solemnly arise to lecture on the
+Religion of Emerson. But picnic-baskets out of doors are rather hard on
+the digestion.
+
+Perhaps I should record also, as a curious experience, that I was required
+to appear as one of the guests of honor at a large reception. This meant
+that I had to stand in line, with certain other marionettes, and shake
+hands with an apparently endless procession of people who were themselves
+as bored as were the guests of honor. I determined then and there that I
+should never run for President,--not even in response to an irresistible
+appeal from the populace. I had never suspected before that there could be
+so many hands without the touch of nature in them.  I shook hands
+mechanically, chatting all the while with a humorous and human woman who
+stood next to me in the line of the attacked--until suddenly I felt the
+sensitive and tender grasp of a sure-enough hand, reminding me of friends
+and one or two women it has been a holiness to know. My attention was
+attracted by the thrill. I turned swiftly--and I looked upon a little bent
+old woman who was blind. She had a voice, too, for she spoke to me ...
+and,--well, I was very glad that I went to that reception.
+
+And many other matters I remember fondly,--a certain lonely hill at
+sunset, whence you looked over wide water to distant dream-enchanted
+shores; the urbanity and humor of the wise directors of the Institution;
+the manner of many young students who discerned an unadmitted sanctity
+beneath the smiling conversations of those summer hours; my own last
+lecture, on "The Importance of Enjoying Life"; the people who walked with
+me to the station and whom I was sorry to leave; and the oddly-minded
+student behind the desk of the hotel; and an old man from Kentucky who
+cared about Walt Whitman after I had talked about his ministrations in the
+army hospitals; and the trees, and the reverberating organ, and, beneath a
+benison of midnight peace, the hushed moon-silvery surface of the lake. It
+is, indeed, a memorable experience to have lectured at Chautauqua.
+
+
+
+
+ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP
+
+
+Any one who has traveled much about the country of recent years must have
+been impressed by the growing uneasiness of mind among thoughtful men.
+Whether in the smoking car, or the hotel corridor, or the college hall,
+everywhere, if you meet them off their guard and stripped of the optimism
+which we wear as a public convention, you will hear them saying in a kind
+of sad amazement, "What is to be the end of it all?" They are alarmed at
+the unsettlement of property and the difficulties that harass the man of
+moderate means in making provision for the future; they are uneasy over
+the breaking up of the old laws of decorum, if not of decency, and over
+the unrestrained pursuit of excitement at any cost; they feel vaguely that
+in the decay of religion the bases of society have been somehow weakened.
+Now, much of this sort of talk is as old as history, and has no special
+significance. We are prone to forget that civilization has always been a
+_tour de force_, so to speak, a little hard-won area of order and
+self-subordination amidst a vast wilderness of anarchy and barbarism that
+are with difficulty held in check and are continually threatening to
+overrun their bounds. But that is equally no reason for over-confidence.
+Civilization is like a ship traversing an untamed sea. It is a more
+complex machine in our day, with command of greater forces, and might seem
+correspondingly safer than in the era of sails. But fresh catastrophes
+have shown that the ancient perils of navigation still confront the
+largest vessel, when the crew loses its discipline or the officers neglect
+their duty; and the analogy is not without its warning.
+
+Only a year after the sinking of the _Titanic_ I was crossing the ocean,
+and it befell by chance that on the anniversary of that disaster we passed
+not very far from the spot where the proud ship lay buried beneath the
+waves. The evening was calm, and on the lee deck a dance had been hastily
+organized to take advantage of the benign weather. Almost alone I stood
+for hours at the railing on the windward side, looking out over the
+rippling water where the moon had laid upon it a broad street of gold.
+Nothing could have been more peaceful; it was as if Nature were smiling
+upon earth in sympathy with the strains of music and the sound of laughter
+that reached me at intervals from the revelling on the other deck. Yet I
+could not put out of my heart an apprehension of some luring treachery in
+this scene of beauty--and certainly the world can offer nothing more
+wonderfully beautiful than the moon shining from the far East over a
+smooth expanse of water. Was it not in such a calm as this that the
+unsuspecting vessel, with its gay freight of human lives, had shuddered,
+and gone down, forever? I seemed to behold a symbol; and there came into
+my mind the words we used to repeat at school, but are, I do not know just
+why, a little ashamed of to-day:
+
+  Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
+  Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
+  Humanity with all its fears,
+  With all its hopes of future years,
+  Is hanging breathless on thy fate!...
+
+Something like this, perhaps, is the feeling of many men--men by no means
+given to morbid gusts of panic--amid a society that laughs overmuch in its
+amusement and exults in the very lust of change. Nor is their anxiety
+quite the same as that which has always disturbed the reflecting
+spectator. At other times the apprehension has been lest the combined
+forces of order might not be strong enough to withstand the
+ever-threatening inroads of those who envy barbarously and desire
+recklessly; whereas today the doubt is whether the natural champions of
+order themselves shall be found loyal to their trust, for they seem no
+longer to remember clearly the word of command that should unite them in
+leadership. Until they can rediscover some common ground of strength and
+purpose in the first principles of education and law and property and
+religion, we are in danger of falling a prey to the disorganizing and
+vulgarizing domination of ambitions which should be the servants and not
+the masters of society.
+
+Certainly, in the sphere of education there is a growing belief that some
+radical reform is needed; and this dissatisfaction is in itself wholesome.
+Boys come into college with no reading and with minds unused to the very
+practice of study; and they leave college, too often, in the same state of
+nature. There are even those, inside and outside of academic halls, who
+protest that our higher institutions of learning simply fail to educate at
+all. That is slander; but in sober earnest, you will find few experienced
+college professors, apart from those engaged in teaching purely
+utilitarian or practical subjects, who are not convinced that the general
+relaxation is greater now than it was twenty years ago. It is of
+considerable significance that the two student essays which took the
+prizes offered by the Harvard _Advocate_ in 1913 were both on this theme.
+The first of them posed the question: "How can the leadership of the
+intellectual rather than the athletic student be fostered?" and was
+virtually a sermon on a text of President Lowell's: "No one in close touch
+with American education has failed to notice the lack among the mass of
+undergraduates of keen interest in their studies, and the small regard for
+scholarly attainment."
+
+Now, the _Advocate_ prizeman has his specific remedy, and President Lowell
+has his, and other men propose other systems and restrictions; but the
+evil is too deep-seated to be reached by any superficial scheme of honors
+or to be charmed away by insinuating appeals. The other day Mr. William F.
+McCombs, chairman of the National Committee which engineered a college
+president into the White House, gave this advice to our academic youth:
+"The college man must forget--or never let it creep into his head--that
+he's a highbrow. If it does creep in, he's out of politics." To which one
+might reply in Mr. McCombs's own dialect, that unless a man can make
+himself a force in politics (or at least in the larger life of the State)
+precisely by virtue of being a "highbrow," he had better spend his four
+golden years otherwhere than in college. There it is: the destiny of
+education is intimately bound up with the question of social leadership,
+and unless the college, as it used to be in the days when the religious
+hierarchy it created was a real power, can be made once more a breeding
+place for a natural aristocracy, it will inevitably degenerate into a
+school for mechanical apprentices or into a pleasure resort for the
+_jeunesse dorée_ (_sc._ the "gold coasters"). We must get back to a common
+understanding of the office of education in the construction of society,
+and must discriminate among the subjects that may enter into the
+curriculum, by their relative value towards this end.
+
+A manifest condition is that education should embrace the means of
+discipline, for without discipline the mind will remain inefficient, just
+as surely as the muscles of the body, without exercise, will be left
+flaccid. That should seem to be a self-evident truth. Now it may be
+possible to derive a certain amount of discipline out of any study, but it
+is a fact, nevertheless, which cannot be gainsaid, that some studies lend
+themselves to this use more readily and effectively than others. You may,
+for instance, if by extraordinary luck you get the perfect teacher, make
+English literature disciplinary by the hard manipulation of ideas; but in
+practice it almost inevitably happens that a course in English literature
+either degenerates into the dull memorizing of dates and names or, rising
+into the O Altitudo, evaporates in romantic gush over beautiful passages.
+This does not mean, of course, that no benefit may be obtained from such a
+study, but it does preclude English literature generally from being made
+the backbone, so to speak, of a sound curriculum. The same may be said of
+French and German. The difficulties of these tongues in themselves, and
+the effort required of us to enter into their spirit, imply some degree of
+intellectual gymnastics, but scarcely enough for our purpose. Of the
+sciences it behooves one to speak circumspectly, and undoubtedly
+mathematics and physics, at least, demand such close attention and such
+firm reasoning as to render them an essential part of any disciplinary
+education. But there are good grounds for being sceptical of the effect of
+the non-mathematical sciences on the immature mind. Any one who has spent
+a considerable portion of his undergraduate time in a chemical laboratory,
+for example, as the present writer has done, and has the means of
+comparing the results of such elementary and pottering experimentation
+with the mental grip required in the humanistic courses, must feel that
+the real training obtained therein was almost negligible. If I may draw
+further from my own observation I must say frankly that, after dealing for
+a number of years with manuscripts prepared for publication by college
+professors of the various faculties, I have been forced to the conclusion
+that science, in itself, is likely to leave the mind in a state of
+relative imbecility. It is not that the writing of men who got their early
+drill too exclusively, or even predominantly, in the sciences lacks the
+graces of rhetoric--that would be comparatively a small matter--but such
+men in the majority of cases, even when treating subjects within their own
+field, show a singular inability to think clearly and consecutively, so
+soon as they are freed from the restraint of merely describing the process
+of an experiment. On the contrary, the manuscript of a classical scholar,
+despite the present dry-rot of philology, almost invariably gives signs of
+a habit of orderly and well-governed cerebration.
+
+Here, whatever else may be lacking, is discipline. The sheer difficulty of
+Latin and Greek, the highly organized structure of these languages, the
+need of scrupulous search to find the nearest equivalents for words that
+differ widely in their scope of meaning from their derivatives in any
+modern vocabulary, the effort of lifting one's self out of the familiar
+rut of ideas into so foreign a world, all these things act as a tonic
+exercise to the brain. And it is a demonstrable fact that students of the
+classics do actually surpass their unclassical rivals in any field where a
+fair test can be made. At Princeton, for instance, Professor West has
+shown this superiority by tables of achievements and grades, which he
+published in the _Educational Review_ for March, 1913; and a number of
+letters from various parts of the country, printed in the _Nation_, tell
+the same story in striking fashion. Thus, a letter from Wesleyan
+(September 7, 1911) gives statistics to prove that the classical students
+in that university outstrip the others in obtaining all sorts of honors,
+commonly even honors in the sciences. Another letter (May 8, 1913) shows
+that in the first semester in English at the University of Nebraska the
+percentage of delinquents among those who entered with four years of Latin
+was below 7; among those who had three years of Latin and one or two of a
+modern language the percentage rose to 15; two years of Latin and two
+years of a modern language, 30 per cent.; one year or less of Latin and
+from two to four years of a modern language, 35 per cent. And in the
+_Nation_ of April 23, 1914, Prof. Arthur Gordon Webster, the eminent
+physicist of Clark University, after speaking of the late B.O. Peirce's
+early drill and life-long interest in Greek and Latin, adds these
+significant words: "Many of us still believe that such a training makes
+the best possible foundation for a scientist." There is reason to think
+that this opinion is daily gaining ground among those who are zealous that
+the prestige of science should be maintained by men of the best calibre.
+
+The disagreement in this matter would no doubt be less, were it not for an
+ambiguity in the meaning of the word "efficient" itself. There is a kind
+of efficiency in managing men, and there also is an intellectual
+efficiency, properly speaking, which is quite a different faculty. The
+former is more likely to be found in the successful engineer or business
+man than in the scholar of secluded habits, and because often such men of
+affairs received no discipline at college in the classics, the argument
+runs that utilitarian studies are as disciplinary as the humanistic. But
+efficiency of this kind is not an academic product at all, and is commonly
+developed, and should be developed, in the school of the world. It comes
+from dealing with men in matters of large physical moment, and may exist
+with a mind utterly undisciplined in the stricter sense of the word. We
+have had more than one illustrious example in recent years of men capable
+of dominating their fellows, let us say in financial transactions, who
+yet, in the grasp of first principles and in the analysis of consequences,
+have shown themselves to be as inefficient as children.
+
+Probably, however, few men who have had experience in education will deny
+the value of discipline to the classics, even though they hold that other
+studies, less costly from the utilitarian point of view, are equally
+educative in this respect. But it is further of prime importance, even if
+such an equality, or approach to equality, were granted, that we should
+select one group of studies, and unite in making it the core of the
+curriculum for the great mass of undergraduates. It is true in education
+as in other matters that strength comes from union, and weakness from
+division, and if educated men are to work together for a common end, they
+must have a common range of ideas, with a certain solidarity in their way
+of looking at things. As matters actually are, the educated man feels
+terribly his isolation under the scattering of intellectual pursuits, yet
+too often lacks the courage to deny the strange popular fallacy that there
+is virtue in sheer variety, and that somehow well-being is to be struck
+out from the clashing of miscellaneous interests rather than from
+concentration. In one of his annual reports some years ago President
+Eliot, of Harvard, observed from the figures of registration that the
+majority of students still at that time believed the best form of
+education for them was in the old humanistic courses, and _therefore_, he
+argued, the other courses should be fostered. There was never perhaps a
+more extraordinary syllogism since the _argal_ of Shakespeare's
+gravedigger. I quote from memory, and may slightly misrepresent the actual
+statement of the influential "educationalist," but the spirit of his
+words, as indeed of his practice, is surely as I give it. And the working
+of this spirit is one of the main causes of the curious fact that scarcely
+any other class of men in social intercourse feel themselves, in their
+deeper concerns, more severed one from another than those very college
+professors who ought to be united in the battle for educational
+leadership. This estrangement is sometimes carried to an extreme almost
+ludicrous. I remember once, in a small but advanced college, the
+consternation that was awakened when an instructor in philosophy went to a
+colleague--both of them now associates in a large university--for
+information in a question of biology. "What business has he with such
+matters," said the irate biologist; "let him stick to his last, and teach
+philosophy--if he can!" That was a polite jest, you will say. Perhaps; but
+not entirely. Philosophy is indeed taught in one lecture hall, and biology
+in another, but of conscious effort to make of education an harmonious
+driving force there is next to nothing. And as the teachers, so are the
+taught.
+
+Such criticism does not imply that advanced work in any of the branches of
+human knowledge should be curtailed; but it does demand that, as a
+background to the professional pursuits, there should be a common
+intellectual training through which all students should pass, acquiring
+thus a single body of ideas and images in which they could always meet as
+brother initiates.
+
+We shall, then, make a long step forward when we determine that in the
+college, as distinguished from the university, it is better to have the
+great mass of men, whatever may be the waste in a few unmalleable minds,
+go through the discipline of a single group of studies--with, of course, a
+considerable freedom of choice in the outlying field. And it will probably
+appear in experience that the only practicable group to select is the
+classics, with the accompaniment of philosophy and the mathematical
+sciences. Latin and Greek are, at least, as disciplinary as any other
+subjects; and if it can be further shown that they possess a specific
+power of correction for the more disintegrating tendencies of the age, it
+ought to be clear that their value as instruments of education outweighs
+the service of certain other studies which may seem to be more immediately
+utilitarian.
+
+For it will be pretty generally agreed that efficiency of the individual
+scholar and unity of the scholarly class are, properly, only the means to
+obtain the real end of education, which is social efficiency. The only
+way, in fact, to make the discipline demanded by a severe curriculum and
+the sacrifice of particular tastes required for unity seem worth the cost,
+is to persuade men that the resulting form of education both meets a
+present and serious need of society and promises to serve those
+individuals who desire to obtain society's fairer honors. As for the
+specific need of society at the present day, it is not my purpose to open
+this matter now, for the good reason that the editor of THE UNPOPULAR
+REVIEW has already permitted me to argue it at length in my article on
+_Natural Aristocracy_. Mr. McCombs, speaking for the "practical" man,
+declares that there is no place in politics for the intellectual
+aristocrat. A good many of us believe that unless the very reverse of this
+is true, unless the educated man can somehow, by virtue of his education,
+make of himself a governor of the people in the larger sense, and even to
+some extent in the narrow political sense, unless the college can produce
+a hierarchy of character and intelligence which shall in due measure
+perform the office of the discredited oligarchy of birth, we had better
+make haste to divert our enormous collegiate endowments into more useful
+channels.
+
+And here I am glad to find confirmation of my belief in the stalwart old
+_Boke Named the Governour_, published by Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531, the
+first treatise on education in the English tongue, and still, after all
+these years, one of the wisest. It is no waste of time to take account of
+the theory held by the humanists when study at Oxford and Cambridge was
+shaping itself for its long service in giving to the oligarchic government
+of Great Britain whatever elements it possessed of true aristocracy.
+Elyot's book is equally a treatise on the education of a gentleman, and on
+the ordinance of government; for, as he says elsewhere, he wrote "to
+instruct men in such virtues as shall be expedient for them which shall
+have authority in a weal public." I quote from various parts of his work
+with some abridgment, retaining the quaint spelling of the original, and I
+beg the reader not to skip, however long the citation may appear:
+
+    Beholde also the ordre that god hath put generally in al his
+    creatures, begynning at the moste inferiour or base, and
+    assendynge upwarde; so that in euery thyng is ordre, and without
+    ordre may be nothing stable or permanent; and it may nat be called
+    ordre, excepte it do contayne in it degrees, high and base,
+    accordynge to the merite or estimation of the thyng that is
+    ordred. And therfore hit appereth that god gyueth nat to euery man
+    like gyftes of grace, or of nature, but to some more, some lesse,
+    as it liketh his diuine maiestie. For as moche as understandyng is
+    the most excellent gyfte that man can receiue in his creation, it
+    is therfore congruent, and accordynge that as one excelleth an
+    other in that influence, as therby beinge next to the similitude
+    of his maker, so shulde the astate of his persone be auanced in
+    degree or place where understandynge may profite. Suche oughte to
+    be set in a more highe place than the residue where they may se
+    and also be sene; that by the beames of theyr excellent witte,
+    shewed throughe the glasse of auctorite, other of inferiour
+    understandynge may be directed to the way of vertue and commodious
+    liuynge....
+
+    Thus I conclude that nobilitie is nat after the vulgare opinion of
+    men, but is only the prayse and surname of vertue; whiche the
+    lenger it continueth in a name or lignage, the more is nobilitie
+    extolled and meruailed at....
+
+    If thou be a gouernour, or haste ouer other soueraygntie, knowe
+    thy selfe. Knowe that the name of a soueraigne or ruler without
+    actuall gouernaunce is but a shadowe, that gouernaunce standeth
+    nat by wordes onely, but principally by acte and example; that by
+    example of gouernours men do rise or falle in vertue or vice. Ye
+    shall knowe all way your selfe, if for affection or motion ye do
+    speke or do nothing unworthy the immortalitie and moste precious
+    nature of your soule....
+
+    In semblable maner the inferiour persone or subiecte aught to
+    consider, that all be it he in the substaunce of soule and body be
+    equall with his superior, yet for als moche as the powars and
+    qualities of the soule and body, with the disposition of reason,
+    be nat in euery man equall, therfore god ordayned a diuersitie or
+    pre-eminence in degrees to be amonge men for the necessary
+    derection and preseruation of them in conformitie of lyuinge....
+
+    Where all thynge is commune, there lacketh ordre; and where ordre
+    lacketh, there all thynge is odiouse and uncomly.
+
+Such is the goal which the grave Sir Thomas pointed out to the noble youth
+of his land at the beginning of England's greatness, and such, within the
+bounds of human frailty, has been the ideal even until now which the two
+universities have held before them. Naturally the method of training
+prescribed in the sixteenth century for the attainment of this goal is
+antiquated in some of its details, but it is no exaggeration,
+nevertheless, to speak of the _Boke Named the Governour_ as the very Magna
+Charta of our education. The scheme of the humanist might be described in
+a word as a disciplining of the higher faculty of the imagination to the
+end that the student may behold, as it were in one sublime vision, the
+whole scale of being in its range from the lowest to the highest under the
+divine decree of order and subordination, without losing sight of the
+immutable veracity at the heart of all variation, which "is only the
+praise and surname of virtue." This was no new vision, nor has it ever
+been quite forgotten. It was the whole meaning of religion to Hooker, from
+whom it passed into all that is best and least ephemeral in the Anglican
+Church. It was the basis, more modestly expressed, of Blackstone's
+conception of the British Constitution and of liberty under law. It was
+the kernel of Burke's theory of statecraft. It is the inspiration of the
+sublimer science, which accepts the hypothesis of evolution as taught by
+Darwin and Spencer, yet bows in reverence before the unnamed and
+incommensurable force lodged as a mystical purpose within the unfolding
+universe. It was the wisdom of that child of Stratford who, building
+better than he knew, gave to our literature its deepest and most
+persistent note. If anywhere Shakespeare seems to speak from his heart and
+to utter his own philosophy, it is in the person of Ulysses in that
+strange satire of life as "still wars and lechery" which forms the theme
+of _Troilus and Cressida_. Twice in the course of the play Ulysses
+moralizes on the causes of human evil. Once it is in an outburst against
+the devastations of disorder:
+
+  Take but degree away, untune that string,
+  And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
+  In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
+  Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
+  And make a sop of all this solid globe:
+  Strength should be lord of imbecility,
+  And the rude son should strike his father dead:
+  Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
+  Between whose endless jar justice resides,
+  Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
+  Then every thing includes itself in power,
+  Power into will, will into appetite.
+
+And, in the same spirit, the second tirade of Ulysses is charged with
+mockery at the vanity of the present and at man's usurpation of time as
+the destroyer instead of the preserver of continuity:
+
+  For time is like a fashionable host
+  That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
+  And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
+  Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
+  And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
+  Remuneration for the thing it was;
+  For beauty, wit,
+  High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
+  Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
+  To envious and calumniating time.
+
+To have made this vision of the higher imagination a true part of our
+self-knowledge, in such fashion that the soul is purged of envy for what
+is distinguished, and we feel ourselves fellows with the preserving,
+rather than the destroying, forces of time, is to be raised into the
+nobility of the intellect. To hold this knowledge in a mind trained to
+fine efficiency and confirmed by faithful comradeship, is to take one's
+place with the rightful governors of the people. Nor is there any narrow
+or invidious exclusiveness in such an aristocracy, which differs in its
+free hospitality from an oligarchy of artificial prescription. The more
+its membership is enlarged, the greater is its power, and the more secure
+are the privileges of each individual. Yet, if not exclusive, an academic
+aristocracy must by its very nature be exceedingly jealous of any
+levelling process which would shape education to the needs of the
+intellectual proletariat, and so diminish its own ranks. It cannot admit
+that, if education is once levelled downwards, the whole body of men will
+of themselves gradually raise the level to the higher range; for its creed
+declares that elevation must come from leadership rather than from
+self-motion of the mass. It will therefore be opposed to any scheme of
+studies which relaxes discipline or destroys intellectual solidarity. It
+will look with suspicion on any system which turns out half-educated men
+with the same diplomas as the fully educated, thinking that such methods
+of slurring over differences are likely to do more harm by discouraging
+the ambition to attain what is distinguished than good by spreading wide a
+thin veneer of culture. In particular it will distrust the present huge
+overgrowth of courses in government and sociology, which send men into the
+world skilled in the machinery of statecraft and with minds sharpened to
+the immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine training of
+the imagination and no understanding of the longer problems of humanity,
+with no hold on the past, "amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and
+opinions, to concentre their thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to
+preserve them from being blown about by every wind of fashionable
+doctrine." It will set itself against any regular subjection of the
+"fierce spirit of liberty," which is the breath of distinction and the
+very charter of aristocracy, to the sullen spirit of equality, which
+proceeds from envy in the baser sort of democracy. It will regard the
+character of education and the disposition of the curriculum as a question
+of supreme importance; for its motto is always, _abeunt studia in mores_.
+
+Now this aristocratic principle has, so to speak, its everlasting
+embodiment in Greek literature, from whence it was taken over into Latin
+and transmitted, with much mingling of foreign and even contradictory
+ideas, to the modern world. From Homer to the last runnings of the
+Hellenic spirit you will find it taught by every kind of precept and
+enforced by every kind of example; nor was Shakespeare writing at hazard,
+but under the instinctive guidance of genius, when he put his aristocratic
+creed into the mouth of the hero who to the end remained for the Greeks
+the personification of their peculiar wisdom. In no other poetry of the
+world is the law of distinction, as springing from a man's perception of
+his place in the great hierarchy of privilege and obligation, from the
+lowest human being up to the Olympian gods, so copiously and magnificently
+set forth as in Pindar's _Odes of Victory_. And Æschylus was the first
+dramatist to see with clear vision the primacy of the intellect in the law
+of orderly development, seemingly at variance with the divine immutable
+will of Fate, yet finally in mysterious accord with it. When the
+philosophers of the later period came to the creation of systematic
+ethics, they had only the task of formulating what was already latent in
+the poets and historians of their land; and it was the recollection of the
+fulness of such instruction in the _Nicomachean Ethics_ and the Platonic
+Dialogues, with their echo in the _Officia_ of Cicero, as if in them were
+stored up all the treasures of antiquity, that raised our Sir Thomas into
+wondering admiration:
+
+    Lorde god, what incomparable swetnesse of wordes and mater shall
+    he finde in the saide warkes of Plato and Cicero; wherin is ioyned
+    grauitie with dilectation, excellent wysedome with diuine
+    eloquence, absolute vertue with pleasure incredible, and euery
+    place is so infarced [crowded] with profitable counsaile, ioyned
+    with honestie, that those thre bokes be almoste sufficient to make
+    a perfecte and excellent gouernour.
+
+There is no need to dwell on this aspect of the classics. He who cares to
+follow their full working in this direction, as did our English humanist,
+may find it exhibited in Plato's political and ethical scheme of
+self-development, or in Aristotle's ideal of the Golden Mean which
+combines magnanimity with moderation, and elevation with self-knowledge.
+If a single word were used to describe the character and state of life
+upheld by Plato and Aristotle, as spokesmen of their people, it would be
+_eleutheria_, _liberty_: the freedom to cultivate the higher part of a
+man's nature--his intellectual prerogative, his desire of truth, his
+refinements of taste--and to hold the baser part of himself in subjection;
+the freedom, also, for its own perfection, and indeed for its very
+existence, to impose an outer conformity to, or at least respect for, the
+laws of this inner government on others who are of themselves ungoverned.
+Such liberty is the ground of true distinction; it implies the opposite of
+an equalitarianism which reserves its honors and rewards for those who
+attain a bastard kind of distinction by the cunning of leadership, without
+departing from common standards--the demagogues who rise by flattery. But
+it is, on the other hand, by no means dependent on the artificial
+distinctions of privilege, and is peculiarly adapted to an age whose
+appointed task must be to create a natural aristocracy as a _via media_
+between an equalitarian democracy and a prescriptive oligarchy or
+plutocracy. It is a notable fact that, as the real hostility to the
+classics in the present day arises from an instinctive suspicion of them
+as standing in the way of a downward-levelling mediocrity, so, at other
+times, they have fallen under displeasure for their veto on a contrary
+excess. Thus, in his savage attack on the Commonwealth, to which he gave
+the significant title _Behemoth_, Hobbes lists the reading of classical
+history among the chief causes of the rebellion. "There were," he says,
+"an exceeding great number of men of the better sort, that had been so
+educated as that in their youth, having read the books written by famous
+men of the ancient Grecian and Roman commonwealths concerning their polity
+and great actions, in which books the popular government was extolled by
+that glorious name of liberty, and monarchy disgraced by the name of
+tyranny, they became thereby in love with their forms of government; and
+out of these men were chosen the greatest part of the House of Commons; or
+if they were not the greatest part, yet by advantage of their eloquence
+were always able to sway the rest." To this charge Hobbes returns again
+and again, even declaring that "the universities have been to this nation
+as the Wooden Horse was to the Trojans." And the uncompromising monarchist
+of the _Leviathan_, himself a classicist of no mean attainments, as may be
+known by his translation of Thucydides, was not deceived in his
+accusation. The tyrannicides of Athens and Rome, the Aristogeitons and
+Brutuses and others, were the heroes by whose example the leaders of the
+French Revolution (rightly, so far as they did not fall into the opposite,
+equalitarian extreme) were continually justifying their acts:
+
+  There Brutus starts and stares by midnight taper,
+  Who all the day enacts--a woollen-draper.
+
+And again, in the years of the Risorgimento, more than one of the
+champions of Italian liberty went to death with those great names on their
+lips.
+
+So runs the law of order and right subordination. But if the classics
+offer the best service to education by inculcating an aristocracy of
+intellectual distinction, they are equally effective in enforcing the
+similar lesson of time. It is a true saying of our ancient humanist that
+"the longer it continueth in a name or lineage, the more is nobility
+extolled and marvelled at." It is true because in this way our imagination
+is working with the great conservative law of growth. Whatever may be in
+theory our democratic distaste for the insignia of birth, we cannot get
+away from the fact that there is a certain honor of inheritance, and that
+we instinctively pay homage to one who represents a noble name. There is
+nothing really illogical in this: for, as an English statesman has put it,
+"the past is one of the elements of our power." He is the wise democrat
+who, with no opposition to such a decree of Nature, endeavors to control
+its operation by expecting noble service where the memory of nobility
+abides. When last year Oxford bestowed its highest honor on an American,
+distinguished not only for his own public acts but for the great tradition
+embodied in his name, the Orator of the University did not omit this
+legitimate appeal to the imagination, singularly appropriate in its
+academic Latin:
+
+    ... Statim succurrit animo antiqua illa Romae condicio, cum non
+    tam propter singulos cives quam propter singulas gentes nomen
+    Romanum floreret. Cum enim civis alicujus et avum et proavum
+    principes civitatis esse creatos, cum patrem legationis munus apud
+    aulam Britannicam summa cum laude esse exsecutum cognovimus; cum
+    denique ipsum per totum bellum stipendia equo meritum, summa
+    pericula "Pulcra pro Libertate" ausum,... Romanae alicujus
+    gentis--Brutorum vel Deciorum--annales evolvere videmur, qui
+    testimonium adhibent "fortes creari fortibus," et majorum exemplis
+    et imaginibus nepotes ad virtutem accendi.
+
+Is there any man so dull of soul as not to be stirred by that enumeration
+of civic services zealously inherited; or is there any one so envious of
+the past as not to believe that such memories should be honored in the
+present as an incentive to noble emulation?
+
+Well, we cannot all of us count Presidents and Ambassadors among our
+ancestors, but we can, if we will, in the genealogy of the inner life
+enroll ourselves among the adopted sons of a family in comparison with
+which the Bruti and Decii of old and the Adamses of to-day are veritable
+_new men_. We can see what defence against the meaner depredations of the
+world may be drawn from the pride of birth, when, as it sometimes happens,
+the obligation of a great past is kept as a contract with the present;
+shall we forget to measure the enlargement and elevation of mind which
+ought to come to a man who has made himself the heir of the ancient Lords
+of Wisdom? "To one small people," as Sir Henry Maine has said, in words
+often quoted, "it was given to create the principle of Progress. That
+people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in
+this world which is not Greek in its origin." That is a hard saying, but
+scarcely exaggerated. Examine the records of our art and our science, our
+philosophy and the enduring element of our faith, our statecraft and our
+notion of liberty, and you will find that they all go back for their
+inspiration to that one small people, and strike their roots into the soil
+of Greece. What we have added, it is well to know; but he is the
+aristocrat of the mind who can display a diploma from the schools of the
+Academy and the Lyceum, and from the Theatre of Dionysus. What tradition
+of ancestral achievement in the Senate or on the field of battle shall
+broaden a man's outlook and elevate his will equally with the
+consciousness that his way of thinking and feeling has come down to him by
+so long and honorable a descent, or shall so confirm him in his better
+judgment against the ephemeral and vulgarizing solicitations of the hour?
+Other men are creatures of the visible moment; he is a citizen of the past
+and of the future. And such a charter of citizenship it is the first duty
+of the college to provide.
+
+I have limited myself in these pages to a discussion of what may be called
+the public side of education, considering the classics in their power to
+mould character and foster sound leadership in a society much given to
+drifting. Of the inexhaustible joy and consolation they afford to the
+individual, only he can have full knowledge who has made the writers of
+Greece and Rome his friends and counsellors through many vicissitudes of
+life. It is related of Sainte-Beuve, who, according to Renan, read
+everything and remembered everything, that one could observe a peculiar
+serenity on his face whenever he came down from his study after reading a
+book of Homer. The cost of learning the language of Homer is not small;
+but so are all fair things difficult, as the Greek proverb runs, and the
+reward in this case is precious beyond estimation.
+
+Nor need we forget another proverb from Greece, with its spirit of
+"accommodation"--that the half is sometimes greater than the whole. Even a
+moderate acquaintance with the language, helped out by good translations
+(especially in such form as the Loeb Classics are now offering, with the
+original and the English on opposite pages), will go a surprising length
+towards keeping a man, amid the exactions of a professional or otherwise
+busy life, in possession of the heritage to which our age has grown so
+perilously indifferent.
+
+
+
+
+HYPNOTISM, TELEPATHY, AND DREAMS
+
+
+A good many good judges find the world more out of joint, and moving with
+a more threatening rattling, than at any previous time since the French
+Revolution, and think that this is largely because the machine has lost
+too much of that regulation it used to get from the religions. Much of the
+regulation came from an interest in things wider than those directly
+revealed by sense.
+
+Possibly a revival of such an interest may be promised by the recent
+indications of a range of our forces, both physical and psychic, far wider
+than previous experience has indicated. This leads us to invite attention
+to some unusual psychic phenomena evinced by persons of exceptional
+sensibilities not yet as well understood, or even as carefully
+investigated, as perhaps they deserve to be. The physical phenomena are
+outside of our present purpose.
+
+There are hundreds of well authenticated reports of super-usual visions.
+The vast majority of them, however, were experienced when the percipients
+were in bed, but believed themselves awake. But almost everybody has often
+believed himself awake in bed, when he was only dreaming. Hence the
+probability is overwhelming that most of these super-usual experiences
+were had in dreams.
+
+But it is certain that not all were, at least in dreams as ordinarily
+understood; but there seems to be a waking dream state. Foster's visions
+virtually all came while he was awake, and they were generally at once
+described by him as if he were describing a landscape or a play. At times
+he very closely identified himself with some personality of his visions,
+and acted out the personality, just as Mrs. Piper has habitually done. The
+following is an approximate instance, quoted by Bartlett (_The Salem
+Seer_, p. 51 f.):
+
+    Says a writer in the New York _World_, Dec. 27, 1885:
+
+    ... While we were talking one night, Foster and I, there came a
+    knock at the door. Bartlett arose and opened it, disclosing as he
+    did so two young men plainly dressed, of marked provincial
+    aspect.... I saw at once that they were clients, and arose to go.
+    Foster restrained me.
+
+    "Sit down," he said. "I'll try and get rid of them, for I'm not in
+    the humor to be disturbed...."
+
+    Foster hinted that he had no particular inclination to gratify
+    them then and there, but they protested that they had come some
+    distance, and, with a characteristically good-natured smile, he
+    gave in....
+
+    Then follows an account of a fairly good séance--taps on the
+    marble table, reading pellets, describing persons, etc., until I
+    thought Foster was tired of the interview and was feigning sleep
+    to end it. All of a sudden he sprang to his feet with such an
+    expression of horror and consternation as an actor playing Macbeth
+    would have given a good deal to imitate. His eyes glared, his
+    breast heaved, his hands clenched....
+
+    "Why did you come here?" cried Foster, in a wail that seemed to
+    come from the bottom of his soul. "Why do you come here to torment
+    me with such a sight? Oh, God! It's horrible! It's horrible!... It
+    is your father I see!... He died fearfully! He died fearfully! He
+    was in Texas--on a horse--with cattle. He was alone. It is the
+    prairies! Alone! The horse fell! He was under it! His thigh was
+    broken--horribly broken! The horse ran away and left him! He lay
+    there stunned! Then he came to his senses! Oh! his thigh was
+    dreadful! Such agony! My God! Such agony!"
+
+    Foster fairly screamed at this. The younger of the men ... broke
+    into violent sobs. His companion wept, too, and the pair of them
+    clasped hands. Bartlett looked on concerned. As for me, I was
+    astounded.
+
+    "He was four days dying--four days dying--of starvation and
+    thirst," Foster went on, as if deciphering some terrible
+    hieroglyphs written on the air. "His thigh swelled to the size of
+    his body. Clouds of flies settled on him--flies and vermin--and he
+    chewed his own arm and drank his own blood. He died mad. And my
+    God! he crawled three miles in those four days! Man! Man! that's
+    how your father died!"
+
+    So saying, with a great sob, Foster dropped into his chair, his
+    cheeks purple, and tears running down them in rivers. The younger
+    man ... burst into a wild cry of grief and sank upon the neck of
+    his friend. He, too, was sobbing as if his own heart would break.
+    Bartlett stood over Foster wiping his forehead with a
+    handkerchief....
+
+    "It's true," said the younger man's friend; "his father was a
+    stock-raiser in Texas, and after he had been missing from his
+    drove for over a week, they found him dead and swollen with his
+    leg broken. They tracked him a good distance from where he must
+    have fallen. But nobody ever heard till now how he died." ...
+
+Now it is hardly to be supposed that the young visitor could ever have had
+this scene in his mind as vividly as Foster had. In that case where and
+how did Foster get the vividness and emotion? How do we get them in
+dreams? He dreamed while he was awake.
+
+As Bartlett quotes this, and as it declares him to have been present, he
+of course attests it by quoting it. So in each of Bartlett's quoted cases,
+the original witness is the reporter in the newspaper, and Bartlett, who
+was present (he was Foster's traveling companion and business agent) thus
+confirms it. We know Mr. Bartlett personally, and have thorough confidence
+in his sanity and sincerity. We have also been at the pains to learn that
+he commands the confidence and respect of his fellow townsmen in Tolland,
+Connecticut, where he is passing a green old age. Moreover, he does not
+interpret these phenomena by "spiritism."
+
+We also had a sitting with Foster, in which he undoubtedly showed abundant
+telepathy, and satisfied us that he was fundamentally honest, though not
+always discriminating between his involuntary impressions, and his natural
+impulses to help out their coherence and interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those who explain these things by denying their existence, were at least
+excusable thirty, or even twenty, years ago, but since the carefully
+sifted and authenticated and recorded evidence of recent years, especially
+that gathered by the Society for Psychical Research, the makers of such
+explanations simply put themselves in the category of those who, in
+Schopenhauer's day, denied the telopsis which is now quite generally
+recognized. He said their attitude should not be called skeptical, but
+merely ignorant. This brings to mind an excellent very practical friend
+who read the first number of this REVIEW, and praised it, but said: "Don't
+fool any more with Psychical Research and Simplified Spelling." We
+refrained from saying that we had not known that he had ever studied
+either, and we would not say it here if we were not confident that his
+aversion from the subject will prevent his reading this.
+
+To return to the manifestations: here are some other cases where Foster
+identified himself with a personality of his vision. (Bartlett, _op.
+cit._, 93.)
+
+    From Sacramento _Record_, December 8, 1873:
+
+    Foster at one time seized A.'s hand, explaining, "God bless you,
+    my dear boy, my son. I am thankful I at last may speak to you. I
+    want you to know I am your father, who loved you in life and loves
+    you still. I am near to you; a thin veil alone separates us.
+    Good-by. I am your father, Abijah A----"
+
+    "Good heavens!" exclaimed A----, "that was my father's name, his
+    tone, his manner, his action."
+
+    "And," said Foster, "it was a good influence; he was a man of
+    large veneration."
+
+The above indicates what we will provisionally call Possession. But it is
+not possession to the extent of complete expulsion of the original
+consciousness, as in the trances of Home, Moses, and Mrs. Piper.
+
+And which is the following? (Bartlett, _op. cit._, 103):
+
+    [Letter to editor, written Nov. 30, 1874]
+
+    New York _Daily Graphic_: ... He told me he saw the spirit of an
+    old woman close to me, describing most perfectly my grandmother,
+    and repeating: "Resodeda, Resodeda is here; she kisses her
+    grandson." Arising from his chair, Foster embraced and kissed me
+    in the same peculiar way as my grandmother did when alive.
+
+But here the Possession seems complete (Bartlett, _op. cit._, 140). From
+the Melbourne _Daily Age_:
+
+    Mr. Foster ... in answer to the question, What he died of?
+    suddenly interrupted, "Stay, this spirit will enter and possess
+    me," and instantaneously his whole body was seized with quivering
+    convulsions, the eyes were introverted, the face swelled, and the
+    mouth and hands were spasmodically agitated. Another change, and
+    there sat before me the counterpart of the figure of my departed
+    friend, stricken down with complete paralysis, just as he was on
+    his death-bed. The transformation was so life-like, if I may use
+    the expression, that I fancied I could detect the very features
+    and physiognomical changes that passed across the visage of my
+    dying friend. The kind of paralysis was exactly represented, with
+    the palsied hand extended to me to shake, as in the case of the
+    original. Mr. Foster recovered himself when I touched it, and he
+    said in reply to one of my companions that he had completely lost
+    his own identity during the fit, and felt like waves of water
+    flowing all over his body, from the crown downwards.
+
+Now for some tentative explanation of these rather unusual proceedings. It
+is generally known that a hypnotized person will imagine things and do
+things willed by the hypnotizer, that the sensibility of persons to
+hypnotism varies, and that persons frequently hypnotized become
+increasingly susceptible to the influence.
+
+Now what is ordinarily called thought transference has all these symptoms,
+and the combined indications seem to be that persons who readily
+experience thought-transference are specially susceptible to hypnotic
+influence, and get the transferred thought from almost anybody, just as
+the recognized hypnotic subject gets it from his hypnotizer; and that
+persons of excessive sensibility, like Foster, Home, Mrs. Holland, Mrs.
+Piper and mediums generally--the genuine ones,--simply get their
+impressions hypnotically from their sitters.
+
+But this explanation (?) by no means covers the whole situation. In the
+first place, it does not cover the vividness and the emotional content
+often displayed by the sensitive. The sitter is very seldom conscious of
+anything approaching it. It comes nearer to, in fact almost seems
+identical with, the frequent vividness and intensity of dreams. But where
+do dreams come from, whether in sleep, or in a waking "dream state" like
+that of Foster and many other sensitives? They don't come from any
+assignable "sitter." This present scribe dreams architecture and
+bric-a-brac finer than any he ever saw, or than any ever made. Yet he is
+no architect, or artist of any kind. Where does it all come from?
+
+Dreams, moreover, are filled with memories of forgotten things. Where do
+they come from? Dreams, too, are by no means devoid of truths not
+previously known to the dreamer, or, it would sometimes seem, to anybody
+else. Where do they come from?
+
+Du Prel and his school say they come from a "subliminal self," and Myers
+picks up the term and spreads it through Anglo-Saxondom. But those queer
+dreams frequently include persons who oppose the self--argue with it, and
+even down it, sometimes very much for its information, regeneration and
+increased stability. That does not seem like a house divided against
+itself; such an one, we have on very high authority, is apt to fall.
+James, cornered by his studies in Psychical Research, was inclined to
+posit a "cosmic reservoir" of all thoughts and feelings that ever existed,
+and of potentialities of all the thoughts and feelings that are ever going
+to exist; and under various designations, this cosmic reservoir or,--it
+seems a better metaphor--the cosmic soul filling it, and dribbling into
+our little souls,--is a guess of virtually all the philosophers from James
+back to Plato, and farther still--into the mists.
+
+Moreover this guess is powerfully backed up by another guess: men's
+speculations have been reaching back for the beginning of mind, until they
+recognize that a consistent doctrine of evolution finds no beginning, and
+demands mind as a constituent of the star-dust, and, when it really comes
+down to the scratch, is unable to imagine matter unassociated with mind.
+This is admirably expressed by James (Psychology I, 140):
+
+    If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape must
+    have been present at the very origin of things. Accordingly we
+    find that the more clear-sighted evolutionary philosophers are
+    beginning to posit it there. Each atom of the nebula, they
+    suppose, must have had an aboriginal atom of consciousness linked
+    with it; and, just as the material atoms have formed bodies and
+    brains by massing themselves together, so the mental atoms, by an
+    analogous process of aggregation, have fused into those larger
+    consciousnesses which we know in ourselves and suppose to exist in
+    our fellow-animals.
+
+That mind is not limited to this connection with matter, we see proved _a
+posteriori_ every day by the appearance from _some_ source, it may be only
+from the memories of survivors, of minds whose accompanying matter is long
+since dissipated.
+
+Moreover, in life, the matter is changing constantly and
+entirely--"renewed once in seven years." Yet not only does the "plan," the
+"idea," of the material man remain the same, but his mind grows for forty,
+sixty, sometimes eighty years, while the body begins to go down hill at
+twenty-eight.
+
+Moreover, we never see the sum of matter in the universe increasing, and
+we do see the sum of mind increasing every time two old thoughts coalesce
+into a new one, or even every time matter assumes a new form before a
+perceiving intelligence, not to speak of every time Mr. Bryan or Mr.
+Roosevelt opens his mouth. We cite these last as the extreme examples of
+increase--in quantity. We see another sort of increase every time Lord
+Bryce takes up his pen--the mental treasures of the world are added
+to--the contents of the cosmic reservoir worthily increased--the cosmic
+soul greater and more significant than before.
+
+Parts of it farther and farther removed in time and space seem to be
+manifesting themselves through the sensitives every day: so the evidence
+is increasing that none of it has ever been extinguished. The evidence
+that any part has been, is merely the evidence that it has stopped flowing
+through each man when he dies. But there are pretty strong indications
+that it has welled up occasionally through another man, and yet with the
+original individuality apparently even stronger than it was in the first
+man--strong enough to make an alien body--Foster's, in the instances
+quoted, look and act like the original twin body.
+
+Yet while the cosmic soul idea seems very illuminating, and even
+stimulating, as far as it goes, it soon lands us in the swamp of paradox
+surrounding all our knowledge. How reconcile it with our
+individuality--the individuality as dear as life itself--virtually
+identical with life itself? Well, we can't reconcile them, at least just
+yet. But we can pull our feet up from the swamp, and make a step that may
+be towards a reconciliation. Each of our brains is a network of channels
+through which the cosmic soul flows; and there are no two brains
+alike--hence our individuality.
+
+But those brains perish. Must individuality be conceded at the cost of our
+mental continuity? Perhaps not. Grant even the original mind-atom to be a
+constituent, or inseparable companion, of an original matter-atom
+(wouldn't it be more up to date to say vibration in each case?), mind, as
+we have already tried to demonstrate, is not limited, as matter seems to
+be, to those primitive atoms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The vague but almost unescapable notion of the cosmic soul also opens up
+some hint of an explanation of hypnotism, including, of course, thought
+transference. These vague hints or gleams on the borderland of our
+knowledge are of course something like what must be such hints of what we
+know as color, as go through the pigment spots on the surface of one of
+the lower creatures. Such as our limits are, we can express them only in
+metaphors. But for that matter all of our language beyond a few material
+conceptions, is metaphor from them. Well, on the hypothesis (or facing the
+fact, if you prefer) of the cosmic soul, telepathy, hypnotism and all that
+sort of thing at once affiliates itself with all our easy conceptions of
+interflow--in fluids, gases, sounds, colors, magnetism, electricity, etc.
+It's all a vague groping, but there seems something there which, as we
+evolve farther, we may get clearer impressions of.
+
+Well, to return to our sheep. Foster didn't get the clearness and
+intensity of his visions from the comparatively indistinct and placid
+impressions in his sitters' minds. There must be something more than
+hypnotism from the sitter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now here is a tougher case which opens a new element of the problem. It is
+from _The Autobiography of a Journalist_, by W.J. Stillman, Boston, 1901,
+Vol. I, pp. 192-4: Not many of our older readers will require any
+introduction of Stillman. For the younger ones, we may say that he was a
+very eminent art-critic; spent most of the latter half of his life abroad,
+being part of the time our consul at Crete; wrote a history of the Cretan
+Rebellion, and other books; and was a regular correspondent of _The
+Nation_, and of _The London Times_. We never knew his veracity questioned.
+
+Here is the story:
+
+A "spiritual medium," Miss A. was "under the control" of Stillman's dead
+cousin "Harvey." The "possession" seems to have been throughout free from
+trance. Stillman says:
+
+    I asked Harvey if he had seen old Turner, the landscape painter,
+    since his death, which had taken place not very long before. The
+    reply was "Yes," and I then asked what he was doing, the reply
+    being a pantomime of painting. I then asked if Harvey could bring
+    Turner there, to which the reply was, "I do not know; I will go
+    and see," upon which Miss A. said, "This influence [Harvey's.
+    Editor] is going away--it is gone"; and after a short pause added,
+    "There is another influence coming, in that direction," pointing
+    over her left shoulder. "I don't like it," and she shuddered
+    slightly, but presently sat up in her chair with a most
+    extraordinary personation of the old painter in manner, in the
+    look out from under the brow, and the pose of the head. It was as
+    if the ghost of Turner, as I had seen him at Griffiths's, sat in
+    the chair, and it made my flesh creep to the very tips of my
+    fingers, as if a spirit sat before me. Miss A. exclaimed, "This
+    influence has taken complete possession of me, as none of the
+    others did. I am obliged to do what it wants me to." I asked if
+    Turner would write his name for me, to which she replied by a
+    sharp, decided negative sign. I then asked if he would give me
+    some advice about my painting, remembering Turner's kindly
+    invitation and manner when I saw him. This proposition was met by
+    the same decided negative, accompanied by the fixed and sardonic
+    stare which the girl had put on at the coming of the new
+    influence. This disconcerted me, and I then explained to my
+    brother what had been going on, as, the questions being mental, he
+    had no clue to the pantomime. I said that as an influence which
+    purported to be Turner was present, and refused to answer any
+    questions, I supposed there was nothing more to be done.
+
+    But Miss A. still sat unmoved and helpless, so we waited.
+    Presently she remarked that the influence wanted her to do
+    something she knew not what, only that she had to get up and go
+    across the room, which she did with the feeble step of an old man.
+    She crossed the room and took down from the wall a colored French
+    lithograph, and, coming to me, laid it on the table before me, and
+    by gesture called my attention to it. She then went through the
+    pantomime of stretching a sheet of paper on a drawing-board, then
+    that of sharpening a lead pencil, following it up by tracing the
+    outlines of the subject in the lithograph. Then followed in
+    similar pantomime the choosing of a water-color pencil, noting
+    carefully the necessary fineness of the point, and then the
+    washing-in of a drawing, broadly. Miss A. seemed much amused by
+    all this, but as she knew nothing of drawing she understood
+    nothing of it. Then with the pencil and her pocket handkerchief
+    she began taking out the lights, "rubbing-out," as the technical
+    term is. This seemed to me so contrary to what I conceived to be
+    the execution of Turner that I interrupted with the question, "Do
+    you mean to say that Turner rubbed out his lights?" to which she
+    gave the affirmative sign. I asked further if in a drawing which I
+    then had in my mind, the well-known "Llanthony Abbey," the central
+    passage of sunlight and shadow through rain was done in that way,
+    and she again gave the affirmative reply, emphatically. I was so
+    firmly convinced to the contrary that I was now persuaded that
+    there was a simulation of personality, such as was generally the
+    case with the public mediums, and I said to my brother, who had
+    not heard any of my questions [He says above that they were
+    mental. Ed.] that this was another humbug, and then repeated what
+    had passed, saying that Turner could not have worked in that way.
+
+    Six weeks later I sailed for England, and, on arriving in London,
+    I went at once to see Ruskin, and told him the whole story. He
+    declared the contrariness manifested by the medium to be entirely
+    characteristic of Turner, and had the drawing in question down for
+    examination. We scrutinized it closely, and both recognized beyond
+    dispute that the drawing had been executed in the way that Miss A.
+    indicated. Ruskin advised me to send an account of the affair to
+    the _Cornhill_, which I did; but it was rejected, as might have
+    been expected in the state of public opinion at that time, and I
+    can easily imagine Thackeray putting it into the basket in a rage.
+
+    I offer no interpretation of the facts which I have here recorded,
+    but I have no hesitation in saying that they completed and fixed
+    my conviction of the existence of invisible and independent
+    intelligences to which the phenomena were due.
+
+To me they seem perhaps the nearest I have come to a communication of
+something not known to any earthly intelligence, and yet it _may_ have
+been so known.
+
+When manifestations of this general nature first attracted systematic
+study, they were attributed, as already stated, to telepathy from the
+sitter. Stillman knew Turner, and as Stillman had an artist's vividness of
+impression, the sensitive could have got from him a pretty good idea of
+Turner, and have acted it out. But how about the innumerable cases not
+unlike the Foster cases quoted, where sensitives get impressions much more
+vivid than the sitter appears capable of holding, and act them out with
+dramatic verisimilitude of which the sitter is absolutely incapable; and
+how about the innumerable cases where the sensitive gets impressions and
+memories which the sitter never had?
+
+These have been accounted for as being picked up from absent persons, by a
+kind of wireless telegraphy, for which we have ventured, with the
+assistance of a couple of Grecian friends, to suggest the name
+teloteropathy.
+
+Well! In this Turner case, _somebody_ somewhere, _may_ have known what
+neither the sensitive nor Stillman knew of Turner's method of work, and
+the sensitive's wireless _may_ have picked up all those detailed
+impressions and dramatic impressions of them from that unknown _somebody_.
+But is that any easier to swallow than that old Turner himself was the
+somebody--that his share of the cosmic soul, or a sufficient portion of
+his share, flowed into or hypnotized the sensitive, and made her act as
+she did?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now let us go on to some of the developments of these phenomena
+manifested by Mrs. Piper. Unlike the manifestations already given, hers
+are not from waking dreams, but from dreams in trance. Moreover, so far
+the sensitives have manifested impressions of but one personality at a
+time, but Mrs. Piper has manifested one by speech and, at the same time,
+another by writing, the expressions of the two apparent personalities
+progressing independently, with full coherence and consistency. Moreover,
+in many of her trances she seemed as if surrounded by a crowd of persons
+endeavoring, with different degrees of success, to express themselves
+through her, or she endeavoring to express them. All this of course, is
+counter to the impression prevailing during the early years of her career,
+that her soul had left her body, and the body was "possessed" by a
+postcarnate soul expressing itself through her. The present aspect of the
+facts is more as if she had impressions such as we all have in dreams, of
+any number of personalities around her. Some of her typical manifestations
+may give still further indications of interflowing of mental impressions.
+
+The George "Pelham" famous in the annals of Psychical Research was a
+friend of the present writer, and his alleged postcarnate self appeared
+through Mrs. Piper to the following effect. There could not have been
+anything cooked up about it; it was my first and only sitting with Mrs.
+Piper, who knew nothing about me or my friends. In fact, the old theories
+of some form of fraud, now, in the light of the vast accumulation of later
+knowledge, seem ridiculous. However the phenomena have to be explained,
+that explanation is out of date.
+
+    G.P. speaks.--"A" [assumed initial. Ed.] "is in a critical state.
+    He's not himself now. He's terribly depressed." Sitter--"Can you
+    tell anything [more] about A?" G.P.--"Friend of yours in body."
+    S.--"Of Hodgson?" [Who was present. This question and the
+    following were mild "tests": I knew the man well. Ed.]
+    G.P.--"Yes." S.--"Did I ever know him?" G.P.--"Yes, you knew him
+    very well. You're connected with him." S.--"Through whom?"
+    G.P.--"Do you know any B----?" [assumed initial. Ed.] S.--"Are A.
+    and I connected through B?" G.P.--"Write to B. and he'll tell you
+    all about it."
+
+It turned out later that A. actually was low in his mind, and that B.,
+whom nobody present knew, _was_ trying to get him occupation. I knew
+nothing whatever about any such circumstances, nor did Hodgson. To suppose
+that Mrs. Piper did, would be absurd. _But_ they were known to other minds
+"in the body," and hence the medium's utterance of them is open to the
+interpretation of teloteropathy. Similar instances are not rare, but the
+interpretation of teloteropathy seems to be rapidly losing probability.
+
+In this instance, I _was_ "connected with" B., but only so far as he had
+become a professor at Yale long after my graduation: I did not know him
+personally. But my intimate connection with A. was not only direct, but
+through several persons intimate with us both, including G.P. when living.
+Mere telepathy, certainly mere telepathy from my mind, would have
+"spotted" some one of these connections much more readily than the alleged
+one with B., which was hardly a connection at all.
+
+The _simplest_ solution for the whole business, though perhaps not the
+most "scientific," or even probable, is that the spirit of G.P. was
+troubled about A. and habitually thinking of me at the University Club as
+a Yale man, on my turning up at the séance, was reminded of the solution
+of A.'s troubles proposed through B., and wanted me to help.
+
+And now to this rather commonplace manifestation comes an interesting
+sequel illustrating the reach of mind spoken of at the outset. Out of a
+perfectly clear sky came to me in New York on April 8, 1894, the message
+from G.P., to look out for A., who was low in his mind, and that B. was
+trying to get a place for him. On May 29th, Hodgson writes me as follows,
+showing that the same thing had come up _through the heteromatic writing
+of A.'s wife at Granada in Spain_, and meant nothing to her or to A.
+
+    --You may be interested in the inclosed. Keep private. [This
+    injunction is of course outlawed by time, but I still conceal the
+    names of the parties. Ed.] and please return. I am writing from my
+    den, and haven't copy of your sitting at hand. But I remember that
+    something was said at your sitting _re_ B. and A.
+
+    (_Copy of Enclosure._)
+
+    "GRANADA, May 6, 1894.
+
+    "Dear H.[odgson]:
+
+    "Those suggestions from Geo. that I write to B. prove interesting
+    in the light of what I first learned here: that he had been
+    lamenting my silence and had been urging me to a place as ----
+    [at] Yale where he is. I had no notion of this move on his part
+    till four days ago when I received a letter telling me. Of course
+    nothing came of it, but anything less known than that cannot be
+    imagined. The message came once earlier thro' [his wife. Ed.] to
+    whom George wrote it [heteromatically. Ed.]. George [in life. Ed.]
+    never heard of B. nor saw him, nor did we ever speak of B. to Geo.
+    or Phinuit.... Of course I don't want mention made of the effort
+    of B. to get me the Yale place. What Geo. said was to write to B.;
+    he is a good friend of yours [_i.e._, of A. Ed.]
+
+    "All send kind messages. Yrs. ever.
+
+    "A----."
+
+Being intensely busy, and not as much interested in the matter as later
+experiences have made me, I did not at the moment catch the full purport
+of Hodgson's letter, or write him till June 5th, and did not keep any copy
+that I can find of my letter. He wrote me on the 8th:
+
+    "Thanks for yours of June 5th, with return of A.'s letter. I knew
+    nothing whatever of the circumstances connected with B., neither,
+    so far as I can tell by cross-questioning, did Mrs. Piper."
+
+And I, the present scribe, certainly did not. A. did not. B. alone did,
+with whatever persons he may have approached on the matter, and Mrs. Piper
+had presumably never seen one of the group. So where did Mrs. Piper and
+Mrs. A. get it? The only answers that seem possible are that she and Mrs.
+A. either got it teloteropathically from one of those absent, or that the
+postcarnate George Pelham himself wrote her about it, and also told me of
+it through Mrs. Piper's organism in New York, and four days later was
+working it into a cross-correspondence through Mrs. A. in Spain. At first
+blush the latter seems easier; and I am not sure but that it does on
+reflection.
+
+Hodgson's letter continues:
+
+    "I never knew of any B. connected with Yale. When B. was first
+    mentioned at the sitting, I had a vague notion that some B. or
+    other had gone to England or France as United States consul. I
+    also knew the name of ---- ---- B. [a celebrated author. Ed.], and
+    met her after she became Mrs. C. two or three years ago.
+
+    "On questioning Mrs. Piper, which I did by referring to books
+    first, I found that she remembered the name of ---- ---- B. when I
+    mentioned it, and connected it in some way with [a certain book.
+    Ed.], which was widely circulated some years ago. This was the
+    only B. that she seemed to know anything about....
+
+    "Yours sincerely,
+
+    "R. HODGSON."
+
+Now does not all this give a strong impression of an interflow among minds
+all over--in New York (the place of the sitting), Granada (Mrs. A.'s place
+of sojourn), Boston (A.'s home), New Haven (B.'s home), and the universe
+in general (G.P.'s apparent home)--of an interflow free from the
+limitations of time and space, and independent of all means of
+communication known to us?
+
+This impression tends to grow deeper with farther study. We have had a
+cross-correspondence between two incarnate intelligences and one apparently
+postcarnate. Mr. Piddington has unearthed a cross-correspondence between
+one apparently postcarnate intelligence and seven "living" ones.
+
+Perhaps the significance of cross-correspondences justifies a little more
+specific treatment, and even the repetition of a paragraph from the first
+number of this REVIEW. The topic has lately attracted more attention from
+the S.P.R. than any other.
+
+If Mrs. Verrall in London and Mrs. Holland in India both, at about the
+same time, write heteromatically about a subject that they both
+understand, that is probably coincidence; but if both write about it when
+but one of them understands it, that is probably teloteropathy; and if
+both write about it when neither understands it, and each of their
+respective writings is apparently nonsense, but both make sense when put
+together, the only obvious hypothesis is that both were inspired by a
+third mind.
+
+There are many instances of strict cross-correspondence of this type. The
+one we have given was perhaps more impressive than a stricter one would be
+apt to be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Accounts of sittings generally suggest apparent intercommunication
+independent of time and space between postcarnate intelligences: often the
+controls say that they will go and find other controls, and, generally,
+after a short interval, the new control manifests. It is impossible to
+read many of the accounts, whether one regards them as fictitious or not,
+without getting an impression--like that given by a good story-teller, if
+you please, of a life outside this one, among a host of personalities who
+communicate freely with each other and, through difficulties, with us. The
+nature of the communication we have already tried to express by
+"interflow." But all metaphors are weak beside the impression of the
+Cosmic Soul that has been brought to most of those who have persistently
+studied the phenomena, as to nearly all those who have speculated _a
+priori_ on the nature of mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Judged by the foregoing specimens, the literature of what we are
+provisionally considering as hypnotic telepathy would not be regarded as
+very cheerful. As a whole, however, the pictures it presents from an
+alleged postcarnate life, are cheerful, and some of them very attractive.
+
+Below are some from an alleged George Eliot. They are from notes of Piper
+sittings kindly placed at our disposal by Professor Newbold.
+
+To my taste the matter savors _very_ little of the reputed author. And yet
+assuming for the moment that our great authors survive in a fuller life,
+presumably they would have to communicate under very embarrassing
+conditions: for not only would they have to cramp themselves to produce
+work comprehensible here, but the System of Things would have to limit
+them, lest their competition should upset the whole system of our literary
+development, or rather would have involved a different one from the
+beginning.
+
+My first reading of the alleged George Eliot matter inclined me to scout
+it entirely. It is certainly not in all particulars what that great soul
+would have sent from a better world if she had been permitted to
+communicate anything more profound than we have been left to find out for
+ourselves, or even if she had had the commonplace chance to revise her
+manuscript. But on reflection I realized that, although the matter came
+through Mrs. Piper, it could not have come _from_ her, wherever it came
+from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings naturally within
+our comprehension, and merely descriptive of superficial experience as
+distinct from reflection, and were communicating, through a poor
+telephone, words to be recorded by an indifferent scribe, this material
+would not seem absolutely incongruous with its alleged source, and to a
+reader knowing that the stuff claimed to be hers, might possibly suggest
+the weakest possible dilution or reflection of her. Yet in ways which I
+have no space for, it abounds in the sort of anthropomorphism that might
+be expected from the average medium or average sitter, but not from George
+Eliot.
+
+And now, since writing the last paragraph and going through the material
+half a dozen times more, I have about concluded, or perhaps worked myself
+up to the conclusion, that if a judicious blue pencil were to take from it
+what could be attributed to imperfect means of communication, and what
+could be considered as having slopped over from the medium, there would be
+a pretty substantial and not unbeautiful residuum which might, without
+straining anything, be taken for a description by George Eliot, of the
+heaven she would find if, as begins to seem possible, she and the rest of
+us, have or are to have heavens to suit our respective tastes. But what
+would have to be taken out is often ludicrously incongruous with George
+Eliot, and taking it out would certainly be open to serious question.
+
+Yet whatever may be the qualities, merits, or demerits of this "George
+Eliot" matter, what character it has is its own, and different materially
+from any I have seen recorded from any other control. What is vastly more
+important, despite the lapses in knowledge, taste, and style, which
+negative its being the unmodified production of George Eliot, it
+nevertheless presents, _me judice_, the most reasonable, suggestive, and
+attractive pictures of a life beyond bodily death that I know of: it is
+not a reflection of previous mythologies, it is congruous with the tastes
+of what we now consider rational beings, and might well fill their
+desires; and it _tallies with our experiences_--in dreams. Yet it is not a
+great feat of imagination; but in recent times no great genius has
+attacked the subject, and George Eliot would not have been expected to
+devote her imagination to it, which raises a slight presumption that what
+is told is really told by her from experience.
+
+If I had to venture a guess as to how it came into existence, I should
+guess that somebody within range, hardly Mrs. Piper herself, had been
+reading George Eliot, or about George Eliot, and the musk-melon pollen had
+affected the cucumbers. Professor Newbold, for instance, was entirely able
+involuntarily to create and telepath the stories, and better shaped ones.
+Some real George Eliot influence may have flowed in too, but on that my
+judgment is in suspense.
+
+"George Eliot" comes in abruptly to Hodgson, on February 26, 1897. After a
+few preliminaries, in response to a remark of Hodgson's on her dislike of
+and disbelief in spiritism, she says:
+
+    "... You may have noted the anxiety of such as I to return and
+    enlighten your fellow men. It is more especially confined to
+    unbelievers before their departure to this life."
+
+This remark and the persistent efforts of the alleged G.P. who, living,
+was a thorough skeptic, would seem strongly "evidential."
+
+    _March 5, 1897._
+
+    _Hodgson sitting._
+
+    [G.E. writes:] "Do you remember me well?... I had a sad life in
+    many ways, yet in others I was happy, yet I have never known what
+    real happiness was until I came here.... I was an unbeliever, in
+    fact almost an agnostic when I left my body, but when I awoke and
+    found myself alive in another form superior in quality, that is,
+    my body less gross and heavy, with no pangs of remorse, no
+    struggling to hold on to the material body, I found it had all
+    been a dream...." R.H.: "That was your first experience?" G.E.:
+    "... The moment I had been removed from my body I found at once I
+    had been thoroughly mistaken in my conjectures. I looked back upon
+    my whole life in one instant. Every thought, word, or action which
+    I had ever experienced passed through my mind like a wonderful
+    panorama as it were before my vision. You cannot begin to imagine
+    anything so real and extraordinary as this first awakening.... I
+    awoke in a realm of golden light. I heard the voices of friends
+    who had gone before calling to me to follow them. At the moment
+    the thrill of joy was so intense I was like one standing
+    spellbound before a beautiful panorama. The music which filled my
+    soul was like a tremendous symphony. I had never heard nor dreamed
+    of anything half so beautiful....
+
+    "Another thing which seemed to me beautiful was the tranquillity
+    of everyone. You will perhaps remember that I had left a state
+    where no one ever knew what tranquillity meant."
+
+    _March 13, 1807:_ "I was speaking about the songs of our birds.
+    Then the birds seemed to pass beyond my vision, and I longed for
+    music of other kinds.... When, to my surprise, my desires were
+    filled.... Just before me sat the most beautiful bevy of young
+    girls that eyes ever rested upon. Some playing stringed
+    instruments, others that sounded and looked like silver bugles,
+    but they were all in harmony, and I must truly confess that I
+    never heard such strains of music before. No mortal mind can
+    possibly realize anything like it. It was not only in this one
+    thing that my desires were filled, but in all things accordingly.
+    I had not one desire, but that it was filled without any apparent
+    act of myself.
+
+    "I longed to see gardens and trees, flowers, etc. I no sooner had
+    the desire than they appeared.... Such beautiful flowers no human
+    eye ever gazed upon. It was simply indescribable, yet everything
+    was real.... I walked and moved along as easily as a fly would
+    pass through a ray of sunlight in your world. I had no weight,
+    nothing cumbersome, nothing.... I passed along through this
+    garden, meeting millions of friends. As they were all friendly to
+    me, each and every one seemed to be my friend.... I then thought
+    of different friends I had once known, and my desire was to meet
+    some one of them, when like every other thought or desire that I
+    had expressed, the friend of whom I thought instantly appeared."
+
+How much all this is like dreams!
+
+    _March 27, 1897._ (A good deal of confusion, out of which appears)
+    "He will insist upon calling me Miss, but let him if he wishes. I
+    am very much Mrs. Never mind so long as it suits him....
+
+    "I have a desire for reading, when instantly my whole surrounding
+    is literally filled with books of all kinds and by many different
+    authors.... When I touched a book and desired to meet its author,
+    if he or she were in our world, he or she would instantly appear.
+    [Is this purely incidental reiterated claim for female authors, by
+    one of them, 'evidential,' or was Mrs. Piper ingenious enough to
+    invent it? Ed.]...."
+
+The change of the instrument below is a specially dreamlike touch.
+
+    _March 30, 1897._ "I wished to see and realize that some of the
+    mortal world's great musicians really existed, and asked to be
+    visited by some one or more of them. When this was expressed,
+    instantly several appeared before me, and Rubinstein stood before
+    me playing upon an instrument like a harp at first. Then the
+    instrument was changed and a piano appeared and he played upon it
+    with the most delightful ease and grace of manner. While he was
+    playing the whole atmosphere was filled with his strains of
+    music."
+
+She wanted to see Rembrandt, and he came, with a quantity of pictures. She
+wanted a symphony, and an orchestra "of some thirty musicians" at once
+appeared and gave her several, which she enjoyed to the full.
+
+Now George Eliot was a remarkably good musician. If she wanted an
+orchestra, she would have wanted at least sixty, and probably more than a
+hundred. Perhaps they do these things with more limited resources in
+Heaven? Such an incongruity as this, and the inane dilution of the writing
+(which of course does not appear at its worst in the selected passages)
+make a genuine George Eliot control hard to predicate, and yet this
+control, like virtually every other one, is an individuality, and is less
+unlike George Eliot than is any other control I know. Will difficulties of
+communication or any other _tertium quid_, make up the difference? I first
+read the record with repulsion, and now find in it some elements of
+attraction.
+
+Do you care for a little more? She wanted to see "angels," and gives a
+very pretty picture of an experience with a bevy of children. Telepathy
+from the sitter will hardly account for the following, especially the
+strange turn at the end, which is signally dreamlike.
+
+    "I being fond, very fond of writers of ancient history, etc., felt
+    a strong desire to see Dante, Aristotle and several others.
+    Shakespeare if such a spirit existed. [An odd bunch of 'writers of
+    ancient history'! Ed.] As I stood thinking of him a spirit
+    instantly appeared who speaking said 'I am Bacon.' ... As Bacon
+    neared me he began to speak and quoted to me the following words
+    'You have questioned my reality. Question it no more. I am
+    Shakespeare.'"
+
+    _June 4, 1897._ "... Speak to me for a moment and if you have
+    anything to say in the nature of poetry or prose would you kindly
+    recite a line or two to me. It will give me strength to remain
+    longer than I could otherwise do. [R.H. recites a poem of Dowden's
+    beginning,
+
+      'I said I will find God and forth I went
+       To seek him in the clearness of the sky,' etc. Excitement.]
+
+    G.E.: 'I will go and see G. and return presently (R.H.: Who says
+    that?) I do. (R.H.: I do not understand what you mean by G.) I do.
+    My husband. Do you not know I had a husband? (R.H.: Do you mean by
+    G. Mr. George Henry Lewes?) [Hand is writing Lewes while I am
+    saying George Henry] Lewes. Yes I do. Oh I am so happy. And when I
+    did not mistake altogether my deeds I am more _happy than tongue
+    can utter_."
+
+As bearing on her feeling for Lewes not many months after his death, the
+foregoing does not correspond with some widely credited but unpublished
+allegations.
+
+Now does not all this read as if Mrs. Piper were dreaming of George Eliot,
+just as any of us might dream? Its quality seems as if it might be a
+transcript of one of my own dreams, with the important exceptions that the
+dreamer wrote it all out, and that it is made up from a series of dreams,
+coming up at intervals for about six months, and apparently only when
+Hodgson was present, though there are records of George Eliot appearing to
+other sitters at other seances.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have, then, groped our way to a vague notion of a dream-life on the
+part of certain sensitives, which seems to participate in another life, in
+some ways similar, that is led by intelligences who have passed beyond the
+body.
+
+We are not saying that this interpretation of the phenomena is the correct
+one: on the contrary we are constantly haunted by a suspicion that any day
+it may be exploded by some new discovery. But we do say, with considerable
+confidence, that of all the interpretations yet offered--even including
+the pervasive one that "the little boy lied," it surpasses all the others
+in the portion of the facts that it fits, and in the weight attached to it
+by the most capable students--even by James, who, however, did not accept
+it as established, though he gave many indications that he felt himself
+likely to. Myers definitely accepted it, not from the impressions of the
+sensitives, but from having them capped by a veridical impression of his
+own. Through the church service one Sunday morning, he felt an inner voice
+assuring him: "Your friend is still with you." Later he found that Gurney,
+with whom he had a manifestation-pact, had died the night before. We are
+not aware that Myers ever published this, but he told it to the present
+writer and presumably to others. The convictions of Hodgson and Sir Oliver
+Lodge were interpretations of the phenomena of the sensitives, though
+Hodgson, it is now known, was probably mainly influenced by communications
+from the alleged postcarnate soul of all possible ones most dear to him.
+
+But to return to the sensitives. They seem to be somnambulists who talk
+out and write out what they see and hear in their dreams. What they see,
+and consequently what they say, is a good deal of a jumble. They see and
+hear persons they never saw before. Sometimes they identify themselves
+more or less with these personalities. Mrs. Piper nearly always does.
+Those others say many things, and very often correct things, unknown to
+sensitives, to anybody present, or to anybody else that can be found.
+Rather unusual among ordinary dreamers, but by no means unprecedented. But
+from here on the experiences of the sensitives are more and more unusual.
+
+Some of the people Mrs. Piper (I speak of her as the representative of a
+class) never saw before, and of whom she never saw portraits, she
+identifies from photographs. Very few people have done that: perhaps very
+few have had the chance. There have been many times when I am sure I
+could, if photographs had been presented.
+
+Her personalities and those of many sensitives are nearly always "dead"
+friends, not of the sensitives, but of the sitters, and abound in
+indications of genuineness in scope and accuracy of memory, in
+distinctness of individual recollections and characteristics, and in all
+the dramatic indications that go to demonstrate personalities. She sees
+and hears these personalities again and again, and _keeps them distinct_
+in feature and character.
+
+Now what do we mean by personalities? Is one, after all, anything more or
+less than an individualized aggregate of cosmic vibrations, physical and
+psychical, with the power of producing on us certain impressions. You and
+I know our friends as such aggregates, and nothing more.
+
+And what do we mean by discarnate personalities? In most minds, the first
+answer will probably bear a pretty close resemblance to Fra Angelico's
+angels, and very nice angels they are! But to some of the more prosy minds
+that have thought on the subject in the light of the best and fullest
+information, or misinformation, probably the answer will be more like
+this: A personality, incarnate or postcarnate, in the last analysis, is a
+manifestation of the Cosmic Soul. From that the raw material is supplied
+with the star dust, and later, through our senses, from the earliest
+reactions of our protozoic ancestors, up to our dreams; and the material
+is worked up into each personality through reactions with the environment.
+Thus it becomes an aggregate of capacities to impress another personality
+with certain sensations, ideas, emotions. As already said, the incarnate
+personality impresses us thru certain vibrations. But after that portion
+of the vibrations constituting "the body" disappears, there still abides
+somewhere the capacity of impressing us, at least in the dream life.
+Perhaps it abides only in the memory of survivors, and gets into our
+dreams telepathically, though that is losing probability every day; and,
+with our anthropomorphic habits, we want to know "where" this capacity to
+impress us abides. The thinkers generally say: In the Cosmic reservoir,
+which I would rather express as the psychic ocean, boundless, fathomless,
+throbbing eternally. It seems to be made up of the original mind-potential
+plus all thoughts and feelings that have ever been. And into this ocean
+seem to be constantly passing those currents that we know as
+individualities, that can each influence, and even intermingle with, other
+individualities, here as well as there: for here really is there. While
+each does this, it still retains its own individuality. This is, of
+course, a vague string of guesses venturing outward from the borderland of
+our knowledge. It may be a little clearer, the more we bear in mind that
+the apparent influencings and interminglings seem to be telepathic.
+
+Now apparently among the accomplishments of a personality, does not
+_necessarily_ inhere that of depressing a scale x pounds: for when that
+capacity is entirely absent, from the apparent personalities who visit us
+in the dream state, they can impress us in every other way, even to all
+the reciprocities of sex. But for some reasons not yet understood, with
+ordinary dreamers these impressions are not as congruous, persistent,
+recurrent, or regulable in the dream life as in the waking life. But with
+Mrs. Piper, Hodgson after his death, and especially G.P. and others, were
+about as persistent and consistent associates as anybody living, barring
+the fact that they could not show themselves over an hour or two at a
+time, which was the limit of the medium's psychokinetic power, on which
+their manifestations depended. But that these personalities are not in
+time to be evolved so that they will be more permanent and consistent with
+dreamers generally, would be a contradiction to at least some of the
+implications of evolution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Accepting provisionally the identity of a postcarnate life with the life
+indicated in dreams, are there any further indications of its nature?
+There are some, which may lend some slight confirmation to the theory of
+identity.
+
+It seems to show itself not only in the visions of the sensitives, but in
+the dream life of all of us. If Mrs. Piper's dream state (I name her only
+as a type) is really one of communication with souls who have passed into
+a new life, dream states generally may not extravagantly be supposed to be
+foretastes of that life. And so far as concerns their desirability, why
+should they not be? Our ordinary dreams are, like the dreams of the
+sensitives, superior to time, space, matter and force--to all the trammels
+of our waking environment and powers. In dreams we experience unlimited
+histories, and pass over unlimited spaces, in an instant; see, hear, feel,
+touch, taste, smell, enjoy unlimited things; walk, swim, fly, change
+things, with unlimited ease; do things with unlimited power; make what we
+will--music, poetry, objects of art, situations, dramas, with unlimited
+faculty, and enjoy unlimited society. Unless we have eaten too much, or
+otherwise got ourselves out of order in the waking life, in the dream life
+we seldom if ever know what it is to be too late for anything, or too far
+from anything; we freely fall from chimneys or precipices, and I suppose
+it will soon be aeroplanes, with no worse consequences than comfortably
+waking up into the everyday world; we sometimes solve the problems which
+baffle us here; we see more beautiful things than we see here; and, far
+above all, we resume the ties that are broken here.
+
+The indications seem to be that if we ever get the hang of that life, we
+can have pretty much what we like, and eliminate what we don't
+like--continue what we enjoy, and stop what we suffer--find no bars to
+congeniality, or compulsion to boredom. To good dreamers it is unnecessary
+to offer proof of any of these assertions, and to prove them to others is
+impossible.
+
+The dream life contains so much more beauty, so much fuller emotion, and
+such wider reaches than the waking life, that one is tempted to regard it
+as the real life, to which the waking life is somehow a necessary
+preliminary. So orthodox believers regard the life after death as the real
+life: yet most of their hopes regarding that life--even the strongest hope
+of rejoining lost loved ones--are realized here during the brief throbs of
+the dream life.
+
+There seems to be no happiness from association in our ordinary life which
+is not obtainable, by some people at least, from association in the dream
+life. And as this appears to exist between incarnate A and postcarnate B,
+there is at least a suggestion that it may exist between postcarnate A and
+postcarnate B, and to a degree vastly more clear and abiding than during
+the present discrepancy between the incarnate and postcarnate conditions?
+This of course assumes, that B's appearance in A's dream life, just as he
+appeared on earth (though, as I know to be the case, sometimes wiser,
+healthier, jollier, and more lovable generally), is something more than a
+mild attack of dyspepsia on the part of A.
+
+Dreams do not seem to abound in work, and are often said not to abound in
+morality, but I know that they sometimes do--in morality higher than any
+attainable in our waking life. Certainly the scant vague indications from
+the dream suggestions of a future life do not necessarily preclude
+abundant work and morality, any more than work and sundry self-denials are
+precluded on a holiday because one does not happen to perform them.
+Moreover, the hoped-for future conditions may not contain the necessities
+for either labor or self-restraint that present conditions do: they may
+not be the same dangers there as here in the _dolce far niente_, or in
+Platonic friendships.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Men are not consistent in their attitude regarding dreams. They admit the
+dream state to be ideal--constantly use such expressions as "A dream of
+loveliness," "Happier than I could even dream," "Surpasses my fondest
+dreams," and yet on the other hand they call its experience "but the
+baseless vision of a dream." What do they mean by "baseless"? Certainly it
+is not lack of vividness or emotional intensity. It is probably the lack
+of duration in the happy experiences, and of the possibility of
+remembering them, and, still more, of enjoying similar ones at will. Yet
+the sensitives do both in recurrent instalments of the dream life, and
+like the rest of us, through the intervening waking periods, after the
+first hour or so, generally know nothing of the dreams. It is not
+vividness of the dream life itself that is lacking, but vividness in our
+memories of it. James defines our waking personality as the stream of
+consciousness: the dream life gives no such stream. To-night does not
+continue last night as to-day continues yesterday. The dream life is not
+like a stream, but more like a series, though hardly integral enough to be
+a series, of disconnected pools, many of them perhaps more enchanting than
+any parts of the waking stream, but not, like that stream, an organic
+whole with motion toward definite results, and power to attain them. But
+suppose the dream life continues after the body's death, and under
+direction toward definite ends, at least so far as the waking life is, and
+still free from the trammels of the waking life--suppose us to have at
+least as much power to secure its joys and avoid its terrors as we have
+regarding those of the waking life; and with all the old intimacies which
+it spasmodically restores, restored permanently, and with the discipline
+of separation to make them nearer perfect. What more can we manage to
+want?
+
+The suggestion has come to more than one student, that when we enter into
+life--as spermatozoa, or star dust if you please--we enter into the
+eternal life, but that the physical conditions essential to our
+development into appreciating it, are a sort of veil between it and our
+consciousness. In our waking life we know it only through the veil; but
+when in sleep or trance, the material environment is removed from
+consciousness, the veil becomes that much thinner, and we get better
+glimpses of the transcendent reality.
+
+Does it not seem then as if, in dreams, we enter upon our closer relation
+with the hyper-phenomenal mind? All sorts of things seem to be in it, from
+the veriest trifles and absurdities up to the highest things our minds can
+receive, and presumably an infinity of things higher still. They appear to
+flow into us in all sorts of ways, presumably depending upon the condition
+of the nerve apparatus through which they flow. If that is out of gear
+from any disorder or injury, what it receives is not only trifling, but
+often grotesque and painful; while if it is in good estate, it often
+receives things far surpassing in beauty and wisdom those of our waking
+phenomenal world.
+
+Apparently every dreamer is a medium for this flow, but dreamers vary
+immensely in their capacity to receive it--from Hodge, who dreams only
+when he has eaten too much, or Professor Gradgrind who never dreams at
+all, up to Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Piper.
+
+As oft remarked, dreams generally are nonsense, but some dreams, or parts
+of some dreams, are perhaps the most significant things we know. Each
+vision, waking or sleeping, must have a cause, and as an expression of
+that cause, must be veridical. On the one hand, the cause of a trivial
+dream is generally too trivial to be ascertained: it may be too much
+lobster, or impaired circulation or respiration; while on the other hand
+(and here the paradox seems to be explained), the cause of an important
+dream must, _ex vi termini_, be some important event. But important events
+are rare, and therefore significant dreams are rare; while trivial events
+are frequent, and therefore trivial dreams are frequent.
+
+The important and rare event _may_ be such a conjunction of circumstances
+and temperaments as makes it possible for a postcarnate intelligence,
+assuming the existence of such, to communicate with an incarnate one. That
+such apparent communications are rare tends to indicate their genuineness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now to develop a little farther the time-honored hypothesis of a cosmic
+soul as explaining dreams, and supported by them.
+
+Admit, provisionally at least, that the medium is merely an extraordinary
+dreamer. Does a man do his own dreaming, or is it done for him? Does a man
+do his own digesting, circulating, assimilating, or is it done for him? If
+he does not do these things himself, who does? About the physical
+functions through the sympathetic nerve, we answer unhesitatingly: the
+cosmic force. How, then, about the psychic functions? Are they done by the
+cosmic psyche?
+
+Like respiration, they are partly under our control, but that does not
+affect the problem. Who runs them when we do not run them, even when we
+try to stop them that we may get to sleep? Even when, after they have
+yielded to our entreaties to stop, and we are asleep, they begin going
+again--without our will. The only probability I can make out is that our
+thinking is run by a power not ourselves, as much as our other partly
+involuntary functions.
+
+To hold that a man does his own dreaming--that it is done by a secondary
+layer of his own consciousness--is to hold that we are made up of layers
+of consciousness, of which the poorest layer is that of what we call our
+waking life, and the better layers are at our service only in our
+dreams--that when a man is asleep or mad he can solve problems, compose
+music, create pictures, to which, when awake and in his sober senses, and
+in a condition to profit by his work, and give profit from it, he is
+inadequate.
+
+Nay more, the theory claims that a man's working consciousness--his
+self--the only self known to him or the world, will hold and shape his
+life by a set of convictions which, in sleep, he will _himself_ prove
+wrong, and thereby revolutionize his philosophy and his entire life.
+Wouldn't it be more reasonable to attribute all such results--the
+solutions of the problems, the music, the pictures, the corrections of the
+errors--to a power outside himself?
+
+I cannot believe that there's anything in my individual consciousness
+which my experience or that of my ancestors has not placed there--in raw
+material at least; or that in working up that raw material _I_ can exert
+any genius in my sometimes chaotic dreams that I cannot exert in my
+systematized waking hours. All the people I meet and talk with in my
+dreams _may_ have been met and talked with by me or my forebears, though I
+don't believe it; but the works of art I see have not been known to me or
+my ancestors or any other mortal; nor have I any sign of the genius to
+combine whatever elements of them I may have seen, into any such designs.
+And when in dreams _other_ persons tell me things contrary to my firmest
+convictions, in which things I later discover germs of most important
+workable truth, the persons who tell me that, and who are different from
+me as far as fairly decent persons can differ from each other, are
+certainly not, as the good Du Prel would have us believe, myself. All
+these things are not figments of _my_ mind--if they are figments of a
+mind, it's a mind bigger than mine. The biggest claim I can make, or
+assent to anybody else making, is that my mind is telepathically receptive
+of the product of that greater mind.
+
+Here are some farther evidences of the greater mind, given by Lombroso
+(_After Death, What?_, 320 f.):
+
+    It is well known that in his dreams Goethe solved many weighty
+    scientific problems and put into words many most beautiful verses.
+    So also La Fontaine (_The Fable of Pleasures_) and Coleridge and
+    Voltaire. Bernard Palissy had in a dream the inspiration for one
+    of his most beautiful ceramic pieces....
+
+    Holde composed while in a dream _La Phantasie_, which reflects in
+    its harmony its origin; and Nodier created _Lydia_, and at the
+    same time a whole theory on the future of dreaming. Condillac in
+    dream finished a lecture interrupted the evening before. Kruger,
+    Corda, and Maignan solved in dreams mathematical problems and
+    theorems. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his _Chapters on Dreams_,
+    confesses that portions of his most original novels were composed
+    in the dreaming state. Tartini had while dreaming one of his most
+    portentous musical inspirations. He saw a spectral form
+    approaching him. It is Beelzebub in person. He holds a magic
+    violin in his hands, and the sonata begins. It is a divine adagio,
+    melancholy-sweet, a lament, a dizzy succession of rapid and
+    intense notes. Tartini rouses himself, leaps out of bed, seizes
+    his violin, and reproduces all that he had heard played in his
+    sleep. He names it the _Sonata del Diavolo_,...
+
+    Giovanni Dupré got in a dream the conception of his very beautiful
+    _Pietà_. One sultry summer day Dupré was lying on a divan thinking
+    hard on what kind of pose he should choose for the Christ. He fell
+    asleep, and in dream he saw the entire group at last complete,
+    with Christ in the very pose he had been aspiring to conceive, but
+    which his mind had not succeeded in completely realizing.
+
+It is a quite frequent experience that a person perplexed by a problem at
+night finds it solved on waking in the morning. Efforts to remember, which
+are unsuccessful before going to sleep, on waking are often found
+accomplished.
+
+A dream is a work of genius, and in many respects, perhaps most,
+especially in vividness of imagination, the best example we have. It is
+the most spontaneous, constructed with the least effort from fewest
+materials, the least restrained, and often immeasurably surpassing all
+works of waking genius in the same department. A genius gets a trifling
+hint, and being inspired by the gods (anthropomorphic for: flowed in upon
+by the cosmic soul?) builds out of the hint a poem or a drama or a
+symphony. You and I build dreams surpassing the poem or the drama or the
+symphony, but our friends Dryasdust and Myopia inquire into our
+experiences, and sometimes find a little hint on which a dream was built,
+and then all dreams are demonstrated things unworthy of serious
+consideration. Is it not a more rational view that the fact that the soul
+can in the dream state elaborate so much from so little, indicates it to
+be then already in a life which has no limits?
+
+Havelock Ellis, in his _World of Dreams_, says (p. 229):
+
+    Our eyes close, our muscles grow slack, the reins fall from our
+    hands. But it sometimes happens that the horse knows the road home
+    even better than we know it ourselves.
+
+He puts "the horse" outside of the dreamer plainly enough here. He further
+says (p. 280).
+
+    If we take into account the complete psychic life of dreaming,
+    subconscious as well as conscious, it is waking, not sleeping,
+    life which may be said to be limited.... Sleep, Vaschide has said,
+    is not, as Homer thought, the brother of Death, but of Life, and,
+    it may be added, the elder brother....
+
+He quotes from Bergson (_Revue Philosophique_, December, 1908, p. 574):
+
+    This dream state is the substratum of our normal state. Nothing is
+    added in waking life; on the contrary, waking life is obtained by
+    the limitation, concentration, and tension of that diffuse
+    psychological life which is the life of dreaming.... To be awake
+    is to will; cease to will, detach yourself from life, become
+    disinterested: in so doing you pass from the waking ego to the
+    dreaming ego, which is less _tense_, but more _extended_ than the
+    other.
+
+Ellis continues (p. 281):
+
+    I have cultivated, so far as I care to, my garden of dreams, and
+    it scarcely seems to me that it is a large garden. Yet every path
+    of it, I sometimes think, might lead at last to the heart of the
+    universe.
+
+But with the exception of a few spasmodic inspirations, the records of
+dreams, ordinary or from the sensitives, contain nothing new--nothing to
+relieve man from the blessed necessity of eating his bread, intellectual
+as well as material, in the sweat of his brow; and, perhaps more important
+still, little to make the interests or responsibilities of this life
+weaker because of any realized inferiority to those of a possible later
+life.
+
+It would apparently be inconsistent in Nature, or God, if you prefer, to
+start our evolution under earthly conditions, educating us in knowledge
+and character through labor and suffering, but at the same time throwing
+open to our perceptions, from another life, a wider range of knowledge and
+character attainable without labor or suffering.
+
+I have no time or space or inclination to argue with those who deny a plan
+in Nature. He who does, probably lives away from Nature. It appears to
+have been a part of that plan that for a long time past most of us should
+"believe in" immortality, and that, at least until very lately, none of us
+should know anything about it. Confidence in immortality has been a
+dangerous thing. So far we haven't all made a very good use of it. Many of
+the people who have had most of it and busied themselves most with it, so
+to speak, have largely transferred their interests to the other life, and
+neglected and abused this one. "Other-worldliness" is a well-named vice,
+and positive evidence of immortality might be more dangerous than mere
+confidence in it.
+
+All this, I think, supports the notion that whatever, if anything, is in
+store for us beyond this life, it would be a self-destructive scheme of
+things (or Scheme of Things, if you prefer) that would throw the future
+life into farther competition with our interests here, at least before we
+are farther evolved here. Looking at history by and large, we children
+have not generally been trusted with edge tools until we had grown to some
+sort of capacity to handle them. If the Mesopotamians or Egyptians or
+Greeks or Romans had had gunpowder, it looks as if they would have blown
+most of themselves and each other out of existence, and the rest back into
+primitive savagery, and stayed there until the use of gunpowder became one
+of the lost arts. But the new knowledge of evolution has given the modern
+world a new intellectual interest; and the new altruism, a new moral one.
+The reasons for doing one's best in this life, and doing it actively, are
+so much stronger and clearer than they were when so many good people could
+fall into asceticism and other-worldliness, that perhaps we are now fit to
+be trusted with proofs of an after life. It is very suggestive that these
+apparent proofs came contemporaneously with the new knowledge tending to
+make them safe; and equally suggestive that it is when we have begun to
+suffer from certain breakdowns in religion, that we have been provided
+with new material for bracing it up.
+
+At the opposite extreme, it also is suggestive that these new indications
+that our present life is a petty thing beside a future one, have come just
+when modern science has so increased our control over material nature that
+we are in peculiar danger of having our interest in higher things buried
+beneath material interests, and enervated by over-indulgence in material
+delights.
+
+If it be true that, roughly speaking, we are not entrusted with dangerous
+things before we are evolved to the point where we can keep their danger
+within bounds, the fact that we have not until very lately, if yet, been
+entrusted with any verification of the dream of the survival of bodily
+death, would seem to confer upon the spiritistic interpretation of the
+recent apparent verifications, a pragmatic sanction--an accidental embryo
+pun over which the historic student is welcome to a smile, and which,
+since the preceding clause was written, I have seen used in all
+seriousness by Professor Giddings. Conclusive or not, that "sanction" is
+certainly an addition to the arguments that existed before, including the
+general argument from evolution. And, so far as the phenomena go to
+establish the spiritistic hypothesis, surely they are not to be lightly
+regarded because as yet they do not establish it more conclusively.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When during the last century science bowled down the old supports of the
+belief in immortality, there grew up a tendency to regard that belief as
+an evidence of ignorance, narrowness, and incapacity to face the music.
+May not disregard of the possible new supports be rapidly becoming an
+evidence of the same characteristics?
+
+When the majority of those who have really studied the phenomena of the
+sensitives, starting with absolute skepticism, have come to a new form of
+the old belief; and when, of the remaining minority, the weight of
+respectable opinion goes so far as suspense of judgment, how does the
+argument look? Isn't it at least one of those cases of new phenomena where
+it is well to be on guard against old mental habits, not to say
+prejudices?
+
+Is it not now vastly more _reasonable_ to believe in a future life than it
+was a century ago, or half a century, or quarter of a century? Is it not
+already more reasonable to believe in it than not to believe in it? Is it
+not already appreciably harder _not_ to believe in it than it was a
+generation ago?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So far as I can see, the dream life, from mine up to Mrs. Piper's, vague
+as it is, is an argument for immortality _based on evidence_.
+
+The sensitives are not among the world's leading thinkers or
+moralists--are not more aristocratic founders for a new faith than were a
+certain carpenter's son and certain fishermen; and only by implication do
+the sensitives suggest any moral truths, but they do offer more facts to
+the modern demand for facts.
+
+Spiritism has a bad name, and it has been in company where it richly
+deserved one; but it has been coming into court lately with some very
+important-looking testimony from very distinguished witnesses; and some
+rather comprehensive minds consider its issues supreme--the principal
+issues now upon the horizon, between the gross, luxurious, unthinking,
+unaspiring, uncreating life of today, and everything that has, in happier
+ages, given us the heritage of the soul--the issues between increasing
+comforts and withering ideals--between water-power and Niagara.
+
+The doubt of immortality is not over the innate reasonableness of it: the
+universe is immeasurably more reasonable with it than without it; but over
+its practicability after the body is gone. We, in our immeasurable wisdom,
+don't see how it can work--we don't see how a universe that we don't begin
+to know, which already has given us genius and beauty and love, and which
+seems to like to give us all it can--birds, flowers, sunsets, stars,
+Vermont, the Himalayas, and the Grand Canyon; which, most of all, has
+given us the insatiable soul, can manage to give us immortality. Well!
+Perhaps we ought not to be grasping--ought to call all we know and have,
+enough, and be thankful--thankful above all, perhaps, that as far as we
+can see, the hope of immortality cannot be disappointed--that the worst
+answer to it must be oblivion. But on whatever grounds we despair of more
+(if we are weak enough to despair), surely the least reasonable ground is
+that we cannot see more: the mole might as well swear that there is no
+Orion.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUSES ON THE HEARTH
+
+
+"How to be efficient though incompetent" is the title suggested by a
+distinguished psychologist for the vocational appeals of the moment. Among
+these raucous calls none is more annoying to the ear of experience than
+the one which summons the college girl away from the bounty of the
+sciences and the humanities to the grudging concreteness of a domestic
+science, a household economy, from which stars and sonnets must perforce
+be excluded. We have, indeed, no quarrel with the conspicuous place now
+given to the word "home" in all discussions of women's vocations.
+Suffragists and anti-suffragists, feminists and anti-feminists have united
+to clear a noble term from the mists of sentimentality and to reinstate it
+in the vocabulary of sincere and candid speakers. More frankly than a
+quarter of a century ago, educated women may now glory in the work
+allotted to their sex. The most radical feminist writer of the day has
+given perfect expression to the home's demand. Husband and children, she
+says, have been able to count on a woman "as they could count on the fire
+on the hearth, the cool shade under the tree, the water in the well, the
+bread in the sacrament." We may go farther and say that our high emprise
+does not depend upon husband and children. Married or unmarried, fruitful
+or barren, with a vocation or without, we must make of the world a home
+for the race. So far from quarrelling with the hypothesis of the domestic
+scientists, we turn it into a confession of faith. It is their conclusions
+that will not bear the test of experience. Because women students can
+anticipate no more important career than home-making, it is argued that
+within their four undergraduate years training should be given in the
+practical details of house-keeping. Any woman who has been both a student
+and a housekeeper knows that this argument is fallacious.
+
+Before examining it, however, we must clear away possible
+misunderstandings. Our discussion concerns colleges and not elementary
+schools. Those who are loudest in denouncing the aristocratic theory of a
+college education must admit that colleges contain, even today, incredible
+as it sometimes seems, a selected group of young women. It is also true
+that the High Schools contain selected groups. Below them are the people's
+schools. The girls who do not go beyond these are to be the wives of
+working men, in many cases can learn nothing from their mothers, and
+before marriage may themselves be caught in the treadmill of daily labor.
+It is probable that to these children of impoverished future we should
+give the chance to learn in school facts which may make directly for
+national health and well-being. But the girls in the most democratic state
+university in this country are selected by their own ambition, if by
+nothing else, for a higher level of life. Their power and their
+opportunities to learn do not end on Commencement Day. The higher we go in
+the scale of education, until we reach the graduate professional schools,
+the less are we able and the less need we be concerned to anticipate the
+specific activities of the future.
+
+Furthermore, we are discussing colleges of "liberal" studies, not
+technical schools. Into the former have strayed many students who belong
+in the latter. The tragic thing about their errantry is that presidents
+and faculties, instead of setting them in the right path, try to make the
+college over to suit them. The rightful heirs to the knowledge of the ages
+are despoiled. The most down-trodden students are those who cherish a
+passion for the intellectual life. Among these are as many women as men.
+If domestic science were confined to separate schools, as all applied
+sciences ought to be, we should have nothing but praise for a subject
+admirably conceived, and often admirably taught. In these schools it may
+be studied by such High School graduates as prefer to deal with practical
+rather than with pure science, and, in a larger way, by such college
+graduates as wish to supplement theory with practice for professional
+purposes. But in liberal colleges domestic science is but dross handed out
+to seekers after gold. Against its intrusion into the curriculum no
+protest can be too stern.
+
+Faith in this study seems to rest upon the belief that the actual
+experiences of life can be anticipated. This is a fallacy. There is no
+dress rehearsal for the rôle of "wife and mother." It is a question of
+experience piled on experience, life piled on life. The only way to
+perform the tasks, understand the duties, accept the joys and sorrows of
+any given stage of existence is to have performed the tasks, learned the
+duties, fought out the joys and sorrows of earlier stages. In so far as
+"housekeeping" means the application of principles of nutrition and
+sanitation, these principles can be acquired at the proper time by an
+active, well-trained mind. The preparation needed is not to have learned
+facts three or five or ten years in advance, when theories and appliances
+may have been very different, but to have taken up one subject after
+another, finding how to master principles and details. This new subject is
+not recondite nor are we unconquerably stupid. To learn as we go--_discere
+ambulando_--need not turn the home into an experiment station.
+
+But "every woman knows" that housekeeping, when it is a labor of love and
+not a paid profession, goes far deeper than ordering meals or keeping
+refrigerators clean, or making an invalid's bed with hospital precision.
+We are more than cooks. We furnish power for the day's work of men, and
+for the growth of children's souls. We are more than parlor maids. We are
+artists, informing material objects with a living spirit. We are more even
+than trained nurses. We are companions along the roads of pain, comrades,
+it may be, at the gates of death. Back of our willingness to do our full
+work must lie something profounder than lectures on bacteria, or interior
+decoration, or an invalid's diet or a baby's bath. Specific knowledge can
+be obtained in a hurry by a trained student. What cannot be obtained by
+any sudden action of the mind is _the habit_ of projecting a task against
+the background of human experience as that experience has been revealed in
+history and literature, and of throwing into details the enthusiasm born
+of this larger vision. She is fortunate who comes to the task of making a
+home with this habit already formed. Her student life may have cast no
+shadow of the future. When she was reading Æschylus or Berkeley, or
+writing reports on the Italian despots, or counting the segments of a
+beetle's antennæ, she may not have foreseen the hours when the manner of
+life and the manner of death of human beings would depend upon her. She
+was merely sanely absorbed in the tasks of her present. But in later life
+she comes to see that in performing them, she learned to disentangle the
+momentary from the permanent, to prefer courage to cowardice, to pay the
+price of hard work for values received. Age may bring what youth
+withholds, a sense of humor, a mellow sympathy. But only youth can begin
+that habitual discipline of mind and will which is the root, if not of all
+success, at least of that which blooms in the comfort of other people.
+Carry the logic of the vocation-mongers to its extreme. Grant that every
+girl in college ought someday to marry, and that we must train her, while
+we have her, for this profession. Then let the college insist on honest
+work, clear thinking and bright imagination in those great fields in which
+successive generations reap their intellectual harvest. Captain Rostron of
+the Carpathia once spoke to a body of college students who were on fire
+with enthusiasm for the rescuer of the Titanic's survivors. He ended with
+some such words as these: "Go back to your classes and work hard. I
+scarcely knew that night what orders were coming out when I opened my
+mouth to speak, but I can tell you that I had been preparing to give those
+orders ever since I was a boy in school." Many a home may be saved from
+shipwreck in the future because today girls are doing their duty in their
+Greek class rooms and Physics laboratories.
+
+But this fallacy of domesticity probes deeper than we have yet indicated.
+It is, in the last analysis, superficial to ticket ourselves off as
+house-keepers or even as women. What are these unplumbed wastes between
+housekeepers and teachers, mothers and scholars, civil engineers and
+professors of Greek, senators and journalists, bankers and poets, men and
+women? A philosopher has pointed out that what we share is vastly greater
+than what separates us. We walk upon and must know the same earth. We live
+under the same sun and stars. In our bodies we are subject to the same
+laws of physics, biology and chemistry. We speak the same language, and
+must shape it to our use. We are products of the same past, and must
+understand it in order to understand the present. We are vexed by the same
+questions about Good and Evil, Will and Destiny. We all bury our dead. We
+shall all die ourselves. Back of our vocations lies human life. Back of
+the streams in which we dabble is that immortal sea which brought us
+hither. To sport upon its shore and hear the roll of its mighty waters is
+the divine privilege of youth.
+
+If any difference is to be made in the education of boys and girls, it
+must be with the purpose of giving to future women more that is
+"unvocational," "unapplied," "unpractical." As it happens, such studies as
+these are the ones which the mother of a family, as well as a teacher or
+writer, is most sure to apply practically in her vocation. The last word
+on this aspect of the subject was said by a woman in a small Maine town.
+Her father had been a day laborer, her husband was a mechanic. She had
+five children, and, of course, did all the house-work. She also belonged
+to a club which studied French history. To a foolish expression of
+surprise that with all her little children she could find time to write a
+paper on Louis XVI she retorted angrily: "With all my children! It is for
+my children that I do it. I do not mean that they shall have to go out of
+their home, as I have had to, for everything interesting." But the larger
+truth is that the value of a woman as a mother depends precisely upon her
+value as a human being. And it is for that reason that in her youth we
+must lead one who is truly thirsty only to fountains pouring from the
+heaven's brink. It might seem cruel if it did not merely illustrate the
+law of risk involved in any creative process, that the more generously
+women fulfil the "function of their sex" the more they are in danger of
+losing their souls to furnish a mess of pottage. The risk of life for life
+at a child's birth is more dramatic but no truer than the risk of soul for
+body as the child grows. In the midst of petty household cares the nervous
+system may become a master instead of a servant, a breeder of distempers
+rather than a feeder of the imagination. The unhappiness of homes, the
+failure of marriage, are due as often to the poverty-stricken minds, the
+narrowed vision of women as to the vice of men.
+
+  Their sense is with their senses all mix'd in,
+  Destroyed by subtleties these women are.
+
+George Meredith's prayer for us, "more brain, O Lord, more brain!" we
+shall still need when "votes for women" has become an outworn slogan.
+
+No one claims that character is produced only by college training or any
+other form of education. There are illiterate women whose wills are so
+steady, whose hearts are so generous, and whose spirits seem to be so
+continuously refreshed that we look up to them with reverence. They have
+their own fountains. It would be a mistake to suppose that because they
+are "open at the outlet" they are "closed at the reservoir." But there is
+a class of women who are impelled toward knowledge (as still others are
+impelled toward music or art) and whose success in anything they do will
+depend upon their state of mind. We ought to assume that the girls who go
+to college belong to this class, however far from the springs of Helicon
+they mean to march in the future. It is a terrible thing that we should
+think of taking one hour of their time while they are in college for any
+course that does not enrich the intellect and add to the treasury of
+thoughts and ideas upon which the woman with a mind will always be
+drawing. Spirit is greater than intellect, and may survive it in the
+course of a long life. But in the active years, for this kind of woman,
+the mental life becomes one with the spiritual. A lusty serviceableness
+will issue from their union. If mental interests seem sterile, the cure,
+as far as the college is concerned with it, is to deepen, not to lessen
+the love of learning. The renewal of sincerity, humility and enthusiasm in
+the age-old search for truth is more necessary than the introduction of
+new courses, which must be applied to be of value, and which at this time
+in a girl's experience, and under these conditions, can give only partial
+and superficial data.
+
+Our lives are subject to a thousand changes. In the home as well as out of
+it, we shall meet, face to face, fruition and disappointment, rapture and
+pain, hope and despair. In these tests of the soul's health what good will
+_domestic_ science do us? Not by sanitation is sanity brought forth. Women
+do not gather courage from calories, nor faith from refrigerators. But
+every added milestone along the road from youth to age shows us the truth
+of Cicero's claim, made after he had borne public care and known private
+grief, for the faithful, homely companionship of intellectual studies:
+"For other things belong neither to all times and ages nor all places; but
+these pursuits feed our growing years, bring charm to ripened age, adorn
+prosperity, offer a refuge and solace to adversity, delight us at home, do
+not handicap us abroad, abide with us through the watches of the night, go
+with us on our travels, make holiday with us in the country."
+
+Upon women, in crucial hours, may depend the peace of the old, the fortune
+of the middle-aged, the hopefulness of the young. In such an hour we do
+not wish to be dismissed as were the women of Socrates's family, who had
+had no part in the bright life of the Athens of which he was taking leave.
+Shall we become the bread in the sacrament of life, ourselves unfed? the
+fire on the hearth, ourselves unkindled?
+
+
+
+
+THE LAND OF THE SLEEPLESS WATCHDOG
+
+
+If from almost any given point in the United States you start out towards
+the Southwest, you will reach in time the Land of the Sleepless Watchdog.
+On each of the scattered farms, defending it against all intruders, you
+will find a band of eager and vociferous dogs--dogs who magnify their
+calling because they have no other, and who, by the same token lose all
+sense of proportion in life. It is "theirs not to reason why," but to put
+up warnings and threats, and to be ready for the fight that never comes.
+
+If you enter a domain without previous understanding with them, you are
+powerless for mischief, for you are in the center of a publicity beside
+which any other publicity is that of a hermit's cell. The whole farm knows
+where you are, and all are suspicious of your predatory intentions. You
+can have none under these conditions. Meanwhile the whole pack voices its
+opinion of you and your unworthiness.
+
+This is supposing that you are actually there. If you are not, it amounts
+to the same thing. Every dog knows that you meant to be there, or at any
+rate, that to be there was the scheme of someone equally bad. The
+slightest rustle of the wind, the call of a bird, the ejaculation
+responsive to a flea--any of these, anything to set the pack going.
+
+And one pack starts the next. And the cries of the two start the third and
+the fourth, and each of these reacts on the first. The cry passes along
+the line, "We have him at last, the mad invader." There being no other
+enemy, they cry out against each other. And of late years, since the
+barbed wire choked the cattle ranges, and gave pause to the coyote, there
+has been no enemy. But the dogs are there, though their function has
+passed away. It is but a tradition--a remembrance. Only to the dogs
+themselves does any reality exist.
+
+Yet, such is the nature of dogs and men, the watchdog was never more
+numerous nor more alert than today. He was never in better voice, and
+having nothing whatever to do, he does it to the highest artistic
+perfection. At least one justification remains. Civilization has not done
+away with the moon. In the stillness of night, its great white face peeps
+over the hills at intervals no dog has yet determined. Under this weird
+light, strange shadowy forms trip across the fields. The watchdogs of each
+farm have given warning, and the whole countryside is eager with
+vociferation.
+
+Men say the Sleepless Watchdog's bark is worse than his bite. This may be,
+but it is certain that his feed is worse than both bark and bite together.
+In the language of economics, the Sleepless Watchdog is an unremunerative
+investment. He has "eaten his master out of house and home," and by the
+same token, he imagines that he himself is now the master.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By this time, the gentle but astute reader has observed that this is no
+common "Dog Story," but a parable of the times we live in; and that the
+real name of the Land of the Sleepless (but unremunerative) Watchdog is
+indeed Europe.
+
+And because of the noisy and costly futility of the whole system in his own
+and other countries, Professor Ottfried Nippold of Frankfort-on-the-Main,
+has made a special study of the Watchdogs of Germany.
+
+The good people of the Fatherland some forty years ago were drawn into a
+great struggle with their neighbors beyond the Rhine. To divert his
+subjects' attention from their ills at home, the Emperor of France wagered
+his Rhine provinces against those of Prussia, in the game of War. The
+Emperor lost, and the King of Prussia took the stakes: for in those days
+it was a divine right of Kings to deal in flesh and blood.
+
+The play is finished, the board is cleared, Alsace and Lorraine were added
+to Germany, and the mistake is irretrievable. A fact accomplished cannot
+be blotted out. But hopeless as it all is, there are watchdogs who, on
+moonlight nights, call across the Vosges for revenge--for honor, for War,
+War, War. And the German watchdogs cry War, War, War. The word sounds the
+same in all languages. The watchdogs bark, but the battle will never
+begin.
+
+It is Professor Nippold's purpose, in his little book _Der Deutsche
+Chauvinismus_, to show that the clamor is not all on one side. The
+watchdogs of the Paris Boulevards are noisy enough, but those of Berlin
+are just the same. And as these are not all of Germany, so the others are
+not all of France. A great, thrifty, honest, earnest, cultured nation does
+not find its voice in the noises of the street. On the other hand,
+Germany, industrious, learned, profound and brave, is busy with her own
+affairs. She would harm no one, but mind her own business. But she is
+entangled in mediæval fashions. She has her own band of watchdogs, as
+noisy, as futile, as unthinkingly clamorous as ever were those of France.
+The "Sleepless Watchdog" in France is known as a Chauvinist, in England as
+a Jingo, in Prussia as a Pangermanist. They all bay at the same moon, are
+excited over the same fancies; they hear nothing, see nothing but one
+another. All alike live in an unreal world, in its essentials a world of
+their own creation. With all of them the bark is worse than the bite, and
+their "Keep" is more disastrous than both together.
+
+And as each nation should look after its own, Dr. Nippold
+lists--blacklists if you choose--the Chauvinists of Germany.
+
+At first glance, they make an imposing showing. A long series of
+newspapers, dozens of pamphlets, categories of bold and impressive
+warnings against the schemes of England and France, a set of appeals in
+the name of patriotism, of religion, of force, of violence. A long-drawn
+call to hate, to hate whatever is not of our own race or class; and above
+all the banding together of the "noblest" profession as against the
+encroachments of mere civilians, of men whose hands are soiled with other
+stains than blood.
+
+We have, first and foremost, General Keim, Keim the invincible, Keim the
+insatiable, Keim of the Army-League, Keim the arch hater of England and of
+Russia and of France, Keim the jewel of the fighting Junker aristocracy of
+Prussia--the band of warriors who despise all common soldiers--"white
+slave" conscripts, and with them all civilians, who at the best are only
+potential common soldiers. "War, war, on both frontiers," is Keim's
+obsessing vision. War being inevitable and salutary, it cannot come too
+soon. The duty of hate, he urges on all the youth of Germany, maidens as
+well as men. It is said that Keim is the only man of the day who can
+maintain before an audience of Christians such a proposition as this: "We
+must learn to hate, and to hate with method. A man counts little who
+cannot hate to a purpose. Bismarck was hate."
+
+From Gaston Choisy's clever character sketch of General Keim, we learn
+that as a soldier or tactician, he was a man of no note. He has no ability
+as a thinker or as a speaker, but this he has: "the courage of his
+vulgarity." "At the age of 68, suffering from Bright's Disease, he
+travelled all Germany, his great head always in ebullition, gathering
+everywhere for the war-fire all the news, all the stories and all the lies
+susceptible of aiding the Cause." "Without Bismarck's authority, he had
+his manner--a mixture of baseness, of atrocious joviality, a studied
+cynicism and a lack of conscience." "How generous are circumstances! The
+spirit of Von Moltke the silent, with the speech of an _enfant terrible_,
+an endless flow of language, an endless course of words."
+
+To the Chauvinists of France, Keim is indeed Germany. As to his own
+country, Von Ferlach sagely remarks: "Keims and Keimlings unfortunately
+are all about us. But they are a vanishing minority." The great culture
+peoples do not hate one another. ("Die grossen Kultur-volker hassen
+einander nicht.")
+
+Next on the black list, comes General Frederick von Bernhardi, with his
+_Germany and the Next War_, the need to obliterate France, while giving
+the needed chastisement to England. A retired officer of cavalry, said to
+be disgruntled through failure of promotion, a tall, spare, serious, prosy
+figure, a writer without inspiration, a speaker without force. Germany has
+never taken him seriously; for he lacks even the clown-charm of his rival
+Keim, but the mediæval absurdities and serious extravagances in his
+defense of war are well tempered to stir the eager watchdogs in the rival
+lands. In spite of his pleas, "historical, biological and philosophical,"
+for war, he is a man of peace, for which, in the words of General
+Eichhorn, "one's own sword is the best and strongest pledge."
+
+Doubtless other retired officers hold views of the same sort, as do
+doubtless many who could not be retired too soon for the welfare of
+Germany. Into the nature of their patriotism, the Zabern incident has
+thrown a great light. "Other lands may possess an army," a Prussian
+officer is quoted as saying, "the army possesses Germany."
+
+The vanities and follies of Prussian militarism are concentrated in the
+movement called Pangermanism. Behind this, there seem to be two moving
+forces, the Prussian Junker aristocracy, and the financial interests which
+center about the house of Krupp. The purposes of Pangermanism seem to be,
+on the one hand, to prevent parliamentary government in Germany; and on
+the other, to take part in whatever goes on in the world outside. Just
+now, the control of Constantinople is the richest prize in sight, and that
+fateful city is fast replacing Alsace in the passive role of "the
+nightmare of Europe." The journalists called Conservative find that
+"Germany needs a vigorous diplomacy as a supplement to her power on land
+and sea, if she is to exercise the influence she deserves." And a vigorous
+foreign policy is but another name for the use of the War System as a
+means of pushing business. From the daily press of Germany may be culled
+many choice examples of idle Jingo talk, but analysis of the papers
+containing it shows their affiliation with the "extreme right," a small
+minority in German politics, potent only through the indiscretions of the
+Crown Prince, and through the fact that the Constitution of Germany gives
+its people no control over administrative affairs. The journals of this
+sort--the _Tägliche Rundschau_, the _Berliner Post_, the _Deutsche
+Tageszeitung_, and the _Berliner Neueste Nachrichten_ are the property of
+Junker reactionists, or else, like the _Lokal Anzeiger_, the
+_Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung_, the organs merely of the War trade
+House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single
+imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who
+"casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of æsthetics,
+the prophet of a great, strong and saber-rattling nation," whose force
+shall be felt everywhere under the sun.
+
+Bloodthirsty pamphlets in numbers, are listed by Nippold. But the
+anonymous writers ("Divinator," "Rhenanus," "Lookout," "Deutscher,"
+"Politiker," "Activer General" and "Deutscher Officier") count for less
+than nothing in personal influence. They do little more than bay at the
+moon.
+
+Impressive as Nippold's list seems at first, and dangerous to the peace of
+the world, after all one's final thought is this: How few they are, and
+how scant their influence, as compared with the wise, sane, commonsense of
+sixty millions of German people. The two great papers that stand for peace
+and sanity, the _Berliner Tageblatt_ and the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, with
+the _Münchener Neueste Nachrichten_, are read daily by more Germans than
+all the reactionary sheets combined. The Socialist organ _Vorwaerts_,
+avowedly opposed to monarchy as well as to militarism, carries farther
+than all the organs of Pangermanism of whatever kind.
+
+We may justly conclude that the war spirit is not the spirit of Germany, a
+nation perforce military because the people cannot help themselves. So far
+as it goes, it is the spirit of a narrow clique of "sleepless watchdogs"
+whose influence is waning, and would be non-existent were it not for the
+military organization which holds Germany by the throat, but which has
+pushed the German people just as far as it dares.
+
+A second lesson is that while forms of government, and social traditions,
+may differ, the relation of public opinion towards war is practically the
+same in all the countries of Western Europe. It is in its way the test of
+European civilization. Each nation has its "sleepless watchdogs," and
+those of one nation fire the others, when the proper war scares are set in
+motion by the great unscrupulous group of those who profit by them. The
+war promoters, the apostles of hate, form a brotherhood among themselves,
+and their success in frightening one nation reacts to make it easier to
+scare another.
+
+This the reader may remember, as a final lesson. There is no civilized
+nation which longs for war. There is nowhere a reckless populace clamoring
+for blood. The schools have done away with all that. The spread of
+commerce has brought a new Earth with new sympathies and new relations, in
+which international war has no place.
+
+If you are sure that your own nation has no design to use violence on any
+other, you may be equally sure that no other has evil designs on you. The
+German fleet is not built as a menace to England; whether it be large or
+small should concern England very little. Just as little does the size of
+the British fleet bear any concern to Germany. The German fleet is built
+against the German people. The growth of the British army and navy has in
+part the same motive. Armies and navies hold back the waves of populism
+and democracy. They seem a bulwark against Socialism. But in the great
+manufacturing and commercial nations, they will not be used for war,
+because they cannot be. The sacrifice appalls: the wreck of society would
+be beyond computation.
+
+But still the sleepless watchdogs bark. It is all that they can do, and we
+should get used to them. In our own country, whatever country it may be,
+we have our own share of them, and some of them bear distinguished names.
+No other nation has any more, and no nation takes them really seriously,
+any more than we do. And one and all, their bark is worse than their bite,
+and the cost of feeding them is doubtless worse than either.
+
+
+
+
+EN CASSEROLE
+
+
+_Special to our Readers_
+
+Those of you who have not received your REVIEWS on time will probably now
+find a double interest in the article in the last number, on _Our
+Government Subvention to Literature_. In conveying periodicals so cheaply,
+not only is Uncle Sam engaged in a bad job, but he is doing it cheaply,
+and consequently badly, and he has more of it than he can well handle. _He
+is at length carrying them as freight_, and most of you know what that
+means. We are receiving complaints of delay on all sides, and an
+appreciable part of the unwelcome subvention Uncle Sam is giving us, goes
+in sending duplicates of lost copies. We don't acknowledge any obligation,
+legal or moral, to do this; but we love our subscribers--more or less
+disinterestedly--and try to do them all the kinds of good we can. Partly
+to enable us to do that, as long as the subvention is given, we follow the
+example of the excellent Pooh Bah, and put our pride (and the subvention)
+into our pockets. Even if we did not love our subscribers so, we should
+have to do the pocketing all the same, because our competitors do.
+Competitors are always a very shameless sort of people.
+
+We wish, however, that Uncle Sam would keep his subvention in his own
+pocket, and so lead to a higher plane all competitors in the magazine
+business, including some of those who don't want to rise to a higher
+plane. The best of such a proceeding on his part would be that he would
+also, through the complicated influences described in the article referred
+to encourage up to a higher plane those who write for popular magazines.
+Those who write for THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW are, of course, on the highest
+possible plane already. This remark is made solely for the benefit of
+readers taking up the REVIEW for the first time. To others it is
+superfluous, and if there is anything we try to avoid, it is, as we have
+so many times to tell volunteer contributors, superfluities. Even
+popularity we do not try to avoid, but--!
+
+The foregoing paragraph was written with little thought of what was coming
+to be added to it. You and we have something to be proud of. Our REVIEW
+has been doing its part in saving all Europe from the waste of hundreds of
+millions of money, and the literatures of all Europe from a degradation
+like that through which our own is passing. Read the following letter:
+
+    Dear Mr. [Editor]:
+
+    I have already sent a line through ---- thanking you for the copy
+    of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW, which you were good enough to send me,
+    but I should like to repeat my thanks to you again direct, and at
+    the same time, tell you how the REVIEW has been of service to
+    European publishers.
+
+    The article in the last number entitled _Our Government Subvention
+    to Literature_ naturally interested me very much from a personal
+    point of view, but the statistics you give showing the effect of
+    second class matter rate on book sales was very valuable to me as
+    the representative of the English Publishers on the Executive
+    Committee of the International Publishers Congress.
+
+    At the Congress held at Budapest last June, a resolution was
+    adopted instructing the Congress to press for a reduced rate of
+    postage on periodicals, and an international stamp. The steps to
+    be taken in order to carry out this resolution were discussed at
+    the meeting of the Committee last week held at Leipzig, when I
+    produced the copy of your article, and gave the Committee a
+    summary of the statistics. The result was the unanimous decision
+    to take no further steps in the matter.
+
+    I tremble to think of what might have happened if I had not had
+    your article before me, for the point of view which you have put
+    forward was one that had not occurred to anyone else connected
+    with the Congress, and if the resolution had not been cut out at
+    this last meeting of the Executive Committee, it would have gone
+    before the Postal Conference which is to be held in Madrid this
+    autumn, backed by practically every European country.
+
+    I feel we all owe you a debt of gratitude for bringing out the
+    facts so clearly, and believe that you will like to know what has
+    taken place.
+
+While we are not slow to take all the credit that our supporters and
+ourselves are entitled to in this matter, we should be very slow tacitly
+to accept the lion's share of it, which is due to Colonel C.W. Burrows of
+Cleveland, who supplied all of the facts and nearly all of the expression
+of the article in question, and who has for years, lately as President of
+the One Cent Letter Postage League, been devoting himself with unsparing
+energy and self-sacrifice to stopping the waste of money and capacity that
+the mistaken outbreak of paternalism we are discussing has brought upon
+the country.
+
+Demos is a good fellow--when he behaves himself, and that generally means
+when he is not abused or flattered; but how supremely ridiculous, not to
+say destructive, he is when he gets to masquerading in the robes of the
+scholar or the judge; and how criminal is the demagogue who seeks personal
+aggrandisement by dangling those robes before him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our modesty has been so anesthetized by the preceding letter, that it
+permits us to show you, in strict confidence of course, a paragraph from
+another. A new subscriber, apparently going it blind on the recommendation
+of a friend, writes:
+
+    "I am told it is the best gentleman's magazine in the United
+    States."
+
+Now, somehow, "gentleman" is a word that we are very chary of using. We
+couldn't put that remark on an advertising page, but perhaps there is no
+inconsistency in putting it here, and confessing that we like it--and that
+we even suspect that we have always had a subconscious idea that it was
+just what we were after--that it includes, or ought to include, about
+everything that we are trying to accomplish. In any interpretation, it is
+certainly an encouragement to keep pegging away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Most of our readers probably remember a letter on pp. 432-3 of the
+_Casserole_ of the April-June number, from an individual who thought we
+were trying to humbug the wage-receiving world into a false and dangerous
+contentment with existing conditions. This inference was probably drawn
+from our insistent promulgation of the belief that a man's fortune depends
+more upon himself than upon his conditions.
+
+As a contrast to that remarkable letter, it is a great pleasure to call
+attention to the following still more remarkable one. It is from a
+printer--not one in our employ.
+
+    I wish to congratulate you on the excellence of the REVIEW, both
+    from a literary and mechanical standpoint. As a "worker," "a
+    member of the Union," it might be inferred that I endorse the
+    views of the critics given on page 432 of the second number. Not
+    so. It is such views as his that harm the unthinking--those who
+    think capital is the emblem of wickedness.
+
+    I believe that individual merit and worth are the only things
+    worth while. The workman who puts his best efforts into his labor,
+    and takes a personal pride in making his productions as nearly
+    perfect as possible, will be recognized, and his individual worth
+    to his employer will raise him above the "common level." All this
+    rot about a "ruling oligarchy" "grinding down the poorer class" is
+    dangerous. The man who has no ambition above ditch digging, and
+    who endeavors to throw out as little dirt in a day as he possibly
+    can, will always be one of "the submerged." It lies with each
+    one--outside of unavoidable physical or mental
+    infirmities--whether he shall rise or sink.
+
+    Again I must congratulate you on the stand you are taking in THE
+    UNPOPULAR REVIEW. I "take" and read twenty to twenty-five
+    magazines and for over forty years have been trying to educate
+    myself to a right way of thinking, and the result is I believe as
+    above briefly outlined.
+
+    Especially good is _The Greeks on Religion and Morals_, also _The
+    Soul of Capitalism, Trust-Busting as a National Pastime_, and _Our
+    Government Subvention to Literature_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Possibly some of you are disappointed at not finding this number as full
+as the daily papers of wisdom on War and the Mexican situation. In one
+sense we are disappointed ourselves: for we had made arrangements for at
+least one article of that general nature from one of our best qualified
+contributors; but when it came time to write it (speaking by the
+calendar), he showed the excellence of his qualifications by saying that,
+considering the situation and the function of this REVIEW, it was _not_
+time--that the situation had not yet become mature enough or broad enough
+for any general conclusions--for any treatment beyond that already well
+given by the newspapers and other organs of frequent publication, and that
+they were giving all the details called for. We will wait, then, and try
+to philosophize when the time comes.
+
+We find, however, that with little deliberate intention on our part, this
+number has turned out "seasonable" in another sense, and hope you will
+find it so. Witness the articles on _Chautauqua_, and _Railway Junctions_,
+and _Tips_ (entitled _A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism_) and several others.
+
+
+_Philosophy in Fly Time_
+
+In the old days, before the destruction of the white pines removed the
+chief source of American inventiveness--the universal habit of
+whittling--every boy had a jackknife, and also had boxes, sometimes of
+wood, sometimes of writing paper, in which he kept flies. Now he has
+neither flies nor jackknife.
+
+Then, when he wanted a fly, nine times out of ten he could catch one with
+a sweep of the hand. That was before the fly was charged with an amount of
+bad deeds, if they really were as bad as represented, which would have
+destroyed the human race long before the plagues of Egypt; or if not
+before the fly plague, would have caused that plague to leave no Egyptians
+alive to enjoy the later ones. With these new opinions of the fly, began a
+crusade against him; and now the boys can't have any more fun with
+him--that is, only good boys can--the kind that catch him with illusive
+traps, for a cent a hundred. The other kind of boys may occasionally be
+sports enough to hunt him with the swatter; but it's pretty poor hunting:
+for the game is so shy that generally before you get within reach of him,
+he is off: so swatting him is difficult, while catching him by hand, as we
+boys used to, is virtually impossible.
+
+Now for some questions profound enough to befit our pages. (I) Have only a
+select group of very alert and quick flies survived? or (II) Have the
+flies told each other that that big clumsy brute with only two legs to
+walk on, and two aborted ones which do all sorts of foolish things--the
+brute with only one lens to an eye (though he sometimes puts a glass one
+over it) and a pitifully aborted proboscis--the brute that has no wings,
+and can't get ahead more than about once his own length in a second--that
+this clumsy brute had at last got so jealous of the six legs,
+hundred-lensed eyes, proboscis, wings and speed of the fly, that he had
+started a new crusade against him, and must be specially avoided?
+
+Then, after it is ascertained whether the timidity of the flies is because
+this story has been passed around among them, or only because men have
+already killed off all but the specially quick and timid ones; we hope our
+investigators may find an answer to the farther question: (III) How, if a
+tenth of what some folks say against flies is true, the human race has so
+long survived?
+
+To avoid misapprehension, it should be added that despite the
+availability, in our boyhood, of flies as playmates, we don't like 'em,
+especially when they light on our hands to help us write articles for this
+REVIEW.
+
+
+_Setting Bounds to Laughter_
+
+That there is even a measure of personal liberty on the earth, is one of
+our most pointed proofs that the universe is governed by design. For
+liberty is loved neither by the many nor by the few; its defense has
+always been unpopular in the extreme, and can be manfully undertaken only
+in an age of moral heroism. The present is no heroic age, and hence our
+personal rights fall one by one, without defense, and apparently without
+regret. The losses thus incurred must be left to future historians to
+weigh and to lament. There is, however, one of our natural rights, now
+cruelly beset by its enemies, that is too precious to surrender to the
+threnodies of the future historians. This is the right to laugh.
+
+It is scarcely a quarter of a century since the first appearance of
+organized efforts to curb the spirit of laughter. All good men and women
+were hectored into believing that one should weep, not laugh, over the
+absurdities of men in their cups. Next, we were warned that it is unseemly
+and unChristian to laugh at a fellow-man's discomfiture--an awkward social
+situation, a sermon or a political oration wrecked by stage fright, or a
+poem spoilt by a printer's stupidity. Under shelter of the dogma that to
+laugh at the ridiculous is unlawful, there have recently grown into vigor
+multitudinous anti-laughter alliances, racial, national and professional.
+Not many years ago a censorship of Irish jokes was established, and this
+was soon followed by an index expurgatorious of Teutonic jokes. Our
+colored fellow citizens promptly advanced the claim that jokes at the
+expense of their race are "in bad taste"; and country life enthusiasts
+solemnly affirmed that the rural and suburban jokes are nothing short of
+national disasters. A recent press report informs us that the suffragette
+joke has been excluded from the vaudeville circuits throughout the
+country. And the movement grows apace. Domestic servants, stenographers,
+politicians, college professors, and clergymen are organizing to establish
+the right of being ridiculous without exciting laughter.
+
+But what does it all matter? What is laughter but an old-fashioned aid to
+digestion, more or less discredited by current medical authority? It is
+time we learned that laughter has a social significance: it is the first
+stage in the process of understanding one's fellow man. Professor Bergson
+to the contrary notwithstanding, you can not laugh with your intellect
+alone. An essential element of your laughter is sympathy. You can not
+laugh at an idiot, nor at a superman. You can not laugh at a Hindoo or a
+Korean; you can hardly force a smile to your lips over the conduct of a
+Bulgar, a Serb, or a Slovak. You are beginning to find something comic in
+the Italian, because you are beginning to know him. And all the world
+laughs at the Irishman, because all the world knows him and loves him.
+
+When Benjamin Franklin walked down the streets of Philadelphia, carrying a
+book under his arm, and munching a crust of bread, just one person
+observed him, a rosy maiden, who laughed merrily at him. As our old school
+readers narrated, with naïve surprise, this maiden was destined to become
+Franklin's faithful wife. And yet psychology should have led us to expect
+such a result. The stupidest small boy making faces or turning somersaults
+before the eyes of his pig-tailed inamorata, evidences his appreciation of
+the sentimental value of the ridiculous. When did we first grant some
+small corner in our hearts to the Chinese? It was when we were introduced
+to Bret Harte's gambler:
+
+  For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,
+  The heathen Chinee is peculiar.
+
+The natural history of the racial or professional joke is easily written.
+At the outset it is crude and cruel, wholly at the expense of the group
+represented. In time the world wearies of an unequal contest, and we have
+a new order of jokes, in which the intended victim acquits himself well.
+This, too, gives way to a higher order, in which race, nationality or
+profession is employed merely as a cloak for common humanity. The
+successive stages mark the progress in assimilation, induced, in large
+measure, by laughter. There is no other social force so potent in creating
+mutual understanding and practical fraternity of spirit; in establishing
+the essential unity of mankind underneath its phenomenal diversity.
+Setting bounds to laughter: why, this is to indenture the angel of charity
+to the father of lies and the lord of hate.
+
+
+_A Post Graduate School for Academic Donors_
+
+At a recent meeting of an University Montessori Club the case of donors to
+colleges and universities was reported on by a special committee. The
+majority report drew a pretty heavy indictment. It was shown that the
+givers to colleges and universities seldom considered the real needs of
+their beneficiaries. Donors liked to give expensive buildings without
+endowment for upkeep, liked to give vast athletic fields, rejoiced in
+stadiums, affected memorial statuary and stained glass windows, dabbled in
+landscape gardening, but seldom were known either to give anything
+unconditionally or, specifically, to destine a gift for such uninspiring
+needs as more books or professors' pay. The result of giving without first
+considering the needs of the benefited college or university, was that
+every gift made the beneficiary more lopsided. Certain universities were
+almost capsized by their incidental architecture. Others were subsidizing
+graduate students to whom the conditions of successful research were
+denied. Still others were calling great specialists to the teaching force
+without providing the apparatus for the pursuit of these specialties.
+Others preferred to offer financial aid to students who were poor--in
+every sense. Donors apparently without exception had single-track minds.
+They saw plainly enough what they wanted to give, but never took the pains
+to see the donation in its relation to the institution as a whole. The
+majority report, which was drawn by our famous Latinist, Professor
+Claudius Senex, concluded with the despairing note _Timeo Danaos et dona
+ferentes_. The minority report was delivered orally by young Simpson Smith
+of the department of banking and finance. He "allowed" that everything
+alleged by the majority report was true, but saw no use in dwelling on
+such truths, since donors always had done and always would do just as they
+darned pleased.
+
+The Club took a more hopeful view of the case, and it was voted that our
+Club should resolve itself into the trustees and faculty of a Post
+Graduate School for Academic Donors. Our committee recommended that we
+qualify our advanced students by conferring the lower degree of Heedless
+Donor (H.D.) every year upon all givers who can be shown to have given at
+random. No method of instruction seemed more appropriate than the seminar
+plan of practical exercises based on concrete instances. The first
+laboratory experiment was performed in the presence of a Seminar of seven
+H.D.'s. in a specially called meeting of married professors attired only
+in bath gowns borrowed from the crews and base ball teams. Into this
+assembly the class of H.D.'s was suddenly introduced. They naturally
+inquired into the meaning of the spectacle, and were informed that in no
+case did the mere salary of these professors enable them to wear clothes
+at all. "But you do usually wear clothes?" inquired a student of a
+favorite professor. "How do you get them?" "By University extension
+lecturing at ten dollars a lecture" was the quiet answer. Another
+professor explained that he got his clothes by tutoring dull students,
+another by book reviewing. One somewhat shamefacedly said the clothes came
+from his wife's money. One declined to answer, and, as a matter of fact,
+his clothes are habitually first worn by a more fortunate elder brother.
+
+On the whole the results of our first seminary exercise were satisfactory.
+One student immediately drew a considerable check for the salary fund,
+another, who had been planning to give a hockey rink, said he would think
+things over. Still a third deposited forty pairs of slightly worn trousers
+with the university treasurer, "for whom it might concern." Only one
+accepted the demonstration contentedly. He admitted that low pay and extra
+work were hard on the Professors, but he also felt that these outside
+activities advertised the university and were good business. Of course you
+wore out some professors in the process, but you could always get others.
+
+Our second seminary exercise was of a less spectacular sort. The post
+graduate donors were each provided with a bibliography. This in every
+instance contained the titles of books that a particular professor or
+graduate student in the university would need to consult for his studies
+of the ensuing week. It was briefly explained by Professor Senex that
+original research could not be successfully accomplished without reference
+to all the original sources and to the writings of other scholars. The
+bibliographies ran from ten titles or so to nearly a hundred, according to
+the nature of the particular research involved. The exercise consisted in
+going to the university library and matching these titles of desiderata
+with the books actually in the catalogue. After varying intervals, the
+post graduate donors returned with their report. Nobody had found more
+than half the books sought for: many had found less.
+
+The effect of this demonstration was interesting. The donor who had tended
+towards the hockey rink, instead transferred his $100,000 to the book
+purchase fund. He said he guessed the old place needed real books more
+than it needed artificial ice. Others followed his example according to
+their ability.
+
+The student who was satisfied with our bath robe faculty meeting, came
+back from the library equally pleased. He had not compared his
+bibliography with the catalogue, but a brief general inspection had
+convinced him that there were already more books in the library than
+anybody could read. His intention held firm to give his Alma Mater a tower
+higher than any university tower on record and containing a chime of bells
+that periodically played the college song. The tower was naturally to bear
+his name, which was also his dear mother's.
+
+
+_A Suggestion Regarding Vacations_
+
+Why wouldn't it be well for the country colleges to shorten their summer
+vacations, and lengthen their winter ones? Then urban students would not,
+for so long a period in summer, be put to their trumps to find out what to
+do with themselves; and, what is more important, in winter both faculty
+and students would have increased opportunity for metropolitan experience.
+In the summer vacations, the cities are empty of music, drama, and most
+else of what makes them distinctively worth while. Intellectually, the
+country needs the city at least as much as, morally, the city needs the
+country.
+
+
+_Advertisement_
+
+We are disposed to do a little gratuitous advertising for good causes.
+Below is the first essay. It is perfectly genuine. Please send us some
+more.
+
+_Help Wanted._ From a young gentleman of education, leisure and energy,
+who desires to devote a part of his time, in connection with scholars and
+philanthropists, to a reform of world-wide importance. Such a person may
+possibly learn of a congenial opportunity by addressing.
+
+X.T.C.
+
+Care of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW.
+
+
+A few hundred persons of the kind whose help is sought by this
+advertisement would have the salvation of the republic in their hands. But
+somehow those who have the leisure generally lack the desire; and those
+who have the desire generally lack the leisure.
+
+
+_Simplified Spelling_
+
+After receiving, in answer to the invitation in our first number, a few
+bitter objections to simplified spelling, we have felt like apologizing
+each time we approached the subject. Perhaps the best apology we can make
+is that apparently the majority of our readers are interested in it.
+Therefore we hope that the others will tolerate as equably as they can,
+the devotion of a little space to it in the interest of the majority.
+Perhaps the objectors may ultimately be able to settle the difficulty as
+we and our house have settled another unconquerable nuisance--the
+dandelions on our lawns--: we have concluded to like them.
+
+Our recent correspondence regarding Simplified Spelling has developed a
+few points which we submit to those who abominate it, those who favor it,
+and those who, like the eminent school-superintendent we have already
+quoted, and like ourselves for that matter, do both:
+
+To a leading Professor of Greek:
+
+    I am more hopeful than you that the repetition of a consonant
+    beginning the second syllable of a dissyllable, to close the
+    preceding syllable, as in "differ", "fiddle", "gobble", etc.,
+    _wil_ "be generally accepted", especially in view of the fact that
+    it is _alreddy_ "generally accepted", and needs only to be
+    extended to a minority of words.
+
+    "Annutther" is not "a fair illustration". On the contrary, it is
+    an exception that I probably was very injudicious to call any
+    attention to; and the trouble with you scholars, I find all the
+    way thru, is that you permit those little exceptions to influence
+    you too much. If a good simplification is ever effected, it will
+    be by cutting Gordian knots, and you all of you seem absolutely
+    incapable of anything of the kind. I don't expect anyhow to make
+    much out of a man who will spell "peepl" "peopl". Imagine all this
+    said with a grin, not a frown!!
+
+    You wil never get back to "the old sounds" of the vowels, in God's
+    world.
+
+    As to the long sounds, I am going in for all I am worth on the
+    double vowels. I alreddy agree with the English Society on
+    "faather", "feel" and "scuul", and am going to do all I can for
+    _niit_, and for spredding the _oo_ in _floor_ and _door_ into
+    _snore_, _more_, _hole_, _poke_, etc. "Awl", "cow" and "go" are
+    spelt wel, and their spelling shoud be spred. These seem to be the
+    lines of least resistance. I find that they work first-rate in my
+    own riting.
+
+    You make enuf serious objections to diacritical marks, but my
+    serious objection to them is that they ar obstacles to lerners,
+    especially forreners.
+
+From his answer:
+
+    All right; I catch the grin, and cheerfully grin back. The
+    business of a scholar (Emerson's "man thinking", Plato's [Greek:
+    philosophos]) is to take as long views as he can; in this case, to
+    look far beyond the possibilities of my life-time. The more you
+    people with the shorter views, as I venture to think them, agitate
+    for and practise each little partial solution, the more you help
+    on the threshing out which must go on for many years before we can
+    arrive at any general solution. So, more power to your elbow!
+
+    Meantime my own spelling will continue to be--like the
+    conventional spelling of the printers of today--a hodge-podge of
+    inconsistencies, quite indefensible on rational grounds, and
+    varying with circumstances. Of course the rational way to spell
+    _people_ is _piipl_, or _pipl_.
+
+Which we think is an attempt to bolster up a lost cause.
+
+From another reader:
+
+    Your closing sentence in the first number of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW
+    states with a most distressing combination of vowels and
+    outlandish collocation of consonants that you would like to hear
+    from your readers on the subject.... Z is not a pretty letter, and
+    to see it so frequently usurping the place so long held by s is
+    far from gratifying to the eye....
+
+    Suppose you establish to your own satisfaction a method for
+    assigning sound values; how will you reach the differences in
+    vowel sounds that prevail in the United States? The New
+    Englander's mouthing of _a_ differs from that of the Northern New
+    Yorker, and both differ greatly from that of the
+    Southerner--indeed, in the different Southern States there is
+    variation.... At first I was interested in simplified spelling,
+    but the eccentricities developed by its advocates alienated me
+    long since, so I beg of you, drop it.
+
+From our answer:
+
+    I delayed thanking you for your letter of the 29th until there
+    should be time for you to see the April-June number.
+
+    I hope you are feeling better now.
+
+    If you are not, I do not think I can do much to console you,
+    because when a man has been irritated into that position where the
+    alleged beauty of a letter counts in so serious a question, he is
+    probably beyond mortal help.
+
+    I have no desire "to reach the differences in vowel sounds that
+    prevail in the United States". There is not much difference among
+    cultivated people. Probably a fair standard would be the
+    conversation at the Century Club, where there are visitors from
+    Maine to California, and hardly any noticeable difference in
+    pronunciation.
+
+    There seems to be no disagreement among authorities that a
+    simplified spelling would save a great deal of time among
+    children....
+
+    Of course I have not been able to answer most of the letters I
+    have received on the subject. I single yours out because you have
+    had a fall from grace, and I feel guilty of having had something
+    to do with it, by presenting stronger meat than was necessary, in
+    our January number. I have fought on the Executive Committee of
+    the Spelling Board against publishing anything of the English
+    S.S.S.'s proposed improvements, for fear of arousing such
+    prejudice as yours; and yet in our first number, I was insensibly
+    led into, myself, publishing things that looked just as
+    outlandish.
+
+    As I said at the outset, I hope you feel better since seeing the
+    April-June number, and should be glad to know how you do feel.
+
+From his reply:
+
+    Thank you very much for the courtesy of your letter of 9th April.
+    I was surprised to receive it, as I did not suppose that your
+    multifarious duties would permit you to notice my rather feeble
+    protest. I was somewhat amused that you should think my irritation
+    so extreme as to call for an effort to console me. I am sure I
+    appreciate your attempt to do so. But really, I was not so hard
+    hit as you thought, because I do not expect in my day (I am no
+    longer a young man) to see the champions of "simplified spelling"
+    (some of it seems to me the reverse of "simplified") gain such
+    headway as to materially mar my pleasure in the printed page, for
+    I do not believe you will allow the atrocities of the last few
+    pages of your first number to creep into the delightful essays
+    which render THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW such pleasant and profitable
+    reading....
+
+    I do not think any great respect is due the opinion of those who
+    think that a simplified spelling would save a great deal of time
+    among children, for it also seems to have its rules which will
+    present as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of
+    our present system....
+
+    Why _thru_? U does not always have the sound of double _o_--very
+    rarely in fact. Why not _throo_--if the aim is to make the written
+    sign correspond to the sound. Thru suggests _huh_.
+
+From our answer:
+
+    Regarding "thru", you justly say that _u_ does not always have the
+    sound of _oo_. The only sound of _oo_ worthy of respect, with
+    which I have an acquaintance, is in "door" and "floor". The idea
+    of using it to represent a _u_ sound is perhaps the culminating
+    absurdity of our spelling.
+
+    Your statement that simplified spelling "seems to have its rules
+    which will present as much difficulty to memorize as do the
+    peculiarities of our present system" overlooks the advantage that
+    writing with a phonetic alphabet, like those of Europe, has over
+    writing with purely conventional characters, as in China. Now
+    English writing is probably the least phonetic in Europe.
+    Simplifying it in any of the well-known proposed methods would be
+    making it more phonetic, and consequently easier. At present it is
+    a mass of contradictions, and the rules that can be extracted from
+    it are overburdened with exceptions. Simplification will decrease
+    both the exceptions and the rules themselves. There are now
+    several ways of representing each of many sounds, and therefore
+    several "rules" to be learned for each of such sounds.
+    Simplification will tend to reduce those rules to one for each
+    sound, and so far as it succeeds, will _not_ "present as much
+    difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of our present
+    system."
+
+All the degrees of reformed spelling now in use are professedly but
+transitional. They may gradually advance into a respectable degree of
+consistency, but we expect that to be reached quicker by a coherent
+survival among the warring elements proposed by the S.S.S., the S.S.B. and
+the better individual reformers. Probably there is already more agreement
+than disagreement among these elements.
+
+While the others are fighting it out, the various transition styles will
+do something to prepare parents to accept a more nearly perfect style for
+their children, and perhaps take an interest in seeing the various
+counsels of perfection fight each other.
+
+A few words have already found their way into advertisements--_tho_,
+_thru_, _thoro_ (a damnable way of spelling _thurro_), and the shortened
+terminal _gram(me)s_, _og(ue)s_ and _et(te)s_; and these and a few more
+have found their way into correspondence on commonplace subjects; and the
+interest in the topic, especially among educators, is spreading. But most
+of the inconsistencies will probably bother and delay children and
+forreners until they are given something with some approach to
+consistency.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After we fight to something like agreement on a system, how are we to get
+it going?
+
+It does not seem extravagant to expect that as soon as the weight of
+scholarly opinion endorses a vocabulary from our present alphabet
+consistent enough to afford a base for a reasonable spelling book,
+spelling books and readers will be prepared for the schools, and adopted
+by advanced teachers. Many are clamoring for such now. When the youngsters
+have mastered these, which they will do in a small fraction of the time
+wasted on their present books, they will of their own accord pick up
+without troubling their teachers a knowledge of the present forms. This
+they have always done when their teaching has been by the various phonetic
+methods with special letters, and have done both in much less time than
+they have needed for learning in the ordinary way. But they will prefer
+the reasonable forms, and this demand the publishers will probably not be
+slow to supply.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number
+3, by Various
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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+Title: The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 22, 2005 [EBook #15876]
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW ***
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+</pre>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h4>The</h4>
+<h1>Unpopular Review</h1>
+<hr class="short" />
+<h3>Vol. II, No. 3<br />
+July-September, 1914</h3>
+<hr class="short" />
+<h4>Published Quarterly at 35 West 32d Street, New York, by</h4>
+<h2>Henry Holt and Company</h2>
+<hr />
+<h2><a id="Contents" name="Contents"></a>Contents</h2>
+<table summary="Table of Contents" class="tableOfContents">
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Unsocial">Unsocial
+Investments</a></td>
+<td class="author">A.S. Johnson</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Feudalism">A Stubborn Relic of
+Feudalism</a></td>
+<td class="author">The Editor</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Syndicalism">An Experiment in
+Syndicalism</a></td>
+<td class="author">Hugh H. Lusk</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Labor">Labor: &ldquo;True
+Demand&rdquo; and Immigrant Supply</a></td>
+<td class="author">Arthur J. Todd</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Flatland">The Way to
+Flatland</a></td>
+<td class="author">Fabian Franklin</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Property">The Disfranchisement of
+Property</a></td>
+<td class="author">David McGregor Means</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Railway">Railway
+Junctions</a></td>
+<td class="author">Clayton Hamilton</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Middling">Minor Uses of the
+Middling Rich</a></td>
+<td class="author">F.J. Mather, Jr.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Chautauqua">Lecturing at
+Chautauqua</a></td>
+<td class="author">Clayton Hamilton</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Academic">Academic
+Leadership</a></td>
+<td class="author">Paul Elmer More</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Hypnotism">Hypnotism, Telepathy,
+and Dreams</a></td>
+<td class="author">The Editor</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Muses">The Muses on the
+Hearth</a></td>
+<td class="author">Mrs. F.G. Allinson</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="articleHead"><a href="#Watchdog">The Land of the
+Sleepless Watchdog</a></td>
+<td class="author">David Starr Jordan</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><a href="#Casserole"><span class="sc">En
+Casserole</span></a>
+<p style="margin-left:3%;font-size:90%;">Special to our
+Readers&mdash;Philosophy in Fly Time&mdash;Setting Bounds to
+Laughter (A.S. Johnson)&mdash;A Post-Graduate School for Academic
+Donors (F.J. Mather, Jr.)&mdash;A Suggestion Regarding
+Vacations&mdash;Advertisement&mdash;Simplified Spelling</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_1" name="page_1"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+1]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Unsocial" name="Unsocial"></a>Unsocial Investments</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>The &ldquo;new social conscience&rdquo; is essentially a class
+phenomenon. While it pretends to the r&ocirc;le of inner monitor
+and guide to conduct for all mankind, it interprets good and evil
+in class terms. It manifests a special solicitude for the welfare
+of one social group, and a mute hostility toward another. Labor is
+its Esau, Capital its Jacob. Let strife arise between workingmen
+and their employers, and you will see the new social conscience
+aligning itself with the former, accepting at face value all the
+claims of labor, reiterating all labor&rsquo;s formul&aelig;. The
+suggestion that judgment should be suspended until the facts at
+issue are established is repudiated as the prompting of a secret
+sin. For, to paraphrase a recent utterance of the <em>Survey</em>,
+one of the foremost organs of the new conscience, is it not true
+that the workers are fighting for their livings, while the
+employers are fighting only for their profits? It would appear,
+then, that there can be no question as to the side to which justice
+inclines. A living is more sacred than a profit.</p>
+<p>It is virtually never true, however, that the workers are
+fighting for their &ldquo;living.&rdquo; Contrary to Marx&rsquo;s
+exploded &ldquo;iron law&rdquo; they probably had that and more
+before the trouble began. But of course we would not wish to
+restrict them to a living, if they can produce more, and want all
+who can&rsquo;t produce that much to be provided with it&mdash;and
+something more at the expense of others.</p>
+<p>It may be urged that the employer&rsquo;s profits also represent
+the livings of a number of human beings; but this passes nowadays
+for a reactionary view. &ldquo;We stand for <a id="page_2" name=
+"page_2"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 2]</span>man as against the
+dollar.&rdquo; If you say that the &ldquo;dollar&rdquo; is metonymy
+for &ldquo;the man possessed of a dollar,&rdquo; with rights to
+defend, and reasonable expectations to be realized, you convict
+yourself of reaction. &ldquo;These gentry&rdquo; (I quote from the
+May <em>Atlantic</em>) &ldquo;suppose themselves to be discussing
+the rights of man, when all they are discussing is the rights of
+stockholders.&rdquo; The true view, the progressive view, is
+obviously that the possessors of the dollar, the recipients of
+profits and dividends, are excluded from the communion of humanity.
+Labor is mankind.</p>
+<p>The present instance is of course not the only instance in human
+history of the substitution of class criteria of judgment for
+social criteria. Such manifestations of class conscience are
+doubtless justified in the large economy of human affairs; an
+individual must often claim all in order to gain anything, and the
+same may be true of a class. Besides, the ultimate arbitration of
+the claims of the classes is not a matter for the rational
+judgment. What is subject to rational analysis, however, are the
+methods of gaining its ends proposed by the new social conscience.
+Of these methods one of wide acceptance is that of fixing odium
+upon certain property interests, with a view to depriving them
+immediately of the respect still granted to property interests in
+general, and ultimately of the protection of the laws. It is with
+the rationality of what may be called the excommunication and
+outlawing of special property interests, that the present paper is
+concerned.</p>
+<p>In passing, it is worth noting that the same ethical spirit that
+insists upon fixing the responsibility for social ills upon
+particular property interests&mdash;or property
+owners&mdash;insists with equal vehemence upon absolving the
+propertyless evil-doer from personal responsibility for his acts.
+The Los Angeles dynamiters were but victims: the crime in which
+they were implicated was institutional, not personal. Their
+punishment was rank injustice; inexpedient, moreover, as
+provocative of further crime, <a id="page_3" name=
+"page_3"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 3]</span>instead of a means
+of repression. On the other hand, when it appears that the
+congestion of the slum produces vice and disease, we are not urged
+by the spokesmen of this ethical creed, to blame the chain of
+institutional causes typified by scarcity of land, high prices of
+building materials, the incapacity of a raw immigrant population to
+pay for better habitations, or to appreciate the need for light and
+air. Rather, we are urged to fix responsibility upon the individual
+owner who receives rent from slum tenements. Perhaps we can not
+imprison him for his misdeeds, but we can make him an object of
+public reproach; expel him from social intercourse (if that, so
+often talked about, is ever done); fasten his iniquities upon him
+if ever he seeks a post of trust or honor; and ultimately we can
+deprive him of his property. Let him and his anti-social interests
+be forever excommunicate, outlawed.</p>
+<h3>II</h3>
+<p>In the country at large the property interests involved in the
+production and sale of alcoholic beverages are already
+excommunicated. The unreformed &ldquo;best society&rdquo; may still
+tolerate the presence of persons whose fortunes are derived from
+breweries or distilleries; but the great mass of the social-minded
+would deny them fire and water. In how many districts would a well
+organized political machine urge persons thus enriched as
+candidates for Congress, the bench or even the school board? In the
+prohibition territory excommunication of such property interests
+has been followed by outlawry. The saloon in Maine and Kansas
+exists by the same title as did Robin Hood: the inefficiency of the
+law. On the road to excommunication is private property in the
+wretched shacks that shelter the city&rsquo;s poor. Outlawry is not
+far distant. &ldquo;These tenements must go.&rdquo; Will they go?
+Ask of the police, who pick over the wreckage upon the subsidence
+of a wave of reform. Many a rookery, officially abolished, <a id=
+"page_4" name="page_4"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 4]</span>will
+be found still tenanted, and yielding not one income, but two, one
+for the owner and another for the police. The property represented
+by enterprises paying low wages, working men for long hours or
+under unhealthful conditions, or employing children, is almost ripe
+for excommunication. Pillars of society and the church have already
+been seen tottering on account of revelations of working conditions
+in factories from which they receive dividends. Property
+&ldquo;affected by a public use,&rdquo; that is, investments in the
+instrumentalities of public service, is becoming a compromising
+possession. We are already somewhat suspicious of the personal
+integrity and political honor of those who receive their incomes
+from railways or electric lighting plants; and the odor of gas
+stocks is unmistakable. Even the land, once the retreat of high
+birth and serene dignity, is beginning to exhale a miasma of
+corruption. &ldquo;Enriched by unearned increment&rdquo;&mdash;who
+wishes such an epitaph? A convention is to be held in a western
+city in this very year, to announce to the world that the delegates
+and their constituencies&mdash;all honest lovers of
+mankind&mdash;will refuse in future to recognize any private title
+to land or other natural resources. Holders of such property, by
+continuing to be such, will place themselves beyond the pale of
+human society, and will forfeit all claim to sympathy when the day
+dawns for the universal confiscation of land.</p>
+<h3>III</h3>
+<p>The existence of categories of property interests resting under
+a growing weight of social disapprobation, is giving rise to a
+series of problems in private ethics that seem almost to demand a
+rehabilitation of the art of casuistry. A very intelligent and
+conscientious lady of the writer&rsquo;s acquaintance became
+possessed, by inheritance, of a one-fourth interest in a
+Minneapolis building the ground floor of which is occupied by a
+saloon. Her first endeavor was to persuade her partners to secure a
+cancellation of the <a id="page_5" name="page_5"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 5]</span>liquor dealer&rsquo;s lease. This they
+refused to do, on the ground that the building in question is, by
+location, eminently suited to its present use, but very ill suited
+to any other; and that, moreover, the lessee would immediately
+reopen his business on the opposite corner. To yield to their
+partner&rsquo;s desire would therefore result in a reduction of
+their own profits, but would advance the public welfare not one
+whit. Disheartened by her partners&rsquo; obstinacy, my friend is
+seeking to dispose of her interest in the building. As she is
+willing to incur a heavy sacrifice in order to get rid of her
+complicity in what she considers an unholy business, the transfer
+will doubtless soon be made. Her soul will be lightened of the
+profits from property put to an anti-social use. But the property
+will still continue in such use, and profits from it will still
+accrue to someone with a soul to lose or to save.</p>
+<p>In her fascinating book, <em>Twenty Years at Hull House</em>,
+Miss Jane Addams tells of a visit to a western state where she had
+invested a sum of money in farm mortgages. &ldquo;I was
+horrified,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;by the wretched conditions among
+the farmers, which had resulted from a long period of drought, and
+one forlorn picture was fairly burned into my mind&hellip;. The
+farmer&rsquo;s wife [was] a picture of despair, as she stood in the
+door of the bare, crude house, and the two children behind her,
+whom she vainly tried to keep out of sight, continually thrust
+forward their faces, almost covered by masses of coarse, sunburned
+hair, and their little bare feet so black, so hard, the great
+cracks so filled with dust, that they looked like flattened hoofs.
+The children could not be compared to anything so joyous as satyrs,
+although they appeared but half-human. It seemed to me quite
+impossible to receive interest from mortgages upon farms which
+might at any season be reduced to such conditions, and with great
+inconvenience to my agent and doubtless with hardship to the
+farmers, as speedily as possible I withdrew all my
+investment.&rdquo; And thereby made the supply of money for such
+farmers <a id="page_6" name="page_6"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+6]</span>that much less and consequently that much dearer. This is
+quite a fair example of much current philanthropy.</p>
+<p>We may safely assume that, however much this action may have
+lightened Miss Addams&rsquo;s conscience, it did not lighten the
+burden of debt upon the farmer, or make the periodic interest
+payments less painful, and it certainly did put them to the trouble
+and contingent expenses of a new mortgage. The moral burden was
+shifted, to the ease of the philanthropist, and this seems to
+exhaust the sum of the good results of one well intentioned deed.
+Do they outweigh the bad ones?</p>
+<p>So, doubtless, there are among our friends persons who, upon
+proof that factories in which they have been interested pay
+starvation wages, have withdrawn their investments. And others who,
+stumbling upon a state legislature among the productive assets of a
+railway corporation, have sold their bonds and invested the
+proceeds elsewhere. It is a modern way of obeying the injunction,
+&ldquo;Sell all thou hast and follow me.&rdquo; And not a very
+painful way, since the irreproachable investments pay almost, if
+not quite, as well as those that are suspect.</p>
+<p>It is not, however, impossible to conceive of a property owner
+driven from one position to another, in order to satisfy this new
+requirement of the social conscience, without ever finding peace.
+Miss Addams put the money withdrawn from those hideous farm
+mortgages into a flock of &ldquo;innocent looking sheep.&rdquo;
+Alas, they were not so innocent as they seemed. &ldquo;The sight of
+two hundred sheep with four rotting hoofs each was not reassuring
+to one whose conscience craved economic peace. A fortunate series
+of sales of mutton, wool and farm enabled the partners to end the
+enterprise without loss.&rdquo; Sales of mutton? Let us hope those
+eight hundred infected hoofs are well printed on the
+butcher&rsquo;s conscience.</p>
+<p>And the net result of all these moral strivings? The evil
+investments still continue to be evil, and still yield <a id=
+"page_7" name="page_7"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+7]</span>profits. Doubtless they rest, in the end, upon less
+sensitive consciences. Marvellous moral gain!</p>
+<h3>IV</h3>
+<p>We are bound to the wheel, say the sociological fatalists. All
+our efforts are of no avail; the Wheel revolves as it was destined.
+Not so. Our strivings for purity in investments, puny as may be
+their results in the individual instance, may compose a sum that is
+imposing in its effectiveness. How their influence may be exerted
+will best appear from an analogy.</p>
+<p>It is a settled conviction among Americans of Puritan
+antecedents, and among all other Americans, native born or alien,
+that have come under Puritan influence, that the dispensing of
+alcoholic beverages is a degrading function. This conviction has
+not, to be sure, notably impaired the performance of the function.
+But it has none the less produced a striking effect. It has set
+apart for the function in question those elements in the population
+that place the lowest valuation upon the esteem of the public, and
+that are, on the whole, least worthy of it. In consequence the
+American saloon is, by common consent, the very worst institution
+of its kind in the world. Such is the immediate result of good
+intentions working by the method of excommunication of a trade.</p>
+<p>This degradation of the personnel and the institution proceeds
+at an accelerated rate as public opinion grows more bitter. In the
+end the evil becomes so serious, so intimately associated with all
+other evils, social and political, that you hear men over their
+very cups rise to proclaim, with husky voices, &ldquo;The saloon
+must go!&rdquo; At this point the community is ripe for
+prohibition: accordingly, it would seem that the initial stages in
+the process, unpleasant as were their consequences, were not
+ill-advised, after all. But prohibition does not come without a
+political struggle, in which the enemy, selected for brazenness and
+schooled in corruption, employs methods that leave <a id="page_8"
+name="page_8"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 8]</span>lasting scars
+upon the body politic. And even when vanquished, the enemy retreats
+into the morasses of &ldquo;unenforcible laws,&rdquo; to conduct a
+guerilla warfare that knows no rules. Let us grant that the
+ultimate gain is worth all it costs: are we sure that we have taken
+the best possible means to achieve our ends?</p>
+<p>In the poorer quarters of most great American cities, there is
+much property that it is difficult for a man to hold without losing
+the respect of the enlightened. Old battered tenements, dingy and
+ill lighted tumbledown shacks, the despair of the city reformer.
+Let us say that the proximity of gas tanks or noisy railways or
+smoky factories consign such quarters to the habitation of the very
+poor. Quite possibly, then, the replacement of the existing
+buildings by better ones would represent a heavy financial loss.
+The increasing social disapprobation of property vested in such
+wretched forms leads to the gradual substitution of owners who hold
+the social approval in contempt, for those who manifest a certain
+degree of sensitiveness. The tenants certainly gain nothing from
+the change. What is more likely to happen, is a screwing up of
+rents, an increasing promptness of evictions. Public opinion will
+in the end be roused against the landlords; the more timid among
+them will sell their holdings to others not less ruthless, but
+bolder and more astute. Attempts at public regulation will be
+fought with infinitely greater resourcefulness than could possibly
+have been displayed by respectable owners. Perhaps the final
+outcome will be that more drastic regulations are adopted than
+would have been the case had the shifting in ownership not taken
+place. There would still remain the possibility of the evasion of
+the law, and it is not at all improbable that the progress in the
+technique of evasion would outstrip the progress in regulation,
+thus leaving the tenant with a balance of disadvantage from the
+process as a whole.</p>
+<p>The most illuminating instance of a business interest subjected
+first to excommunication&mdash;literally&mdash;and <a id="page_9"
+name="page_9"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 9]</span>then to
+outlawry, is that of the usurer, or, in modern parlance, the loan
+shark. To the medi&aelig;val mind there was something distinctly
+immoral in an income from property devoted to the furnishing of
+personal loans. We need not stop to defend the medi&aelig;val
+position or to attack it; all that concerns us here is that an
+opportunity for profit&mdash;that is, a potential property
+interest&mdash;was outlawed. In consequence it became impossible
+for reputable citizens to engage in the business. Usury therefore
+came to be monopolized by aliens, exempt from the current ethical
+formulation, who were &ldquo;protected,&rdquo; for a consideration,
+by the prince, just as dubious modern property interests may be
+protected by the political boss.</p>
+<p>Let us summarize the results of eight hundred years of
+experience in this method of dealing with the usurer&rsquo;s trade.
+The business shifted from the control of citizens to that of
+aliens; from the hands of those who were aliens merely in a narrow,
+national sense, to the hands of those who are alien to our common
+humanity. Such lawless, tricky, extortionate loan sharks as now
+infest our cities were probably not to be found at all in
+medi&aelig;val or early modern times. They are a product of a
+secular process of selection. Their ability to evade the laws
+directed against them is consummate. It is true that from time to
+time we do succeed in catching one and fining him, or even
+imprisoning him. For which risk the small borrower is forced to
+pay, at a usurer&rsquo;s rate.</p>
+<p>Social improvement through the excommunication of property
+interests is inevitably a disorderly process. Wherever it is in
+operation we are sure to find the successive stages indicated in
+the foregoing examples. First, a gradual substitution of the
+conscienceless property holder for the one responsive to public
+sentiment. Next, under the threat of hostile popular action, the
+timid and resourceless property owner gives way to the resourceful
+and the bold. The third stage in the process is a vigorous
+political movement towards drastic regulation or abolition, <a id=
+"page_10" name="page_10"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+10]</span>evoking a desperate attempt on the part of the interests
+threatened to protect themselves by political means&mdash;that is,
+by gross corruption; or, if the menaced interest is a vast one,
+dominating a defensible territory, by armed rebellion, as in our
+own Civil War. If the interest is finally overwhelmed politically,
+and placed completely under the ban of the law, it has been given
+ample time to develop an unscrupulousness of personnel and an art
+of corruption that long enable it to exist illegally, a lasting
+reproach to the constituted authorities.</p>
+<h3>V</h3>
+<p>Suppression of anti-social interests by the methods in vogue
+amounts to little more than their banishment to the underworld. And
+we can well imagine the joy with which the denizens of the
+underworld receive such new accessions to their numbers and power.
+For in the nature of the case, it is inevitable that all varieties
+of outcasts and outlaws should join forces. The religious
+schismatic makes common cause with the pariah; the political
+offender with the thief and robber. Such association of elements
+vastly increases the difficulty of repressing crime. The band of
+thieves and robbers in the cave of Adullam doubtless found their
+powers of preying vastly increased through the acquisition of such
+a leader as David. The problem of medi&aelig;val vagabondage was
+rendered well-nigh incapable of solution by the fact that any
+beggar&rsquo;s rags might conceal a holy but excommunicated
+friar.</p>
+<p>Let us once more review our experience with the usurer. As an
+outcast he offers his support to other outcasts, and is in turn
+supported by them. The pawnbroker and the pickpocket are closely
+allied: without the pawnshop, pocketpicking would offer but a
+precarious living; without the picking of pockets, many pawnshops
+would find it impossible to meet expenses. The salary loan shark
+often works hand in glove with the professional gambler; each
+procures victims for the other. The &ldquo;hole-in-the-<a id=
+"page_11" name="page_11"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+11]</span>wall&rdquo; or &ldquo;blind tiger&rdquo; provides a
+rendezvous for all the outcasts of society.
+&ldquo;Boot-legging&rdquo; is a common subsidiary occupation for
+the pander, the thief and the cracksman. Where it flourishes, it
+serves to bridge over many a period of slack trade. Franchises
+whose validity is subject to political attack, bring to the aid of
+the underworld some of the most powerful interests in the
+community. The police are almost helpless when confronted by a
+coalition of persons of wealth and respectability with professional
+politicians commanding a motley array of yeggs and thugs, pimps and
+card-sharpers.</p>
+<p>Let us suppose that the developing social conscience places
+under the ban receipt of private income from land and other natural
+resources, and that a powerful movement aiming at the confiscation
+of such resources is under way. It is superfluous to point out that
+the vast interests threatened would offer a desperate resistance.
+The warfare against an incomparably lesser interest, the liquor
+trade, has taxed all the resources of the modern democratic
+state&mdash;on the whole the most absolute political organization
+known. In no instance has the state come out of the struggle
+completely victorious; the proscribed interest is yielding ground,
+if at all, only very slowly. What, then, would be the outcome of a
+struggle against the vastly greater landed interest? Perhaps the
+state would be victorious in the end. But for generations the
+landed interest would survive, if not by title of common law, at
+least by title of common corruption. And in the course of the
+conflict, we can not doubt that political disorder would flourish
+as never before, and that under its shelter private vice and crime
+would develop almost unchecked.</p>
+<p>We should disabuse ourselves of the notion that the will of a
+mere majority is absolute in the state. The law is a reality only
+when the outlawed interests represent an insignificant minority.
+Arbitrarily to increase the outlawed interests is to undermine the
+very foundations of society.</p>
+<p><a id="page_12" name="page_12"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+12]</span></p>
+<h3>VI</h3>
+<p>The trend of the foregoing discussion, it will be said, is
+reactionary in the extreme. There are, as all must admit, private
+interests that are prejudicial to the public interest. Are they to
+be left in possession of the privilege of trading upon the public
+disaster&mdash;entrenching themselves, rendering still more
+difficult the future task of the reformer? By no means. The writer
+opposes no criticism to the extinction of anti-social private
+interests; on the contrary, he would have the state proceed against
+them with far greater vigor than it has hitherto displayed. It is
+important, however, to be sure first that a private interest is
+anti-social. Then the question is merely one of method. It is the
+author&rsquo;s contention that the method of excommunication and
+outlawry is the very worst conceivable.</p>
+<p>We are wont to hold up to scorn the British method of
+compensating liquor sellers for licenses revoked. It is an
+expensive method. But let us weigh its corresponding advantages.
+The licensee does not find himself in a position in which he must
+choose between personal destitution and the public interest. He
+dares not employ methods of resistance that would subject him to
+the risk of forfeiting the right to compensation. He may resist by
+fair means, but if he is intelligent, he will keep his skirts clear
+of foul. If his establishment is closed, he is not left, a ruined
+and desperate man, to project methods for carrying on his trade
+illicitly. On the contrary, the act of compensation has placed in
+his hands funds in which he might be mulcted if convicted of
+violation of the law. And if natural perversity should drive him to
+illegal practices, he would not find himself an object of sympathy
+on the part of that considerable minority that resent injustice
+even to those whom they regard as evil-doers.</p>
+<p>There can be little doubt that by the adoption of the principle
+of adequate compensation, an American commonwealth <a id="page_13"
+name="page_13"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 13]</span>could
+extinguish any property interest that majority opinion pronounces
+anti-social. We may have industries that menace the public health.
+Under existing conditions the interests involved exert themselves
+to the utmost to suppress information relative to the dangers of
+such industries. With the principle of compensation in operation,
+these very interests would be the foremost in exposing the evils in
+question. It is no hardship to sell your interest to the public.
+Does any one feel aggrieved when the public decides to appropriate
+his land to a public use? On the contrary, every possessor of a
+site at all suited for a public building or playground does
+everything in his power to display its advantages in the most
+favorable light.</p>
+<p>And with this we have admitted a disadvantage of the
+compensation principle&mdash;over-compensation. We do pay
+excessively for property rights extinguished in the public
+interest. But this is largely because the principle is employed
+with such relative infrequency that we have not as yet developed a
+technique of compensation. German cities have learned how to
+acquire property for public use without either plundering the
+private owner or excessively enriching him. The British application
+of the Small Holdings Acts has duly protected the interests of the
+large landholder, without making of him a vociferous champion of
+the Acts.</p>
+<p>Progressive public morality readers one private interest after
+another indefensible. Let the public extinguish such interests, by
+all means. But let the public be moral at its own expense.</p>
+<p>A revolting doctrine, it will be said. Because men have been
+permitted, through gross defect in the laws, to build up interests
+in dealing out poisons to the public, are they to be compensated,
+like the purveyors of wholesome products, when the public decrees
+that their destructive activities shall cease? Because a corrupt
+legislature once gave away valuable franchises, are we and our
+children, <a id="page_14" name="page_14"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 14]</span>and our children&rsquo;s children, forever
+to pay tribute, in the shape of interest on compensation funds, to
+the heirs of the shameless grantees? Because the land of a country
+was parcelled out, in a lawless age, among the unworthy retainers
+of a predatory prince, must we forever pay rent on every loaf we
+eat&mdash;as we should do, in fact, even if we transformed great
+landed estates into privately held funds? Did we not abolish human
+slavery, without compensation, and is there any one to question the
+justice of the act?</p>
+<p>We did indeed extinguish slavery without compensation to the
+slave owners. But if no one had ever conceived of such a policy we
+should have been a richer nation and a happier one. We paid for the
+slaves, in blood and treasure, many times the sum that would have
+made every slave owner eager to part with his slaves. Such
+enrichment of the slave owner would have been an act of social
+injustice, it may be said. The saying would be open to grave doubt,
+but the doctrine here advanced runs, not in terms of justice, but
+in terms of social expediency.</p>
+<p>And expediency is commonly regarded as a cheap substitute for
+justice. It is wrongly so regarded. Social justice, as usually
+conceived, looks to the past for its validity. Its preoccupation is
+the correction of ancient wrongs. Social expediency looks to the
+future: its chief concern is the prevention of future wrongs. As a
+guide to political action, the superiority of the claims of social
+expediency is indisputable.</p>
+<h3>VII</h3>
+<p>In the foregoing argument it has been deliberately assumed that
+the interests to be extinguished are, for the most part,
+universally recognized as anti-social. Slavery, health-destroying
+adulteration, the maintenance of tenements that menace life and
+morals, these at least represent interests so abominable that all
+must agree upon the wisdom of extinguishing them. The only point in
+dispute <a id="page_15" name="page_15"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+15]</span>must be one of method. It is the contention of the
+present writer that when even such interests have had time to
+become clothed with an appearance of regularity, the method of
+extinction should be through compensation. By its tolerance of such
+interests, the public has made itself an accomplice in the mischief
+to which they give rise, and accordingly has not even an equitable
+right to throw the whole responsibility upon the private persons
+concerned.</p>
+<p>Interests thus universally recognized to be evil are necessarily
+few. In the vast majority of cases the establishment of interests
+we now seek to proscribe took place in an epoch in which no evil
+was imputed to them. At first a small minority, usually regarded as
+fanatics, attack the interests in question. This minority
+increases, and in the end transforms itself into a majority. But
+long after majority opinion has become adverse, there remains a
+vigorous minority opinion defending the menaced interests. A
+hundred years ago the distilling of spirituous liquors was almost
+universally regarded as an entirely legitimate industry. The
+enemies of the industry were few and of no political consequence.
+Today in many communities the industry is utterly condemned by
+majority opinion. There is, however, no community in which a
+minority honestly defending the industry is absolutely wanting.
+Admitting that the majority opinion is right, it remains none the
+less true that adherents of the minority opinion would regard
+themselves as most grievously wronged if the majority proceeded to
+a destruction of their interests.</p>
+<p>Where moral issues alone are involved, we may perhaps accept the
+view that the well considered opinion of the majority is as near as
+may be to infallibility. But it is very rarely the case that the
+question of the legitimacy of a property interest can be reduced to
+a purely moral issue. Usually there are also at stake, technical
+and broad economic issues in which majority judgment is notoriously
+<a id="page_16" name="page_16"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+16]</span>fallible. Thus we have at times had large minorities who
+believed that the bank as an institution is wholly evil, and ought
+to be abolished. This was the majority opinion in one period of the
+history of Texas, and in accordance with it, established banking
+interests were destroyed by law. It is only within the last fifteen
+years that the majority of the citizens of that commonwealth have
+admitted the error of the earlier view.</p>
+<p>In the course of the last twenty-five years, notable progress
+has been made in the art of preserving perishable foods through
+refrigeration. There are differences of opinion as to the effect
+upon the public health of food so preserved; and further
+differences as to the effect of the cold storage system upon the
+cost of living. On neither the physiological nor the economic
+questions involved is majority opinion worthy of special
+consideration. None the less, legislative measures directed against
+the storage interests have been seriously considered in a large
+number of states, and were it not for the difficulties inherent in
+the regulation of interstate commerce, we should doubtless see the
+practice of cold storage prohibited in some jurisdictions. Those
+whose property would thus be destroyed would accept their losses
+with much bitterness, in view of the fact that the weight of expert
+opinion holds their industry to be in the public interest.</p>
+<p>What still further exacerbates the feeling of injury on the part
+of those whose interests are proscribed, is the fact that the
+purity of motives of the persons most active in the campaign of
+proscription is not always clear. Not many years ago we had a
+thriving manufacture of artificial butter. The persons engaged in
+the industry claimed that their product was as wholesome as that
+produced according to the time-honored process, and that its
+cheapness promised an important advance in the adequate
+provisioning of the people. We destroyed the industry, very largely
+because of our strong bent toward conservatism in all matters
+pertaining to the table. But among the influences <a id="page_17"
+name="page_17"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 17]</span>that were
+most active in taxing artificial butter out of existence, was the
+competing dairymen&rsquo;s interest.</p>
+<p>It is asserted by those who would shift the whole burden of
+taxation onto land that they are animated by the most unselfish
+motives, whereas their opponents are defending their selfish
+interests alone. Yet a common Single Tax appeal to the large
+manufacturer and the small house-owner takes the form of a
+computation demonstrating that those classes would gain more
+through the reduction in the burden on improvements than they would
+lose through increase in burden on the land. Let it be granted that
+personal advantage is not incompatible with purity of motives. The
+association of ideas does not, however, inspire confidence,
+especially in the breasts of those whose interests are
+threatened.</p>
+<p>Extinction of property interests without compensation
+necessarily makes our legislative bodies the battleground of
+conflicting interests. Honest motives are combined with crooked
+ones in the attack upon an interest; crooked and honest motives
+combine in its defense. Out of the disorder issues a legislative
+determination that may be in the public interest or may be
+prejudicial to it. And most likely the law is inadequately
+supported by machinery of enforcement: it is effective in
+controlling the scrupulous; to the unscrupulous it is mere paper.
+In many instances its net effect is only to increase the risks
+connected with the conduct of a business.</p>
+<p>When England prohibited importation of manufactures from France,
+the import trade continued none the less, under the form of
+smuggling. The risk of seizure was merely added to the risk of fire
+and flood. Just as one could insure against the latter risks, so
+the practice arose of insuring against seizure. At one time, at any
+rate, in the French ports were to be found brokers who would insure
+the evasion of a cargo of goods for a premium of fifteen per cent.
+At the safe distance of a century and a half, the absurd
+prohibition and its incompetent administration <a id="page_18"
+name="page_18"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 18]</span>are equally
+comic. At the time, however, there was nothing comic in the
+contempt for law and order thus engendered, in the feeling of
+outrage on the part of those ruined by seizures, and in the
+alliance of respectable merchants with the thieves and footpads
+enlisted for the smuggling trade.</p>
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+<p>It is a common observation of present day social reformers that
+an excessive regard is displayed by our governmental organs for
+security of property, while security of non-property rights is
+neglected. And this would indeed be a serious indictment of the
+existing order if there were in fact a natural antithesis between
+the security of property and security of the person. There is,
+however, no such antithesis. In the course of history the
+establishment of security of property has, as a rule, preceded the
+establishment of personal security, and has provided the conditions
+in which personal security becomes possible. Adequate policing is
+essential to any form of security. Property can pay for policing;
+the person can not. This is a crude and materialistic
+interpretation of the facts, but it is essentially sound.</p>
+<p>How much personal security existed in England, five centuries
+and a half ago, when it was possible for Richard to carve his way
+through human flesh to the throne? The lowly, certainly, enjoyed no
+greater security than the high born. How much personal security
+exists in the late Macedonian provinces of the Turkish Empire, or
+in northern Mexico? It is safe to issue a challenge to all the
+world to produce an instance, contemporary or historical, of a
+country in which property is insecure and in which human life and
+human happiness are not still more insecure. On the other hand, it
+is difficult to produce an instance of a state in which security of
+property has long been established, in which there is not a
+progressive sensitiveness about the non-propertied rights of man.
+It is in the countries <a id="page_19" name=
+"page_19"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 19]</span>where the
+sacredness of private property is a fetich, that one finds
+recognition of a universal right to education, of a right to
+protection against violence and against epidemic disease, of a
+right to relief in destitution. These are perhaps meagre rights;
+but they represent an expanding category. The right to support in
+time of illness and in old age is making rapid progress. The
+development of such rights is not only not incompatible with
+security of property, but it is, in large measure, a corollary of
+property security. Personal rights shape themselves upon the
+analogy of property rights; they utilize the same channels of
+thought and habit. One of the most powerful arguments for
+&ldquo;social insurance&rdquo; is its very name. Insurance is
+recognized as an essential to the security of property; it is
+therefore easy to make out a case for the application of the
+principle to non-propertied claims.</p>
+<p>Some may claim that the security of property has now fulfilled
+its mission; that we can safely allow the principle to decay in
+order to concentrate our attention upon the task of establishing
+non-propertied rights. But let us remember that we are not removed
+from barbarism by the length of a universe. The crust of orderly
+civilization is deep under our feet: but not six hundred years
+deep. The primitive fires still smoke on our Mexican borders and in
+the Balkans. And blow holes open from time to time through our own
+seemingly solid crust&mdash;in Colorado, in West Virginia, in the
+Copper Country. It is evidently premature to affirm that the
+security of property has fulfilled its mission.</p>
+<h3>IX</h3>
+<p>The question at issue, is not, however, the rights of property
+against the rights of man&mdash;or more honestly&mdash;the rights
+of labor. The claims of labor upon the social income may advance at
+the expense of the claims of property. In the institutional
+struggle between the propertied and the propertyless, the
+sympathies of the writer <a id="page_20" name=
+"page_20"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 20]</span>are with the
+latter party. It is his hope and belief that an ever increasing
+share of the social income will assume the form of rewards for
+personal effort.</p>
+<p>But this is an altogether different matter from the crushing of
+one private property interest after another, in the name of the
+social welfare or the social morality. Such detailed attacks upon
+property interests are, in the end, to the injury of both social
+classes. Frequently they amount to little more than a large loss to
+one property interest, and a small gain to another. They increase
+the element of insecurity in all forms of property; for who shall
+say which form is immune from attack? Now it is the slum tenement,
+obvious corollary of our social inequalities; next it may be the
+marble mansion or gilded hotel, equally obvious corollaries of the
+same institutional situation. Now it is the storage of meat that is
+under attack; it may next be the storage of flour. The fact is, our
+mass of income yielding possessions is essentially an organic
+whole. The irreproachable incomes are not exactly what they would
+be if those subject to reproach did not exist. If some property
+incomes are dirty, all property incomes become turbid.</p>
+<p>The cleansing of property incomes, therefore, is a first
+obligation of the institution of property as a whole. The
+compensation principle throws the cost of the cleansing upon the
+whole mass, since, in the last analysis, any considerable burden of
+taxation will distribute itself over the mass. The principle is
+therefore consonant with justice. What is not less important, the
+principle, systematically developed, would go far toward freeing
+the legislature from the graceless function of arbitrating between
+selfish interests, and the administration from the necessity of
+putting down powerful interests outlawed by legislative act. It
+would give us a State working smoothly, and therefore an efficient
+instrument for social ends. Most important of all, it would promote
+that security of economic interests which is essential to social
+progress.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_21" name="page_21"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+21]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Feudalism" name="Feudalism"></a>A Stubborn Relic of
+Feudalism</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>There is a persistent question regarding the distribution of
+property which is of peculiar interest in the season of automobile
+tours and summer hotels. Most thinking people acknowledge a good
+deal of perplexity over this question, while on most parallel ones
+they are generally cock-sure&mdash;on whichever is the side of
+their personal interests. But in this question the bias of personal
+interest is not very large, and therefore it may be considered with
+more chance of agreement than can the larger questions of the same
+class which parade under various disguises.</p>
+<p>The little question is that of tipping. After we have squeezed
+out of it such antitoxic serum as we can, we will briefly indicate
+the application of it to larger questions.</p>
+<p>Tipping is plainly a survival of the feudal relation, long
+before the humbler men had risen from the condition of status to
+that of contract, when fixed pay in the ordinary sense was unknown,
+and where the relation between servant and master was one of
+ostensible voluntary service and voluntary support, was for life,
+and in its best aspect was a relation of mutual dependence and
+kindness. Then the spasmodic payment was, as tips are now,
+essential to the upper man&rsquo;s dignity, and very especially to
+the dignity of his visitor. This feudal relation survives in
+England today to such an extent that poor men refrain from visiting
+their rich relations because of the tips. In the great
+country-houses the tips are expected to be in gold, at least so I
+was told some years ago. And in England and out of it, Don
+Cesar&rsquo;s bestowal of his last shilling on the man who had
+served him, still thrills the audience, at least the tipped portion
+of it.</p>
+<p>Europe being on the whole less removed from feudal institutions
+than we are, tipping is not only more firmly <a id="page_22" name=
+"page_22"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 22]</span>established there,
+but more systematized. It is more nearly the rule that
+servants&rsquo; places in hotels are paid for, and they are apt to
+be dependent entirely upon tips. The greater wealth of America, on
+the other hand, and the extravagance of the <em>nouveaux
+riches</em>, has led in some institutions to more extravagant
+tipping than is dreamed of in Europe, and consequently has
+scattered through the community a number of servants from Europe
+who, when here, receive with gratitude from a foreigner, a tip
+which they would scorn from an American.</p>
+<p>In the midst of general relations of contract&mdash;of agreed
+pay for agreed service, tipping is an anomaly and a constant
+puzzle.</p>
+<p>It would seem strange, if it were not true of the greater
+questions of the same kind, that in the chronic discussion of this
+one, so little attention, if any, has been paid to what may be the
+fundamental line of division between the two sides&mdash;namely,
+the distinction between ideal ethics and practical ethics.</p>
+<p>An illustration or two will help explain that distinction:</p>
+<p>First illustration: &ldquo;Thou shalt not kill&rdquo; which is
+ideal ethics in an ideal world of peace. Practical ethics in the
+real world are illustrated in Washington and Lee, who for having
+killed their thousands, are placed beside the saints!</p>
+<p>Second illustration: Obey the laws and tell the truth. This is
+ideal ethics, which our very legislatures do much to prevent being
+practical. For instance; they ignore the fact that in the present
+state of morality, taxes on personal property can be collected from
+virtually nobody but widows and orphans who have no one to evade
+the taxes for them. So the legislatures continue the attempt to tax
+personal property, and a judge on the bench says that a man who
+lies about his personal taxes shall not on that account be held an
+unreliable witness in other matters.</p>
+<p>Or to take an illustration less radical: it is not in legal
+testimony alone that ideal ethics require everybody to tell the
+truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth&mdash;<a id=
+"page_23" name="page_23"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+23]</span>that the world should have as much truth as possible; and
+if the world were perfectly kind, perfectly honest and perfectly
+wise (which last involves the first two), that ideal could be
+realized. For instance, in our imperfect world a man telling people
+when he did not like them, would be constantly giving needless pain
+and making needless enemies, whereas in an ideal world&mdash;made
+up of perfect people, there would be nobody to dislike, or, pardon
+the Hibernicism, if there were, the whole truth could be told
+without causing pain or enmity. Or again, in a world where there
+are dishonest people, a man telling everything about his schemes,
+would have them run away with by others, though in an ideal world,
+where there were no dishonest people, he could speak freely. In
+fact, the necessity of reticence in this connection does not even
+depend on the existence of dishonesty: for in a world where people
+have to look out for themselves, instead of everybody looking out
+for everybody else, a man exposing his plans might hurry the
+execution of competing plans on the part of perfectly honest
+people.</p>
+<p>Farther illustration may be sufficiently furnished by the topic
+in hand.</p>
+<p>In the case of most poor folks other than servants, what to do
+about it has lately been pretty distinctly settled: the religion of
+pauperization is pretty generally set aside: almsgiving, the
+authorities on ethics now generally hold, should be restricted to
+deserving cases&mdash;to people incapacitated by constitution or
+circumstance from taking proper care of themselves.</p>
+<p>Now is tipping almsgiving, and are servants among the deserving
+classes?</p>
+<p>How many people have asked themselves these simple questions,
+and how many who are educated up to habitually refusing alms unless
+the last of the questions is affirmatively answered, just as
+habitually tip servants?</p>
+<p>Is tipping almsgiving? Not in the same sense that alms are given
+without any show of anything in return: the <a id="page_24" name=
+"page_24"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 24]</span>servant does
+something for the tipper. Yes, but he is paid for it by his
+employer. True, but only sometimes: at other times he is only
+partly paid, depending for the rest on tips; and sometimes the tips
+are so valuable that the servant pays his alleged employer for the
+opportunity to get them. Yet I know one hotel in Germany, and
+probably there are others, there and elsewhere, where the menus and
+other stationery bear requests against tipping. But in that one
+hotel I know tipping to be as rife as in hotels generally: the
+customers are not educated up to the landlord&rsquo;s standard. And
+here we come to the fundamental remedy for all questionable
+practices&mdash;the education of the people beyond them. But this
+is simply the ideal condition in which ideal ethics could prevail.
+Meanwhile we must determine the practical ethics of the actual
+world.</p>
+<p>The servant&rsquo;s position is different from that of most
+other wage-earners, in that he is in direct contact with the person
+who is to benefit from his work. The man who butchers your meat or
+grinds your flour, you probably never see; but the man who brushes
+your clothes or waits on your table, holds to you a personal
+relation, and he can do his work so as merely to meet a necessity,
+or so as to rise beyond mere necessity into comfort or luxury.
+Outside of home servants, the necessity is all that, in the present
+state of human nature, his regular stipend is apt to provide; the
+comfort or the luxury, the feeling of personal interest, the
+atmosphere of promptness and cheerfulness and ease, is apt to
+respond only to the tip. Only in the ideal world will it be
+spontaneous. In the real world it must be paid for.</p>
+<p>And why should it not be&mdash;why is it not as legitimate to
+pay for having your wine well cooled or carefully tempered and
+decanted, as to pay for the wine itself? The objection apt to be
+first urged is that it degrades the servant. But does it? He is not
+an ideal man in an ideal world, already doing his best or paid to
+do his best. You are not degrading him from any such standard as
+that, <a id="page_25" name="page_25"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+25]</span>into the lower one of requiring tips: you are simply
+taking him as he is. True, if he got no tips, he would not depend
+upon them; but without them he would not do all you want him to;
+before he will do that, he must be developed into a different
+man&mdash;he must become a creature of an ideal world. You may in
+the course of ages develop him into that, and as you do, he will
+work better and better, and tips may grow smaller and smaller,
+until he does his best spontaneously, and tips have dwindled to
+nothing. But to withdraw them now would simply make him sulky, and
+lead to his doing worse than now.</p>
+<p>Another objection urged against tips is that they put the rich
+tipper at an advantage over the poor one. But the rich man is at an
+advantage in nearly everything else, why not here? The idea of
+depriving him of his advantages, is rank communism, which destroys
+the stimulus to energy and ingenuity that, in the present state of
+human nature, is needed to keep the world moving. In an ideal state
+of human nature, the man with ability to create wealth may find
+stimulus enough, as some do to a considerable extent now, in the
+delight of distributing wealth for the general good; but we are
+considering what is practicable in the present state of human
+nature.</p>
+<p>Another aspect of the case, or at least a wider aspect, is the
+more sentimental one where the tip is prompted as reciprocation for
+spontaneous kindness.</p>
+<p>But in the service of private families, as distinct from service
+to the general public or to visitors it is notorious that constant
+tipping is ruinous. Occasional holidays and treats and presents at
+Christmas and on special occasions are useful, as promoting the
+general feeling of reciprocation. But from visitors the tip is
+generally essential to ensuring the due meed of respect. Yet we can
+reasonably imagine a time when it may not be; and even now, for the
+casual service of holding a horse or brushing off the dust, a
+hearty &ldquo;thank you&rdquo; is perhaps on the whole better than
+a tip.</p>
+<p><a id="page_26" name="page_26"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+26]</span>Considering the morality of the question all
+around&mdash;the practical ethics as well as the ideal, the
+underlying facts are that no man ought to be a servant in the
+servile sense, and indeed no man ought to be poor; and in an ideal
+world no man would be one or the other. Just how we are to get a
+world without servants or servile people, is perhaps a little more
+plain than how we are to get Mr. Bellamy&rsquo;s world without poor
+people, which, however, amounts to nearly the same thing. At least
+we will get a less servile world, as machinery and organization
+make service less and less personal. Bread has long been to a great
+extent made away from home; much of the washing is also done away
+in great laundries, and organizations have lately been started to
+call for men&rsquo;s outer clothes, and keep them cleaned, repaired
+and pressed. There is a noticeable rise, too, in the dignity of
+personal service: witness the college students at the summer
+hotels, and the self-respecting Jap in the private family. These
+influences are making for the ideal world in relation to service,
+and <em>when</em> we get it, no man will take tips, and nobody will
+offer them.</p>
+<p>But in our stage of evolution, the tip, like the larger prizes,
+is part of the general stimulus to the best exertion and the best
+feeling, and is therefore legitimate; but it, like every other
+stimulus, should not be applied in excess, and the tendency should
+be to abolish it. The rich man often is led by good taste and good
+morals to restrain his expenditure in many directions, and there
+are few directions, if any, in which good taste and good morals
+more commend the happy medium than in tips. Excess in them,
+however, is not always prompted by good nature and generosity and
+reciprocation of spontaneous kindness, but often by desire for
+comfort, and even by ostentation. But all such promptings require
+regulation for the same reason that, it is now becoming generally
+recognized, the promptings of even charity itself require
+regulation.</p>
+<p>The head of one of the leading Fifth Avenue restaurants <a id=
+"page_27" name="page_27"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+27]</span>once said to the writer, substantially: &ldquo;We
+don&rsquo;t like tips: they demoralize our men. But what can we do
+about it? We can&rsquo;t stop it, or even keep it within bounds.
+Our customers will give them, and people who have too much money or
+too little sense, give not only dollar bills or five dollar bills,
+but fifty dollar bills and even hundred dollar bills. We have tried
+to stave off customers who do such things: we believe that in the
+long run it would pay us to; but we can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>When all the promptings of liberality or selfishness or
+ostentation are well regulated, we will be in the ideal world.
+Until then, in the actual world, it is the part of wisdom to
+regulate ideal ethics by practical ethics&mdash;and tip, but tip
+temperately.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>And now to apply our principles to a wider field.</p>
+<p>The ideal is that all men should have what they produce. The
+ideal is also that all men should have full shares of the good
+things of life. These two ideals inevitably combine into a
+third&mdash;that all men should produce full shares of the good
+things of life. But the plain fact is that they cannot&mdash;that
+no amount of opportunity or appliances will enable the average day
+laborer to produce what Mr. Edison or Mr. Hill or even the average
+deviser of work and guide of labor does. Then even ideal ethics
+cannot say in this actual world: Let both have the same. That would
+simply be Robin Hood ethics: rob the man who produces much, and
+give the plunder to the man who produces little. Hence comes the
+disguising of the schemes to do it, even so that they often deceive
+their own devisers. What then do practical ethics say? They
+can&rsquo;t say anything more than: Help the less capable to become
+capable, so that he may produce more. But that is at least as slow
+a process as raising the servant beyond the stage of tips. Meantime
+the socialists are unwilling to wait, and propose to rob the
+present owners of the means of production, and take the control of
+industry from the <a id="page_28" name="page_28"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 28]</span>men who manage it now, and put it in the
+hands of the men who merely can influence votes. These men
+certainly are no less selfish and dishonest than the captains of
+industry, and are vastly less able to select the profitable fields
+of industry, and organize and economize industry; whatever product
+they might squeeze out would be vastly less than now, and it would
+stick to their own fingers no less than does what the politicians
+handle now. Dividing whatever might reach the people, without
+reference to those who produced it, could yield the average man no
+more than he gets now. That&rsquo;s very simple mathematics. One of
+the saddest sights of the day is the number of good people to whom
+these facts are not self-evident.</p>
+<p>In no state of human nature that any persons now living, or the
+grandchild of any person now living, will witness, could such
+conditions be permanent. Their temporary realization might be
+accomplished; but if it were, the able men would not be satisfied
+with either the low grade of civilization inevitable unless they
+worked, or with being robbed of the large share of production that
+must result from their work. The more intelligent of the rank and
+file, too, would rebel against the conditions inevitably lowering
+the general prosperity, and they would soon realize the difference
+in industrial leadership between &ldquo;political generals&rdquo;
+and natural generals. Insurrection would follow, and then anarchy,
+after which things would start again on their present basis, but
+some generations behind.</p>
+<p>But I for one do not expect these experiences, especially in
+America: for here probably enough men have already become property
+holders to make a sufficient balance of power for the preservation
+of property. If not, the first step toward ensuring civilization,
+is helping enough men to develop into property holders, and
+<em>continue</em> property holders, which general experience
+declares that they will not unless they develop their property
+themselves.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_29" name="page_29"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+29]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Syndicalism" name="Syndicalism"></a>An Experiment in
+Syndicalism</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>During the last twenty years New Zealand has tried many social
+and economic experiments; these experiments have been made by her
+own Legislature, and her own people; and as a rule they have been
+remarkably successful: during the last few months she has had the
+experience of a new one conducted by strangers, and made at her
+expense. Fortunately there is reason to believe that this one will
+be found to have resulted in benefit to New Zealand and its people,
+while it may prove of service to older and larger countries. It is
+probable that the most widely known of New Zealand&rsquo;s
+experiments is that which aimed at doing justice to employers and
+employees alike by the substitution for the Industrial strike of a
+Court of Arbitration, fairly constituted, on which both Workers and
+Employers were equally represented. This law has been branded by
+the supporters of the usual Strike policy with the name of
+&ldquo;Compulsory Arbitration,&rdquo; the object being to discredit
+it in the eyes of the workers, as an infringement of their liberty.
+The title is unfair and misleading. Unlike most laws, it never has
+been of universal application either to Workers or Employers, but
+only to those among them that chose to form themselves into
+industrial Unions, and to register those Unions as subject to the
+provisions of the Statute. The purpose of the Statute was an appeal
+to the common sense of the people, by offering them an alternative
+method of settling disputes and securing that fair-play for both
+parties which experience had shown could seldom be secured by the
+strike. The law, which was first introduced in 1894, had gradually
+appealed both to workers and employers, as worth trying, and before
+the close of the last century it <a id="page_30" name=
+"page_30"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 30]</span>had rendered the
+country prosperous, and had attracted the attention of thoughtful
+people in many other parts of the world to the &ldquo;Country
+Without Strikes.&rdquo; Efforts were made in several countries to
+introduce the principle of the New Zealand Statute, but with very
+little success, as it was generally opposed both by workers and
+employers:&mdash;the workers feeling confident they could obtain
+greater concessions by the forceful methods of the strike, and the
+employers suspecting that any Court of Arbitration would be likely
+to give the workers more than, without arbitration, they could
+compel the employers to surrender.</p>
+<p>In the mean time the statutory substitute for the strike
+continued to succeed in New Zealand. Nearly every class of town
+workers, and some in the country, had formed Unions, and registered
+them under the arbitration law. With a single trifling exception,
+that was speedily put an end to by the punishment of the Union with
+the alternative of heavy fine or imprisonment, the country was
+literally as well as nominally a country without a strike. And it
+was something more than that: its prosperity increased year by
+year, and its production of goods&mdash;agricultural, pastoral, and
+manufactured&mdash;increased at a pace unequalled elsewhere. Yet
+the prosperity was most apparent in its effect on the conditions of
+the workers: under the successive awards of the arbitration court,
+wages had steadily increased until they had reached a point as high
+as in similar trades in America, while the cost of living was very
+little more than half the rate in any town in the United States. To
+all intelligent observers these facts were evident, and could not
+be concealed from the workers in other countries, especially in
+Australia, as the nearest geographically to New Zealand and
+commercially the most closely connected.</p>
+<p>The effect, however, on the workers of Australia was not what
+might have been expected. Attempts had been made by some of the
+State Legislatures to introduce arbitration <a id="page_31" name=
+"page_31"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 31]</span>laws more or less
+like the New Zealand statute, but with very partial success. From
+the first these laws were opposed by the leaders of the Labor
+Unions, who naturally saw a menace to their influence in the fact
+that they became subject to punishment if they attempted to use
+their accustomed powers over their fellow unionists. The example of
+New Zealand was lauded in the Australian Legislatures and
+newspapers, and even in the courts, till at last a feeling of
+strong antagonism was developed among the more advanced class of
+socialistic Labor men, and it was decided by their leaders to
+undertake a campaign in the neighboring Dominion against the system
+of settling industrial questions by courts, and in favor of
+substituting the system of strikes, with their attendant power and
+profit to the Labor leaders. The first steps taken were sending men
+from Australia or England on lecturing tours through New Zealand,
+to create dissatisfaction with the Arbitration Courts by
+representing them as leaning to the side of the employers, and
+ignoring the claims of the workers. When this had gone on for about
+a year, workers of various classes were induced to cross from
+Australia, and join the Unions in New Zealand, for the purpose of
+influencing their fellow unionists to disloyalty towards the system
+under which they were registered. These men were generally
+competent workers and clever agitators, and many of them soon
+obtained prominence and official position in the Unions. As was
+natural, a good many of these new-comers were miners&mdash;either
+for coal or gold&mdash;and many of them joined the miners&rsquo;
+union at the great gold mine known as the Waihi, from which upwards
+of thirty million dollars worth of gold had been dug, and which was
+still yielding between three and four million dollars a year. There
+were nearly a thousand miners employed there, and all of them were
+members of a Union that was duly registered under the Arbitration
+statute.</p>
+<p>There had been several questions in dispute between <a id=
+"page_32" name="page_32"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 32]</span>the
+miners and the owners, and these had been referred to the
+Arbitration Court some time before the arrival of the new
+Australian miners. The result, while it favored the Union in some
+respects, favored the Company in others, and this fact was used by
+the new-comers to convince the older hands that the Court had been
+unfair, and that they could secure much better terms for themselves
+if they would cease work, and so inflict immense loss by permitting
+the lower levels of the mine to become flooded. After a few months
+the Union decided to take advantage of the provision of the law
+which enabled any registered Union to withdraw its registration at
+six months&rsquo; notice. When the time had expired, the Union
+repeated the demand which had been refused by the Court, and on the
+refusal of the Company to agree, a strike was at once declared, and
+the whole of the miners ceased work. This had the effect, within a
+very short time, of rendering all the deeper levels of the mine
+unworkable. Close to the mine was a prosperous little town occupied
+chiefly by the miners and their families, most of the houses being
+the property of the mining company, and the men continued to occupy
+the houses while the strike was in progress. Other miners were
+found who were ready to take their places, but the men in
+possession refused to move out, and threatened with violence any
+miners that should attempt to work the mine. The men who had been
+prepared to work, finding this to be the position, withdrew. As
+there was no actual violence shown, there seemed to be a difficulty
+in the way of any interference by the Government: so several months
+passed, during which the mine lay idle while the miners on strike
+continued to occupy the houses and pay the very moderate rents
+demanded from employees of the company. This they were able to do
+partly from their savings, partly from the sympathetic
+contributions from Australia, and partly by some of the miners
+having scattered over the country and got work on the farms, and
+throwing their earnings into the common fund.</p>
+<p><a id="page_33" name="page_33"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+33]</span>After repeated appeals by the mine-owners to the
+Government, an arrangement was made that the Company should employ
+miners willing to become members of a new Union registered under
+the Arbitration statute, and that the Government should send a
+police force sufficient to protect these in working the mine, and
+also to enforce the judgment of the local court in dispossessing
+the occupants of the houses belonging to the Company. An attempt
+was made by the strikers to defy this police force and prevent the
+new Union from working the mine; but when most of the new unionists
+had been sworn in as special constables, and a number of the
+militant strikers had been arrested, the others saw that they could
+not continue the struggle, and within a week or two abandoned the
+district, giving place to the members of the arbitration Union in
+both the mine and town.</p>
+<p>Thus the first strike organized by the &ldquo;Federation of
+Labor&rdquo; in New Zealand resulted in a failure, but the miners
+thus defeated and driven from the little town that had been their
+home, in many cases for a good many years, were naturally
+embittered by their failure, and became an element of mischief in
+other districts, and especially in the coal mines, to which they
+turned when they found it hard to obtain employment in any of the
+gold mines.</p>
+<p>The Australian Federation of Labor and its branch in New Zealand
+fully appreciated the fact that their first attempt to establish a
+system of Unionism opposed to the one recognized by the law, having
+proved a failure, it was necessary either to give up the attempt
+altogether or to make it more deliberately and on a much wider
+scale. The method they adopted was one that did credit to their
+foresight and determination. The Australian Federation is, and has
+always been, highly socialistic in its policy, and latterly its
+leaders have adopted and preached syndicalism, as promising to give
+the workers the control of society. New Zealand, alone among
+self-governing countries, having struck at the very root of their
+policy by <a id="page_34" name="page_34"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 34]</span>trying to substitute a statute and a Court
+for the will of the associated workers, was a very tempting country
+for syndicalism. An island country which, owing to climate and
+soil, was specially suited for the production of all kinds of
+agricultural wealth beyond the needs of its own people, must depend
+on free access to the ports of other countries. This, it seemed
+plain, could be prevented by well managed syndicalism. It would be
+only necessary to organize the seamen who worked the vessels that
+kept the smaller harbors of such a country in touch with the larger
+ports at which the ocean going ships loaded and unloaded; and to
+organize also the stevedores at the larger ports. The bitterness of
+feeling that had followed the destruction of the Waihi Union, and
+the loss to its members not only of a good many months of good
+wages but of the homes they and their families had occupied for
+years, was a valuable asset in such a campaign. At first, of
+course, some of the working classes blamed the agents of &ldquo;The
+Federation of Labor&rdquo; who were responsible for the disastrous
+strike, but it was not difficult to turn attention from the past
+failure of a single strike, to the certain success that must attend
+a great syndical strike that would involve all the industries of
+the country. Most, indeed nearly all, of the disappointed Waihi
+strikers were ready to join with enthusiasm in carrying out the
+plans of The Federation, and removed to the places where they could
+be most effective in preparing the way for what they looked upon as
+a great revenge. Thus they either joined the old Unions at the
+principal ports, especially Auckland and Wellington, or formed new
+Unions, no longer registered under the Arbitration statute, but
+openly affiliated to The Federation of Labor, which had been
+established in New Zealand, but was really a branch of the
+Australian Federation. The four principal ports of New Zealand,
+indeed the only ports much frequented by the large export and
+import vessels, are Auckland, Wellington, Lyttleton, and Dunedin,
+the two first named being in the north island, <a id="page_35"
+name="page_35"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 35]</span>and the other
+two in the south. Auckland is considerably the largest city in The
+Dominion, containing at least 25,000 more inhabitants than
+Wellington, which is not only the capital of the Dominion, but also
+the great distributing centre for the South island and the southern
+part of the North island, at the southern extremity of which it is
+situated. The remarkable situation of Auckland, on a very narrow
+isthmus about a hundred and eighty miles from the northern point of
+the country, is no doubt largely responsible for the growth of the
+city, which is the chief centre of the young manufactures of the
+Dominion, and the largest port of export for almost all the country
+produces, except wool and mutton, which are mainly raised in the
+South island. Thus it happens that Auckland and Wellington are at
+present the chief shipping ports of the Dominion, and it was to
+them that the Federation of Labor turned its chief attention when
+its leaders had definitely decided to undertake the campaign of
+syndicalism against the system of arbitration which had prevailed
+for sixteen years.</p>
+<p>There had already been formed Unions of Waterside Workers and
+Seamen at each of these ports; but they were in all cases
+registered under the arbitration law, and of course subject to its
+penalties against both officials and members in cases of any breach
+of the statute. The Federation&rsquo;s agents proceeded to collect
+the members of these unions who were in any way dissatisfied with
+the existing awards of the Arbitration Courts, and to form them
+into new Unions outside the statute. They had little difficulty in
+persuading the men that the new Unions would be free to act in many
+directions that were barred to the members of the old Unions. A
+good many of the men were thus persuaded to resign their membership
+in the existing Unions, and as they were very often the most active
+members, they gradually persuaded others to leave with them. There
+was nothing either in the law or custom of the ports to prevent
+unionists and non-unionists working <a id="page_36" name=
+"page_36"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 36]</span>together on the
+wharves or the coasting vessels; so within a comparatively short
+time the members of the new Federation Unions were more numerous
+than those that clung to the older ones. When this became the case,
+the officials of the new Unions approached the shipping companies
+with proposals for an agreement between them and the Federation
+Unions in some respects more favorable to the employers than the
+arbitration award under which the older Unions were working, and in
+this way gained a position which enabled them to undermine the old
+Unions, till they either died out for want of members or withdrew
+their registration, and at the end of their six months&rsquo;
+notice merged their Unions in those of The Federation. The
+Federation&rsquo;s plans had been so carefully prepared that there
+was little or no suspicion on the part of the employers or of the
+public generally as to the true meaning of the movement. It was
+evident, of course, that it indicated a revolt against the
+arbitration law, but as the new unions appeared ready to give the
+employers rather better terms than the old ones, many reasons were
+found by employers for defending what began to be called the
+&ldquo;Free Unions.&rdquo; In this way things had gone on at the
+shipping ports for about two years from the failure of the gold
+miners&rsquo; strike at Waihi, before anything happened to open the
+eyes of the public to the real meaning of what The Federation of
+Labor had been doing. In that time the new Unions at each of the
+principal ports of the country had quietly obtained the entire
+control of the hands at waterside and local shipping, as well as of
+the Carters Unions. The time had arrived when the syndicalists
+believed themselves able to compel the public to submit to any
+demands they might see fit to make.</p>
+<p>The occasion finally arose, as might have been expected, at
+Wellington, where the Federation of Labor had established its
+head-quarters. There was no definite dispute between the employers
+and workers, but for a few weeks there had been an uneasy feeling
+in relation to the Waterside <a id="page_37" name=
+"page_37"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 37]</span>Workers who, it
+was said, were growing more lazy and slovenly in handling cargo on
+the wharves and piers. A meeting had been called by The Federation
+to discuss some grievances of the coal miners at Westport, from
+which most of the coal landed in Wellington is brought. The meeting
+was called for the noon dinner hour, and a number of the waterside
+workers engaged in discharging cargo from a steamer about to sail,
+at once went to the meeting, and did not return to work in the
+afternoon. The shipping company at once engaged other men to finish
+their work, and when the men came back some hours later, they found
+their places filled up. The new men belonged to the same Union, but
+the men dispossessed demanded that the new ones should be dismissed
+at once. When the company refused the demand, the men appealed to
+the Council of the Federation, who at once called on the Waterside
+Workers and Seamens Unions at Wellington to cease work. Within a
+few days the position looked so serious that the Premier invited
+both parties to a conference, at which he presided in person, in
+the hope of bringing about an agreement to refer the matters in
+dispute to an arbitrator to be mutually agreed upon. The officials
+of The Federation, however, said there was nothing to submit to an
+arbitrator: they had made a demand, and unless it was complied with
+by the shipping company and the Union of merchants at Wellington
+who were in league with the Company in victimizing the men who took
+part in the meeting in aid of the Coal-miners, the strike must go
+on. The Merchants and Shipping Company&rsquo;s Unions pointed out
+that what had been done was in direct opposition to the terms of
+the formal agreement signed less than a year before, and they
+refused to have anything more to do with the Federation on any
+terms. The conference thus ended in an open declaration of war. The
+time had evidently come for the Federation of Labor to make good
+the assertions so often made by its lecturers and agitators, of its
+power to force the rest of the community to submission. It would be
+<a id="page_38" name="page_38"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+38]</span>difficult to imagine a more favorable position for
+carrying such a policy into effect: New Zealand, it must be borne
+in mind, is a country without an army. For some years past, it is
+true, a system of military training for all her young men between
+eighteen and twenty-five has been enforced by law, but except for
+training purposes, there is no military force in the Dominion,
+either of regulars or militia; and it is now forty-five years since
+the last company of British soldiers left its shores. Law has been
+maintained, and order enforced, by a police force under the control
+of the Government of the Dominion, and while the force is
+undoubtedly a good and trustworthy one, its numbers have never been
+large in proportion to the population. This year the entire force
+throughout the country is very little more than 850, which includes
+officers as well as men. It can hardly be wondered at that the
+officials of The Federation of Labor were convinced that, if they
+could arrange a general strike of the workers, the police force
+would be powerless to deal with it. On the failure of the attempt
+of the Premier to bring about a settlement between the parties by
+arbitration, the Federation proclaimed a general strike of all
+Unions affiliated to themselves throughout the country, and of all
+other Unions that were in sympathy with them in their policy of
+giving united Labor the control of society. The order to cease work
+was at once obeyed, as a matter of course, by all the Federation
+Unions, which practically meant all the workers engaged on vessels
+registered in the Dominion and trading on the coast, all workers on
+wharves and piers, carters in the cities, and coal miners
+throughout the country. The appeal for sympathetic assistance from
+Unions unconnected with the Federation was largely successful in
+the chief centres, though it was, of course, a direct defiance of
+the arbitration law under which they were registered. It has since
+been discovered that in nearly every case it was brought about by
+the unprincipled scheming of the secretaries, assisted by a few of
+the officials, who called <a id="page_39" name=
+"page_39"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 39]</span>meetings, of which
+notice was given only to a selected minority, and at which the
+question of joining a sympathetic strike was settled by a large
+majority of those present, but in fact in many cases a small
+minority of the whole membership. The sympathetic strike of
+Arbitration Unions was mainly confined to the cities, and Auckland,
+as the largest city, was the most affected by it. In Auckland the
+members of practically every Union ceased work, somewhere about ten
+thousand persons going on strike simultaneously.</p>
+<p>The result during the first days of the strike seemed likely to
+confirm the expectations of the Federation orators. Industry was
+practically dead. At every port vessels lay at anchor, having been
+withdrawn from the wharves before they were deserted by their
+crews, and the wharves were in the possession of the Waterside
+strikers. The streets of the cities were empty, and a large
+proportion of the stores were closed, partly owing to want of
+business, and partly from fear of violence in case they kept open.
+These first few days in both New Zealand and Australia were days of
+triumph for the Federation leaders but the triumph was a
+short-lived one. The Government of the Dominion did not interfere,
+indeed, but the public, through their municipal authorities, did.
+The people of New Zealand have throughout their history been
+accustomed to manage their own affairs, and within four days of the
+declaration of war by the syndical Federation, steps were taken to
+meet the emergency. At Auckland and Wellington it had been evident
+from the first that the small police force available could not
+safely attempt to cope with the main body of strikers, or do more
+than prevent acts of aggressive violence to the citizens and their
+property. The local authorities, however, had confidence in the
+general public, and at Auckland, and afterwards at Wellington, the
+Mayor of the city appealed to the public to come forward as
+volunteers to maintain law and order, by acting as Special
+Constables. In both cities the appeal <a id="page_40" name=
+"page_40"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 40]</span>was responded to
+readily, nearly two thousand young men coming forward at Auckland
+in twenty-four hours, and upwards of a thousand at Wellington.
+These were at once sworn in as special constables, and armed with
+serviceable batons, while all the fire-arms and ammunition for sale
+in the city was taken charge of and withdrawn from sale by the
+municipal authorities. In this way the maintenance of order was
+fairly provided for, and the temporary closing of all licensed
+hotels by order of the city magistrates removed the danger of riot
+as the result of intemperance.</p>
+<p>There had been some rioting in Wellington, though with little
+serious injury, but there was nothing that could be called a riot
+in Auckland. The Federation Unions waited, under the impression
+that time was on their side, owing to the impossibility of doing
+anything or getting anything done without the help of the
+associated workers. This had been the basis of their scheme, but
+like all such schemes it failed to take into account the instinct
+of self-preservation on the part of the people outside the Unions.
+As long as the strike leaders could point to the fleet of vessels
+lying idle in the harbor, the mills silent, and the street
+railroads without a moving car, and almost deserted by carts, it
+was easy for them to persuade their followers that complete victory
+was only a matter of days, or at most of weeks; they had not
+remembered that there were others besides themselves and their
+fellow townsmen interested in the question of a paralyzed industry.
+The trade that has been making the people of New Zealand
+increasingly rich during the last twenty years has been mainly
+derived from the land. Small holdings and close settlement have
+been the rule, and the rate of production has been increasingly
+rapid. The exports&mdash;mainly the produce of the land&mdash;have
+grown in proportions quite unknown in any other country, and the
+farmers knew that the prosperity of the country, and most directly
+of all the workers on the land, depended on the freedom and
+facilities for shipment of their ports. It was the workers on the
+<a id="page_41" name="page_41"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+41]</span>land, accordingly, that came to the rescue, and solved
+the industrial problem. An offer was made by the President of The
+Farmers&rsquo; Cooperative Union to bring a sufficient number of
+the members into the cities to work the shipping and to prevent any
+interruption of the work by the men on strike. The offer was at
+once accepted by the municipal authorities at Auckland and
+Wellington, and within two days fully eighteen hundred mounted
+farmers rode into Auckland, and nearly a thousand into Wellington,
+all prepared to carry on the work and protect the workers. Their
+arrival practically settled the question. New Waterside Unions were
+formed at every port, and registered under the provisions of the
+Arbitration Statute; such of the country workers as were able to do
+so, enrolled themselves as members of the new Unions; the wharves
+and water fronts were taken possession of and guarded by the
+special constables enlisted in the cities, while the streets were
+patrolled by parties of the mounted volunteers. Within twenty-four
+hours of their arrival, some of the vessels in harbor had been
+brought to the wharves, and the work of unloading them was
+begun.</p>
+<p>At first there were many threats of violent opposition on the
+part of the strikers, and crowds assembled in the principal streets
+and in the neighborhood of the wharves; but these were dispersed
+before they became dangerous, by the mounted constables, and a
+proclamation having been issued by the mayor calling attention to
+the fact that collections of people that obstructed traffic in the
+streets were contrary to law, the police and mounted constables
+cleared the streets, and forcibly arrested any persons who
+attempted opposition. Within two or three days, at each of the
+principal cities, new Unions of seamen and of carters had been
+formed and registered under the arbitration law, and those members
+of the old Federation Unions who were not enthusiastic, and began
+to see that the assurances of success were not likely to be
+realized, began to resign and apply for admission to the new
+Unions. After about <a id="page_42" name="page_42"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 42]</span>two weeks the Council of The Federation of
+Labor, recognizing the failure of the sympathetic strike, invited
+the Unions that were not connected with them to declare the strike
+at an end, and tried by confining the strike to their own members,
+to maintain a solid front, which, with the help of the Australian
+Federation both in money for the strikers and in refusing to handle
+any goods either from or for New Zealand, they still hoped would
+carry them to at least a compromise, if not to the victory they had
+expected. The hopes of the Federation of Labor were not realized.
+Within a week or two a large proportion of the members of their own
+Unions, seeing their places filled, and their work being done, not
+by free labor, which they might hope to deal with, but by new
+Unions, whose members would be entitled, under the arbitration law,
+to preference and many other privileges, began to desert and to
+seek admission to the Arbitration Unions that had taken their
+place. For a time this was fiercely denied by the Federation
+officials, but as the days went on, and business of every kind was
+resumed in the cities, the groups of strikers at street corners and
+around the Federation head-quarters dwindled away; the hotels were
+reopened, the shops and stores were busy, the mills were at work,
+and even the coastal steamers were manned and running, and the
+federationists were forced to admit that they were hopelessly
+defeated. For a time they still hoped that the Australian Boycott
+might save them from absolute disaster, and the Labor Ministry of
+New South Wales tried to help the Federation by making an appeal to
+the New Zealand Government to arrange an arbitration to settle the
+dispute between The Wellington Waterside Workers and the merchants
+and shipping companies. The absolute refusal of the New Zealand
+Government to recognize The Federation of Labor, or to interfere
+with the new Unions under the Arbitration Act that had taken their
+place, finally settled the question, and completed the defeat of
+the strikers. The officials of the Federation <a id="page_43" name=
+"page_43"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 43]</span>declared the
+strike at an end, and the Australian Federation announced that the
+boycott was also at an end.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>At first sight it may seem that, after all, the experiment in
+syndicalism was on a small scale, and that its lesson can hardly be
+of great value to a country like America. A little consideration
+may correct such a misapprehension. New Zealand was deliberately
+selected by the Syndicalists as a test case, for two reasons. In
+the first place it was the only country that had for years adopted
+a policy of justice according to law for both workers and
+employers, and from the syndicalist&rsquo;s point of view it was
+therefore the only country that seriously attacked their own policy
+by showing that it was unnecessary. In the second place New Zealand
+was the only country with a population of British origin that could
+be dealt with practically by itself. With the aid of an Australian
+boycott it seemed as if her people must be helpless in the hands of
+the Federation. The result proved to be not only the defeat of the
+principle of lawless syndicalism, but the destruction of the
+industrial association that represented it in the country. No
+compromise was accepted, and except it may be in name, no Union
+attached to the Federation of Labor remains at work. The question,
+of course, suggests itself: What was the reason? Minor reasons may
+be found, no doubt, to account for failure where success was so
+confidently expected; but there can be little doubt that the real
+cause is the policy pursued by the Legislature and people of New
+Zealand for the last twenty years. Syndicalism, like all plans for
+the over turn, or reform, as their advocates would perhaps prefer
+to call it, of existing institutions, depends for success on the
+existence of wrongs by which part of the people is impoverished,
+while another, and very small part, has more than enough. The
+workers of our own race, at any rate, have enough common-sense to
+understand, at least when they are not hysterically excited, that
+imaginary wrongs are not a sufficient reason for great sacrifices.
+<a id="page_44" name="page_44"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+44]</span>New Zealand&rsquo;s legislation has not created an ideal
+society, it is true; but for twenty years it has proceeded step by
+step in the direction of righting the wrongs of the past, and
+giving opportunity to that part of its people that needed it most,
+on the single condition that they would use it, and respect the
+rights of others. To such a people, increasing steadily, year by
+year, in all that makes for well-being, the wild denunciations, and
+if possible wilder promises, of paid agitators can have little
+attraction. It may be possible by careful generalship to stir a
+small section of such a people to the hysterical excitement of an
+industrial war, but the mass of the people would be certain to
+resent it, and the movement will be doomed to a speedy
+collapse.</p>
+<p>Other countries have been less enlightened and less fortunate
+than New Zealand in their legislation, and perhaps still less
+fortunate in the administration of the laws passed for the
+betterment of the masses of their people. They have done little to
+convince the great majority that they are aware of the wrongs that
+have been done that majority in the supposed interest of the small
+class of the over rich. They have not provided opportunity for
+those who hitherto have had none, nor have they even provided a
+reasonable alternative for industrial warfare. Had they done these
+things in the past, or were they even to begin honestly to provide
+for them in the future, they might confidently expect that the
+reign of industrial warfare, which exasperates their people, and
+retards the prosperity of their nation, would be as easily and
+effectually suppressed as the experiment of the Syndicalists has
+just been in New Zealand.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_45" name="page_45"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+45]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Labor" name="Labor"></a>Labor: &ldquo;True Demand&rdquo;
+and Immigrant Supply</h2>
+<h3>A Restatement of the Economic Aspects of Immigration
+Policy</h3>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>Recent historians and economists have been showing that it was
+anything but pure and unadulterated sense of brotherhood that
+prompted many of our forefathers&rsquo; fine speeches about opening
+the doors of America to the down-trodden and oppressed of Europe.
+Emerson, fifty years ago, in his essay on <em>Fate</em> noted the
+current exploitation of the immigrant: &ldquo;The German and Irish
+millions, like the Negro, have a great deal of guano in their
+destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic, and carted over
+America, to ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to
+lie down prematurely to make a spot of green grass on the
+prairie.&rdquo; Indeed it would not be hard to show that there was
+always a real or potential social surplus back of our national
+hospitality to the alien.</p>
+<p>The process began long before our great nineteenth century era
+of industrial expansion. Colonial policies with regard to the
+immigrant varied according to latitude and longitude. Most of the
+New England colonies viewed the foreigner with distrust as a menace
+to Puritan theocracy. New York, Pennsylvania, and some of the
+Southern colonies were much more hospitable, for economic reasons.
+That this hospitality sometimes resembled that of the spider to the
+fly is evident from observations of contemporary writers. That it
+included whites as well as negroes in its ambiguous welcome is
+equally evident.</p>
+<p>John Woolman writes in his <em>Journal</em> (1741-2): &ldquo;In
+a few months after I came here my master bought several <a id=
+"page_46" name="page_46"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+46]</span>Scotchmen as servants, from on board a vessel, and
+brought them to Mount Holly to sell.&rdquo; Isaac Weld, traveling
+in the United States in the last decade of the eighteenth century,
+noted methods of securing aliens in the town of York, Pennsylvania:
+&ldquo;The inhabitants of this town as well as those of Lancaster
+and the adjoining country consist principally of Dutch and German
+immigrants and their descendants. Great numbers of these people
+emigrate to America every year and the importation of them forms a
+very considerable branch of commerce. They are for the most part
+brought from the Hanse towns and Rotterdam. The vessels sail
+thither from America laden with different kinds of produce and the
+masters of them on arriving there entice as many of these people on
+board as they can persuade to leave their native country, without
+demanding any money for their passages. When the vessel arrives in
+America an advertisement is put into the paper mentioning the
+different kinds of people on board whether smiths, tailors,
+carpenters, laborers, or the like and the people that are in want
+of such men flock down to the vessel. These poor Germans are then
+sold to the highest bidder and the captain of the vessel or the
+ship holder puts the money into his pocket.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>These may be, it is true, extreme cases of the economic motive
+for immigration. But they are quite in line with eighteenth century
+Mercantilist economic philosophy. Josiah Tucker, for example, in
+his <em>Essay on Trade</em>, 1753, urges the encouragement of
+immigration from France, and cites the value of Huguenot refugees.
+&ldquo;Great was the outcry against them at their first coming.
+Poor England would be ruined! Foreigners encouraged! And our own
+people starving! This was the popular cry of the times. But the
+looms in Spittle-Fields, and the shops on Ludgate-Hill have at last
+sufficiently taught us another lesson &hellip; these
+<em>Hugonots</em> have &hellip; partly got, and partly saved, in
+the space of fifty years, a balance in our favour of, at least,
+fifty millions sterling&hellip;. And as England and <a id="page_47"
+name="page_47"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 47]</span>France are
+rivals to each other, and competitors in almost all branches of
+commerce, every single manufacturer so coming over, would be our
+gain, and a double loss to France.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The obverse side of the case appears in British hindrances to
+the free emigration of artisans during the eighteenth and early
+nineteenth centuries. Laws forbade any British subject who had been
+employed in the manufacture of wool, cotton, iron, brass, steel, or
+any other metal, of clocks, watches, etc., or who might come under
+the general denomination of artificer or manufacturer, to leave his
+own country for the purpose of residing in a foreign country out of
+the dominion of His Britannic Majesty. Recall the difficulty early
+American manufacturers encountered in introducing new English
+improvements in cotton manufacture; a virtual embargo was laid upon
+the migration of either men or machinery. Recall, too, an
+expression of American resentment in our Declaration of
+Independence at this English attitude: &ldquo;He has endeavored to
+prevent the population of these states; for that purpose,
+obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to
+pass others to encourage migration hither, and raising the
+conditions of new appropriations of lands.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On the whole, the economic motive seems to have been uppermost
+in the minds of both those who fostered and those who opposed
+foreign immigration into the United States, up to, say, 1870.
+Likewise in perhaps more than ninety-nine of every hundred cases
+the economic motive holds in the mind of the present day immigrant,
+or his protagonist. Escape from political tyranny or religious
+persecution, at least since the revolutionary period of 1848, has
+operated only as a secondary motive. The industrial impulse is all
+the more striking in the so-called &ldquo;new immigration&rdquo;
+from the Mediterranean and South-Eastern Europe. The temporary
+migrant laborer, the &ldquo;bird of passage,&rdquo; roams about
+seeking his fortunes in <a id="page_48" name=
+"page_48"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 48]</span>much the same
+spirit that certain Middle Age Knights or Crusades camp followers
+sought theirs. This is in no way to his discredit. It is simply a
+fact that we are to reckon with when called upon to work out a
+satisfactory immigration policy. At least its recognition would
+eliminate a good deal of wordy sentimentality from discussions of
+the immigration problem.</p>
+<p>Professor Fairchild discovered that three things attract the
+Greek immigrant. First and foremost, financial opportunities.
+Second, corollary to the first, citizenship papers which will
+enable him to return to Turkey, there to carry on business under
+the greater protection which such citizenship confers. There is a
+hint here to the effect that mere naturalization does not mean
+assimilation and permanent acceptance of the status and
+responsibilities of American citizenship. Third, enjoyment of
+certain more or less factitious &ldquo;comforts of
+civilization.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But the Greeks are by no means untypical. The conclusion of the
+Immigration Commission as to the causes of the new immigration is
+that while &ldquo;social conditions affect the situation in some
+countries, the present immigration from Europe to the United States
+is in the largest measure due to economic causes. It should be
+stated, however, that emigration from Europe is not now an absolute
+economic necessity, and as a rule those who emigrate to the United
+States are impelled by a desire for betterment rather than by the
+necessity of escaping intolerable conditions. This fact should
+largely modify the natural incentive to treat the immigration
+movement from the standpoint of sentiment, and permit its
+consideration primarily as an economic problem. In other words, the
+economic and social welfare of the United States should now
+ordinarily be the determining factor in the immigration policy of
+the Government.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This delimitation of the immigration problem to its economic
+aspects led the Immigration Commission to recommend a somewhat
+restrictionist policy. That they <a id="page_49" name=
+"page_49"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 49]</span>were not without
+warrant in so delimiting it is evident from the utterances of such
+ardent opponents of restriction as Dr. Peter Roberts and Max J.
+Kohler. The latter, writing in the <em>American Economic
+Review</em> (March, 1912) said: &ldquo;In fact, the immigrant
+laborer is indispensable to our economic progress today, and we can
+rely upon no one else to build our houses, railroads and subways,
+and mine our ores for us.&rdquo; Dr. Roberts&rsquo; plea is almost
+identical.</p>
+<p>What a glaring misconception of the whole economic and social
+problem is here involved will appear if we add a clause or two to
+Mr. Kohler&rsquo;s sentence. He should have said: &ldquo;We can
+rely upon no one else to build our houses, railroads and subways,
+and mine our ores for us <em>at $455 a year; for workers of native
+birth but of foreign fathers would cost us $566, and native born
+White Americans $666 a year</em>.&rdquo; (See Abstracts of Rep. of
+Immigr. Comm. vol. i., pp. 405-8.) These are the facts. This is the
+social situation as it should be stated if a candid discussion of
+the problem is sought.</p>
+<p>Now what are the economic arguments for restricting somewhat the
+tide of immigration? Several studies of standards of living among
+American workingmen within the past ten years have shown that a
+large proportion of American wage earners fall below a minimum
+efficiency standard. Studies of American wages indicate that only a
+little over ten per cent of American wage earners receive enough to
+maintain an average family in full social efficiency. The average
+daily wage for the year ranges from $1.50 to $2. One-half of all
+American wage earners get less than $600 a year; three-quarters
+less than $750; only one-tenth more than $1,000.</p>
+<p>Take in connection with these wage figures the statistics for
+unemployment. The proportion of idleness to work ranges from
+one-third in mining industries to one-fifth in other industries. In
+Massachusetts, 1908, manufacturers were unemployed twelve per cent
+of the working time. <a id="page_50" name=
+"page_50"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 50]</span>Professor
+Streightoff estimated three years ago that the average annual loss
+in this country through unemployment is 1,000,000 years of working
+time. Perhaps one-tenth of working time might be taken as a very
+conservative general average loss. But the worst feature of the
+whole problem is that, in certain industries at least, the tendency
+to seasonal unemployment is increasing. Ex-Commissioner Neill in
+his report on the Lawrence strike said: &ldquo;&hellip; it is a
+fact that the tendency in many lines of industry, including
+textiles, is to become more and more seasonal and to build to meet
+maximum demands and competitive trade conditions more effectively.
+This necessarily brings it about that a large number of
+employ&eacute;s are required for the industry during its period of
+maximum activity who are accordingly of necessity left idle during
+the period of slackness.&rdquo; (Senate Document 870, 62d Cong., 2d
+sess., 1912.)</p>
+<p>If we recall still further that the casual laborer, who suffers
+most from seasonal unemployment, is the chief stumbling block in
+the way to a solution of the problem of poverty; that he furnishes
+the human power in &ldquo;sweated trades:&rdquo; that immigrants
+form the majority of unskilled and sweated laborers; if we remember
+that there is not a shred of evidence (except the well-meant
+enthusiasm of the protagonists of the immigrant) to show that
+immigration has &ldquo;forced-up&rdquo; the American laborer and
+his standard of living, instead of displacing him downward; if we
+remember that probably 10,000,000 of our people are in poverty, and
+that though the immigrant may not seek charity in any larger
+proportions than the poor of native stock, yet he does contribute
+heavily to our burden of relief for dependents and defectives: we
+are justified in assuming that an analysis of the causes of poverty
+confirms the evidence from studies of wages and standards of living
+as to the depressing effect of the new immigration, in particular,
+upon working conditions for the American laborer.</p>
+<p><a id="page_51" name="page_51"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+51]</span>Consider, too, the question of &ldquo;social
+surplus.&rdquo; Several American economists, among them Professors
+Hollander, Patten and Devine, agree that we are creating annually
+in the United States a substantial social surplus. But it is
+evident from the figures of wages and standards of living quoted
+above that the American laborer is not participating as he might
+expect to participate in this economic advantage. Three factors
+conspire against him. First, we have yet no adequate machinery for
+determining exactly what the surplus is, or how to distribute it
+equitably. Mr. Babson with his &ldquo;composite statistical
+charts&rdquo; has made a beginning in the mathematical
+determination of prosperity; but it is only a beginning. Second,
+organized labor is not yet sufficiently organized nor sufficiently
+self-conscious to perceive and demand its opportunity for a larger
+share. The significant point here is that recent immigration has
+hampered and hindered the development of labor organizations, and
+thus indirectly held back the normal tendency of wages to rise.
+Third, inadequate education, particularly economic and social
+education. The adult illiterate constitutes a tremendous
+educational problem. Over 35 per cent of the &ldquo;new
+immigration&rdquo; of 1913 was illiterate, and this new immigration
+included over two-thirds of the total. Ignorance prevents the
+laborer from demanding the very education that would give him a
+better place in the economic system; it hinders the play of
+intelligent self-interest; and it actually prevents effective
+labor-organization, which is one of the surest means of
+labor-education. Jenks and Lauck, after experience with the
+Immigration Commission, concluded that &ldquo;the fact that recent
+immigrants are usually of non-English speaking races, and their
+high degree of illiteracy, have made their absorption by the labor
+organizations very slow and expensive. In many cases, too, the
+conscious policy of the employers of mixing the races in different
+departments and divisions of labor, in order, by a diversity of
+tongues, to prevent concerted action on the <a id="page_52" name=
+"page_52"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 52]</span>part of
+employ&eacute;s, has made unionization of the immigrant almost
+impossible.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For these reasons, and others, we are driven to the conclusion
+that future policies of immigration must be based on sound
+principles of social welfare and social economy, and not upon the
+economic advantage of certain special industries. Whether we want
+the brawn of the immigrant must be determined by what it will
+contribute to the general social surplus, and not by what it adds
+to A&rsquo;s railroads or B&rsquo;s iron mines.</p>
+<p>We are told that the three classes of our population demanding
+unrestricted immigration are large employers of unskilled labor,
+transportation companies, and revolutionary anarchists. Since this
+is by definition an economic and not a philosophical question, we
+may neglect the third class. To the other two classes should be
+directed certain brief tests of economic good faith. Take at its
+face value their claim that European brawn by the ship-load is
+indispensable to American industry. It is becoming an accepted
+maxim that industry should bear its own charges, should pay its own
+way. American industry has long fought the contract-labor exclusion
+feature in current immigration law. Suppose we frankly admit that
+it is much better for the immigrant to come over here to a definite
+job than to wander about for weeks after he arrives, a prey to
+immigrant banks, fake employment agents, and other sharks. Suppose,
+accordingly, we repeal the laws against contract-labor. Let the
+employer contract for as many foreign laborers as he likes or says
+he needs. But make the contractor liable for support and
+deportation costs if the laborers become public charges. Also
+require him to assume the cost of unemployment insurance. Exact a
+bond for the faithful performance of these terms, guaranteed in
+somewhat the same way that National Banks are safeguarded.
+Immigration authorities now commonly require a bond from the
+relatives of admitted aliens who seem likely to become public
+charges, <a id="page_53" name="page_53"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 53]</span>but who are allowed to enter with the
+benefit of the doubt. Customs and revenue rules admit dutiable
+goods in bond. Hence the principle of the bond is perfectly
+familiar, and its application to contract-immigrants would be in no
+sense an untried or dangerous experiment. It would establish no new
+precedent: for precedents, and successful ones, are already
+established, accepted and approved. It would be understood that all
+admissions of aliens can be only provisional, with no time limit on
+deportation. It would be understood further&mdash;and the plan
+would work automatically if the contractor were made such a deeply
+interested party&mdash;that intending immigrants must be rigidly
+inspected, that they be required to produce consular certificates
+of clean police record, freedom from chronic disease, insanity,
+etc.</p>
+<p>The result of such a scheme would probably cut away entirely
+contract-labor; for it would not longer pay. But this does not mean
+barring the gate to all foreign labor. As an aid to the employer
+and to our own native workingman, we must, sooner or later, and the
+sooner the better, establish a chain of labor bureaus throughout
+the Union. The system must be placed under Federal direction,
+largely because the Department of Labor would be charged, <em>ex
+officio</em>, with ascertaining the &ldquo;true demand&rdquo; for
+immigrant labor, and it could only accomplish this end effectively
+through such an employment clearing system. This true demand would,
+of course, be based not only upon mere numerical excess of calls
+for labor over demands for jobs, but would also take into account
+the nature of the work, working conditions, and above all the
+prevailing level of wages. According to this true demand the
+Department would adjust a sliding scale of admissions of immigrant
+laborers.</p>
+<p>Much might be said in favor of an absolute embargo upon all
+immigration until such a body as the Industrial Relations
+Commission has time to make an authoritative economic survey of the
+whole country, or until the Unemployment <a id="page_54" name=
+"page_54"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 54]</span>Research
+Commission recently called for by Miss Kellor could make the three
+years&rsquo; study contemplated by her as the only way out of the
+unemployment morass. Twenty years ago men of the type of General
+Walker frankly urged that the immigration gates be closed for a
+flat period of ten years or so. But the sliding scale plan
+contemplates no such radical step. Indeed it is radical in no sense
+whatever. The proposed immigration act now before Congress (The
+Burnett Bill, H.R. 6060) paves the way for it, and provides a
+working principle, which apparently is accepted on all sides.
+Section 3 includes this clause: &ldquo;That skilled labor, if
+otherwise admissible, may be imported if labor of like kind
+unemployed can not be found in this country, and the question of
+the necessity of importing such skilled labor in any particular
+instance may be determined by the Secretary of
+Labor&hellip;.&rdquo; A really workable test for immigration,
+superior by far to the literacy test or any other so far suggested,
+might easily be developed by simply enlarging the scope of this
+clause, making it include unskilled as well as skilled labor. No
+machinery other than that contemplated by the present act would be
+required.</p>
+<p>The immigration problem can never be satisfactorily handled
+until we fix upon some such means of determining just what the
+economic need is. There is no danger of hindering legitimate
+industrial expansion in times of sudden business prosperity: for
+the transportation companies may be safely trusted to supply in
+three or four weeks aliens enough to fill all the gaps in the
+industrial army. Neither would injustice be done to the immigrant
+himself. On the contrary, he would be assured of a job and
+respectful consideration when he arrived. The &ldquo;dago&rdquo; or
+the &ldquo;bohunk&rdquo; would acquire a new dignity and a more
+enviable status than he now occupies. The selective process thus
+involved would much improve the quality of the immigrant admitted,
+and would incidentally render assimilation of the foreigner all the
+easier.</p>
+<p><a id="page_55" name="page_55"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+55]</span>The precise details of selection, and the machinery, are
+mere matters of detail. But the consular service, as long ago
+suggested by Catlin, Schuyler and others, seems to offer the proper
+base of operations. We have already recommended charging consuls
+with vis&eacute;ing certificates from police, medical, and
+poor-relief authorities. We should further require that
+declarations of intention to migrate be published (somewhat as
+marriage banns are published) at local administrative centers
+(arrondissement, Bezirk, etc.) and at United States consular
+offices; the consular declaration should be obligatory; perhaps the
+other might be optional, though in all probability foreign
+governments would co&ouml;perate in demanding it. These validated
+declarations of intention should be filed in the consular offices.
+When notice comes from the United States Department of Labor that
+so many laborers will be admitted from such and such district, the
+declarations are to be taken up in the order of their filing, and
+the proper number of persons certified for admission. The
+apportionment of admissions from each country might be calculated
+on a basis of its population, also upon the nature of the
+employment offered, and upon the desirability of the alien himself,
+his general assimilability, his willingness to become naturalized,
+to adopt the English language and the American standard of living
+among efficient workers, etc.,&mdash;all as proved by past
+experience with his countrymen. This plan, in so far as it provides
+for a sliding scale of admissions, is in line with that proposed by
+Professor Gulick. He advocates making all nations eligible for
+admission and citizenship, but would admit them only in proportion
+as they can be readily assimilated. This would admit annually, say,
+five per cent of those already naturalized, with their American
+children. The principle here seems to be that we can assimilate
+from any land in, and only in, proportion to the number already
+assimilated from that land. But the difficulty of applying such a
+test lies in the complexity of the assimilative <a id="page_56"
+name="page_56"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 56]</span>process. No
+measure yet exists for assimilation. Anthropologists are convinced
+that various strains in the populations, for example of France, or
+Great Britain, which have been dwelling together for centuries, are
+not by any means assimilated. Mere naturalization is not a
+sufficient test of assimilation; it is only the expression of a
+desire to be assimilated; and it may only be a device for the
+promotion of business success here or in foreign parts, as we have
+already indicated in the case of the Greeks. Hence in working out
+the basis of a sound immigration policy, it would seem more
+practicable to consider first the question of economic utilization
+rather than assimilation. This, of course, does not exclude from
+the Secretary of Labor&rsquo;s judgment the category of
+assimilability as one of the factors in determining the
+apportionment of admissions.</p>
+<p>It will appear that the plan outlined above limits immigration
+policy to purely national and economic considerations. But it is,
+as matters now stand, a national question. And it must remain so
+for some time to come, even if we are reproached with a narrow
+Mercantilist economics. The admission of aliens is not yet a
+fundamental international <em>right</em>, or <em>duty</em>; it is
+only an example of <em>comity</em> within the family of nations.
+And the matter must rest in this state of limbo until we develop
+some institution or method of registering our sentiments of
+internationalism, and especially of determining <em>international
+surplus</em>. As it is idle to talk or dream of abolishing poverty
+until at least the concept of social or national surplus is pretty
+clearly fixed and its realization either actually at hand or fairly
+imminent, just so is it vain to expect an international adjustment
+of the immigration problem on economic grounds until the existence
+of an international surplus is demonstrated, and the methods of
+apportioning it worked out.</p>
+<p>How soon we may expect these things it is not our province to
+predict. It is too early to pass final judgment <a id="page_57"
+name="page_57"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 57]</span>on Professor
+Patten&rsquo;s dictum that inter-racial co&ouml;peration is
+impossible without integration, and that races must therefore stand
+in hostile relations or finally unite. But it is perfectly apparent
+that we have a long way to travel before the path to integration is
+cleared. Such assemblages as the First Universal Races Congress
+which met in London in 1911 can do much to prepare the way. But it
+must not be forgotten that the German representative at that
+Congress pleaded for the maintenance of strict racial and national
+boundaries, and summed up his plea in the rather ominous sentence:
+&ldquo;The brotherhood of man is a good thing, but the struggle for
+life is a far better one.&rdquo; Meanwhile we need not anticipate
+serious international difficulties in the way of the sliding-scale
+plan; for foreign governments are watching the tide of immigration
+with mixed feelings. They welcome the two or three hundred million
+dollars sent home annually by alien residents in the United States.
+But they also resent the dislocations of industry, the fallow
+fields, the dodging of military service, and the disturbance of the
+level of prices which such wholesale emigrations inflict upon the
+mother country.</p>
+<p>Since the protagonists of unrestricted immigration have taken
+largely an economic line of argument, it seemed desirable to accept
+their terms, and meet them on their own ground. But I should not
+wish to be misunderstood as limiting the immigration question to
+its economic phases. When we have said that the
+<em>latifondisti</em> of Southern Italy are in despair at the
+scarcity of laborers to work their lands at starvation wages, and
+that the railway builders and mine operators of America are equally
+anxious to have those selfsame South Italian laborers for their own
+exploitive enterprises, we have told a bare half of the tale. There
+remain all those cultural, educational, political, religious and
+domestic variations and adjustments which make up the general
+problem of assimilability of the alien and of the strength of our
+own national digestion. America had a giant&rsquo;s
+undiscriminating appetite <a id="page_58" name=
+"page_58"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 58]</span>in the great days
+of expansion from 1850 to 1890. But there are many signs, economic
+and other, that we can no longer play Gargantua and continue a
+healthy nation. An unwise engineer sometimes over-stokes his
+boilers, and courts disaster. Is it not equally possible that
+national welfare may suffer from an over-dose of human fuel in our
+industry?</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_59" name="page_59"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+59]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Flatland" name="Flatland"></a>The Way to Flatland</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>&ldquo;The next great task of preventive medicine is the
+inauguration of universal periodic medical examinations as an
+indispensable means for the control of all diseases, whether
+arising from injurious personal habits, from congenital or
+constitutional weakness, or from social and vocational
+conditions.&rdquo; That this declaration by the Commissioner of
+Health of the city of New York is not the mere expression of an
+individual opinion, there is abundant evidence. And no one who has
+watched the growth of other movements towards such regulation of
+life as only a few years ago would have seemed wholly outside the
+domain of practical probability can doubt that the &ldquo;Life
+Extension&rdquo; movement, as thus outlined, will rapidly grow into
+prominence. Nor is there much room for doubt that, whether
+explicitly contemplated at present or not, compulsion as well as
+universality is tacitly implied in the movement.</p>
+<p>I say that the movement is sure to grow into prominence, that it
+is a thing which must be seriously reckoned with; I do not say that
+it will march straight on to victory, or even that it is sure to
+prevail in the end. It is instructive, in this regard, to hark back
+to a recent experience in a more special, but yet an extremely
+important, domain. Several years ago a report on university
+efficiency was issued under the auspices&mdash;though, it should be
+added, without the official endorsement&mdash;of the Carnegie
+Foundation. The central feature of this report lay in its advocacy
+of the application to universities of those principles of system
+and of standardization which have been successfully applied on a
+large scale to the promotion of industrial efficiency, and are
+generally referred to by the catch-<a id="page_60" name=
+"page_60"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 60]</span>word,
+&ldquo;scientific management.&rdquo; In spite of the merits of the
+report in certain matters of detail, and of the high standing of
+the expert who wrote it in his own department of industrial
+engineering, the report evoked an almost universal chorus of
+contemptuous rejection not only in university circles, but also
+from those organs of public opinion which have any claim to be
+regarded as enlightened judges in questions of education and
+culture. The thing seemed to have been laughed out of court. And
+yet it turned out that a year or two afterwards a full-fledged
+scheme for carrying out some of the crudest and most objectionable
+features of this &ldquo;efficiency&rdquo; program was presented to
+the professors of Harvard University, apparently with the
+expectation that they would fall in with its requirements without
+hesitation or protest. For some days there seemed to be real danger
+that this would actually happen. It turned out to be a false alarm;
+the faculty of the foremost of American universities were guilty of
+no such supineness. The project was ignominiously shelved, with
+some sort of explanation that the springing of it on the professors
+was due to an error or misunderstanding. But that the attempt
+should have been made, and in a manner that argued so total a lack
+of any sense of its grossness and crudity, is a significant warning
+of the extent to which the notions underlying it have fastened upon
+the general mind.</p>
+<p>The story of the eugenics movement in this country affords a
+striking illustration at once of the almost startling rapidity with
+which innovating ideas as to the regulation of life gain
+acceptance, and of the fact that this rapidity is by no means
+conclusive proof that their progress will be continuous. The one
+thing clear is that there is a large, active, and influential
+element in the population that is extremely hospitable to such
+ideas, and manifests a na&iuml;ve, an almost childish, readiness to
+put them into immediate execution. Since, in the nature of things,
+this element is lively and active&mdash;since, too, what is novel
+and <a id="page_61" name="page_61"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+61]</span>in motion is more interesting than what is old and at
+rest&mdash;at first there is almost sure to be produced a deceptive
+appearance that the new thing is sweeping everything before it.
+Just now there is evidently a lull in the onward march of
+legislative eugenics. This is sufficient proof of the conservatism
+of the people as a whole; we may be quite sure that anything beyond
+a very restricted application of eugenical notions will take a long
+time to get itself established in our laws or even in our customs.
+Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that even the
+more extreme forms of eugenical doctrine are not forces to be
+reckoned with as affecting practical possibilities of a not distant
+future. Though no results may appear on the surface, the leaven is
+working. It is consonant with tendencies which in so many
+directions are becoming more and more dominant. So long as those
+tendencies continue in anything like their present strength, there
+can be little doubt that the idea of control in the direction of
+eugenics, like that of the regulation of human life in other
+fundamental respects, will continue to make headway, and may at any
+time become one of the central issues of the day.</p>
+<p>To adduce prohibition as an illustration of this same character
+in the thought and the tendencies of our immediate time may seem
+like forcing the point. It is true, it may be said, that there has
+been within the past few years a rapid spread of prohibition in
+almost every part of the country; but the thing itself is sixty
+years old, has had its periods of advance and recession, and is
+now, in the fullness of time, reaping the fruits of two generations
+of agitation, investigation, and education. But to say this is to
+overlook the distinctive feature of the present situation regarding
+prohibition in the United States. A Constitutional amendment
+providing for the complete prohibition of the sale of liquor
+throughout the Union is pending in Congress. A year
+ago&mdash;probably six months ago&mdash;there was hardly a human
+being in the United States, <a id="page_62" name=
+"page_62"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 62]</span>other than those
+in the councils of the Anti-saloon League, who had so much as
+thought of national prohibition as a question of present-day
+practical politics. Suddenly it is announced that there is a
+distinct possibility of a prohibition amendment being passed by
+Congress in the near future; and one of the foremost
+representatives of the Anti-saloon League states, and with good
+show of reason, that if the amendment be passed by Congress, its
+ratification by the Legislatures of three fourths of the States can
+be only a matter of time. What the probabilities actually are, I do
+not undertake to say; neither am I concerned at this moment with
+the merits of the issue itself. What I <em>am</em> concerned with
+is the simple fact that in this situation, brought upon the country
+with dramatic suddenness, nobody seems to have been in the least
+startled, or so much as disturbed in his equanimity. There will of
+course be a great struggle over the question, sooner or later. But
+neither in Congress nor in the press has there as yet been any sign
+of such an assertion of the claims of personal liberty as, at any
+time previous to the past ten years, would have been sure to be
+made in such a situation. This collective silence, on an issue
+affecting so intimately the lives, the habits, the traditions of
+millions of people, is, in my judgment, by far the most impressive
+proof of the degree in which the public mind has grown accustomed
+to the inroads of regulation upon the domain of individuality.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>A number of years ago, when the mathematical concept of space of
+more than three dimensions was attracting great popular interest,
+an ingenious writer undertook to make the idea intelligible to
+&ldquo;the general&rdquo; by picturing the state of mind in regard
+to three dimensions of a race of beings whose life and whose
+sensual experience was limited to space of two dimensions. He gave
+his little book the title &ldquo;Flatland,&rdquo; and it gained
+wide attention. In his Commencement address at Columbia last year,
+President <a id="page_63" name="page_63"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 63]</span>Butler had the happy thought of applying the
+term in the characterization of certain aspects of the intellectual
+and political life of our time. He was speaking particularly of
+that absorption in the immediate problems of the day which makes
+almost impossible a true study and contemplation of the lasting
+concerns of mankind as embodied in history and literature.
+&ldquo;Every ruling tendency,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is to make
+life a Flatland, an affair of two dimensions, with no depth, no
+background, no permanent root.&rdquo; That this is a literal truth
+probably neither Dr. Butler nor anyone else would contend; but it
+hits off with great force and with substantial accuracy the
+prevailing character of thought in the circles most active and most
+influential in almost every department of human activity at the
+present time. And the tendency which President Butler describes as
+arising out of our absorption in current problems is still more
+manifest in the spirit of our actual dealings with those problems
+themselves. On every hand we find a surprising readiness to accept
+views which explicitly tend to take out of life that which gives it
+depth and significance and richness. Each one of the four movements
+we have mentioned affords an illustration of this: in following any
+one of them we travel straight toward Flatland. They differ very
+much, one from another; they have very different degrees and kinds
+of justification; it may be difficult in the case of some of them
+to strike a balance between the gain and the loss. The remarkable
+thing&mdash;the ominous thing, if we are to suppose that the
+present tone of thought will long persist&mdash;is that the loss
+involved in the flattening of life, as such, apparently almost
+wholly fails to get consideration. I say apparently, because there
+is, no doubt, a deep and strong undercurrent of opposition which,
+sooner or later, will manifest itself; in speaking of &ldquo;ruling
+tendencies&rdquo; we are apt to mean merely the tendencies that are
+most in evidence. But after all, it is to these that criticism of
+contemporary life and thought must, of necessity, be chiefly
+directed.</p>
+<p><a id="page_64" name="page_64"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+64]</span>As I have already indicated, the attack on individuality
+and personal dignity in the universities was met in a spirit that
+is highly gratifying, and which is quite out of keeping with the
+tendency that I am discussing and deploring. Yet it is doubtful
+whether, outside the circle of the universities themselves, and of
+those individuals who are thoroughly imbued with the university
+spirit, there is any true realization of what it is that
+constituted the head and front of that offending. If some bureau of
+research were to present a formidable array of figures showing that
+the &ldquo;output&rdquo; of professorial work could be increased by
+so and so many per cent. through the adoption of some definitely
+formulated system of &ldquo;scientific management,&rdquo; it is by
+no means certain that the scheme would not receive powerful support
+in the highest quarters of efficiency propaganda. We should be told
+just how many millions of dollars a year we are spending on
+university education, and just how many of these millions go
+needlessly to waste. Even the opponents of the &ldquo;reform&rdquo;
+would probably find themselves compelled to use as their most
+powerful argument this and that example of great practical results
+which have flowed from letting men of genius go their own way. It
+would be pointed out that many an investigation which, to the
+authorities of the time, appeared wholly unpromising, turned out to
+be of cardinal value. We should be warned that what we gain in a
+thousand cases through time-clock and card-catalogue methods, might
+be lost ten times over through the shackling of the initiative of a
+single man of unrecognized genius. And all this would be very much
+to the purpose; but it is not upon any such special pleading that
+the case ought to be made to rest. The loss that would be suffered
+transcends all these concrete and definable instances of it. It
+would be pervasive, fundamental, immeasurable. Grievous as might be
+the injury caused by the prevention of specific achievements of
+exceptional importance, this would be as nothing in comparison with
+the intellectual <a id="page_65" name="page_65"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 65]</span>and spiritual loss entailed by the lowering
+of the human level, the devitalizing of the intellectual
+atmosphere, which must inevitably follow upon the application of
+factory methods to university life.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>The case of the eugenics propaganda is far more complex. In its
+origin, and doubtless in some of its present manifestations, it may
+lay claim to being directed toward aims which are particularly
+concerned with the higher interests of life. The author of
+&ldquo;Hereditary Genius&rdquo; certainly could not be accused of
+indifference to the part played in the past, or to be played in the
+future, by exceptional minds and characters; nor is it necessary to
+charge any of the present promoters of the propaganda with explicit
+failure to appreciate the importance of such minds and characters.
+The criticism is often made, from this standpoint, that the
+hard-and-fast rules which the eugenists propose would, in point of
+fact, have put under the ban some of the most illustrious names in
+the annals of mankind&mdash;men whose genius was accompanied with
+some of the very traits which they hold should most positively be
+prevented from appearing. But, however weighty this objection to
+the methods of eugenics may be, it is to be looked upon rather as
+an item on the debit side of the reckoning than as marking an
+ingrained defect, a fault at the very heart of the matter. The
+eugenists may well challenge those who urge merely this kind of
+objection to show that the losses thus pointed out are great enough
+to offset the gains, in the very same direction, which they regard
+their program as promising. Whatever the truth of the matter may
+be, they can at least set up the contention that, as a mere affair
+of quantity, genius will do better under their system than without
+it.</p>
+<p>What brings the eugenics movement into the Flatland category is
+not its attitude toward the question of genius, or perhaps even of
+singularity, but its attitude toward the life of mankind as a
+whole&mdash;if indeed it can be said to have <a id="page_66" name=
+"page_66"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 66]</span>any attitude
+toward the life of mankind as a whole. The profound elements of
+that life seem not to come at all within the range of its
+contemplation. Of course this does not apply to everything that
+comes from the eugenics camp, nor to every person that calls
+himself a eugenist. But on the other hand it is by no means only of
+the crude projects of half-educated reformers, or the outgivings of
+the prophets of our popular magazines, that it <em>is</em> true.
+The agitation has derived much of its impetus, directly or
+indirectly, from the teachings of men of high scientific eminence
+who have attacked the question without any apparent realization of
+its deeper bearings on the whole character of human life. This
+influence often comes in the shape of exhortations, or suggestions,
+addressed to the public at a time when attention is centered upon
+some conspicuous crime or some particular phase of evil in the
+community; sweeping and radical regulation of the right of
+parenthood being urged as necessary for the prevention of all such
+distressing phenomena. Thus, after the attempted assassination of
+Mayor Gaynor, there was much talk of a &ldquo;national campaign for
+mental hygiene,&rdquo; which should have the effect of
+&ldquo;preventing Czolgoszes and Schranks.&rdquo; Its program was
+thus indicated by one of the foremost professors of medicine in the
+United States:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Provision must be made for the birth of children whose brains
+shall, so far as possible, be innately of good quality; this means
+the denial of the privilege of parenthood to those likely to
+transmit bad nervous systems to their offsprings.</p>
+</div>
+<p>What the carrying out of such a programme would mean to mankind
+at large, how profoundly it would modify those ideas about life,
+those standards of human dignity and human rights, which are so
+fundamental and so pervasive that they are taken for granted
+without express thought in every act and every feeling of all
+normal men and women&mdash;this does not seem ever to trouble the
+mind of the devotee of universal regulation. He sees the
+possibility <a id="page_67" name="page_67"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 67]</span>of effecting a certain definite and
+measurable improvement; that the means by which this is
+accomplished must fatally impair those elemental conceptions of
+human life whose value transcends all measurement, he has not the
+insight or the imagination to recognize. The distinctions of social
+class, of wealth, of public honor, leave untouched the equality of
+men in the fundamentals of human dignity. They do not go to the
+vitals of self-respect; they do not interfere with a man&rsquo;s
+sense of what is due to him, and what is due from him, in the
+primary relations of life. If nature has been unkind to him in his
+physical or mental endowments, he does not therefore feel in the
+least disqualified, as regards his family, his friends, his
+neighbors, the stranger with whom he chances to come into contact,
+from receiving the same kind of consideration, in the essentials of
+human intercourse, that is accorded to those who are more
+fortunate; nor does he feel in any respect absolved from the duty
+of playing the full part of a man. Under the r&eacute;gime of
+medical classification&mdash;and the &ldquo;mental hygiene&rdquo;
+programme can mean nothing less than that&mdash;all this would
+disappear. Some men would be men, others would be something less.
+It is true that, so far as regards the imbecile, the insane, and
+the criminal, such a state of things obtains as it is; but this
+stands wholly apart from the general life of the race, and has no
+influence whatever on the habitual feelings and experiences of
+human beings. The normal life of mankind is shot through and
+through with the idea that a man&rsquo;s a man; all that is highest
+in feeling and conduct is closely bound up with it. Lessen its sway
+over our feelings and thoughts and instincts, and how much benefit
+in the shape of &ldquo;preventing Czolgoszes and Schranks&rdquo;
+would be required to compensate for the loss in nobleness, in
+depth, which human life would suffer?</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>The prohibition movement belongs, in the main, to a wholly
+different order of things. The fight against the <a id="page_68"
+name="page_68"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 68]</span>evils of
+drink, as it has been carried on for a century or more, has been
+animated by a moral fervor which classes it rather with the fight
+against slavery, or with the great revivals of religion, than with
+those movements which owe their origin to a calculating and
+cold-blooded perfectionism. Its leaders have been fired with the
+ardor of a war directed against a devastating monster, to whose
+ravages was to be ascribed a large part of the misery and
+wickedness that afflict mankind. It is true that the economic and
+physiological aspects of the drink question were not ignored; the
+total-abstinence men were glad enough to have this second string to
+their bow. But the real fight was not against alcohol as one of
+many things concerning which the habits of men are more or less
+unwise; it was a fight against the Demon Rum, the ally of all the
+powers of darkness. The plea of the moderate drinker was rejected
+with scorn, not because there was any objection to moderate
+drinking in itself, but because total abstinence was the only true
+preventive of drunkenness, and drunkenness must be stamped out if
+mankind was to be saved. The moderate drinker was censured not
+because he was wasting his money, or failing to &ldquo;conserve his
+efficiency,&rdquo; but because for the sake of a trivial
+self-indulgence he was giving countenance to a practice which was
+consigning millions of his fellow men to wretchedness in this world
+and to everlasting damnation in the next.</p>
+<p>Now this remarkable thing about the present extraordinary
+manifestation of growth and strength in the prohibition movement is
+that it is not in the least due to a strengthening of this
+sentiment. On the contrary, it is safe to say that feeling about
+drunkenness, about the drink evil in the sense in which it was
+understood a generation ago, is far less intense than it was then.
+The prohibition movement in its present stage is not the old
+prohibition movement advancing to triumph through the onward march
+of its proselyting zeal; of true prohibitionist zealots the number
+is probably less, in proportion to the <a id="page_69" name=
+"page_69"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 69]</span>population, than
+it was forty years ago. Its great accession of strength has come
+from the growth of that order of ideas which is common to all the
+&ldquo;efficiency&rdquo; movements of the time. And that growth
+helps it in two ways. On the one hand, to the little army of
+crusaders against the Demon Rum there has come the accession of a
+host of men who are not thinking about demons at all, but who
+calmly hold that the world would be better off without drinking,
+and that this is an all-sufficient reason for prohibiting it. And
+on the other hand, millions of persons who, in former days would
+have cried out against this way of improving the
+world&mdash;against the impairment of personal liberty and the
+sacrifice of social enjoyment and social variety&mdash;have no
+longer the courage of their convictions. The temper of the time is
+unfavorable to the assertion of the value of things so incapable of
+numerical measurement. Against the heavy battalions led by the
+statisticians, and the experimental psychologists, and the
+efficiency experts, what chance is there for successful resistance?
+On the opposing side can be rallied only such mere irregulars as
+are willing to fight for airy nothings&mdash;for the zest and
+colorfulness of life, for sociability and good fellowship, for
+preserving to each man access to those resources of relaxation and
+refreshment which, without injury to others, he finds conducive to
+his own happiness.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>It is hardly necessary to say that, in taking up these various
+movements, no attempt has been made at anything like comprehensive
+discussion of their merits. Whatever may be the balance between
+good and ill in any of them, they all have in common one tendency
+that bodes danger to the highest and most permanent interests of
+mankind; and it is with this alone that I am concerned. What that
+tendency is has, I trust, been made sufficiently clear; but it will
+perhaps be brought out more distinctly by a consideration of the
+&ldquo;Life Extension&rdquo; <a id="page_70" name=
+"page_70"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 70]</span>propaganda more
+detailed and specific than that given to the other three.</p>
+<p>Conspicuous in the literature of this propaganda is the appeal
+to standard modern practice in regard to machinery. &ldquo;Those to
+whom the care of delicate mechanical apparatus is entrusted,&rdquo;
+says the New York Commissioner of Health, &ldquo;do not wait until
+a breakdown occurs, but inspect and examine the apparatus minutely,
+at regular intervals, and thus detect the first signs of
+damage.&rdquo; &ldquo;This principle of periodic inspection,&rdquo;
+says the prospectus of the Life Extension Institute, &ldquo;has for
+many years been applied to almost every kind of machinery, except
+the most marvelous and complex of all,&mdash;the human body.&rdquo;
+To find fault with the drawing of this comparison, with the
+utilization of this analogy, would be foolish. That many persons
+would be greatly benefited by submitting to these inspections is
+certain; it is not impossible that they are desirable for most
+persons. And the analogy of the inspection of machinery serves
+excellently the purpose of suggesting such desirability. What is
+objectionable about its use by the Life Extension propagandists is
+their evident complacent satisfaction with the analogy as complete
+and conclusive. Yet nothing is more certain than that, even from
+the strictly medical standpoint, it ignores an essential
+distinction between the case of the man and the case of the
+machine. The machine is affected only by the measures that may be
+taken in consequence of the knowledge arising from the inspection;
+the man is affected by that knowledge itself. Whether the possible
+physical harm that may come to a man from having his mind disturbed
+by solicitude about his health is important or unimportant in
+comparison with the good that is likely to be done him by the
+following of the precautions or remedies prescribed, is a question
+of fact to which the answer varies in every individual case. It may
+be that in the great majority of cases the harm is insignificant in
+comparison with the good. However that may <a id="page_71" name=
+"page_71"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 71]</span>be, the question
+is there, and it is of itself fatal to the conclusiveness of the
+<em>argumentum ex machina</em>. That this is not a captious
+criticism, that it is based on substantial facts of life, ordinary
+experience sufficiently attests; but it may not be amiss to point
+to a conspicuous contemporary phenomenon which throws an
+interesting light on the matter. The Christian Scientists regard
+the <em>ignoring</em> of disease as the primary requisite for
+health and longevity. That the Christian Science doctrine is a
+sheer absurdity, no one can hold more emphatically than the present
+writer; but it cannot be denied that in thousands of cases its
+acceptance has been of physical benefit through its subjective
+effect upon the believer. Personally, I would not purchase any
+benefit to my physical life at such sacrifice of my intellectual
+integrity; I mention the point only by way of accentuating the
+undisputed fact that the presence or absence of concern about
+health may have a potent influence on one&rsquo;s bodily
+welfare.</p>
+<p>Although it is a still further digression from the main purpose
+of this paper, I must permit myself a few words on another point
+relating to the strictly medical claims of the plan of
+&ldquo;universal periodic medical examination.&rdquo; It is natural
+that its advocates say nothing about the danger of errors in
+diagnosis; everybody knows that this danger exists, but sensible
+men do not allow it to deter them from consulting a physician; in
+this, as in other affairs of life, they do not cry for the moon,
+but do the best they can. But it seems to be wholly overlooked by
+the advocates of the propaganda of &ldquo;universal periodic
+examination&rdquo; that the extent of this danger under present
+conditions affords no indication at all of what it would be under
+the system they contemplate. Its cardinal virtue, they constantly
+proclaim, would be the detection of the very slightest indication
+of impairment: &ldquo;The task before us is to discover the first
+sign of departure from the normal physiological path, and promptly
+and effectually to apply the brake.&rdquo; The consequence must
+necessarily be that for <a id="page_72" name=
+"page_72"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 72]</span>one case of false
+alarm that occurs today there will be a score, or a hundred, under
+the new r&eacute;gime. For, in the first place, the individuals
+seeking advice will not be, as they now are in the main, selected
+cases in which there is some antecedent presumption that there is
+something wrong; and secondly, the examiner, bent upon the one
+great object of overlooking nothing, however slight, will give
+warnings which, whether technically justifiable or not, will in
+great numbers of cases have a wholly unjustifiable significance to
+the mind of the subject. Who shall say how many persons will thus
+be made to carry through life a burden of solicitude about their
+health from which, if left to their own devices, they would have
+been wholly free?</p>
+<p>But it is not my design to find fault with this scheme as a
+matter of medical benefit; if I have ventured to point out some
+drawbacks, it is only by way of showing that, even from the
+strictly medical standpoint the cult of uniformity, of
+standardization, of mechanical perfection, is not free from fault.
+But the great objection against that attitude of mind which is
+typified in the appeal to the analogy of machinery is far more
+vital. Our only interest in a machine is that we shall get out of
+it as much, and as exact, work as possible. Our interest in our
+bodies is not so limited. We may deliberately choose to forego the
+maximum of mechanical perfection for the sake of living our lives
+in a way more satisfactory to us than a constant care for that
+perfection would permit. Even the most ardent of health
+enthusiasts&mdash;unless he be an insane fanatic&mdash;draws the
+line somewhere. What he forgets is that other people prefer to draw
+the line somewhere else. They choose to run a certain amount of
+risk rather than have their health on their minds. To
+compel&mdash;whether by legal means or by social
+pressure&mdash;every man to take precautions concerning his own
+body which he deliberately prefers not to take; to make impossible,
+in this most intimate and personal of all human <a id="page_73"
+name="page_73"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 73]</span>concerns, the
+various ways of acting which the infinite varieties of temperament
+and desire may dictate&mdash;this would be such an invasion of
+personal liberty, such a suppression of individuality, as would
+strike us all as appalling, had we not grown so habituated to the
+mechanical, the statistical, measurement of human values&mdash;to
+the Flatland view of life.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>What gives to these movements that I have been discussing the
+character which I have been ascribing to them is not so much the
+specific things which they severally aim to accomplish, but the
+spirit in which they are carried on, and perhaps still more the
+spirit, or want of spirit, with which they are met. It is not that
+a balance is falsely struck between the benefit of the concrete,
+circumscribed, measurable improvement aimed at and the injury done
+to some deeper, more pervading, and quite immeasurable element or
+principle of life; it is that the balance is not struck at all. The
+subtler, the less tangible, element is simply ignored. It was not
+always so. It was not so in the last generation, or the generation
+before that. The phenomenon is one that is closely bound up with
+the ruling tendency of thought and action in all directions; it is
+not an accident of this or that particular agitation. Perhaps in no
+direction is it more convincingly manifested than in the prevailing
+tone of opinion, or at least of publicly expressed opinion, in
+regard to the objects and ideals of universities. That in the
+present state of the world&rsquo;s economic and social development
+on the one hand, and of the various sciences on the other,
+&ldquo;service&rdquo;&mdash;that is, service directly conducive to
+the general good&mdash;should be regarded as one of the great
+objects of universities, is altogether right; that it should be
+spoken of as their <em>only</em> object, which is the ruling
+fashion, is most deplorable. The object of a university, said Mill,
+is to keep philosophy alive; yet it would go hard with the present
+generation to point to any one more truly and <a id="page_74" name=
+"page_74"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 74]</span>profoundly devoted
+to the service, the uplifting, of the masses of mankind than was
+John Stuart Mill. Were he living he would recognize, as thoroughly
+as the best efficiency man of them all, that the universities of
+today have opportunities and duties which were undreamed of half a
+century ago. But he would know, too, that in those activities which
+are directed to the promotion of practical efficiency, the
+university is but one of many agencies, and that if it were not
+doing the work some other means would be found for supplying the
+demand. Its paramount value he would find now, as he did then, in
+the service it renders not to the ordinary needs of the community
+but to the higher intellectual interests and strivings of mankind.
+That so few of us have the courage clearly to assert a position
+even distantly approaching this&mdash;such a position as was mere
+matter of course among university men in the last
+generation&mdash;is perhaps the most significant of all the
+indications of our drift toward Flatland.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_75" name="page_75"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+75]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Property" name="Property"></a>The Disfranchisement of
+Property</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<h3>I</h3>
+<p>It is Hawthorne, I think, who tells us that when he was a boy he
+used once in a while to go down to the wharves in Salem, and lay
+his hand on the rail of some great East India merchantman, redolent
+of spices, and thus bring himself in actual touch with the
+mysterious orient. But there is nothing strange in this: almost
+anything that we can feel or see may start the flight of fancy, and
+open to us prophetic visions. This is even true of such dry symbols
+as figures, for our journalists would never publish statistics as
+they do, unless they knew that their readers liked to see them.
+Travellers from other parts of the world have often laughed at our
+fondness for revelling in the marvellous accounts of our material
+dimensions, but they should remember that people who do not have a
+taste for poetry may yet have a taste for romance, and that big
+figures do appeal to the imagination.</p>
+<p>It is true that there may be something portentous in bigness.
+&ldquo;Tom&rdquo; Reed, as he was affectionately called, said many
+wise things in a jesting way. At a certain crisis in our history he
+exclaimed: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want Cuba and Hawaii; I&rsquo;ve
+got more country now than I can love.&rdquo; A foreigner might
+suppose that our politicians had similarly become terror-stricken
+at the extent of our wealth and the rate at which it was growing.
+They may well give the impression that there has been created in
+the &ldquo;money power,&rdquo; a Frankenstein monster, the control
+of whose murderous propensities has put them at their wit&rsquo;s
+end.</p>
+<p>Figures are notorious liars; they may arouse emotion if looked
+at in any light, but they must be looked at in <a id="page_76"
+name="page_76"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 76]</span>many lights
+if we would get an emotional effect that is truly worth while. Some
+very large figures relating to Savings Banks have lately been
+published. The deposits in these banks amount to over four and
+two-thirds billions of dollars, and the number of separate accounts
+is about ten and two-thirds millions. Savings deposits in all banks
+are about $7,000,000,000, the number of accounts being 17,600,000.
+Probably the interest paid on the savings banks deposits is 160
+millions of dollars a year. I confess that these figures give me
+much pleasure. I like to think that so many men have taken pains to
+guard their wives and children against miserable want; that so many
+women have to some extent made sure of their independence. It would
+not be surprising to find that twelve millions of families,
+possibly half the people of the country, were in this way protected
+against extreme penury. Viewed in this light, the growth of wealth
+does not seem so terrible. One might paraphrase Burke and say that
+such wealth as this loses half its evil through losing all its
+grossness. Indeed one might go further and say that if there were
+twice as much of this wealth, and every person in the country had
+an interest in it, it would lose all of its evil.</p>
+<p>To young people, this is all dry enough. They like to think of
+spending money, not of saving it. But it is not at all dry to their
+elders. It is what St. Beuve said of literary enjoyment, a
+&ldquo;pure d&eacute;lice du go&ucirc;t et du coeur dans la
+maturit&eacute;.&rdquo; It is a &ldquo;Pleasure of the
+Imagination&rdquo; that can be appreciated only by those like the
+old Scottish lawyer, who justified his penurious prudence by saying
+that he had shaken hands with poverty up to the elbow when he was
+young, and had no intention to renew the acquaintance. We have not,
+at least in the Northern part of our country, had the terrible
+experiences of the people of Europe, who are even now hiding their
+money in a vague apprehension of danger, inherited from centuries
+of rapine; but there are few of those who have given hostages to
+fortune who have not had many hours, and <a id="page_77" name=
+"page_77"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 77]</span>even years, of
+distressing anxiety concerning the future of their families. The
+greater the provision made against this heart-corroding care by a
+people, the happier should that people be.</p>
+<p>It seems so unselfish a luxury to revel in these comfortable
+statistics, that one is tempted to broaden his vision, and take in
+the four or five billions of assets heaped up by the six or seven
+millions of people who have insured their lives, and the one
+hundred and fifty or two hundred millions of dollars paid out
+yearly to lighten the distress attending the death of husbands and
+fathers of families,&mdash;to say nothing of a much greater sum
+repaid policy-holders. In many cases, happily, death causes no
+actual want; but against these cases we may offset the stupendous
+number of policies insuring against industrial accidents, possibly
+twenty-five millions of them, representing one quarter of the
+people of the country&mdash;for we may be sure that there are few
+payments made under these policies that do not actually alleviate
+suffering. We have here a colossal aggregate of altruism on the
+part of the policy-holders, an intangible national asset grander
+than all the material wealth which it represents; for the sordid
+element in all these savings is necessarily small. There is a point
+in the old story of the gambler on the Mississippi steamboat who
+listened attentively to the persuasive arguments of a
+life-insurance agent; he &ldquo;allowed&rdquo; that he was willing
+to bet on almost any kind of game, but declined to take a hand in
+one where he had to die to win. It is painful to think of the
+infinity of petty economies, of all the grievous deprivations, the
+positive hardships, undergone in so many millions of families, day
+by day, and year by year, to secure these policies of insurance;
+but, as Plato said, &ldquo;the good is difficult.&rdquo; There is
+no heroism where there is no self-sacrifice. Whoever is disquieted
+by the growth of &ldquo;materialism&rdquo; may be relieved by
+reflecting that when so many millions of people are denying
+themselves present enjoyments in order that <a id="page_78" name=
+"page_78"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 78]</span>others may be
+spared pain in the future, there is such a leaven of high motive
+among us as may leaven the whole lump.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>It would be easy to keep on in this exalted strain, but perhaps
+it is a little too much in the style of a life-insurance
+advertisement. We may correct any such impression, by changing our
+point of view. When we consider the difficulties and the hindrances
+in the way of laying up these savings, while the moral effect of
+the self-sacrifice hitherto involved is enhanced, the question
+comes up whether this altruistic exertion can be maintained in the
+future. How many of the ten millions of depositors in the savings
+banks have considered that their rulers at Washington give away
+every year in military pensions a sum equal to all, and more than
+all, the income earned by the four billions of dollars in the
+banks? When after many years, it seemed that this burden might at
+last begin to be lightened, it was suddenly increased by the last
+Congress perhaps thirty millions a year. Why should so many people
+scrimp, year in and year out, when the equivalent of all the toil
+and all the self-denial is thus swept away?</p>
+<p>Senator Aldrich has told the country that its affairs could be
+carried on for three hundred millions of dollars a year less than
+it now pays. He is a very competent witness, and no one has
+contradicted him. If the attempt had been made, he could perhaps
+have shown&mdash;he could certainly show now&mdash;that three
+hundred millions was an understatement. But this sum is nearly
+equal to the income earned by the investments of all the savings
+banks and all the life-insurance companies of the country. If our
+rulers had borrowed ten billions of dollars at three per cent. and
+had wasted it all, the country would be financially about where it
+is now. They have not borrowed this ten billions of dollars, but if
+Mr. Aldrich is right, they are spending the interest on it. They
+have in effect mortgaged the wealth of the people to the extent
+<a id="page_79" name="page_79"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+79]</span>of all their deposits in the savings banks, and all their
+investments in life-insurance companies, and are wasting the income
+of these funds faster than it is earned. If anyone thinks this is
+stating the case too strongly, he may add the waste of our state
+and municipal rulers to that of those at Washington, and Mr.
+Aldrich&rsquo;s figure will seem moderate enough.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>People who are comfortably off will reply to all this that we
+are getting on pretty well, and seem to be on the whole doing
+better from year to year. There is a well known passage in
+Macaulay&rsquo;s History which may be thought to give support to
+optimism of this kind. &ldquo;No ordinary misfortune,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a
+nation wretched as the constant progress of physical knowledge, and
+the constant effort of every man to better his condition will do to
+make a nation prosperous.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>No one will deny that the history of England justifies this
+statement; but let us remember the reason that Macaulay gave for
+this insuperable prosperity. &ldquo;Every man has felt entire
+confidence that the State would protect him in the possession of
+what had been earned by his diligence and hoarded by his
+self-denial.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is impossible to maintain that every man now feels this
+entire confidence. The income &ldquo;earned by his diligence&rdquo;
+is henceforth to be taxed at a progressive rate, and the demagogues
+are already complaining that the rate is not high enough. The
+inheritance of his family, &ldquo;hoarded by his
+self-denial,&rdquo; protected by the State until within a few
+years, now pays taxes which amount to the interest on a billion of
+dollars. We are assured by a railroad officer that three measures
+of legislation have increased the expenses of his corporation alone
+by a sum equal to the interest on $32,000,000, with no appreciable
+benefit to the public. The number of such laws is incalculable, and
+the cost of complying with them has become <a id="page_80" name=
+"page_80"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 80]</span>an almost
+intolerable burden. The income of the railroads declines, while
+their taxes increase, in some cases two or three fold. Lawyers and
+office holders thrive and are cheerful; investors suffer and
+tremble.</p>
+<p>The people of New York seem just now to be in a way to find out
+how the enormous taxes which their rulers have levied on them are
+expended; but New York has no monopoly of corrupt rulers, and the
+cost of investigating extravagance is itself extravagant. And yet
+people wonder at the increased cost of living! Unfortunately the
+oppressions of government do worse than discourage business
+enterprise; they tend to demoralize society. There are too many men
+who hesitate to marry because they do not have confidence in the
+future, too many married people who do not dare to have more than
+one or two children, if they dare to have any, to make it possible
+to maintain that there is now no dread of more than ordinary
+misgovernment.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>It is difficult to ascertain the total wealth of the country.
+The census bureau is notoriously dilatory. Its latest estimate was
+for 1904, when this aggregate was computed to be $107,000,000,000,
+or about $1,300 <em>per caput</em>. Assuming this ratio, the wealth
+of our people should now be over $120,000,000,000; but the figures
+are largely conjectural. It happens, however, that we possess some
+figures that are altogether trustworthy. In the year 1909 the
+Federal Government imposed a tax of one per cent. on the net income
+of every corporation, joint stock company, or association,
+including insurance companies, organized for profit, whenever this
+net income is over $5,000. There are some other exemptions, but
+they are not sufficient to demand consideration, and may be
+disregarded. Now we may be absolutely certain of one thing, and
+that is that the net income of those concerns will not be
+overestimated. Their net income may be more than what they report
+for the purposes of taxation, <a id="page_81" name=
+"page_81"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 81]</span>but it surely
+cannot be less. For the past year it seems probable that this tax
+will produce nearly thirty-five millions of dollars net income,
+after deducting all expenses, losses, depreciation, interest on
+debts and on deposits paid by banks, and dividends from other
+companies subject to the tax.</p>
+<p>It may be more, but it cannot be less. Here our certainty ends.
+Guesses will vary, but in view of what we know in a general way of
+the conditions of business during the past year, we may perhaps
+venture to assume that the net income of these concerns is six per
+cent. of their real wealth. If this assumption is correct, their
+total wealth is 60 billions of dollars, or one half of the total
+wealth of the nation.</p>
+<p>This estimate may be confirmed to some extent by other
+statistics. Calling the physical value of the railroads fourteen
+billions, their net earnings at five per cent. would be 700
+millions, which corresponds well enough with the figures of the
+government, although some railroad men would make their net
+earnings much less. We do not know the net income of the untaxed
+corporations. Their returns would show its amount, but the
+government does not supply the information. As there must be now
+nearly 250,000 such corporations, if their average income is only
+$2,000 a year, the total could be $500,000,000. If it is $4,000,
+their income would be almost a billion dollars. On a 5 per cent.
+basis, the wealth of these corporations would be nearly 20 billion
+dollars. It seems, on the whole, that the wealth held by
+corporations is probably more than half our total wealth rather
+than less.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>The bearing of these figures on our subject is now apparent. All
+of this property is disfranchised. It is, economically, to a very
+great extent disfranchised; politically, it is altogether
+disfranchised. What I mean by this is that the owners of this
+wealth, as owners, have very little to say, and nothing to do,
+about its care and management. Probably <a id="page_82" name=
+"page_82"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 82]</span>more than half of
+our people are directly or indirectly interested in it as owners.
+They have been attracted by a desire to share, however humbly, in
+big and famous enterprises, by the freedom from liability of the
+portion of their estates outside the particular investments, and by
+the freedom at death or withdrawal of associates from appraisals
+and accountings and probable closing of the business, as is the
+inevitable practice in mere partnerships. Two centuries ago people
+who saved money could hardly find ways to invest it. The practice
+of incorporation has enormously increased our wealth by putting a
+stop to hoarding without interest, stimulating saving, and
+broadening industry. The number of individual owners of the bonds
+and stocks of corporations is incalculable, and their holdings
+added to those of savings banks, insurance companies, trust
+companies and other fiduciary institutions, churches, hospitals,
+and colleges, make up a total of almost fabulous extent. It is true
+that large sums are loaned to persons, and on mortgages of real
+estate; but for most people such investments are not desirable or
+convenient, and they are altogether inadequate to absorb the vast
+sums that are available. In fact probably most investments of this
+character are now made by corporations who gather the savings of
+little depositors and premium payers; and it would cost much more
+to make them in any other way.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Corporations, therefore, are necessary, but they necessarily
+separate the ownership of wealth from its management. To invest is
+generally to entrust your money to another, and those who invest in
+corporations, unless they control them, are economically
+disfranchised, because the stockholders in all large corporations
+almost never influence the management of their property, and as a
+rule do not know anything about it. They don&rsquo;t because they
+can&rsquo;t. A few years ago a very large number of people were
+much worried by the exposure of some <a id="page_83" name=
+"page_83"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 83]</span>scandalous doings
+by the managers of certain great life-insurance companies. They
+would have been very glad to combine and choose better managers if
+they could; but they couldn&rsquo;t. Laws were passed for the
+purpose of enabling the policy-holders to select their trustees,
+but the only result has been a ridiculous and rather expensive
+fiasco. As in politics, the rank and file select the managers
+selected for them by a few men who understand the situation. When
+many thousands of people own stock in a concern, they live all over
+this continent and in foreign parts, and it is a physical
+impossibility to bring them together. They do not know one another,
+and very few of them know much about the affairs of the concern,
+and if they know anything of the candidates that may be suggested,
+it is generally only by hearsay.</p>
+<p>How many of the eighty-eight thousand stockholders in the
+Pennsylvania Railroad, for instance, have ever attended a meeting?
+For that matter, how many of them have ever studied the report of
+the railroad? Not one in ten could spare the time to read it,
+perhaps not one in a hundred could master it. The report may be
+read in a few hours; it would take as many months, if not years to
+verify it. Very nearly half these stockholders are women; the
+average holding is 120 shares, (par $50), and one-sixth of the
+stockholders own less than 10 shares each. Ten thousand of them are
+abroad. Much stock is held by trustees, whose beneficiaries are
+probably very numerous, and totally incompetent to understand
+railroad management. There are also more than twenty thousand
+holders of stock in subsidiary corporations controlled by the
+Pennsylvania Railroad. No one can tell the number of bondholders;
+perhaps there are as many as there are employees, making an
+aggregate of almost half a million.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Sometimes trustees abuse their office; but on the whole they
+have done pretty well, and whether they have or not, <a id=
+"page_84" name="page_84"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+84]</span>there is no other way in which large capitals can be
+managed. All civilization rests on confidence. Such a vast fabric
+could not be built on confidence unless confidence was deserved. As
+a matter of fact, a man invests his money just as he invests in a
+surgeon. He does not think of directing the surgeon how to operate.
+If the operation does not succeed, he tries another surgeon next
+time&mdash;if there is a next time.</p>
+<p>Of course all this applies chiefly to the large corporations.
+There are many thousands of small ones, having few stockholders,
+who reside where the business is established. These stockholders
+know more or less of the details of the business; they can judge to
+some extent how it is carried on, they are often acquainted with
+the managers, or are the managers themselves, and if not, they are
+able sometimes to combine and change the management. And I will
+anticipate a little and say here that the property of such a
+corporation located in a small town is often to some extent not
+politically disfranchised, because the people of the town
+understand that they are directly interested in the prosperity of
+the business. But it seems almost impossible for the stockholders
+to change the management of a large corporation. It has been done a
+few times. Mr. Harriman notoriously did it by using the money of
+one concern to buy the stock of another, and that is almost the
+only way in which it has been done. No doubt there has been an
+immense deal of combination which has resulted in change of
+management, but this has not been because the stockholders combined
+to oust their trustees, but because they thought they saw a good
+chance to sell their stock to those who would pay high for the
+control, or to participate in these combinations. There have been a
+good many cases where an enterprising speculator has managed to get
+hold of a majority of the stock and change the control, and
+powerful bankers can sometimes get proxies enough to put a stop to
+bad management; but spontaneous movements of this kind <a id=
+"page_85" name="page_85"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 85]</span>on
+the part of the mass of the stockholders are extremely rare.</p>
+<p>Beyond dispute then, the great mass of wealth held by
+corporations is almost wholly under the control of their managers,
+and not the mass of the owners. Mr. Hill has recently testified
+that he never knew a stockholder to attend a meeting except to make
+trouble; by which he perhaps meant that when a single stockholder
+appeared, it was to get paid for not making trouble.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>It need hardly be said that no such thing as legitimate
+representation of corporate wealth is known in our politics, and
+the representation of individual wealth is very limited. The theory
+of government by manhood suffrage, so far as there is any theory,
+is now entirely personal. In early times the freemen of the town,
+or little commune, met and legislated according to their needs. To
+be a freeman one had to own property; to &ldquo;have a stake in the
+country.&rdquo; Nowadays nearly all the men who have no property
+can vote, and some that have property cannot. In England, they are
+doing away with &ldquo;plural voters.&rdquo; Heretofore it was
+thought just, when a man owned land in more than one place, that he
+should have his say in the government of all; but this is now
+forbidden. The right was never recognized in this country, partly
+because formerly men seldom owned property in two places, but as
+transportation improved the conditions changed. The
+&ldquo;commuters&rdquo; are legion. Their business and their
+capital are under one jurisdiction and their dwellings and families
+under another; but they can vote in only one. Many thousands of men
+own houses in both city and country. They could help in the
+government of both, but are disfranchised in one or the other.
+Under our complicated systems of registration, they are often
+disfranchised at both.</p>
+<p>Of course when population increases, the town meeting becomes a
+physical impossibility. There is no more direct <a id="page_86"
+name="page_86"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 86]</span>legislation;
+it has to be delegated. The power is transferred to the city
+councils, and to the state and national legislatures. In other
+words, the interests of the owners of wealth are put in charge of
+trustees. According to Hamilton, the theory of our government is
+that the people will &ldquo;naturally&rdquo; choose the wisest of
+their number to represent them. There is not much basis for this
+assumption. Rousseau scouted it. According to him, the
+<em>volont&eacute; g&eacute;n&eacute;rale</em> could be ascertained
+only in the town meeting, and he seriously maintained that the
+ideal government for the Roman empire was by the gangs of rioters
+that the politicians marshalled in the Forum at Rome under the name
+of <em>comitia</em>. All that the theory of our government
+requires, is that our rulers shall be such men as are designated by
+the majority of the voters. That they should be wise and good men
+may accord with the theory of aristocracy; it is no part of the
+theory of democracy, and is certainly a very small part of the
+practice.</p>
+<p>When I say that half of the property of this country is
+disfranchised, I mean that the nature of this property is such that
+it is peculiarly subject to the power of rulers, and that the
+owners of it have hardly any legitimate way of defending it against
+the arbitrary exercise of this power. The corporation is created by
+the legislature; men cannot combine their capitals and avoid
+unlimited liability for the debts of the combination, unless the
+law specifically authorizes the proceeding. Of course, if the
+legislature has power to make such grants, it must have power to
+alter them. In short, property held by a corporation is held at the
+will of the legislature, and in a way and to an extent that
+property held by an individual is not. It is not very easy for the
+legislature to plunder or blackmail individuals, even when they are
+disfranchised, because it has to be done by general laws, and
+direct methods arouse direct opposition. But, as we have seen,
+stockholders as a class cannot defend their rights, and as things
+are now, their trustees cannot have much to say concerning <a id=
+"page_87" name="page_87"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 87]</span>the
+laws that affect their property. Managers of large corporations are
+now commonly denounced as unfit to be legislators, and are
+practically excluded from the halls of legislation. In some states
+they are even specifically disfranchised, so far as holding office
+is concerned, and, under the new despotism, ironically dubbed the
+new freedom, every man whose wealth and ability make his aid
+important to many enterprises, is to be forbidden to participate in
+more than one. Yet property is almost entirely subject to the
+disposition of the legislature! not entirely, for the courts afford
+some protection; but even this is now threatened: we may
+&ldquo;progress&rdquo; so far as to make it unconstitutional for a
+judge to declare any law unconstitutional.</p>
+<p>It goes without saying that half the property of the country
+will not submit to spoliation without a struggle. If it cannot have
+representation legitimately, it will try to get it illegitimately
+or extra legitimately. The managers of corporations have in the
+past found many ways to influence legislation. Despite the
+prejudices against them, some of them have had themselves chosen as
+legislators; even as judges. Some have brought about the election
+of legislators who would act in their favor, and have even bribed
+legislators. Until recently it was not even unlawful for these
+managers to use the money of their stockholders in political
+contributions; some managers acted on the &ldquo;Good Lord! Good
+Devil!&rdquo; principle. Probably most of the politicians paid no
+railroad fares. Many of them got passes for their families and
+their friends; and it was certainly to be expected that they should
+listen to the requests of those who granted these favors. The
+situation became grotesque when a great ruler, seeking a nomination
+to office with the proclaimed purpose of enforcing the laws against
+rebates and passes, required the railroad managers to furnish him
+free transportation on his righteous mission.</p>
+<p>There were obvious objections to these practices, and <a id=
+"page_88" name="page_88"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+88]</span>public opinion finally compelled our rulers to pass laws
+prohibiting them. Theoretically the managers of corporations are
+now effectually disfranchised. They dare not offer themselves as
+candidates for office. They scarcely dare to favor, even secretly,
+the choice of rulers who will listen to them. Fortunately, however,
+they hardly longer dare to offer bribes. Anyone on friendly terms
+with them is politically a suspicious character. Any lawyer who has
+been employed by them becomes unavailable as a candidate for
+office. Our legislators, as was to be expected, at once showed the
+effect of release from restraint. It has been uncharitably said
+that in revenge for the loss of their passes and other favors, they
+attacked the railroads; but there has been considerable voting of
+more mileage, and our congressmen at least voted themselves ample
+indemnity in larger salaries, and they opened fire on corporations
+in general and railroads in particular, with a broadside of
+statutes. Against this fire the property of millions of small
+holders in the corporations has been almost defenceless. Some of
+these statutes are so drawn that the plain business man does not
+know whether he is a criminal or not; if he could afford to consult
+the best of lawyers it would not help him much. The only safe
+course to pursue is to agree with the adversary quickly; to plead
+guilty to whatever charge is made, and beg for mercy. That one is
+innocent is immaterial. The expense of litigation is nothing to the
+rulers of the United States; but it may be ruinous to their
+subjects. The cost of the commissions and investigations and
+prosecutions of the last few years has been enormous. Only lawyers
+can contemplate it without consternation.</p>
+<p>True, the managers of large corporations can make their protests
+heard. They can publish their pleas in the newspapers, and issue
+pamphlets, and they can appear before committees and commissions,
+and submit arguments. The managers of small corporations cannot
+afford such measures. You might as well refer a servant-girl who
+couldn&rsquo;t <a id="page_89" name="page_89"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 89]</span>collect her wages, to the Hague Tribunal, as
+to send a plain business man to Washington to plead his cause.</p>
+<p>The animus of these statutes is hostility to great corporations.
+But it is impossible to legislate against great corporations
+without hitting the small ones. Take the case of the recent
+corporation income tax; the 244,000 corporations exempt from the
+tax had to make out their inventories and keep their books and
+report their proceedings precisely as if they were liable to the
+tax. A fine of from $1,000 to $10,000 and a 50 per cent. increased
+assessment were the penalties for failure. But the cost of
+complying with all the requirements of the law, for a corporation
+having an income of two or three thousand dollars, cannot be
+figured at much less than the tax. Many corporations have no net
+income. The managers of these concerns are not expert book-keepers,
+and their returns must be in many cases so inaccurate as to expose
+them to prosecution if the game were worth the candle. If we assume
+that the average cost of making out the return is only ten dollars,
+we have a bill of $2,400,000, which the stockholders, or the
+employees, or the customers, must pay for the privilege of
+demonstrating that the small corporations are not liable to pay
+anything at all.</p>
+<p>The corporation income tax law was really an act of popular
+dislike of corporations exercising great monopolies. Grouping all
+the little corporations with them was an absurdity and a
+cruelty.</p>
+<p>Corporations have no feelings. They are not wounded by the
+hostility of legislatures. The managers of corporations of large
+capital have feelings, and some of them are wounded in their pride
+by this hostility. But they need not suffer in their pockets. They
+are abundantly able to protect their own property; they know how to
+make money on the short side of the market as well as the long
+side. But the managers of the concerns of small capital are seldom
+able to do this. Oppressive laws cause suffering to them, to the
+mere holders of stock in all corporations, <a id="page_90" name=
+"page_90"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 90]</span>to the creditors
+of all, to the employees, and to the customers. Many of these laws
+profess to be meant to favor small people as against big
+people&mdash;to restrain the rich corporations so that the poor
+ones may have more liberty. There is no evidence to show that this
+result is attained, or that the country would be better off if it
+were attained. But there is plenty of evidence to show that half
+the people of the country are suffering from these legislative
+attacks on their property. The men who manage the great
+corporations, whatever their faults, are men of enterprise and
+courage. They are the true progressives; the prosperity that they
+diffuse among the whole people is ordinarily more than can be
+destroyed by our progressive politicians. They are now beginning to
+feel that their rulers are discriminating against them as a class,
+and are uneasy and disheartened, and reluctant to embark in new
+enterprises; and the progress of the country is halted by their
+apprehension. It is not the rich who suffer most: it is &ldquo;the
+unemployed,&rdquo; and the millions of dumb, helpless, struggling
+thrifty men and women whose hard earned savings constitute a large
+part of the capital of the corporations; and who are already
+alarmed at the shrinking value of these savings. It is, perhaps
+most of all, the mass of ignorant unthrifty poor, whose chief
+wealth is the wages paid them by the corporations which they are
+taught to look on as their oppressors.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_91" name="page_91"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+91]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Railway" name="Railway"></a>Railway Junctions</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>In his illuminating essay on <em>The Lantern-Bearers</em>,
+Stevenson complains of the vacuity of that view of life which he
+finds expressed in the pages of most realistic writers. &ldquo;This
+harping on life&rsquo;s dulness and man&rsquo;s meanness is a loud
+profession of incompetence; it is one of two things: the cry of the
+blind eye, <em>I cannot see</em>, or the complaint of the dumb
+tongue, <em>I cannot utter</em>.&rdquo; And then, with a fine
+flourish, he declares:&mdash;&ldquo;If I had no better hope than to
+continue to revolve among the dreary and petty businesses, and to
+be moved by the paltry hopes and fears with which they surround and
+animate their heroes, I declare I would die now. But there has
+never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet; if it were spent
+waiting at a railway junction, I would have some scattering
+thoughts, I could count some grains of memory, compared to which
+the whole of one of these romances seems but dross.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If it were spent waiting at a railway junction&rdquo;
+&hellip; Here, with his instinct for the perfect phrase, Stevenson
+has pointed a finger at the one experience which is commonly
+accepted as the acme of imaginable dulness. This man, who could be
+happy at a railway junction, could not have found a prouder way of
+boasting to posterity that he had never &ldquo;faltered more or
+less in his great task of happiness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is because railway junctions are the most unpopular places in
+the world that they have been singled out for praise in
+<span class="sc">The Unpopular Review</span>. Poor places, lonely
+and forlorn, cursed by so many, celebrated by so few,&mdash;surely
+they have waited over-long for an apologist&hellip;. But first of
+all, in order to be fair, we must consider the customary view of
+these points of punctuation in the text of travel.</p>
+<p><a id="page_92" name="page_92"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+92]</span>Far up in Vermont, at a point vaguely to the east of
+Burlington, there is a place called Essex Junction. It consists of
+a dismal shed of a station, a bewildering wilderness of tracks, and
+an adjacent cemetery, thickly populated (according to a local
+legend) with the bodies of people who have died of old age while
+waiting for their trains. This elegiac locality was visited, many
+years ago, by the Honorable E.J. Phelps, once ambassador of the
+United States to the court of St. James&rsquo;s. He was allotted
+several hours for the contemplation of the cemetery; and his
+consequent meditations moved him to the composition of a poem, in
+four stanzas, which is a little classic of its kind. Space is
+lacking for a quotation of more than the initial stanza; but the
+taste of a poem, as of a pie, may conveniently be judged from a
+quadrant of the whole.&mdash;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>With saddened face and battered hat</p>
+<p class="i2">And eye that told of blank despair,</p>
+<p>On wooden bench the traveller sat,</p>
+<p class="i2">Cursing the fate that brought him there.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nine hours,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve lingered
+here</p>
+<p class="i2">With thoughts intent on distant homes,</p>
+<p>Waiting for that delusive train</p>
+<p class="i2">That, always coming, never comes:</p>
+<p class="i4">Till weary, worn,</p>
+<p class="i4">Distressed, forlorn,</p>
+<p>And paralyzed in every function!</p>
+<p class="i4">I hope in hell</p>
+<p class="i4">His soul may dwell</p>
+<p>Who first invented Essex Junction!&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>It was apparently the purpose of the writer to convey the
+impression that his period of waiting had been passed without
+pleasure; but yet we may easily confute him with another quotation
+from <em>The Lantern-Bearers</em>. &ldquo;One pleasure at
+least,&rdquo; says Stevenson, &ldquo;he tasted to the
+full&mdash;his work is there to prove it&mdash;the keen pleasure of
+successful literary composition.&rdquo; Was this honorable author
+ever moved to such eloquence by an audience with Queen <a id=
+"page_93" name="page_93"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+93]</span>Victoria? Never; so far as we know. Was not Essex
+Junction, therefore, a more inspiring spot than Buckingham Palace?
+Undeniably. Then, why complain of Essex Junction?</p>
+<p>For, indeed, the pleasure that we take from places is nothing
+more nor less than the pleasure we put into them. A person
+predisposed to boredom can be bored in the very nave of Amiens; and
+a person predisposed to happiness can be happy even in Camden, New
+Jersey. I know: for I have watched American tourists in Amiens; and
+once, when I had gone to Camden, to visit Walt Whitman in his
+granite tomb, I was wakened to a strange exhilaration, and wandered
+all about that little dust-heap of a city amazing the inhabitants
+with a happiness that required them to smile. &ldquo;All
+architecture,&rdquo; said Whitman, &ldquo;is what you do to it when
+you look upon it;&hellip; all music is what awakes from you when
+you are reminded by the instruments&rdquo;: and I must have had
+this passage singing in my blood when I enjoyed that monstrous
+courthouse dome which stands up like a mushroom in the midst of
+Camden.</p>
+<p>I have never been to Essex Junction; but I should like to go
+there&mdash;just to see (in Whitman&rsquo;s words) what I could do
+to it. Imagine it upon a windy night of winter, when a hundred
+discommoded passengers are turned out, grumbling, underneath the
+stars,&mdash;coughing invalids, and kicking infants, and indignant
+citizens, scrambling haphazard among tottering trunks, and picking
+their way from train to train. Imagine their faces, their voices,
+their gesticulations: here, indeed, you will see more than a
+theatre-full of characters. Or, if human beings do not interest
+you, imagine the mysterious gleam of yellow windows veiled behind a
+drift of intermingled smoke and steam. Listen, also, to the clang
+of bells, the throb and puff of the engines, and the shrill shriek
+of their whistles. Or peer into the station-shed, made stuffy by
+the breath of many loiterers; and contrast their death in life with
+<a id="page_94" name="page_94"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+94]</span>the life in death of those others who loiter through
+eternity beneath the gravestones of the cemetery. I can imagine
+being happy with all this (and even writing a paragraph about it
+afterwards): but, above all, I should like to gather those hundred
+discommoded passengers upon the station-platform, and to rehearse
+and lead them in a solemn chant of the refrain of Phelps&rsquo;s
+poem. Imagine a hundred voices singing lustily in unison,</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">&ldquo;I hope in hell</p>
+<p class="i4">His soul may dwell</p>
+<p>Who first invented Essex Junction,&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>under the vast cathedral vaulting of the night, until the
+adjacent dead should seem to stand up in their graves and join the
+anthem of anathema&hellip;. Who is there so bold to tell me that
+enjoyment is impossible in such a place as this?</p>
+<p>There is very little difference between places, after all: the
+true difference is between the people who regard them. I should
+rather read a description of Hoboken by Rudyard Kipling than a
+description of Florence by some New England schoolmarm. To the
+poet, all places are poetical; to the adventurous, all places are
+teeming with adventure: and to experience a lack of joy in any
+place is merely a sign of sluggish blood in the beholder.</p>
+<p>So, at least, it seems to me; for not otherwise can I explain
+the fact that, like my beloved R.L.S., I have always enjoyed
+waiting at railway junctions. I love not merely the marching
+phrases, but also the commas and the semi-colons of a
+journey,&mdash;those mystic moments when &ldquo;we look before and
+after&rdquo; and need not &ldquo;pine for what is not.&rdquo; I
+have never done much waiting in America, which is in the main a
+country of express trains, that hurl their lighted windows through
+the night like what Mr. Kipling calls &ldquo;a damned hotel;&rdquo;
+but there is scarcely a country of Europe except Russia whose
+railway junctions <a id="page_95" name="page_95"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 95]</span>are unknown to me. In many of these little
+nameless places I have experienced memorable hours: and because the
+less enthusiastic Baedeker has neglected to star and double-star
+them, I have always wanted to praise them, in print somewhat larger
+than his own. Space is lacking in the present article for a
+complete guide to all the railway junctions of Europe; but I should
+like to commemorate a few, in gratitude for what befell me
+there.</p>
+<p>There is a junction in Bavaria whose name I have forgotten; but
+it is very near Rothenburg, the most picturesquely medieval of all
+German cities. It consists merely of a station and two intersecting
+tracks. When you enter the station, you observe what seems to be a
+lunch-counter; but if you step up to it and innocently order food,
+a buxom girl informs you that no food is ever served
+there&mdash;and then everybody laughs. This pleasant cachinnation
+attracts your attention to the assembled company. It consists of
+many peasants, in their native costumes (which any painter would be
+willing to journey many miles to see), who are enjoying the
+delicious experience of travel. They are great travelers, these
+peasants. Once a month they take the train to Rothenburg, and once
+a month they journey home again, to talk of the experience for
+thirty days. All of them have heard of Nuremberg [which is actually
+less than a hundred miles away],&mdash;that vast and wonderful
+metropolis, so far, so very far, beyond the ultimate horizon of
+their lives. They would like to see it some day&mdash;as I should
+like to see the Taj Mahal&mdash;but meanwhile they content
+themselves with the great adventure of going to Rothenburg,&mdash;a
+city that is really much more interesting, if they could only know.
+In the very midst of these congregated travelers, I casually set
+down a suit-case which was plastered over with many labels from
+many lands; and this suit-case affected them as I might be affected
+by a messenger from Mars. They spelled out many unfamiliar
+languages, and a murmur of amazement swept through <a id="page_96"
+name="page_96"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 96]</span>the entire
+company when one of them discovered that that suit-case had been to
+Morocco. Morocco, they assured me, was a place where black men rode
+on camels; and I had no heart to tell them that it was a country
+where white men rode on mules. Then another of these
+travelers&mdash;an old man, with a face like one of Albrecht
+D&uuml;rer&rsquo;s drawings&mdash;discovered a label that read
+&ldquo;Venezia.&rdquo; &ldquo;Is that,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;Venedig?&rdquo; with a little gasp. &ldquo;Yes;
+Venedig,&rdquo; I responded, &ldquo;where the streets are
+water.&rdquo; Slowly he removed his hat. &ldquo;Ach,
+Venedig!&rdquo; he sighed; and then he stooped down, and, with the
+uttermost solemnity, he kissed the label&hellip;. And then I
+understood the vast impulsion of that <em>wanderlust</em> which has
+pushed so many, many Germans southward, to overrun that golden city
+that is wedded to the sea. I have forgotten the name of that
+junction, as I said before; but I have never been so happy in
+Munich as in this lonely station where there is no food.</p>
+<p>Speaking of food reminds me of Bobadilla, in southern Spain.
+Bobadilla sounds as if it ought to be the name of a medieval town,
+with ghosts of gaunt imaginative knights riding forth to tilt with
+windmills; but there is no town at all at Bobadilla,&mdash;merely
+two railway restaurants set on either side of several intersecting
+tracks. For some mysterious reason, passengers from the four
+quarters of the compass&mdash;that is to say, from Cordoba,
+Granada, Algeciras, or Sevilla&mdash;are required to alight here,
+and eat, and change their trains. I remember Bobadilla as the place
+where you spend your counterfeit money. Many of the current coins
+of southern Spain are made of silver; and the rest are made of
+lead. For leaden five-peseta pieces there is a local name,
+&ldquo;Sevillan dollars,&rdquo; which ascribes their coinage to the
+crafty artisans of the capital of Andalucia. These pieces, which
+are plentiful, are just as good as silver dollars&mdash;when you
+can persuade anyone to take them. The currency of any coinage,
+except gold, depends entirely upon the faith of those who pass and
+take <a id="page_97" name="page_97"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+97]</span>it and has no reference to its intrinsic value; and, in
+southern Spain, the leaden dollars serve as counters for just as
+many commercial transactions as the dollars made of silver. The
+only difference is that they are commonly accepted only after
+protest. In every Spanish shop, a slab of marble is built into the
+counter, and on this slab all proffered coins are slapped before
+they are accepted by the merchant. The traveler soon learns to
+fling his change upon the pavement; and many merry arguments ensue
+regarding the <em>timbre</em> of their ring. I remember how once,
+in the wondrous town of Ronda, when a beggar had imposed himself
+upon me as a guide and led me into a church where High Mass was
+being chanted, I gave him a peseta to get rid of him, and at once
+he flung it upon the pavement of the church, and chased it,
+listening, across the nave. Thereafter, he protested loudly that
+the piece was lead, and disrupted the intoning of the priests.
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;it is, in any case, a gift;
+if you don&rsquo;t want it, I will take it back&rdquo;: and he
+accepted it with bows and smiles, and allowed the weary priests to
+continue their intonings. But Bobadilla is the one place in
+southern Spain where money is never jingled upon marble. There is
+no time between trains to quibble over minor matters; and a
+&ldquo;Sevillan dollar&rdquo; accepted from one passenger is
+blithely handed to another who is traveling in the opposite
+direction. I discovered this fact on the occasion of my first visit
+to this interesting junction; and on subsequent occasions I have
+eaten my fill at one or another of the railway restaurants and
+settled the account with all the leaden money garnered up from
+weeks of traveling. There is surely no dishonesty in observing the
+custom of a country; and Bobadilla may be treasured by all
+travelers as a clearing-house for counterfeit coins.</p>
+<p>Again, in northern France, it was merely by some accident of
+changing trains that I discovered the lovely little town of Dol. I
+found myself in Saint Malo, for obvious reasons; and I desired to
+go to Mont Saint-Michel, for <a id="page_98" name=
+"page_98"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 98]</span>reasons still more
+obvious&mdash;Mother Poulard&rsquo;s omelettes, and architecture,
+and the incoming of the tide. Between them&mdash;the map told
+me&mdash;was situated Dol. I made inquiries of the porter in the
+Saint Malo hotel. He responded in English,&mdash;the English of
+<em>Ici on parle anglais</em>. &ldquo;Dol,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;is a dull place.&rdquo; He pronounced &ldquo;Dol&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;dull&rdquo; in precisely the same manner, and smiled at his
+sickly pun. I did not like that smile; and I alighted at the town
+that he despised. It was a little picture-book of a place, with
+many toy-like medieval houses clustered side by side around a
+market-place where peasants twisted the tails of cows. I strolled
+to the cathedral&mdash;and found myself mysteriously in England. It
+was a manly Norman edifice, sane and reticent and strong, set in a
+veritable English green, with little houses round about, reminding
+one of Salisbury. I entered the Cathedral; and found the nave to be
+composed in what is called in England the &ldquo;decorated&rdquo;
+style, and the choir to give hints of &ldquo;perpendicular.&rdquo;
+And then I remembered, with a start, that the ancestors of all that
+is most beautiful in England had migrated from Normandy, and that
+here I was visiting them in their antecedent home. &ldquo;Saxon and
+Norman and Dane are we;&rdquo; and all that was Norman in me
+reached forth with groping hands to grasp the palms of those old
+builders who reared this little sacrosanct cathedral in the far-off
+times when one dominion extended to either side of the English
+Channel.</p>
+<p>It was by a similar accident&mdash;desiring to transfer myself
+from Bourges to Auxerre&mdash;that I discovered the wonderful
+junction-town of Nevers, which, despite the guide-books, is more
+interesting than either of the others. It possesses a Gothic
+cathedral with an apse at either end, that looks as if two churches
+had collided and telescoped each other. There is also a Romanesque
+church at Nevers which is just as simple and as manly as either of
+the famous abbeys in Caen; and a chateau with rounded towers, which
+once belonged to Mazarin. But the most amusing <a id="page_99"
+name="page_99"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 99]</span>feature of
+this town is that, though Bourges packs itself to bed at ten
+o&rsquo;clock, Nevers sits blithely up till twelve, listening to
+music in caf&eacute;s, and watching moving-pictures; and this
+amiable incongruity in a medieval town makes you bless that
+complication of the time-table which has forced you, against
+forethought, to stay there over night.</p>
+<p>It is difficult for me to remember a railway junction in which
+there was nothing to do; but perhaps Pyrgos, in Greece, comes
+nearest to this description. At this point, you change cars on your
+way from Patras to Olympia. The town is made of mud: that is to
+say, the single-storied houses are built of unbaked clay. There is
+nothing to see in Pyrgos. But I amused myself by addressing the
+inhabitants, in the English language, with an eloquent oration that
+soon gathered them under my control; and thereafter I set a hundred
+of them at the pleasant task of trying to push the train for
+Olympia on its way to take me to the Hermes of Praxiteles. I knew
+no word of their language, nor did they of mine; but they
+understood that that train should be started, if human force were
+sufficient to help the cars upon their way: and finally, when the
+engine puffed and snorted with a tardily awakened sense of duty,
+the train was cheered by the entire population as I waved my hand
+from the rear platform and quoted one of Daniel Webster&rsquo;s
+perorations.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Is it&mdash;I have often wondered&mdash;so difficult as people
+think, to be happy in an hour &ldquo;spent waiting at a railway
+junction&rdquo;?&hellip; The kingdom of happiness is within us; or
+else there is no truth in our assumption that the will of man is
+free: and I am inclined to pity a man who, being happy in
+Amalfi&mdash;the loveliest of all the places I have ever
+seen&mdash;cannot also manage to be happy in Pyrgos&mdash;or in
+Essex Junction&mdash;and to communicate his happiness to his
+responsive fellow-travelers.</p>
+<p>The true enjoyment of traveling is to enjoy traveling; not to
+relish merely the places you are going to, but to <a id="page_100"
+name="page_100"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 100]</span>relish also
+the adventure of the going. The most difficult train-journey I
+remember is the twenty-hour trip from Lisbon to Sevilla, with a
+change of cars in the ghastly early morning at the border-town of
+Badajoz and another change at noon at the sun-baked, parched, and
+God-forsaken town of Merida; and yet I relish as red letters on my
+personal map of Spain a pleasant quarrel over the price of
+sandwiches at Badajoz and the way a muleteer of Merida flung a
+colored cloak over his shoulder and posed for an unconscious moment
+like a painting by Zuloaga.</p>
+<p>And this philosophy has a deeper application to life at large:
+for all life may be figured as a journey, and few there are who are
+natively equipped for the enjoyment of all the waste and waiting
+places on the way. The minds of most people are so fixed upon the
+storied capitals that are featured in those works of fiction known
+as guidebooks that they are impeded from enjoying the minor
+stations on their journey. &ldquo;Hurry me to Sevilla,&rdquo; cries
+the traveler&mdash;and misses the sight of my muleteer of Merida.
+In America, our society is crammed with people who fail to enjoy
+life on five thousand a year because their minds are fixed upon
+that distant time when they hope to enjoy life on twenty thousand a
+year. And if ever they attain that twenty thousand they will not
+enjoy it either; but will merely peer forward to a hypothetical
+enjoyment at fifty thousand a year. And this is the essence of
+their tragedy:&mdash;they have not learned to wait with
+happiness.</p>
+<p>Is there any reason for this inordinate ambition to &ldquo;get
+on&rdquo;? Louis Stevenson was happier, as a small boy with a
+bull&rsquo;s-eye lantern at his belt, than any king upon his
+throne. The secret of enjoyment is to learn to look about us, to
+value what our destiny has given us, to transform it into magic by
+some contributory gift of poetry or humor, to consider with
+contentment the lilies of the field. The zest of life is in the
+living of it; and &ldquo;to travel hopefully is a better thing than
+to arrive.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>How often, in the roaring and tumultuary tide of life, <a id=
+"page_101" name="page_101"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+101]</span>we meet a man who sighs, &ldquo;If only I could have a
+single day in which there was nothing that I had to do, nothing
+even that I had to think of, how happy I should be!&rdquo; and yet
+this self-same man, if set down at a railway junction, will at once
+bestir himself to seek something to think of, something to do, and
+will spurn the gift of leisure. The incessant hurry of our current
+life has tragically lured us to forget the art of loitering. We are
+no longer able&mdash;like Wordsworth, on his &ldquo;old gray
+stone&rdquo;&mdash;to sit upon a trunk at some railway junction of
+our lives and listen reverently to the &ldquo;mighty sum of things
+forever speaking.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>One of the loveliest women I have ever known&mdash;the late
+Alison Cunningham&mdash;told me a little anecdote of the author of
+<em>The Lantern-Bearers</em> which, so far as I know, has never yet
+been published. When little Louis was about five years old, he did
+something naughty, and Cummy stood him up in a corner and told him
+he would have to stay there for ten minutes. Then she left the
+room. At the end of the allotted period, she returned and said,
+&ldquo;Time&rsquo;s up, Master Lou: you may come out now.&rdquo;
+But the little boy stood motionless in his penitential corner.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s enough: time&rsquo;s up,&rdquo; repeated Cummy.
+And then the child mystically raised his hand, and with a strange
+light in his eyes, &ldquo;Hush&hellip;,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m telling myself a story&hellip;.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And, in the <em>Christian Morals</em> of Sir Thomas Browne, we
+may read the following passage:&mdash;&ldquo;He who must needs have
+company, must needs have sometimes bad company. Be able to be
+alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of
+thyself; nor be only content, but delight to be alone and single
+with Omnipresency. He who is thus prepared, the day is not uneasy
+nor the night black unto him. Darkness may bound his eyes, not his
+imagination. In his bed he may lie, like Pompey and his sons, in
+all quarters of the earth; may speculate the universe, and enjoy
+the whole world in the hermitage of himself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a id="page_102" name="page_102"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+102]</span>Wordsworth sitting quiescent and receptive in a lakeside
+landscape, little Louis standing in a corner, Sir Thomas Browne
+enjoying the whole world in the hermitage of himself:&mdash;what a
+rebuke is offered by these images to those who fret and fume away
+the leisure that is granted them at all the waiting places of their
+lives!&hellip; These disgruntled travelers <em>nel mezzo del cammin
+di nostra vita</em> miss their privilege and duty of enjoying life
+merely because they miss the point that life is, in itself,
+enjoyable. They are so busy reading guide-books to the vague beyond
+that they shut their minds to all that may be going on about them,
+or within them, at way-stations. They close their eyes and ears to
+the immediate. They veto all perception of the here and now. But
+life itself is always here and now; and, truly to enjoy it, we must
+learn to look forever with unfaltering eyes into the bright face of
+immediacy.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>And there is another point about railway junctions that reveals
+an important application to the larger journey of our life. A
+friend of mine, who is a great lover of painting, had occasion once
+(and only once) to change trains at Basle, in the course of a
+journey from Lucerne to Heidelberg. He had to wait two hours at
+this railway junction; and this time he pleasantly expended in
+eating many dishes at a restaurant, and amusing the lax porters by
+teaching them a method of economizing energy in shifting trunks. It
+should be noted that this friend of mine was not trying to
+&ldquo;kill time;&rdquo; for, like all genuine humanitarians, he of
+course regards that tragic process as the least excusable of
+murders. He was entirely happy for two hours in that railway
+station. But&mdash;having packed his guide-book in a trunk&mdash;it
+was not until he reached Darmstadt, some days later, that he
+discovered that several of the very greatest works of Holbein are
+now resident in Basle. The two hours that he had spent playing and
+eating might have been devoted to an examination <a id="page_103"
+name="page_103"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 103]</span>of many
+masterpieces of that art which, more than any other, he had crossed
+the seas to seek. He has never yet been able to return to Basle;
+but for a sight of those lost portraits of the most honest and
+straightforward of all German painters, he would gladly sell his
+memories of both Lucerne and Heidelberg.</p>
+<p>Here we have a record of a great disappointment that was
+occasioned merely by the common habit of despising railway
+junctions, and presuming them to be inevitably dull. But this same
+unfortunate presumption, applied to life at large, leads many
+people to overlook the nearness of some great adventure.
+Interrogate a thousand men, and you will find that none of them has
+first set eyes upon his greatest friend in the Mosque of Cordoba or
+in Trafalgar Square. Every adventure of lasting consequence has
+confronted all of them, without exception, in some hidden nook or
+cranny of the world,&mdash;some place unknown to fame. Anybody is
+as likely to meet the woman who is destined to become his wife, at
+Essex Junction on a wintry night, as in the Parthenon by moonlight
+in the month of May. The most romantic places in the world are
+often those that promised, in advance, to be the least
+romantic.</p>
+<p>Since this is so, how can anybody ever dare to shut his eyes to
+that incalculable imminency of adventure which environs him even
+when he is merely changing trains on some island-platform of the
+New York Subway? In our daily living we are never safe from
+destiny; and who can ever know in what vacuous and sedentary period
+of his experience he may suddenly be called upon to entertain an
+angel unawares? It is best to be prepared for anything, at any hour
+of our lives,&mdash;even at those moments that must, perforce, be
+&ldquo;spent waiting at a railway junction.&rdquo;</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_104" name="page_104"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+104]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Middling" name="Middling"></a>Minor Uses of the Middling
+Rich</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>To assert today that the rich are for the most part entirely
+harmless is to dare much, for the contrary opinion is greatly in
+favor. Such wholesale condemnation of the rich assumes a more
+general and a more specific form. They are said to be harmful to
+the body politic simply because they have more money than the
+average: their property has been wrongly taken from persons who
+have a better right to it, or is withheld from people who need it
+more. But aside from being constructively a moral detriment from
+the mere possession of wealth, the rich man may do specific harm
+through indulging his vices, maintaining an inordinate display,
+charging too much for his own services, crushing his weaker
+competitor, corrupting the legislature and the judiciary, finally
+by asserting flagrantly his right to what he erroneously deems to
+be his own. Such are the general and specific charges of modern
+anti-capitalism against wealth. Like many deep rooted convictions,
+these rest less on analysis of particular instances than upon
+axioms received without criticism. The word spoliation does yeoman
+service in covering with one broad blanket of prejudice the most
+diverse cases of wealth. But spoliation is assumed, not proved. My
+own conviction that most wealth is quite blameless, whether under
+the general or specific accusation, is based on no comprehensive
+axiom, but simply on the knowledge of a number of particular
+fortunes and of their owners. Such a road towards truth is highly
+unromantic. The student of particular phenomena is unable to pose
+as the champion of the race. But the method has the modest
+advantage of resting not on a priori definitions, but on <a id=
+"page_105" name="page_105"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+105]</span>inductions from actual experience; hence of being
+relatively scientific.</p>
+<p>Before sketching the line of such an investigation, let me say
+that in logic and common sense there is no presumption against the
+wealthy person. Ever since civilization began and until yesterday
+it has been assumed that wealth was simply ability legitimately
+funded and transmitted. Even modern humanitarians, while dallying
+with the equation wealth = spoliation, have been unwilling wholly
+to relinquish the historic view of the case. I have always admired
+the courage with which Mr. Howells faced the situation in one of
+those charming essays for the Easy Chair of
+<em>Harper&rsquo;s</em>. Driving one night in a comfortable cab he
+was suddenly confronted by the long drawn out misery of the
+midnight bread line. For a moment the vision of these hungry fellow
+men overcame him. He felt guilty on his cushions, and possibly
+entertained some St. Martin-like project of dividing his
+swallowtail with the nearest unfortunate. Then common sense in the
+form of his companion came to his rescue. She remarked
+&ldquo;Perhaps we are right and they are wrong.&rdquo; Why not? At
+any rate Mr. Howells was not permitted to condemn in a moment of
+compassion the career of thrift, industry and genius, that had led
+him from a printer&rsquo;s case to a premier position in American
+letters, or, more concretely, he received a domestic dispensation
+to cab it home in good conscience, though many were waiting in
+chilly discomfort for their gift of yesterday&rsquo;s bread. The
+why so and why not of this incident are my real subject. For Mr.
+Howells is merely a particularly conspicuous instance of the kind
+of prosperity I have in mind. We are all too much dazzled by the
+rare great fortunes. The newly rich have spectacular ways with
+them. By dint of frequently passing us in notorious circumstances,
+they give the impression of a throng. They are much in the papers,
+their steam yachts loom large on the waters, they divorce quickly
+and often, they buy the most egregious, old masters. <a id=
+"page_106" name="page_106"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+106]</span>By such more or less innocent ostentations, a handful
+stretches into a procession, much as a dozen sprightly
+supernumeraries will keep up an endless defile of Macduff&rsquo;s
+army on the tragic stage. Let us admit that some of the great
+wealth is more or less foolishly and harmfully spent; my subject is
+not bank accounts, but people; and very wealthy people constitute
+an almost negligible minority of the race. Their influence too is
+much less potent than is supposed. A slightly vulgarizing tendency
+proceeds from them, but in waves of decreasing intensity. Their
+vogue is chiefly a <em>succ&egrave;s de scandale</em>. Sensible
+people will gape at the spectacle without admiration, and even the
+reader of the society column in the sensational newspapers keeps
+more critical detachment than he is usually credited with. In any
+case neither the boisterous nor the shrinking multimillionaire has
+any representative standing. He is not what a poor person means by
+a rich person. Ask your laundress who is rich in your neighborhood,
+and she will name all who live gently and do not have to worry
+about next month&rsquo;s bills. True pragmatist, she sees that to
+be exempt from any threat of poverty is to all intents and purposes
+to be rich. Her classification ignores certain niceties, but
+corresponds roughly to the fact, and has the merit of corresponding
+to government decree. Rich people, since the income tax, are
+officially those who pay the tax but not the surtax. Families with
+an income not less than four thousand dollars nor more than twenty
+thousand comprise the harmless, middling rich. Let us once for all
+admit that in the surtaxed classes there are many cases of quite
+harmless wealth, while in the lower level of the rich, harmful
+wealth will sometimes be found. Such exceptions do not invalidate
+the general rule that all but a negligible fraction of the rich are
+included in the first class of income taxpayers&mdash;on from four
+to twenty thousand, that most of the property here held is
+blamelessly held in good hands&mdash;wealth that in no fair
+estimate can be regarded as harmful. In terms <a id="page_107"
+name="page_107"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 107]</span>of British
+currency, our category of the middling rich would include the
+poorer individuals of the upper classes, the richer persons of the
+lower middle class, and the upper middle class as a whole. This
+comparison is made not to apply an alien class system which holds
+very inadequately here in America, but simply to avow the
+difficulty of my task of apology. The bourgeoisie is equally
+suspect among radicals, reactionaries, and artists. My middling
+rich are nothing other than what an European essayist would quite
+brazenly call the <em>haute bourgeoisie</em>. It is quite a
+comprehensive class, made up chiefly of professional men,
+moderately successful merchants, manufacturers, and bankers with
+their more highly paid employees, but including also many artists,
+and teachers of all sorts. Incidentally it is an employing and
+borrowing class in various degrees, hence especially subject to the
+exactions of the labor union at one end, and of the great
+capitalist and the Trust at the other.</p>
+<p>The general harmlessness of the wealth of this class rests upon
+the fact that it is in small part inherited, but mostly earned by
+individual effort, while such effort has usually been honestly and
+efficiently rendered and paid for at a moderate rate. In fact the
+amount of capacity that can be hired for the slightest rewards is
+simply amazing. It is the distinction of this class as compared
+both with the wage earning and the capitalist class&mdash;both of
+which agree in overvaluing their services and extorting payment on
+their own terms&mdash;that it respects its work more than it
+regards rewards. Consider the amount of general education and
+special training that go to make a capable school superintendent,
+or college professor; a good country doctor or clergyman&mdash;and
+it will be felt that no money is more honestly earned. This is
+equally true of many lawyers and magistrates, who are wise
+counsellors for an entire country side. It is no less true of hosts
+of small manufacturers who make a superior product with conscience.
+For the wealth, small enough it usually is, <a id="page_108" name=
+"page_108"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 108]</span>that is thus
+gained in positions of especial skill and confidence, absolutely no
+apology need be made. I sometimes wish that the Socialists for whom
+any degree of wealth means spoliation, would go a day&rsquo;s round
+with a country doctor, would take the pains to learn of the cases
+he treats for half his fee, for a nominal sum, or for nothing;
+would candidly reckon his normal fee against the long years of
+college, medical school and hospital, and against the service
+itself; would then deduct the actual expenses of the day, as
+represented by apparatus, motor, or horse service&mdash;I can only
+say that if such an investigator could in any way conceive that
+physician as a spoliator, because he earned twice as much as a
+master brick-layer or five times as much as a ditch
+digger&mdash;if, I say, before the actual fact, our Socialist
+investigator in any way grudges that day&rsquo;s earnings, his
+mental and emotional confusion is beyond ordinary remedy. And such
+a physician&rsquo;s earnings are merely typical of those of an
+entire class of devoted professional men.</p>
+<p>We do well to remind ourselves that the great body of wealth in
+the country has been built up slowly and honestly by the most
+laborious means, and accumulated and transmitted by
+self-sacrificing thrift. A rich person in nine cases out of ten is
+merely a capable, careful, saving person, often, too, a person who
+conducts a difficult calling with a fine sense of personal honor
+and a high standard of social obligation. We are too much dazzled
+by the occasional apparition of the lawyer who has got rich by
+steering guilty clients past the legal reefs, of the surgeon who
+plays equally on the fears and the purses of his patients, of the
+sensational clergyman who has made full coinage of his
+charlatanism. All these types exist, and all are highly
+exceptional. Most rich persons are self-respecting, have given
+ample value received for their wealth, and have less reason to
+apologize for it than most poor folks have to apologize for their
+poverty.</p>
+<p>Furthermore: for the maintenance of certain humdrum <a id=
+"page_109" name="page_109"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+109]</span>but necessary human virtues, we are dependent upon these
+middling rich. It has been frequently remarked that a lord and a
+working man are likely to agree, as against a bourgeois, in
+generosity, spontaneous fellowship, and all that goes to make
+sporting spirit. The right measure of these qualities makes for
+charm and genuine fraternity; the excess of these qualities
+produces an enormous amount of human waste among the wage earners
+and the aristocrats impartially. The great body of self-controlled,
+that is of reasonably socialized people, must be sought between
+these two extremes. In short the building up of ideals of
+discipline and of habits of efficiency and of good manners and of
+human respect is very largely the task of the middle classes.
+Whereas the breaking down of such ideals is, in the present posture
+of society, the avowed or unavowed intention of a considerable
+portion of laboring men and aristocrats. The scornful retort of the
+Socialist is at hand: &ldquo;Of course the middle classes are
+shrewd enough to practice the virtues that pay.&rdquo; Into this
+familiar moral bog that there are as many kinds of morality as
+there are economic conditions of mankind, I do not consent to
+plunge. I need only say that the so-called middle class virtues
+would pay a workman or a lord quite as well as they do a bourgeois.
+Moreover, while workmen and lords are prone to scorn the
+calculating virtues of the middle classes, there is no indication
+that the <em>bourgeoisie</em> has selfishly tried to keep its
+virtues to itself. On the contrary there is positive rejoicing in
+the middle classes over a workman who deigns to keep a contract,
+and an aristocrat who perceives the duty of paying a debt. In fine
+we of the middle classes need no more be ashamed of our highly
+unpicturesque virtues than we are of our inconspicuous wealth.</p>
+<p>So far from being in danger of suppression, we middling rich
+people are likely to last longer than the capitalists who exploit
+us in practice, and the workmen who exploit us on principle.
+Theoretically, and perhaps practically, <a id="page_110" name=
+"page_110"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 110]</span>the very rich
+are in danger of expropriation. Theoretically the course of
+invention may limit or almost abolish all but the higher grades of
+labor. The need of the more skilful sort of service in the
+professions, in manufacture, in agency of all sorts, is sure to
+persist. The socialists expect to get such service for much less
+than it at present brings, that is to make us poor and yet keep us
+working. Such a scheme must break down, not through the refusal of
+the middling rich to keep at work;&mdash;for I think there is
+loyalty enough to the work itself to keep most necessary activities
+going after a fashion, even under the most untoward
+conditions;&mdash;but because to make us poor is to destroy the
+conditions under which we can efficiently render a somewhat
+exceptional service. Our wealth is not an extraneous thing that can
+be readily added or taken away. It is our possibility of
+self-education and of professional improvement, it is the medium in
+which we can work, it is our hope of children. To take away our
+wealth is to maim us. There is nothing humiliating in such an
+avowal. It is merely an assertion of the integrity of one&rsquo;s
+life and work. As a matter of fact no class is so well fitted to
+face the threat of a proletarian revolution as we harmless rich. It
+is the class that produces generals, explorers, inventors,
+statesmen. A social revolution with its stern attendant
+regimentation would bear most heavily on the relatively
+undisciplined class of working people. The disciplined class of the
+middling rich is better prepared to meet such an eventuality.
+Accordingly it is no mere selfishness or complacency that leads the
+middling rich to oppose the pretensions of proletarianism on one
+side and of capitalism on the other. It is rather the assertion of
+sound middle class morality against two opposite yet somewhat
+allied forms of social immorality&mdash;the strength that
+exaggerates its claims, and the weakness that claims all the
+privileges of strength.</p>
+<p>We are useful too as conserving certain valuable ideas. When I
+mention the idea of the right of private property, I <a id=
+"page_111" name="page_111"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+111]</span>expect to be laughed at by a large class of enthusiasts.
+Yet all of civilization has been built up on the distinction
+between <em>meum</em> and <em>tuum</em>. Without this idea there is
+not the slightest inducement to persistent individual effort nor
+possibility of progress for the individual or for the race. The
+fruitful diversities, the germinative inequalities between men all
+depend on this right. And today the right to one&rsquo;s own is
+doubly under attack from the violence of laboring men, and the
+guile of those in positions of financial trust. The strikers who
+offer as an argument the burning of a mine or wrecking of a mill,
+and the directors who manipulate corporation accounts to pay
+unearned dividends, are both undermining the right of property.
+Against such counsels of force and fraud, the representatives of
+the common sense and funded wisdom of mankind are the middling
+rich. It is an unromantic service&mdash;doubtless breaking other
+people&rsquo;s windows or scaling their bank accounts is much more
+thrilling&mdash;it is a public service obviously tinged with
+self-interest, but none the less a public service of high and
+timely importance. The business of keeping the sanity of the world
+intact as against the wilder expressions of social discontent, and
+the uglier expressions of personal envy and greed, may seem to lack
+zest and originality today. History may well take a different view
+of the matter. It would not be surprising to find a posthumous
+aureole of idealism conferred upon those who amid the trumpeting of
+money market messiahs, and the braying of self-appointed
+remodellers of the race, simply stood quietly on their own
+inherited rights and principles.</p>
+<p>Such are some not wholly minor uses for the middling rich.
+Should they be abolished, many of the pleasanter facts and
+appearances of the world would disappear with them. The other day I
+whisked in one of their motor cars through miles of green
+Philadelphia suburbs dappled with pink magnolia trees and white
+fruit blossoms&mdash;everywhere charming houses, velvety lawns,
+tidy gardens. The establishing of a little paradise like that is of
+course a <a id="page_112" name="page_112"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 112]</span>selfish enterprise&mdash;a mere meeting of
+the push and foresight of real estate operators with the thrift and
+sentiment of householders, yet it is an advantage inevitably
+shared, a benefit to the entire community, an example in reasonable
+working, living, and playing.</p>
+<p>On the side of play we should especially miss these harmless
+rich. The sleek horses on a thousand bridle paths and meadows are
+theirs, the smaller winged craft that still protest against the
+pollution of the sea by the reek of coal and the stench of
+gasoline; of their furnishing are the graceful and widely shared
+spectacles not only of the minor yacht racing but of the field
+sports generally. They constitute our militia. The survival in the
+world of such gentler accomplishments as fencing, canoeing, and
+exploration rests with the middling rich. They write our books and
+plays, compose our music, paint our pictures, carve our statues.
+The pleasanter unconscious pageantry of our life is conducted by
+their sons and daughters. To be nice, to indulge in nice
+occupations, to express happiness&mdash;this is not even today a
+reproach to any one. Indeed if any approach to the dreamed
+socialized state ever be made, it will come less through
+regimentation than through imitation of those persons of middle
+condition who have managed to be reasonably faithful in their
+duties, and moderate in their pleasures. To keep a clean mind in a
+clean body is the prerogative of no class, but the lapses from this
+standard are unquestionably more frequent among the poor and the
+very rich.</p>
+<p>It is instructive in this regard to compare with the newspapers
+that serve the middling rich, those that address the poor, and
+those that are owned in the interest of well understood
+capitalistic interests. The extremes of yellow journalism and of
+avowedly capitalistic journalism, meet in a preference for
+salacious or merely shocking news, and in a predilection for
+blatant, sophistical, or merely nugatory and time-serving editorial
+expressions. Between the two really allied types of newspapers are
+a few which <a id="page_113" name="page_113"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 113]</span>exercise a decent censorship over
+questionable news, and habitually indulge in the luxury of sincere
+editorial opinion. There are some exceptions to the rule. In our
+own day we have seen a proletarian paper become a magnificent
+editorial organ, while somewhat illogically maintaining a random
+and sensational policy in its news columns. But generally the
+distinction is unmistakable. Imagine the plight of New York
+journalism if four papers, which I need not mention, ceased
+publication. It would mean a distinct and immediate cheapening of
+the mentality of the city. Then observe on any train who are
+reading these papers. It is plain enough what class among us makes
+decent journalism possible.</p>
+<p>Much is to be said for the abolition of poverty, and something
+for the reduction of inordinate wealth. Poverty is being much
+reduced, and will be farther, the process being limited simply by
+the degree to which the poor will educate and discipline
+themselves. We shall never wholly do away with bad luck, bad
+inheritance, wild blood, laziness, and incapacity: so some poverty
+we shall always have, but much less than now, and less dire. The
+fact that the large class of middling rich has been evolved from a
+world where all began poor, is a promise of a future society where
+poverty shall be the exception. But such increase of the wealth of
+the world, and of the number of the virtually rich, will never be
+attained by the puerile method of expropriating the present holders
+of wealth. That would produce more poor people beyond
+doubt&mdash;but its effect in enriching the present poor would be
+inappreciable. You cannot change a man&rsquo;s character and
+capacity simply by giving him the wealth of another. In wholesale
+expropriations and bequests the experiment has been many times
+tried, and always with the same results. The wealth that could not
+be assimilated and administered has always left the receiver or
+grasper in all essentials poorer than he was before. Wealth is an
+attribute of personality. It is not interchangeable like the parts
+of a <a id="page_114" name="page_114"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+114]</span>standardized machine. The futility of dispossessing the
+middling rich would be as marked as its immorality.</p>
+<p>This essentially personal character of wealth must affect the
+views of those who would attack what are called the inordinate
+fortunes. I hold no brief for or against the multi-millionaire. In
+many cases I believe his wealth is as personal, assimilated and
+legitimate as is the average moderate fortune. In many cases too, I
+know that such gigantic wealth is in fact the product of unfair
+craft and favoritism, is to that extent unassimilated and
+illegitimate. Yet admitting the worst of great fortunes, I think a
+prudent and fair minded man would hesitate before a general
+programme of expropriation. He would consider that in many cases
+the common weal needs such services as very wealthy people render,
+he would reflect on the practical benefits to the world, of the
+benevolent enterprises for education, research, invention, hygiene,
+medicine, which are founded and supported by great wealth. In our
+time The Rockefeller Institute will have stamped out that slow
+plague of the south, the hook worm. To the obvious retort that the
+government ought to do this sort of thing, the reply is equally
+obvious, that historically governments have not done this sort of
+thing until enlightened private enterprise has shown the way. Our
+prudent observer of mankind in general, and of the very rich in
+particular, would again reflect that, granting much of the
+socialist indictment of capital as illgained, common sense requires
+a statute of limitations. At a certain point restitution makes more
+trouble than the possession of illegitimate wealth. Debts,
+interest, and grudges cannot be indefinitely accumulated and
+extended. It is the entire disregard of this simple and generally
+admitted principle that has marred the socialist propaganda from
+the first. From the point of view of fomenting hatred between
+classes, to make every workingman regard himself as the residuary
+legatee of all the grievances of all workingmen, at all times, may
+be clever tactics, it is not a good way of making the workingman
+<a id="page_115" name="page_115"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+115]</span>see clearly what his actual grievance and expectancy of
+redress are in his own day and time.</p>
+<p>With increasingly heavy income and inheritance taxes, the very
+rich will have to reckon. Yet the multi-millionaire&rsquo;s evident
+utility as the milch cow of the state, will cause statesmen, even
+of the anti-capitalistic stamp, to waver at the point where the cow
+threatens to dry up from over-milking. If the case, then, for
+utterly despoiling the harmful rich, is by no means clear, the
+prospect for the harmless rich may be regarded as fairly favorable.
+For the moment, caught between the headiness of working folk, the
+din of doctrinaires, and the wiles of corporate activity, the lot
+of the middling rich is not the most happy imaginable. But they
+seem better able to weather these flurries than the windy,
+cloud-compelling divinities of the hour. From the survival of the
+middling rich, the future common weal will be none the worse, and
+it may even be better.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_116" name="page_116"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+116]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Chautauqua" name="Chautauqua"></a>Lecturing at
+Chautauqua</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>To render any real impression of the Chautauqua Summer Assembly,
+I must approach this many-mooded subject from a personal point of
+view. Others, more thoroughly informed in the arcana of the
+Institution, have written the history of its development from small
+beginnings to its present impressive magnitude, have analyzed the
+theory of its intentions, and have expounded its extraordinary
+influence over what may be called the middle-class culture of our
+present-day America. It would be beyond the scope of my equipment
+to add another solemn treatise to the extensive list already issued
+by the tireless Chautauqua Press. My own experience of Chautauqua
+was not that of a theoretical investigator, but that of a surprised
+and wondering participant. It was the experience of an alien thrust
+suddenly into the midst of a new but not unsympathetic world; and,
+if the reader will make allowance for the personal equation, some
+sense of the human significance of this summer seat of earnest
+recreation may be suggested by a mere record of my individual
+reactions.</p>
+<p>I had heard of Chautauqua only vaguely, until, one sunny summer
+morning, I suddenly received a telegram inviting me to lecture at
+the Institution. I was a little disconcerted at the moment, because
+I was enjoying an amphibious existence in a bathing-suit, and was
+inclined to shudder at the thought of putting on a collar in July;
+but, after an hour or two, I managed to imagine that telegram as a
+Summons from the Great Unknown, and it was in a proper spirit of
+adventure that I flung together a few books, and climbed into the
+only available upper berth on a discomfortable train that rushed me
+westward.</p>
+<p><a id="page_117" name="page_117"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+117]</span>In some sickly hour of the early morning, I was cast out
+at Westfield, on Lake Erie,&mdash;a town that looked like the
+back-yard of civilization, with weeds growing in it. Thence a
+trolley car, climbing over heightening hills that became
+progressively more beautiful, hauled me ultimately to the entrance
+of what the cynical conductor called &ldquo;The Holy City.&rdquo; A
+fence of insurmountable palings stretched away on either hand; and,
+at the little station, there were turn-stiles, through which
+pilgrims passed within. Most people pay money to obtain admittance;
+but I was met by a very affable young man from Dartmouth, whose
+business it was to welcome invited visitors, and by him I was
+steered officially through unopposing gates. I liked this young man
+for his cheerful clothes and smiling countenance; but I was rather
+appalled by the agglomeration of ram-shackle cottages through which
+we passed on our way to the hotel.</p>
+<p>I say &ldquo;the hotel,&rdquo; for the Chautauqua Settlement
+contains but one such institution. It carries the classic name of
+Athen&aelig;um; but the first view of it occasioned in my sensitive
+constitution a sinking of the heart. The edifice dates from the
+early-gingerbread period of architecture. It culminates in a
+horrifying cupola, and is colored a discountenancing brown. The
+first glimpse of it reminded me of the poems of A.H. Clough, whose
+chief merit was to die and to offer thereby an occasion for a grave
+and twilit elegy by Matthew Arnold. Clough&rsquo;s life-work was a
+continual asking of the question, &ldquo;Life being unbearable, why
+should I not die?&rdquo;&mdash;while echo, that commonplace and
+sapient commentator, mildly answered, &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;: and this
+was precisely the impression that I gathered from my initial vista
+of the Athen&aelig;um between trees.</p>
+<p>On entering the hotel I was greeted over the desk (with what
+might be defined as a left-handed smile) by one of the leading
+students of the university with which I am associated as a teacher.
+He called out, &ldquo;Front!&rdquo; in the manner of an amateur who
+is amiably aping the professional, <a id="page_118" name=
+"page_118"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 118]</span>and assigned me
+to a scarcely comfortable room.</p>
+<p>My first voluntary act in the Chautauqua Community was to take a
+swim. But the water was tepid, and brown, and tasteless, and
+unbuoyant; and I felt, rather oddly, as if I were swimming in a
+gigantic cup of tea. From this initial experience I proceeded,
+somewhat precipitately, to induce an analogy; and it seemed to me,
+at the time, as if I had forsaken the roar and tumble of the
+hoarse, tumultuous world, for the inland disassociated peace of an
+unaware and loitering backwater.</p>
+<p>With hair still wet and still dishevelled, I was met by the
+Secretary of Instruction,&mdash;a man (as I discovered later) of
+wise and humorous perceptions. By him I was informed that, in an
+hour or so, I was to lecture, in the Hall of Philosophy, on (if I
+remember rightly) Edgar Allan Poe. I combed my hair, and tried to
+care for Poe, and made my way to the Hall of Philosophy. This
+turned out to be a Greek temple divested of its walls. An oaken
+roof, with pediments, was supported by Doric columns; and under the
+enlarged umbrella thus devised, about a thousand people were
+congregated to greet the new and unknown lecturer.</p>
+<p>I honestly believe that that was the worst lecture I have ever
+imposed upon a suffering audience. I had lain awake all night, in
+an upper berth, on the hottest day of the year; I had found my swim
+in inland water unrefreshing; and, at the moment, I really cared no
+more for Edgar Allan Poe than I usually care for the sculptures of
+Bernini, the paintings of Bouguereau, or the base-ball playing of
+the St. Louis &ldquo;Browns.&rdquo; This feeling was, of course,
+unfair to Poe, who is (with all his emptiness of content) an
+admirable artist; but I was tired at the time. It pained me
+exceedingly to listen, for an hour, to my own dull and
+unilluminated lecture. And yet (and here is the pathetic point that
+touched me deeply) I perceived gradually that the audience was
+listening not only attentively but <a id="page_119" name=
+"page_119"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 119]</span>eagerly. Those
+people really wanted to hear whatever the lecturer should say: and
+I wandered back to the depressing hotel with bowed head, actuated
+by a new resolve to tell them something worthy on the morrow.</p>
+<p>That afternoon and evening I strolled about the summer
+settlement of Chautauqua; and (in view of my subsequent shift of
+attitude) I do not mind confessing that this first aspect of the
+community depressed me to a perilous melancholy. I beheld a
+landscape that reminded me of Wordsworth&rsquo;s Windermere, except
+that the lake was broader and the hills less high, deflowered and
+defamed by the huddled houses of the Chautauqua settlers. The lake
+was lovely; and, with this supreme adjective, I forbear from
+further effort at description. Upon the southern shore, a natural
+grove of noble and venerable trees had been invaded by a crowded
+horror of discomfortable tenements, thrown up by carpenters with a
+taste for machine-made architectural details, and colored a sickly
+green, an acid yellow, or an angry brown. The Chautauqua
+Settlement, which is surrounded by a fence of palings, covers only
+two or three square miles of territory; and, in the months of July
+and August, between fifteen and twenty thousand people are crowded
+into this constricted area. Hence a horror of unsightly
+dormitories, spawning unpredictable inhabitants upon the ambling,
+muddy lanes.</p>
+<p>There have been, in the history of this Assembly, a few salutary
+fires,&mdash;as a result of which new buildings have been erected
+which are comparatively easy on the eyes. The Hall of Philosophy is
+really beautiful, and is nobly seated among memorable trees at the
+summit of a little hill. The Aula Christi tried to be beautiful,
+and failed; but at least the good intention is apparent. The
+Amphitheatre (which seats six or seven thousand auditors) is
+admirably adapted to its uses; and some of the more recent business
+buildings, like the Post Office, are inoffensive to the unexacting
+observer. A wooded peninsula, which is pleasantly laid out as a
+park, projects into <a id="page_120" name=
+"page_120"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 120]</span>the lake; and,
+at the point of this, has lately been erected a <em>campanile</em>
+which is admirable in both color and proportion. Indeed, when a
+fanfaronnade of sunset is blown wide behind it, you suffer a sudden
+tinge of homesickness for Venice or Ravenna. It is good enough for
+that. But beside it is a helter-skelter wooden edifice which
+reminds you of Surf Avenue at Coney Island. Indeed, the Settlement
+as a whole exhibits still an overwhelmment of the un&aelig;sthetic,
+and appalls the eye of the new-comer from a more considerative
+world.</p>
+<p>On the way back from the lovely <em>campanile</em> to the hotel,
+I stumbled over a scattering of artificial hillocks surrounding two
+mud-puddles connected by a gutter. This monstrosity turned out to
+be a relief-map of Palestine. Little children, with uncultivated
+voices, shouted at each other as they lightly leaped from Jerusalem
+to Jericho; and waste-paper soaked itself to dingy brown in the
+insanitary Sea of Galilee.&mdash;Then I encountered a wooden
+edifice with castellated towers and machicolated battlements, which
+called itself (with a large label) the Men&rsquo;s Club; and from
+this I fled, with almost a sense of relief, to the hotel itself,
+now sprawling low and dark beneath its Boston-brown-bread
+cupola.</p>
+<p>Thus my first impression of Chautauqua was one of melancholy and
+resentment. But, in the subsequent few days, this emotion was
+altered to one of impressible satiric mirth; and, subsequently
+still, it was changed again to an emotion of wondering and humble
+admiration. I had been assured at the outset, by one who had
+already tried it, that, if I stayed long enough, I should end up by
+liking Chautauqua; and this is precisely what happened to me before
+a week was out.</p>
+<p>But meanwhile I laughed very hard for three days. The thing that
+made me laugh most was the unexpected experience of enduring the
+discomfiture of fame. Chautauqua is a constricted community; and
+any one who lectures there becomes, by that very fact, a famous
+person <a id="page_121" name="page_121"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 121]</span>in this little backwater of the world,
+until he is supplanted (for fame is as fickle as a ballet-dancer)
+by the next new-comer to the platform. The Chautauqua Press
+publishes a daily paper, a weekly review, a monthly magazine and a
+quarterly; and these publications report your lectures, tell the
+story of your life, comment upon your views of this and that,
+advertise your books, and print your picture. Everybody knows you
+by sight, and stops you in the street to ask you questions. Thus,
+on your way to the Post Office, you are intercepted by some kindly
+soul who says: &ldquo;I am Miss Terwilliger, from Montgomery,
+Alabama; and do you think that Bernard Shaw is really an immoral
+writer?&rdquo; or, &ldquo;I am Mrs. Winterbottom, of Muncie,
+Indiana; and where do you think I had better send my boy to school?
+He is rather a backward boy for his age&mdash;he was ten last
+April&mdash;but I really think that if, etc.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then, when you return to the hotel, you observe that everybody
+is rocking vigorously on the veranda, and reading one of your
+books. This pleases you a little; for, though an actor may look his
+audience in the eyes, an author is seldom privileged to see his
+readers face to face. Indeed, he often wonders if anybody ever
+reads his writings, because he knows that his best friends never
+do. But very soon this tender sentiment is disrupted. There comes a
+sudden resurrection of the rocking-chair brigade, a rush of readers
+with uplifted fountain-pens, and a general request for the
+author&rsquo;s autograph upon the flyleaf of his volume. All of
+this is rather flattering; but afterward these gracious and
+well-meaning people begin to comment on your lectures, and tell you
+that you have made them see a great light. And then you find
+yourself embarrassed.</p>
+<p>It is rather embarrassing to be embarrassed.</p>
+<p>One enthusiastic lady, having told me her name and her address,
+assaulted me with the following commentary:&mdash;&ldquo;I heard
+you lecture on Stevenson the other day; and ever since then I have
+been thinking how very much <a id="page_122" name=
+"page_122"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 122]</span>like Stevenson
+you are. And today I heard you lecture on Walt Whitman: and all
+afternoon I have been thinking how very much like Whitman you are.
+And that is rather puzzling&mdash;isn&rsquo;t it?&mdash;because
+Stevenson and Whitman weren&rsquo;t at all like each
+other,&mdash;were they?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I smiled, and told the lady the simple truth; but I do not think
+she understood me. &ldquo;Ah, madam,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;wait
+until you hear me lecture about Hawthorne&hellip;.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For (and now I am freely giving the whole game away) the secret
+of the art of lecturing is merely this:&mdash;on your way to the
+rostrum you contrive to fling yourself into complete sympathy with
+the man you are to talk about, so that, when you come to speak, you
+will give utterance to <em>his</em> message, in terms that are
+suggestive of <em>his</em> style. You must guard yourself from ever
+attempting to talk about anybody whom you have not (at some time or
+other) loved; and, at the moment, you should, for sheer affection,
+abandon your own personality in favor of his, so that you may
+become, as nearly as possible, the person whom it is your business
+to represent. Naturally, if you have any ear at all, your sentences
+will tend to fall into the rhythm of his style; and if you have any
+temperament (whatever that may be) your imagined mood will diffuse
+an ineluctable aroma of the author&rsquo;s personality.</p>
+<p>This at least, is my own theory of lecturing; and, in the
+instance of my talk on Hawthorne, I seem to have carried it out
+successfully in practice. I must have attained a tone of sombre
+gray, and seemed for the moment a meditative Puritan under a
+shadowy and steepled hat; for, at the close of the lecture, a
+silvery-haired and sweet-faced woman asked me if I wouldn&rsquo;t
+be so kind as to lead the devotional service in the Baptist House
+that evening. I found myself abashed. But a previous engagement
+saved me; and I was able to retire, not without honor, though with
+some discomfiture.</p>
+<p>This previous engagement was a steamboat ride upon the lake.
+When you want to give a sure-enough party at <a id="page_123" name=
+"page_123"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 123]</span>Chautauqua, you
+charter a steamboat and escape from the enclosure, having seduced a
+sufficient number of other people to come along and sing. On this
+particular evening, the party consisted of the Chautauqua School of
+Expression,&mdash;a bevy of about thirty young women who were
+having their speaking voices cultivated by an admired friend of
+mine who is one of the best readers in America; and they sang with
+real spirit, so soon as we had churned our way beyond remembrance
+of (I mean no disrespect) the Baptist House. But this boat-ride had
+a curious effect on the four or five male members of the party. We
+touched at a barbarous and outrageous settlement, named (if I
+remember rightly) Bemus Point; and hardly had the boat been docked
+before there ensued a hundred-yard dash for a pair of swinging
+doors behind which dazzled lights splashed gaudily on soapy
+mirrors. I did not really desire a drink at the time; but I took
+two, and the other men did likewise. I understood at once (for I
+must always philosophize a little) why excessive drinking is
+induced in prohibition states. Tell me that I may not laugh, and I
+wish at once to laugh my head off,&mdash;though I am at heart a
+holy person who loves Keats. This incongruous emotion must have
+been felt, under this or that influence of external inhibition, by
+everyone who is alive enough to like swimming, and Dante, and Weber
+and Fields, and Filipino Lippi, and the view of the valley
+underneath the sacred stones of Delphi.</p>
+<p>Within the enclosure of Chautauqua one does not drink at all;
+and I infer that this regulation is well-advised. I base this
+inference upon my gradual discovery that all the regulations of
+this well-conducted Institution have been fashioned sanely to
+contribute to the greatest good of the greatest number. That is my
+final, critical opinion. But how we did dash for the swinging doors
+at Bemus Point!&mdash;we four or five simple-natured human beings
+who were not, in any considerable sense, drinking men at all.</p>
+<p><a id="page_124" name="page_124"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+124]</span>Then the congregated School of Expression tripped ashore
+with nimble ankles; and there ensued a general dance at a pavilion
+where a tired boy maltreated a more tired piano, and one paid a
+dime before, or after, dancing. One does not dance at Chautauqua,
+even on moon-silvery summer evenings:&mdash;and again the
+regulation is right, because the serious-minded members of the
+community must have time to read the books of those who lecture
+there.</p>
+<p>And this brings me to a consideration of the Chautauqua Sunday.
+On this day the gates are closed, and neither ingress nor egress is
+permitted. Once more I must admit that the regulation has been
+sensibly devised. If admittance were allowed on Sunday, the grounds
+would be overrun by picnickers from Buffalo, who would cast the
+shells of hard-boiled eggs into the inviting Sea of Galilee; and
+unless the officers are willing to let anybody in, they can devise
+no practicable way of letting anybody out. Besides, the people who
+are in already like to rest and meditate. But alas! (and at this
+point I think that I begin to disapprove) the row-boats and canoes
+are tied up at the dock, the tennis-courts are emptied, and the
+simple exercise of swimming is forbidden. This desuetude of natural
+and smiling recreation on a day intended for surcease of labor
+struck me (for I am in part an ancient Greek, in part a
+medi&aelig;val Florentine) as strangely irreligious. All day the
+organ rumbles in the Amphitheatre (and of this I approved, because
+I love the way in which an organ shakes you into sanctity), and
+many meetings are held in various sectarian houses, the mood of
+which is doubtless reverent&mdash;though all the while the rippling
+water beckons to the high and dry canoes, and a gathering of
+many-tinted clouds is summoned in the windy west to tingle with
+Olympian laughter and Universal song. How much more wisely (if I
+may talk in Greek terms for the moment) the gods take Sunday, than
+their followers on this forgetful earth!</p>
+<p><a id="page_125" name="page_125"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+125]</span>But we must change the mood if I am to speak again of
+what amused me in the pagan days of my initiation at Chautauqua.
+Life, for instance, at the ginger-bread hotel amused me oddly. To
+one who lives in a metropolis throughout the working months, the
+map of eating at Chautauqua seems incongruous. Dinner is served in
+the middle of the day, at an hour when one is hardly encouraged to
+the thought of luncheon; and at six P.M. a sort of breakfast is set
+forth, which is denominated <em>Supper</em>. This Supper consists
+of fruit, followed by buckwheat cakes, followed by meat or eggs;
+and to eat one&rsquo;s way through it induces a curious sense of
+standing on one&rsquo;s head. After two days I discovered a remedy
+for this undesired dizziness. I turned the <em>menu</em> upside
+down, and ordered a meal in the reverse order. The Supper itself
+was a success; but the waitress (who, in the winter, teaches school
+in Texas) disapproved of what she deemed my frivolous proceeding.
+Her eyes took on an inward look beneath the pedagogical
+eye-glasses; and there was a distinct furrowing of her forehead.
+Thereafter I did not dare to overturn the <em>menu</em>, but ate my
+way heroically backward. After all, our prandial prejudices are
+merely the result of custom. There is no real reason why stewed
+prunes should not be eaten at three A.M.</p>
+<p>But this philosophical reflection reminds me that there is no
+such hour at Chautauqua. At ten P.M. a carol of sweet chimes is
+rung from the Italian <em>campanile</em>; and at that hour all good
+Chautauquans go to bed. If you are by profession (let us say) a
+writer, and are accustomed to be alive at midnight, you will find
+the witching hours sad. Vainly you will seek companionship, and
+will be reduced at last to reading the base-ball reports in the
+newspapers of Cleveland, Ohio.</p>
+<p>At the Athen&aelig;um you are passed about, from meal to meal,
+like a one-card draw at poker. The hotel is haunted by Old
+Chautauquans, who vie with each other to receive you with
+traditional cordiality. The head-waitress steers <a id="page_126"
+name="page_126"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 126]</span>you for
+luncheon (I mean Dinner) to one table, for Supper to another, and
+so on around the room from day to day. The process reminds you a
+little of the procedure at a progressive euchre party. At each meal
+you meet a new company of Old Chautauquans, and are expected to
+converse: but many (indeed most) of these people are humanly
+refreshing, and the experience is not so wearing as it sounds.</p>
+<p>But you must not imagine from all that I have said that the life
+of the lecturer at Chautauqua is merely frivolous. Not at all. You
+get up very early, and proceed to Higgins Hall, a pleasant little
+edifice (named after the late Governor of New York State) set
+agreeably amid trees upon a rising knoll of verdure; and there you
+converse for a time about the Drama, and for another time about the
+Novel. In each of these two courses there were, perhaps, seventy or
+eighty students,&mdash;male and female, elderly and young. I found
+them much more eager than the classes I had been accustomed to in
+college, and at least as well prepared. They came from anywhere,
+and from any previous condition of servitude to the general cause
+of learning; but I found them apt, and interested, and alive.</p>
+<p>Now and then it appeared that their sense of humor was a little
+less fantastic than my own; but I liked them very much, because
+they were so earnest and simple and human and (what is
+Whitman&rsquo;s adjective?) adhesive.</p>
+<p>And now I come to the point that converted me finally to
+Chautauqua. I found myself, after a few days, liking the people
+very much. In the afternoons I talked in the Doric Temple about
+this man or that,&mdash;selected from my company of well-beloved
+friends among &ldquo;the famous nations of the dead&rdquo;; and the
+people came in hundreds and listened reverently&mdash;not, I am
+very glad to know, because of any trick I have of setting words
+together, but because of Stevenson and Whitman and the others, and
+what they meant by living steadfast lives amid the hurly-<a id=
+"page_127" name="page_127"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+127]</span>burly of this roaring world, and steering heroically by
+their stars. Some elderly matrons among the listeners brought their
+knitting with them and toiled with busy hands throughout the
+lecture; but they listened none the less attentively, and reduced
+me to a mood of humble wonderment.</p>
+<p>For I have often wondered (and this is, perhaps, the most
+intimate of my confessions) how anybody can endure a
+lecture,&mdash;even a good lecture, for I am not thinking merely of
+my own. It is a passive exercise of which I am myself incapable. I,
+for one, have always found it very irksome&mdash;as Carlyle has
+phrased the experience&mdash;&ldquo;to sit as a passive bucket and
+be pumped into.&rdquo; I always want to talk back, or rise and
+remark &ldquo;But, on the other hand&hellip;&rdquo;; and, before
+long, I find myself spiritually itching. This is, possibly, a
+reason why I prefer canoeing to listening to sermons. Yet these
+admirable Chautauquans submit themselves to this experience hour
+after hour, because they earnestly desire to discover some
+glimmering of &ldquo;the best that has been known and thought in
+the world.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>These fifteen or twenty thousand people have assembled for the
+pursuit of culture&mdash;a pursuit which the Hellenic-minded
+Matthew Arnold designated as the noblest in this life. But from
+this fact (and here the antithetic formula asserts itself) we must
+deduce an inference that they feel themselves to be uncultured. In
+this inference I found a taste of the pathetic. I discovered that
+many of the colonists at Chautauqua were men and women well along
+in life who had had no opportunities for early education. Their
+children, rising through the generations, had returned from the
+state universities of Texas or Ohio or Mississippi, talking of
+Browning, and the binominal theorem, and the survival of the
+fittest, and the grandeur and decadence of the Romans, and the
+<em>entassus</em> of Ionic columns, and the doctrine of <em>laissez
+faire</em>; and now their elders had set out to endeavor to <a id=
+"page_128" name="page_128"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+128]</span>catch up with them. This discovery touched me with both
+reverence and pathos. An attempt at what may be termed, in the
+technical jargon of base-ball, a &ldquo;delayed steal&rdquo; of
+culture, seemed to me little likely to succeed. Culture, like
+wisdom, cannot be acquired: it cannot be passed, like a dollar
+bill, from one who has it to one who has it not. It must be
+absorbed, early in life, through birth or breeding, or be gathered
+undeliberately through experience. A child of five with a French
+governess will ask for his mug of milk with an easier Gallic grace
+than a man of eighty who has puzzled out the pronunciation from a
+text-book. There is, apparently, no remedy for this. Love the
+<em>Faerie Queene</em> at twelve, or you will never really love it
+at seventy: or so, at least, it seems to me. And yet the desire to
+learn, in gray-haired men and women who in their youth were
+battling hard for a mere continuance of life itself, and founding
+homesteads in a book-less wilderness, moved me to a quick
+exhilaration.</p>
+<p>Most of the people at Chautauqua come either from the south or
+from the middle west. They pronounce the English language either
+without any <em>r</em> at all, or with such excessive emphasis upon
+the <em>r</em> as to make up for the deficiency of their
+fellow-seekers. In other words, these people are really American,
+as opposed to cosmopolitan; and to live among them is&mdash;for a
+world-wandering adventurer&mdash;to learn a lesson in Americanism.
+Mr. Roosevelt once stated that Chautauqua is the most American
+institution in America; and this statement&mdash;like many others
+of his inspired platitudes&mdash;begins to seem meaningful upon
+reflection.</p>
+<p>At one time or another I have drifted to many different corners
+of the world; but my residence at Chautauqua was my only experience
+of a democracy. In this community there are no special privileges.
+If the President of the Institution had wished to hear me lecture
+(he never did, in fact&mdash;though we used to play tennis
+together, at which game he proved himself easily the better man) he
+would <a id="page_129" name="page_129"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+129]</span>have been required to come early and take his chance at
+getting a front seat; and once, when I ventured to attend a lecture
+by one of my colleagues, I found myself seated beside that very
+waitress in the Athen&aelig;um who had disapproved of my method of
+ordering a meal. All the exercises are open equally to
+anybody&mdash;first come, first served&mdash;and the boy who blacks
+your boots may turn out to be a Sophomore at Oberlin. Teachers in
+Texas high-schools sweep the floors or shave you, and the raucous
+newsboy is earning his way toward the University of Illinois. All
+this is a little bewildering at first; but in a day or two you grow
+to like it.</p>
+<p>This free-for-all spirit that permeates Chautauqua reminds me to
+speak of the economic conduct of the Institution. The only
+charge&mdash;except in the case of certain special courses&mdash;is
+for admission to the grounds. The visitor pays fifty cents for a
+franchise of one day, and more for periods of greater length, until
+the ultimate charge of seven dollars and fifty cents for a season
+ticket is attained. On leaving the grounds, he has to show his
+ticket; and if it has expired he is taxed according to the term of
+his delinquent lingering. Once free of the grounds, he may avail
+himself of any of the privileges of the Assembly. Lectures, on an
+infinite variety of subjects, are delivered hour after hour; and a
+bulletin of these successive lectures is posted publicly and
+printed in the daily paper. Every evening an entertainment of some
+sort is given in the Amphitheatre, and this is eagerly attended by
+swarming thousands. The Institution owns all the land within the
+bounding palisades. Private cottages may be erected by individual
+builders on lots leased for ninety-nine years; but the Institution
+owns and operates the only hotel, and exercises an absolute empery
+over the issuance of franchises to necessary tradesmen. The revenue
+of the corporation is therefore rich; but all of it is expended in
+importing the best lecturers that may be obtained, and in
+furthering the general good of the general assembly. The <a id=
+"page_130" name="page_130"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+130]</span>entire system suggests the theoretic observation that an
+absolute democracy can be instituted and maintained only by an
+absolute monarchy. If all the people are to be free and equal, the
+government must have absolute control of all the revenue. Here is,
+perhaps, a principle for our presidential candidates to think
+about.</p>
+<p>But I do not wish to terminate this summer conversation on a
+serious note; and I must revert, in closing, to some of the
+recreations at Chautauqua. The first of these is tea. Every
+afternoon, from four to five o&rsquo;clock, the visitor lightly
+flits from tea to tea,&mdash;making his excuses to one hostess in
+order to dash onward to another. This is rather hard upon the
+health, because it requires the deglutition of innumerable potions.
+I have always maintained that tea is an admirable entity if it be
+considered merely as a time of day, but that it is insidious if it
+be considered as a beverage. At Chautauqua, tea is not only an hour
+but a drink; and (though I am a sympathetic soul) I can only say
+that those who like it like it. For my part, I preferred the
+concoction sold at rustic soda-fountains, which is known locally as
+a &ldquo;Chautauqua highball,&rdquo;&mdash;a ribald term devised by
+college men who make up the by-no-means-despicable ball-team. This
+beverage is compounded out of unfermented grape-juice and foaming
+fizz-water; and, if it be taken absent-mindedly, seems to taste
+like something.</p>
+<p>But the standard recreation at Chautauqua is the habit of
+impromptu eating in the open air. Every one invites you to go upon
+a picnic. You take a steamer to some point upon the lake, or take a
+trolley to a wild and deep ravine known by the somewhat unpoetic
+name of the Hog&rsquo;s Back; and then everybody sits around and
+eats sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and considers the occasion a
+debauch. This formality resembles great good fun,&mdash;especially
+as there are girls who laugh, and play, and threaten to disconcert
+you on the morrow when you solemnly arise to lecture on the
+Religion of Emerson. <a id="page_131" name=
+"page_131"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 131]</span>But
+picnic-baskets out of doors are rather hard on the digestion.</p>
+<p>Perhaps I should record also, as a curious experience, that I
+was required to appear as one of the guests of honor at a large
+reception. This meant that I had to stand in line, with certain
+other marionettes, and shake hands with an apparently endless
+procession of people who were themselves as bored as were the
+guests of honor. I determined then and there that I should never
+run for President,&mdash;not even in response to an irresistible
+appeal from the populace. I had never suspected before that there
+could be so many hands without the touch of nature in them. I shook
+hands mechanically, chatting all the while with a humorous and
+human woman who stood next to me in the line of the
+attacked&mdash;until suddenly I felt the sensitive and tender grasp
+of a sure-enough hand, reminding me of friends and one or two women
+it has been a holiness to know. My attention was attracted by the
+thrill. I turned swiftly&mdash;and I looked upon a little bent old
+woman who was blind. She had a voice, too, for she spoke to me
+&hellip; and,&mdash;well, I was very glad that I went to that
+reception.</p>
+<p>And many other matters I remember fondly,&mdash;a certain lonely
+hill at sunset, whence you looked over wide water to distant
+dream-enchanted shores; the urbanity and humor of the wise
+directors of the Institution; the manner of many young students who
+discerned an unadmitted sanctity beneath the smiling conversations
+of those summer hours; my own last lecture, on &ldquo;The
+Importance of Enjoying Life&rdquo;; the people who walked with me
+to the station and whom I was sorry to leave; and the oddly-minded
+student behind the desk of the hotel; and an old man from Kentucky
+who cared about Walt Whitman after I had talked about his
+ministrations in the army hospitals; and the trees, and the
+reverberating organ, and, beneath a benison of midnight peace, the
+hushed moon-silvery surface of the lake. It is, indeed, a memorable
+experience to have lectured at Chautauqua.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_132" name="page_132"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+132]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Academic" name="Academic"></a>Academic Leadership</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>Any one who has traveled much about the country of recent years
+must have been impressed by the growing uneasiness of mind among
+thoughtful men. Whether in the smoking car, or the hotel corridor,
+or the college hall, everywhere, if you meet them off their guard
+and stripped of the optimism which we wear as a public convention,
+you will hear them saying in a kind of sad amazement, &ldquo;What
+is to be the end of it all?&rdquo; They are alarmed at the
+unsettlement of property and the difficulties that harass the man
+of moderate means in making provision for the future; they are
+uneasy over the breaking up of the old laws of decorum, if not of
+decency, and over the unrestrained pursuit of excitement at any
+cost; they feel vaguely that in the decay of religion the bases of
+society have been somehow weakened. Now, much of this sort of talk
+is as old as history, and has no special significance. We are prone
+to forget that civilization has always been a <em>tour de
+force</em>, so to speak, a little hard-won area of order and
+self-subordination amidst a vast wilderness of anarchy and
+barbarism that are with difficulty held in check and are
+continually threatening to overrun their bounds. But that is
+equally no reason for over-confidence. Civilization is like a ship
+traversing an untamed sea. It is a more complex machine in our day,
+with command of greater forces, and might seem correspondingly
+safer than in the era of sails. But fresh catastrophes have shown
+that the ancient perils of navigation still confront the largest
+vessel, when the crew loses its discipline or the officers neglect
+their duty; and the analogy is not without its warning.</p>
+<p><a id="page_133" name="page_133"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+133]</span>Only a year after the sinking of the <em>Titanic</em> I
+was crossing the ocean, and it befell by chance that on the
+anniversary of that disaster we passed not very far from the spot
+where the proud ship lay buried beneath the waves. The evening was
+calm, and on the lee deck a dance had been hastily organized to
+take advantage of the benign weather. Almost alone I stood for
+hours at the railing on the windward side, looking out over the
+rippling water where the moon had laid upon it a broad street of
+gold. Nothing could have been more peaceful; it was as if Nature
+were smiling upon earth in sympathy with the strains of music and
+the sound of laughter that reached me at intervals from the
+revelling on the other deck. Yet I could not put out of my heart an
+apprehension of some luring treachery in this scene of
+beauty&mdash;and certainly the world can offer nothing more
+wonderfully beautiful than the moon shining from the far East over
+a smooth expanse of water. Was it not in such a calm as this that
+the unsuspecting vessel, with its gay freight of human lives, had
+shuddered, and gone down, forever? I seemed to behold a symbol; and
+there came into my mind the words we used to repeat at school, but
+are, I do not know just why, a little ashamed of to-day:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!</p>
+<p>Sail on, O Union, strong and great!</p>
+<p>Humanity with all its fears,</p>
+<p>With all its hopes of future years,</p>
+<p>Is hanging breathless on thy fate!&hellip;</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>Something like this, perhaps, is the feeling of many
+men&mdash;men by no means given to morbid gusts of panic&mdash;amid
+a society that laughs overmuch in its amusement and exults in the
+very lust of change. Nor is their anxiety quite the same as that
+which has always disturbed the reflecting spectator. At other times
+the apprehension has been lest the combined forces of order might
+not be strong enough to withstand the ever-threatening inroads of
+those <a id="page_134" name="page_134"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+134]</span>who envy barbarously and desire recklessly; whereas
+today the doubt is whether the natural champions of order
+themselves shall be found loyal to their trust, for they seem no
+longer to remember clearly the word of command that should unite
+them in leadership. Until they can rediscover some common ground of
+strength and purpose in the first principles of education and law
+and property and religion, we are in danger of falling a prey to
+the disorganizing and vulgarizing domination of ambitions which
+should be the servants and not the masters of society.</p>
+<p>Certainly, in the sphere of education there is a growing belief
+that some radical reform is needed; and this dissatisfaction is in
+itself wholesome. Boys come into college with no reading and with
+minds unused to the very practice of study; and they leave college,
+too often, in the same state of nature. There are even those,
+inside and outside of academic halls, who protest that our higher
+institutions of learning simply fail to educate at all. That is
+slander; but in sober earnest, you will find few experienced
+college professors, apart from those engaged in teaching purely
+utilitarian or practical subjects, who are not convinced that the
+general relaxation is greater now than it was twenty years ago. It
+is of considerable significance that the two student essays which
+took the prizes offered by the Harvard <em>Advocate</em> in 1913
+were both on this theme. The first of them posed the question:
+&ldquo;How can the leadership of the intellectual rather than the
+athletic student be fostered?&rdquo; and was virtually a sermon on
+a text of President Lowell&rsquo;s: &ldquo;No one in close touch
+with American education has failed to notice the lack among the
+mass of undergraduates of keen interest in their studies, and the
+small regard for scholarly attainment.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Now, the <em>Advocate</em> prizeman has his specific remedy, and
+President Lowell has his, and other men propose other systems and
+restrictions; but the evil is too deep-seated <a id="page_135"
+name="page_135"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 135]</span>to be
+reached by any superficial scheme of honors or to be charmed away
+by insinuating appeals. The other day Mr. William F. McCombs,
+chairman of the National Committee which engineered a college
+president into the White House, gave this advice to our academic
+youth: &ldquo;The college man must forget&mdash;or never let it
+creep into his head&mdash;that he&rsquo;s a highbrow. If it does
+creep in, he&rsquo;s out of politics.&rdquo; To which one might
+reply in Mr. McCombs&rsquo;s own dialect, that unless a man can
+make himself a force in politics (or at least in the larger life of
+the State) precisely by virtue of being a &ldquo;highbrow,&rdquo;
+he had better spend his four golden years otherwhere than in
+college. There it is: the destiny of education is intimately bound
+up with the question of social leadership, and unless the college,
+as it used to be in the days when the religious hierarchy it
+created was a real power, can be made once more a breeding place
+for a natural aristocracy, it will inevitably degenerate into a
+school for mechanical apprentices or into a pleasure resort for the
+<em>jeunesse dor&eacute;e</em> (<em>sc.</em> the &ldquo;gold
+coasters&rdquo;). We must get back to a common understanding of the
+office of education in the construction of society, and must
+discriminate among the subjects that may enter into the curriculum,
+by their relative value towards this end.</p>
+<p>A manifest condition is that education should embrace the means
+of discipline, for without discipline the mind will remain
+inefficient, just as surely as the muscles of the body, without
+exercise, will be left flaccid. That should seem to be a
+self-evident truth. Now it may be possible to derive a certain
+amount of discipline out of any study, but it is a fact,
+nevertheless, which cannot be gainsaid, that some studies lend
+themselves to this use more readily and effectively than others.
+You may, for instance, if by extraordinary luck you get the perfect
+teacher, make English literature disciplinary by the hard
+manipulation of ideas; but in practice it almost inevitably happens
+that a course in English literature either degenerates into the
+dull <a id="page_136" name="page_136"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+136]</span>memorizing of dates and names or, rising into the O
+Altitudo, evaporates in romantic gush over beautiful passages. This
+does not mean, of course, that no benefit may be obtained from such
+a study, but it does preclude English literature generally from
+being made the backbone, so to speak, of a sound curriculum. The
+same may be said of French and German. The difficulties of these
+tongues in themselves, and the effort required of us to enter into
+their spirit, imply some degree of intellectual gymnastics, but
+scarcely enough for our purpose. Of the sciences it behooves one to
+speak circumspectly, and undoubtedly mathematics and physics, at
+least, demand such close attention and such firm reasoning as to
+render them an essential part of any disciplinary education. But
+there are good grounds for being sceptical of the effect of the
+non-mathematical sciences on the immature mind. Any one who has
+spent a considerable portion of his undergraduate time in a
+chemical laboratory, for example, as the present writer has done,
+and has the means of comparing the results of such elementary and
+pottering experimentation with the mental grip required in the
+humanistic courses, must feel that the real training obtained
+therein was almost negligible. If I may draw further from my own
+observation I must say frankly that, after dealing for a number of
+years with manuscripts prepared for publication by college
+professors of the various faculties, I have been forced to the
+conclusion that science, in itself, is likely to leave the mind in
+a state of relative imbecility. It is not that the writing of men
+who got their early drill too exclusively, or even predominantly,
+in the sciences lacks the graces of rhetoric&mdash;that would be
+comparatively a small matter&mdash;but such men in the majority of
+cases, even when treating subjects within their own field, show a
+singular inability to think clearly and consecutively, so soon as
+they are freed from the restraint of merely describing the process
+of an experiment. On the contrary, the manuscript of a classical
+scholar, despite the present dry-rot of philology, <a id="page_137"
+name="page_137"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 137]</span>almost
+invariably gives signs of a habit of orderly and well-governed
+cerebration.</p>
+<p>Here, whatever else may be lacking, is discipline. The sheer
+difficulty of Latin and Greek, the highly organized structure of
+these languages, the need of scrupulous search to find the nearest
+equivalents for words that differ widely in their scope of meaning
+from their derivatives in any modern vocabulary, the effort of
+lifting one&rsquo;s self out of the familiar rut of ideas into so
+foreign a world, all these things act as a tonic exercise to the
+brain. And it is a demonstrable fact that students of the classics
+do actually surpass their unclassical rivals in any field where a
+fair test can be made. At Princeton, for instance, Professor West
+has shown this superiority by tables of achievements and grades,
+which he published in the <em>Educational Review</em> for March,
+1913; and a number of letters from various parts of the country,
+printed in the <em>Nation</em>, tell the same story in striking
+fashion. Thus, a letter from Wesleyan (September 7, 1911) gives
+statistics to prove that the classical students in that university
+outstrip the others in obtaining all sorts of honors, commonly even
+honors in the sciences. Another letter (May 8, 1913) shows that in
+the first semester in English at the University of Nebraska the
+percentage of delinquents among those who entered with four years
+of Latin was below 7; among those who had three years of Latin and
+one or two of a modern language the percentage rose to 15; two
+years of Latin and two years of a modern language, 30 per cent.;
+one year or less of Latin and from two to four years of a modern
+language, 35 per cent. And in the <em>Nation</em> of April 23,
+1914, Prof. Arthur Gordon Webster, the eminent physicist of Clark
+University, after speaking of the late B.O. Peirce&rsquo;s early
+drill and life-long interest in Greek and Latin, adds these
+significant words: &ldquo;Many of us still believe that such a
+training makes the best possible foundation for a scientist.&rdquo;
+There is reason to think that this opinion is daily gaining ground
+among those who are <a id="page_138" name=
+"page_138"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 138]</span>zealous that the
+prestige of science should be maintained by men of the best
+calibre.</p>
+<p>The disagreement in this matter would no doubt be less, were it
+not for an ambiguity in the meaning of the word
+&ldquo;efficient&rdquo; itself. There is a kind of efficiency in
+managing men, and there also is an intellectual efficiency,
+properly speaking, which is quite a different faculty. The former
+is more likely to be found in the successful engineer or business
+man than in the scholar of secluded habits, and because often such
+men of affairs received no discipline at college in the classics,
+the argument runs that utilitarian studies are as disciplinary as
+the humanistic. But efficiency of this kind is not an academic
+product at all, and is commonly developed, and should be developed,
+in the school of the world. It comes from dealing with men in
+matters of large physical moment, and may exist with a mind utterly
+undisciplined in the stricter sense of the word. We have had more
+than one illustrious example in recent years of men capable of
+dominating their fellows, let us say in financial transactions, who
+yet, in the grasp of first principles and in the analysis of
+consequences, have shown themselves to be as inefficient as
+children.</p>
+<p>Probably, however, few men who have had experience in education
+will deny the value of discipline to the classics, even though they
+hold that other studies, less costly from the utilitarian point of
+view, are equally educative in this respect. But it is further of
+prime importance, even if such an equality, or approach to
+equality, were granted, that we should select one group of studies,
+and unite in making it the core of the curriculum for the great
+mass of undergraduates. It is true in education as in other matters
+that strength comes from union, and weakness from division, and if
+educated men are to work together for a common end, they must have
+a common range of ideas, with a certain solidarity in their way of
+looking at things. As matters actually are, the educated man feels
+terribly <a id="page_139" name="page_139"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 139]</span>his isolation under the scattering of
+intellectual pursuits, yet too often lacks the courage to deny the
+strange popular fallacy that there is virtue in sheer variety, and
+that somehow well-being is to be struck out from the clashing of
+miscellaneous interests rather than from concentration. In one of
+his annual reports some years ago President Eliot, of Harvard,
+observed from the figures of registration that the majority of
+students still at that time believed the best form of education for
+them was in the old humanistic courses, and <em>therefore</em>, he
+argued, the other courses should be fostered. There was never
+perhaps a more extraordinary syllogism since the <em>argal</em> of
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s gravedigger. I quote from memory, and may
+slightly misrepresent the actual statement of the influential
+&ldquo;educationalist,&rdquo; but the spirit of his words, as
+indeed of his practice, is surely as I give it. And the working of
+this spirit is one of the main causes of the curious fact that
+scarcely any other class of men in social intercourse feel
+themselves, in their deeper concerns, more severed one from another
+than those very college professors who ought to be united in the
+battle for educational leadership. This estrangement is sometimes
+carried to an extreme almost ludicrous. I remember once, in a small
+but advanced college, the consternation that was awakened when an
+instructor in philosophy went to a colleague&mdash;both of them now
+associates in a large university&mdash;for information in a
+question of biology. &ldquo;What business has he with such
+matters,&rdquo; said the irate biologist; &ldquo;let him stick to
+his last, and teach philosophy&mdash;if he can!&rdquo; That was a
+polite jest, you will say. Perhaps; but not entirely. Philosophy is
+indeed taught in one lecture hall, and biology in another, but of
+conscious effort to make of education an harmonious driving force
+there is next to nothing. And as the teachers, so are the
+taught.</p>
+<p>Such criticism does not imply that advanced work in any of the
+branches of human knowledge should be curtailed; <a id="page_140"
+name="page_140"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 140]</span>but it does
+demand that, as a background to the professional pursuits, there
+should be a common intellectual training through which all students
+should pass, acquiring thus a single body of ideas and images in
+which they could always meet as brother initiates.</p>
+<p>We shall, then, make a long step forward when we determine that
+in the college, as distinguished from the university, it is better
+to have the great mass of men, whatever may be the waste in a few
+unmalleable minds, go through the discipline of a single group of
+studies&mdash;with, of course, a considerable freedom of choice in
+the outlying field. And it will probably appear in experience that
+the only practicable group to select is the classics, with the
+accompaniment of philosophy and the mathematical sciences. Latin
+and Greek are, at least, as disciplinary as any other subjects; and
+if it can be further shown that they possess a specific power of
+correction for the more disintegrating tendencies of the age, it
+ought to be clear that their value as instruments of education
+outweighs the service of certain other studies which may seem to be
+more immediately utilitarian.</p>
+<p>For it will be pretty generally agreed that efficiency of the
+individual scholar and unity of the scholarly class are, properly,
+only the means to obtain the real end of education, which is social
+efficiency. The only way, in fact, to make the discipline demanded
+by a severe curriculum and the sacrifice of particular tastes
+required for unity seem worth the cost, is to persuade men that the
+resulting form of education both meets a present and serious need
+of society and promises to serve those individuals who desire to
+obtain society&rsquo;s fairer honors. As for the specific need of
+society at the present day, it is not my purpose to open this
+matter now, for the good reason that the editor of <span class=
+"sc">The Unpopular Review</span> has already permitted me to argue
+it at length in my article on <em>Natural Aristocracy</em>. Mr.
+McCombs, speaking for the &ldquo;practical&rdquo; man, declares
+that there is no place in politics for the intellectual aristocrat.
+<a id="page_141" name="page_141"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+141]</span>A good many of us believe that unless the very reverse
+of this is true, unless the educated man can somehow, by virtue of
+his education, make of himself a governor of the people in the
+larger sense, and even to some extent in the narrow political
+sense, unless the college can produce a hierarchy of character and
+intelligence which shall in due measure perform the office of the
+discredited oligarchy of birth, we had better make haste to divert
+our enormous collegiate endowments into more useful channels.</p>
+<p>And here I am glad to find confirmation of my belief in the
+stalwart old <em>Boke Named the Governour</em>, published by Sir
+Thomas Elyot in 1531, the first treatise on education in the
+English tongue, and still, after all these years, one of the
+wisest. It is no waste of time to take account of the theory held
+by the humanists when study at Oxford and Cambridge was shaping
+itself for its long service in giving to the oligarchic government
+of Great Britain whatever elements it possessed of true
+aristocracy. Elyot&rsquo;s book is equally a treatise on the
+education of a gentleman, and on the ordinance of government; for,
+as he says elsewhere, he wrote &ldquo;to instruct men in such
+virtues as shall be expedient for them which shall have authority
+in a weal public.&rdquo; I quote from various parts of his work
+with some abridgment, retaining the quaint spelling of the
+original, and I beg the reader not to skip, however long the
+citation may appear:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Beholde also the ordre that god hath put generally in al his
+creatures, begynning at the moste inferiour or base, and assendynge
+upwarde; so that in euery thyng is ordre, and without ordre may be
+nothing stable or permanent; and it may nat be called ordre,
+excepte it do contayne in it degrees, high and base, accordynge to
+the merite or estimation of the thyng that is ordred. And therfore
+hit appereth that god gyueth nat to euery man like gyftes of grace,
+or of nature, but to some more, some lesse, as it liketh his diuine
+maiestie. For as moche as understandyng is the most excellent gyfte
+that man can receiue in his creation, it is therfore congruent, and
+accordynge <a id="page_142" name="page_142"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 142]</span>that as one excelleth an other in that
+influence, as therby beinge next to the similitude of his maker, so
+shulde the astate of his persone be auanced in degree or place
+where understandynge may profite. Suche oughte to be set in a more
+highe place than the residue where they may se and also be sene;
+that by the beames of theyr excellent witte, shewed throughe the
+glasse of auctorite, other of inferiour understandynge may be
+directed to the way of vertue and commodious liuynge&hellip;.</p>
+<p>Thus I conclude that nobilitie is nat after the vulgare opinion
+of men, but is only the prayse and surname of vertue; whiche the
+lenger it continueth in a name or lignage, the more is nobilitie
+extolled and meruailed at&hellip;.</p>
+<p>If thou be a gouernour, or haste ouer other soueraygntie, knowe
+thy selfe. Knowe that the name of a soueraigne or ruler without
+actuall gouernaunce is but a shadowe, that gouernaunce standeth nat
+by wordes onely, but principally by acte and example; that by
+example of gouernours men do rise or falle in vertue or vice. Ye
+shall knowe all way your selfe, if for affection or motion ye do
+speke or do nothing unworthy the immortalitie and moste precious
+nature of your soule&hellip;.</p>
+<p>In semblable maner the inferiour persone or subiecte aught to
+consider, that all be it he in the substaunce of soule and body be
+equall with his superior, yet for als moche as the powars and
+qualities of the soule and body, with the disposition of reason, be
+nat in euery man equall, therfore god ordayned a diuersitie or
+pre-eminence in degrees to be amonge men for the necessary
+derection and preseruation of them in conformitie of
+lyuinge&hellip;.</p>
+<p>Where all thynge is commune, there lacketh ordre; and where
+ordre lacketh, there all thynge is odiouse and uncomly.</p>
+</div>
+<p>Such is the goal which the grave Sir Thomas pointed out to the
+noble youth of his land at the beginning of England&rsquo;s
+greatness, and such, within the bounds of human frailty, has been
+the ideal even until now which the two universities have held
+before them. Naturally the method of training prescribed in the
+sixteenth century for the attainment of this goal is antiquated in
+some of its details, but it is no exaggeration, nevertheless, to
+speak of the <em>Boke Named the Governour</em> as the very Magna
+Charta of <a id="page_143" name="page_143"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 143]</span>our education. The scheme of the humanist
+might be described in a word as a disciplining of the higher
+faculty of the imagination to the end that the student may behold,
+as it were in one sublime vision, the whole scale of being in its
+range from the lowest to the highest under the divine decree of
+order and subordination, without losing sight of the immutable
+veracity at the heart of all variation, which &ldquo;is only the
+praise and surname of virtue.&rdquo; This was no new vision, nor
+has it ever been quite forgotten. It was the whole meaning of
+religion to Hooker, from whom it passed into all that is best and
+least ephemeral in the Anglican Church. It was the basis, more
+modestly expressed, of Blackstone&rsquo;s conception of the British
+Constitution and of liberty under law. It was the kernel of
+Burke&rsquo;s theory of statecraft. It is the inspiration of the
+sublimer science, which accepts the hypothesis of evolution as
+taught by Darwin and Spencer, yet bows in reverence before the
+unnamed and incommensurable force lodged as a mystical purpose
+within the unfolding universe. It was the wisdom of that child of
+Stratford who, building better than he knew, gave to our literature
+its deepest and most persistent note. If anywhere Shakespeare seems
+to speak from his heart and to utter his own philosophy, it is in
+the person of Ulysses in that strange satire of life as
+&ldquo;still wars and lechery&rdquo; which forms the theme of
+<em>Troilus and Cressida</em>. Twice in the course of the play
+Ulysses moralizes on the causes of human evil. Once it is in an
+outburst against the devastations of disorder:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Take but degree away, untune that string,</p>
+<p>And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets</p>
+<p>In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters</p>
+<p>Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,</p>
+<p>And make a sop of all this solid globe:</p>
+<p>Strength should be lord of imbecility,</p>
+<p>And the rude son should strike his father dead:</p>
+<p>Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,</p>
+<a id="page_144" name="page_144"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+144]</span>
+<p>Between whose endless jar justice resides,</p>
+<p>Should lose their names, and so should justice too.</p>
+<p>Then every thing includes itself in power,</p>
+<p>Power into will, will into appetite.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>And, in the same spirit, the second tirade of Ulysses is charged
+with mockery at the vanity of the present and at man&rsquo;s
+usurpation of time as the destroyer instead of the preserver of
+continuity:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>For time is like a fashionable host</p>
+<p>That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,</p>
+<p>And with his arms outstretch&rsquo;d, as he would fly,</p>
+<p>Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,</p>
+<p>And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek</p>
+<p>Remuneration for the thing it was;</p>
+<p>For beauty, wit,</p>
+<p>High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,</p>
+<p>Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all</p>
+<p>To envious and calumniating time.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>To have made this vision of the higher imagination a true part
+of our self-knowledge, in such fashion that the soul is purged of
+envy for what is distinguished, and we feel ourselves fellows with
+the preserving, rather than the destroying, forces of time, is to
+be raised into the nobility of the intellect. To hold this
+knowledge in a mind trained to fine efficiency and confirmed by
+faithful comradeship, is to take one&rsquo;s place with the
+rightful governors of the people. Nor is there any narrow or
+invidious exclusiveness in such an aristocracy, which differs in
+its free hospitality from an oligarchy of artificial prescription.
+The more its membership is enlarged, the greater is its power, and
+the more secure are the privileges of each individual. Yet, if not
+exclusive, an academic aristocracy must by its very nature be
+exceedingly jealous of any levelling process which would shape
+education to the needs of the intellectual proletariat, and so
+diminish its own ranks. It cannot <a id="page_145" name=
+"page_145"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 145]</span>admit that, if
+education is once levelled downwards, the whole body of men will of
+themselves gradually raise the level to the higher range; for its
+creed declares that elevation must come from leadership rather than
+from self-motion of the mass. It will therefore be opposed to any
+scheme of studies which relaxes discipline or destroys intellectual
+solidarity. It will look with suspicion on any system which turns
+out half-educated men with the same diplomas as the fully educated,
+thinking that such methods of slurring over differences are likely
+to do more harm by discouraging the ambition to attain what is
+distinguished than good by spreading wide a thin veneer of culture.
+In particular it will distrust the present huge overgrowth of
+courses in government and sociology, which send men into the world
+skilled in the machinery of statecraft and with minds sharpened to
+the immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine
+training of the imagination and no understanding of the longer
+problems of humanity, with no hold on the past, &ldquo;amidst so
+vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre their
+thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to preserve them from being
+blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine.&rdquo; It will
+set itself against any regular subjection of the &ldquo;fierce
+spirit of liberty,&rdquo; which is the breath of distinction and
+the very charter of aristocracy, to the sullen spirit of equality,
+which proceeds from envy in the baser sort of democracy. It will
+regard the character of education and the disposition of the
+curriculum as a question of supreme importance; for its motto is
+always, <em>abeunt studia in mores</em>.</p>
+<p>Now this aristocratic principle has, so to speak, its
+everlasting embodiment in Greek literature, from whence it was
+taken over into Latin and transmitted, with much mingling of
+foreign and even contradictory ideas, to the modern world. From
+Homer to the last runnings of the Hellenic spirit you will find it
+taught by every kind of precept and enforced by every kind of
+example; nor was <a id="page_146" name="page_146"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 146]</span>Shakespeare writing at hazard, but under
+the instinctive guidance of genius, when he put his aristocratic
+creed into the mouth of the hero who to the end remained for the
+Greeks the personification of their peculiar wisdom. In no other
+poetry of the world is the law of distinction, as springing from a
+man&rsquo;s perception of his place in the great hierarchy of
+privilege and obligation, from the lowest human being up to the
+Olympian gods, so copiously and magnificently set forth as in
+Pindar&rsquo;s <em>Odes of Victory</em>. And &AElig;schylus was the
+first dramatist to see with clear vision the primacy of the
+intellect in the law of orderly development, seemingly at variance
+with the divine immutable will of Fate, yet finally in mysterious
+accord with it. When the philosophers of the later period came to
+the creation of systematic ethics, they had only the task of
+formulating what was already latent in the poets and historians of
+their land; and it was the recollection of the fulness of such
+instruction in the <em>Nicomachean Ethics</em> and the Platonic
+Dialogues, with their echo in the <em>Officia</em> of Cicero, as if
+in them were stored up all the treasures of antiquity, that raised
+our Sir Thomas into wondering admiration:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Lorde god, what incomparable swetnesse of wordes and mater shall
+he finde in the saide warkes of Plato and Cicero; wherin is ioyned
+grauitie with dilectation, excellent wysedome with diuine
+eloquence, absolute vertue with pleasure incredible, and euery
+place is so infarced [crowded] with profitable counsaile, ioyned
+with honestie, that those thre bokes be almoste sufficient to make
+a perfecte and excellent gouernour.</p>
+</div>
+<p>There is no need to dwell on this aspect of the classics. He who
+cares to follow their full working in this direction, as did our
+English humanist, may find it exhibited in Plato&rsquo;s political
+and ethical scheme of self-development, or in Aristotle&rsquo;s
+ideal of the Golden Mean which combines magnanimity with
+moderation, and elevation with self-knowledge. If a single word
+were used to describe the <a id="page_147" name=
+"page_147"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 147]</span>character and
+state of life upheld by Plato and Aristotle, as spokesmen of their
+people, it would be <em>eleutheria</em>, <em>liberty</em>: the
+freedom to cultivate the higher part of a man&rsquo;s
+nature&mdash;his intellectual prerogative, his desire of truth, his
+refinements of taste&mdash;and to hold the baser part of himself in
+subjection; the freedom, also, for its own perfection, and indeed
+for its very existence, to impose an outer conformity to, or at
+least respect for, the laws of this inner government on others who
+are of themselves ungoverned. Such liberty is the ground of true
+distinction; it implies the opposite of an equalitarianism which
+reserves its honors and rewards for those who attain a bastard kind
+of distinction by the cunning of leadership, without departing from
+common standards&mdash;the demagogues who rise by flattery. But it
+is, on the other hand, by no means dependent on the artificial
+distinctions of privilege, and is peculiarly adapted to an age
+whose appointed task must be to create a natural aristocracy as a
+<em>via media</em> between an equalitarian democracy and a
+prescriptive oligarchy or plutocracy. It is a notable fact that, as
+the real hostility to the classics in the present day arises from
+an instinctive suspicion of them as standing in the way of a
+downward-levelling mediocrity, so, at other times, they have fallen
+under displeasure for their veto on a contrary excess. Thus, in his
+savage attack on the Commonwealth, to which he gave the significant
+title <em>Behemoth</em>, Hobbes lists the reading of classical
+history among the chief causes of the rebellion. &ldquo;There
+were,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;an exceeding great number of men of
+the better sort, that had been so educated as that in their youth,
+having read the books written by famous men of the ancient Grecian
+and Roman commonwealths concerning their polity and great actions,
+in which books the popular government was extolled by that glorious
+name of liberty, and monarchy disgraced by the name of tyranny,
+they became thereby in love with their forms of government; and out
+of these men were chosen the <a id="page_148" name=
+"page_148"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 148]</span>greatest part of
+the House of Commons; or if they were not the greatest part, yet by
+advantage of their eloquence were always able to sway the
+rest.&rdquo; To this charge Hobbes returns again and again, even
+declaring that &ldquo;the universities have been to this nation as
+the Wooden Horse was to the Trojans.&rdquo; And the uncompromising
+monarchist of the <em>Leviathan</em>, himself a classicist of no
+mean attainments, as may be known by his translation of Thucydides,
+was not deceived in his accusation. The tyrannicides of Athens and
+Rome, the Aristogeitons and Brutuses and others, were the heroes by
+whose example the leaders of the French Revolution (rightly, so far
+as they did not fall into the opposite, equalitarian extreme) were
+continually justifying their acts:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>There Brutus starts and stares by midnight taper,</p>
+<p>Who all the day enacts&mdash;a woollen-draper.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>And again, in the years of the Risorgimento, more than one of
+the champions of Italian liberty went to death with those great
+names on their lips.</p>
+<p>So runs the law of order and right subordination. But if the
+classics offer the best service to education by inculcating an
+aristocracy of intellectual distinction, they are equally effective
+in enforcing the similar lesson of time. It is a true saying of our
+ancient humanist that &ldquo;the longer it continueth in a name or
+lineage, the more is nobility extolled and marvelled at.&rdquo; It
+is true because in this way our imagination is working with the
+great conservative law of growth. Whatever may be in theory our
+democratic distaste for the insignia of birth, we cannot get away
+from the fact that there is a certain honor of inheritance, and
+that we instinctively pay homage to one who represents a noble
+name. There is nothing really illogical in this: for, as an English
+statesman has put it, &ldquo;the past is one of the elements of our
+power.&rdquo; He is the wise democrat who, with no opposition to
+such a decree of Nature, endeavors to control its operation by
+expecting noble service where the memory of nobility abides. When
+<a id="page_149" name="page_149"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+149]</span>last year Oxford bestowed its highest honor on an
+American, distinguished not only for his own public acts but for
+the great tradition embodied in his name, the Orator of the
+University did not omit this legitimate appeal to the imagination,
+singularly appropriate in its academic Latin:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&hellip; Statim succurrit animo antiqua illa Romae condicio, cum
+non tam propter singulos cives quam propter singulas gentes nomen
+Romanum floreret. Cum enim civis alicujus et avum et proavum
+principes civitatis esse creatos, cum patrem legationis munus apud
+aulam Britannicam summa cum laude esse exsecutum cognovimus; cum
+denique ipsum per totum bellum stipendia equo meritum, summa
+pericula &ldquo;Pulcra pro Libertate&rdquo; ausum,&hellip; Romanae
+alicujus gentis&mdash;Brutorum vel Deciorum&mdash;annales evolvere
+videmur, qui testimonium adhibent &ldquo;fortes creari
+fortibus,&rdquo; et majorum exemplis et imaginibus nepotes ad
+virtutem accendi.</p>
+</div>
+<p>Is there any man so dull of soul as not to be stirred by that
+enumeration of civic services zealously inherited; or is there any
+one so envious of the past as not to believe that such memories
+should be honored in the present as an incentive to noble
+emulation?</p>
+<p>Well, we cannot all of us count Presidents and Ambassadors among
+our ancestors, but we can, if we will, in the genealogy of the
+inner life enroll ourselves among the adopted sons of a family in
+comparison with which the Bruti and Decii of old and the Adamses of
+to-day are veritable <em>new men</em>. We can see what defence
+against the meaner depredations of the world may be drawn from the
+pride of birth, when, as it sometimes happens, the obligation of a
+great past is kept as a contract with the present; shall we forget
+to measure the enlargement and elevation of mind which ought to
+come to a man who has made himself the heir of the ancient Lords of
+Wisdom? &ldquo;To one small people,&rdquo; as Sir Henry Maine has
+said, in words often quoted, &ldquo;it was given to create the
+principle of <a id="page_150" name="page_150"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 150]</span>Progress. That people was the Greek. Except
+the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is
+not Greek in its origin.&rdquo; That is a hard saying, but scarcely
+exaggerated. Examine the records of our art and our science, our
+philosophy and the enduring element of our faith, our statecraft
+and our notion of liberty, and you will find that they all go back
+for their inspiration to that one small people, and strike their
+roots into the soil of Greece. What we have added, it is well to
+know; but he is the aristocrat of the mind who can display a
+diploma from the schools of the Academy and the Lyceum, and from
+the Theatre of Dionysus. What tradition of ancestral achievement in
+the Senate or on the field of battle shall broaden a man&rsquo;s
+outlook and elevate his will equally with the consciousness that
+his way of thinking and feeling has come down to him by so long and
+honorable a descent, or shall so confirm him in his better judgment
+against the ephemeral and vulgarizing solicitations of the hour?
+Other men are creatures of the visible moment; he is a citizen of
+the past and of the future. And such a charter of citizenship it is
+the first duty of the college to provide.</p>
+<p>I have limited myself in these pages to a discussion of what may
+be called the public side of education, considering the classics in
+their power to mould character and foster sound leadership in a
+society much given to drifting. Of the inexhaustible joy and
+consolation they afford to the individual, only he can have full
+knowledge who has made the writers of Greece and Rome his friends
+and counsellors through many vicissitudes of life. It is related of
+Sainte-Beuve, who, according to Renan, read everything and
+remembered everything, that one could observe a peculiar serenity
+on his face whenever he came down from his study after reading a
+book of Homer. The cost of learning the language of Homer is not
+small; but so are all fair things difficult, as the Greek proverb
+runs, and the reward in this case is precious beyond
+estimation.</p>
+<p><a id="page_151" name="page_151"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+151]</span>Nor need we forget another proverb from Greece, with its
+spirit of &ldquo;accommodation&rdquo;&mdash;that the half is
+sometimes greater than the whole. Even a moderate acquaintance with
+the language, helped out by good translations (especially in such
+form as the Loeb Classics are now offering, with the original and
+the English on opposite pages), will go a surprising length towards
+keeping a man, amid the exactions of a professional or otherwise
+busy life, in possession of the heritage to which our age has grown
+so perilously indifferent.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_152" name="page_152"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+152]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Hypnotism" name="Hypnotism"></a>Hypnotism, Telepathy,
+and Dreams</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>A good many good judges find the world more out of joint, and
+moving with a more threatening rattling, than at any previous time
+since the French Revolution, and think that this is largely because
+the machine has lost too much of that regulation it used to get
+from the religions. Much of the regulation came from an interest in
+things wider than those directly revealed by sense.</p>
+<p>Possibly a revival of such an interest may be promised by the
+recent indications of a range of our forces, both physical and
+psychic, far wider than previous experience has indicated. This
+leads us to invite attention to some unusual psychic phenomena
+evinced by persons of exceptional sensibilities not yet as well
+understood, or even as carefully investigated, as perhaps they
+deserve to be. The physical phenomena are outside of our present
+purpose.</p>
+<p>There are hundreds of well authenticated reports of super-usual
+visions. The vast majority of them, however, were experienced when
+the percipients were in bed, but believed themselves awake. But
+almost everybody has often believed himself awake in bed, when he
+was only dreaming. Hence the probability is overwhelming that most
+of these super-usual experiences were had in dreams.</p>
+<p>But it is certain that not all were, at least in dreams as
+ordinarily understood; but there seems to be a waking dream state.
+Foster&rsquo;s visions virtually all came while he was awake, and
+they were generally at once described by him as if he were
+describing a landscape or a play. At times he very closely
+identified himself with some personality of his visions, and acted
+out the personality, just as Mrs. Piper has habitually done. The
+following is an <a id="page_153" name="page_153"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 153]</span>approximate instance, quoted by Bartlett
+(<em>The Salem Seer</em>, p. 51<em>f.</em>):</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Says a writer in the New York <em>World</em>, Dec. 27, 1885:</p>
+<p>&hellip; While we were talking one night, Foster and I, there
+came a knock at the door. Bartlett arose and opened it, disclosing
+as he did so two young men plainly dressed, of marked provincial
+aspect&hellip;. I saw at once that they were clients, and arose to
+go. Foster restrained me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll try and get
+rid of them, for I&rsquo;m not in the humor to be
+disturbed&hellip;.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Foster hinted that he had no particular inclination to gratify
+them then and there, but they protested that they had come some
+distance, and, with a characteristically good-natured smile, he
+gave in&hellip;.</p>
+<p>Then follows an account of a fairly good
+s&eacute;ance&mdash;taps on the marble table, reading pellets,
+describing persons, etc., until I thought Foster was tired of the
+interview and was feigning sleep to end it. All of a sudden he
+sprang to his feet with such an expression of horror and
+consternation as an actor playing Macbeth would have given a good
+deal to imitate. His eyes glared, his breast heaved, his hands
+clenched&hellip;.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why did you come here?&rdquo; cried Foster, in a wail
+that seemed to come from the bottom of his soul. &ldquo;Why do you
+come here to torment me with such a sight? Oh, God! It&rsquo;s
+horrible! It&rsquo;s horrible!&hellip; It is your father I
+see!&hellip; He died fearfully! He died fearfully! He was in
+Texas&mdash;on a horse&mdash;with cattle. He was alone. It is the
+prairies! Alone! The horse fell! He was under it! His thigh was
+broken&mdash;horribly broken! The horse ran away and left him! He
+lay there stunned! Then he came to his senses! Oh! his thigh was
+dreadful! Such agony! My God! Such agony!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Foster fairly screamed at this. The younger of the men &hellip;
+broke into violent sobs. His companion wept, too, and the pair of
+them clasped hands. Bartlett looked on concerned. As for me, I was
+astounded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was four days dying&mdash;four days dying&mdash;of
+starvation and thirst,&rdquo; Foster went on, as if deciphering
+some terrible hieroglyphs written on the air. &ldquo;His thigh
+swelled to the size of his body. Clouds of flies settled on
+him&mdash;flies and vermin&mdash;and he chewed his own arm and
+drank his own blood. He died mad. And my God! he crawled three
+miles in those four days! Man! Man! that&rsquo;s how your father
+died!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So saying, with a great sob, Foster dropped into his chair,
+<a id="page_154" name="page_154"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+154]</span>his cheeks purple, and tears running down them in
+rivers. The younger man &hellip; burst into a wild cry of grief and
+sank upon the neck of his friend. He, too, was sobbing as if his
+own heart would break. Bartlett stood over Foster wiping his
+forehead with a handkerchief&hellip;.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said the younger man&rsquo;s
+friend; &ldquo;his father was a stock-raiser in Texas, and after he
+had been missing from his drove for over a week, they found him
+dead and swollen with his leg broken. They tracked him a good
+distance from where he must have fallen. But nobody ever heard till
+now how he died.&rdquo; &hellip;</p>
+</div>
+<p>Now it is hardly to be supposed that the young visitor could
+ever have had this scene in his mind as vividly as Foster had. In
+that case where and how did Foster get the vividness and emotion?
+How do we get them in dreams? He dreamed while he was awake.</p>
+<p>As Bartlett quotes this, and as it declares him to have been
+present, he of course attests it by quoting it. So in each of
+Bartlett&rsquo;s quoted cases, the original witness is the reporter
+in the newspaper, and Bartlett, who was present (he was
+Foster&rsquo;s traveling companion and business agent) thus
+confirms it. We know Mr. Bartlett personally, and have thorough
+confidence in his sanity and sincerity. We have also been at the
+pains to learn that he commands the confidence and respect of his
+fellow townsmen in Tolland, Connecticut, where he is passing a
+green old age. Moreover, he does not interpret these phenomena by
+&ldquo;spiritism.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We also had a sitting with Foster, in which he undoubtedly
+showed abundant telepathy, and satisfied us that he was
+fundamentally honest, though not always discriminating between his
+involuntary impressions, and his natural impulses to help out their
+coherence and interest.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Those who explain these things by denying their existence, were
+at least excusable thirty, or even twenty, years ago, but since the
+carefully sifted and authenticated and recorded evidence of recent
+years, especially that gathered by the Society for Psychical
+Research, the makers <a id="page_155" name=
+"page_155"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 155]</span>of such
+explanations simply put themselves in the category of those who, in
+Schopenhauer&rsquo;s day, denied the telopsis which is now quite
+generally recognized. He said their attitude should not be called
+skeptical, but merely ignorant. This brings to mind an excellent
+very practical friend who read the first number of this
+<span class="sc">Review</span>, and praised it, but said:
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t fool any more with Psychical Research and
+Simplified Spelling.&rdquo; We refrained from saying that we had
+not known that he had ever studied either, and we would not say it
+here if we were not confident that his aversion from the subject
+will prevent his reading this.</p>
+<p>To return to the manifestations: here are some other cases where
+Foster identified himself with a personality of his vision.
+(Bartlett, <em>op. cit.</em>, 93.)</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>From Sacramento <em>Record</em>, December 8, 1873:</p>
+<p>Foster at one time seized A.&rsquo;s hand, explaining,
+&ldquo;God bless you, my dear boy, my son. I am thankful I at last
+may speak to you. I want you to know I am your father, who loved
+you in life and loves you still. I am near to you; a thin veil
+alone separates us. Good-by. I am your father, Abijah
+A&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; exclaimed A&mdash;&mdash;,
+&ldquo;that was my father&rsquo;s name, his tone, his manner, his
+action.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And,&rdquo; said Foster, &ldquo;it was a good influence;
+he was a man of large veneration.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>The above indicates what we will provisionally call Possession.
+But it is not possession to the extent of complete expulsion of the
+original consciousness, as in the trances of Home, Moses, and Mrs.
+Piper.</p>
+<p>And which is the following? (Bartlett, <em>op. cit.</em>,
+103):</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>[Letter to editor, written Nov. 30, 1874]</p>
+<p>New York <em>Daily Graphic</em>: &hellip; He told me he saw the
+spirit of an old woman close to me, describing most perfectly my
+grandmother, and repeating: &ldquo;Resodeda, Resodeda is here; she
+kisses her grandson.&rdquo; Arising from his chair, Foster embraced
+and kissed me in the same peculiar way as my grandmother did when
+alive.</p>
+</div>
+<p><a id="page_156" name="page_156"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+156]</span>But here the Possession seems complete (Bartlett,
+<em>op. cit.</em>, 140). From the Melbourne <em>Daily Age</em>:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Mr. Foster &hellip; in answer to the question, What he died of?
+suddenly interrupted, &ldquo;Stay, this spirit will enter and
+possess me,&rdquo; and instantaneously his whole body was seized
+with quivering convulsions, the eyes were introverted, the face
+swelled, and the mouth and hands were spasmodically agitated.
+Another change, and there sat before me the counterpart of the
+figure of my departed friend, stricken down with complete
+paralysis, just as he was on his death-bed. The transformation was
+so life-like, if I may use the expression, that I fancied I could
+detect the very features and physiognomical changes that passed
+across the visage of my dying friend. The kind of paralysis was
+exactly represented, with the palsied hand extended to me to shake,
+as in the case of the original. Mr. Foster recovered himself when I
+touched it, and he said in reply to one of my companions that he
+had completely lost his own identity during the fit, and felt like
+waves of water flowing all over his body, from the crown
+downwards.</p>
+</div>
+<p>Now for some tentative explanation of these rather unusual
+proceedings. It is generally known that a hypnotized person will
+imagine things and do things willed by the hypnotizer, that the
+sensibility of persons to hypnotism varies, and that persons
+frequently hypnotized become increasingly susceptible to the
+influence.</p>
+<p>Now what is ordinarily called thought transference has all these
+symptoms, and the combined indications seem to be that persons who
+readily experience thought-transference are specially susceptible
+to hypnotic influence, and get the transferred thought from almost
+anybody, just as the recognized hypnotic subject gets it from his
+hypnotizer; and that persons of excessive sensibility, like Foster,
+Home, Mrs. Holland, Mrs. Piper and mediums generally&mdash;the
+genuine ones,&mdash;simply get their impressions hypnotically from
+their sitters.</p>
+<p>But this explanation (?) by no means covers the whole situation.
+In the first place, it does not cover the vividness and the
+emotional content often displayed by the <a id="page_157" name=
+"page_157"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 157]</span>sensitive. The
+sitter is very seldom conscious of anything approaching it. It
+comes nearer to, in fact almost seems identical with, the frequent
+vividness and intensity of dreams. But where do dreams come from,
+whether in sleep, or in a waking &ldquo;dream state&rdquo; like
+that of Foster and many other sensitives? They don&rsquo;t come
+from any assignable &ldquo;sitter.&rdquo; This present scribe
+dreams architecture and bric-a-brac finer than any he ever saw, or
+than any ever made. Yet he is no architect, or artist of any kind.
+Where does it all come from?</p>
+<p>Dreams, moreover, are filled with memories of forgotten things.
+Where do they come from? Dreams, too, are by no means devoid of
+truths not previously known to the dreamer, or, it would sometimes
+seem, to anybody else. Where do they come from?</p>
+<p>Du Prel and his school say they come from a &ldquo;subliminal
+self,&rdquo; and Myers picks up the term and spreads it through
+Anglo-Saxondom. But those queer dreams frequently include persons
+who oppose the self&mdash;argue with it, and even down it,
+sometimes very much for its information, regeneration and increased
+stability. That does not seem like a house divided against itself;
+such an one, we have on very high authority, is apt to fall. James,
+cornered by his studies in Psychical Research, was inclined to
+posit a &ldquo;cosmic reservoir&rdquo; of all thoughts and feelings
+that ever existed, and of potentialities of all the thoughts and
+feelings that are ever going to exist; and under various
+designations, this cosmic reservoir or,&mdash;it seems a better
+metaphor&mdash;the cosmic soul filling it, and dribbling into our
+little souls,&mdash;is a guess of virtually all the philosophers
+from James back to Plato, and farther still&mdash;into the
+mists.</p>
+<p>Moreover this guess is powerfully backed up by another guess:
+men&rsquo;s speculations have been reaching back for the beginning
+of mind, until they recognize that a consistent doctrine of
+evolution finds no beginning, and demands mind as a constituent of
+the star-dust, and, when it really <a id="page_158" name=
+"page_158"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 158]</span>comes down to
+the scratch, is unable to imagine matter unassociated with mind.
+This is admirably expressed by James (Psychology I, 140):</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape
+must have been present at the very origin of things. Accordingly we
+find that the more clear-sighted evolutionary philosophers are
+beginning to posit it there. Each atom of the nebula, they suppose,
+must have had an aboriginal atom of consciousness linked with it;
+and, just as the material atoms have formed bodies and brains by
+massing themselves together, so the mental atoms, by an analogous
+process of aggregation, have fused into those larger
+consciousnesses which we know in ourselves and suppose to exist in
+our fellow-animals.</p>
+</div>
+<p>That mind is not limited to this connection with matter, we see
+proved <em>a posteriori</em> every day by the appearance from
+<em>some</em> source, it may be only from the memories of
+survivors, of minds whose accompanying matter is long since
+dissipated.</p>
+<p>Moreover, in life, the matter is changing constantly and
+entirely&mdash;&ldquo;renewed once in seven years.&rdquo; Yet not
+only does the &ldquo;plan,&rdquo; the &ldquo;idea,&rdquo; of the
+material man remain the same, but his mind grows for forty, sixty,
+sometimes eighty years, while the body begins to go down hill at
+twenty-eight.</p>
+<p>Moreover, we never see the sum of matter in the universe
+increasing, and we do see the sum of mind increasing every time two
+old thoughts coalesce into a new one, or even every time matter
+assumes a new form before a perceiving intelligence, not to speak
+of every time Mr. Bryan or Mr. Roosevelt opens his mouth. We cite
+these last as the extreme examples of increase&mdash;in quantity.
+We see another sort of increase every time Lord Bryce takes up his
+pen&mdash;the mental treasures of the world are added to&mdash;the
+contents of the cosmic reservoir worthily increased&mdash;the
+cosmic soul greater and more significant than before.</p>
+<p>Parts of it farther and farther removed in time and space <a id=
+"page_159" name="page_159"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+159]</span>seem to be manifesting themselves through the sensitives
+every day: so the evidence is increasing that none of it has ever
+been extinguished. The evidence that any part has been, is merely
+the evidence that it has stopped flowing through each man when he
+dies. But there are pretty strong indications that it has welled up
+occasionally through another man, and yet with the original
+individuality apparently even stronger than it was in the first
+man&mdash;strong enough to make an alien body&mdash;Foster&rsquo;s,
+in the instances quoted, look and act like the original twin
+body.</p>
+<p>Yet while the cosmic soul idea seems very illuminating, and even
+stimulating, as far as it goes, it soon lands us in the swamp of
+paradox surrounding all our knowledge. How reconcile it with our
+individuality&mdash;the individuality as dear as life
+itself&mdash;virtually identical with life itself? Well, we
+can&rsquo;t reconcile them, at least just yet. But we can pull our
+feet up from the swamp, and make a step that may be towards a
+reconciliation. Each of our brains is a network of channels through
+which the cosmic soul flows; and there are no two brains
+alike&mdash;hence our individuality.</p>
+<p>But those brains perish. Must individuality be conceded at the
+cost of our mental continuity? Perhaps not. Grant even the original
+mind-atom to be a constituent, or inseparable companion, of an
+original matter-atom (wouldn&rsquo;t it be more up to date to say
+vibration in each case?), mind, as we have already tried to
+demonstrate, is not limited, as matter seems to be, to those
+primitive atoms.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>The vague but almost unescapable notion of the cosmic soul also
+opens up some hint of an explanation of hypnotism, including, of
+course, thought transference. These vague hints or gleams on the
+borderland of our knowledge are of course something like what must
+be such hints of what we know as color, as go through the pigment
+spots <a id="page_160" name="page_160"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+160]</span>on the surface of one of the lower creatures. Such as
+our limits are, we can express them only in metaphors. But for that
+matter all of our language beyond a few material conceptions, is
+metaphor from them. Well, on the hypothesis (or facing the fact, if
+you prefer) of the cosmic soul, telepathy, hypnotism and all that
+sort of thing at once affiliates itself with all our easy
+conceptions of interflow&mdash;in fluids, gases, sounds, colors,
+magnetism, electricity, etc. It&rsquo;s all a vague groping, but
+there seems something there which, as we evolve farther, we may get
+clearer impressions of.</p>
+<p>Well, to return to our sheep. Foster didn&rsquo;t get the
+clearness and intensity of his visions from the comparatively
+indistinct and placid impressions in his sitters&rsquo; minds.
+There must be something more than hypnotism from the sitter.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Now here is a tougher case which opens a new element of the
+problem. It is from <em>The Autobiography of a Journalist</em>, by
+W.J. Stillman, Boston, 1901, Vol. I, pp. 192-4: Not many of our
+older readers will require any introduction of Stillman. For the
+younger ones, we may say that he was a very eminent art-critic;
+spent most of the latter half of his life abroad, being part of the
+time our consul at Crete; wrote a history of the Cretan Rebellion,
+and other books; and was a regular correspondent of <em>The
+Nation</em>, and of <em>The London Times</em>. We never knew his
+veracity questioned.</p>
+<p>Here is the story:</p>
+<p>A &ldquo;spiritual medium,&rdquo; Miss A. was &ldquo;under the
+control&rdquo; of Stillman&rsquo;s dead cousin
+&ldquo;Harvey.&rdquo; The &ldquo;possession&rdquo; seems to have
+been throughout free from trance. Stillman says:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>I asked Harvey if he had seen old Turner, the landscape painter,
+since his death, which had taken place not very long before. The
+reply was &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; and I then asked what he was doing,
+the reply being a pantomime of painting. I then asked if Harvey
+could bring Turner there, to which the reply was, &ldquo;I do not
+know; I will go and see,&rdquo; upon which Miss A. said, <a id=
+"page_161" name="page_161"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+161]</span>&ldquo;This influence [Harvey&rsquo;s. Editor] is going
+away&mdash;it is gone&rdquo;; and after a short pause added,
+&ldquo;There is another influence coming, in that direction,&rdquo;
+pointing over her left shoulder. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like
+it,&rdquo; and she shuddered slightly, but presently sat up in her
+chair with a most extraordinary personation of the old painter in
+manner, in the look out from under the brow, and the pose of the
+head. It was as if the ghost of Turner, as I had seen him at
+Griffiths&rsquo;s, sat in the chair, and it made my flesh creep to
+the very tips of my fingers, as if a spirit sat before me. Miss A.
+exclaimed, &ldquo;This influence has taken complete possession of
+me, as none of the others did. I am obliged to do what it wants me
+to.&rdquo; I asked if Turner would write his name for me, to which
+she replied by a sharp, decided negative sign. I then asked if he
+would give me some advice about my painting, remembering
+Turner&rsquo;s kindly invitation and manner when I saw him. This
+proposition was met by the same decided negative, accompanied by
+the fixed and sardonic stare which the girl had put on at the
+coming of the new influence. This disconcerted me, and I then
+explained to my brother what had been going on, as, the questions
+being mental, he had no clue to the pantomime. I said that as an
+influence which purported to be Turner was present, and refused to
+answer any questions, I supposed there was nothing more to be
+done.</p>
+<p>But Miss A. still sat unmoved and helpless, so we waited.
+Presently she remarked that the influence wanted her to do
+something she knew not what, only that she had to get up and go
+across the room, which she did with the feeble step of an old man.
+She crossed the room and took down from the wall a colored French
+lithograph, and, coming to me, laid it on the table before me, and
+by gesture called my attention to it. She then went through the
+pantomime of stretching a sheet of paper on a drawing-board, then
+that of sharpening a lead pencil, following it up by tracing the
+outlines of the subject in the lithograph. Then followed in similar
+pantomime the choosing of a water-color pencil, noting carefully
+the necessary fineness of the point, and then the washing-in of a
+drawing, broadly. Miss A. seemed much amused by all this, but as
+she knew nothing of drawing she understood nothing of it. Then with
+the pencil and her pocket handkerchief she began taking out the
+lights, &ldquo;rubbing-out,&rdquo; as the technical term is. This
+seemed to me so contrary to what I conceived to be the execution of
+Turner that I interrupted with the question, &ldquo;Do you mean to
+say that Turner rubbed out his lights?&rdquo; to which she gave the
+<a id="page_162" name="page_162"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+162]</span>affirmative sign. I asked further if in a drawing which
+I then had in my mind, the well-known &ldquo;Llanthony
+Abbey,&rdquo; the central passage of sunlight and shadow through
+rain was done in that way, and she again gave the affirmative
+reply, emphatically. I was so firmly convinced to the contrary that
+I was now persuaded that there was a simulation of personality,
+such as was generally the case with the public mediums, and I said
+to my brother, who had not heard any of my questions [He says above
+that they were mental. Ed.] that this was another humbug, and then
+repeated what had passed, saying that Turner could not have worked
+in that way.</p>
+<p>Six weeks later I sailed for England, and, on arriving in
+London, I went at once to see Ruskin, and told him the whole story.
+He declared the contrariness manifested by the medium to be
+entirely characteristic of Turner, and had the drawing in question
+down for examination. We scrutinized it closely, and both
+recognized beyond dispute that the drawing had been executed in the
+way that Miss A. indicated. Ruskin advised me to send an account of
+the affair to the <em>Cornhill</em>, which I did; but it was
+rejected, as might have been expected in the state of public
+opinion at that time, and I can easily imagine Thackeray putting it
+into the basket in a rage.</p>
+<p>I offer no interpretation of the facts which I have here
+recorded, but I have no hesitation in saying that they completed
+and fixed my conviction of the existence of invisible and
+independent intelligences to which the phenomena were due.</p>
+</div>
+<p>To me they seem perhaps the nearest I have come to a
+communication of something not known to any earthly intelligence,
+and yet it <em>may</em> have been so known.</p>
+<p>When manifestations of this general nature first attracted
+systematic study, they were attributed, as already stated, to
+telepathy from the sitter. Stillman knew Turner, and as Stillman
+had an artist&rsquo;s vividness of impression, the sensitive could
+have got from him a pretty good idea of Turner, and have acted it
+out. But how about the innumerable cases not unlike the Foster
+cases quoted, where sensitives get impressions much more vivid than
+the sitter appears capable of holding, and act them out with
+dramatic verisimilitude of which the sitter is absolutely
+incapable; and how about the innumerable <a id="page_163" name=
+"page_163"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 163]</span>cases where the
+sensitive gets impressions and memories which the sitter never
+had?</p>
+<p>These have been accounted for as being picked up from absent
+persons, by a kind of wireless telegraphy, for which we have
+ventured, with the assistance of a couple of Grecian friends, to
+suggest the name teloteropathy.</p>
+<p>Well! In this Turner case, <em>somebody</em> somewhere,
+<em>may</em> have known what neither the sensitive nor Stillman
+knew of Turner&rsquo;s method of work, and the sensitive&rsquo;s
+wireless <em>may</em> have picked up all those detailed impressions
+and dramatic impressions of them from that unknown
+<em>somebody</em>. But is that any easier to swallow than that old
+Turner himself was the somebody&mdash;that his share of the cosmic
+soul, or a sufficient portion of his share, flowed into or
+hypnotized the sensitive, and made her act as she did?</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>And now let us go on to some of the developments of these
+phenomena manifested by Mrs. Piper. Unlike the manifestations
+already given, hers are not from waking dreams, but from dreams in
+trance. Moreover, so far the sensitives have manifested impressions
+of but one personality at a time, but Mrs. Piper has manifested one
+by speech and, at the same time, another by writing, the
+expressions of the two apparent personalities progressing
+independently, with full coherence and consistency. Moreover, in
+many of her trances she seemed as if surrounded by a crowd of
+persons endeavoring, with different degrees of success, to express
+themselves through her, or she endeavoring to express them. All
+this of course, is counter to the impression prevailing during the
+early years of her career, that her soul had left her body, and the
+body was &ldquo;possessed&rdquo; by a postcarnate soul expressing
+itself through her. The present aspect of the facts is more as if
+she had impressions such as we all have in dreams, of any number of
+personalities around her. Some of her typical manifestations may
+give still further indications of interflowing of mental
+impressions.</p>
+<p><a id="page_164" name="page_164"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+164]</span>The George &ldquo;Pelham&rdquo; famous in the annals of
+Psychical Research was a friend of the present writer, and his
+alleged postcarnate self appeared through Mrs. Piper to the
+following effect. There could not have been anything cooked up
+about it; it was my first and only sitting with Mrs. Piper, who
+knew nothing about me or my friends. In fact, the old theories of
+some form of fraud, now, in the light of the vast accumulation of
+later knowledge, seem ridiculous. However the phenomena have to be
+explained, that explanation is out of date.</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>G.P. speaks.&mdash;&ldquo;A&rdquo; [assumed initial. Ed.]
+&ldquo;is in a critical state. He&rsquo;s not himself now.
+He&rsquo;s terribly depressed.&rdquo; Sitter&mdash;&ldquo;Can you
+tell anything [more] about A?&rdquo; G.P.&mdash;&ldquo;Friend of
+yours in body.&rdquo; S.&mdash;&ldquo;Of Hodgson?&rdquo; [Who was
+present. This question and the following were mild
+&ldquo;tests&rdquo;: I knew the man well. Ed.]
+G.P.&mdash;&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; S.&mdash;&ldquo;Did I ever know
+him?&rdquo; G.P.&mdash;&ldquo;Yes, you knew him very well.
+You&rsquo;re connected with him.&rdquo; S.&mdash;&ldquo;Through
+whom?&rdquo; G.P.&mdash;&ldquo;Do you know any
+B&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo; [assumed initial. Ed.] S.&mdash;&ldquo;Are
+A. and I connected through B?&rdquo; G.P.&mdash;&ldquo;Write to B.
+and he&rsquo;ll tell you all about it.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>It turned out later that A. actually was low in his mind, and
+that B., whom nobody present knew, <em>was</em> trying to get him
+occupation. I knew nothing whatever about any such circumstances,
+nor did Hodgson. To suppose that Mrs. Piper did, would be absurd.
+<em>But</em> they were known to other minds &ldquo;in the
+body,&rdquo; and hence the medium&rsquo;s utterance of them is open
+to the interpretation of teloteropathy. Similar instances are not
+rare, but the interpretation of teloteropathy seems to be rapidly
+losing probability.</p>
+<p>In this instance, I <em>was</em> &ldquo;connected with&rdquo;
+B., but only so far as he had become a professor at Yale long after
+my graduation: I did not know him personally. But my intimate
+connection with A. was not only direct, but through several persons
+intimate with us both, including G.P. when living. Mere telepathy,
+certainly mere telepathy <a id="page_165" name=
+"page_165"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 165]</span>from my mind,
+would have &ldquo;spotted&rdquo; some one of these connections much
+more readily than the alleged one with B., which was hardly a
+connection at all.</p>
+<p>The <em>simplest</em> solution for the whole business, though
+perhaps not the most &ldquo;scientific,&rdquo; or even probable, is
+that the spirit of G.P. was troubled about A. and habitually
+thinking of me at the University Club as a Yale man, on my turning
+up at the s&eacute;ance, was reminded of the solution of A.&rsquo;s
+troubles proposed through B., and wanted me to help.</p>
+<p>And now to this rather commonplace manifestation comes an
+interesting sequel illustrating the reach of mind spoken of at the
+outset. Out of a perfectly clear sky came to me in New York on
+April 8, 1894, the message from G.P., to look out for A., who was
+low in his mind, and that B. was trying to get a place for him. On
+May 29th, Hodgson writes me as follows, showing that the same thing
+had come up <em>through the heteromatic writing of A.&rsquo;s wife
+at Granada in Spain</em>, and meant nothing to her or to A.</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&mdash;You may be interested in the inclosed. Keep private.
+[This injunction is of course outlawed by time, but I still conceal
+the names of the parties. Ed.] and please return. I am writing from
+my den, and haven&rsquo;t copy of your sitting at hand. But I
+remember that something was said at your sitting <em>re</em> B. and
+A.</p>
+<p class="cen">(<em>Copy of Enclosure.</em>)</p>
+<p class="rgt">&ldquo;<span class="sc">Granada</span>, May 6,
+1894.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dear H.[odgson]:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Those suggestions from Geo. that I write to B. prove
+interesting in the light of what I first learned here: that he had
+been lamenting my silence and had been urging me to a place as
+&mdash;&mdash; [at] Yale where he is. I had no notion of this move
+on his part till four days ago when I received a letter telling me.
+Of course nothing came of it, but anything less known than that
+cannot be imagined. The message came once earlier thro&rsquo; [his
+wife. Ed.] to whom George wrote it [heteromatically. Ed.]. George
+[in life. Ed.] never heard of B. nor saw him, nor did we ever speak
+of B. to Geo. or Phinuit&hellip;. Of course I don&rsquo;t want
+mention made of the effort of B. to get me the Yale place. What
+<a id="page_166" name="page_166"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+166]</span>Geo. said was to write to B.; he is a good friend of
+yours [<em>i.e.</em>, of A. Ed.]</p>
+<p class="rgt">&ldquo;All send kind messages. Yrs. ever.<br />
+&ldquo;A&mdash;&mdash;.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>Being intensely busy, and not as much interested in the matter
+as later experiences have made me, I did not at the moment catch
+the full purport of Hodgson&rsquo;s letter, or write him till June
+5th, and did not keep any copy that I can find of my letter. He
+wrote me on the 8th:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks for yours of June 5th, with return of A.&rsquo;s
+letter. I knew nothing whatever of the circumstances connected with
+B., neither, so far as I can tell by cross-questioning, did Mrs.
+Piper.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>And I, the present scribe, certainly did not. A. did not. B.
+alone did, with whatever persons he may have approached on the
+matter, and Mrs. Piper had presumably never seen one of the group.
+So where did Mrs. Piper and Mrs. A. get it? The only answers that
+seem possible are that she and Mrs. A. either got it
+teloteropathically from one of those absent, or that the
+postcarnate George Pelham himself wrote her about it, and also told
+me of it through Mrs. Piper&rsquo;s organism in New York, and four
+days later was working it into a cross-correspondence through Mrs.
+A. in Spain. At first blush the latter seems easier; and I am not
+sure but that it does on reflection.</p>
+<p>Hodgson&rsquo;s letter continues:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&ldquo;I never knew of any B. connected with Yale. When B. was
+first mentioned at the sitting, I had a vague notion that some B.
+or other had gone to England or France as United States consul. I
+also knew the name of &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; B. [a
+celebrated author. Ed.], and met her after she became Mrs. C. two
+or three years ago.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On questioning Mrs. Piper, which I did by referring to
+books first, I found that she remembered the name of &mdash;&mdash;
+&mdash;&mdash; B. when I mentioned it, and connected it in some way
+with [a certain book. Ed.], which was widely circulated some years
+ago. This was the only B. that she seemed to know anything
+about&hellip;.</p>
+<p class="rgt">&ldquo;Yours sincerely,<br />
+&ldquo;<span class="sc">R. Hodgson</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p><a id="page_167" name="page_167"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+167]</span>Now does not all this give a strong impression of an
+interflow among minds all over&mdash;in New York (the place of the
+sitting), Granada (Mrs. A.&rsquo;s place of sojourn), Boston
+(A.&rsquo;s home), New Haven (B.&rsquo;s home), and the universe in
+general (G.P.&rsquo;s apparent home)&mdash;of an interflow free
+from the limitations of time and space, and independent of all
+means of communication known to us?</p>
+<p>This impression tends to grow deeper with farther study. We have
+had a cross-correspondence between two incarnate intelligences and
+one apparently postcarnate. Mr. Piddington has unearthed a
+cross-correspondence between one apparently postcarnate
+intelligence and seven &ldquo;living&rdquo; ones.</p>
+<p>Perhaps the significance of cross-correspondences justifies a
+little more specific treatment, and even the repetition of a
+paragraph from the first number of this <span class=
+"sc">Review</span>. The topic has lately attracted more attention
+from the S.P.R. than any other.</p>
+<p>If Mrs. Verrall in London and Mrs. Holland in India both, at
+about the same time, write heteromatically about a subject that
+they both understand, that is probably coincidence; but if both
+write about it when but one of them understands it, that is
+probably teloteropathy; and if both write about it when neither
+understands it, and each of their respective writings is apparently
+nonsense, but both make sense when put together, the only obvious
+hypothesis is that both were inspired by a third mind.</p>
+<p>There are many instances of strict cross-correspondence of this
+type. The one we have given was perhaps more impressive than a
+stricter one would be apt to be.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Accounts of sittings generally suggest apparent
+intercommunication independent of time and space between <a id=
+"page_168" name="page_168"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+168]</span>postcarnate intelligences: often the controls say that
+they will go and find other controls, and, generally, after a short
+interval, the new control manifests. It is impossible to read many
+of the accounts, whether one regards them as fictitious or not,
+without getting an impression&mdash;like that given by a good
+story-teller, if you please, of a life outside this one, among a
+host of personalities who communicate freely with each other and,
+through difficulties, with us. The nature of the communication we
+have already tried to express by &ldquo;interflow.&rdquo; But all
+metaphors are weak beside the impression of the Cosmic Soul that
+has been brought to most of those who have persistently studied the
+phenomena, as to nearly all those who have speculated <em>a
+priori</em> on the nature of mind.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Judged by the foregoing specimens, the literature of what we are
+provisionally considering as hypnotic telepathy would not be
+regarded as very cheerful. As a whole, however, the pictures it
+presents from an alleged postcarnate life, are cheerful, and some
+of them very attractive.</p>
+<p>Below are some from an alleged George Eliot. They are from notes
+of Piper sittings kindly placed at our disposal by Professor
+Newbold.</p>
+<p>To my taste the matter savors <em>very</em> little of the
+reputed author. And yet assuming for the moment that our great
+authors survive in a fuller life, presumably they would have to
+communicate under very embarrassing conditions: for not only would
+they have to cramp themselves to produce work comprehensible here,
+but the System of Things would have to limit them, lest their
+competition should upset the whole system of our literary
+development, or rather would have involved a different one from the
+beginning.</p>
+<p>My first reading of the alleged George Eliot matter inclined me
+to scout it entirely. It is certainly not in all particulars what
+that great soul would have sent from a better world if she had been
+permitted to communicate <a id="page_169" name=
+"page_169"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 169]</span>anything more
+profound than we have been left to find out for ourselves, or even
+if she had had the commonplace chance to revise her manuscript. But
+on reflection I realized that, although the matter came through
+Mrs. Piper, it could not have come <em>from</em> her, wherever it
+came from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings
+naturally within our comprehension, and merely descriptive of
+superficial experience as distinct from reflection, and were
+communicating, through a poor telephone, words to be recorded by an
+indifferent scribe, this material would not seem absolutely
+incongruous with its alleged source, and to a reader knowing that
+the stuff claimed to be hers, might possibly suggest the weakest
+possible dilution or reflection of her. Yet in ways which I have no
+space for, it abounds in the sort of anthropomorphism that might be
+expected from the average medium or average sitter, but not from
+George Eliot.</p>
+<p>And now, since writing the last paragraph and going through the
+material half a dozen times more, I have about concluded, or
+perhaps worked myself up to the conclusion, that if a judicious
+blue pencil were to take from it what could be attributed to
+imperfect means of communication, and what could be considered as
+having slopped over from the medium, there would be a pretty
+substantial and not unbeautiful residuum which might, without
+straining anything, be taken for a description by George Eliot, of
+the heaven she would find if, as begins to seem possible, she and
+the rest of us, have or are to have heavens to suit our respective
+tastes. But what would have to be taken out is often ludicrously
+incongruous with George Eliot, and taking it out would certainly be
+open to serious question.</p>
+<p>Yet whatever may be the qualities, merits, or demerits of this
+&ldquo;George Eliot&rdquo; matter, what character it has is its
+own, and different materially from any I have seen recorded from
+any other control. What is vastly more important, despite the
+lapses in knowledge, taste, and <a id="page_170" name=
+"page_170"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 170]</span>style, which
+negative its being the unmodified production of George Eliot, it
+nevertheless presents, <em>me judice</em>, the most reasonable,
+suggestive, and attractive pictures of a life beyond bodily death
+that I know of: it is not a reflection of previous mythologies, it
+is congruous with the tastes of what we now consider rational
+beings, and might well fill their desires; and it <em>tallies with
+our experiences</em>&mdash;in dreams. Yet it is not a great feat of
+imagination; but in recent times no great genius has attacked the
+subject, and George Eliot would not have been expected to devote
+her imagination to it, which raises a slight presumption that what
+is told is really told by her from experience.</p>
+<p>If I had to venture a guess as to how it came into existence, I
+should guess that somebody within range, hardly Mrs. Piper herself,
+had been reading George Eliot, or about George Eliot, and the
+musk-melon pollen had affected the cucumbers. Professor Newbold,
+for instance, was entirely able involuntarily to create and
+telepath the stories, and better shaped ones. Some real George
+Eliot influence may have flowed in too, but on that my judgment is
+in suspense.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;George Eliot&rdquo; comes in abruptly to Hodgson, on
+February 26, 1897. After a few preliminaries, in response to a
+remark of Hodgson&rsquo;s on her dislike of and disbelief in
+spiritism, she says:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&ldquo;&hellip; You may have noted the anxiety of such as I to
+return and enlighten your fellow men. It is more especially
+confined to unbelievers before their departure to this
+life.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>This remark and the persistent efforts of the alleged G.P. who,
+living, was a thorough skeptic, would seem strongly
+&ldquo;evidential.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p><em>March 5, 1897.</em><br />
+<em>Hodgson sitting.</em></p>
+<p>[G.E. writes:] &ldquo;Do you remember me well?&hellip; I had a
+sad life in many ways, yet in others I was happy, yet I have never
+known what real happiness was until I came here&hellip;. I was an
+unbeliever, in fact almost an agnostic when I left my <a id=
+"page_171" name="page_171"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+171]</span>body, but when I awoke and found myself alive in another
+form superior in quality, that is, my body less gross and heavy,
+with no pangs of remorse, no struggling to hold on to the material
+body, I found it had all been a dream&hellip;.&rdquo; R.H.:
+&ldquo;That was your first experience?&rdquo; G.E.: &ldquo;&hellip;
+The moment I had been removed from my body I found at once I had
+been thoroughly mistaken in my conjectures. I looked back upon my
+whole life in one instant. Every thought, word, or action which I
+had ever experienced passed through my mind like a wonderful
+panorama as it were before my vision. You cannot begin to imagine
+anything so real and extraordinary as this first awakening&hellip;.
+I awoke in a realm of golden light. I heard the voices of friends
+who had gone before calling to me to follow them. At the moment the
+thrill of joy was so intense I was like one standing spellbound
+before a beautiful panorama. The music which filled my soul was
+like a tremendous symphony. I had never heard nor dreamed of
+anything half so beautiful&hellip;.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Another thing which seemed to me beautiful was the
+tranquillity of everyone. You will perhaps remember that I had left
+a state where no one ever knew what tranquillity meant.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><em>March 13, 1807:</em> &ldquo;I was speaking about the songs
+of our birds. Then the birds seemed to pass beyond my vision, and I
+longed for music of other kinds&hellip;. When, to my surprise, my
+desires were filled&hellip;. Just before me sat the most beautiful
+bevy of young girls that eyes ever rested upon. Some playing
+stringed instruments, others that sounded and looked like silver
+bugles, but they were all in harmony, and I must truly confess that
+I never heard such strains of music before. No mortal mind can
+possibly realize anything like it. It was not only in this one
+thing that my desires were filled, but in all things accordingly. I
+had not one desire, but that it was filled without any apparent act
+of myself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I longed to see gardens and trees, flowers, etc. I no
+sooner had the desire than they appeared&hellip;. Such beautiful
+flowers no human eye ever gazed upon. It was simply indescribable,
+yet everything was real&hellip;. I walked and moved along as easily
+as a fly would pass through a ray of sunlight in your world. I had
+no weight, nothing cumbersome, nothing&hellip;. I passed along
+through this garden, meeting millions of friends. As they were all
+friendly to me, each and every one seemed to be my friend&hellip;.
+I then thought of different friends I had once known, and my desire
+was to meet some one of them, when like <a id="page_172" name=
+"page_172"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 172]</span>every other
+thought or desire that I had expressed, the friend of whom I
+thought instantly appeared.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>How much all this is like dreams!</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p><em>March 27, 1897.</em> (A good deal of confusion, out of which
+appears) &ldquo;He will insist upon calling me Miss, but let him if
+he wishes. I am very much Mrs. Never mind so long as it suits
+him&hellip;.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have a desire for reading, when instantly my whole
+surrounding is literally filled with books of all kinds and by many
+different authors&hellip;. When I touched a book and desired to
+meet its author, if he or she were in our world, he or she would
+instantly appear. [Is this purely incidental reiterated claim for
+female authors, by one of them, &lsquo;evidential,&rsquo; or was
+Mrs. Piper ingenious enough to invent it? Ed.]&hellip;.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>The change of the instrument below is a specially dreamlike
+touch.</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p><em>March 30, 1897.</em> &ldquo;I wished to see and realize that
+some of the mortal world&rsquo;s great musicians really existed,
+and asked to be visited by some one or more of them. When this was
+expressed, instantly several appeared before me, and Rubinstein
+stood before me playing upon an instrument like a harp at first.
+Then the instrument was changed and a piano appeared and he played
+upon it with the most delightful ease and grace of manner. While he
+was playing the whole atmosphere was filled with his strains of
+music.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>She wanted to see Rembrandt, and he came, with a quantity of
+pictures. She wanted a symphony, and an orchestra &ldquo;of some
+thirty musicians&rdquo; at once appeared and gave her several,
+which she enjoyed to the full.</p>
+<p>Now George Eliot was a remarkably good musician. If she wanted
+an orchestra, she would have wanted at least sixty, and probably
+more than a hundred. Perhaps they do these things with more limited
+resources in Heaven? Such an incongruity as this, and the inane
+dilution of the writing (which of course does not appear at its
+worst in the selected passages) make a genuine George Eliot control
+hard to predicate, and yet this control, like virtually every other
+one, is an individuality, and is less unlike <a id="page_173" name=
+"page_173"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 173]</span>George Eliot
+than is any other control I know. Will difficulties of
+communication or any other <em>tertium quid</em>, make up the
+difference? I first read the record with repulsion, and now find in
+it some elements of attraction.</p>
+<p>Do you care for a little more? She wanted to see
+&ldquo;angels,&rdquo; and gives a very pretty picture of an
+experience with a bevy of children. Telepathy from the sitter will
+hardly account for the following, especially the strange turn at
+the end, which is signally dreamlike.</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&ldquo;I being fond, very fond of writers of ancient history,
+etc., felt a strong desire to see Dante, Aristotle and several
+others. Shakespeare if such a spirit existed. [An odd bunch of
+&lsquo;writers of ancient history&rsquo;! Ed.] As I stood thinking
+of him a spirit instantly appeared who speaking said &lsquo;I am
+Bacon.&rsquo; &hellip; As Bacon neared me he began to speak and
+quoted to me the following words &lsquo;You have questioned my
+reality. Question it no more. I am Shakespeare.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p><em>June 4, 1897.</em> &ldquo;&hellip; Speak to me for a moment
+and if you have anything to say in the nature of poetry or prose
+would you kindly recite a line or two to me. It will give me
+strength to remain longer than I could otherwise do. [R.H. recites
+a poem of Dowden&rsquo;s beginning,</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>&lsquo;I said I will find God and forth I went</p>
+<p>To seek him in the clearness of the sky,&rsquo; etc.
+Excitement.]</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>G.E.: &lsquo;I will go and see G. and return presently (R.H.:
+Who says that?) I do. (R.H.: I do not understand what you mean by
+G.) I do. My husband. Do you not know I had a husband? (R.H.: Do
+you mean by G. Mr. George Henry Lewes?) [Hand is writing Lewes
+while I am saying George Henry] Lewes. Yes I do. Oh I am so happy.
+And when I did not mistake altogether my deeds I am more <em>happy
+than tongue can utter</em>.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>As bearing on her feeling for Lewes not many months after his
+death, the foregoing does not correspond with some widely credited
+but unpublished allegations.</p>
+<p>Now does not all this read as if Mrs. Piper were dreaming of
+George Eliot, just as any of us might dream? Its quality seems as
+if it might be a transcript of one of my own dreams, with the
+important exceptions that the dreamer wrote it all out, and that it
+is made up from a <a id="page_174" name="page_174"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 174]</span>series of dreams, coming up at intervals
+for about six months, and apparently only when Hodgson was present,
+though there are records of George Eliot appearing to other sitters
+at other seances.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>We have, then, groped our way to a vague notion of a dream-life
+on the part of certain sensitives, which seems to participate in
+another life, in some ways similar, that is led by intelligences
+who have passed beyond the body.</p>
+<p>We are not saying that this interpretation of the phenomena is
+the correct one: on the contrary we are constantly haunted by a
+suspicion that any day it may be exploded by some new discovery.
+But we do say, with considerable confidence, that of all the
+interpretations yet offered&mdash;even including the pervasive one
+that &ldquo;the little boy lied,&rdquo; it surpasses all the others
+in the portion of the facts that it fits, and in the weight
+attached to it by the most capable students&mdash;even by James,
+who, however, did not accept it as established, though he gave many
+indications that he felt himself likely to. Myers definitely
+accepted it, not from the impressions of the sensitives, but from
+having them capped by a veridical impression of his own. Through
+the church service one Sunday morning, he felt an inner voice
+assuring him: &ldquo;Your friend is still with you.&rdquo; Later he
+found that Gurney, with whom he had a manifestation-pact, had died
+the night before. We are not aware that Myers ever published this,
+but he told it to the present writer and presumably to others. The
+convictions of Hodgson and Sir Oliver Lodge were interpretations of
+the phenomena of the sensitives, though Hodgson, it is now known,
+was probably mainly influenced by communications from the alleged
+postcarnate soul of all possible ones most dear to him.</p>
+<p>But to return to the sensitives. They seem to be somnambulists
+who talk out and write out what they see and hear in their dreams.
+What they see, and consequently <a id="page_175" name=
+"page_175"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 175]</span>what they say,
+is a good deal of a jumble. They see and hear persons they never
+saw before. Sometimes they identify themselves more or less with
+these personalities. Mrs. Piper nearly always does. Those others
+say many things, and very often correct things, unknown to
+sensitives, to anybody present, or to anybody else that can be
+found. Rather unusual among ordinary dreamers, but by no means
+unprecedented. But from here on the experiences of the sensitives
+are more and more unusual.</p>
+<p>Some of the people Mrs. Piper (I speak of her as the
+representative of a class) never saw before, and of whom she never
+saw portraits, she identifies from photographs. Very few people
+have done that: perhaps very few have had the chance. There have
+been many times when I am sure I could, if photographs had been
+presented.</p>
+<p>Her personalities and those of many sensitives are nearly always
+&ldquo;dead&rdquo; friends, not of the sensitives, but of the
+sitters, and abound in indications of genuineness in scope and
+accuracy of memory, in distinctness of individual recollections and
+characteristics, and in all the dramatic indications that go to
+demonstrate personalities. She sees and hears these personalities
+again and again, and <em>keeps them distinct</em> in feature and
+character.</p>
+<p>Now what do we mean by personalities? Is one, after all,
+anything more or less than an individualized aggregate of cosmic
+vibrations, physical and psychical, with the power of producing on
+us certain impressions. You and I know our friends as such
+aggregates, and nothing more.</p>
+<p>And what do we mean by discarnate personalities? In most minds,
+the first answer will probably bear a pretty close resemblance to
+Fra Angelico&rsquo;s angels, and very nice angels they are! But to
+some of the more prosy minds that have thought on the subject in
+the light of the best and fullest information, or misinformation,
+probably the answer will be more like this: A personality,
+incarnate or postcarnate, in the last analysis, is a manifestation
+of the Cosmic Soul. From that the raw material is supplied <a id=
+"page_176" name="page_176"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+176]</span>with the star dust, and later, through our senses, from
+the earliest reactions of our protozoic ancestors, up to our
+dreams; and the material is worked up into each personality through
+reactions with the environment. Thus it becomes an aggregate of
+capacities to impress another personality with certain sensations,
+ideas, emotions. As already said, the incarnate personality
+impresses us thru certain vibrations. But after that portion of the
+vibrations constituting &ldquo;the body&rdquo; disappears, there
+still abides somewhere the capacity of impressing us, at least in
+the dream life. Perhaps it abides only in the memory of survivors,
+and gets into our dreams telepathically, though that is losing
+probability every day; and, with our anthropomorphic habits, we
+want to know &ldquo;where&rdquo; this capacity to impress us
+abides. The thinkers generally say: In the Cosmic reservoir, which
+I would rather express as the psychic ocean, boundless, fathomless,
+throbbing eternally. It seems to be made up of the original
+mind-potential plus all thoughts and feelings that have ever been.
+And into this ocean seem to be constantly passing those currents
+that we know as individualities, that can each influence, and even
+intermingle with, other individualities, here as well as there: for
+here really is there. While each does this, it still retains its
+own individuality. This is, of course, a vague string of guesses
+venturing outward from the borderland of our knowledge. It may be a
+little clearer, the more we bear in mind that the apparent
+influencings and interminglings seem to be telepathic.</p>
+<p>Now apparently among the accomplishments of a personality, does
+not <em>necessarily</em> inhere that of depressing a scale x
+pounds: for when that capacity is entirely absent, from the
+apparent personalities who visit us in the dream state, they can
+impress us in every other way, even to all the reciprocities of
+sex. But for some reasons not yet understood, with ordinary
+dreamers these impressions are not as congruous, persistent,
+recurrent, or regulable in <a id="page_177" name=
+"page_177"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 177]</span>the dream life
+as in the waking life. But with Mrs. Piper, Hodgson after his
+death, and especially G.P. and others, were about as persistent and
+consistent associates as anybody living, barring the fact that they
+could not show themselves over an hour or two at a time, which was
+the limit of the medium&rsquo;s psychokinetic power, on which their
+manifestations depended. But that these personalities are not in
+time to be evolved so that they will be more permanent and
+consistent with dreamers generally, would be a contradiction to at
+least some of the implications of evolution.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Accepting provisionally the identity of a postcarnate life with
+the life indicated in dreams, are there any further indications of
+its nature? There are some, which may lend some slight confirmation
+to the theory of identity.</p>
+<p>It seems to show itself not only in the visions of the
+sensitives, but in the dream life of all of us. If Mrs.
+Piper&rsquo;s dream state (I name her only as a type) is really one
+of communication with souls who have passed into a new life, dream
+states generally may not extravagantly be supposed to be foretastes
+of that life. And so far as concerns their desirability, why should
+they not be? Our ordinary dreams are, like the dreams of the
+sensitives, superior to time, space, matter and force&mdash;to all
+the trammels of our waking environment and powers. In dreams we
+experience unlimited histories, and pass over unlimited spaces, in
+an instant; see, hear, feel, touch, taste, smell, enjoy unlimited
+things; walk, swim, fly, change things, with unlimited ease; do
+things with unlimited power; make what we will&mdash;music, poetry,
+objects of art, situations, dramas, with unlimited faculty, and
+enjoy unlimited society. Unless we have eaten too much, or
+otherwise got ourselves out of order in the waking life, in the
+dream life we seldom if ever know what it is to be too late for
+anything, or too far from anything; we freely fall from chimneys or
+precipices, and I suppose it will soon be aeroplanes, <a id=
+"page_178" name="page_178"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+178]</span>with no worse consequences than comfortably waking up
+into the everyday world; we sometimes solve the problems which
+baffle us here; we see more beautiful things than we see here; and,
+far above all, we resume the ties that are broken here.</p>
+<p>The indications seem to be that if we ever get the hang of that
+life, we can have pretty much what we like, and eliminate what we
+don&rsquo;t like&mdash;continue what we enjoy, and stop what we
+suffer&mdash;find no bars to congeniality, or compulsion to
+boredom. To good dreamers it is unnecessary to offer proof of any
+of these assertions, and to prove them to others is impossible.</p>
+<p>The dream life contains so much more beauty, so much fuller
+emotion, and such wider reaches than the waking life, that one is
+tempted to regard it as the real life, to which the waking life is
+somehow a necessary preliminary. So orthodox believers regard the
+life after death as the real life: yet most of their hopes
+regarding that life&mdash;even the strongest hope of rejoining lost
+loved ones&mdash;are realized here during the brief throbs of the
+dream life.</p>
+<p>There seems to be no happiness from association in our ordinary
+life which is not obtainable, by some people at least, from
+association in the dream life. And as this appears to exist between
+incarnate A and postcarnate B, there is at least a suggestion that
+it may exist between postcarnate A and postcarnate B, and to a
+degree vastly more clear and abiding than during the present
+discrepancy between the incarnate and postcarnate conditions? This
+of course assumes, that B&rsquo;s appearance in A&rsquo;s dream
+life, just as he appeared on earth (though, as I know to be the
+case, sometimes wiser, healthier, jollier, and more lovable
+generally), is something more than a mild attack of dyspepsia on
+the part of A.</p>
+<p>Dreams do not seem to abound in work, and are often said not to
+abound in morality, but I know that they sometimes do&mdash;in
+morality higher than any attainable in our waking life. Certainly
+the scant vague indications <a id="page_179" name=
+"page_179"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 179]</span>from the dream
+suggestions of a future life do not necessarily preclude abundant
+work and morality, any more than work and sundry self-denials are
+precluded on a holiday because one does not happen to perform them.
+Moreover, the hoped-for future conditions may not contain the
+necessities for either labor or self-restraint that present
+conditions do: they may not be the same dangers there as here in
+the <em>dolce far niente</em>, or in Platonic friendships.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Men are not consistent in their attitude regarding dreams. They
+admit the dream state to be ideal&mdash;constantly use such
+expressions as &ldquo;A dream of loveliness,&rdquo; &ldquo;Happier
+than I could even dream,&rdquo; &ldquo;Surpasses my fondest
+dreams,&rdquo; and yet on the other hand they call its experience
+&ldquo;but the baseless vision of a dream.&rdquo; What do they mean
+by &ldquo;baseless&rdquo;? Certainly it is not lack of vividness or
+emotional intensity. It is probably the lack of duration in the
+happy experiences, and of the possibility of remembering them, and,
+still more, of enjoying similar ones at will. Yet the sensitives do
+both in recurrent instalments of the dream life, and like the rest
+of us, through the intervening waking periods, after the first hour
+or so, generally know nothing of the dreams. It is not vividness of
+the dream life itself that is lacking, but vividness in our
+memories of it. James defines our waking personality as the stream
+of consciousness: the dream life gives no such stream. To-night
+does not continue last night as to-day continues yesterday. The
+dream life is not like a stream, but more like a series, though
+hardly integral enough to be a series, of disconnected pools, many
+of them perhaps more enchanting than any parts of the waking
+stream, but not, like that stream, an organic whole with motion
+toward definite results, and power to attain them. But suppose the
+dream life continues after the body&rsquo;s death, and under
+direction toward definite ends, at least so far as the waking life
+is, and still free from the trammels <a id="page_180" name=
+"page_180"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 180]</span>of the waking
+life&mdash;suppose us to have at least as much power to secure its
+joys and avoid its terrors as we have regarding those of the waking
+life; and with all the old intimacies which it spasmodically
+restores, restored permanently, and with the discipline of
+separation to make them nearer perfect. What more can we manage to
+want?</p>
+<p>The suggestion has come to more than one student, that when we
+enter into life&mdash;as spermatozoa, or star dust if you
+please&mdash;we enter into the eternal life, but that the physical
+conditions essential to our development into appreciating it, are a
+sort of veil between it and our consciousness. In our waking life
+we know it only through the veil; but when in sleep or trance, the
+material environment is removed from consciousness, the veil
+becomes that much thinner, and we get better glimpses of the
+transcendent reality.</p>
+<p>Does it not seem then as if, in dreams, we enter upon our closer
+relation with the hyper-phenomenal mind? All sorts of things seem
+to be in it, from the veriest trifles and absurdities up to the
+highest things our minds can receive, and presumably an infinity of
+things higher still. They appear to flow into us in all sorts of
+ways, presumably depending upon the condition of the nerve
+apparatus through which they flow. If that is out of gear from any
+disorder or injury, what it receives is not only trifling, but
+often grotesque and painful; while if it is in good estate, it
+often receives things far surpassing in beauty and wisdom those of
+our waking phenomenal world.</p>
+<p>Apparently every dreamer is a medium for this flow, but dreamers
+vary immensely in their capacity to receive it&mdash;from Hodge,
+who dreams only when he has eaten too much, or Professor Gradgrind
+who never dreams at all, up to Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Piper.</p>
+<p>As oft remarked, dreams generally are nonsense, but some dreams,
+or parts of some dreams, are perhaps the most significant things we
+know. Each vision, waking or sleeping, must have a cause, and as an
+expression of that <a id="page_181" name=
+"page_181"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 181]</span>cause, must be
+veridical. On the one hand, the cause of a trivial dream is
+generally too trivial to be ascertained: it may be too much
+lobster, or impaired circulation or respiration; while on the other
+hand (and here the paradox seems to be explained), the cause of an
+important dream must, <em>ex vi termini</em>, be some important
+event. But important events are rare, and therefore significant
+dreams are rare; while trivial events are frequent, and therefore
+trivial dreams are frequent.</p>
+<p>The important and rare event <em>may</em> be such a conjunction
+of circumstances and temperaments as makes it possible for a
+postcarnate intelligence, assuming the existence of such, to
+communicate with an incarnate one. That such apparent
+communications are rare tends to indicate their genuineness.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Now to develop a little farther the time-honored hypothesis of a
+cosmic soul as explaining dreams, and supported by them.</p>
+<p>Admit, provisionally at least, that the medium is merely an
+extraordinary dreamer. Does a man do his own dreaming, or is it
+done for him? Does a man do his own digesting, circulating,
+assimilating, or is it done for him? If he does not do these things
+himself, who does? About the physical functions through the
+sympathetic nerve, we answer unhesitatingly: the cosmic force. How,
+then, about the psychic functions? Are they done by the cosmic
+psyche?</p>
+<p>Like respiration, they are partly under our control, but that
+does not affect the problem. Who runs them when we do not run them,
+even when we try to stop them that we may get to sleep? Even when,
+after they have yielded to our entreaties to stop, and we are
+asleep, they begin going again&mdash;without our will. The only
+probability I can make out is that our thinking is run by a power
+not ourselves, as much as our other partly involuntary
+functions.</p>
+<p><a id="page_182" name="page_182"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+182]</span>To hold that a man does his own dreaming&mdash;that it
+is done by a secondary layer of his own consciousness&mdash;is to
+hold that we are made up of layers of consciousness, of which the
+poorest layer is that of what we call our waking life, and the
+better layers are at our service only in our dreams&mdash;that when
+a man is asleep or mad he can solve problems, compose music, create
+pictures, to which, when awake and in his sober senses, and in a
+condition to profit by his work, and give profit from it, he is
+inadequate.</p>
+<p>Nay more, the theory claims that a man&rsquo;s working
+consciousness&mdash;his self&mdash;the only self known to him or
+the world, will hold and shape his life by a set of convictions
+which, in sleep, he will <em>himself</em> prove wrong, and thereby
+revolutionize his philosophy and his entire life. Wouldn&rsquo;t it
+be more reasonable to attribute all such results&mdash;the
+solutions of the problems, the music, the pictures, the corrections
+of the errors&mdash;to a power outside himself?</p>
+<p>I cannot believe that there&rsquo;s anything in my individual
+consciousness which my experience or that of my ancestors has not
+placed there&mdash;in raw material at least; or that in working up
+that raw material <em>I</em> can exert any genius in my sometimes
+chaotic dreams that I cannot exert in my systematized waking hours.
+All the people I meet and talk with in my dreams <em>may</em> have
+been met and talked with by me or my forebears, though I
+don&rsquo;t believe it; but the works of art I see have not been
+known to me or my ancestors or any other mortal; nor have I any
+sign of the genius to combine whatever elements of them I may have
+seen, into any such designs. And when in dreams <em>other</em>
+persons tell me things contrary to my firmest convictions, in which
+things I later discover germs of most important workable truth, the
+persons who tell me that, and who are different from me as far as
+fairly decent persons can differ from each other, are certainly
+not, as the good Du Prel would have us believe, myself. All these
+things are <a id="page_183" name="page_183"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 183]</span>not figments of <em>my</em> mind&mdash;if
+they are figments of a mind, it&rsquo;s a mind bigger than mine.
+The biggest claim I can make, or assent to anybody else making, is
+that my mind is telepathically receptive of the product of that
+greater mind.</p>
+<p>Here are some farther evidences of the greater mind, given by
+Lombroso (<em>After Death, What?</em>, 320<em>f.</em>):</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>It is well known that in his dreams Goethe solved many weighty
+scientific problems and put into words many most beautiful verses.
+So also La Fontaine (<em>The Fable of Pleasures</em>) and Coleridge
+and Voltaire. Bernard Palissy had in a dream the inspiration for
+one of his most beautiful ceramic pieces&hellip;.</p>
+<p>Holde composed while in a dream <em>La Phantasie</em>, which
+reflects in its harmony its origin; and Nodier created
+<em>Lydia</em>, and at the same time a whole theory on the future
+of dreaming. Condillac in dream finished a lecture interrupted the
+evening before. Kruger, Corda, and Maignan solved in dreams
+mathematical problems and theorems. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his
+<em>Chapters on Dreams</em>, confesses that portions of his most
+original novels were composed in the dreaming state. Tartini had
+while dreaming one of his most portentous musical inspirations. He
+saw a spectral form approaching him. It is Beelzebub in person. He
+holds a magic violin in his hands, and the sonata begins. It is a
+divine adagio, melancholy-sweet, a lament, a dizzy succession of
+rapid and intense notes. Tartini rouses himself, leaps out of bed,
+seizes his violin, and reproduces all that he had heard played in
+his sleep. He names it the <em>Sonata del Diavolo</em>,
+&hellip;</p>
+<p>Giovanni Dupr&eacute; got in a dream the conception of his very
+beautiful <em>Piet&agrave;</em>. One sultry summer day Dupr&eacute;
+was lying on a divan thinking hard on what kind of pose he should
+choose for the Christ. He fell asleep, and in dream he saw the
+entire group at last complete, with Christ in the very pose he had
+been aspiring to conceive, but which his mind had not succeeded in
+completely realizing.</p>
+</div>
+<p>It is a quite frequent experience that a person perplexed by a
+problem at night finds it solved on waking in the morning. Efforts
+to remember, which are unsuccessful before going to sleep, on
+waking are often found accomplished.</p>
+<p><a id="page_184" name="page_184"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+184]</span>A dream is a work of genius, and in many respects,
+perhaps most, especially in vividness of imagination, the best
+example we have. It is the most spontaneous, constructed with the
+least effort from fewest materials, the least restrained, and often
+immeasurably surpassing all works of waking genius in the same
+department. A genius gets a trifling hint, and being inspired by
+the gods (anthropomorphic for: flowed in upon by the cosmic soul?)
+builds out of the hint a poem or a drama or a symphony. You and I
+build dreams surpassing the poem or the drama or the symphony, but
+our friends Dryasdust and Myopia inquire into our experiences, and
+sometimes find a little hint on which a dream was built, and then
+all dreams are demonstrated things unworthy of serious
+consideration. Is it not a more rational view that the fact that
+the soul can in the dream state elaborate so much from so little,
+indicates it to be then already in a life which has no limits?</p>
+<p>Havelock Ellis, in his <em>World of Dreams</em>, says (p.
+229):</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Our eyes close, our muscles grow slack, the reins fall from our
+hands. But it sometimes happens that the horse knows the road home
+even better than we know it ourselves.</p>
+</div>
+<p>He puts &ldquo;the horse&rdquo; outside of the dreamer plainly
+enough here. He further says (p. 280).</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>If we take into account the complete psychic life of dreaming,
+subconscious as well as conscious, it is waking, not sleeping, life
+which may be said to be limited&hellip;. Sleep, Vaschide has said,
+is not, as Homer thought, the brother of Death, but of Life, and,
+it may be added, the elder brother&hellip;.</p>
+</div>
+<p>He quotes from Bergson (<em>Revue Philosophique</em>, December,
+1908, p. 574):</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>This dream state is the substratum of our normal state. Nothing
+is added in waking life; on the contrary, waking life is obtained
+by the limitation, concentration, and tension of that diffuse
+psychological life which is the life of dreaming&hellip;. To be
+awake is to will; cease to will, detach yourself from life, become
+disinterested: in so doing you pass from the waking <a id=
+"page_185" name="page_185"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+185]</span>ego to the dreaming ego, which is less <em>tense</em>,
+but more <em>extended</em> than the other.</p>
+</div>
+<p>Ellis continues (p. 281):</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>I have cultivated, so far as I care to, my garden of dreams, and
+it scarcely seems to me that it is a large garden. Yet every path
+of it, I sometimes think, might lead at last to the heart of the
+universe.</p>
+</div>
+<p>But with the exception of a few spasmodic inspirations, the
+records of dreams, ordinary or from the sensitives, contain nothing
+new&mdash;nothing to relieve man from the blessed necessity of
+eating his bread, intellectual as well as material, in the sweat of
+his brow; and, perhaps more important still, little to make the
+interests or responsibilities of this life weaker because of any
+realized inferiority to those of a possible later life.</p>
+<p>It would apparently be inconsistent in Nature, or God, if you
+prefer, to start our evolution under earthly conditions, educating
+us in knowledge and character through labor and suffering, but at
+the same time throwing open to our perceptions, from another life,
+a wider range of knowledge and character attainable without labor
+or suffering.</p>
+<p>I have no time or space or inclination to argue with those who
+deny a plan in Nature. He who does, probably lives away from
+Nature. It appears to have been a part of that plan that for a long
+time past most of us should &ldquo;believe in&rdquo; immortality,
+and that, at least until very lately, none of us should know
+anything about it. Confidence in immortality has been a dangerous
+thing. So far we haven&rsquo;t all made a very good use of it. Many
+of the people who have had most of it and busied themselves most
+with it, so to speak, have largely transferred their interests to
+the other life, and neglected and abused this one.
+&ldquo;Other-worldliness&rdquo; is a well-named vice, and positive
+evidence of immortality might be more dangerous than mere
+confidence in it.</p>
+<p><a id="page_186" name="page_186"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+186]</span>All this, I think, supports the notion that whatever, if
+anything, is in store for us beyond this life, it would be a
+self-destructive scheme of things (or Scheme of Things, if you
+prefer) that would throw the future life into farther competition
+with our interests here, at least before we are farther evolved
+here. Looking at history by and large, we children have not
+generally been trusted with edge tools until we had grown to some
+sort of capacity to handle them. If the Mesopotamians or Egyptians
+or Greeks or Romans had had gunpowder, it looks as if they would
+have blown most of themselves and each other out of existence, and
+the rest back into primitive savagery, and stayed there until the
+use of gunpowder became one of the lost arts. But the new knowledge
+of evolution has given the modern world a new intellectual
+interest; and the new altruism, a new moral one. The reasons for
+doing one&rsquo;s best in this life, and doing it actively, are so
+much stronger and clearer than they were when so many good people
+could fall into asceticism and other-worldliness, that perhaps we
+are now fit to be trusted with proofs of an after life. It is very
+suggestive that these apparent proofs came contemporaneously with
+the new knowledge tending to make them safe; and equally suggestive
+that it is when we have begun to suffer from certain breakdowns in
+religion, that we have been provided with new material for bracing
+it up.</p>
+<p>At the opposite extreme, it also is suggestive that these new
+indications that our present life is a petty thing beside a future
+one, have come just when modern science has so increased our
+control over material nature that we are in peculiar danger of
+having our interest in higher things buried beneath material
+interests, and enervated by over-indulgence in material
+delights.</p>
+<p>If it be true that, roughly speaking, we are not entrusted with
+dangerous things before we are evolved to the point where we can
+keep their danger within bounds, the fact that we have not until
+very lately, if yet, been entrusted <a id="page_187" name=
+"page_187"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 187]</span>with any
+verification of the dream of the survival of bodily death, would
+seem to confer upon the spiritistic interpretation of the recent
+apparent verifications, a pragmatic sanction&mdash;an accidental
+embryo pun over which the historic student is welcome to a smile,
+and which, since the preceding clause was written, I have seen used
+in all seriousness by Professor Giddings. Conclusive or not, that
+&ldquo;sanction&rdquo; is certainly an addition to the arguments
+that existed before, including the general argument from evolution.
+And, so far as the phenomena go to establish the spiritistic
+hypothesis, surely they are not to be lightly regarded because as
+yet they do not establish it more conclusively.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>When during the last century science bowled down the old
+supports of the belief in immortality, there grew up a tendency to
+regard that belief as an evidence of ignorance, narrowness, and
+incapacity to face the music. May not disregard of the possible new
+supports be rapidly becoming an evidence of the same
+characteristics?</p>
+<p>When the majority of those who have really studied the phenomena
+of the sensitives, starting with absolute skepticism, have come to
+a new form of the old belief; and when, of the remaining minority,
+the weight of respectable opinion goes so far as suspense of
+judgment, how does the argument look? Isn&rsquo;t it at least one
+of those cases of new phenomena where it is well to be on guard
+against old mental habits, not to say prejudices?</p>
+<p>Is it not now vastly more <em>reasonable</em> to believe in a
+future life than it was a century ago, or half a century, or
+quarter of a century? Is it not already more reasonable to believe
+in it than not to believe in it? Is it not already appreciably
+harder <em>not</em> to believe in it than it was a generation
+ago?</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>So far as I can see, the dream life, from mine up to Mrs.
+Piper&rsquo;s, vague as it is, is an argument for immortality
+<em>based on evidence</em>.</p>
+<p><a id="page_188" name="page_188"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+188]</span>The sensitives are not among the world&rsquo;s leading
+thinkers or moralists&mdash;are not more aristocratic founders for
+a new faith than were a certain carpenter&rsquo;s son and certain
+fishermen; and only by implication do the sensitives suggest any
+moral truths, but they do offer more facts to the modern demand for
+facts.</p>
+<p>Spiritism has a bad name, and it has been in company where it
+richly deserved one; but it has been coming into court lately with
+some very important-looking testimony from very distinguished
+witnesses; and some rather comprehensive minds consider its issues
+supreme&mdash;the principal issues now upon the horizon, between
+the gross, luxurious, unthinking, unaspiring, uncreating life of
+today, and everything that has, in happier ages, given us the
+heritage of the soul&mdash;the issues between increasing comforts
+and withering ideals&mdash;between water-power and Niagara.</p>
+<p>The doubt of immortality is not over the innate reasonableness
+of it: the universe is immeasurably more reasonable with it than
+without it; but over its practicability after the body is gone. We,
+in our immeasurable wisdom, don&rsquo;t see how it can
+work&mdash;we don&rsquo;t see how a universe that we don&rsquo;t
+begin to know, which already has given us genius and beauty and
+love, and which seems to like to give us all it can&mdash;birds,
+flowers, sunsets, stars, Vermont, the Himalayas, and the Grand
+Canyon; which, most of all, has given us the insatiable soul, can
+manage to give us immortality. Well! Perhaps we ought not to be
+grasping&mdash;ought to call all we know and have, enough, and be
+thankful&mdash;thankful above all, perhaps, that as far as we can
+see, the hope of immortality cannot be disappointed&mdash;that the
+worst answer to it must be oblivion. But on whatever grounds we
+despair of more (if we are weak enough to despair), surely the
+least reasonable ground is that we cannot see more: the mole might
+as well swear that there is no Orion.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_189" name="page_189"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+189]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Muses" name="Muses"></a>The Muses on the Hearth</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>&ldquo;How to be efficient though incompetent&rdquo; is the
+title suggested by a distinguished psychologist for the vocational
+appeals of the moment. Among these raucous calls none is more
+annoying to the ear of experience than the one which summons the
+college girl away from the bounty of the sciences and the
+humanities to the grudging concreteness of a domestic science, a
+household economy, from which stars and sonnets must perforce be
+excluded. We have, indeed, no quarrel with the conspicuous place
+now given to the word &ldquo;home&rdquo; in all discussions of
+women&rsquo;s vocations. Suffragists and anti-suffragists,
+feminists and anti-feminists have united to clear a noble term from
+the mists of sentimentality and to reinstate it in the vocabulary
+of sincere and candid speakers. More frankly than a quarter of a
+century ago, educated women may now glory in the work allotted to
+their sex. The most radical feminist writer of the day has given
+perfect expression to the home&rsquo;s demand. Husband and
+children, she says, have been able to count on a woman &ldquo;as
+they could count on the fire on the hearth, the cool shade under
+the tree, the water in the well, the bread in the sacrament.&rdquo;
+We may go farther and say that our high emprise does not depend
+upon husband and children. Married or unmarried, fruitful or
+barren, with a vocation or without, we must make of the world a
+home for the race. So far from quarrelling with the hypothesis of
+the domestic scientists, we turn it into a confession of faith. It
+is their conclusions that will not bear the test of experience.
+Because women students can anticipate no more important career than
+home-making, it is argued that within their four undergraduate
+years training should be given in the practical <a id="page_190"
+name="page_190"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 190]</span>details of
+house-keeping. Any woman who has been both a student and a
+housekeeper knows that this argument is fallacious.</p>
+<p>Before examining it, however, we must clear away possible
+misunderstandings. Our discussion concerns colleges and not
+elementary schools. Those who are loudest in denouncing the
+aristocratic theory of a college education must admit that colleges
+contain, even today, incredible as it sometimes seems, a selected
+group of young women. It is also true that the High Schools contain
+selected groups. Below them are the people&rsquo;s schools. The
+girls who do not go beyond these are to be the wives of working
+men, in many cases can learn nothing from their mothers, and before
+marriage may themselves be caught in the treadmill of daily labor.
+It is probable that to these children of impoverished future we
+should give the chance to learn in school facts which may make
+directly for national health and well-being. But the girls in the
+most democratic state university in this country are selected by
+their own ambition, if by nothing else, for a higher level of life.
+Their power and their opportunities to learn do not end on
+Commencement Day. The higher we go in the scale of education, until
+we reach the graduate professional schools, the less are we able
+and the less need we be concerned to anticipate the specific
+activities of the future.</p>
+<p>Furthermore, we are discussing colleges of &ldquo;liberal&rdquo;
+studies, not technical schools. Into the former have strayed many
+students who belong in the latter. The tragic thing about their
+errantry is that presidents and faculties, instead of setting them
+in the right path, try to make the college over to suit them. The
+rightful heirs to the knowledge of the ages are despoiled. The most
+down-trodden students are those who cherish a passion for the
+intellectual life. Among these are as many women as men. If
+domestic science were confined to separate schools, as all applied
+sciences ought to be, we should have nothing but praise for a
+subject admirably conceived, and <a id="page_191" name=
+"page_191"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 191]</span>often admirably
+taught. In these schools it may be studied by such High School
+graduates as prefer to deal with practical rather than with pure
+science, and, in a larger way, by such college graduates as wish to
+supplement theory with practice for professional purposes. But in
+liberal colleges domestic science is but dross handed out to
+seekers after gold. Against its intrusion into the curriculum no
+protest can be too stern.</p>
+<p>Faith in this study seems to rest upon the belief that the
+actual experiences of life can be anticipated. This is a fallacy.
+There is no dress rehearsal for the r&ocirc;le of &ldquo;wife and
+mother.&rdquo; It is a question of experience piled on experience,
+life piled on life. The only way to perform the tasks, understand
+the duties, accept the joys and sorrows of any given stage of
+existence is to have performed the tasks, learned the duties,
+fought out the joys and sorrows of earlier stages. In so far as
+&ldquo;housekeeping&rdquo; means the application of principles of
+nutrition and sanitation, these principles can be acquired at the
+proper time by an active, well-trained mind. The preparation needed
+is not to have learned facts three or five or ten years in advance,
+when theories and appliances may have been very different, but to
+have taken up one subject after another, finding how to master
+principles and details. This new subject is not recondite nor are
+we unconquerably stupid. To learn as we go&mdash;<em>discere
+ambulando</em>&mdash;need not turn the home into an experiment
+station.</p>
+<p>But &ldquo;every woman knows&rdquo; that housekeeping, when it
+is a labor of love and not a paid profession, goes far deeper than
+ordering meals or keeping refrigerators clean, or making an
+invalid&rsquo;s bed with hospital precision. We are more than
+cooks. We furnish power for the day&rsquo;s work of men, and for
+the growth of children&rsquo;s souls. We are more than parlor
+maids. We are artists, informing material objects with a living
+spirit. We are more even than trained nurses. We are companions
+along the roads of pain, comrades, it may be, at the gates of
+death. Back <a id="page_192" name="page_192"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 192]</span>of our willingness to do our full work must
+lie something profounder than lectures on bacteria, or interior
+decoration, or an invalid&rsquo;s diet or a baby&rsquo;s bath.
+Specific knowledge can be obtained in a hurry by a trained student.
+What cannot be obtained by any sudden action of the mind is <em>the
+habit</em> of projecting a task against the background of human
+experience as that experience has been revealed in history and
+literature, and of throwing into details the enthusiasm born of
+this larger vision. She is fortunate who comes to the task of
+making a home with this habit already formed. Her student life may
+have cast no shadow of the future. When she was reading
+&AElig;schylus or Berkeley, or writing reports on the Italian
+despots, or counting the segments of a beetle&rsquo;s
+antenn&aelig;, she may not have foreseen the hours when the manner
+of life and the manner of death of human beings would depend upon
+her. She was merely sanely absorbed in the tasks of her present.
+But in later life she comes to see that in performing them, she
+learned to disentangle the momentary from the permanent, to prefer
+courage to cowardice, to pay the price of hard work for values
+received. Age may bring what youth withholds, a sense of humor, a
+mellow sympathy. But only youth can begin that habitual discipline
+of mind and will which is the root, if not of all success, at least
+of that which blooms in the comfort of other people. Carry the
+logic of the vocation-mongers to its extreme. Grant that every girl
+in college ought someday to marry, and that we must train her,
+while we have her, for this profession. Then let the college insist
+on honest work, clear thinking and bright imagination in those
+great fields in which successive generations reap their
+intellectual harvest. Captain Rostron of the Carpathia once spoke
+to a body of college students who were on fire with enthusiasm for
+the rescuer of the Titanic&rsquo;s survivors. He ended with some
+such words as these: &ldquo;Go back to your classes and work hard.
+I scarcely knew that night what orders were coming out when I
+opened my <a id="page_193" name="page_193"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 193]</span>mouth to speak, but I can tell you that I
+had been preparing to give those orders ever since I was a boy in
+school.&rdquo; Many a home may be saved from shipwreck in the
+future because today girls are doing their duty in their Greek
+class rooms and Physics laboratories.</p>
+<p>But this fallacy of domesticity probes deeper than we have yet
+indicated. It is, in the last analysis, superficial to ticket
+ourselves off as house-keepers or even as women. What are these
+unplumbed wastes between housekeepers and teachers, mothers and
+scholars, civil engineers and professors of Greek, senators and
+journalists, bankers and poets, men and women? A philosopher has
+pointed out that what we share is vastly greater than what
+separates us. We walk upon and must know the same earth. We live
+under the same sun and stars. In our bodies we are subject to the
+same laws of physics, biology and chemistry. We speak the same
+language, and must shape it to our use. We are products of the same
+past, and must understand it in order to understand the present. We
+are vexed by the same questions about Good and Evil, Will and
+Destiny. We all bury our dead. We shall all die ourselves. Back of
+our vocations lies human life. Back of the streams in which we
+dabble is that immortal sea which brought us hither. To sport upon
+its shore and hear the roll of its mighty waters is the divine
+privilege of youth.</p>
+<p>If any difference is to be made in the education of boys and
+girls, it must be with the purpose of giving to future women more
+that is &ldquo;unvocational,&rdquo; &ldquo;unapplied,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;unpractical.&rdquo; As it happens, such studies as these are
+the ones which the mother of a family, as well as a teacher or
+writer, is most sure to apply practically in her vocation. The last
+word on this aspect of the subject was said by a woman in a small
+Maine town. Her father had been a day laborer, her husband was a
+mechanic. She had five children, and, of course, did all the
+house-work. She also belonged to a club which studied French
+history. To a foolish expression of surprise that with all her
+little children <a id="page_194" name="page_194"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 194]</span>she could find time to write a paper on
+Louis XVI she retorted angrily: &ldquo;With all my children! It is
+for my children that I do it. I do not mean that they shall have to
+go out of their home, as I have had to, for everything
+interesting.&rdquo; But the larger truth is that the value of a
+woman as a mother depends precisely upon her value as a human
+being. And it is for that reason that in her youth we must lead one
+who is truly thirsty only to fountains pouring from the
+heaven&rsquo;s brink. It might seem cruel if it did not merely
+illustrate the law of risk involved in any creative process, that
+the more generously women fulfil the &ldquo;function of their
+sex&rdquo; the more they are in danger of losing their souls to
+furnish a mess of pottage. The risk of life for life at a
+child&rsquo;s birth is more dramatic but no truer than the risk of
+soul for body as the child grows. In the midst of petty household
+cares the nervous system may become a master instead of a servant,
+a breeder of distempers rather than a feeder of the imagination.
+The unhappiness of homes, the failure of marriage, are due as often
+to the poverty-stricken minds, the narrowed vision of women as to
+the vice of men.</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Their sense is with their senses all mix&rsquo;d in,</p>
+<p>Destroyed by subtleties these women are.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>George Meredith&rsquo;s prayer for us, &ldquo;more brain, O
+Lord, more brain!&rdquo; we shall still need when &ldquo;votes for
+women&rdquo; has become an outworn slogan.</p>
+<p>No one claims that character is produced only by college
+training or any other form of education. There are illiterate women
+whose wills are so steady, whose hearts are so generous, and whose
+spirits seem to be so continuously refreshed that we look up to
+them with reverence. They have their own fountains. It would be a
+mistake to suppose that because they are &ldquo;open at the
+outlet&rdquo; they are &ldquo;closed at the reservoir.&rdquo; But
+there is a class of women who are impelled toward knowledge (as
+still others are impelled toward music or art) and whose success in
+anything <a id="page_195" name="page_195"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 195]</span>they do will depend upon their state of
+mind. We ought to assume that the girls who go to college belong to
+this class, however far from the springs of Helicon they mean to
+march in the future. It is a terrible thing that we should think of
+taking one hour of their time while they are in college for any
+course that does not enrich the intellect and add to the treasury
+of thoughts and ideas upon which the woman with a mind will always
+be drawing. Spirit is greater than intellect, and may survive it in
+the course of a long life. But in the active years, for this kind
+of woman, the mental life becomes one with the spiritual. A lusty
+serviceableness will issue from their union. If mental interests
+seem sterile, the cure, as far as the college is concerned with it,
+is to deepen, not to lessen the love of learning. The renewal of
+sincerity, humility and enthusiasm in the age-old search for truth
+is more necessary than the introduction of new courses, which must
+be applied to be of value, and which at this time in a girl&rsquo;s
+experience, and under these conditions, can give only partial and
+superficial data.</p>
+<p>Our lives are subject to a thousand changes. In the home as well
+as out of it, we shall meet, face to face, fruition and
+disappointment, rapture and pain, hope and despair. In these tests
+of the soul&rsquo;s health what good will <em>domestic</em> science
+do us? Not by sanitation is sanity brought forth. Women do not
+gather courage from calories, nor faith from refrigerators. But
+every added milestone along the road from youth to age shows us the
+truth of Cicero&rsquo;s claim, made after he had borne public care
+and known private grief, for the faithful, homely companionship of
+intellectual studies: &ldquo;For other things belong neither to all
+times and ages nor all places; but these pursuits feed our growing
+years, bring charm to ripened age, adorn prosperity, offer a refuge
+and solace to adversity, delight us at home, do not handicap us
+abroad, abide with us through the watches of the night, go with us
+on our travels, make holiday with us in the country.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a id="page_196" name="page_196"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+196]</span>Upon women, in crucial hours, may depend the peace of
+the old, the fortune of the middle-aged, the hopefulness of the
+young. In such an hour we do not wish to be dismissed as were the
+women of Socrates&rsquo;s family, who had had no part in the bright
+life of the Athens of which he was taking leave. Shall we become
+the bread in the sacrament of life, ourselves unfed? the fire on
+the hearth, ourselves unkindled?</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_197" name="page_197"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+197]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Watchdog" name="Watchdog"></a>The Land of the Sleepless
+Watchdog</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<p>If from almost any given point in the United States you start
+out towards the Southwest, you will reach in time the Land of the
+Sleepless Watchdog. On each of the scattered farms, defending it
+against all intruders, you will find a band of eager and vociferous
+dogs&mdash;dogs who magnify their calling because they have no
+other, and who, by the same token lose all sense of proportion in
+life. It is &ldquo;theirs not to reason why,&rdquo; but to put up
+warnings and threats, and to be ready for the fight that never
+comes.</p>
+<p>If you enter a domain without previous understanding with them,
+you are powerless for mischief, for you are in the center of a
+publicity beside which any other publicity is that of a
+hermit&rsquo;s cell. The whole farm knows where you are, and all
+are suspicious of your predatory intentions. You can have none
+under these conditions. Meanwhile the whole pack voices its opinion
+of you and your unworthiness.</p>
+<p>This is supposing that you are actually there. If you are not,
+it amounts to the same thing. Every dog knows that you meant to be
+there, or at any rate, that to be there was the scheme of someone
+equally bad. The slightest rustle of the wind, the call of a bird,
+the ejaculation responsive to a flea&mdash;any of these, anything
+to set the pack going.</p>
+<p>And one pack starts the next. And the cries of the two start the
+third and the fourth, and each of these reacts on the first. The
+cry passes along the line, &ldquo;We have him at last, the mad
+invader.&rdquo; There being no other enemy, they cry out against
+each other. And of late <a id="page_198" name=
+"page_198"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 198]</span>years, since the
+barbed wire choked the cattle ranges, and gave pause to the coyote,
+there has been no enemy. But the dogs are there, though their
+function has passed away. It is but a tradition&mdash;a
+remembrance. Only to the dogs themselves does any reality
+exist.</p>
+<p>Yet, such is the nature of dogs and men, the watchdog was never
+more numerous nor more alert than today. He was never in better
+voice, and having nothing whatever to do, he does it to the highest
+artistic perfection. At least one justification remains.
+Civilization has not done away with the moon. In the stillness of
+night, its great white face peeps over the hills at intervals no
+dog has yet determined. Under this weird light, strange shadowy
+forms trip across the fields. The watchdogs of each farm have given
+warning, and the whole countryside is eager with vociferation.</p>
+<p>Men say the Sleepless Watchdog&rsquo;s bark is worse than his
+bite. This may be, but it is certain that his feed is worse than
+both bark and bite together. In the language of economics, the
+Sleepless Watchdog is an unremunerative investment. He has
+&ldquo;eaten his master out of house and home,&rdquo; and by the
+same token, he imagines that he himself is now the master.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>By this time, the gentle but astute reader has observed that
+this is no common &ldquo;Dog Story,&rdquo; but a parable of the
+times we live in; and that the real name of the Land of the
+Sleepless (but unremunerative) Watchdog is indeed Europe.</p>
+<p>And because of the noisy and costly futility of the whole system
+in his own and other countries, Professor Ottfried Nippold of
+Frankfort-on-the-Main, has made a special study of the Watchdogs of
+Germany.</p>
+<p>The good people of the Fatherland some forty years ago were
+drawn into a great struggle with their neighbors beyond the Rhine.
+To divert his subjects&rsquo; attention from their ills at home,
+the Emperor of France wagered his <a id="page_199" name=
+"page_199"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 199]</span>Rhine provinces
+against those of Prussia, in the game of War. The Emperor lost, and
+the King of Prussia took the stakes: for in those days it was a
+divine right of Kings to deal in flesh and blood.</p>
+<p>The play is finished, the board is cleared, Alsace and Lorraine
+were added to Germany, and the mistake is irretrievable. A fact
+accomplished cannot be blotted out. But hopeless as it all is,
+there are watchdogs who, on moonlight nights, call across the
+Vosges for revenge&mdash;for honor, for War, War, War. And the
+German watchdogs cry War, War, War. The word sounds the same in all
+languages. The watchdogs bark, but the battle will never begin.</p>
+<p>It is Professor Nippold&rsquo;s purpose, in his little book
+<em>Der Deutsche Chauvinismus</em>, to show that the clamor is not
+all on one side. The watchdogs of the Paris Boulevards are noisy
+enough, but those of Berlin are just the same. And as these are not
+all of Germany, so the others are not all of France. A great,
+thrifty, honest, earnest, cultured nation does not find its voice
+in the noises of the street. On the other hand, Germany,
+industrious, learned, profound and brave, is busy with her own
+affairs. She would harm no one, but mind her own business. But she
+is entangled in medi&aelig;val fashions. She has her own band of
+watchdogs, as noisy, as futile, as unthinkingly clamorous as ever
+were those of France. The &ldquo;Sleepless Watchdog&rdquo; in
+France is known as a Chauvinist, in England as a Jingo, in Prussia
+as a Pangermanist. They all bay at the same moon, are excited over
+the same fancies; they hear nothing, see nothing but one another.
+All alike live in an unreal world, in its essentials a world of
+their own creation. With all of them the bark is worse than the
+bite, and their &ldquo;Keep&rdquo; is more disastrous than both
+together.</p>
+<p>And as each nation should look after its own, Dr. Nippold
+lists&mdash;blacklists if you choose&mdash;the Chauvinists of
+Germany.</p>
+<p><a id="page_200" name="page_200"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+200]</span>At first glance, they make an imposing showing. A long
+series of newspapers, dozens of pamphlets, categories of bold and
+impressive warnings against the schemes of England and France, a
+set of appeals in the name of patriotism, of religion, of force, of
+violence. A long-drawn call to hate, to hate whatever is not of our
+own race or class; and above all the banding together of the
+&ldquo;noblest&rdquo; profession as against the encroachments of
+mere civilians, of men whose hands are soiled with other stains
+than blood.</p>
+<p>We have, first and foremost, General Keim, Keim the invincible,
+Keim the insatiable, Keim of the Army-League, Keim the arch hater
+of England and of Russia and of France, Keim the jewel of the
+fighting Junker aristocracy of Prussia&mdash;the band of warriors
+who despise all common soldiers&mdash;&ldquo;white slave&rdquo;
+conscripts, and with them all civilians, who at the best are only
+potential common soldiers. &ldquo;War, war, on both
+frontiers,&rdquo; is Keim&rsquo;s obsessing vision. War being
+inevitable and salutary, it cannot come too soon. The duty of hate,
+he urges on all the youth of Germany, maidens as well as men. It is
+said that Keim is the only man of the day who can maintain before
+an audience of Christians such a proposition as this: &ldquo;We
+must learn to hate, and to hate with method. A man counts little
+who cannot hate to a purpose. Bismarck was hate.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From Gaston Choisy&rsquo;s clever character sketch of General
+Keim, we learn that as a soldier or tactician, he was a man of no
+note. He has no ability as a thinker or as a speaker, but this he
+has: &ldquo;the courage of his vulgarity.&rdquo; &ldquo;At the age
+of 68, suffering from Bright&rsquo;s Disease, he travelled all
+Germany, his great head always in ebullition, gathering everywhere
+for the war-fire all the news, all the stories and all the lies
+susceptible of aiding the Cause.&rdquo; &ldquo;Without
+Bismarck&rsquo;s authority, he had his manner&mdash;a mixture of
+baseness, of atrocious joviality, a studied cynicism and a lack of
+conscience.&rdquo; &ldquo;How generous are <a id="page_201" name=
+"page_201"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 201]</span>circumstances!
+The spirit of Von Moltke the silent, with the speech of an
+<em>enfant terrible</em>, an endless flow of language, an endless
+course of words.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To the Chauvinists of France, Keim is indeed Germany. As to his
+own country, Von Ferlach sagely remarks: &ldquo;Keims and Keimlings
+unfortunately are all about us. But they are a vanishing
+minority.&rdquo; The great culture peoples do not hate one another.
+(&ldquo;Die grossen Kultur-volker hassen einander
+nicht.&rdquo;)</p>
+<p>Next on the black list, comes General Frederick von Bernhardi,
+with his <em>Germany and the Next War</em>, the need to obliterate
+France, while giving the needed chastisement to England. A retired
+officer of cavalry, said to be disgruntled through failure of
+promotion, a tall, spare, serious, prosy figure, a writer without
+inspiration, a speaker without force. Germany has never taken him
+seriously; for he lacks even the clown-charm of his rival Keim, but
+the medi&aelig;val absurdities and serious extravagances in his
+defense of war are well tempered to stir the eager watchdogs in the
+rival lands. In spite of his pleas, &ldquo;historical, biological
+and philosophical,&rdquo; for war, he is a man of peace, for which,
+in the words of General Eichhorn, &ldquo;one&rsquo;s own sword is
+the best and strongest pledge.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Doubtless other retired officers hold views of the same sort, as
+do doubtless many who could not be retired too soon for the welfare
+of Germany. Into the nature of their patriotism, the Zabern
+incident has thrown a great light. &ldquo;Other lands may possess
+an army,&rdquo; a Prussian officer is quoted as saying, &ldquo;the
+army possesses Germany.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The vanities and follies of Prussian militarism are concentrated
+in the movement called Pangermanism. Behind this, there seem to be
+two moving forces, the Prussian Junker aristocracy, and the
+financial interests which center about the house of Krupp. The
+purposes of Pangermanism seem to be, on the one hand, to prevent
+parliamentary government in Germany; and on the other, to take part
+in whatever goes on in the world outside. <a id="page_202" name=
+"page_202"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 202]</span>Just now, the
+control of Constantinople is the richest prize in sight, and that
+fateful city is fast replacing Alsace in the passive role of
+&ldquo;the nightmare of Europe.&rdquo; The journalists called
+Conservative find that &ldquo;Germany needs a vigorous diplomacy as
+a supplement to her power on land and sea, if she is to exercise
+the influence she deserves.&rdquo; And a vigorous foreign policy is
+but another name for the use of the War System as a means of
+pushing business. From the daily press of Germany may be culled
+many choice examples of idle Jingo talk, but analysis of the papers
+containing it shows their affiliation with the &ldquo;extreme
+right,&rdquo; a small minority in German politics, potent only
+through the indiscretions of the Crown Prince, and through the fact
+that the Constitution of Germany gives its people no control over
+administrative affairs. The journals of this sort&mdash;the
+<em>T&auml;gliche Rundschau</em>, the <em>Berliner Post</em>, the
+<em>Deutsche Tageszeitung</em>, and the <em>Berliner Neueste
+Nachrichten</em> are the property of Junker reactionists, or else,
+like the <em>Lokal Anzeiger</em>, the <em>Rheinisch-Westphalische
+Zeitung</em>, the organs merely of the War trade House of Krupp.
+Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single imposing
+figure, Maximilian Harden, the &ldquo;poet of German
+politics,&rdquo; who &ldquo;casts forth heroic gestures and thinks
+of politics in terms of &aelig;sthetics, the prophet of a great,
+strong and saber-rattling nation,&rdquo; whose force shall be felt
+everywhere under the sun.</p>
+<p>Bloodthirsty pamphlets in numbers, are listed by Nippold. But
+the anonymous writers (&ldquo;Divinator,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Rhenanus,&rdquo; &ldquo;Lookout,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Deutscher,&rdquo; &ldquo;Politiker,&rdquo; &ldquo;Activer
+General&rdquo; and &ldquo;Deutscher Officier&rdquo;) count for less
+than nothing in personal influence. They do little more than bay at
+the moon.</p>
+<p>Impressive as Nippold&rsquo;s list seems at first, and dangerous
+to the peace of the world, after all one&rsquo;s final thought is
+this: How few they are, and how scant their influence, as compared
+with the wise, sane, commonsense of sixty millions of German
+people. The two great papers that <a id="page_203" name=
+"page_203"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 203]</span>stand for peace
+and sanity, the <em>Berliner Tageblatt</em> and the <em>Frankfurter
+Zeitung</em>, with the <em>M&uuml;nchener Neueste Nachrichten</em>,
+are read daily by more Germans than all the reactionary sheets
+combined. The Socialist organ <em>Vorwaerts</em>, avowedly opposed
+to monarchy as well as to militarism, carries farther than all the
+organs of Pangermanism of whatever kind.</p>
+<p>We may justly conclude that the war spirit is not the spirit of
+Germany, a nation perforce military because the people cannot help
+themselves. So far as it goes, it is the spirit of a narrow clique
+of &ldquo;sleepless watchdogs&rdquo; whose influence is waning, and
+would be non-existent were it not for the military organization
+which holds Germany by the throat, but which has pushed the German
+people just as far as it dares.</p>
+<p>A second lesson is that while forms of government, and social
+traditions, may differ, the relation of public opinion towards war
+is practically the same in all the countries of Western Europe. It
+is in its way the test of European civilization. Each nation has
+its &ldquo;sleepless watchdogs,&rdquo; and those of one nation fire
+the others, when the proper war scares are set in motion by the
+great unscrupulous group of those who profit by them. The war
+promoters, the apostles of hate, form a brotherhood among
+themselves, and their success in frightening one nation reacts to
+make it easier to scare another.</p>
+<p>This the reader may remember, as a final lesson. There is no
+civilized nation which longs for war. There is nowhere a reckless
+populace clamoring for blood. The schools have done away with all
+that. The spread of commerce has brought a new Earth with new
+sympathies and new relations, in which international war has no
+place.</p>
+<p>If you are sure that your own nation has no design to use
+violence on any other, you may be equally sure that no other has
+evil designs on you. The German fleet is not built as a menace to
+England; whether it be large or small should concern England very
+little. Just as little does the <a id="page_204" name=
+"page_204"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 204]</span>size of the
+British fleet bear any concern to Germany. The German fleet is
+built against the German people. The growth of the British army and
+navy has in part the same motive. Armies and navies hold back the
+waves of populism and democracy. They seem a bulwark against
+Socialism. But in the great manufacturing and commercial nations,
+they will not be used for war, because they cannot be. The
+sacrifice appalls: the wreck of society would be beyond
+computation.</p>
+<p>But still the sleepless watchdogs bark. It is all that they can
+do, and we should get used to them. In our own country, whatever
+country it may be, we have our own share of them, and some of them
+bear distinguished names. No other nation has any more, and no
+nation takes them really seriously, any more than we do. And one
+and all, their bark is worse than their bite, and the cost of
+feeding them is doubtless worse than either.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><a id="page_205" name="page_205"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+205]</span></p>
+<h2><a id="Casserole" name="Casserole"></a>En Casserole</h2>
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+Contents</a></p>
+<h3><em>Special to our Readers</em></h3>
+<p>Those of you who have not received your <span class=
+"sc">Reviews</span> on time will probably now find a double
+interest in the article in the last number, on <em>Our Government
+Subvention to Literature</em>. In conveying periodicals so cheaply,
+not only is Uncle Sam engaged in a bad job, but he is doing it
+cheaply, and consequently badly, and he has more of it than he can
+well handle. <em>He is at length carrying them as freight</em>, and
+most of you know what that means. We are receiving complaints of
+delay on all sides, and an appreciable part of the unwelcome
+subvention Uncle Sam is giving us, goes in sending duplicates of
+lost copies. We don&rsquo;t acknowledge any obligation, legal or
+moral, to do this; but we love our subscribers&mdash;more or less
+disinterestedly&mdash;and try to do them all the kinds of good we
+can. Partly to enable us to do that, as long as the subvention is
+given, we follow the example of the excellent Pooh Bah, and put our
+pride (and the subvention) into our pockets. Even if we did not
+love our subscribers so, we should have to do the pocketing all the
+same, because our competitors do. Competitors are always a very
+shameless sort of people.</p>
+<p>We wish, however, that Uncle Sam would keep his subvention in
+his own pocket, and so lead to a higher plane all competitors in
+the magazine business, including some of those who don&rsquo;t want
+to rise to a higher plane. The best of such a proceeding on his
+part would be that he would also, through the complicated
+influences described in the article referred to encourage up to a
+higher plane <a id="page_206" name="page_206"></a><span class=
+"pagenr">[pg 206]</span>those who write for popular magazines.
+Those who write for <span class="sc">The Unpopular Review</span>
+are, of course, on the highest possible plane already. This remark
+is made solely for the benefit of readers taking up the
+<span class="sc">Review</span> for the first time. To others it is
+superfluous, and if there is anything we try to avoid, it is, as we
+have so many times to tell volunteer contributors, superfluities.
+Even popularity we do not try to avoid, but&mdash;!</p>
+<p>The foregoing paragraph was written with little thought of what
+was coming to be added to it. You and we have something to be proud
+of. Our <span class="sc">Review</span> has been doing its part in
+saving all Europe from the waste of hundreds of millions of money,
+and the literatures of all Europe from a degradation like that
+through which our own is passing. Read the following letter:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Dear Mr. [Editor]:</p>
+<p>I have already sent a line through &mdash;&mdash; thanking you
+for the copy of <span class="sc">The Unpopular Review</span>, which
+you were good enough to send me, but I should like to repeat my
+thanks to you again direct, and at the same time, tell you how the
+<span class="sc">Review</span> has been of service to European
+publishers.</p>
+<p>The article in the last number entitled <em>Our Government
+Subvention to Literature</em> naturally interested me very much
+from a personal point of view, but the statistics you give showing
+the effect of second class matter rate on book sales was very
+valuable to me as the representative of the English Publishers on
+the Executive Committee of the International Publishers
+Congress.</p>
+<p>At the Congress held at Budapest last June, a resolution was
+adopted instructing the Congress to press for a reduced rate of
+postage on periodicals, and an international stamp. The steps to be
+taken in order to carry out this resolution were discussed at the
+meeting of the Committee last week held at Leipzig, when I produced
+the copy of your article, and gave the Committee a summary of the
+statistics. The result was the unanimous decision to take no
+further steps in the matter.</p>
+<p>I tremble to think of what might have happened if I had not had
+your article before me, for the point of view which you have put
+forward was one that had not occurred to anyone else connected with
+the Congress, and if the resolution had not been cut out at this
+last meeting of the Executive Committee, it would <a id="page_207"
+name="page_207"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 207]</span>have gone
+before the Postal Conference which is to be held in Madrid this
+autumn, backed by practically every European country.</p>
+<p>I feel we all owe you a debt of gratitude for bringing out the
+facts so clearly, and believe that you will like to know what has
+taken place.</p>
+</div>
+<p>While we are not slow to take all the credit that our supporters
+and ourselves are entitled to in this matter, we should be very
+slow tacitly to accept the lion&rsquo;s share of it, which is due
+to Colonel C.W. Burrows of Cleveland, who supplied all of the facts
+and nearly all of the expression of the article in question, and
+who has for years, lately as President of the One Cent Letter
+Postage League, been devoting himself with unsparing energy and
+self-sacrifice to stopping the waste of money and capacity that the
+mistaken outbreak of paternalism we are discussing has brought upon
+the country.</p>
+<p>Demos is a good fellow&mdash;when he behaves himself, and that
+generally means when he is not abused or flattered; but how
+supremely ridiculous, not to say destructive, he is when he gets to
+masquerading in the robes of the scholar or the judge; and how
+criminal is the demagogue who seeks personal aggrandisement by
+dangling those robes before him.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Our modesty has been so anesthetized by the preceding letter,
+that it permits us to show you, in strict confidence of course, a
+paragraph from another. A new subscriber, apparently going it blind
+on the recommendation of a friend, writes:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&ldquo;I am told it is the best gentleman&rsquo;s magazine in
+the United States.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>Now, somehow, &ldquo;gentleman&rdquo; is a word that we are very
+chary of using. We couldn&rsquo;t put that remark on an advertising
+page, but perhaps there is no inconsistency in putting it here, and
+confessing that we like it&mdash;and that we even suspect that we
+have always had a subconscious idea that <a id="page_208" name=
+"page_208"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 208]</span>it was just what
+we were after&mdash;that it includes, or ought to include, about
+everything that we are trying to accomplish. In any interpretation,
+it is certainly an encouragement to keep pegging away.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>Most of our readers probably remember a letter on pp. 432-3 of
+the <em>Casserole</em> of the April-June number, from an individual
+who thought we were trying to humbug the wage-receiving world into
+a false and dangerous contentment with existing conditions. This
+inference was probably drawn from our insistent promulgation of the
+belief that a man&rsquo;s fortune depends more upon himself than
+upon his conditions.</p>
+<p>As a contrast to that remarkable letter, it is a great pleasure
+to call attention to the following still more remarkable one. It is
+from a printer&mdash;not one in our employ.</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>I wish to congratulate you on the excellence of the <span class=
+"sc">Review</span>, both from a literary and mechanical standpoint.
+As a &ldquo;worker,&rdquo; &ldquo;a member of the Union,&rdquo; it
+might be inferred that I endorse the views of the critics given on
+page 432 of the second number. Not so. It is such views as his that
+harm the unthinking&mdash;those who think capital is the emblem of
+wickedness.</p>
+<p>I believe that individual merit and worth are the only things
+worth while. The workman who puts his best efforts into his labor,
+and takes a personal pride in making his productions as nearly
+perfect as possible, will be recognized, and his individual worth
+to his employer will raise him above the &ldquo;common
+level.&rdquo; All this rot about a &ldquo;ruling oligarchy&rdquo;
+&ldquo;grinding down the poorer class&rdquo; is dangerous. The man
+who has no ambition above ditch digging, and who endeavors to throw
+out as little dirt in a day as he possibly can, will always be one
+of &ldquo;the submerged.&rdquo; It lies with each one&mdash;outside
+of unavoidable physical or mental infirmities&mdash;whether he
+shall rise or sink.</p>
+<p>Again I must congratulate you on the stand you are taking in
+<span class="sc">The Unpopular Review</span>. I &ldquo;take&rdquo;
+and read twenty to twenty-five magazines and for over forty years
+have been trying to educate myself to a right way of thinking, and
+the result is I believe as above briefly outlined.</p>
+<p>Especially good is <em>The Greeks on Religion and Morals</em>,
+also <em>The Soul of Capitalism, Trust-Busting as a National
+Pastime</em>, and <em>Our Government Subvention to
+Literature</em>.</p>
+</div>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p><a id="page_209" name="page_209"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+209]</span>Possibly some of you are disappointed at not finding
+this number as full as the daily papers of wisdom on War and the
+Mexican situation. In one sense we are disappointed ourselves: for
+we had made arrangements for at least one article of that general
+nature from one of our best qualified contributors; but when it
+came time to write it (speaking by the calendar), he showed the
+excellence of his qualifications by saying that, considering the
+situation and the function of this <span class="sc">Review</span>,
+it was <em>not</em> time&mdash;that the situation had not yet
+become mature enough or broad enough for any general
+conclusions&mdash;for any treatment beyond that already well given
+by the newspapers and other organs of frequent publication, and
+that they were giving all the details called for. We will wait,
+then, and try to philosophize when the time comes.</p>
+<p>We find, however, that with little deliberate intention on our
+part, this number has turned out &ldquo;seasonable&rdquo; in
+another sense, and hope you will find it so. Witness the articles
+on <em>Chautauqua</em>, and <em>Railway Junctions</em>, and
+<em>Tips</em> (entitled <em>A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism</em>) and
+several others.</p>
+<h3><em>Philosophy in Fly Time</em></h3>
+<p>In the old days, before the destruction of the white pines
+removed the chief source of American inventiveness&mdash;the
+universal habit of whittling&mdash;every boy had a jackknife, and
+also had boxes, sometimes of wood, sometimes of writing paper, in
+which he kept flies. Now he has neither flies nor jackknife.</p>
+<p>Then, when he wanted a fly, nine times out of ten he could catch
+one with a sweep of the hand. That was before the fly was charged
+with an amount of bad deeds, if they really were as bad as
+represented, which would have destroyed the human race long before
+the plagues of Egypt; or if not before the fly plague, would have
+caused that plague to leave no Egyptians alive to enjoy the later
+ones. With these new opinions of the fly, began a crusade against
+him; and now the boys can&rsquo;t have any more fun with <a id=
+"page_210" name="page_210"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+210]</span>him&mdash;that is, only good boys can&mdash;the kind
+that catch him with illusive traps, for a cent a hundred. The other
+kind of boys may occasionally be sports enough to hunt him with the
+swatter; but it&rsquo;s pretty poor hunting: for the game is so shy
+that generally before you get within reach of him, he is off: so
+swatting him is difficult, while catching him by hand, as we boys
+used to, is virtually impossible.</p>
+<p>Now for some questions profound enough to befit our pages. (I)
+Have only a select group of very alert and quick flies survived? or
+(II) Have the flies told each other that that big clumsy brute with
+only two legs to walk on, and two aborted ones which do all sorts
+of foolish things&mdash;the brute with only one lens to an eye
+(though he sometimes puts a glass one over it) and a pitifully
+aborted proboscis&mdash;the brute that has no wings, and
+can&rsquo;t get ahead more than about once his own length in a
+second&mdash;that this clumsy brute had at last got so jealous of
+the six legs, hundred-lensed eyes, proboscis, wings and speed of
+the fly, that he had started a new crusade against him, and must be
+specially avoided?</p>
+<p>Then, after it is ascertained whether the timidity of the flies
+is because this story has been passed around among them, or only
+because men have already killed off all but the specially quick and
+timid ones; we hope our investigators may find an answer to the
+farther question: (III) How, if a tenth of what some folks say
+against flies is true, the human race has so long survived?</p>
+<p>To avoid misapprehension, it should be added that despite the
+availability, in our boyhood, of flies as playmates, we don&rsquo;t
+like &lsquo;em, especially when they light on our hands to help us
+write articles for this <span class="sc">Review</span>.</p>
+<h3><em>Setting Bounds to Laughter</em></h3>
+<p>That there is even a measure of personal liberty on the earth,
+is one of our most pointed proofs that the universe is governed by
+design. For liberty is loved neither <a id="page_211" name=
+"page_211"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 211]</span>by the many nor
+by the few; its defense has always been unpopular in the extreme,
+and can be manfully undertaken only in an age of moral heroism. The
+present is no heroic age, and hence our personal rights fall one by
+one, without defense, and apparently without regret. The losses
+thus incurred must be left to future historians to weigh and to
+lament. There is, however, one of our natural rights, now cruelly
+beset by its enemies, that is too precious to surrender to the
+threnodies of the future historians. This is the right to
+laugh.</p>
+<p>It is scarcely a quarter of a century since the first appearance
+of organized efforts to curb the spirit of laughter. All good men
+and women were hectored into believing that one should weep, not
+laugh, over the absurdities of men in their cups. Next, we were
+warned that it is unseemly and unChristian to laugh at a
+fellow-man&rsquo;s discomfiture&mdash;an awkward social situation,
+a sermon or a political oration wrecked by stage fright, or a poem
+spoilt by a printer&rsquo;s stupidity. Under shelter of the dogma
+that to laugh at the ridiculous is unlawful, there have recently
+grown into vigor multitudinous anti-laughter alliances, racial,
+national and professional. Not many years ago a censorship of Irish
+jokes was established, and this was soon followed by an index
+expurgatorious of Teutonic jokes. Our colored fellow citizens
+promptly advanced the claim that jokes at the expense of their race
+are &ldquo;in bad taste&rdquo;; and country life enthusiasts
+solemnly affirmed that the rural and suburban jokes are nothing
+short of national disasters. A recent press report informs us that
+the suffragette joke has been excluded from the vaudeville circuits
+throughout the country. And the movement grows apace. Domestic
+servants, stenographers, politicians, college professors, and
+clergymen are organizing to establish the right of being ridiculous
+without exciting laughter.</p>
+<p>But what does it all matter? What is laughter but an
+old-fashioned aid to digestion, more or less discredited by <a id=
+"page_212" name="page_212"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+212]</span>current medical authority? It is time we learned that
+laughter has a social significance: it is the first stage in the
+process of understanding one&rsquo;s fellow man. Professor Bergson
+to the contrary notwithstanding, you can not laugh with your
+intellect alone. An essential element of your laughter is sympathy.
+You can not laugh at an idiot, nor at a superman. You can not laugh
+at a Hindoo or a Korean; you can hardly force a smile to your lips
+over the conduct of a Bulgar, a Serb, or a Slovak. You are
+beginning to find something comic in the Italian, because you are
+beginning to know him. And all the world laughs at the Irishman,
+because all the world knows him and loves him.</p>
+<p>When Benjamin Franklin walked down the streets of Philadelphia,
+carrying a book under his arm, and munching a crust of bread, just
+one person observed him, a rosy maiden, who laughed merrily at him.
+As our old school readers narrated, with na&iuml;ve surprise, this
+maiden was destined to become Franklin&rsquo;s faithful wife. And
+yet psychology should have led us to expect such a result. The
+stupidest small boy making faces or turning somersaults before the
+eyes of his pig-tailed inamorata, evidences his appreciation of the
+sentimental value of the ridiculous. When did we first grant some
+small corner in our hearts to the Chinese? It was when we were
+introduced to Bret Harte&rsquo;s gambler:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,</p>
+<p>The heathen Chinee is peculiar.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>The natural history of the racial or professional joke is easily
+written. At the outset it is crude and cruel, wholly at the expense
+of the group represented. In time the world wearies of an unequal
+contest, and we have a new order of jokes, in which the intended
+victim acquits himself well. This, too, gives way to a higher
+order, in which race, nationality or profession is employed merely
+as <a id="page_213" name="page_213"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+213]</span>a cloak for common humanity. The successive stages mark
+the progress in assimilation, induced, in large measure, by
+laughter. There is no other social force so potent in creating
+mutual understanding and practical fraternity of spirit; in
+establishing the essential unity of mankind underneath its
+phenomenal diversity. Setting bounds to laughter: why, this is to
+indenture the angel of charity to the father of lies and the lord
+of hate.</p>
+<h3><em>A Post Graduate School for Academic Donors</em></h3>
+<p>At a recent meeting of an University Montessori Club the case of
+donors to colleges and universities was reported on by a special
+committee. The majority report drew a pretty heavy indictment. It
+was shown that the givers to colleges and universities seldom
+considered the real needs of their beneficiaries. Donors liked to
+give expensive buildings without endowment for upkeep, liked to
+give vast athletic fields, rejoiced in stadiums, affected memorial
+statuary and stained glass windows, dabbled in landscape gardening,
+but seldom were known either to give anything unconditionally or,
+specifically, to destine a gift for such uninspiring needs as more
+books or professors&rsquo; pay. The result of giving without first
+considering the needs of the benefited college or university, was
+that every gift made the beneficiary more lopsided. Certain
+universities were almost capsized by their incidental architecture.
+Others were subsidizing graduate students to whom the conditions of
+successful research were denied. Still others were calling great
+specialists to the teaching force without providing the apparatus
+for the pursuit of these specialties. Others preferred to offer
+financial aid to students who were poor&mdash;in every sense.
+Donors apparently without exception had single-track minds. They
+saw plainly enough what they wanted to give, but never took the
+pains to see the donation in its relation to the institution as a
+whole. The majority report, which was <a id="page_214" name=
+"page_214"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 214]</span>drawn by our
+famous Latinist, Professor Claudius Senex, concluded with the
+despairing note <em>Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes</em>. The
+minority report was delivered orally by young Simpson Smith of the
+department of banking and finance. He &ldquo;allowed&rdquo; that
+everything alleged by the majority report was true, but saw no use
+in dwelling on such truths, since donors always had done and always
+would do just as they darned pleased.</p>
+<p>The Club took a more hopeful view of the case, and it was voted
+that our Club should resolve itself into the trustees and faculty
+of a Post Graduate School for Academic Donors. Our committee
+recommended that we qualify our advanced students by conferring the
+lower degree of Heedless Donor (H.D.) every year upon all givers
+who can be shown to have given at random. No method of instruction
+seemed more appropriate than the seminar plan of practical
+exercises based on concrete instances. The first laboratory
+experiment was performed in the presence of a Seminar of seven
+H.D.&rsquo;s. in a specially called meeting of married professors
+attired only in bath gowns borrowed from the crews and base ball
+teams. Into this assembly the class of H.D.&rsquo;s was suddenly
+introduced. They naturally inquired into the meaning of the
+spectacle, and were informed that in no case did the mere salary of
+these professors enable them to wear clothes at all. &ldquo;But you
+do usually wear clothes?&rdquo; inquired a student of a favorite
+professor. &ldquo;How do you get them?&rdquo; &ldquo;By University
+extension lecturing at ten dollars a lecture&rdquo; was the quiet
+answer. Another professor explained that he got his clothes by
+tutoring dull students, another by book reviewing. One somewhat
+shamefacedly said the clothes came from his wife&rsquo;s money. One
+declined to answer, and, as a matter of fact, his clothes are
+habitually first worn by a more fortunate elder brother.</p>
+<p>On the whole the results of our first seminary exercise were
+satisfactory. One student immediately drew a considerable check for
+the salary fund, another, who <a id="page_215" name=
+"page_215"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 215]</span>had been
+planning to give a hockey rink, said he would think things over.
+Still a third deposited forty pairs of slightly worn trousers with
+the university treasurer, &ldquo;for whom it might concern.&rdquo;
+Only one accepted the demonstration contentedly. He admitted that
+low pay and extra work were hard on the Professors, but he also
+felt that these outside activities advertised the university and
+were good business. Of course you wore out some professors in the
+process, but you could always get others.</p>
+<p>Our second seminary exercise was of a less spectacular sort. The
+post graduate donors were each provided with a bibliography. This
+in every instance contained the titles of books that a particular
+professor or graduate student in the university would need to
+consult for his studies of the ensuing week. It was briefly
+explained by Professor Senex that original research could not be
+successfully accomplished without reference to all the original
+sources and to the writings of other scholars. The bibliographies
+ran from ten titles or so to nearly a hundred, according to the
+nature of the particular research involved. The exercise consisted
+in going to the university library and matching these titles of
+desiderata with the books actually in the catalogue. After varying
+intervals, the post graduate donors returned with their report.
+Nobody had found more than half the books sought for: many had
+found less.</p>
+<p>The effect of this demonstration was interesting. The donor who
+had tended towards the hockey rink, instead transferred his
+$100,000 to the book purchase fund. He said he guessed the old
+place needed real books more than it needed artificial ice. Others
+followed his example according to their ability.</p>
+<p>The student who was satisfied with our bath robe faculty
+meeting, came back from the library equally pleased. He had not
+compared his bibliography with the catalogue, but a brief general
+inspection had convinced him that there were already more books in
+the library than anybody <a id="page_216" name=
+"page_216"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 216]</span>could read. His
+intention held firm to give his Alma Mater a tower higher than any
+university tower on record and containing a chime of bells that
+periodically played the college song. The tower was naturally to
+bear his name, which was also his dear mother&rsquo;s.</p>
+<h3><em>A Suggestion Regarding Vacations</em></h3>
+<p>Why wouldn&rsquo;t it be well for the country colleges to
+shorten their summer vacations, and lengthen their winter ones?
+Then urban students would not, for so long a period in summer, be
+put to their trumps to find out what to do with themselves; and,
+what is more important, in winter both faculty and students would
+have increased opportunity for metropolitan experience. In the
+summer vacations, the cities are empty of music, drama, and most
+else of what makes them distinctively worth while. Intellectually,
+the country needs the city at least as much as, morally, the city
+needs the country.</p>
+<h3><em>Advertisement</em></h3>
+<p>We are disposed to do a little gratuitous advertising for good
+causes. Below is the first essay. It is perfectly genuine. Please
+send us some more.</p>
+<p><em>Help Wanted.</em> From a young gentleman of education,
+leisure and energy, who desires to devote a part of his time, in
+connection with scholars and philanthropists, to a reform of
+world-wide importance. Such a person may possibly learn of a
+congenial opportunity by addressing.</p>
+<p class="rgt">X.T.C.<br />
+Care of<span class="sc">The Unpopular Review</span>.</p>
+<p>A few hundred persons of the kind whose help is sought by this
+advertisement would have the salvation of the republic in their
+hands. But somehow those who have the leisure generally lack the
+desire; and those who have the desire generally lack the
+leisure.</p>
+<p><a id="page_217" name="page_217"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+217]</span></p>
+<h3><em>Simplified Spelling</em></h3>
+<p>After receiving, in answer to the invitation in our first
+number, a few bitter objections to simplified spelling, we have
+felt like apologizing each time we approached the subject. Perhaps
+the best apology we can make is that apparently the majority of our
+readers are interested in it. Therefore we hope that the others
+will tolerate as equably as they can, the devotion of a little
+space to it in the interest of the majority. Perhaps the objectors
+may ultimately be able to settle the difficulty as we and our house
+have settled another unconquerable nuisance&mdash;the dandelions on
+our lawns&mdash;: we have concluded to like them.</p>
+<p>Our recent correspondence regarding Simplified Spelling has
+developed a few points which we submit to those who abominate it,
+those who favor it, and those who, like the eminent
+school-superintendent we have already quoted, and like ourselves
+for that matter, do both:</p>
+<p>To a leading Professor of Greek:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>I am more hopeful than you that the repetition of a consonant
+beginning the second syllable of a dissyllable, to close the
+preceding syllable, as in &ldquo;differ&rdquo;,
+&ldquo;fiddle&rdquo;, &ldquo;gobble&rdquo;, etc., <em>wil</em>
+&ldquo;be generally accepted&rdquo;, especially in view of the fact
+that it is <em>alreddy</em> &ldquo;generally accepted&rdquo;, and
+needs only to be extended to a minority of words.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Annutther&rdquo; is not &ldquo;a fair
+illustration&rdquo;. On the contrary, it is an exception that I
+probably was very injudicious to call any attention to; and the
+trouble with you scholars, I find all the way thru, is that you
+permit those little exceptions to influence you too much. If a good
+simplification is ever effected, it will be by cutting Gordian
+knots, and you all of you seem absolutely incapable of anything of
+the kind. I don&rsquo;t expect anyhow to make much out of a man who
+will spell &ldquo;peepl&rdquo; &ldquo;peopl&rdquo;. Imagine all
+this said with a grin, not a frown!!</p>
+<p>You wil never get back to &ldquo;the old sounds&rdquo; of the
+vowels, in God&rsquo;s world.</p>
+<p>As to the long sounds, I am going in for all I am worth on the
+double vowels. I alreddy agree with the English Society on <a id=
+"page_218" name="page_218"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+218]</span>&ldquo;faather&rdquo;, &ldquo;feel&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;scuul&rdquo;, and am going to do all I can for
+<em>niit</em>, and for spredding the <em>oo</em> in <em>floor</em>
+and <em>door</em> into <em>snore</em>, <em>more</em>,
+<em>hole</em>, <em>poke</em>, etc. &ldquo;Awl&rdquo;,
+&ldquo;cow&rdquo; and &ldquo;go&rdquo; are spelt wel, and their
+spelling shoud be spred. These seem to be the lines of least
+resistance. I find that they work first-rate in my own riting.</p>
+<p>You make enuf serious objections to diacritical marks, but my
+serious objection to them is that they ar obstacles to lerners,
+especially forreners.</p>
+</div>
+<p>From his answer:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>All right; I catch the grin, and cheerfully grin back. The
+business of a scholar (Emerson&rsquo;s &ldquo;man thinking&rdquo;,
+Plato&rsquo;s [Greek: philosophos]) is to take as long views as he
+can; in this case, to look far beyond the possibilities of my
+life-time. The more you people with the shorter views, as I venture
+to think them, agitate for and practise each little partial
+solution, the more you help on the threshing out which must go on
+for many years before we can arrive at any general solution. So,
+more power to your elbow!</p>
+<p>Meantime my own spelling will continue to be&mdash;like the
+conventional spelling of the printers of today&mdash;a hodge-podge
+of inconsistencies, quite indefensible on rational grounds, and
+varying with circumstances. Of course the rational way to spell
+<em>people</em> is <em>piipl</em>, or <em>pipl</em>.</p>
+</div>
+<p>Which we think is an attempt to bolster up a lost cause.</p>
+<p>From another reader:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Your closing sentence in the first number of <span class=
+"sc">The Unpopular Review</span> states with a most distressing
+combination of vowels and outlandish collocation of consonants that
+you would like to hear from your readers on the subject&hellip;. Z
+is not a pretty letter, and to see it so frequently usurping the
+place so long held by s is far from gratifying to the
+eye&hellip;.</p>
+<p>Suppose you establish to your own satisfaction a method for
+assigning sound values; how will you reach the differences in vowel
+sounds that prevail in the United States? The New Englander&rsquo;s
+mouthing of <em>a</em> differs from that of the Northern New
+Yorker, and both differ greatly from that of the
+Southerner&mdash;indeed, in the different Southern States there is
+variation&hellip;. At first I was interested in simplified
+spelling, but the eccentricities developed by its advocates
+alienated me long since, so I beg of you, drop it.</p>
+</div>
+<p><a id="page_219" name="page_219"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+219]</span>From our answer:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>I delayed thanking you for your letter of the 29th until there
+should be time for you to see the April-June number.</p>
+<p>I hope you are feeling better now.</p>
+<p>If you are not, I do not think I can do much to console you,
+because when a man has been irritated into that position where the
+alleged beauty of a letter counts in so serious a question, he is
+probably beyond mortal help.</p>
+<p>I have no desire &ldquo;to reach the differences in vowel sounds
+that prevail in the United States&rdquo;. There is not much
+difference among cultivated people. Probably a fair standard would
+be the conversation at the Century Club, where there are visitors
+from Maine to California, and hardly any noticeable difference in
+pronunciation.</p>
+<p>There seems to be no disagreement among authorities that a
+simplified spelling would save a great deal of time among
+children&hellip;.</p>
+<p>Of course I have not been able to answer most of the letters I
+have received on the subject. I single yours out because you have
+had a fall from grace, and I feel guilty of having had something to
+do with it, by presenting stronger meat than was necessary, in our
+January number. I have fought on the Executive Committee of the
+Spelling Board against publishing anything of the English
+S.S.S.&rsquo;s proposed improvements, for fear of arousing such
+prejudice as yours; and yet in our first number, I was insensibly
+led into, myself, publishing things that looked just as
+outlandish.</p>
+<p>As I said at the outset, I hope you feel better since seeing the
+April-June number, and should be glad to know how you do feel.</p>
+</div>
+<p>From his reply:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Thank you very much for the courtesy of your letter of 9th
+April. I was surprised to receive it, as I did not suppose that
+your multifarious duties would permit you to notice my rather
+feeble protest. I was somewhat amused that you should think my
+irritation so extreme as to call for an effort to console me. I am
+sure I appreciate your attempt to do so. But really, I was not so
+hard hit as you thought, because I do not expect in my day (I am no
+longer a young man) to see the champions of &ldquo;simplified
+spelling&rdquo; (some of it seems to me the reverse of
+&ldquo;simplified&rdquo;) gain such headway as to materially mar my
+pleasure in the printed page, for I do not believe you will allow
+the atrocities of the last few pages of your first number to creep
+<a id="page_220" name="page_220"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+220]</span>into the delightful essays which render <span class=
+"sc">The Unpopular Review</span> such pleasant and profitable
+reading&hellip;.</p>
+<p>I do not think any great respect is due the opinion of those who
+think that a simplified spelling would save a great deal of time
+among children, for it also seems to have its rules which will
+present as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of
+our present system&hellip;.</p>
+<p>Why <em>thru</em>? U does not always have the sound of double
+<em>o</em>&mdash;very rarely in fact. Why not
+<em>throo</em>&mdash;if the aim is to make the written sign
+correspond to the sound. Thru suggests <em>huh</em>.</p>
+</div>
+<p>From our answer:</p>
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Regarding &ldquo;thru&rdquo;, you justly say that <em>u</em>
+does not always have the sound of <em>oo</em>. The only sound of
+<em>oo</em> worthy of respect, with which I have an acquaintance,
+is in &ldquo;door&rdquo; and &ldquo;floor&rdquo;. The idea of using
+it to represent a <em>u</em> sound is perhaps the culminating
+absurdity of our spelling.</p>
+<p>Your statement that simplified spelling &ldquo;seems to have its
+rules which will present as much difficulty to memorize as do the
+peculiarities of our present system&rdquo; overlooks the advantage
+that writing with a phonetic alphabet, like those of Europe, has
+over writing with purely conventional characters, as in China. Now
+English writing is probably the least phonetic in Europe.
+Simplifying it in any of the well-known proposed methods would be
+making it more phonetic, and consequently easier. At present it is
+a mass of contradictions, and the rules that can be extracted from
+it are overburdened with exceptions. Simplification will decrease
+both the exceptions and the rules themselves. There are now several
+ways of representing each of many sounds, and therefore several
+&ldquo;rules&rdquo; to be learned for each of such sounds.
+Simplification will tend to reduce those rules to one for each
+sound, and so far as it succeeds, will <em>not</em> &ldquo;present
+as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of our
+present system.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>All the degrees of reformed spelling now in use are professedly
+but transitional. They may gradually advance into a respectable
+degree of consistency, but we expect that to be reached quicker by
+a coherent survival among the warring elements proposed by the
+S.S.S., the S.S.B. and the better individual reformers. Probably
+there is already more agreement than disagreement among these
+elements.</p>
+<p><a id="page_221" name="page_221"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg
+221]</span>While the others are fighting it out, the various
+transition styles will do something to prepare parents to accept a
+more nearly perfect style for their children, and perhaps take an
+interest in seeing the various counsels of perfection fight each
+other.</p>
+<p>A few words have already found their way into
+advertisements&mdash;<em>tho</em>, <em>thru</em>, <em>thoro</em> (a
+damnable way of spelling <em>thurro</em>), and the shortened
+terminal <em>gram(me)s</em>, <em>og(ue)s</em> and <em>et(te)s</em>;
+and these and a few more have found their way into correspondence
+on commonplace subjects; and the interest in the topic, especially
+among educators, is spreading. But most of the inconsistencies will
+probably bother and delay children and forreners until they are
+given something with some approach to consistency.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>After we fight to something like agreement on a system, how are
+we to get it going?</p>
+<p>It does not seem extravagant to expect that as soon as the
+weight of scholarly opinion endorses a vocabulary from our present
+alphabet consistent enough to afford a base for a reasonable
+spelling book, spelling books and readers will be prepared for the
+schools, and adopted by advanced teachers. Many are clamoring for
+such now. When the youngsters have mastered these, which they will
+do in a small fraction of the time wasted on their present books,
+they will of their own accord pick up without troubling their
+teachers a knowledge of the present forms. This they have always
+done when their teaching has been by the various phonetic methods
+with special letters, and have done both in much less time than
+they have needed for learning in the ordinary way. But they will
+prefer the reasonable forms, and this demand the publishers will
+probably not be slow to supply.</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number
+3, by Various
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+Project Gutenberg's The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 22, 2005 [EBook #15876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW
+
+VOL. II, NO. 3
+
+JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1914
+
+
+Published Quarterly at 35 West 32d Street, New York, by
+
+HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  Unsocial Investments                                A.S. Johnson
+  A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism                       The Editor
+  An Experiment in Syndicalism                        Hugh H. Lusk
+  Labor: "True Demand" and Immigrant Supply           Arthur J. Todd
+  The Way to Flatland                                 Fabian Franklin
+  The Disfranchisement of Property                    David McGregor Means
+  Railway Junctions                                   Clayton Hamilton
+  Minor Uses of the Middling Rich                     F.J. Mather, Jr.
+  Lecturing at Chautauqua                             Clayton Hamilton
+  Academic Leadership                                 Paul Elmer More
+  Hypnotism, Telepathy, and Dreams                    The Editor
+  The Muses on the Hearth                             Mrs F.G. Allinson
+  The Land of the Sleepless Watchdog                  David Starr Jordan
+  En Casserole
+    Special to our Readers--Philosophy in Fly Time--Setting Bounds
+    to Laughter (A.S. Johnson)--A Post-Graduate School for Academic
+    Donors (F.J. Mather, Jr.)--A Suggestion Regarding
+    Vacations--Advertisement--Simplified Spelling
+
+
+
+
+UNSOCIAL INVESTMENTS
+
+
+The "new social conscience" is essentially a class phenomenon. While it
+pretends to the role of inner monitor and guide to conduct for all
+mankind, it interprets good and evil in class terms. It manifests a
+special solicitude for the welfare of one social group, and a mute
+hostility toward another. Labor is its Esau, Capital its Jacob. Let strife
+arise between workingmen and their employers, and you will see the new
+social conscience aligning itself with the former, accepting at face value
+all the claims of labor, reiterating all labor's formulae. The suggestion
+that judgment should be suspended until the facts at issue are established
+is repudiated as the prompting of a secret sin. For, to paraphrase a
+recent utterance of the _Survey_, one of the foremost organs of the new
+conscience, is it not true that the workers are fighting for their
+livings, while the employers are fighting only for their profits? It would
+appear, then, that there can be no question as to the side to which
+justice inclines. A living is more sacred than a profit.
+
+It is virtually never true, however, that the workers are fighting for
+their "living." Contrary to Marx's exploded "iron law" they probably had
+that and more before the trouble began. But of course we would not wish to
+restrict them to a living, if they can produce more, and want all who
+can't produce that much to be provided with it--and something more at the
+expense of others.
+
+It may be urged that the employer's profits also represent the livings of
+a number of human beings; but this passes nowadays for a reactionary view.
+"We stand for man as against the dollar." If you say that the "dollar" is
+metonymy for "the man possessed of a dollar," with rights to defend, and
+reasonable expectations to be realized, you convict yourself of reaction.
+"These gentry" (I quote from the May _Atlantic_) "suppose themselves to be
+discussing the rights of man, when all they are discussing is the rights
+of stockholders." The true view, the progressive view, is obviously that
+the possessors of the dollar, the recipients of profits and dividends, are
+excluded from the communion of humanity. Labor is mankind.
+
+The present instance is of course not the only instance in human history
+of the substitution of class criteria of judgment for social criteria.
+Such manifestations of class conscience are doubtless justified in the
+large economy of human affairs; an individual must often claim all in
+order to gain anything, and the same may be true of a class. Besides, the
+ultimate arbitration of the claims of the classes is not a matter for the
+rational judgment. What is subject to rational analysis, however, are the
+methods of gaining its ends proposed by the new social conscience. Of
+these methods one of wide acceptance is that of fixing odium upon certain
+property interests, with a view to depriving them immediately of the
+respect still granted to property interests in general, and ultimately of
+the protection of the laws. It is with the rationality of what may be
+called the excommunication and outlawing of special property interests,
+that the present paper is concerned.
+
+In passing, it is worth noting that the same ethical spirit that insists
+upon fixing the responsibility for social ills upon particular property
+interests--or property owners--insists with equal vehemence upon absolving
+the propertyless evil-doer from personal responsibility for his acts. The
+Los Angeles dynamiters were but victims: the crime in which they were
+implicated was institutional, not personal. Their punishment was rank
+injustice; inexpedient, moreover, as provocative of further crime, instead
+of a means of repression. On the other hand, when it appears that the
+congestion of the slum produces vice and disease, we are not urged by the
+spokesmen of this ethical creed, to blame the chain of institutional
+causes typified by scarcity of land, high prices of building materials,
+the incapacity of a raw immigrant population to pay for better
+habitations, or to appreciate the need for light and air. Rather, we are
+urged to fix responsibility upon the individual owner who receives rent
+from slum tenements. Perhaps we can not imprison him for his misdeeds, but
+we can make him an object of public reproach; expel him from social
+intercourse (if that, so often talked about, is ever done); fasten his
+iniquities upon him if ever he seeks a post of trust or honor; and
+ultimately we can deprive him of his property. Let him and his anti-social
+interests be forever excommunicate, outlawed.
+
+
+II
+
+In the country at large the property interests involved in the production
+and sale of alcoholic beverages are already excommunicated. The unreformed
+"best society" may still tolerate the presence of persons whose fortunes
+are derived from breweries or distilleries; but the great mass of the
+social-minded would deny them fire and water. In how many districts would
+a well organized political machine urge persons thus enriched as
+candidates for Congress, the bench or even the school board? In the
+prohibition territory excommunication of such property interests has been
+followed by outlawry. The saloon in Maine and Kansas exists by the same
+title as did Robin Hood: the inefficiency of the law. On the road to
+excommunication is private property in the wretched shacks that shelter
+the city's poor. Outlawry is not far distant. "These tenements must go."
+Will they go? Ask of the police, who pick over the wreckage upon the
+subsidence of a wave of reform. Many a rookery, officially abolished, will
+be found still tenanted, and yielding not one income, but two, one for the
+owner and another for the police. The property represented by enterprises
+paying low wages, working men for long hours or under unhealthful
+conditions, or employing children, is almost ripe for excommunication.
+Pillars of society and the church have already been seen tottering on
+account of revelations of working conditions in factories from which they
+receive dividends. Property "affected by a public use," that is,
+investments in the instrumentalities of public service, is becoming a
+compromising possession. We are already somewhat suspicious of the
+personal integrity and political honor of those who receive their incomes
+from railways or electric lighting plants; and the odor of gas stocks is
+unmistakable. Even the land, once the retreat of high birth and serene
+dignity, is beginning to exhale a miasma of corruption. "Enriched by
+unearned increment"--who wishes such an epitaph? A convention is to be
+held in a western city in this very year, to announce to the world that
+the delegates and their constituencies--all honest lovers of mankind--will
+refuse in future to recognize any private title to land or other natural
+resources. Holders of such property, by continuing to be such, will place
+themselves beyond the pale of human society, and will forfeit all claim to
+sympathy when the day dawns for the universal confiscation of land.
+
+
+III
+
+The existence of categories of property interests resting under a growing
+weight of social disapprobation, is giving rise to a series of problems in
+private ethics that seem almost to demand a rehabilitation of the art of
+casuistry. A very intelligent and conscientious lady of the writer's
+acquaintance became possessed, by inheritance, of a one-fourth interest in
+a Minneapolis building the ground floor of which is occupied by a saloon.
+Her first endeavor was to persuade her partners to secure a cancellation
+of the liquor dealer's lease. This they refused to do, on the ground that
+the building in question is, by location, eminently suited to its present
+use, but very ill suited to any other; and that, moreover, the lessee
+would immediately reopen his business on the opposite corner. To yield to
+their partner's desire would therefore result in a reduction of their own
+profits, but would advance the public welfare not one whit. Disheartened
+by her partners' obstinacy, my friend is seeking to dispose of her
+interest in the building. As she is willing to incur a heavy sacrifice in
+order to get rid of her complicity in what she considers an unholy
+business, the transfer will doubtless soon be made. Her soul will be
+lightened of the profits from property put to an anti-social use. But the
+property will still continue in such use, and profits from it will still
+accrue to someone with a soul to lose or to save.
+
+In her fascinating book, _Twenty Years at Hull House_, Miss Jane Addams
+tells of a visit to a western state where she had invested a sum of money
+in farm mortgages. "I was horrified," she says, "by the wretched
+conditions among the farmers, which had resulted from a long period of
+drought, and one forlorn picture was fairly burned into my mind.... The
+farmer's wife [was] a picture of despair, as she stood in the door of the
+bare, crude house, and the two children behind her, whom she vainly tried
+to keep out of sight, continually thrust forward their faces, almost
+covered by masses of coarse, sunburned hair, and their little bare feet so
+black, so hard, the great cracks so filled with dust, that they looked
+like flattened hoofs. The children could not be compared to anything so
+joyous as satyrs, although they appeared but half-human. It seemed to me
+quite impossible to receive interest from mortgages upon farms which might
+at any season be reduced to such conditions, and with great inconvenience
+to my agent and doubtless with hardship to the farmers, as speedily as
+possible I withdrew all my investment." And thereby made the supply of
+money for such farmers that much less and consequently that much dearer.
+This is quite a fair example of much current philanthropy.
+
+We may safely assume that, however much this action may have lightened
+Miss Addams's conscience, it did not lighten the burden of debt upon the
+farmer, or make the periodic interest payments less painful, and it
+certainly did put them to the trouble and contingent expenses of a new
+mortgage. The moral burden was shifted, to the ease of the philanthropist,
+and this seems to exhaust the sum of the good results of one well
+intentioned deed. Do they outweigh the bad ones?
+
+So, doubtless, there are among our friends persons who, upon proof that
+factories in which they have been interested pay starvation wages, have
+withdrawn their investments. And others who, stumbling upon a state
+legislature among the productive assets of a railway corporation, have
+sold their bonds and invested the proceeds elsewhere. It is a modern way
+of obeying the injunction, "Sell all thou hast and follow me." And not a
+very painful way, since the irreproachable investments pay almost, if not
+quite, as well as those that are suspect.
+
+It is not, however, impossible to conceive of a property owner driven from
+one position to another, in order to satisfy this new requirement of the
+social conscience, without ever finding peace. Miss Addams put the money
+withdrawn from those hideous farm mortgages into a flock of "innocent
+looking sheep." Alas, they were not so innocent as they seemed. "The sight
+of two hundred sheep with four rotting hoofs each was not reassuring to
+one whose conscience craved economic peace. A fortunate series of sales of
+mutton, wool and farm enabled the partners to end the enterprise without
+loss." Sales of mutton? Let us hope those eight hundred infected hoofs are
+well printed on the butcher's conscience.
+
+And the net result of all these moral strivings? The evil investments
+still continue to be evil, and still yield profits. Doubtless they rest,
+in the end, upon less sensitive consciences. Marvellous moral gain!
+
+
+IV
+
+We are bound to the wheel, say the sociological fatalists. All our efforts
+are of no avail; the Wheel revolves as it was destined. Not so. Our
+strivings for purity in investments, puny as may be their results in the
+individual instance, may compose a sum that is imposing in its
+effectiveness. How their influence may be exerted will best appear from an
+analogy.
+
+It is a settled conviction among Americans of Puritan antecedents, and
+among all other Americans, native born or alien, that have come under
+Puritan influence, that the dispensing of alcoholic beverages is a
+degrading function. This conviction has not, to be sure, notably impaired
+the performance of the function. But it has none the less produced a
+striking effect. It has set apart for the function in question those
+elements in the population that place the lowest valuation upon the esteem
+of the public, and that are, on the whole, least worthy of it. In
+consequence the American saloon is, by common consent, the very worst
+institution of its kind in the world. Such is the immediate result of good
+intentions working by the method of excommunication of a trade.
+
+This degradation of the personnel and the institution proceeds at an
+accelerated rate as public opinion grows more bitter. In the end the evil
+becomes so serious, so intimately associated with all other evils, social
+and political, that you hear men over their very cups rise to proclaim,
+with husky voices, "The saloon must go!" At this point the community is
+ripe for prohibition: accordingly, it would seem that the initial stages
+in the process, unpleasant as were their consequences, were not
+ill-advised, after all. But prohibition does not come without a political
+struggle, in which the enemy, selected for brazenness and schooled in
+corruption, employs methods that leave lasting scars upon the body
+politic. And even when vanquished, the enemy retreats into the morasses of
+"unenforcible laws," to conduct a guerilla warfare that knows no rules.
+Let us grant that the ultimate gain is worth all it costs: are we sure
+that we have taken the best possible means to achieve our ends?
+
+In the poorer quarters of most great American cities, there is much
+property that it is difficult for a man to hold without losing the respect
+of the enlightened. Old battered tenements, dingy and ill lighted
+tumbledown shacks, the despair of the city reformer. Let us say that the
+proximity of gas tanks or noisy railways or smoky factories consign such
+quarters to the habitation of the very poor. Quite possibly, then, the
+replacement of the existing buildings by better ones would represent a
+heavy financial loss. The increasing social disapprobation of property
+vested in such wretched forms leads to the gradual substitution of owners
+who hold the social approval in contempt, for those who manifest a certain
+degree of sensitiveness. The tenants certainly gain nothing from the
+change. What is more likely to happen, is a screwing up of rents, an
+increasing promptness of evictions. Public opinion will in the end be
+roused against the landlords; the more timid among them will sell their
+holdings to others not less ruthless, but bolder and more astute. Attempts
+at public regulation will be fought with infinitely greater
+resourcefulness than could possibly have been displayed by respectable
+owners. Perhaps the final outcome will be that more drastic regulations
+are adopted than would have been the case had the shifting in ownership
+not taken place. There would still remain the possibility of the evasion
+of the law, and it is not at all improbable that the progress in the
+technique of evasion would outstrip the progress in regulation, thus
+leaving the tenant with a balance of disadvantage from the process as a
+whole.
+
+The most illuminating instance of a business interest subjected first to
+excommunication--literally--and then to outlawry, is that of the usurer,
+or, in modern parlance, the loan shark. To the mediaeval mind there was
+something distinctly immoral in an income from property devoted to the
+furnishing of personal loans. We need not stop to defend the mediaeval
+position or to attack it; all that concerns us here is that an opportunity
+for profit--that is, a potential property interest--was outlawed. In
+consequence it became impossible for reputable citizens to engage in the
+business. Usury therefore came to be monopolized by aliens, exempt from
+the current ethical formulation, who were "protected," for a
+consideration, by the prince, just as dubious modern property interests
+may be protected by the political boss.
+
+Let us summarize the results of eight hundred years of experience in this
+method of dealing with the usurer's trade. The business shifted from the
+control of citizens to that of aliens; from the hands of those who were
+aliens merely in a narrow, national sense, to the hands of those who are
+alien to our common humanity. Such lawless, tricky, extortionate loan
+sharks as now infest our cities were probably not to be found at all in
+mediaeval or early modern times. They are a product of a secular process of
+selection. Their ability to evade the laws directed against them is
+consummate. It is true that from time to time we do succeed in catching
+one and fining him, or even imprisoning him. For which risk the small
+borrower is forced to pay, at a usurer's rate.
+
+Social improvement through the excommunication of property interests is
+inevitably a disorderly process. Wherever it is in operation we are sure
+to find the successive stages indicated in the foregoing examples. First,
+a gradual substitution of the conscienceless property holder for the one
+responsive to public sentiment. Next, under the threat of hostile popular
+action, the timid and resourceless property owner gives way to the
+resourceful and the bold. The third stage in the process is a vigorous
+political movement towards drastic regulation or abolition, evoking a
+desperate attempt on the part of the interests threatened to protect
+themselves by political means--that is, by gross corruption; or, if the
+menaced interest is a vast one, dominating a defensible territory, by
+armed rebellion, as in our own Civil War. If the interest is finally
+overwhelmed politically, and placed completely under the ban of the law,
+it has been given ample time to develop an unscrupulousness of personnel
+and an art of corruption that long enable it to exist illegally, a lasting
+reproach to the constituted authorities.
+
+
+V
+
+Suppression of anti-social interests by the methods in vogue amounts to
+little more than their banishment to the underworld. And we can well
+imagine the joy with which the denizens of the underworld receive such new
+accessions to their numbers and power. For in the nature of the case, it
+is inevitable that all varieties of outcasts and outlaws should join
+forces. The religious schismatic makes common cause with the pariah; the
+political offender with the thief and robber. Such association of elements
+vastly increases the difficulty of repressing crime. The band of thieves
+and robbers in the cave of Adullam doubtless found their powers of preying
+vastly increased through the acquisition of such a leader as David. The
+problem of mediaeval vagabondage was rendered well-nigh incapable of
+solution by the fact that any beggar's rags might conceal a holy but
+excommunicated friar.
+
+Let us once more review our experience with the usurer. As an outcast he
+offers his support to other outcasts, and is in turn supported by them.
+The pawnbroker and the pickpocket are closely allied: without the
+pawnshop, pocketpicking would offer but a precarious living; without the
+picking of pockets, many pawnshops would find it impossible to meet
+expenses. The salary loan shark often works hand in glove with the
+professional gambler; each procures victims for the other. The
+"hole-in-the-wall" or "blind tiger" provides a rendezvous for all the
+outcasts of society. "Boot-legging" is a common subsidiary occupation for
+the pander, the thief and the cracksman. Where it flourishes, it serves to
+bridge over many a period of slack trade. Franchises whose validity is
+subject to political attack, bring to the aid of the underworld some of
+the most powerful interests in the community. The police are almost
+helpless when confronted by a coalition of persons of wealth and
+respectability with professional politicians commanding a motley array of
+yeggs and thugs, pimps and card-sharpers.
+
+Let us suppose that the developing social conscience places under the ban
+receipt of private income from land and other natural resources, and that
+a powerful movement aiming at the confiscation of such resources is under
+way. It is superfluous to point out that the vast interests threatened
+would offer a desperate resistance. The warfare against an incomparably
+lesser interest, the liquor trade, has taxed all the resources of the
+modern democratic state--on the whole the most absolute political
+organization known. In no instance has the state come out of the struggle
+completely victorious; the proscribed interest is yielding ground, if at
+all, only very slowly. What, then, would be the outcome of a struggle
+against the vastly greater landed interest? Perhaps the state would be
+victorious in the end. But for generations the landed interest would
+survive, if not by title of common law, at least by title of common
+corruption. And in the course of the conflict, we can not doubt that
+political disorder would flourish as never before, and that under its
+shelter private vice and crime would develop almost unchecked.
+
+We should disabuse ourselves of the notion that the will of a mere
+majority is absolute in the state. The law is a reality only when the
+outlawed interests represent an insignificant minority. Arbitrarily to
+increase the outlawed interests is to undermine the very foundations of
+society.
+
+
+VI
+
+The trend of the foregoing discussion, it will be said, is reactionary in
+the extreme. There are, as all must admit, private interests that are
+prejudicial to the public interest. Are they to be left in possession of
+the privilege of trading upon the public disaster--entrenching themselves,
+rendering still more difficult the future task of the reformer? By no
+means. The writer opposes no criticism to the extinction of anti-social
+private interests; on the contrary, he would have the state proceed
+against them with far greater vigor than it has hitherto displayed. It is
+important, however, to be sure first that a private interest is
+anti-social. Then the question is merely one of method. It is the author's
+contention that the method of excommunication and outlawry is the very
+worst conceivable.
+
+We are wont to hold up to scorn the British method of compensating liquor
+sellers for licenses revoked. It is an expensive method. But let us weigh
+its corresponding advantages. The licensee does not find himself in a
+position in which he must choose between personal destitution and the
+public interest. He dares not employ methods of resistance that would
+subject him to the risk of forfeiting the right to compensation. He may
+resist by fair means, but if he is intelligent, he will keep his skirts
+clear of foul. If his establishment is closed, he is not left, a ruined
+and desperate man, to project methods for carrying on his trade illicitly.
+On the contrary, the act of compensation has placed in his hands funds in
+which he might be mulcted if convicted of violation of the law. And if
+natural perversity should drive him to illegal practices, he would not
+find himself an object of sympathy on the part of that considerable
+minority that resent injustice even to those whom they regard as
+evil-doers.
+
+There can be little doubt that by the adoption of the principle of
+adequate compensation, an American commonwealth could extinguish any
+property interest that majority opinion pronounces anti-social. We may
+have industries that menace the public health. Under existing conditions
+the interests involved exert themselves to the utmost to suppress
+information relative to the dangers of such industries. With the principle
+of compensation in operation, these very interests would be the foremost
+in exposing the evils in question. It is no hardship to sell your interest
+to the public. Does any one feel aggrieved when the public decides to
+appropriate his land to a public use? On the contrary, every possessor of
+a site at all suited for a public building or playground does everything
+in his power to display its advantages in the most favorable light.
+
+And with this we have admitted a disadvantage of the compensation
+principle--over-compensation. We do pay excessively for property rights
+extinguished in the public interest. But this is largely because the
+principle is employed with such relative infrequency that we have not as
+yet developed a technique of compensation. German cities have learned how
+to acquire property for public use without either plundering the private
+owner or excessively enriching him. The British application of the Small
+Holdings Acts has duly protected the interests of the large landholder,
+without making of him a vociferous champion of the Acts.
+
+Progressive public morality readers one private interest after another
+indefensible. Let the public extinguish such interests, by all means. But
+let the public be moral at its own expense.
+
+A revolting doctrine, it will be said. Because men have been permitted,
+through gross defect in the laws, to build up interests in dealing out
+poisons to the public, are they to be compensated, like the purveyors of
+wholesome products, when the public decrees that their destructive
+activities shall cease? Because a corrupt legislature once gave away
+valuable franchises, are we and our children, and our children's children,
+forever to pay tribute, in the shape of interest on compensation funds, to
+the heirs of the shameless grantees? Because the land of a country was
+parcelled out, in a lawless age, among the unworthy retainers of a
+predatory prince, must we forever pay rent on every loaf we eat--as we
+should do, in fact, even if we transformed great landed estates into
+privately held funds? Did we not abolish human slavery, without
+compensation, and is there any one to question the justice of the act?
+
+We did indeed extinguish slavery without compensation to the slave owners.
+But if no one had ever conceived of such a policy we should have been a
+richer nation and a happier one. We paid for the slaves, in blood and
+treasure, many times the sum that would have made every slave owner eager
+to part with his slaves. Such enrichment of the slave owner would have
+been an act of social injustice, it may be said. The saying would be open
+to grave doubt, but the doctrine here advanced runs, not in terms of
+justice, but in terms of social expediency.
+
+And expediency is commonly regarded as a cheap substitute for justice. It
+is wrongly so regarded. Social justice, as usually conceived, looks to the
+past for its validity. Its preoccupation is the correction of ancient
+wrongs. Social expediency looks to the future: its chief concern is the
+prevention of future wrongs. As a guide to political action, the
+superiority of the claims of social expediency is indisputable.
+
+
+VII
+
+In the foregoing argument it has been deliberately assumed that the
+interests to be extinguished are, for the most part, universally
+recognized as anti-social. Slavery, health-destroying adulteration, the
+maintenance of tenements that menace life and morals, these at least
+represent interests so abominable that all must agree upon the wisdom of
+extinguishing them. The only point in dispute must be one of method. It is
+the contention of the present writer that when even such interests have
+had time to become clothed with an appearance of regularity, the method of
+extinction should be through compensation. By its tolerance of such
+interests, the public has made itself an accomplice in the mischief to
+which they give rise, and accordingly has not even an equitable right to
+throw the whole responsibility upon the private persons concerned.
+
+Interests thus universally recognized to be evil are necessarily few. In
+the vast majority of cases the establishment of interests we now seek to
+proscribe took place in an epoch in which no evil was imputed to them. At
+first a small minority, usually regarded as fanatics, attack the interests
+in question. This minority increases, and in the end transforms itself
+into a majority. But long after majority opinion has become adverse, there
+remains a vigorous minority opinion defending the menaced interests. A
+hundred years ago the distilling of spirituous liquors was almost
+universally regarded as an entirely legitimate industry. The enemies of
+the industry were few and of no political consequence. Today in many
+communities the industry is utterly condemned by majority opinion. There
+is, however, no community in which a minority honestly defending the
+industry is absolutely wanting. Admitting that the majority opinion is
+right, it remains none the less true that adherents of the minority
+opinion would regard themselves as most grievously wronged if the majority
+proceeded to a destruction of their interests.
+
+Where moral issues alone are involved, we may perhaps accept the view that
+the well considered opinion of the majority is as near as may be to
+infallibility. But it is very rarely the case that the question of the
+legitimacy of a property interest can be reduced to a purely moral issue.
+Usually there are also at stake, technical and broad economic issues in
+which majority judgment is notoriously fallible. Thus we have at times had
+large minorities who believed that the bank as an institution is wholly
+evil, and ought to be abolished. This was the majority opinion in one
+period of the history of Texas, and in accordance with it, established
+banking interests were destroyed by law. It is only within the last
+fifteen years that the majority of the citizens of that commonwealth have
+admitted the error of the earlier view.
+
+In the course of the last twenty-five years, notable progress has been
+made in the art of preserving perishable foods through refrigeration.
+There are differences of opinion as to the effect upon the public health
+of food so preserved; and further differences as to the effect of the cold
+storage system upon the cost of living. On neither the physiological nor
+the economic questions involved is majority opinion worthy of special
+consideration. None the less, legislative measures directed against the
+storage interests have been seriously considered in a large number of
+states, and were it not for the difficulties inherent in the regulation of
+interstate commerce, we should doubtless see the practice of cold storage
+prohibited in some jurisdictions. Those whose property would thus be
+destroyed would accept their losses with much bitterness, in view of the
+fact that the weight of expert opinion holds their industry to be in the
+public interest.
+
+What still further exacerbates the feeling of injury on the part of those
+whose interests are proscribed, is the fact that the purity of motives of
+the persons most active in the campaign of proscription is not always
+clear. Not many years ago we had a thriving manufacture of artificial
+butter. The persons engaged in the industry claimed that their product was
+as wholesome as that produced according to the time-honored process, and
+that its cheapness promised an important advance in the adequate
+provisioning of the people. We destroyed the industry, very largely
+because of our strong bent toward conservatism in all matters pertaining
+to the table. But among the influences that were most active in taxing
+artificial butter out of existence, was the competing dairymen's interest.
+
+It is asserted by those who would shift the whole burden of taxation onto
+land that they are animated by the most unselfish motives, whereas their
+opponents are defending their selfish interests alone. Yet a common Single
+Tax appeal to the large manufacturer and the small house-owner takes the
+form of a computation demonstrating that those classes would gain more
+through the reduction in the burden on improvements than they would lose
+through increase in burden on the land. Let it be granted that personal
+advantage is not incompatible with purity of motives. The association of
+ideas does not, however, inspire confidence, especially in the breasts of
+those whose interests are threatened.
+
+Extinction of property interests without compensation necessarily makes
+our legislative bodies the battleground of conflicting interests. Honest
+motives are combined with crooked ones in the attack upon an interest;
+crooked and honest motives combine in its defense. Out of the disorder
+issues a legislative determination that may be in the public interest or
+may be prejudicial to it. And most likely the law is inadequately
+supported by machinery of enforcement: it is effective in controlling the
+scrupulous; to the unscrupulous it is mere paper. In many instances its
+net effect is only to increase the risks connected with the conduct of a
+business.
+
+When England prohibited importation of manufactures from France, the
+import trade continued none the less, under the form of smuggling. The
+risk of seizure was merely added to the risk of fire and flood. Just as
+one could insure against the latter risks, so the practice arose of
+insuring against seizure. At one time, at any rate, in the French ports
+were to be found brokers who would insure the evasion of a cargo of goods
+for a premium of fifteen per cent. At the safe distance of a century and a
+half, the absurd prohibition and its incompetent administration are
+equally comic. At the time, however, there was nothing comic in the
+contempt for law and order thus engendered, in the feeling of outrage on
+the part of those ruined by seizures, and in the alliance of respectable
+merchants with the thieves and footpads enlisted for the smuggling trade.
+
+
+VIII
+
+It is a common observation of present day social reformers that an
+excessive regard is displayed by our governmental organs for security of
+property, while security of non-property rights is neglected. And this
+would indeed be a serious indictment of the existing order if there were
+in fact a natural antithesis between the security of property and security
+of the person. There is, however, no such antithesis. In the course of
+history the establishment of security of property has, as a rule, preceded
+the establishment of personal security, and has provided the conditions in
+which personal security becomes possible. Adequate policing is essential
+to any form of security. Property can pay for policing; the person can
+not. This is a crude and materialistic interpretation of the facts, but it
+is essentially sound.
+
+How much personal security existed in England, five centuries and a half
+ago, when it was possible for Richard to carve his way through human flesh
+to the throne? The lowly, certainly, enjoyed no greater security than the
+high born. How much personal security exists in the late Macedonian
+provinces of the Turkish Empire, or in northern Mexico? It is safe to
+issue a challenge to all the world to produce an instance, contemporary or
+historical, of a country in which property is insecure and in which human
+life and human happiness are not still more insecure. On the other hand,
+it is difficult to produce an instance of a state in which security of
+property has long been established, in which there is not a progressive
+sensitiveness about the non-propertied rights of man. It is in the
+countries where the sacredness of private property is a fetich, that one
+finds recognition of a universal right to education, of a right to
+protection against violence and against epidemic disease, of a right to
+relief in destitution. These are perhaps meagre rights; but they represent
+an expanding category. The right to support in time of illness and in old
+age is making rapid progress. The development of such rights is not only
+not incompatible with security of property, but it is, in large measure, a
+corollary of property security. Personal rights shape themselves upon the
+analogy of property rights; they utilize the same channels of thought and
+habit. One of the most powerful arguments for "social insurance" is its
+very name. Insurance is recognized as an essential to the security of
+property; it is therefore easy to make out a case for the application of
+the principle to non-propertied claims.
+
+Some may claim that the security of property has now fulfilled its
+mission; that we can safely allow the principle to decay in order to
+concentrate our attention upon the task of establishing non-propertied
+rights. But let us remember that we are not removed from barbarism by the
+length of a universe. The crust of orderly civilization is deep under our
+feet: but not six hundred years deep. The primitive fires still smoke on
+our Mexican borders and in the Balkans. And blow holes open from time to
+time through our own seemingly solid crust--in Colorado, in West Virginia,
+in the Copper Country. It is evidently premature to affirm that the
+security of property has fulfilled its mission.
+
+
+IX
+
+The question at issue, is not, however, the rights of property against the
+rights of man--or more honestly--the rights of labor. The claims of labor
+upon the social income may advance at the expense of the claims of
+property. In the institutional struggle between the propertied and the
+propertyless, the sympathies of the writer are with the latter party. It
+is his hope and belief that an ever increasing share of the social income
+will assume the form of rewards for personal effort.
+
+But this is an altogether different matter from the crushing of one
+private property interest after another, in the name of the social welfare
+or the social morality. Such detailed attacks upon property interests are,
+in the end, to the injury of both social classes. Frequently they amount
+to little more than a large loss to one property interest, and a small
+gain to another. They increase the element of insecurity in all forms of
+property; for who shall say which form is immune from attack? Now it is
+the slum tenement, obvious corollary of our social inequalities; next it
+may be the marble mansion or gilded hotel, equally obvious corollaries of
+the same institutional situation. Now it is the storage of meat that is
+under attack; it may next be the storage of flour. The fact is, our mass
+of income yielding possessions is essentially an organic whole. The
+irreproachable incomes are not exactly what they would be if those subject
+to reproach did not exist. If some property incomes are dirty, all
+property incomes become turbid.
+
+The cleansing of property incomes, therefore, is a first obligation of the
+institution of property as a whole. The compensation principle throws the
+cost of the cleansing upon the whole mass, since, in the last analysis,
+any considerable burden of taxation will distribute itself over the mass.
+The principle is therefore consonant with justice. What is not less
+important, the principle, systematically developed, would go far toward
+freeing the legislature from the graceless function of arbitrating between
+selfish interests, and the administration from the necessity of putting
+down powerful interests outlawed by legislative act. It would give us a
+State working smoothly, and therefore an efficient instrument for social
+ends. Most important of all, it would promote that security of economic
+interests which is essential to social progress.
+
+
+
+
+A STUBBORN RELIC OF FEUDALISM
+
+
+There is a persistent question regarding the distribution of property
+which is of peculiar interest in the season of automobile tours and summer
+hotels. Most thinking people acknowledge a good deal of perplexity over
+this question, while on most parallel ones they are generally
+cock-sure--on whichever is the side of their personal interests. But in
+this question the bias of personal interest is not very large, and
+therefore it may be considered with more chance of agreement than can the
+larger questions of the same class which parade under various disguises.
+
+The little question is that of tipping. After we have squeezed out of it
+such antitoxic serum as we can, we will briefly indicate the application
+of it to larger questions.
+
+Tipping is plainly a survival of the feudal relation, long before the
+humbler men had risen from the condition of status to that of contract,
+when fixed pay in the ordinary sense was unknown, and where the relation
+between servant and master was one of ostensible voluntary service and
+voluntary support, was for life, and in its best aspect was a relation of
+mutual dependence and kindness. Then the spasmodic payment was, as tips
+are now, essential to the upper man's dignity, and very especially to the
+dignity of his visitor. This feudal relation survives in England today to
+such an extent that poor men refrain from visiting their rich relations
+because of the tips. In the great country-houses the tips are expected to
+be in gold, at least so I was told some years ago. And in England and out
+of it, Don Cesar's bestowal of his last shilling on the man who had served
+him, still thrills the audience, at least the tipped portion of it.
+
+Europe being on the whole less removed from feudal institutions than we
+are, tipping is not only more firmly established there, but more
+systematized. It is more nearly the rule that servants' places in hotels
+are paid for, and they are apt to be dependent entirely upon tips. The
+greater wealth of America, on the other hand, and the extravagance of the
+_nouveaux riches_, has led in some institutions to more extravagant
+tipping than is dreamed of in Europe, and consequently has scattered
+through the community a number of servants from Europe who, when here,
+receive with gratitude from a foreigner, a tip which they would scorn from
+an American.
+
+In the midst of general relations of contract--of agreed pay for agreed
+service, tipping is an anomaly and a constant puzzle.
+
+It would seem strange, if it were not true of the greater questions of the
+same kind, that in the chronic discussion of this one, so little
+attention, if any, has been paid to what may be the fundamental line of
+division between the two sides--namely, the distinction between ideal
+ethics and practical ethics.
+
+An illustration or two will help explain that distinction:
+
+First illustration: "Thou shalt not kill" which is ideal ethics in an
+ideal world of peace. Practical ethics in the real world are illustrated
+in Washington and Lee, who for having killed their thousands, are placed
+beside the saints!
+
+Second illustration: Obey the laws and tell the truth. This is ideal
+ethics, which our very legislatures do much to prevent being practical.
+For instance; they ignore the fact that in the present state of morality,
+taxes on personal property can be collected from virtually nobody but
+widows and orphans who have no one to evade the taxes for them. So the
+legislatures continue the attempt to tax personal property, and a judge on
+the bench says that a man who lies about his personal taxes shall not on
+that account be held an unreliable witness in other matters.
+
+Or to take an illustration less radical: it is not in legal testimony
+alone that ideal ethics require everybody to tell the truth, the whole
+truth, and nothing but the truth--that the world should have as much truth
+as possible; and if the world were perfectly kind, perfectly honest and
+perfectly wise (which last involves the first two), that ideal could be
+realized. For instance, in our imperfect world a man telling people when
+he did not like them, would be constantly giving needless pain and making
+needless enemies, whereas in an ideal world--made up of perfect people,
+there would be nobody to dislike, or, pardon the Hibernicism, if there
+were, the whole truth could be told without causing pain or enmity. Or
+again, in a world where there are dishonest people, a man telling
+everything about his schemes, would have them run away with by others,
+though in an ideal world, where there were no dishonest people, he could
+speak freely. In fact, the necessity of reticence in this connection does
+not even depend on the existence of dishonesty: for in a world where
+people have to look out for themselves, instead of everybody looking out
+for everybody else, a man exposing his plans might hurry the execution of
+competing plans on the part of perfectly honest people.
+
+Farther illustration may be sufficiently furnished by the topic in hand.
+
+In the case of most poor folks other than servants, what to do about it
+has lately been pretty distinctly settled: the religion of pauperization
+is pretty generally set aside: almsgiving, the authorities on ethics now
+generally hold, should be restricted to deserving cases--to people
+incapacitated by constitution or circumstance from taking proper care of
+themselves.
+
+Now is tipping almsgiving, and are servants among the deserving classes?
+
+How many people have asked themselves these simple questions, and how many
+who are educated up to habitually refusing alms unless the last of the
+questions is affirmatively answered, just as habitually tip servants?
+
+Is tipping almsgiving? Not in the same sense that alms are given without
+any show of anything in return: the servant does something for the tipper.
+Yes, but he is paid for it by his employer. True, but only sometimes: at
+other times he is only partly paid, depending for the rest on tips; and
+sometimes the tips are so valuable that the servant pays his alleged
+employer for the opportunity to get them. Yet I know one hotel in Germany,
+and probably there are others, there and elsewhere, where the menus and
+other stationery bear requests against tipping. But in that one hotel I
+know tipping to be as rife as in hotels generally: the customers are not
+educated up to the landlord's standard. And here we come to the
+fundamental remedy for all questionable practices--the education of the
+people beyond them. But this is simply the ideal condition in which ideal
+ethics could prevail. Meanwhile we must determine the practical ethics of
+the actual world.
+
+The servant's position is different from that of most other wage-earners,
+in that he is in direct contact with the person who is to benefit from his
+work. The man who butchers your meat or grinds your flour, you probably
+never see; but the man who brushes your clothes or waits on your table,
+holds to you a personal relation, and he can do his work so as merely to
+meet a necessity, or so as to rise beyond mere necessity into comfort or
+luxury. Outside of home servants, the necessity is all that, in the
+present state of human nature, his regular stipend is apt to provide; the
+comfort or the luxury, the feeling of personal interest, the atmosphere of
+promptness and cheerfulness and ease, is apt to respond only to the tip.
+Only in the ideal world will it be spontaneous. In the real world it must
+be paid for.
+
+And why should it not be--why is it not as legitimate to pay for having
+your wine well cooled or carefully tempered and decanted, as to pay for
+the wine itself? The objection apt to be first urged is that it degrades
+the servant. But does it? He is not an ideal man in an ideal world,
+already doing his best or paid to do his best. You are not degrading him
+from any such standard as that, into the lower one of requiring tips: you
+are simply taking him as he is. True, if he got no tips, he would not
+depend upon them; but without them he would not do all you want him to;
+before he will do that, he must be developed into a different man--he must
+become a creature of an ideal world. You may in the course of ages develop
+him into that, and as you do, he will work better and better, and tips may
+grow smaller and smaller, until he does his best spontaneously, and tips
+have dwindled to nothing. But to withdraw them now would simply make him
+sulky, and lead to his doing worse than now.
+
+Another objection urged against tips is that they put the rich tipper at
+an advantage over the poor one. But the rich man is at an advantage in
+nearly everything else, why not here? The idea of depriving him of his
+advantages, is rank communism, which destroys the stimulus to energy and
+ingenuity that, in the present state of human nature, is needed to keep
+the world moving. In an ideal state of human nature, the man with ability
+to create wealth may find stimulus enough, as some do to a considerable
+extent now, in the delight of distributing wealth for the general good;
+but we are considering what is practicable in the present state of human
+nature.
+
+Another aspect of the case, or at least a wider aspect, is the more
+sentimental one where the tip is prompted as reciprocation for spontaneous
+kindness.
+
+But in the service of private families, as distinct from service to the
+general public or to visitors it is notorious that constant tipping is
+ruinous. Occasional holidays and treats and presents at Christmas and on
+special occasions are useful, as promoting the general feeling of
+reciprocation. But from visitors the tip is generally essential to
+ensuring the due meed of respect. Yet we can reasonably imagine a time
+when it may not be; and even now, for the casual service of holding a
+horse or brushing off the dust, a hearty "thank you" is perhaps on the
+whole better than a tip.
+
+Considering the morality of the question all around--the practical ethics
+as well as the ideal, the underlying facts are that no man ought to be a
+servant in the servile sense, and indeed no man ought to be poor; and in
+an ideal world no man would be one or the other. Just how we are to get a
+world without servants or servile people, is perhaps a little more plain
+than how we are to get Mr. Bellamy's world without poor people, which,
+however, amounts to nearly the same thing. At least we will get a less
+servile world, as machinery and organization make service less and less
+personal. Bread has long been to a great extent made away from home; much
+of the washing is also done away in great laundries, and organizations
+have lately been started to call for men's outer clothes, and keep them
+cleaned, repaired and pressed. There is a noticeable rise, too, in the
+dignity of personal service: witness the college students at the summer
+hotels, and the self-respecting Jap in the private family. These
+influences are making for the ideal world in relation to service, and
+_when_ we get it, no man will take tips, and nobody will offer them.
+
+But in our stage of evolution, the tip, like the larger prizes, is part of
+the general stimulus to the best exertion and the best feeling, and is
+therefore legitimate; but it, like every other stimulus, should not be
+applied in excess, and the tendency should be to abolish it. The rich man
+often is led by good taste and good morals to restrain his expenditure in
+many directions, and there are few directions, if any, in which good taste
+and good morals more commend the happy medium than in tips. Excess in
+them, however, is not always prompted by good nature and generosity and
+reciprocation of spontaneous kindness, but often by desire for comfort,
+and even by ostentation. But all such promptings require regulation for
+the same reason that, it is now becoming generally recognized, the
+promptings of even charity itself require regulation.
+
+The head of one of the leading Fifth Avenue restaurants once said to the
+writer, substantially: "We don't like tips: they demoralize our men. But
+what can we do about it? We can't stop it, or even keep it within bounds.
+Our customers will give them, and people who have too much money or too
+little sense, give not only dollar bills or five dollar bills, but fifty
+dollar bills and even hundred dollar bills. We have tried to stave off
+customers who do such things: we believe that in the long run it would pay
+us to; but we can't."
+
+When all the promptings of liberality or selfishness or ostentation are
+well regulated, we will be in the ideal world. Until then, in the actual
+world, it is the part of wisdom to regulate ideal ethics by practical
+ethics--and tip, but tip temperately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now to apply our principles to a wider field.
+
+The ideal is that all men should have what they produce. The ideal is also
+that all men should have full shares of the good things of life. These two
+ideals inevitably combine into a third--that all men should produce full
+shares of the good things of life. But the plain fact is that they
+cannot--that no amount of opportunity or appliances will enable the
+average day laborer to produce what Mr. Edison or Mr. Hill or even the
+average deviser of work and guide of labor does. Then even ideal ethics
+cannot say in this actual world: Let both have the same. That would simply
+be Robin Hood ethics: rob the man who produces much, and give the plunder
+to the man who produces little. Hence comes the disguising of the schemes
+to do it, even so that they often deceive their own devisers. What then do
+practical ethics say? They can't say anything more than: Help the less
+capable to become capable, so that he may produce more. But that is at
+least as slow a process as raising the servant beyond the stage of tips.
+Meantime the socialists are unwilling to wait, and propose to rob the
+present owners of the means of production, and take the control of
+industry from the men who manage it now, and put it in the hands of the
+men who merely can influence votes. These men certainly are no less
+selfish and dishonest than the captains of industry, and are vastly less
+able to select the profitable fields of industry, and organize and
+economize industry; whatever product they might squeeze out would be
+vastly less than now, and it would stick to their own fingers no less than
+does what the politicians handle now. Dividing whatever might reach the
+people, without reference to those who produced it, could yield the
+average man no more than he gets now. That's very simple mathematics. One
+of the saddest sights of the day is the number of good people to whom
+these facts are not self-evident.
+
+In no state of human nature that any persons now living, or the grandchild
+of any person now living, will witness, could such conditions be
+permanent. Their temporary realization might be accomplished; but if it
+were, the able men would not be satisfied with either the low grade of
+civilization inevitable unless they worked, or with being robbed of the
+large share of production that must result from their work. The more
+intelligent of the rank and file, too, would rebel against the conditions
+inevitably lowering the general prosperity, and they would soon realize
+the difference in industrial leadership between "political generals" and
+natural generals. Insurrection would follow, and then anarchy, after which
+things would start again on their present basis, but some generations
+behind.
+
+But I for one do not expect these experiences, especially in America: for
+here probably enough men have already become property holders to make a
+sufficient balance of power for the preservation of property. If not, the
+first step toward ensuring civilization, is helping enough men to develop
+into property holders, and _continue_ property holders, which general
+experience declares that they will not unless they develop their property
+themselves.
+
+
+
+
+AN EXPERIMENT IN SYNDICALISM
+
+
+During the last twenty years New Zealand has tried many social and
+economic experiments; these experiments have been made by her own
+Legislature, and her own people; and as a rule they have been remarkably
+successful: during the last few months she has had the experience of a new
+one conducted by strangers, and made at her expense. Fortunately there is
+reason to believe that this one will be found to have resulted in benefit
+to New Zealand and its people, while it may prove of service to older and
+larger countries. It is probable that the most widely known of New
+Zealand's experiments is that which aimed at doing justice to employers
+and employees alike by the substitution for the Industrial strike of a
+Court of Arbitration, fairly constituted, on which both Workers and
+Employers were equally represented. This law has been branded by the
+supporters of the usual Strike policy with the name of "Compulsory
+Arbitration," the object being to discredit it in the eyes of the workers,
+as an infringement of their liberty. The title is unfair and misleading.
+Unlike most laws, it never has been of universal application either to
+Workers or Employers, but only to those among them that chose to form
+themselves into industrial Unions, and to register those Unions as subject
+to the provisions of the Statute. The purpose of the Statute was an appeal
+to the common sense of the people, by offering them an alternative method
+of settling disputes and securing that fair-play for both parties which
+experience had shown could seldom be secured by the strike. The law, which
+was first introduced in 1894, had gradually appealed both to workers and
+employers, as worth trying, and before the close of the last century it
+had rendered the country prosperous, and had attracted the attention of
+thoughtful people in many other parts of the world to the "Country Without
+Strikes." Efforts were made in several countries to introduce the
+principle of the New Zealand Statute, but with very little success, as it
+was generally opposed both by workers and employers:--the workers feeling
+confident they could obtain greater concessions by the forceful methods of
+the strike, and the employers suspecting that any Court of Arbitration
+would be likely to give the workers more than, without arbitration, they
+could compel the employers to surrender.
+
+In the mean time the statutory substitute for the strike continued to
+succeed in New Zealand. Nearly every class of town workers, and some in
+the country, had formed Unions, and registered them under the arbitration
+law. With a single trifling exception, that was speedily put an end to by
+the punishment of the Union with the alternative of heavy fine or
+imprisonment, the country was literally as well as nominally a country
+without a strike. And it was something more than that: its prosperity
+increased year by year, and its production of goods--agricultural,
+pastoral, and manufactured--increased at a pace unequalled elsewhere. Yet
+the prosperity was most apparent in its effect on the conditions of the
+workers: under the successive awards of the arbitration court, wages had
+steadily increased until they had reached a point as high as in similar
+trades in America, while the cost of living was very little more than half
+the rate in any town in the United States. To all intelligent observers
+these facts were evident, and could not be concealed from the workers in
+other countries, especially in Australia, as the nearest geographically to
+New Zealand and commercially the most closely connected.
+
+The effect, however, on the workers of Australia was not what might have
+been expected. Attempts had been made by some of the State Legislatures to
+introduce arbitration laws more or less like the New Zealand statute, but
+with very partial success. From the first these laws were opposed by the
+leaders of the Labor Unions, who naturally saw a menace to their influence
+in the fact that they became subject to punishment if they attempted to
+use their accustomed powers over their fellow unionists. The example of
+New Zealand was lauded in the Australian Legislatures and newspapers, and
+even in the courts, till at last a feeling of strong antagonism was
+developed among the more advanced class of socialistic Labor men, and it
+was decided by their leaders to undertake a campaign in the neighboring
+Dominion against the system of settling industrial questions by courts,
+and in favor of substituting the system of strikes, with their attendant
+power and profit to the Labor leaders. The first steps taken were sending
+men from Australia or England on lecturing tours through New Zealand, to
+create dissatisfaction with the Arbitration Courts by representing them as
+leaning to the side of the employers, and ignoring the claims of the
+workers. When this had gone on for about a year, workers of various
+classes were induced to cross from Australia, and join the Unions in New
+Zealand, for the purpose of influencing their fellow unionists to
+disloyalty towards the system under which they were registered. These men
+were generally competent workers and clever agitators, and many of them
+soon obtained prominence and official position in the Unions. As was
+natural, a good many of these new-comers were miners--either for coal or
+gold--and many of them joined the miners' union at the great gold mine
+known as the Waihi, from which upwards of thirty million dollars worth of
+gold had been dug, and which was still yielding between three and four
+million dollars a year. There were nearly a thousand miners employed
+there, and all of them were members of a Union that was duly registered
+under the Arbitration statute.
+
+There had been several questions in dispute between the miners and the
+owners, and these had been referred to the Arbitration Court some time
+before the arrival of the new Australian miners. The result, while it
+favored the Union in some respects, favored the Company in others, and
+this fact was used by the new-comers to convince the older hands that the
+Court had been unfair, and that they could secure much better terms for
+themselves if they would cease work, and so inflict immense loss by
+permitting the lower levels of the mine to become flooded. After a few
+months the Union decided to take advantage of the provision of the law
+which enabled any registered Union to withdraw its registration at six
+months' notice. When the time had expired, the Union repeated the demand
+which had been refused by the Court, and on the refusal of the Company to
+agree, a strike was at once declared, and the whole of the miners ceased
+work. This had the effect, within a very short time, of rendering all the
+deeper levels of the mine unworkable. Close to the mine was a prosperous
+little town occupied chiefly by the miners and their families, most of the
+houses being the property of the mining company, and the men continued to
+occupy the houses while the strike was in progress. Other miners were
+found who were ready to take their places, but the men in possession
+refused to move out, and threatened with violence any miners that should
+attempt to work the mine. The men who had been prepared to work, finding
+this to be the position, withdrew. As there was no actual violence shown,
+there seemed to be a difficulty in the way of any interference by the
+Government: so several months passed, during which the mine lay idle while
+the miners on strike continued to occupy the houses and pay the very
+moderate rents demanded from employees of the company. This they were able
+to do partly from their savings, partly from the sympathetic contributions
+from Australia, and partly by some of the miners having scattered over the
+country and got work on the farms, and throwing their earnings into the
+common fund.
+
+After repeated appeals by the mine-owners to the Government, an
+arrangement was made that the Company should employ miners willing to
+become members of a new Union registered under the Arbitration statute,
+and that the Government should send a police force sufficient to protect
+these in working the mine, and also to enforce the judgment of the local
+court in dispossessing the occupants of the houses belonging to the
+Company. An attempt was made by the strikers to defy this police force and
+prevent the new Union from working the mine; but when most of the new
+unionists had been sworn in as special constables, and a number of the
+militant strikers had been arrested, the others saw that they could not
+continue the struggle, and within a week or two abandoned the district,
+giving place to the members of the arbitration Union in both the mine and
+town.
+
+Thus the first strike organized by the "Federation of Labor" in New
+Zealand resulted in a failure, but the miners thus defeated and driven
+from the little town that had been their home, in many cases for a good
+many years, were naturally embittered by their failure, and became an
+element of mischief in other districts, and especially in the coal mines,
+to which they turned when they found it hard to obtain employment in any
+of the gold mines.
+
+The Australian Federation of Labor and its branch in New Zealand fully
+appreciated the fact that their first attempt to establish a system of
+Unionism opposed to the one recognized by the law, having proved a
+failure, it was necessary either to give up the attempt altogether or to
+make it more deliberately and on a much wider scale. The method they
+adopted was one that did credit to their foresight and determination. The
+Australian Federation is, and has always been, highly socialistic in its
+policy, and latterly its leaders have adopted and preached syndicalism, as
+promising to give the workers the control of society. New Zealand, alone
+among self-governing countries, having struck at the very root of their
+policy by trying to substitute a statute and a Court for the will of the
+associated workers, was a very tempting country for syndicalism. An island
+country which, owing to climate and soil, was specially suited for the
+production of all kinds of agricultural wealth beyond the needs of its own
+people, must depend on free access to the ports of other countries. This,
+it seemed plain, could be prevented by well managed syndicalism. It would
+be only necessary to organize the seamen who worked the vessels that kept
+the smaller harbors of such a country in touch with the larger ports at
+which the ocean going ships loaded and unloaded; and to organize also the
+stevedores at the larger ports. The bitterness of feeling that had
+followed the destruction of the Waihi Union, and the loss to its members
+not only of a good many months of good wages but of the homes they and
+their families had occupied for years, was a valuable asset in such a
+campaign. At first, of course, some of the working classes blamed the
+agents of "The Federation of Labor" who were responsible for the
+disastrous strike, but it was not difficult to turn attention from the
+past failure of a single strike, to the certain success that must attend a
+great syndical strike that would involve all the industries of the
+country. Most, indeed nearly all, of the disappointed Waihi strikers were
+ready to join with enthusiasm in carrying out the plans of The Federation,
+and removed to the places where they could be most effective in preparing
+the way for what they looked upon as a great revenge. Thus they either
+joined the old Unions at the principal ports, especially Auckland and
+Wellington, or formed new Unions, no longer registered under the
+Arbitration statute, but openly affiliated to The Federation of Labor,
+which had been established in New Zealand, but was really a branch of the
+Australian Federation. The four principal ports of New Zealand, indeed the
+only ports much frequented by the large export and import vessels, are
+Auckland, Wellington, Lyttleton, and Dunedin, the two first named being in
+the north island, and the other two in the south. Auckland is considerably
+the largest city in The Dominion, containing at least 25,000 more
+inhabitants than Wellington, which is not only the capital of the
+Dominion, but also the great distributing centre for the South island and
+the southern part of the North island, at the southern extremity of which
+it is situated. The remarkable situation of Auckland, on a very narrow
+isthmus about a hundred and eighty miles from the northern point of the
+country, is no doubt largely responsible for the growth of the city, which
+is the chief centre of the young manufactures of the Dominion, and the
+largest port of export for almost all the country produces, except wool
+and mutton, which are mainly raised in the South island. Thus it happens
+that Auckland and Wellington are at present the chief shipping ports of
+the Dominion, and it was to them that the Federation of Labor turned its
+chief attention when its leaders had definitely decided to undertake the
+campaign of syndicalism against the system of arbitration which had
+prevailed for sixteen years.
+
+There had already been formed Unions of Waterside Workers and Seamen at
+each of these ports; but they were in all cases registered under the
+arbitration law, and of course subject to its penalties against both
+officials and members in cases of any breach of the statute. The
+Federation's agents proceeded to collect the members of these unions who
+were in any way dissatisfied with the existing awards of the Arbitration
+Courts, and to form them into new Unions outside the statute. They had
+little difficulty in persuading the men that the new Unions would be free
+to act in many directions that were barred to the members of the old
+Unions. A good many of the men were thus persuaded to resign their
+membership in the existing Unions, and as they were very often the most
+active members, they gradually persuaded others to leave with them. There
+was nothing either in the law or custom of the ports to prevent unionists
+and non-unionists working together on the wharves or the coasting vessels;
+so within a comparatively short time the members of the new Federation
+Unions were more numerous than those that clung to the older ones. When
+this became the case, the officials of the new Unions approached the
+shipping companies with proposals for an agreement between them and the
+Federation Unions in some respects more favorable to the employers than
+the arbitration award under which the older Unions were working, and in
+this way gained a position which enabled them to undermine the old Unions,
+till they either died out for want of members or withdrew their
+registration, and at the end of their six months' notice merged their
+Unions in those of The Federation. The Federation's plans had been so
+carefully prepared that there was little or no suspicion on the part of
+the employers or of the public generally as to the true meaning of the
+movement. It was evident, of course, that it indicated a revolt against
+the arbitration law, but as the new unions appeared ready to give the
+employers rather better terms than the old ones, many reasons were found
+by employers for defending what began to be called the "Free Unions." In
+this way things had gone on at the shipping ports for about two years from
+the failure of the gold miners' strike at Waihi, before anything happened
+to open the eyes of the public to the real meaning of what The Federation
+of Labor had been doing. In that time the new Unions at each of the
+principal ports of the country had quietly obtained the entire control of
+the hands at waterside and local shipping, as well as of the Carters
+Unions. The time had arrived when the syndicalists believed themselves
+able to compel the public to submit to any demands they might see fit to
+make.
+
+The occasion finally arose, as might have been expected, at Wellington,
+where the Federation of Labor had established its head-quarters. There was
+no definite dispute between the employers and workers, but for a few weeks
+there had been an uneasy feeling in relation to the Waterside Workers who,
+it was said, were growing more lazy and slovenly in handling cargo on the
+wharves and piers. A meeting had been called by The Federation to discuss
+some grievances of the coal miners at Westport, from which most of the
+coal landed in Wellington is brought. The meeting was called for the noon
+dinner hour, and a number of the waterside workers engaged in discharging
+cargo from a steamer about to sail, at once went to the meeting, and did
+not return to work in the afternoon. The shipping company at once engaged
+other men to finish their work, and when the men came back some hours
+later, they found their places filled up. The new men belonged to the same
+Union, but the men dispossessed demanded that the new ones should be
+dismissed at once. When the company refused the demand, the men appealed
+to the Council of the Federation, who at once called on the Waterside
+Workers and Seamens Unions at Wellington to cease work. Within a few days
+the position looked so serious that the Premier invited both parties to a
+conference, at which he presided in person, in the hope of bringing about
+an agreement to refer the matters in dispute to an arbitrator to be
+mutually agreed upon. The officials of The Federation, however, said there
+was nothing to submit to an arbitrator: they had made a demand, and unless
+it was complied with by the shipping company and the Union of merchants at
+Wellington who were in league with the Company in victimizing the men who
+took part in the meeting in aid of the Coal-miners, the strike must go on.
+The Merchants and Shipping Company's Unions pointed out that what had been
+done was in direct opposition to the terms of the formal agreement signed
+less than a year before, and they refused to have anything more to do with
+the Federation on any terms. The conference thus ended in an open
+declaration of war. The time had evidently come for the Federation of
+Labor to make good the assertions so often made by its lecturers and
+agitators, of its power to force the rest of the community to submission.
+It would be difficult to imagine a more favorable position for carrying
+such a policy into effect: New Zealand, it must be borne in mind, is a
+country without an army. For some years past, it is true, a system of
+military training for all her young men between eighteen and twenty-five
+has been enforced by law, but except for training purposes, there is no
+military force in the Dominion, either of regulars or militia; and it is
+now forty-five years since the last company of British soldiers left its
+shores. Law has been maintained, and order enforced, by a police force
+under the control of the Government of the Dominion, and while the force
+is undoubtedly a good and trustworthy one, its numbers have never been
+large in proportion to the population. This year the entire force
+throughout the country is very little more than 850, which includes
+officers as well as men. It can hardly be wondered at that the officials
+of The Federation of Labor were convinced that, if they could arrange a
+general strike of the workers, the police force would be powerless to deal
+with it. On the failure of the attempt of the Premier to bring about a
+settlement between the parties by arbitration, the Federation proclaimed a
+general strike of all Unions affiliated to themselves throughout the
+country, and of all other Unions that were in sympathy with them in their
+policy of giving united Labor the control of society. The order to cease
+work was at once obeyed, as a matter of course, by all the Federation
+Unions, which practically meant all the workers engaged on vessels
+registered in the Dominion and trading on the coast, all workers on
+wharves and piers, carters in the cities, and coal miners throughout the
+country. The appeal for sympathetic assistance from Unions unconnected
+with the Federation was largely successful in the chief centres, though it
+was, of course, a direct defiance of the arbitration law under which they
+were registered. It has since been discovered that in nearly every case it
+was brought about by the unprincipled scheming of the secretaries,
+assisted by a few of the officials, who called meetings, of which notice
+was given only to a selected minority, and at which the question of
+joining a sympathetic strike was settled by a large majority of those
+present, but in fact in many cases a small minority of the whole
+membership. The sympathetic strike of Arbitration Unions was mainly
+confined to the cities, and Auckland, as the largest city, was the most
+affected by it. In Auckland the members of practically every Union ceased
+work, somewhere about ten thousand persons going on strike simultaneously.
+
+The result during the first days of the strike seemed likely to confirm
+the expectations of the Federation orators. Industry was practically dead.
+At every port vessels lay at anchor, having been withdrawn from the
+wharves before they were deserted by their crews, and the wharves were in
+the possession of the Waterside strikers. The streets of the cities were
+empty, and a large proportion of the stores were closed, partly owing to
+want of business, and partly from fear of violence in case they kept open.
+These first few days in both New Zealand and Australia were days of
+triumph for the Federation leaders but the triumph was a short-lived one.
+The Government of the Dominion did not interfere, indeed, but the public,
+through their municipal authorities, did. The people of New Zealand have
+throughout their history been accustomed to manage their own affairs, and
+within four days of the declaration of war by the syndical Federation,
+steps were taken to meet the emergency. At Auckland and Wellington it had
+been evident from the first that the small police force available could
+not safely attempt to cope with the main body of strikers, or do more than
+prevent acts of aggressive violence to the citizens and their property.
+The local authorities, however, had confidence in the general public, and
+at Auckland, and afterwards at Wellington, the Mayor of the city appealed
+to the public to come forward as volunteers to maintain law and order, by
+acting as Special Constables. In both cities the appeal was responded to
+readily, nearly two thousand young men coming forward at Auckland in
+twenty-four hours, and upwards of a thousand at Wellington. These were at
+once sworn in as special constables, and armed with serviceable batons,
+while all the fire-arms and ammunition for sale in the city was taken
+charge of and withdrawn from sale by the municipal authorities. In this
+way the maintenance of order was fairly provided for, and the temporary
+closing of all licensed hotels by order of the city magistrates removed
+the danger of riot as the result of intemperance.
+
+There had been some rioting in Wellington, though with little serious
+injury, but there was nothing that could be called a riot in Auckland. The
+Federation Unions waited, under the impression that time was on their
+side, owing to the impossibility of doing anything or getting anything
+done without the help of the associated workers. This had been the basis
+of their scheme, but like all such schemes it failed to take into account
+the instinct of self-preservation on the part of the people outside the
+Unions. As long as the strike leaders could point to the fleet of vessels
+lying idle in the harbor, the mills silent, and the street railroads
+without a moving car, and almost deserted by carts, it was easy for them
+to persuade their followers that complete victory was only a matter of
+days, or at most of weeks; they had not remembered that there were others
+besides themselves and their fellow townsmen interested in the question of
+a paralyzed industry. The trade that has been making the people of New
+Zealand increasingly rich during the last twenty years has been mainly
+derived from the land. Small holdings and close settlement have been the
+rule, and the rate of production has been increasingly rapid. The
+exports--mainly the produce of the land--have grown in proportions quite
+unknown in any other country, and the farmers knew that the prosperity of
+the country, and most directly of all the workers on the land, depended on
+the freedom and facilities for shipment of their ports. It was the workers
+on the land, accordingly, that came to the rescue, and solved the
+industrial problem. An offer was made by the President of The Farmers'
+Cooperative Union to bring a sufficient number of the members into the
+cities to work the shipping and to prevent any interruption of the work by
+the men on strike. The offer was at once accepted by the municipal
+authorities at Auckland and Wellington, and within two days fully eighteen
+hundred mounted farmers rode into Auckland, and nearly a thousand into
+Wellington, all prepared to carry on the work and protect the workers.
+Their arrival practically settled the question. New Waterside Unions were
+formed at every port, and registered under the provisions of the
+Arbitration Statute; such of the country workers as were able to do so,
+enrolled themselves as members of the new Unions; the wharves and water
+fronts were taken possession of and guarded by the special constables
+enlisted in the cities, while the streets were patrolled by parties of the
+mounted volunteers. Within twenty-four hours of their arrival, some of the
+vessels in harbor had been brought to the wharves, and the work of
+unloading them was begun.
+
+At first there were many threats of violent opposition on the part of the
+strikers, and crowds assembled in the principal streets and in the
+neighborhood of the wharves; but these were dispersed before they became
+dangerous, by the mounted constables, and a proclamation having been
+issued by the mayor calling attention to the fact that collections of
+people that obstructed traffic in the streets were contrary to law, the
+police and mounted constables cleared the streets, and forcibly arrested
+any persons who attempted opposition. Within two or three days, at each of
+the principal cities, new Unions of seamen and of carters had been formed
+and registered under the arbitration law, and those members of the old
+Federation Unions who were not enthusiastic, and began to see that the
+assurances of success were not likely to be realized, began to resign and
+apply for admission to the new Unions. After about two weeks the Council
+of The Federation of Labor, recognizing the failure of the sympathetic
+strike, invited the Unions that were not connected with them to declare
+the strike at an end, and tried by confining the strike to their own
+members, to maintain a solid front, which, with the help of the Australian
+Federation both in money for the strikers and in refusing to handle any
+goods either from or for New Zealand, they still hoped would carry them to
+at least a compromise, if not to the victory they had expected. The hopes
+of the Federation of Labor were not realized. Within a week or two a large
+proportion of the members of their own Unions, seeing their places filled,
+and their work being done, not by free labor, which they might hope to
+deal with, but by new Unions, whose members would be entitled, under the
+arbitration law, to preference and many other privileges, began to desert
+and to seek admission to the Arbitration Unions that had taken their
+place. For a time this was fiercely denied by the Federation officials,
+but as the days went on, and business of every kind was resumed in the
+cities, the groups of strikers at street corners and around the Federation
+head-quarters dwindled away; the hotels were reopened, the shops and
+stores were busy, the mills were at work, and even the coastal steamers
+were manned and running, and the federationists were forced to admit that
+they were hopelessly defeated. For a time they still hoped that the
+Australian Boycott might save them from absolute disaster, and the Labor
+Ministry of New South Wales tried to help the Federation by making an
+appeal to the New Zealand Government to arrange an arbitration to settle
+the dispute between The Wellington Waterside Workers and the merchants and
+shipping companies. The absolute refusal of the New Zealand Government to
+recognize The Federation of Labor, or to interfere with the new Unions
+under the Arbitration Act that had taken their place, finally settled the
+question, and completed the defeat of the strikers. The officials of the
+Federation declared the strike at an end, and the Australian Federation
+announced that the boycott was also at an end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At first sight it may seem that, after all, the experiment in syndicalism
+was on a small scale, and that its lesson can hardly be of great value to
+a country like America. A little consideration may correct such a
+misapprehension. New Zealand was deliberately selected by the Syndicalists
+as a test case, for two reasons. In the first place it was the only
+country that had for years adopted a policy of justice according to law
+for both workers and employers, and from the syndicalist's point of view
+it was therefore the only country that seriously attacked their own policy
+by showing that it was unnecessary. In the second place New Zealand was
+the only country with a population of British origin that could be dealt
+with practically by itself. With the aid of an Australian boycott it
+seemed as if her people must be helpless in the hands of the Federation.
+The result proved to be not only the defeat of the principle of lawless
+syndicalism, but the destruction of the industrial association that
+represented it in the country. No compromise was accepted, and except it
+may be in name, no Union attached to the Federation of Labor remains at
+work. The question, of course, suggests itself: What was the reason? Minor
+reasons may be found, no doubt, to account for failure where success was
+so confidently expected; but there can be little doubt that the real cause
+is the policy pursued by the Legislature and people of New Zealand for the
+last twenty years. Syndicalism, like all plans for the over turn, or
+reform, as their advocates would perhaps prefer to call it, of existing
+institutions, depends for success on the existence of wrongs by which part
+of the people is impoverished, while another, and very small part, has
+more than enough. The workers of our own race, at any rate, have enough
+common-sense to understand, at least when they are not hysterically
+excited, that imaginary wrongs are not a sufficient reason for great
+sacrifices. New Zealand's legislation has not created an ideal society, it
+is true; but for twenty years it has proceeded step by step in the
+direction of righting the wrongs of the past, and giving opportunity to
+that part of its people that needed it most, on the single condition that
+they would use it, and respect the rights of others. To such a people,
+increasing steadily, year by year, in all that makes for well-being, the
+wild denunciations, and if possible wilder promises, of paid agitators can
+have little attraction. It may be possible by careful generalship to stir
+a small section of such a people to the hysterical excitement of an
+industrial war, but the mass of the people would be certain to resent it,
+and the movement will be doomed to a speedy collapse.
+
+Other countries have been less enlightened and less fortunate than New
+Zealand in their legislation, and perhaps still less fortunate in the
+administration of the laws passed for the betterment of the masses of
+their people. They have done little to convince the great majority that
+they are aware of the wrongs that have been done that majority in the
+supposed interest of the small class of the over rich. They have not
+provided opportunity for those who hitherto have had none, nor have they
+even provided a reasonable alternative for industrial warfare. Had they
+done these things in the past, or were they even to begin honestly to
+provide for them in the future, they might confidently expect that the
+reign of industrial warfare, which exasperates their people, and retards
+the prosperity of their nation, would be as easily and effectually
+suppressed as the experiment of the Syndicalists has just been in New
+Zealand.
+
+
+
+
+LABOR: "TRUE DEMAND" AND IMMIGRANT SUPPLY
+
+A RESTATEMENT OF THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF IMMIGRATION POLICY
+
+
+Recent historians and economists have been showing that it was anything
+but pure and unadulterated sense of brotherhood that prompted many of our
+forefathers' fine speeches about opening the doors of America to the
+down-trodden and oppressed of Europe. Emerson, fifty years ago, in his
+essay on _Fate_ noted the current exploitation of the immigrant: "The
+German and Irish millions, like the Negro, have a great deal of guano in
+their destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic, and carted over
+America, to ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to lie down
+prematurely to make a spot of green grass on the prairie." Indeed it would
+not be hard to show that there was always a real or potential social
+surplus back of our national hospitality to the alien.
+
+The process began long before our great nineteenth century era of
+industrial expansion. Colonial policies with regard to the immigrant
+varied according to latitude and longitude. Most of the New England
+colonies viewed the foreigner with distrust as a menace to Puritan
+theocracy. New York, Pennsylvania, and some of the Southern colonies were
+much more hospitable, for economic reasons. That this hospitality
+sometimes resembled that of the spider to the fly is evident from
+observations of contemporary writers. That it included whites as well as
+negroes in its ambiguous welcome is equally evident.
+
+John Woolman writes in his _Journal_ (1741-2): "In a few months after I
+came here my master bought several Scotchmen as servants, from on board a
+vessel, and brought them to Mount Holly to sell." Isaac Weld, traveling in
+the United States in the last decade of the eighteenth century, noted
+methods of securing aliens in the town of York, Pennsylvania: "The
+inhabitants of this town as well as those of Lancaster and the adjoining
+country consist principally of Dutch and German immigrants and their
+descendants. Great numbers of these people emigrate to America every year
+and the importation of them forms a very considerable branch of commerce.
+They are for the most part brought from the Hanse towns and Rotterdam. The
+vessels sail thither from America laden with different kinds of produce
+and the masters of them on arriving there entice as many of these people
+on board as they can persuade to leave their native country, without
+demanding any money for their passages. When the vessel arrives in America
+an advertisement is put into the paper mentioning the different kinds of
+people on board whether smiths, tailors, carpenters, laborers, or the like
+and the people that are in want of such men flock down to the vessel.
+These poor Germans are then sold to the highest bidder and the captain of
+the vessel or the ship holder puts the money into his pocket."
+
+These may be, it is true, extreme cases of the economic motive for
+immigration. But they are quite in line with eighteenth century
+Mercantilist economic philosophy. Josiah Tucker, for example, in his
+_Essay on Trade_, 1753, urges the encouragement of immigration from
+France, and cites the value of Huguenot refugees. "Great was the outcry
+against them at their first coming. Poor England would be ruined!
+Foreigners encouraged! And our own people starving! This was the popular
+cry of the times. But the looms in Spittle-Fields, and the shops on
+Ludgate-Hill have at last sufficiently taught us another lesson ... these
+_Hugonots_ have ... partly got, and partly saved, in the space of fifty
+years, a balance in our favour of, at least, fifty millions sterling....
+And as England and France are rivals to each other, and competitors in
+almost all branches of commerce, every single manufacturer so coming over,
+would be our gain, and a double loss to France."
+
+The obverse side of the case appears in British hindrances to the free
+emigration of artisans during the eighteenth and early nineteenth
+centuries. Laws forbade any British subject who had been employed in the
+manufacture of wool, cotton, iron, brass, steel, or any other metal, of
+clocks, watches, etc., or who might come under the general denomination of
+artificer or manufacturer, to leave his own country for the purpose of
+residing in a foreign country out of the dominion of His Britannic
+Majesty. Recall the difficulty early American manufacturers encountered in
+introducing new English improvements in cotton manufacture; a virtual
+embargo was laid upon the migration of either men or machinery. Recall,
+too, an expression of American resentment in our Declaration of
+Independence at this English attitude: "He has endeavored to prevent the
+population of these states; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for
+naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage
+migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of
+lands."
+
+On the whole, the economic motive seems to have been uppermost in the
+minds of both those who fostered and those who opposed foreign immigration
+into the United States, up to, say, 1870. Likewise in perhaps more than
+ninety-nine of every hundred cases the economic motive holds in the mind
+of the present day immigrant, or his protagonist. Escape from political
+tyranny or religious persecution, at least since the revolutionary period
+of 1848, has operated only as a secondary motive. The industrial impulse
+is all the more striking in the so-called "new immigration" from the
+Mediterranean and South-Eastern Europe. The temporary migrant laborer, the
+"bird of passage," roams about seeking his fortunes in much the same
+spirit that certain Middle Age Knights or Crusades camp followers sought
+theirs. This is in no way to his discredit. It is simply a fact that we
+are to reckon with when called upon to work out a satisfactory immigration
+policy. At least its recognition would eliminate a good deal of wordy
+sentimentality from discussions of the immigration problem.
+
+Professor Fairchild discovered that three things attract the Greek
+immigrant. First and foremost, financial opportunities. Second, corollary
+to the first, citizenship papers which will enable him to return to
+Turkey, there to carry on business under the greater protection which such
+citizenship confers. There is a hint here to the effect that mere
+naturalization does not mean assimilation and permanent acceptance of the
+status and responsibilities of American citizenship. Third, enjoyment of
+certain more or less factitious "comforts of civilization."
+
+But the Greeks are by no means untypical. The conclusion of the
+Immigration Commission as to the causes of the new immigration is that
+while "social conditions affect the situation in some countries, the
+present immigration from Europe to the United States is in the largest
+measure due to economic causes. It should be stated, however, that
+emigration from Europe is not now an absolute economic necessity, and as a
+rule those who emigrate to the United States are impelled by a desire for
+betterment rather than by the necessity of escaping intolerable
+conditions. This fact should largely modify the natural incentive to treat
+the immigration movement from the standpoint of sentiment, and permit its
+consideration primarily as an economic problem. In other words, the
+economic and social welfare of the United States should now ordinarily be
+the determining factor in the immigration policy of the Government."
+
+This delimitation of the immigration problem to its economic aspects led
+the Immigration Commission to recommend a somewhat restrictionist policy.
+That they were not without warrant in so delimiting it is evident from the
+utterances of such ardent opponents of restriction as Dr. Peter Roberts
+and Max J. Kohler. The latter, writing in the _American Economic Review_
+(March, 1912) said: "In fact, the immigrant laborer is indispensable to
+our economic progress today, and we can rely upon no one else to build our
+houses, railroads and subways, and mine our ores for us." Dr. Roberts'
+plea is almost identical.
+
+What a glaring misconception of the whole economic and social problem is
+here involved will appear if we add a clause or two to Mr. Kohler's
+sentence. He should have said: "We can rely upon no one else to build our
+houses, railroads and subways, and mine our ores for us _at $455 a year;
+for workers of native birth but of foreign fathers would cost us $566, and
+native born White Americans $666 a year_." (See Abstracts of Rep. of
+Immigr. Comm. vol. i., pp. 405-8.) These are the facts. This is the social
+situation as it should be stated if a candid discussion of the problem is
+sought.
+
+Now what are the economic arguments for restricting somewhat the tide of
+immigration? Several studies of standards of living among American
+workingmen within the past ten years have shown that a large proportion of
+American wage earners fall below a minimum efficiency standard. Studies of
+American wages indicate that only a little over ten per cent of American
+wage earners receive enough to maintain an average family in full social
+efficiency. The average daily wage for the year ranges from $1.50 to $2.
+One-half of all American wage earners get less than $600 a year;
+three-quarters less than $750; only one-tenth more than $1,000.
+
+Take in connection with these wage figures the statistics for
+unemployment. The proportion of idleness to work ranges from one-third in
+mining industries to one-fifth in other industries. In Massachusetts,
+1908, manufacturers were unemployed twelve per cent of the working time.
+Professor Streightoff estimated three years ago that the average annual
+loss in this country through unemployment is 1,000,000 years of working
+time. Perhaps one-tenth of working time might be taken as a very
+conservative general average loss. But the worst feature of the whole
+problem is that, in certain industries at least, the tendency to seasonal
+unemployment is increasing. Ex-Commissioner Neill in his report on the
+Lawrence strike said: "... it is a fact that the tendency in many lines of
+industry, including textiles, is to become more and more seasonal and to
+build to meet maximum demands and competitive trade conditions more
+effectively. This necessarily brings it about that a large number of
+employes are required for the industry during its period of maximum
+activity who are accordingly of necessity left idle during the period of
+slackness." (Senate Document 870, 62d Cong., 2d sess., 1912.)
+
+If we recall still further that the casual laborer, who suffers most from
+seasonal unemployment, is the chief stumbling block in the way to a
+solution of the problem of poverty; that he furnishes the human power in
+"sweated trades:" that immigrants form the majority of unskilled and
+sweated laborers; if we remember that there is not a shred of evidence
+(except the well-meant enthusiasm of the protagonists of the immigrant) to
+show that immigration has "forced-up" the American laborer and his
+standard of living, instead of displacing him downward; if we remember
+that probably 10,000,000 of our people are in poverty, and that though the
+immigrant may not seek charity in any larger proportions than the poor of
+native stock, yet he does contribute heavily to our burden of relief for
+dependents and defectives: we are justified in assuming that an analysis
+of the causes of poverty confirms the evidence from studies of wages and
+standards of living as to the depressing effect of the new immigration, in
+particular, upon working conditions for the American laborer.
+
+Consider, too, the question of "social surplus." Several American
+economists, among them Professors Hollander, Patten and Devine, agree that
+we are creating annually in the United States a substantial social
+surplus. But it is evident from the figures of wages and standards of
+living quoted above that the American laborer is not participating as he
+might expect to participate in this economic advantage. Three factors
+conspire against him. First, we have yet no adequate machinery for
+determining exactly what the surplus is, or how to distribute it
+equitably. Mr. Babson with his "composite statistical charts" has made a
+beginning in the mathematical determination of prosperity; but it is only
+a beginning. Second, organized labor is not yet sufficiently organized nor
+sufficiently self-conscious to perceive and demand its opportunity for a
+larger share. The significant point here is that recent immigration has
+hampered and hindered the development of labor organizations, and thus
+indirectly held back the normal tendency of wages to rise. Third,
+inadequate education, particularly economic and social education. The
+adult illiterate constitutes a tremendous educational problem. Over 35 per
+cent of the "new immigration" of 1913 was illiterate, and this new
+immigration included over two-thirds of the total. Ignorance prevents the
+laborer from demanding the very education that would give him a better
+place in the economic system; it hinders the play of intelligent
+self-interest; and it actually prevents effective labor-organization,
+which is one of the surest means of labor-education. Jenks and Lauck,
+after experience with the Immigration Commission, concluded that "the fact
+that recent immigrants are usually of non-English speaking races, and
+their high degree of illiteracy, have made their absorption by the labor
+organizations very slow and expensive. In many cases, too, the conscious
+policy of the employers of mixing the races in different departments and
+divisions of labor, in order, by a diversity of tongues, to prevent
+concerted action on the part of employes, has made unionization of the
+immigrant almost impossible."
+
+For these reasons, and others, we are driven to the conclusion that future
+policies of immigration must be based on sound principles of social
+welfare and social economy, and not upon the economic advantage of certain
+special industries. Whether we want the brawn of the immigrant must be
+determined by what it will contribute to the general social surplus, and
+not by what it adds to A's railroads or B's iron mines.
+
+We are told that the three classes of our population demanding
+unrestricted immigration are large employers of unskilled labor,
+transportation companies, and revolutionary anarchists. Since this is by
+definition an economic and not a philosophical question, we may neglect
+the third class. To the other two classes should be directed certain brief
+tests of economic good faith. Take at its face value their claim that
+European brawn by the ship-load is indispensable to American industry. It
+is becoming an accepted maxim that industry should bear its own charges,
+should pay its own way. American industry has long fought the
+contract-labor exclusion feature in current immigration law. Suppose we
+frankly admit that it is much better for the immigrant to come over here
+to a definite job than to wander about for weeks after he arrives, a prey
+to immigrant banks, fake employment agents, and other sharks. Suppose,
+accordingly, we repeal the laws against contract-labor. Let the employer
+contract for as many foreign laborers as he likes or says he needs. But
+make the contractor liable for support and deportation costs if the
+laborers become public charges. Also require him to assume the cost of
+unemployment insurance. Exact a bond for the faithful performance of these
+terms, guaranteed in somewhat the same way that National Banks are
+safeguarded. Immigration authorities now commonly require a bond from the
+relatives of admitted aliens who seem likely to become public charges, but
+who are allowed to enter with the benefit of the doubt. Customs and
+revenue rules admit dutiable goods in bond. Hence the principle of the
+bond is perfectly familiar, and its application to contract-immigrants
+would be in no sense an untried or dangerous experiment. It would
+establish no new precedent: for precedents, and successful ones, are
+already established, accepted and approved. It would be understood that
+all admissions of aliens can be only provisional, with no time limit on
+deportation. It would be understood further--and the plan would work
+automatically if the contractor were made such a deeply interested
+party--that intending immigrants must be rigidly inspected, that they be
+required to produce consular certificates of clean police record, freedom
+from chronic disease, insanity, etc.
+
+The result of such a scheme would probably cut away entirely
+contract-labor; for it would not longer pay. But this does not mean
+barring the gate to all foreign labor. As an aid to the employer and to
+our own native workingman, we must, sooner or later, and the sooner the
+better, establish a chain of labor bureaus throughout the Union. The
+system must be placed under Federal direction, largely because the
+Department of Labor would be charged, _ex officio_, with ascertaining the
+"true demand" for immigrant labor, and it could only accomplish this end
+effectively through such an employment clearing system. This true demand
+would, of course, be based not only upon mere numerical excess of calls
+for labor over demands for jobs, but would also take into account the
+nature of the work, working conditions, and above all the prevailing level
+of wages. According to this true demand the Department would adjust a
+sliding scale of admissions of immigrant laborers.
+
+Much might be said in favor of an absolute embargo upon all immigration
+until such a body as the Industrial Relations Commission has time to make
+an authoritative economic survey of the whole country, or until the
+Unemployment Research Commission recently called for by Miss Kellor could
+make the three years' study contemplated by her as the only way out of the
+unemployment morass. Twenty years ago men of the type of General Walker
+frankly urged that the immigration gates be closed for a flat period of
+ten years or so. But the sliding scale plan contemplates no such radical
+step. Indeed it is radical in no sense whatever. The proposed immigration
+act now before Congress (The Burnett Bill, H.R. 6060) paves the way for
+it, and provides a working principle, which apparently is accepted on all
+sides. Section 3 includes this clause: "That skilled labor, if otherwise
+admissible, may be imported if labor of like kind unemployed can not be
+found in this country, and the question of the necessity of importing such
+skilled labor in any particular instance may be determined by the
+Secretary of Labor...." A really workable test for immigration, superior
+by far to the literacy test or any other so far suggested, might easily be
+developed by simply enlarging the scope of this clause, making it include
+unskilled as well as skilled labor. No machinery other than that
+contemplated by the present act would be required.
+
+The immigration problem can never be satisfactorily handled until we fix
+upon some such means of determining just what the economic need is. There
+is no danger of hindering legitimate industrial expansion in times of
+sudden business prosperity: for the transportation companies may be safely
+trusted to supply in three or four weeks aliens enough to fill all the
+gaps in the industrial army. Neither would injustice be done to the
+immigrant himself. On the contrary, he would be assured of a job and
+respectful consideration when he arrived. The "dago" or the "bohunk" would
+acquire a new dignity and a more enviable status than he now occupies. The
+selective process thus involved would much improve the quality of the
+immigrant admitted, and would incidentally render assimilation of the
+foreigner all the easier.
+
+The precise details of selection, and the machinery, are mere matters of
+detail. But the consular service, as long ago suggested by Catlin,
+Schuyler and others, seems to offer the proper base of operations. We have
+already recommended charging consuls with viseing certificates from
+police, medical, and poor-relief authorities. We should further require
+that declarations of intention to migrate be published (somewhat as
+marriage banns are published) at local administrative centers
+(arrondissement, Bezirk, etc.) and at United States consular offices; the
+consular declaration should be obligatory; perhaps the other might be
+optional, though in all probability foreign governments would cooeperate in
+demanding it. These validated declarations of intention should be filed in
+the consular offices. When notice comes from the United States Department
+of Labor that so many laborers will be admitted from such and such
+district, the declarations are to be taken up in the order of their
+filing, and the proper number of persons certified for admission. The
+apportionment of admissions from each country might be calculated on a
+basis of its population, also upon the nature of the employment offered,
+and upon the desirability of the alien himself, his general
+assimilability, his willingness to become naturalized, to adopt the
+English language and the American standard of living among efficient
+workers, etc.,--all as proved by past experience with his countrymen. This
+plan, in so far as it provides for a sliding scale of admissions, is in
+line with that proposed by Professor Gulick. He advocates making all
+nations eligible for admission and citizenship, but would admit them only
+in proportion as they can be readily assimilated. This would admit
+annually, say, five per cent of those already naturalized, with their
+American children. The principle here seems to be that we can assimilate
+from any land in, and only in, proportion to the number already
+assimilated from that land. But the difficulty of applying such a test
+lies in the complexity of the assimilative process. No measure yet exists
+for assimilation. Anthropologists are convinced that various strains in
+the populations, for example of France, or Great Britain, which have been
+dwelling together for centuries, are not by any means assimilated. Mere
+naturalization is not a sufficient test of assimilation; it is only the
+expression of a desire to be assimilated; and it may only be a device for
+the promotion of business success here or in foreign parts, as we have
+already indicated in the case of the Greeks. Hence in working out the
+basis of a sound immigration policy, it would seem more practicable to
+consider first the question of economic utilization rather than
+assimilation. This, of course, does not exclude from the Secretary of
+Labor's judgment the category of assimilability as one of the factors in
+determining the apportionment of admissions.
+
+It will appear that the plan outlined above limits immigration policy to
+purely national and economic considerations. But it is, as matters now
+stand, a national question. And it must remain so for some time to come,
+even if we are reproached with a narrow Mercantilist economics. The
+admission of aliens is not yet a fundamental international _right_, or
+_duty_; it is only an example of _comity_ within the family of nations.
+And the matter must rest in this state of limbo until we develop some
+institution or method of registering our sentiments of internationalism,
+and especially of determining _international surplus_. As it is idle to
+talk or dream of abolishing poverty until at least the concept of social
+or national surplus is pretty clearly fixed and its realization either
+actually at hand or fairly imminent, just so is it vain to expect an
+international adjustment of the immigration problem on economic grounds
+until the existence of an international surplus is demonstrated, and the
+methods of apportioning it worked out.
+
+How soon we may expect these things it is not our province to predict. It
+is too early to pass final judgment on Professor Patten's dictum that
+inter-racial cooeperation is impossible without integration, and that races
+must therefore stand in hostile relations or finally unite. But it is
+perfectly apparent that we have a long way to travel before the path to
+integration is cleared. Such assemblages as the First Universal Races
+Congress which met in London in 1911 can do much to prepare the way. But
+it must not be forgotten that the German representative at that Congress
+pleaded for the maintenance of strict racial and national boundaries, and
+summed up his plea in the rather ominous sentence: "The brotherhood of man
+is a good thing, but the struggle for life is a far better one." Meanwhile
+we need not anticipate serious international difficulties in the way of
+the sliding-scale plan; for foreign governments are watching the tide of
+immigration with mixed feelings. They welcome the two or three hundred
+million dollars sent home annually by alien residents in the United
+States. But they also resent the dislocations of industry, the fallow
+fields, the dodging of military service, and the disturbance of the level
+of prices which such wholesale emigrations inflict upon the mother
+country.
+
+Since the protagonists of unrestricted immigration have taken largely an
+economic line of argument, it seemed desirable to accept their terms, and
+meet them on their own ground. But I should not wish to be misunderstood
+as limiting the immigration question to its economic phases. When we have
+said that the _latifondisti_ of Southern Italy are in despair at the
+scarcity of laborers to work their lands at starvation wages, and that the
+railway builders and mine operators of America are equally anxious to have
+those selfsame South Italian laborers for their own exploitive
+enterprises, we have told a bare half of the tale. There remain all those
+cultural, educational, political, religious and domestic variations and
+adjustments which make up the general problem of assimilability of the
+alien and of the strength of our own national digestion. America had a
+giant's undiscriminating appetite in the great days of expansion from 1850
+to 1890. But there are many signs, economic and other, that we can no
+longer play Gargantua and continue a healthy nation. An unwise engineer
+sometimes over-stokes his boilers, and courts disaster. Is it not equally
+possible that national welfare may suffer from an over-dose of human fuel
+in our industry?
+
+
+
+
+THE WAY TO FLATLAND
+
+
+"The next great task of preventive medicine is the inauguration of
+universal periodic medical examinations as an indispensable means for the
+control of all diseases, whether arising from injurious personal habits,
+from congenital or constitutional weakness, or from social and vocational
+conditions." That this declaration by the Commissioner of Health of the
+city of New York is not the mere expression of an individual opinion,
+there is abundant evidence. And no one who has watched the growth of other
+movements towards such regulation of life as only a few years ago would
+have seemed wholly outside the domain of practical probability can doubt
+that the "Life Extension" movement, as thus outlined, will rapidly grow
+into prominence. Nor is there much room for doubt that, whether explicitly
+contemplated at present or not, compulsion as well as universality is
+tacitly implied in the movement.
+
+I say that the movement is sure to grow into prominence, that it is a
+thing which must be seriously reckoned with; I do not say that it will
+march straight on to victory, or even that it is sure to prevail in the
+end. It is instructive, in this regard, to hark back to a recent
+experience in a more special, but yet an extremely important, domain.
+Several years ago a report on university efficiency was issued under the
+auspices--though, it should be added, without the official endorsement--of
+the Carnegie Foundation. The central feature of this report lay in its
+advocacy of the application to universities of those principles of system
+and of standardization which have been successfully applied on a large
+scale to the promotion of industrial efficiency, and are generally
+referred to by the catch-word, "scientific management." In spite of the
+merits of the report in certain matters of detail, and of the high
+standing of the expert who wrote it in his own department of industrial
+engineering, the report evoked an almost universal chorus of contemptuous
+rejection not only in university circles, but also from those organs of
+public opinion which have any claim to be regarded as enlightened judges
+in questions of education and culture. The thing seemed to have been
+laughed out of court. And yet it turned out that a year or two afterwards
+a full-fledged scheme for carrying out some of the crudest and most
+objectionable features of this "efficiency" program was presented to the
+professors of Harvard University, apparently with the expectation that
+they would fall in with its requirements without hesitation or protest.
+For some days there seemed to be real danger that this would actually
+happen. It turned out to be a false alarm; the faculty of the foremost of
+American universities were guilty of no such supineness. The project was
+ignominiously shelved, with some sort of explanation that the springing of
+it on the professors was due to an error or misunderstanding. But that the
+attempt should have been made, and in a manner that argued so total a lack
+of any sense of its grossness and crudity, is a significant warning of the
+extent to which the notions underlying it have fastened upon the general
+mind.
+
+The story of the eugenics movement in this country affords a striking
+illustration at once of the almost startling rapidity with which
+innovating ideas as to the regulation of life gain acceptance, and of the
+fact that this rapidity is by no means conclusive proof that their
+progress will be continuous. The one thing clear is that there is a large,
+active, and influential element in the population that is extremely
+hospitable to such ideas, and manifests a naive, an almost childish,
+readiness to put them into immediate execution. Since, in the nature of
+things, this element is lively and active--since, too, what is novel and
+in motion is more interesting than what is old and at rest--at first there
+is almost sure to be produced a deceptive appearance that the new thing is
+sweeping everything before it. Just now there is evidently a lull in the
+onward march of legislative eugenics. This is sufficient proof of the
+conservatism of the people as a whole; we may be quite sure that anything
+beyond a very restricted application of eugenical notions will take a long
+time to get itself established in our laws or even in our customs.
+Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that even the more
+extreme forms of eugenical doctrine are not forces to be reckoned with as
+affecting practical possibilities of a not distant future. Though no
+results may appear on the surface, the leaven is working. It is consonant
+with tendencies which in so many directions are becoming more and more
+dominant. So long as those tendencies continue in anything like their
+present strength, there can be little doubt that the idea of control in
+the direction of eugenics, like that of the regulation of human life in
+other fundamental respects, will continue to make headway, and may at any
+time become one of the central issues of the day.
+
+To adduce prohibition as an illustration of this same character in the
+thought and the tendencies of our immediate time may seem like forcing the
+point. It is true, it may be said, that there has been within the past few
+years a rapid spread of prohibition in almost every part of the country;
+but the thing itself is sixty years old, has had its periods of advance
+and recession, and is now, in the fullness of time, reaping the fruits of
+two generations of agitation, investigation, and education. But to say
+this is to overlook the distinctive feature of the present situation
+regarding prohibition in the United States. A Constitutional amendment
+providing for the complete prohibition of the sale of liquor throughout
+the Union is pending in Congress. A year ago--probably six months
+ago--there was hardly a human being in the United States, other than those
+in the councils of the Anti-saloon League, who had so much as thought of
+national prohibition as a question of present-day practical politics.
+Suddenly it is announced that there is a distinct possibility of a
+prohibition amendment being passed by Congress in the near future; and one
+of the foremost representatives of the Anti-saloon League states, and with
+good show of reason, that if the amendment be passed by Congress, its
+ratification by the Legislatures of three fourths of the States can be
+only a matter of time. What the probabilities actually are, I do not
+undertake to say; neither am I concerned at this moment with the merits of
+the issue itself. What I _am_ concerned with is the simple fact that in
+this situation, brought upon the country with dramatic suddenness, nobody
+seems to have been in the least startled, or so much as disturbed in his
+equanimity. There will of course be a great struggle over the question,
+sooner or later. But neither in Congress nor in the press has there as yet
+been any sign of such an assertion of the claims of personal liberty as,
+at any time previous to the past ten years, would have been sure to be
+made in such a situation. This collective silence, on an issue affecting
+so intimately the lives, the habits, the traditions of millions of people,
+is, in my judgment, by far the most impressive proof of the degree in
+which the public mind has grown accustomed to the inroads of regulation
+upon the domain of individuality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A number of years ago, when the mathematical concept of space of more than
+three dimensions was attracting great popular interest, an ingenious
+writer undertook to make the idea intelligible to "the general" by
+picturing the state of mind in regard to three dimensions of a race of
+beings whose life and whose sensual experience was limited to space of two
+dimensions. He gave his little book the title "Flatland," and it gained
+wide attention. In his Commencement address at Columbia last year,
+President Butler had the happy thought of applying the term in the
+characterization of certain aspects of the intellectual and political life
+of our time. He was speaking particularly of that absorption in the
+immediate problems of the day which makes almost impossible a true study
+and contemplation of the lasting concerns of mankind as embodied in
+history and literature. "Every ruling tendency," he said, "is to make life
+a Flatland, an affair of two dimensions, with no depth, no background, no
+permanent root." That this is a literal truth probably neither Dr. Butler
+nor anyone else would contend; but it hits off with great force and with
+substantial accuracy the prevailing character of thought in the circles
+most active and most influential in almost every department of human
+activity at the present time. And the tendency which President Butler
+describes as arising out of our absorption in current problems is still
+more manifest in the spirit of our actual dealings with those problems
+themselves. On every hand we find a surprising readiness to accept views
+which explicitly tend to take out of life that which gives it depth and
+significance and richness. Each one of the four movements we have
+mentioned affords an illustration of this: in following any one of them we
+travel straight toward Flatland. They differ very much, one from another;
+they have very different degrees and kinds of justification; it may be
+difficult in the case of some of them to strike a balance between the gain
+and the loss. The remarkable thing--the ominous thing, if we are to
+suppose that the present tone of thought will long persist--is that the
+loss involved in the flattening of life, as such, apparently almost wholly
+fails to get consideration. I say apparently, because there is, no doubt,
+a deep and strong undercurrent of opposition which, sooner or later, will
+manifest itself; in speaking of "ruling tendencies" we are apt to mean
+merely the tendencies that are most in evidence. But after all, it is to
+these that criticism of contemporary life and thought must, of necessity,
+be chiefly directed.
+
+As I have already indicated, the attack on individuality and personal
+dignity in the universities was met in a spirit that is highly gratifying,
+and which is quite out of keeping with the tendency that I am discussing
+and deploring. Yet it is doubtful whether, outside the circle of the
+universities themselves, and of those individuals who are thoroughly
+imbued with the university spirit, there is any true realization of what
+it is that constituted the head and front of that offending. If some
+bureau of research were to present a formidable array of figures showing
+that the "output" of professorial work could be increased by so and so
+many per cent. through the adoption of some definitely formulated system
+of "scientific management," it is by no means certain that the scheme
+would not receive powerful support in the highest quarters of efficiency
+propaganda. We should be told just how many millions of dollars a year we
+are spending on university education, and just how many of these millions
+go needlessly to waste. Even the opponents of the "reform" would probably
+find themselves compelled to use as their most powerful argument this and
+that example of great practical results which have flowed from letting men
+of genius go their own way. It would be pointed out that many an
+investigation which, to the authorities of the time, appeared wholly
+unpromising, turned out to be of cardinal value. We should be warned that
+what we gain in a thousand cases through time-clock and card-catalogue
+methods, might be lost ten times over through the shackling of the
+initiative of a single man of unrecognized genius. And all this would be
+very much to the purpose; but it is not upon any such special pleading
+that the case ought to be made to rest. The loss that would be suffered
+transcends all these concrete and definable instances of it. It would be
+pervasive, fundamental, immeasurable. Grievous as might be the injury
+caused by the prevention of specific achievements of exceptional
+importance, this would be as nothing in comparison with the intellectual
+and spiritual loss entailed by the lowering of the human level, the
+devitalizing of the intellectual atmosphere, which must inevitably follow
+upon the application of factory methods to university life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The case of the eugenics propaganda is far more complex. In its origin,
+and doubtless in some of its present manifestations, it may lay claim to
+being directed toward aims which are particularly concerned with the
+higher interests of life. The author of "Hereditary Genius" certainly
+could not be accused of indifference to the part played in the past, or to
+be played in the future, by exceptional minds and characters; nor is it
+necessary to charge any of the present promoters of the propaganda with
+explicit failure to appreciate the importance of such minds and
+characters. The criticism is often made, from this standpoint, that the
+hard-and-fast rules which the eugenists propose would, in point of fact,
+have put under the ban some of the most illustrious names in the annals of
+mankind--men whose genius was accompanied with some of the very traits
+which they hold should most positively be prevented from appearing. But,
+however weighty this objection to the methods of eugenics may be, it is to
+be looked upon rather as an item on the debit side of the reckoning than
+as marking an ingrained defect, a fault at the very heart of the matter.
+The eugenists may well challenge those who urge merely this kind of
+objection to show that the losses thus pointed out are great enough to
+offset the gains, in the very same direction, which they regard their
+program as promising. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, they can at
+least set up the contention that, as a mere affair of quantity, genius
+will do better under their system than without it.
+
+What brings the eugenics movement into the Flatland category is not its
+attitude toward the question of genius, or perhaps even of singularity,
+but its attitude toward the life of mankind as a whole--if indeed it can
+be said to have any attitude toward the life of mankind as a whole. The
+profound elements of that life seem not to come at all within the range of
+its contemplation. Of course this does not apply to everything that comes
+from the eugenics camp, nor to every person that calls himself a eugenist.
+But on the other hand it is by no means only of the crude projects of
+half-educated reformers, or the outgivings of the prophets of our popular
+magazines, that it _is_ true. The agitation has derived much of its
+impetus, directly or indirectly, from the teachings of men of high
+scientific eminence who have attacked the question without any apparent
+realization of its deeper bearings on the whole character of human life.
+This influence often comes in the shape of exhortations, or suggestions,
+addressed to the public at a time when attention is centered upon some
+conspicuous crime or some particular phase of evil in the community;
+sweeping and radical regulation of the right of parenthood being urged as
+necessary for the prevention of all such distressing phenomena. Thus,
+after the attempted assassination of Mayor Gaynor, there was much talk of
+a "national campaign for mental hygiene," which should have the effect of
+"preventing Czolgoszes and Schranks." Its program was thus indicated by
+one of the foremost professors of medicine in the United States:
+
+    Provision must be made for the birth of children whose brains
+    shall, so far as possible, be innately of good quality; this means
+    the denial of the privilege of parenthood to those likely to
+    transmit bad nervous systems to their offsprings.
+
+What the carrying out of such a programme would mean to mankind at large,
+how profoundly it would modify those ideas about life, those standards of
+human dignity and human rights, which are so fundamental and so pervasive
+that they are taken for granted without express thought in every act and
+every feeling of all normal men and women--this does not seem ever to
+trouble the mind of the devotee of universal regulation. He sees the
+possibility of effecting a certain definite and measurable improvement;
+that the means by which this is accomplished must fatally impair those
+elemental conceptions of human life whose value transcends all
+measurement, he has not the insight or the imagination to recognize. The
+distinctions of social class, of wealth, of public honor, leave untouched
+the equality of men in the fundamentals of human dignity. They do not go
+to the vitals of self-respect; they do not interfere with a man's sense of
+what is due to him, and what is due from him, in the primary relations of
+life. If nature has been unkind to him in his physical or mental
+endowments, he does not therefore feel in the least disqualified, as
+regards his family, his friends, his neighbors, the stranger with whom he
+chances to come into contact, from receiving the same kind of
+consideration, in the essentials of human intercourse, that is accorded to
+those who are more fortunate; nor does he feel in any respect absolved
+from the duty of playing the full part of a man. Under the regime of
+medical classification--and the "mental hygiene" programme can mean
+nothing less than that--all this would disappear. Some men would be men,
+others would be something less. It is true that, so far as regards the
+imbecile, the insane, and the criminal, such a state of things obtains as
+it is; but this stands wholly apart from the general life of the race, and
+has no influence whatever on the habitual feelings and experiences of
+human beings. The normal life of mankind is shot through and through with
+the idea that a man's a man; all that is highest in feeling and conduct is
+closely bound up with it. Lessen its sway over our feelings and thoughts
+and instincts, and how much benefit in the shape of "preventing Czolgoszes
+and Schranks" would be required to compensate for the loss in nobleness,
+in depth, which human life would suffer?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The prohibition movement belongs, in the main, to a wholly different order
+of things. The fight against the evils of drink, as it has been carried on
+for a century or more, has been animated by a moral fervor which classes
+it rather with the fight against slavery, or with the great revivals of
+religion, than with those movements which owe their origin to a
+calculating and cold-blooded perfectionism. Its leaders have been fired
+with the ardor of a war directed against a devastating monster, to whose
+ravages was to be ascribed a large part of the misery and wickedness that
+afflict mankind. It is true that the economic and physiological aspects of
+the drink question were not ignored; the total-abstinence men were glad
+enough to have this second string to their bow. But the real fight was not
+against alcohol as one of many things concerning which the habits of men
+are more or less unwise; it was a fight against the Demon Rum, the ally of
+all the powers of darkness. The plea of the moderate drinker was rejected
+with scorn, not because there was any objection to moderate drinking in
+itself, but because total abstinence was the only true preventive of
+drunkenness, and drunkenness must be stamped out if mankind was to be
+saved. The moderate drinker was censured not because he was wasting his
+money, or failing to "conserve his efficiency," but because for the sake
+of a trivial self-indulgence he was giving countenance to a practice which
+was consigning millions of his fellow men to wretchedness in this world
+and to everlasting damnation in the next.
+
+Now this remarkable thing about the present extraordinary manifestation of
+growth and strength in the prohibition movement is that it is not in the
+least due to a strengthening of this sentiment. On the contrary, it is
+safe to say that feeling about drunkenness, about the drink evil in the
+sense in which it was understood a generation ago, is far less intense
+than it was then. The prohibition movement in its present stage is not the
+old prohibition movement advancing to triumph through the onward march of
+its proselyting zeal; of true prohibitionist zealots the number is
+probably less, in proportion to the population, than it was forty years
+ago. Its great accession of strength has come from the growth of that
+order of ideas which is common to all the "efficiency" movements of the
+time. And that growth helps it in two ways. On the one hand, to the little
+army of crusaders against the Demon Rum there has come the accession of a
+host of men who are not thinking about demons at all, but who calmly hold
+that the world would be better off without drinking, and that this is an
+all-sufficient reason for prohibiting it. And on the other hand, millions
+of persons who, in former days would have cried out against this way of
+improving the world--against the impairment of personal liberty and the
+sacrifice of social enjoyment and social variety--have no longer the
+courage of their convictions. The temper of the time is unfavorable to the
+assertion of the value of things so incapable of numerical measurement.
+Against the heavy battalions led by the statisticians, and the
+experimental psychologists, and the efficiency experts, what chance is
+there for successful resistance? On the opposing side can be rallied only
+such mere irregulars as are willing to fight for airy nothings--for the
+zest and colorfulness of life, for sociability and good fellowship, for
+preserving to each man access to those resources of relaxation and
+refreshment which, without injury to others, he finds conducive to his own
+happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that, in taking up these various movements,
+no attempt has been made at anything like comprehensive discussion of
+their merits. Whatever may be the balance between good and ill in any of
+them, they all have in common one tendency that bodes danger to the
+highest and most permanent interests of mankind; and it is with this alone
+that I am concerned. What that tendency is has, I trust, been made
+sufficiently clear; but it will perhaps be brought out more distinctly by
+a consideration of the "Life Extension" propaganda more detailed and
+specific than that given to the other three.
+
+Conspicuous in the literature of this propaganda is the appeal to standard
+modern practice in regard to machinery. "Those to whom the care of
+delicate mechanical apparatus is entrusted," says the New York
+Commissioner of Health, "do not wait until a breakdown occurs, but inspect
+and examine the apparatus minutely, at regular intervals, and thus detect
+the first signs of damage." "This principle of periodic inspection," says
+the prospectus of the Life Extension Institute, "has for many years been
+applied to almost every kind of machinery, except the most marvelous and
+complex of all,--the human body." To find fault with the drawing of this
+comparison, with the utilization of this analogy, would be foolish. That
+many persons would be greatly benefited by submitting to these inspections
+is certain; it is not impossible that they are desirable for most persons.
+And the analogy of the inspection of machinery serves excellently the
+purpose of suggesting such desirability. What is objectionable about its
+use by the Life Extension propagandists is their evident complacent
+satisfaction with the analogy as complete and conclusive. Yet nothing is
+more certain than that, even from the strictly medical standpoint, it
+ignores an essential distinction between the case of the man and the case
+of the machine. The machine is affected only by the measures that may be
+taken in consequence of the knowledge arising from the inspection; the man
+is affected by that knowledge itself. Whether the possible physical harm
+that may come to a man from having his mind disturbed by solicitude about
+his health is important or unimportant in comparison with the good that is
+likely to be done him by the following of the precautions or remedies
+prescribed, is a question of fact to which the answer varies in every
+individual case. It may be that in the great majority of cases the harm is
+insignificant in comparison with the good. However that may be, the
+question is there, and it is of itself fatal to the conclusiveness of the
+_argumentum ex machina_. That this is not a captious criticism, that it is
+based on substantial facts of life, ordinary experience sufficiently
+attests; but it may not be amiss to point to a conspicuous contemporary
+phenomenon which throws an interesting light on the matter. The Christian
+Scientists regard the _ignoring_ of disease as the primary requisite for
+health and longevity. That the Christian Science doctrine is a sheer
+absurdity, no one can hold more emphatically than the present writer; but
+it cannot be denied that in thousands of cases its acceptance has been of
+physical benefit through its subjective effect upon the believer.
+Personally, I would not purchase any benefit to my physical life at such
+sacrifice of my intellectual integrity; I mention the point only by way of
+accentuating the undisputed fact that the presence or absence of concern
+about health may have a potent influence on one's bodily welfare.
+
+Although it is a still further digression from the main purpose of this
+paper, I must permit myself a few words on another point relating to the
+strictly medical claims of the plan of "universal periodic medical
+examination." It is natural that its advocates say nothing about the
+danger of errors in diagnosis; everybody knows that this danger exists,
+but sensible men do not allow it to deter them from consulting a
+physician; in this, as in other affairs of life, they do not cry for the
+moon, but do the best they can. But it seems to be wholly overlooked by
+the advocates of the propaganda of "universal periodic examination" that
+the extent of this danger under present conditions affords no indication
+at all of what it would be under the system they contemplate. Its cardinal
+virtue, they constantly proclaim, would be the detection of the very
+slightest indication of impairment: "The task before us is to discover the
+first sign of departure from the normal physiological path, and promptly
+and effectually to apply the brake." The consequence must necessarily be
+that for one case of false alarm that occurs today there will be a score,
+or a hundred, under the new regime. For, in the first place, the
+individuals seeking advice will not be, as they now are in the main,
+selected cases in which there is some antecedent presumption that there is
+something wrong; and secondly, the examiner, bent upon the one great
+object of overlooking nothing, however slight, will give warnings which,
+whether technically justifiable or not, will in great numbers of cases
+have a wholly unjustifiable significance to the mind of the subject. Who
+shall say how many persons will thus be made to carry through life a
+burden of solicitude about their health from which, if left to their own
+devices, they would have been wholly free?
+
+But it is not my design to find fault with this scheme as a matter of
+medical benefit; if I have ventured to point out some drawbacks, it is
+only by way of showing that, even from the strictly medical standpoint the
+cult of uniformity, of standardization, of mechanical perfection, is not
+free from fault. But the great objection against that attitude of mind
+which is typified in the appeal to the analogy of machinery is far more
+vital. Our only interest in a machine is that we shall get out of it as
+much, and as exact, work as possible. Our interest in our bodies is not so
+limited. We may deliberately choose to forego the maximum of mechanical
+perfection for the sake of living our lives in a way more satisfactory to
+us than a constant care for that perfection would permit. Even the most
+ardent of health enthusiasts--unless he be an insane fanatic--draws the
+line somewhere. What he forgets is that other people prefer to draw the
+line somewhere else. They choose to run a certain amount of risk rather
+than have their health on their minds. To compel--whether by legal means
+or by social pressure--every man to take precautions concerning his own
+body which he deliberately prefers not to take; to make impossible, in
+this most intimate and personal of all human concerns, the various ways of
+acting which the infinite varieties of temperament and desire may
+dictate--this would be such an invasion of personal liberty, such a
+suppression of individuality, as would strike us all as appalling, had we
+not grown so habituated to the mechanical, the statistical, measurement of
+human values--to the Flatland view of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What gives to these movements that I have been discussing the character
+which I have been ascribing to them is not so much the specific things
+which they severally aim to accomplish, but the spirit in which they are
+carried on, and perhaps still more the spirit, or want of spirit, with
+which they are met. It is not that a balance is falsely struck between the
+benefit of the concrete, circumscribed, measurable improvement aimed at
+and the injury done to some deeper, more pervading, and quite immeasurable
+element or principle of life; it is that the balance is not struck at all.
+The subtler, the less tangible, element is simply ignored. It was not
+always so. It was not so in the last generation, or the generation before
+that. The phenomenon is one that is closely bound up with the ruling
+tendency of thought and action in all directions; it is not an accident of
+this or that particular agitation. Perhaps in no direction is it more
+convincingly manifested than in the prevailing tone of opinion, or at
+least of publicly expressed opinion, in regard to the objects and ideals
+of universities. That in the present state of the world's economic and
+social development on the one hand, and of the various sciences on the
+other, "service"--that is, service directly conducive to the general
+good--should be regarded as one of the great objects of universities, is
+altogether right; that it should be spoken of as their _only_ object,
+which is the ruling fashion, is most deplorable. The object of a
+university, said Mill, is to keep philosophy alive; yet it would go hard
+with the present generation to point to any one more truly and profoundly
+devoted to the service, the uplifting, of the masses of mankind than was
+John Stuart Mill. Were he living he would recognize, as thoroughly as the
+best efficiency man of them all, that the universities of today have
+opportunities and duties which were undreamed of half a century ago. But
+he would know, too, that in those activities which are directed to the
+promotion of practical efficiency, the university is but one of many
+agencies, and that if it were not doing the work some other means would be
+found for supplying the demand. Its paramount value he would find now, as
+he did then, in the service it renders not to the ordinary needs of the
+community but to the higher intellectual interests and strivings of
+mankind. That so few of us have the courage clearly to assert a position
+even distantly approaching this--such a position as was mere matter of
+course among university men in the last generation--is perhaps the most
+significant of all the indications of our drift toward Flatland.
+
+
+
+
+THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF PROPERTY
+
+
+I
+
+It is Hawthorne, I think, who tells us that when he was a boy he used once
+in a while to go down to the wharves in Salem, and lay his hand on the
+rail of some great East India merchantman, redolent of spices, and thus
+bring himself in actual touch with the mysterious orient. But there is
+nothing strange in this: almost anything that we can feel or see may start
+the flight of fancy, and open to us prophetic visions. This is even true
+of such dry symbols as figures, for our journalists would never publish
+statistics as they do, unless they knew that their readers liked to see
+them. Travellers from other parts of the world have often laughed at our
+fondness for revelling in the marvellous accounts of our material
+dimensions, but they should remember that people who do not have a taste
+for poetry may yet have a taste for romance, and that big figures do
+appeal to the imagination.
+
+It is true that there may be something portentous in bigness. "Tom" Reed,
+as he was affectionately called, said many wise things in a jesting way.
+At a certain crisis in our history he exclaimed: "I don't want Cuba and
+Hawaii; I've got more country now than I can love." A foreigner might
+suppose that our politicians had similarly become terror-stricken at the
+extent of our wealth and the rate at which it was growing. They may well
+give the impression that there has been created in the "money power," a
+Frankenstein monster, the control of whose murderous propensities has put
+them at their wit's end.
+
+Figures are notorious liars; they may arouse emotion if looked at in any
+light, but they must be looked at in many lights if we would get an
+emotional effect that is truly worth while. Some very large figures
+relating to Savings Banks have lately been published. The deposits in
+these banks amount to over four and two-thirds billions of dollars, and
+the number of separate accounts is about ten and two-thirds millions.
+Savings deposits in all banks are about $7,000,000,000, the number of
+accounts being 17,600,000. Probably the interest paid on the savings banks
+deposits is 160 millions of dollars a year. I confess that these figures
+give me much pleasure. I like to think that so many men have taken pains
+to guard their wives and children against miserable want; that so many
+women have to some extent made sure of their independence. It would not be
+surprising to find that twelve millions of families, possibly half the
+people of the country, were in this way protected against extreme penury.
+Viewed in this light, the growth of wealth does not seem so terrible. One
+might paraphrase Burke and say that such wealth as this loses half its
+evil through losing all its grossness. Indeed one might go further and say
+that if there were twice as much of this wealth, and every person in the
+country had an interest in it, it would lose all of its evil.
+
+To young people, this is all dry enough. They like to think of spending
+money, not of saving it. But it is not at all dry to their elders. It is
+what St. Beuve said of literary enjoyment, a "pure delice du gout et du
+coeur dans la maturite." It is a "Pleasure of the Imagination" that can be
+appreciated only by those like the old Scottish lawyer, who justified his
+penurious prudence by saying that he had shaken hands with poverty up to
+the elbow when he was young, and had no intention to renew the
+acquaintance. We have not, at least in the Northern part of our country,
+had the terrible experiences of the people of Europe, who are even now
+hiding their money in a vague apprehension of danger, inherited from
+centuries of rapine; but there are few of those who have given hostages to
+fortune who have not had many hours, and even years, of distressing
+anxiety concerning the future of their families. The greater the provision
+made against this heart-corroding care by a people, the happier should
+that people be.
+
+It seems so unselfish a luxury to revel in these comfortable statistics,
+that one is tempted to broaden his vision, and take in the four or five
+billions of assets heaped up by the six or seven millions of people who
+have insured their lives, and the one hundred and fifty or two hundred
+millions of dollars paid out yearly to lighten the distress attending the
+death of husbands and fathers of families,--to say nothing of a much
+greater sum repaid policy-holders. In many cases, happily, death causes no
+actual want; but against these cases we may offset the stupendous number
+of policies insuring against industrial accidents, possibly twenty-five
+millions of them, representing one quarter of the people of the
+country--for we may be sure that there are few payments made under these
+policies that do not actually alleviate suffering. We have here a colossal
+aggregate of altruism on the part of the policy-holders, an intangible
+national asset grander than all the material wealth which it represents;
+for the sordid element in all these savings is necessarily small. There is
+a point in the old story of the gambler on the Mississippi steamboat who
+listened attentively to the persuasive arguments of a life-insurance
+agent; he "allowed" that he was willing to bet on almost any kind of game,
+but declined to take a hand in one where he had to die to win. It is
+painful to think of the infinity of petty economies, of all the grievous
+deprivations, the positive hardships, undergone in so many millions of
+families, day by day, and year by year, to secure these policies of
+insurance; but, as Plato said, "the good is difficult." There is no
+heroism where there is no self-sacrifice. Whoever is disquieted by the
+growth of "materialism" may be relieved by reflecting that when so many
+millions of people are denying themselves present enjoyments in order that
+others may be spared pain in the future, there is such a leaven of high
+motive among us as may leaven the whole lump.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be easy to keep on in this exalted strain, but perhaps it is a
+little too much in the style of a life-insurance advertisement. We may
+correct any such impression, by changing our point of view. When we
+consider the difficulties and the hindrances in the way of laying up these
+savings, while the moral effect of the self-sacrifice hitherto involved is
+enhanced, the question comes up whether this altruistic exertion can be
+maintained in the future. How many of the ten millions of depositors in
+the savings banks have considered that their rulers at Washington give
+away every year in military pensions a sum equal to all, and more than
+all, the income earned by the four billions of dollars in the banks? When
+after many years, it seemed that this burden might at last begin to be
+lightened, it was suddenly increased by the last Congress perhaps thirty
+millions a year. Why should so many people scrimp, year in and year out,
+when the equivalent of all the toil and all the self-denial is thus swept
+away?
+
+Senator Aldrich has told the country that its affairs could be carried on
+for three hundred millions of dollars a year less than it now pays. He is
+a very competent witness, and no one has contradicted him. If the attempt
+had been made, he could perhaps have shown--he could certainly show
+now--that three hundred millions was an understatement. But this sum is
+nearly equal to the income earned by the investments of all the savings
+banks and all the life-insurance companies of the country. If our rulers
+had borrowed ten billions of dollars at three per cent. and had wasted it
+all, the country would be financially about where it is now. They have not
+borrowed this ten billions of dollars, but if Mr. Aldrich is right, they
+are spending the interest on it. They have in effect mortgaged the wealth
+of the people to the extent of all their deposits in the savings banks,
+and all their investments in life-insurance companies, and are wasting the
+income of these funds faster than it is earned. If anyone thinks this is
+stating the case too strongly, he may add the waste of our state and
+municipal rulers to that of those at Washington, and Mr. Aldrich's figure
+will seem moderate enough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+People who are comfortably off will reply to all this that we are getting
+on pretty well, and seem to be on the whole doing better from year to
+year. There is a well known passage in Macaulay's History which may be
+thought to give support to optimism of this kind. "No ordinary
+misfortune," he said, "no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make
+a nation wretched as the constant progress of physical knowledge, and the
+constant effort of every man to better his condition will do to make a
+nation prosperous."
+
+No one will deny that the history of England justifies this statement; but
+let us remember the reason that Macaulay gave for this insuperable
+prosperity. "Every man has felt entire confidence that the State would
+protect him in the possession of what had been earned by his diligence and
+hoarded by his self-denial."
+
+It is impossible to maintain that every man now feels this entire
+confidence. The income "earned by his diligence" is henceforth to be taxed
+at a progressive rate, and the demagogues are already complaining that the
+rate is not high enough. The inheritance of his family, "hoarded by his
+self-denial," protected by the State until within a few years, now pays
+taxes which amount to the interest on a billion of dollars. We are assured
+by a railroad officer that three measures of legislation have increased
+the expenses of his corporation alone by a sum equal to the interest on
+$32,000,000, with no appreciable benefit to the public. The number of such
+laws is incalculable, and the cost of complying with them has become an
+almost intolerable burden. The income of the railroads declines, while
+their taxes increase, in some cases two or three fold. Lawyers and office
+holders thrive and are cheerful; investors suffer and tremble.
+
+The people of New York seem just now to be in a way to find out how the
+enormous taxes which their rulers have levied on them are expended; but
+New York has no monopoly of corrupt rulers, and the cost of investigating
+extravagance is itself extravagant. And yet people wonder at the increased
+cost of living! Unfortunately the oppressions of government do worse than
+discourage business enterprise; they tend to demoralize society. There are
+too many men who hesitate to marry because they do not have confidence in
+the future, too many married people who do not dare to have more than one
+or two children, if they dare to have any, to make it possible to maintain
+that there is now no dread of more than ordinary misgovernment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is difficult to ascertain the total wealth of the country. The census
+bureau is notoriously dilatory. Its latest estimate was for 1904, when
+this aggregate was computed to be $107,000,000,000, or about $1,300 _per
+caput_. Assuming this ratio, the wealth of our people should now be over
+$120,000,000,000; but the figures are largely conjectural. It happens,
+however, that we possess some figures that are altogether trustworthy. In
+the year 1909 the Federal Government imposed a tax of one per cent. on the
+net income of every corporation, joint stock company, or association,
+including insurance companies, organized for profit, whenever this net
+income is over $5,000. There are some other exemptions, but they are not
+sufficient to demand consideration, and may be disregarded. Now we may be
+absolutely certain of one thing, and that is that the net income of those
+concerns will not be overestimated. Their net income may be more than what
+they report for the purposes of taxation, but it surely cannot be less.
+For the past year it seems probable that this tax will produce nearly
+thirty-five millions of dollars net income, after deducting all expenses,
+losses, depreciation, interest on debts and on deposits paid by banks, and
+dividends from other companies subject to the tax.
+
+It may be more, but it cannot be less. Here our certainty ends. Guesses
+will vary, but in view of what we know in a general way of the conditions
+of business during the past year, we may perhaps venture to assume that
+the net income of these concerns is six per cent. of their real wealth. If
+this assumption is correct, their total wealth is 60 billions of dollars,
+or one half of the total wealth of the nation.
+
+This estimate may be confirmed to some extent by other statistics. Calling
+the physical value of the railroads fourteen billions, their net earnings
+at five per cent. would be 700 millions, which corresponds well enough
+with the figures of the government, although some railroad men would make
+their net earnings much less. We do not know the net income of the untaxed
+corporations. Their returns would show its amount, but the government does
+not supply the information. As there must be now nearly 250,000 such
+corporations, if their average income is only $2,000 a year, the total
+could be $500,000,000. If it is $4,000, their income would be almost a
+billion dollars. On a 5 per cent. basis, the wealth of these corporations
+would be nearly 20 billion dollars. It seems, on the whole, that the
+wealth held by corporations is probably more than half our total wealth
+rather than less.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bearing of these figures on our subject is now apparent. All of this
+property is disfranchised. It is, economically, to a very great extent
+disfranchised; politically, it is altogether disfranchised. What I mean by
+this is that the owners of this wealth, as owners, have very little to
+say, and nothing to do, about its care and management. Probably more than
+half of our people are directly or indirectly interested in it as owners.
+They have been attracted by a desire to share, however humbly, in big and
+famous enterprises, by the freedom from liability of the portion of their
+estates outside the particular investments, and by the freedom at death or
+withdrawal of associates from appraisals and accountings and probable
+closing of the business, as is the inevitable practice in mere
+partnerships. Two centuries ago people who saved money could hardly find
+ways to invest it. The practice of incorporation has enormously increased
+our wealth by putting a stop to hoarding without interest, stimulating
+saving, and broadening industry. The number of individual owners of the
+bonds and stocks of corporations is incalculable, and their holdings added
+to those of savings banks, insurance companies, trust companies and other
+fiduciary institutions, churches, hospitals, and colleges, make up a total
+of almost fabulous extent. It is true that large sums are loaned to
+persons, and on mortgages of real estate; but for most people such
+investments are not desirable or convenient, and they are altogether
+inadequate to absorb the vast sums that are available. In fact probably
+most investments of this character are now made by corporations who gather
+the savings of little depositors and premium payers; and it would cost
+much more to make them in any other way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Corporations, therefore, are necessary, but they necessarily separate the
+ownership of wealth from its management. To invest is generally to entrust
+your money to another, and those who invest in corporations, unless they
+control them, are economically disfranchised, because the stockholders in
+all large corporations almost never influence the management of their
+property, and as a rule do not know anything about it. They don't because
+they can't. A few years ago a very large number of people were much
+worried by the exposure of some scandalous doings by the managers of
+certain great life-insurance companies. They would have been very glad to
+combine and choose better managers if they could; but they couldn't. Laws
+were passed for the purpose of enabling the policy-holders to select their
+trustees, but the only result has been a ridiculous and rather expensive
+fiasco. As in politics, the rank and file select the managers selected for
+them by a few men who understand the situation. When many thousands of
+people own stock in a concern, they live all over this continent and in
+foreign parts, and it is a physical impossibility to bring them together.
+They do not know one another, and very few of them know much about the
+affairs of the concern, and if they know anything of the candidates that
+may be suggested, it is generally only by hearsay.
+
+How many of the eighty-eight thousand stockholders in the Pennsylvania
+Railroad, for instance, have ever attended a meeting? For that matter, how
+many of them have ever studied the report of the railroad? Not one in ten
+could spare the time to read it, perhaps not one in a hundred could master
+it. The report may be read in a few hours; it would take as many months,
+if not years to verify it. Very nearly half these stockholders are women;
+the average holding is 120 shares, (par $50), and one-sixth of the
+stockholders own less than 10 shares each. Ten thousand of them are
+abroad. Much stock is held by trustees, whose beneficiaries are probably
+very numerous, and totally incompetent to understand railroad management.
+There are also more than twenty thousand holders of stock in subsidiary
+corporations controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad. No one can tell the
+number of bondholders; perhaps there are as many as there are employees,
+making an aggregate of almost half a million.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sometimes trustees abuse their office; but on the whole they have done
+pretty well, and whether they have or not, there is no other way in which
+large capitals can be managed. All civilization rests on confidence. Such
+a vast fabric could not be built on confidence unless confidence was
+deserved. As a matter of fact, a man invests his money just as he invests
+in a surgeon. He does not think of directing the surgeon how to operate.
+If the operation does not succeed, he tries another surgeon next time--if
+there is a next time.
+
+Of course all this applies chiefly to the large corporations. There are
+many thousands of small ones, having few stockholders, who reside where
+the business is established. These stockholders know more or less of the
+details of the business; they can judge to some extent how it is carried
+on, they are often acquainted with the managers, or are the managers
+themselves, and if not, they are able sometimes to combine and change the
+management. And I will anticipate a little and say here that the property
+of such a corporation located in a small town is often to some extent not
+politically disfranchised, because the people of the town understand that
+they are directly interested in the prosperity of the business. But it
+seems almost impossible for the stockholders to change the management of a
+large corporation. It has been done a few times. Mr. Harriman notoriously
+did it by using the money of one concern to buy the stock of another, and
+that is almost the only way in which it has been done. No doubt there has
+been an immense deal of combination which has resulted in change of
+management, but this has not been because the stockholders combined to
+oust their trustees, but because they thought they saw a good chance to
+sell their stock to those who would pay high for the control, or to
+participate in these combinations. There have been a good many cases where
+an enterprising speculator has managed to get hold of a majority of the
+stock and change the control, and powerful bankers can sometimes get
+proxies enough to put a stop to bad management; but spontaneous movements
+of this kind on the part of the mass of the stockholders are extremely
+rare.
+
+Beyond dispute then, the great mass of wealth held by corporations is
+almost wholly under the control of their managers, and not the mass of the
+owners. Mr. Hill has recently testified that he never knew a stockholder
+to attend a meeting except to make trouble; by which he perhaps meant that
+when a single stockholder appeared, it was to get paid for not making
+trouble.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It need hardly be said that no such thing as legitimate representation of
+corporate wealth is known in our politics, and the representation of
+individual wealth is very limited. The theory of government by manhood
+suffrage, so far as there is any theory, is now entirely personal. In
+early times the freemen of the town, or little commune, met and legislated
+according to their needs. To be a freeman one had to own property; to
+"have a stake in the country." Nowadays nearly all the men who have no
+property can vote, and some that have property cannot. In England, they
+are doing away with "plural voters." Heretofore it was thought just, when
+a man owned land in more than one place, that he should have his say in
+the government of all; but this is now forbidden. The right was never
+recognized in this country, partly because formerly men seldom owned
+property in two places, but as transportation improved the conditions
+changed. The "commuters" are legion. Their business and their capital are
+under one jurisdiction and their dwellings and families under another; but
+they can vote in only one. Many thousands of men own houses in both city
+and country. They could help in the government of both, but are
+disfranchised in one or the other. Under our complicated systems of
+registration, they are often disfranchised at both.
+
+Of course when population increases, the town meeting becomes a physical
+impossibility. There is no more direct legislation; it has to be
+delegated. The power is transferred to the city councils, and to the state
+and national legislatures. In other words, the interests of the owners of
+wealth are put in charge of trustees. According to Hamilton, the theory of
+our government is that the people will "naturally" choose the wisest of
+their number to represent them. There is not much basis for this
+assumption. Rousseau scouted it. According to him, the _volonte generale_
+could be ascertained only in the town meeting, and he seriously maintained
+that the ideal government for the Roman empire was by the gangs of rioters
+that the politicians marshalled in the Forum at Rome under the name of
+_comitia_. All that the theory of our government requires, is that our
+rulers shall be such men as are designated by the majority of the voters.
+That they should be wise and good men may accord with the theory of
+aristocracy; it is no part of the theory of democracy, and is certainly a
+very small part of the practice.
+
+When I say that half of the property of this country is disfranchised, I
+mean that the nature of this property is such that it is peculiarly
+subject to the power of rulers, and that the owners of it have hardly any
+legitimate way of defending it against the arbitrary exercise of this
+power. The corporation is created by the legislature; men cannot combine
+their capitals and avoid unlimited liability for the debts of the
+combination, unless the law specifically authorizes the proceeding. Of
+course, if the legislature has power to make such grants, it must have
+power to alter them. In short, property held by a corporation is held at
+the will of the legislature, and in a way and to an extent that property
+held by an individual is not. It is not very easy for the legislature to
+plunder or blackmail individuals, even when they are disfranchised,
+because it has to be done by general laws, and direct methods arouse
+direct opposition. But, as we have seen, stockholders as a class cannot
+defend their rights, and as things are now, their trustees cannot have
+much to say concerning the laws that affect their property. Managers of
+large corporations are now commonly denounced as unfit to be legislators,
+and are practically excluded from the halls of legislation. In some states
+they are even specifically disfranchised, so far as holding office is
+concerned, and, under the new despotism, ironically dubbed the new
+freedom, every man whose wealth and ability make his aid important to many
+enterprises, is to be forbidden to participate in more than one. Yet
+property is almost entirely subject to the disposition of the legislature!
+not entirely, for the courts afford some protection; but even this is now
+threatened: we may "progress" so far as to make it unconstitutional for a
+judge to declare any law unconstitutional.
+
+It goes without saying that half the property of the country will not
+submit to spoliation without a struggle. If it cannot have representation
+legitimately, it will try to get it illegitimately or extra legitimately.
+The managers of corporations have in the past found many ways to influence
+legislation. Despite the prejudices against them, some of them have had
+themselves chosen as legislators; even as judges. Some have brought about
+the election of legislators who would act in their favor, and have even
+bribed legislators. Until recently it was not even unlawful for these
+managers to use the money of their stockholders in political
+contributions; some managers acted on the "Good Lord! Good Devil!"
+principle. Probably most of the politicians paid no railroad fares. Many
+of them got passes for their families and their friends; and it was
+certainly to be expected that they should listen to the requests of those
+who granted these favors. The situation became grotesque when a great
+ruler, seeking a nomination to office with the proclaimed purpose of
+enforcing the laws against rebates and passes, required the railroad
+managers to furnish him free transportation on his righteous mission.
+
+There were obvious objections to these practices, and public opinion
+finally compelled our rulers to pass laws prohibiting them. Theoretically
+the managers of corporations are now effectually disfranchised. They dare
+not offer themselves as candidates for office. They scarcely dare to
+favor, even secretly, the choice of rulers who will listen to them.
+Fortunately, however, they hardly longer dare to offer bribes. Anyone on
+friendly terms with them is politically a suspicious character. Any lawyer
+who has been employed by them becomes unavailable as a candidate for
+office. Our legislators, as was to be expected, at once showed the effect
+of release from restraint. It has been uncharitably said that in revenge
+for the loss of their passes and other favors, they attacked the
+railroads; but there has been considerable voting of more mileage, and our
+congressmen at least voted themselves ample indemnity in larger salaries,
+and they opened fire on corporations in general and railroads in
+particular, with a broadside of statutes. Against this fire the property
+of millions of small holders in the corporations has been almost
+defenceless. Some of these statutes are so drawn that the plain business
+man does not know whether he is a criminal or not; if he could afford to
+consult the best of lawyers it would not help him much. The only safe
+course to pursue is to agree with the adversary quickly; to plead guilty
+to whatever charge is made, and beg for mercy. That one is innocent is
+immaterial. The expense of litigation is nothing to the rulers of the
+United States; but it may be ruinous to their subjects. The cost of the
+commissions and investigations and prosecutions of the last few years has
+been enormous. Only lawyers can contemplate it without consternation.
+
+True, the managers of large corporations can make their protests heard.
+They can publish their pleas in the newspapers, and issue pamphlets, and
+they can appear before committees and commissions, and submit arguments.
+The managers of small corporations cannot afford such measures. You might
+as well refer a servant-girl who couldn't collect her wages, to the Hague
+Tribunal, as to send a plain business man to Washington to plead his
+cause.
+
+The animus of these statutes is hostility to great corporations. But it is
+impossible to legislate against great corporations without hitting the
+small ones. Take the case of the recent corporation income tax; the
+244,000 corporations exempt from the tax had to make out their inventories
+and keep their books and report their proceedings precisely as if they
+were liable to the tax. A fine of from $1,000 to $10,000 and a 50 per
+cent. increased assessment were the penalties for failure. But the cost of
+complying with all the requirements of the law, for a corporation having
+an income of two or three thousand dollars, cannot be figured at much less
+than the tax. Many corporations have no net income. The managers of these
+concerns are not expert book-keepers, and their returns must be in many
+cases so inaccurate as to expose them to prosecution if the game were
+worth the candle. If we assume that the average cost of making out the
+return is only ten dollars, we have a bill of $2,400,000, which the
+stockholders, or the employees, or the customers, must pay for the
+privilege of demonstrating that the small corporations are not liable to
+pay anything at all.
+
+The corporation income tax law was really an act of popular dislike of
+corporations exercising great monopolies. Grouping all the little
+corporations with them was an absurdity and a cruelty.
+
+Corporations have no feelings. They are not wounded by the hostility of
+legislatures. The managers of corporations of large capital have feelings,
+and some of them are wounded in their pride by this hostility. But they
+need not suffer in their pockets. They are abundantly able to protect
+their own property; they know how to make money on the short side of the
+market as well as the long side. But the managers of the concerns of small
+capital are seldom able to do this. Oppressive laws cause suffering to
+them, to the mere holders of stock in all corporations, to the creditors
+of all, to the employees, and to the customers. Many of these laws profess
+to be meant to favor small people as against big people--to restrain the
+rich corporations so that the poor ones may have more liberty. There is no
+evidence to show that this result is attained, or that the country would
+be better off if it were attained. But there is plenty of evidence to show
+that half the people of the country are suffering from these legislative
+attacks on their property. The men who manage the great corporations,
+whatever their faults, are men of enterprise and courage. They are the
+true progressives; the prosperity that they diffuse among the whole people
+is ordinarily more than can be destroyed by our progressive politicians.
+They are now beginning to feel that their rulers are discriminating
+against them as a class, and are uneasy and disheartened, and reluctant to
+embark in new enterprises; and the progress of the country is halted by
+their apprehension. It is not the rich who suffer most: it is "the
+unemployed," and the millions of dumb, helpless, struggling thrifty men
+and women whose hard earned savings constitute a large part of the capital
+of the corporations; and who are already alarmed at the shrinking value of
+these savings. It is, perhaps most of all, the mass of ignorant unthrifty
+poor, whose chief wealth is the wages paid them by the corporations which
+they are taught to look on as their oppressors.
+
+
+
+
+RAILWAY JUNCTIONS
+
+
+In his illuminating essay on _The Lantern-Bearers_, Stevenson complains of
+the vacuity of that view of life which he finds expressed in the pages of
+most realistic writers. "This harping on life's dulness and man's meanness
+is a loud profession of incompetence; it is one of two things: the cry of
+the blind eye, _I cannot see_, or the complaint of the dumb tongue, _I
+cannot utter_." And then, with a fine flourish, he declares:--"If I had no
+better hope than to continue to revolve among the dreary and petty
+businesses, and to be moved by the paltry hopes and fears with which they
+surround and animate their heroes, I declare I would die now. But there
+has never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet; if it were spent
+waiting at a railway junction, I would have some scattering thoughts, I
+could count some grains of memory, compared to which the whole of one of
+these romances seems but dross."
+
+"If it were spent waiting at a railway junction" ... Here, with his
+instinct for the perfect phrase, Stevenson has pointed a finger at the one
+experience which is commonly accepted as the acme of imaginable dulness.
+This man, who could be happy at a railway junction, could not have found a
+prouder way of boasting to posterity that he had never "faltered more or
+less in his great task of happiness."
+
+It is because railway junctions are the most unpopular places in the world
+that they have been singled out for praise in THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW. Poor
+places, lonely and forlorn, cursed by so many, celebrated by so
+few,--surely they have waited over-long for an apologist.... But first of
+all, in order to be fair, we must consider the customary view of these
+points of punctuation in the text of travel.
+
+Far up in Vermont, at a point vaguely to the east of Burlington, there is
+a place called Essex Junction. It consists of a dismal shed of a station,
+a bewildering wilderness of tracks, and an adjacent cemetery, thickly
+populated (according to a local legend) with the bodies of people who have
+died of old age while waiting for their trains. This elegiac locality was
+visited, many years ago, by the Honorable E.J. Phelps, once ambassador of
+the United States to the court of St. James's. He was allotted several
+hours for the contemplation of the cemetery; and his consequent
+meditations moved him to the composition of a poem, in four stanzas, which
+is a little classic of its kind. Space is lacking for a quotation of more
+than the initial stanza; but the taste of a poem, as of a pie, may
+conveniently be judged from a quadrant of the whole.--
+
+  With saddened face and battered hat
+    And eye that told of blank despair,
+  On wooden bench the traveller sat,
+    Cursing the fate that brought him there.
+  "Nine hours," he cried, "we've lingered here
+    With thoughts intent on distant homes,
+  Waiting for that delusive train
+    That, always coming, never comes:
+      Till weary, worn,
+      Distressed, forlorn,
+  And paralyzed in every function!
+      I hope in hell
+      His soul may dwell
+  Who first invented Essex Junction!"
+
+It was apparently the purpose of the writer to convey the impression that
+his period of waiting had been passed without pleasure; but yet we may
+easily confute him with another quotation from _The Lantern-Bearers_. "One
+pleasure at least," says Stevenson, "he tasted to the full--his work is
+there to prove it--the keen pleasure of successful literary composition."
+Was this honorable author ever moved to such eloquence by an audience with
+Queen Victoria? Never; so far as we know. Was not Essex Junction,
+therefore, a more inspiring spot than Buckingham Palace? Undeniably. Then,
+why complain of Essex Junction?
+
+For, indeed, the pleasure that we take from places is nothing more nor
+less than the pleasure we put into them. A person predisposed to boredom
+can be bored in the very nave of Amiens; and a person predisposed to
+happiness can be happy even in Camden, New Jersey. I know: for I have
+watched American tourists in Amiens; and once, when I had gone to Camden,
+to visit Walt Whitman in his granite tomb, I was wakened to a strange
+exhilaration, and wandered all about that little dust-heap of a city
+amazing the inhabitants with a happiness that required them to smile. "All
+architecture," said Whitman, "is what you do to it when you look upon
+it;... all music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the
+instruments": and I must have had this passage singing in my blood when I
+enjoyed that monstrous courthouse dome which stands up like a mushroom in
+the midst of Camden.
+
+I have never been to Essex Junction; but I should like to go there--just
+to see (in Whitman's words) what I could do to it. Imagine it upon a windy
+night of winter, when a hundred discommoded passengers are turned out,
+grumbling, underneath the stars,--coughing invalids, and kicking infants,
+and indignant citizens, scrambling haphazard among tottering trunks, and
+picking their way from train to train. Imagine their faces, their voices,
+their gesticulations: here, indeed, you will see more than a theatre-full
+of characters. Or, if human beings do not interest you, imagine the
+mysterious gleam of yellow windows veiled behind a drift of intermingled
+smoke and steam. Listen, also, to the clang of bells, the throb and puff
+of the engines, and the shrill shriek of their whistles. Or peer into the
+station-shed, made stuffy by the breath of many loiterers; and contrast
+their death in life with the life in death of those others who loiter
+through eternity beneath the gravestones of the cemetery. I can imagine
+being happy with all this (and even writing a paragraph about it
+afterwards): but, above all, I should like to gather those hundred
+discommoded passengers upon the station-platform, and to rehearse and lead
+them in a solemn chant of the refrain of Phelps's poem. Imagine a hundred
+voices singing lustily in unison,
+
+      "I hope in hell
+      His soul may dwell
+  Who first invented Essex Junction,"
+
+under the vast cathedral vaulting of the night, until the adjacent dead
+should seem to stand up in their graves and join the anthem of
+anathema.... Who is there so bold to tell me that enjoyment is impossible
+in such a place as this?
+
+There is very little difference between places, after all: the true
+difference is between the people who regard them. I should rather read a
+description of Hoboken by Rudyard Kipling than a description of Florence
+by some New England schoolmarm. To the poet, all places are poetical; to
+the adventurous, all places are teeming with adventure: and to experience
+a lack of joy in any place is merely a sign of sluggish blood in the
+beholder.
+
+So, at least, it seems to me; for not otherwise can I explain the fact
+that, like my beloved R.L.S., I have always enjoyed waiting at railway
+junctions. I love not merely the marching phrases, but also the commas and
+the semi-colons of a journey,--those mystic moments when "we look before
+and after" and need not "pine for what is not." I have never done much
+waiting in America, which is in the main a country of express trains, that
+hurl their lighted windows through the night like what Mr. Kipling calls
+"a damned hotel;" but there is scarcely a country of Europe except Russia
+whose railway junctions are unknown to me. In many of these little
+nameless places I have experienced memorable hours: and because the less
+enthusiastic Baedeker has neglected to star and double-star them, I have
+always wanted to praise them, in print somewhat larger than his own. Space
+is lacking in the present article for a complete guide to all the railway
+junctions of Europe; but I should like to commemorate a few, in gratitude
+for what befell me there.
+
+There is a junction in Bavaria whose name I have forgotten; but it is very
+near Rothenburg, the most picturesquely medieval of all German cities. It
+consists merely of a station and two intersecting tracks. When you enter
+the station, you observe what seems to be a lunch-counter; but if you step
+up to it and innocently order food, a buxom girl informs you that no food
+is ever served there--and then everybody laughs. This pleasant
+cachinnation attracts your attention to the assembled company. It consists
+of many peasants, in their native costumes (which any painter would be
+willing to journey many miles to see), who are enjoying the delicious
+experience of travel. They are great travelers, these peasants. Once a
+month they take the train to Rothenburg, and once a month they journey
+home again, to talk of the experience for thirty days. All of them have
+heard of Nuremberg [which is actually less than a hundred miles
+away],--that vast and wonderful metropolis, so far, so very far, beyond
+the ultimate horizon of their lives. They would like to see it some
+day--as I should like to see the Taj Mahal--but meanwhile they content
+themselves with the great adventure of going to Rothenburg,--a city that
+is really much more interesting, if they could only know. In the very
+midst of these congregated travelers, I casually set down a suit-case
+which was plastered over with many labels from many lands; and this
+suit-case affected them as I might be affected by a messenger from Mars.
+They spelled out many unfamiliar languages, and a murmur of amazement
+swept through the entire company when one of them discovered that that
+suit-case had been to Morocco. Morocco, they assured me, was a place where
+black men rode on camels; and I had no heart to tell them that it was a
+country where white men rode on mules. Then another of these travelers--an
+old man, with a face like one of Albrecht Duerer's drawings--discovered a
+label that read "Venezia." "Is that," he said, "Venedig?" with a little
+gasp. "Yes; Venedig," I responded, "where the streets are water." Slowly
+he removed his hat. "Ach, Venedig!" he sighed; and then he stooped down,
+and, with the uttermost solemnity, he kissed the label.... And then I
+understood the vast impulsion of that _wanderlust_ which has pushed so
+many, many Germans southward, to overrun that golden city that is wedded
+to the sea. I have forgotten the name of that junction, as I said before;
+but I have never been so happy in Munich as in this lonely station where
+there is no food.
+
+Speaking of food reminds me of Bobadilla, in southern Spain. Bobadilla
+sounds as if it ought to be the name of a medieval town, with ghosts of
+gaunt imaginative knights riding forth to tilt with windmills; but there
+is no town at all at Bobadilla,--merely two railway restaurants set on
+either side of several intersecting tracks. For some mysterious reason,
+passengers from the four quarters of the compass--that is to say, from
+Cordoba, Granada, Algeciras, or Sevilla--are required to alight here, and
+eat, and change their trains. I remember Bobadilla as the place where you
+spend your counterfeit money. Many of the current coins of southern Spain
+are made of silver; and the rest are made of lead. For leaden five-peseta
+pieces there is a local name, "Sevillan dollars," which ascribes their
+coinage to the crafty artisans of the capital of Andalucia. These pieces,
+which are plentiful, are just as good as silver dollars--when you can
+persuade anyone to take them. The currency of any coinage, except gold,
+depends entirely upon the faith of those who pass and take it and has no
+reference to its intrinsic value; and, in southern Spain, the leaden
+dollars serve as counters for just as many commercial transactions as the
+dollars made of silver. The only difference is that they are commonly
+accepted only after protest. In every Spanish shop, a slab of marble is
+built into the counter, and on this slab all proffered coins are slapped
+before they are accepted by the merchant. The traveler soon learns to
+fling his change upon the pavement; and many merry arguments ensue
+regarding the _timbre_ of their ring. I remember how once, in the wondrous
+town of Ronda, when a beggar had imposed himself upon me as a guide and
+led me into a church where High Mass was being chanted, I gave him a
+peseta to get rid of him, and at once he flung it upon the pavement of the
+church, and chased it, listening, across the nave. Thereafter, he
+protested loudly that the piece was lead, and disrupted the intoning of
+the priests. "Very well," said I, "it is, in any case, a gift; if you
+don't want it, I will take it back": and he accepted it with bows and
+smiles, and allowed the weary priests to continue their intonings. But
+Bobadilla is the one place in southern Spain where money is never jingled
+upon marble. There is no time between trains to quibble over minor
+matters; and a "Sevillan dollar" accepted from one passenger is blithely
+handed to another who is traveling in the opposite direction. I discovered
+this fact on the occasion of my first visit to this interesting junction;
+and on subsequent occasions I have eaten my fill at one or another of the
+railway restaurants and settled the account with all the leaden money
+garnered up from weeks of traveling. There is surely no dishonesty in
+observing the custom of a country; and Bobadilla may be treasured by all
+travelers as a clearing-house for counterfeit coins.
+
+Again, in northern France, it was merely by some accident of changing
+trains that I discovered the lovely little town of Dol. I found myself in
+Saint Malo, for obvious reasons; and I desired to go to Mont Saint-Michel,
+for reasons still more obvious--Mother Poulard's omelettes, and
+architecture, and the incoming of the tide. Between them--the map told
+me--was situated Dol. I made inquiries of the porter in the Saint Malo
+hotel. He responded in English,--the English of _Ici on parle anglais_.
+"Dol," said he, "is a dull place." He pronounced "Dol" and "dull" in
+precisely the same manner, and smiled at his sickly pun. I did not like
+that smile; and I alighted at the town that he despised. It was a little
+picture-book of a place, with many toy-like medieval houses clustered side
+by side around a market-place where peasants twisted the tails of cows. I
+strolled to the cathedral--and found myself mysteriously in England. It
+was a manly Norman edifice, sane and reticent and strong, set in a
+veritable English green, with little houses round about, reminding one of
+Salisbury. I entered the Cathedral; and found the nave to be composed in
+what is called in England the "decorated" style, and the choir to give
+hints of "perpendicular." And then I remembered, with a start, that the
+ancestors of all that is most beautiful in England had migrated from
+Normandy, and that here I was visiting them in their antecedent home.
+"Saxon and Norman and Dane are we;" and all that was Norman in me reached
+forth with groping hands to grasp the palms of those old builders who
+reared this little sacrosanct cathedral in the far-off times when one
+dominion extended to either side of the English Channel.
+
+It was by a similar accident--desiring to transfer myself from Bourges to
+Auxerre--that I discovered the wonderful junction-town of Nevers, which,
+despite the guide-books, is more interesting than either of the others. It
+possesses a Gothic cathedral with an apse at either end, that looks as if
+two churches had collided and telescoped each other. There is also a
+Romanesque church at Nevers which is just as simple and as manly as either
+of the famous abbeys in Caen; and a chateau with rounded towers, which
+once belonged to Mazarin. But the most amusing feature of this town is
+that, though Bourges packs itself to bed at ten o'clock, Nevers sits
+blithely up till twelve, listening to music in cafes, and watching
+moving-pictures; and this amiable incongruity in a medieval town makes you
+bless that complication of the time-table which has forced you, against
+forethought, to stay there over night.
+
+It is difficult for me to remember a railway junction in which there was
+nothing to do; but perhaps Pyrgos, in Greece, comes nearest to this
+description. At this point, you change cars on your way from Patras to
+Olympia. The town is made of mud: that is to say, the single-storied
+houses are built of unbaked clay. There is nothing to see in Pyrgos. But I
+amused myself by addressing the inhabitants, in the English language, with
+an eloquent oration that soon gathered them under my control; and
+thereafter I set a hundred of them at the pleasant task of trying to push
+the train for Olympia on its way to take me to the Hermes of Praxiteles. I
+knew no word of their language, nor did they of mine; but they understood
+that that train should be started, if human force were sufficient to help
+the cars upon their way: and finally, when the engine puffed and snorted
+with a tardily awakened sense of duty, the train was cheered by the entire
+population as I waved my hand from the rear platform and quoted one of
+Daniel Webster's perorations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is it--I have often wondered--so difficult as people think, to be happy in
+an hour "spent waiting at a railway junction"?... The kingdom of happiness
+is within us; or else there is no truth in our assumption that the will of
+man is free: and I am inclined to pity a man who, being happy in
+Amalfi--the loveliest of all the places I have ever seen--cannot also
+manage to be happy in Pyrgos--or in Essex Junction--and to communicate his
+happiness to his responsive fellow-travelers.
+
+The true enjoyment of traveling is to enjoy traveling; not to relish
+merely the places you are going to, but to relish also the adventure of
+the going. The most difficult train-journey I remember is the twenty-hour
+trip from Lisbon to Sevilla, with a change of cars in the ghastly early
+morning at the border-town of Badajoz and another change at noon at the
+sun-baked, parched, and God-forsaken town of Merida; and yet I relish as
+red letters on my personal map of Spain a pleasant quarrel over the price
+of sandwiches at Badajoz and the way a muleteer of Merida flung a colored
+cloak over his shoulder and posed for an unconscious moment like a
+painting by Zuloaga.
+
+And this philosophy has a deeper application to life at large: for all
+life may be figured as a journey, and few there are who are natively
+equipped for the enjoyment of all the waste and waiting places on the way.
+The minds of most people are so fixed upon the storied capitals that are
+featured in those works of fiction known as guidebooks that they are
+impeded from enjoying the minor stations on their journey. "Hurry me to
+Sevilla," cries the traveler--and misses the sight of my muleteer of
+Merida. In America, our society is crammed with people who fail to enjoy
+life on five thousand a year because their minds are fixed upon that
+distant time when they hope to enjoy life on twenty thousand a year. And
+if ever they attain that twenty thousand they will not enjoy it either;
+but will merely peer forward to a hypothetical enjoyment at fifty thousand
+a year. And this is the essence of their tragedy:--they have not learned
+to wait with happiness.
+
+Is there any reason for this inordinate ambition to "get on"? Louis
+Stevenson was happier, as a small boy with a bull's-eye lantern at his
+belt, than any king upon his throne. The secret of enjoyment is to learn
+to look about us, to value what our destiny has given us, to transform it
+into magic by some contributory gift of poetry or humor, to consider with
+contentment the lilies of the field. The zest of life is in the living of
+it; and "to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."
+
+How often, in the roaring and tumultuary tide of life, we meet a man who
+sighs, "If only I could have a single day in which there was nothing that
+I had to do, nothing even that I had to think of, how happy I should be!"
+and yet this self-same man, if set down at a railway junction, will at
+once bestir himself to seek something to think of, something to do, and
+will spurn the gift of leisure. The incessant hurry of our current life
+has tragically lured us to forget the art of loitering. We are no longer
+able--like Wordsworth, on his "old gray stone"--to sit upon a trunk at
+some railway junction of our lives and listen reverently to the "mighty
+sum of things forever speaking."
+
+One of the loveliest women I have ever known--the late Alison
+Cunningham--told me a little anecdote of the author of _The
+Lantern-Bearers_ which, so far as I know, has never yet been published.
+When little Louis was about five years old, he did something naughty, and
+Cummy stood him up in a corner and told him he would have to stay there
+for ten minutes. Then she left the room. At the end of the allotted
+period, she returned and said, "Time's up, Master Lou: you may come out
+now." But the little boy stood motionless in his penitential corner.
+"That's enough: time's up," repeated Cummy. And then the child mystically
+raised his hand, and with a strange light in his eyes, "Hush...," he said,
+"I'm telling myself a story...."
+
+And, in the _Christian Morals_ of Sir Thomas Browne, we may read the
+following passage:--"He who must needs have company, must needs have
+sometimes bad company. Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of
+solitude, and the society of thyself; nor be only content, but delight to
+be alone and single with Omnipresency. He who is thus prepared, the day is
+not uneasy nor the night black unto him. Darkness may bound his eyes, not
+his imagination. In his bed he may lie, like Pompey and his sons, in all
+quarters of the earth; may speculate the universe, and enjoy the whole
+world in the hermitage of himself."
+
+Wordsworth sitting quiescent and receptive in a lakeside landscape, little
+Louis standing in a corner, Sir Thomas Browne enjoying the whole world in
+the hermitage of himself:--what a rebuke is offered by these images to
+those who fret and fume away the leisure that is granted them at all the
+waiting places of their lives!... These disgruntled travelers _nel mezzo
+del cammin di nostra vita_ miss their privilege and duty of enjoying life
+merely because they miss the point that life is, in itself, enjoyable.
+They are so busy reading guide-books to the vague beyond that they shut
+their minds to all that may be going on about them, or within them, at
+way-stations. They close their eyes and ears to the immediate. They veto
+all perception of the here and now. But life itself is always here and
+now; and, truly to enjoy it, we must learn to look forever with
+unfaltering eyes into the bright face of immediacy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And there is another point about railway junctions that reveals an
+important application to the larger journey of our life. A friend of mine,
+who is a great lover of painting, had occasion once (and only once) to
+change trains at Basle, in the course of a journey from Lucerne to
+Heidelberg. He had to wait two hours at this railway junction; and this
+time he pleasantly expended in eating many dishes at a restaurant, and
+amusing the lax porters by teaching them a method of economizing energy in
+shifting trunks. It should be noted that this friend of mine was not
+trying to "kill time;" for, like all genuine humanitarians, he of course
+regards that tragic process as the least excusable of murders. He was
+entirely happy for two hours in that railway station. But--having packed
+his guide-book in a trunk--it was not until he reached Darmstadt, some
+days later, that he discovered that several of the very greatest works of
+Holbein are now resident in Basle. The two hours that he had spent playing
+and eating might have been devoted to an examination of many masterpieces
+of that art which, more than any other, he had crossed the seas to seek.
+He has never yet been able to return to Basle; but for a sight of those
+lost portraits of the most honest and straightforward of all German
+painters, he would gladly sell his memories of both Lucerne and
+Heidelberg.
+
+Here we have a record of a great disappointment that was occasioned merely
+by the common habit of despising railway junctions, and presuming them to
+be inevitably dull. But this same unfortunate presumption, applied to life
+at large, leads many people to overlook the nearness of some great
+adventure. Interrogate a thousand men, and you will find that none of them
+has first set eyes upon his greatest friend in the Mosque of Cordoba or in
+Trafalgar Square. Every adventure of lasting consequence has confronted
+all of them, without exception, in some hidden nook or cranny of the
+world,--some place unknown to fame. Anybody is as likely to meet the woman
+who is destined to become his wife, at Essex Junction on a wintry night,
+as in the Parthenon by moonlight in the month of May. The most romantic
+places in the world are often those that promised, in advance, to be the
+least romantic.
+
+Since this is so, how can anybody ever dare to shut his eyes to that
+incalculable imminency of adventure which environs him even when he is
+merely changing trains on some island-platform of the New York Subway? In
+our daily living we are never safe from destiny; and who can ever know in
+what vacuous and sedentary period of his experience he may suddenly be
+called upon to entertain an angel unawares? It is best to be prepared for
+anything, at any hour of our lives,--even at those moments that must,
+perforce, be "spent waiting at a railway junction."
+
+
+
+
+MINOR USES OF THE MIDDLING RICH
+
+
+To assert today that the rich are for the most part entirely harmless is
+to dare much, for the contrary opinion is greatly in favor. Such wholesale
+condemnation of the rich assumes a more general and a more specific form.
+They are said to be harmful to the body politic simply because they have
+more money than the average: their property has been wrongly taken from
+persons who have a better right to it, or is withheld from people who need
+it more. But aside from being constructively a moral detriment from the
+mere possession of wealth, the rich man may do specific harm through
+indulging his vices, maintaining an inordinate display, charging too much
+for his own services, crushing his weaker competitor, corrupting the
+legislature and the judiciary, finally by asserting flagrantly his right
+to what he erroneously deems to be his own. Such are the general and
+specific charges of modern anti-capitalism against wealth. Like many deep
+rooted convictions, these rest less on analysis of particular instances
+than upon axioms received without criticism. The word spoliation does
+yeoman service in covering with one broad blanket of prejudice the most
+diverse cases of wealth. But spoliation is assumed, not proved. My own
+conviction that most wealth is quite blameless, whether under the general
+or specific accusation, is based on no comprehensive axiom, but simply on
+the knowledge of a number of particular fortunes and of their owners. Such
+a road towards truth is highly unromantic. The student of particular
+phenomena is unable to pose as the champion of the race. But the method
+has the modest advantage of resting not on a priori definitions, but on
+inductions from actual experience; hence of being relatively scientific.
+
+Before sketching the line of such an investigation, let me say that in
+logic and common sense there is no presumption against the wealthy person.
+Ever since civilization began and until yesterday it has been assumed that
+wealth was simply ability legitimately funded and transmitted. Even modern
+humanitarians, while dallying with the equation wealth = spoliation, have
+been unwilling wholly to relinquish the historic view of the case. I have
+always admired the courage with which Mr. Howells faced the situation in
+one of those charming essays for the Easy Chair of _Harper's_. Driving one
+night in a comfortable cab he was suddenly confronted by the long drawn
+out misery of the midnight bread line. For a moment the vision of these
+hungry fellow men overcame him. He felt guilty on his cushions, and
+possibly entertained some St. Martin-like project of dividing his
+swallowtail with the nearest unfortunate. Then common sense in the form of
+his companion came to his rescue. She remarked "Perhaps we are right and
+they are wrong." Why not? At any rate Mr. Howells was not permitted to
+condemn in a moment of compassion the career of thrift, industry and
+genius, that had led him from a printer's case to a premier position in
+American letters, or, more concretely, he received a domestic dispensation
+to cab it home in good conscience, though many were waiting in chilly
+discomfort for their gift of yesterday's bread. The why so and why not of
+this incident are my real subject. For Mr. Howells is merely a
+particularly conspicuous instance of the kind of prosperity I have in
+mind. We are all too much dazzled by the rare great fortunes. The newly
+rich have spectacular ways with them. By dint of frequently passing us in
+notorious circumstances, they give the impression of a throng. They are
+much in the papers, their steam yachts loom large on the waters, they
+divorce quickly and often, they buy the most egregious, old masters. By
+such more or less innocent ostentations, a handful stretches into a
+procession, much as a dozen sprightly supernumeraries will keep up an
+endless defile of Macduff's army on the tragic stage. Let us admit that
+some of the great wealth is more or less foolishly and harmfully spent; my
+subject is not bank accounts, but people; and very wealthy people
+constitute an almost negligible minority of the race. Their influence too
+is much less potent than is supposed. A slightly vulgarizing tendency
+proceeds from them, but in waves of decreasing intensity. Their vogue is
+chiefly a _succes de scandale_. Sensible people will gape at the spectacle
+without admiration, and even the reader of the society column in the
+sensational newspapers keeps more critical detachment than he is usually
+credited with. In any case neither the boisterous nor the shrinking
+multimillionaire has any representative standing. He is not what a poor
+person means by a rich person. Ask your laundress who is rich in your
+neighborhood, and she will name all who live gently and do not have to
+worry about next month's bills. True pragmatist, she sees that to be
+exempt from any threat of poverty is to all intents and purposes to be
+rich. Her classification ignores certain niceties, but corresponds roughly
+to the fact, and has the merit of corresponding to government decree. Rich
+people, since the income tax, are officially those who pay the tax but not
+the surtax. Families with an income not less than four thousand dollars
+nor more than twenty thousand comprise the harmless, middling rich. Let us
+once for all admit that in the surtaxed classes there are many cases of
+quite harmless wealth, while in the lower level of the rich, harmful
+wealth will sometimes be found. Such exceptions do not invalidate the
+general rule that all but a negligible fraction of the rich are included
+in the first class of income taxpayers--on from four to twenty thousand,
+that most of the property here held is blamelessly held in good
+hands--wealth that in no fair estimate can be regarded as harmful. In
+terms of British currency, our category of the middling rich would include
+the poorer individuals of the upper classes, the richer persons of the
+lower middle class, and the upper middle class as a whole. This comparison
+is made not to apply an alien class system which holds very inadequately
+here in America, but simply to avow the difficulty of my task of apology.
+The bourgeoisie is equally suspect among radicals, reactionaries, and
+artists. My middling rich are nothing other than what an European essayist
+would quite brazenly call the _haute bourgeoisie_. It is quite a
+comprehensive class, made up chiefly of professional men, moderately
+successful merchants, manufacturers, and bankers with their more highly
+paid employees, but including also many artists, and teachers of all
+sorts. Incidentally it is an employing and borrowing class in various
+degrees, hence especially subject to the exactions of the labor union at
+one end, and of the great capitalist and the Trust at the other.
+
+The general harmlessness of the wealth of this class rests upon the fact
+that it is in small part inherited, but mostly earned by individual
+effort, while such effort has usually been honestly and efficiently
+rendered and paid for at a moderate rate. In fact the amount of capacity
+that can be hired for the slightest rewards is simply amazing. It is the
+distinction of this class as compared both with the wage earning and the
+capitalist class--both of which agree in overvaluing their services and
+extorting payment on their own terms--that it respects its work more than
+it regards rewards. Consider the amount of general education and special
+training that go to make a capable school superintendent, or college
+professor; a good country doctor or clergyman--and it will be felt that no
+money is more honestly earned. This is equally true of many lawyers and
+magistrates, who are wise counsellors for an entire country side. It is no
+less true of hosts of small manufacturers who make a superior product with
+conscience. For the wealth, small enough it usually is, that is thus
+gained in positions of especial skill and confidence, absolutely no
+apology need be made. I sometimes wish that the Socialists for whom any
+degree of wealth means spoliation, would go a day's round with a country
+doctor, would take the pains to learn of the cases he treats for half his
+fee, for a nominal sum, or for nothing; would candidly reckon his normal
+fee against the long years of college, medical school and hospital, and
+against the service itself; would then deduct the actual expenses of the
+day, as represented by apparatus, motor, or horse service--I can only say
+that if such an investigator could in any way conceive that physician as a
+spoliator, because he earned twice as much as a master brick-layer or five
+times as much as a ditch digger--if, I say, before the actual fact, our
+Socialist investigator in any way grudges that day's earnings, his mental
+and emotional confusion is beyond ordinary remedy. And such a physician's
+earnings are merely typical of those of an entire class of devoted
+professional men.
+
+We do well to remind ourselves that the great body of wealth in the
+country has been built up slowly and honestly by the most laborious means,
+and accumulated and transmitted by self-sacrificing thrift. A rich person
+in nine cases out of ten is merely a capable, careful, saving person,
+often, too, a person who conducts a difficult calling with a fine sense of
+personal honor and a high standard of social obligation. We are too much
+dazzled by the occasional apparition of the lawyer who has got rich by
+steering guilty clients past the legal reefs, of the surgeon who plays
+equally on the fears and the purses of his patients, of the sensational
+clergyman who has made full coinage of his charlatanism. All these types
+exist, and all are highly exceptional. Most rich persons are
+self-respecting, have given ample value received for their wealth, and
+have less reason to apologize for it than most poor folks have to
+apologize for their poverty.
+
+Furthermore: for the maintenance of certain humdrum but necessary human
+virtues, we are dependent upon these middling rich. It has been frequently
+remarked that a lord and a working man are likely to agree, as against a
+bourgeois, in generosity, spontaneous fellowship, and all that goes to
+make sporting spirit. The right measure of these qualities makes for charm
+and genuine fraternity; the excess of these qualities produces an enormous
+amount of human waste among the wage earners and the aristocrats
+impartially. The great body of self-controlled, that is of reasonably
+socialized people, must be sought between these two extremes. In short the
+building up of ideals of discipline and of habits of efficiency and of
+good manners and of human respect is very largely the task of the middle
+classes. Whereas the breaking down of such ideals is, in the present
+posture of society, the avowed or unavowed intention of a considerable
+portion of laboring men and aristocrats. The scornful retort of the
+Socialist is at hand: "Of course the middle classes are shrewd enough to
+practice the virtues that pay." Into this familiar moral bog that there
+are as many kinds of morality as there are economic conditions of mankind,
+I do not consent to plunge. I need only say that the so-called middle
+class virtues would pay a workman or a lord quite as well as they do a
+bourgeois. Moreover, while workmen and lords are prone to scorn the
+calculating virtues of the middle classes, there is no indication that the
+_bourgeoisie_ has selfishly tried to keep its virtues to itself. On the
+contrary there is positive rejoicing in the middle classes over a workman
+who deigns to keep a contract, and an aristocrat who perceives the duty of
+paying a debt. In fine we of the middle classes need no more be ashamed of
+our highly unpicturesque virtues than we are of our inconspicuous wealth.
+
+So far from being in danger of suppression, we middling rich people are
+likely to last longer than the capitalists who exploit us in practice, and
+the workmen who exploit us on principle. Theoretically, and perhaps
+practically, the very rich are in danger of expropriation. Theoretically
+the course of invention may limit or almost abolish all but the higher
+grades of labor. The need of the more skilful sort of service in the
+professions, in manufacture, in agency of all sorts, is sure to persist.
+The socialists expect to get such service for much less than it at present
+brings, that is to make us poor and yet keep us working. Such a scheme
+must break down, not through the refusal of the middling rich to keep at
+work;--for I think there is loyalty enough to the work itself to keep most
+necessary activities going after a fashion, even under the most untoward
+conditions;--but because to make us poor is to destroy the conditions
+under which we can efficiently render a somewhat exceptional service. Our
+wealth is not an extraneous thing that can be readily added or taken away.
+It is our possibility of self-education and of professional improvement,
+it is the medium in which we can work, it is our hope of children. To take
+away our wealth is to maim us. There is nothing humiliating in such an
+avowal. It is merely an assertion of the integrity of one's life and work.
+As a matter of fact no class is so well fitted to face the threat of a
+proletarian revolution as we harmless rich. It is the class that produces
+generals, explorers, inventors, statesmen. A social revolution with its
+stern attendant regimentation would bear most heavily on the relatively
+undisciplined class of working people. The disciplined class of the
+middling rich is better prepared to meet such an eventuality. Accordingly
+it is no mere selfishness or complacency that leads the middling rich to
+oppose the pretensions of proletarianism on one side and of capitalism on
+the other. It is rather the assertion of sound middle class morality
+against two opposite yet somewhat allied forms of social immorality--the
+strength that exaggerates its claims, and the weakness that claims all the
+privileges of strength.
+
+We are useful too as conserving certain valuable ideas. When I mention the
+idea of the right of private property, I expect to be laughed at by a
+large class of enthusiasts. Yet all of civilization has been built up on
+the distinction between _meum_ and _tuum_. Without this idea there is not
+the slightest inducement to persistent individual effort nor possibility
+of progress for the individual or for the race. The fruitful diversities,
+the germinative inequalities between men all depend on this right. And
+today the right to one's own is doubly under attack from the violence of
+laboring men, and the guile of those in positions of financial trust. The
+strikers who offer as an argument the burning of a mine or wrecking of a
+mill, and the directors who manipulate corporation accounts to pay
+unearned dividends, are both undermining the right of property. Against
+such counsels of force and fraud, the representatives of the common sense
+and funded wisdom of mankind are the middling rich. It is an unromantic
+service--doubtless breaking other people's windows or scaling their bank
+accounts is much more thrilling--it is a public service obviously tinged
+with self-interest, but none the less a public service of high and timely
+importance. The business of keeping the sanity of the world intact as
+against the wilder expressions of social discontent, and the uglier
+expressions of personal envy and greed, may seem to lack zest and
+originality today. History may well take a different view of the matter.
+It would not be surprising to find a posthumous aureole of idealism
+conferred upon those who amid the trumpeting of money market messiahs, and
+the braying of self-appointed remodellers of the race, simply stood
+quietly on their own inherited rights and principles.
+
+Such are some not wholly minor uses for the middling rich. Should they be
+abolished, many of the pleasanter facts and appearances of the world would
+disappear with them. The other day I whisked in one of their motor cars
+through miles of green Philadelphia suburbs dappled with pink magnolia
+trees and white fruit blossoms--everywhere charming houses, velvety lawns,
+tidy gardens. The establishing of a little paradise like that is of course
+a selfish enterprise--a mere meeting of the push and foresight of real
+estate operators with the thrift and sentiment of householders, yet it is
+an advantage inevitably shared, a benefit to the entire community, an
+example in reasonable working, living, and playing.
+
+On the side of play we should especially miss these harmless rich. The
+sleek horses on a thousand bridle paths and meadows are theirs, the
+smaller winged craft that still protest against the pollution of the sea
+by the reek of coal and the stench of gasoline; of their furnishing are
+the graceful and widely shared spectacles not only of the minor yacht
+racing but of the field sports generally. They constitute our militia. The
+survival in the world of such gentler accomplishments as fencing,
+canoeing, and exploration rests with the middling rich. They write our
+books and plays, compose our music, paint our pictures, carve our statues.
+The pleasanter unconscious pageantry of our life is conducted by their
+sons and daughters. To be nice, to indulge in nice occupations, to express
+happiness--this is not even today a reproach to any one. Indeed if any
+approach to the dreamed socialized state ever be made, it will come less
+through regimentation than through imitation of those persons of middle
+condition who have managed to be reasonably faithful in their duties, and
+moderate in their pleasures. To keep a clean mind in a clean body is the
+prerogative of no class, but the lapses from this standard are
+unquestionably more frequent among the poor and the very rich.
+
+It is instructive in this regard to compare with the newspapers that serve
+the middling rich, those that address the poor, and those that are owned
+in the interest of well understood capitalistic interests. The extremes of
+yellow journalism and of avowedly capitalistic journalism, meet in a
+preference for salacious or merely shocking news, and in a predilection
+for blatant, sophistical, or merely nugatory and time-serving editorial
+expressions. Between the two really allied types of newspapers are a few
+which exercise a decent censorship over questionable news, and habitually
+indulge in the luxury of sincere editorial opinion. There are some
+exceptions to the rule. In our own day we have seen a proletarian paper
+become a magnificent editorial organ, while somewhat illogically
+maintaining a random and sensational policy in its news columns. But
+generally the distinction is unmistakable. Imagine the plight of New York
+journalism if four papers, which I need not mention, ceased publication.
+It would mean a distinct and immediate cheapening of the mentality of the
+city. Then observe on any train who are reading these papers. It is plain
+enough what class among us makes decent journalism possible.
+
+Much is to be said for the abolition of poverty, and something for the
+reduction of inordinate wealth. Poverty is being much reduced, and will be
+farther, the process being limited simply by the degree to which the poor
+will educate and discipline themselves. We shall never wholly do away with
+bad luck, bad inheritance, wild blood, laziness, and incapacity: so some
+poverty we shall always have, but much less than now, and less dire. The
+fact that the large class of middling rich has been evolved from a world
+where all began poor, is a promise of a future society where poverty shall
+be the exception. But such increase of the wealth of the world, and of the
+number of the virtually rich, will never be attained by the puerile method
+of expropriating the present holders of wealth. That would produce more
+poor people beyond doubt--but its effect in enriching the present poor
+would be inappreciable. You cannot change a man's character and capacity
+simply by giving him the wealth of another. In wholesale expropriations
+and bequests the experiment has been many times tried, and always with the
+same results. The wealth that could not be assimilated and administered
+has always left the receiver or grasper in all essentials poorer than he
+was before. Wealth is an attribute of personality. It is not
+interchangeable like the parts of a standardized machine. The futility of
+dispossessing the middling rich would be as marked as its immorality.
+
+This essentially personal character of wealth must affect the views of
+those who would attack what are called the inordinate fortunes. I hold no
+brief for or against the multi-millionaire. In many cases I believe his
+wealth is as personal, assimilated and legitimate as is the average
+moderate fortune. In many cases too, I know that such gigantic wealth is
+in fact the product of unfair craft and favoritism, is to that extent
+unassimilated and illegitimate. Yet admitting the worst of great fortunes,
+I think a prudent and fair minded man would hesitate before a general
+programme of expropriation. He would consider that in many cases the
+common weal needs such services as very wealthy people render, he would
+reflect on the practical benefits to the world, of the benevolent
+enterprises for education, research, invention, hygiene, medicine, which
+are founded and supported by great wealth. In our time The Rockefeller
+Institute will have stamped out that slow plague of the south, the hook
+worm. To the obvious retort that the government ought to do this sort of
+thing, the reply is equally obvious, that historically governments have
+not done this sort of thing until enlightened private enterprise has shown
+the way. Our prudent observer of mankind in general, and of the very rich
+in particular, would again reflect that, granting much of the socialist
+indictment of capital as illgained, common sense requires a statute of
+limitations. At a certain point restitution makes more trouble than the
+possession of illegitimate wealth. Debts, interest, and grudges cannot be
+indefinitely accumulated and extended. It is the entire disregard of this
+simple and generally admitted principle that has marred the socialist
+propaganda from the first. From the point of view of fomenting hatred
+between classes, to make every workingman regard himself as the residuary
+legatee of all the grievances of all workingmen, at all times, may be
+clever tactics, it is not a good way of making the workingman see clearly
+what his actual grievance and expectancy of redress are in his own day and
+time.
+
+With increasingly heavy income and inheritance taxes, the very rich will
+have to reckon. Yet the multi-millionaire's evident utility as the milch
+cow of the state, will cause statesmen, even of the anti-capitalistic
+stamp, to waver at the point where the cow threatens to dry up from
+over-milking. If the case, then, for utterly despoiling the harmful rich,
+is by no means clear, the prospect for the harmless rich may be regarded
+as fairly favorable. For the moment, caught between the headiness of
+working folk, the din of doctrinaires, and the wiles of corporate
+activity, the lot of the middling rich is not the most happy imaginable.
+But they seem better able to weather these flurries than the windy,
+cloud-compelling divinities of the hour. From the survival of the middling
+rich, the future common weal will be none the worse, and it may even be
+better.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURING AT CHAUTAUQUA
+
+
+To render any real impression of the Chautauqua Summer Assembly, I must
+approach this many-mooded subject from a personal point of view. Others,
+more thoroughly informed in the arcana of the Institution, have written
+the history of its development from small beginnings to its present
+impressive magnitude, have analyzed the theory of its intentions, and have
+expounded its extraordinary influence over what may be called the
+middle-class culture of our present-day America. It would be beyond the
+scope of my equipment to add another solemn treatise to the extensive list
+already issued by the tireless Chautauqua Press. My own experience of
+Chautauqua was not that of a theoretical investigator, but that of a
+surprised and wondering participant. It was the experience of an alien
+thrust suddenly into the midst of a new but not unsympathetic world; and,
+if the reader will make allowance for the personal equation, some sense of
+the human significance of this summer seat of earnest recreation may be
+suggested by a mere record of my individual reactions.
+
+I had heard of Chautauqua only vaguely, until, one sunny summer morning, I
+suddenly received a telegram inviting me to lecture at the Institution. I
+was a little disconcerted at the moment, because I was enjoying an
+amphibious existence in a bathing-suit, and was inclined to shudder at the
+thought of putting on a collar in July; but, after an hour or two, I
+managed to imagine that telegram as a Summons from the Great Unknown, and
+it was in a proper spirit of adventure that I flung together a few books,
+and climbed into the only available upper berth on a discomfortable train
+that rushed me westward.
+
+In some sickly hour of the early morning, I was cast out at Westfield, on
+Lake Erie,--a town that looked like the back-yard of civilization, with
+weeds growing in it. Thence a trolley car, climbing over heightening hills
+that became progressively more beautiful, hauled me ultimately to the
+entrance of what the cynical conductor called "The Holy City." A fence of
+insurmountable palings stretched away on either hand; and, at the little
+station, there were turn-stiles, through which pilgrims passed within.
+Most people pay money to obtain admittance; but I was met by a very
+affable young man from Dartmouth, whose business it was to welcome invited
+visitors, and by him I was steered officially through unopposing gates. I
+liked this young man for his cheerful clothes and smiling countenance; but
+I was rather appalled by the agglomeration of ram-shackle cottages through
+which we passed on our way to the hotel.
+
+I say "the hotel," for the Chautauqua Settlement contains but one such
+institution. It carries the classic name of Athenaeum; but the first view
+of it occasioned in my sensitive constitution a sinking of the heart. The
+edifice dates from the early-gingerbread period of architecture. It
+culminates in a horrifying cupola, and is colored a discountenancing
+brown. The first glimpse of it reminded me of the poems of A.H. Clough,
+whose chief merit was to die and to offer thereby an occasion for a grave
+and twilit elegy by Matthew Arnold. Clough's life-work was a continual
+asking of the question, "Life being unbearable, why should I not
+die?"--while echo, that commonplace and sapient commentator, mildly
+answered, "Why?": and this was precisely the impression that I gathered
+from my initial vista of the Athenaeum between trees.
+
+On entering the hotel I was greeted over the desk (with what might be
+defined as a left-handed smile) by one of the leading students of the
+university with which I am associated as a teacher. He called out,
+"Front!" in the manner of an amateur who is amiably aping the
+professional, and assigned me to a scarcely comfortable room.
+
+My first voluntary act in the Chautauqua Community was to take a swim. But
+the water was tepid, and brown, and tasteless, and unbuoyant; and I felt,
+rather oddly, as if I were swimming in a gigantic cup of tea. From this
+initial experience I proceeded, somewhat precipitately, to induce an
+analogy; and it seemed to me, at the time, as if I had forsaken the roar
+and tumble of the hoarse, tumultuous world, for the inland disassociated
+peace of an unaware and loitering backwater.
+
+With hair still wet and still dishevelled, I was met by the Secretary of
+Instruction,--a man (as I discovered later) of wise and humorous
+perceptions. By him I was informed that, in an hour or so, I was to
+lecture, in the Hall of Philosophy, on (if I remember rightly) Edgar Allan
+Poe. I combed my hair, and tried to care for Poe, and made my way to the
+Hall of Philosophy. This turned out to be a Greek temple divested of its
+walls. An oaken roof, with pediments, was supported by Doric columns; and
+under the enlarged umbrella thus devised, about a thousand people were
+congregated to greet the new and unknown lecturer.
+
+I honestly believe that that was the worst lecture I have ever imposed
+upon a suffering audience. I had lain awake all night, in an upper berth,
+on the hottest day of the year; I had found my swim in inland water
+unrefreshing; and, at the moment, I really cared no more for Edgar Allan
+Poe than I usually care for the sculptures of Bernini, the paintings of
+Bouguereau, or the base-ball playing of the St. Louis "Browns." This
+feeling was, of course, unfair to Poe, who is (with all his emptiness of
+content) an admirable artist; but I was tired at the time. It pained me
+exceedingly to listen, for an hour, to my own dull and unilluminated
+lecture. And yet (and here is the pathetic point that touched me deeply) I
+perceived gradually that the audience was listening not only attentively
+but eagerly. Those people really wanted to hear whatever the lecturer
+should say: and I wandered back to the depressing hotel with bowed head,
+actuated by a new resolve to tell them something worthy on the morrow.
+
+That afternoon and evening I strolled about the summer settlement of
+Chautauqua; and (in view of my subsequent shift of attitude) I do not mind
+confessing that this first aspect of the community depressed me to a
+perilous melancholy. I beheld a landscape that reminded me of Wordsworth's
+Windermere, except that the lake was broader and the hills less high,
+deflowered and defamed by the huddled houses of the Chautauqua settlers.
+The lake was lovely; and, with this supreme adjective, I forbear from
+further effort at description. Upon the southern shore, a natural grove of
+noble and venerable trees had been invaded by a crowded horror of
+discomfortable tenements, thrown up by carpenters with a taste for
+machine-made architectural details, and colored a sickly green, an acid
+yellow, or an angry brown. The Chautauqua Settlement, which is surrounded
+by a fence of palings, covers only two or three square miles of territory;
+and, in the months of July and August, between fifteen and twenty thousand
+people are crowded into this constricted area. Hence a horror of unsightly
+dormitories, spawning unpredictable inhabitants upon the ambling, muddy
+lanes.
+
+There have been, in the history of this Assembly, a few salutary
+fires,--as a result of which new buildings have been erected which are
+comparatively easy on the eyes. The Hall of Philosophy is really
+beautiful, and is nobly seated among memorable trees at the summit of a
+little hill. The Aula Christi tried to be beautiful, and failed; but at
+least the good intention is apparent. The Amphitheatre (which seats six or
+seven thousand auditors) is admirably adapted to its uses; and some of the
+more recent business buildings, like the Post Office, are inoffensive to
+the unexacting observer. A wooded peninsula, which is pleasantly laid out
+as a park, projects into the lake; and, at the point of this, has lately
+been erected a _campanile_ which is admirable in both color and
+proportion. Indeed, when a fanfaronnade of sunset is blown wide behind it,
+you suffer a sudden tinge of homesickness for Venice or Ravenna. It is
+good enough for that. But beside it is a helter-skelter wooden edifice
+which reminds you of Surf Avenue at Coney Island. Indeed, the Settlement
+as a whole exhibits still an overwhelmment of the unaesthetic, and appalls
+the eye of the new-comer from a more considerative world.
+
+On the way back from the lovely _campanile_ to the hotel, I stumbled over
+a scattering of artificial hillocks surrounding two mud-puddles connected
+by a gutter. This monstrosity turned out to be a relief-map of Palestine.
+Little children, with uncultivated voices, shouted at each other as they
+lightly leaped from Jerusalem to Jericho; and waste-paper soaked itself to
+dingy brown in the insanitary Sea of Galilee.--Then I encountered a wooden
+edifice with castellated towers and machicolated battlements, which called
+itself (with a large label) the Men's Club; and from this I fled, with
+almost a sense of relief, to the hotel itself, now sprawling low and dark
+beneath its Boston-brown-bread cupola.
+
+Thus my first impression of Chautauqua was one of melancholy and
+resentment. But, in the subsequent few days, this emotion was altered to
+one of impressible satiric mirth; and, subsequently still, it was changed
+again to an emotion of wondering and humble admiration. I had been assured
+at the outset, by one who had already tried it, that, if I stayed long
+enough, I should end up by liking Chautauqua; and this is precisely what
+happened to me before a week was out.
+
+But meanwhile I laughed very hard for three days. The thing that made me
+laugh most was the unexpected experience of enduring the discomfiture of
+fame. Chautauqua is a constricted community; and any one who lectures
+there becomes, by that very fact, a famous person in this little backwater
+of the world, until he is supplanted (for fame is as fickle as a
+ballet-dancer) by the next new-comer to the platform. The Chautauqua Press
+publishes a daily paper, a weekly review, a monthly magazine and a
+quarterly; and these publications report your lectures, tell the story of
+your life, comment upon your views of this and that, advertise your books,
+and print your picture. Everybody knows you by sight, and stops you in the
+street to ask you questions. Thus, on your way to the Post Office, you are
+intercepted by some kindly soul who says: "I am Miss Terwilliger, from
+Montgomery, Alabama; and do you think that Bernard Shaw is really an
+immoral writer?" or, "I am Mrs. Winterbottom, of Muncie, Indiana; and
+where do you think I had better send my boy to school? He is rather a
+backward boy for his age--he was ten last April--but I really think that
+if, etc."
+
+Then, when you return to the hotel, you observe that everybody is rocking
+vigorously on the veranda, and reading one of your books. This pleases you
+a little; for, though an actor may look his audience in the eyes, an
+author is seldom privileged to see his readers face to face. Indeed, he
+often wonders if anybody ever reads his writings, because he knows that
+his best friends never do. But very soon this tender sentiment is
+disrupted. There comes a sudden resurrection of the rocking-chair brigade,
+a rush of readers with uplifted fountain-pens, and a general request for
+the author's autograph upon the flyleaf of his volume. All of this is
+rather flattering; but afterward these gracious and well-meaning people
+begin to comment on your lectures, and tell you that you have made them
+see a great light. And then you find yourself embarrassed.
+
+It is rather embarrassing to be embarrassed.
+
+One enthusiastic lady, having told me her name and her address, assaulted
+me with the following commentary:--"I heard you lecture on Stevenson the
+other day; and ever since then I have been thinking how very much like
+Stevenson you are. And today I heard you lecture on Walt Whitman: and all
+afternoon I have been thinking how very much like Whitman you are. And
+that is rather puzzling--isn't it?--because Stevenson and Whitman weren't
+at all like each other,--were they?"
+
+I smiled, and told the lady the simple truth; but I do not think she
+understood me. "Ah, madam," I said, "wait until you hear me lecture about
+Hawthorne...."
+
+For (and now I am freely giving the whole game away) the secret of the art
+of lecturing is merely this:--on your way to the rostrum you contrive to
+fling yourself into complete sympathy with the man you are to talk about,
+so that, when you come to speak, you will give utterance to _his_ message,
+in terms that are suggestive of _his_ style. You must guard yourself from
+ever attempting to talk about anybody whom you have not (at some time or
+other) loved; and, at the moment, you should, for sheer affection, abandon
+your own personality in favor of his, so that you may become, as nearly as
+possible, the person whom it is your business to represent. Naturally, if
+you have any ear at all, your sentences will tend to fall into the rhythm
+of his style; and if you have any temperament (whatever that may be) your
+imagined mood will diffuse an ineluctable aroma of the author's
+personality.
+
+This at least, is my own theory of lecturing; and, in the instance of my
+talk on Hawthorne, I seem to have carried it out successfully in practice.
+I must have attained a tone of sombre gray, and seemed for the moment a
+meditative Puritan under a shadowy and steepled hat; for, at the close of
+the lecture, a silvery-haired and sweet-faced woman asked me if I wouldn't
+be so kind as to lead the devotional service in the Baptist House that
+evening. I found myself abashed. But a previous engagement saved me; and I
+was able to retire, not without honor, though with some discomfiture.
+
+This previous engagement was a steamboat ride upon the lake. When you want
+to give a sure-enough party at Chautauqua, you charter a steamboat and
+escape from the enclosure, having seduced a sufficient number of other
+people to come along and sing. On this particular evening, the party
+consisted of the Chautauqua School of Expression,--a bevy of about thirty
+young women who were having their speaking voices cultivated by an admired
+friend of mine who is one of the best readers in America; and they sang
+with real spirit, so soon as we had churned our way beyond remembrance of
+(I mean no disrespect) the Baptist House. But this boat-ride had a curious
+effect on the four or five male members of the party. We touched at a
+barbarous and outrageous settlement, named (if I remember rightly) Bemus
+Point; and hardly had the boat been docked before there ensued a
+hundred-yard dash for a pair of swinging doors behind which dazzled lights
+splashed gaudily on soapy mirrors. I did not really desire a drink at the
+time; but I took two, and the other men did likewise. I understood at once
+(for I must always philosophize a little) why excessive drinking is
+induced in prohibition states. Tell me that I may not laugh, and I wish at
+once to laugh my head off,--though I am at heart a holy person who loves
+Keats. This incongruous emotion must have been felt, under this or that
+influence of external inhibition, by everyone who is alive enough to like
+swimming, and Dante, and Weber and Fields, and Filipino Lippi, and the
+view of the valley underneath the sacred stones of Delphi.
+
+Within the enclosure of Chautauqua one does not drink at all; and I infer
+that this regulation is well-advised. I base this inference upon my
+gradual discovery that all the regulations of this well-conducted
+Institution have been fashioned sanely to contribute to the greatest good
+of the greatest number. That is my final, critical opinion. But how we did
+dash for the swinging doors at Bemus Point!--we four or five
+simple-natured human beings who were not, in any considerable sense,
+drinking men at all.
+
+Then the congregated School of Expression tripped ashore with nimble
+ankles; and there ensued a general dance at a pavilion where a tired boy
+maltreated a more tired piano, and one paid a dime before, or after,
+dancing. One does not dance at Chautauqua, even on moon-silvery summer
+evenings:--and again the regulation is right, because the serious-minded
+members of the community must have time to read the books of those who
+lecture there.
+
+And this brings me to a consideration of the Chautauqua Sunday. On this
+day the gates are closed, and neither ingress nor egress is permitted.
+Once more I must admit that the regulation has been sensibly devised. If
+admittance were allowed on Sunday, the grounds would be overrun by
+picnickers from Buffalo, who would cast the shells of hard-boiled eggs
+into the inviting Sea of Galilee; and unless the officers are willing to
+let anybody in, they can devise no practicable way of letting anybody out.
+Besides, the people who are in already like to rest and meditate. But
+alas! (and at this point I think that I begin to disapprove) the row-boats
+and canoes are tied up at the dock, the tennis-courts are emptied, and the
+simple exercise of swimming is forbidden. This desuetude of natural and
+smiling recreation on a day intended for surcease of labor struck me (for
+I am in part an ancient Greek, in part a mediaeval Florentine) as strangely
+irreligious. All day the organ rumbles in the Amphitheatre (and of this I
+approved, because I love the way in which an organ shakes you into
+sanctity), and many meetings are held in various sectarian houses, the
+mood of which is doubtless reverent--though all the while the rippling
+water beckons to the high and dry canoes, and a gathering of many-tinted
+clouds is summoned in the windy west to tingle with Olympian laughter and
+Universal song. How much more wisely (if I may talk in Greek terms for the
+moment) the gods take Sunday, than their followers on this forgetful
+earth!
+
+But we must change the mood if I am to speak again of what amused me in
+the pagan days of my initiation at Chautauqua. Life, for instance, at the
+ginger-bread hotel amused me oddly. To one who lives in a metropolis
+throughout the working months, the map of eating at Chautauqua seems
+incongruous. Dinner is served in the middle of the day, at an hour when
+one is hardly encouraged to the thought of luncheon; and at six P.M. a
+sort of breakfast is set forth, which is denominated _Supper_. This Supper
+consists of fruit, followed by buckwheat cakes, followed by meat or eggs;
+and to eat one's way through it induces a curious sense of standing on
+one's head. After two days I discovered a remedy for this undesired
+dizziness. I turned the _menu_ upside down, and ordered a meal in the
+reverse order. The Supper itself was a success; but the waitress (who, in
+the winter, teaches school in Texas) disapproved of what she deemed my
+frivolous proceeding. Her eyes took on an inward look beneath the
+pedagogical eye-glasses; and there was a distinct furrowing of her
+forehead. Thereafter I did not dare to overturn the _menu_, but ate my way
+heroically backward. After all, our prandial prejudices are merely the
+result of custom. There is no real reason why stewed prunes should not be
+eaten at three A.M.
+
+But this philosophical reflection reminds me that there is no such hour at
+Chautauqua. At ten P.M. a carol of sweet chimes is rung from the Italian
+_campanile_; and at that hour all good Chautauquans go to bed. If you are
+by profession (let us say) a writer, and are accustomed to be alive at
+midnight, you will find the witching hours sad. Vainly you will seek
+companionship, and will be reduced at last to reading the base-ball
+reports in the newspapers of Cleveland, Ohio.
+
+At the Athenaeum you are passed about, from meal to meal, like a one-card
+draw at poker. The hotel is haunted by Old Chautauquans, who vie with each
+other to receive you with traditional cordiality. The head-waitress steers
+you for luncheon (I mean Dinner) to one table, for Supper to another, and
+so on around the room from day to day. The process reminds you a little of
+the procedure at a progressive euchre party. At each meal you meet a new
+company of Old Chautauquans, and are expected to converse: but many
+(indeed most) of these people are humanly refreshing, and the experience
+is not so wearing as it sounds.
+
+But you must not imagine from all that I have said that the life of the
+lecturer at Chautauqua is merely frivolous. Not at all. You get up very
+early, and proceed to Higgins Hall, a pleasant little edifice (named after
+the late Governor of New York State) set agreeably amid trees upon a
+rising knoll of verdure; and there you converse for a time about the
+Drama, and for another time about the Novel. In each of these two courses
+there were, perhaps, seventy or eighty students,--male and female, elderly
+and young. I found them much more eager than the classes I had been
+accustomed to in college, and at least as well prepared. They came from
+anywhere, and from any previous condition of servitude to the general
+cause of learning; but I found them apt, and interested, and alive.
+
+Now and then it appeared that their sense of humor was a little less
+fantastic than my own; but I liked them very much, because they were so
+earnest and simple and human and (what is Whitman's adjective?) adhesive.
+
+And now I come to the point that converted me finally to Chautauqua. I
+found myself, after a few days, liking the people very much. In the
+afternoons I talked in the Doric Temple about this man or that,--selected
+from my company of well-beloved friends among "the famous nations of the
+dead"; and the people came in hundreds and listened reverently--not, I am
+very glad to know, because of any trick I have of setting words together,
+but because of Stevenson and Whitman and the others, and what they meant
+by living steadfast lives amid the hurly-burly of this roaring world, and
+steering heroically by their stars. Some elderly matrons among the
+listeners brought their knitting with them and toiled with busy hands
+throughout the lecture; but they listened none the less attentively, and
+reduced me to a mood of humble wonderment.
+
+For I have often wondered (and this is, perhaps, the most intimate of my
+confessions) how anybody can endure a lecture,--even a good lecture, for I
+am not thinking merely of my own. It is a passive exercise of which I am
+myself incapable. I, for one, have always found it very irksome--as
+Carlyle has phrased the experience--"to sit as a passive bucket and be
+pumped into." I always want to talk back, or rise and remark "But, on the
+other hand..."; and, before long, I find myself spiritually itching. This
+is, possibly, a reason why I prefer canoeing to listening to sermons. Yet
+these admirable Chautauquans submit themselves to this experience hour
+after hour, because they earnestly desire to discover some glimmering of
+"the best that has been known and thought in the world."
+
+These fifteen or twenty thousand people have assembled for the pursuit of
+culture--a pursuit which the Hellenic-minded Matthew Arnold designated as
+the noblest in this life. But from this fact (and here the antithetic
+formula asserts itself) we must deduce an inference that they feel
+themselves to be uncultured. In this inference I found a taste of the
+pathetic. I discovered that many of the colonists at Chautauqua were men
+and women well along in life who had had no opportunities for early
+education. Their children, rising through the generations, had returned
+from the state universities of Texas or Ohio or Mississippi, talking of
+Browning, and the binominal theorem, and the survival of the fittest, and
+the grandeur and decadence of the Romans, and the _entassus_ of Ionic
+columns, and the doctrine of _laissez faire_; and now their elders had set
+out to endeavor to catch up with them. This discovery touched me with both
+reverence and pathos. An attempt at what may be termed, in the technical
+jargon of base-ball, a "delayed steal" of culture, seemed to me little
+likely to succeed. Culture, like wisdom, cannot be acquired: it cannot be
+passed, like a dollar bill, from one who has it to one who has it not. It
+must be absorbed, early in life, through birth or breeding, or be gathered
+undeliberately through experience. A child of five with a French governess
+will ask for his mug of milk with an easier Gallic grace than a man of
+eighty who has puzzled out the pronunciation from a text-book. There is,
+apparently, no remedy for this. Love the _Faerie Queene_ at twelve, or you
+will never really love it at seventy: or so, at least, it seems to me. And
+yet the desire to learn, in gray-haired men and women who in their youth
+were battling hard for a mere continuance of life itself, and founding
+homesteads in a book-less wilderness, moved me to a quick exhilaration.
+
+Most of the people at Chautauqua come either from the south or from the
+middle west. They pronounce the English language either without any _r_ at
+all, or with such excessive emphasis upon the _r_ as to make up for the
+deficiency of their fellow-seekers. In other words, these people are
+really American, as opposed to cosmopolitan; and to live among them
+is--for a world-wandering adventurer--to learn a lesson in Americanism.
+Mr. Roosevelt once stated that Chautauqua is the most American institution
+in America; and this statement--like many others of his inspired
+platitudes--begins to seem meaningful upon reflection.
+
+At one time or another I have drifted to many different corners of the
+world; but my residence at Chautauqua was my only experience of a
+democracy. In this community there are no special privileges. If the
+President of the Institution had wished to hear me lecture (he never did,
+in fact--though we used to play tennis together, at which game he proved
+himself easily the better man) he would have been required to come early
+and take his chance at getting a front seat; and once, when I ventured to
+attend a lecture by one of my colleagues, I found myself seated beside
+that very waitress in the Athenaeum who had disapproved of my method of
+ordering a meal. All the exercises are open equally to anybody--first
+come, first served--and the boy who blacks your boots may turn out to be a
+Sophomore at Oberlin. Teachers in Texas high-schools sweep the floors or
+shave you, and the raucous newsboy is earning his way toward the
+University of Illinois. All this is a little bewildering at first; but in
+a day or two you grow to like it.
+
+This free-for-all spirit that permeates Chautauqua reminds me to speak of
+the economic conduct of the Institution. The only charge--except in the
+case of certain special courses--is for admission to the grounds. The
+visitor pays fifty cents for a franchise of one day, and more for periods
+of greater length, until the ultimate charge of seven dollars and fifty
+cents for a season ticket is attained. On leaving the grounds, he has to
+show his ticket; and if it has expired he is taxed according to the term
+of his delinquent lingering. Once free of the grounds, he may avail
+himself of any of the privileges of the Assembly. Lectures, on an infinite
+variety of subjects, are delivered hour after hour; and a bulletin of
+these successive lectures is posted publicly and printed in the daily
+paper. Every evening an entertainment of some sort is given in the
+Amphitheatre, and this is eagerly attended by swarming thousands. The
+Institution owns all the land within the bounding palisades. Private
+cottages may be erected by individual builders on lots leased for
+ninety-nine years; but the Institution owns and operates the only hotel,
+and exercises an absolute empery over the issuance of franchises to
+necessary tradesmen. The revenue of the corporation is therefore rich; but
+all of it is expended in importing the best lecturers that may be
+obtained, and in furthering the general good of the general assembly. The
+entire system suggests the theoretic observation that an absolute
+democracy can be instituted and maintained only by an absolute monarchy.
+If all the people are to be free and equal, the government must have
+absolute control of all the revenue. Here is, perhaps, a principle for our
+presidential candidates to think about.
+
+But I do not wish to terminate this summer conversation on a serious note;
+and I must revert, in closing, to some of the recreations at Chautauqua.
+The first of these is tea. Every afternoon, from four to five o'clock, the
+visitor lightly flits from tea to tea,--making his excuses to one hostess
+in order to dash onward to another. This is rather hard upon the health,
+because it requires the deglutition of innumerable potions. I have always
+maintained that tea is an admirable entity if it be considered merely as a
+time of day, but that it is insidious if it be considered as a beverage.
+At Chautauqua, tea is not only an hour but a drink; and (though I am a
+sympathetic soul) I can only say that those who like it like it. For my
+part, I preferred the concoction sold at rustic soda-fountains, which is
+known locally as a "Chautauqua highball,"--a ribald term devised by
+college men who make up the by-no-means-despicable ball-team. This
+beverage is compounded out of unfermented grape-juice and foaming
+fizz-water; and, if it be taken absent-mindedly, seems to taste like
+something.
+
+But the standard recreation at Chautauqua is the habit of impromptu eating
+in the open air. Every one invites you to go upon a picnic. You take a
+steamer to some point upon the lake, or take a trolley to a wild and deep
+ravine known by the somewhat unpoetic name of the Hog's Back; and then
+everybody sits around and eats sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and
+considers the occasion a debauch. This formality resembles great good
+fun,--especially as there are girls who laugh, and play, and threaten to
+disconcert you on the morrow when you solemnly arise to lecture on the
+Religion of Emerson. But picnic-baskets out of doors are rather hard on
+the digestion.
+
+Perhaps I should record also, as a curious experience, that I was required
+to appear as one of the guests of honor at a large reception. This meant
+that I had to stand in line, with certain other marionettes, and shake
+hands with an apparently endless procession of people who were themselves
+as bored as were the guests of honor. I determined then and there that I
+should never run for President,--not even in response to an irresistible
+appeal from the populace. I had never suspected before that there could be
+so many hands without the touch of nature in them.  I shook hands
+mechanically, chatting all the while with a humorous and human woman who
+stood next to me in the line of the attacked--until suddenly I felt the
+sensitive and tender grasp of a sure-enough hand, reminding me of friends
+and one or two women it has been a holiness to know. My attention was
+attracted by the thrill. I turned swiftly--and I looked upon a little bent
+old woman who was blind. She had a voice, too, for she spoke to me ...
+and,--well, I was very glad that I went to that reception.
+
+And many other matters I remember fondly,--a certain lonely hill at
+sunset, whence you looked over wide water to distant dream-enchanted
+shores; the urbanity and humor of the wise directors of the Institution;
+the manner of many young students who discerned an unadmitted sanctity
+beneath the smiling conversations of those summer hours; my own last
+lecture, on "The Importance of Enjoying Life"; the people who walked with
+me to the station and whom I was sorry to leave; and the oddly-minded
+student behind the desk of the hotel; and an old man from Kentucky who
+cared about Walt Whitman after I had talked about his ministrations in the
+army hospitals; and the trees, and the reverberating organ, and, beneath a
+benison of midnight peace, the hushed moon-silvery surface of the lake. It
+is, indeed, a memorable experience to have lectured at Chautauqua.
+
+
+
+
+ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP
+
+
+Any one who has traveled much about the country of recent years must have
+been impressed by the growing uneasiness of mind among thoughtful men.
+Whether in the smoking car, or the hotel corridor, or the college hall,
+everywhere, if you meet them off their guard and stripped of the optimism
+which we wear as a public convention, you will hear them saying in a kind
+of sad amazement, "What is to be the end of it all?" They are alarmed at
+the unsettlement of property and the difficulties that harass the man of
+moderate means in making provision for the future; they are uneasy over
+the breaking up of the old laws of decorum, if not of decency, and over
+the unrestrained pursuit of excitement at any cost; they feel vaguely that
+in the decay of religion the bases of society have been somehow weakened.
+Now, much of this sort of talk is as old as history, and has no special
+significance. We are prone to forget that civilization has always been a
+_tour de force_, so to speak, a little hard-won area of order and
+self-subordination amidst a vast wilderness of anarchy and barbarism that
+are with difficulty held in check and are continually threatening to
+overrun their bounds. But that is equally no reason for over-confidence.
+Civilization is like a ship traversing an untamed sea. It is a more
+complex machine in our day, with command of greater forces, and might seem
+correspondingly safer than in the era of sails. But fresh catastrophes
+have shown that the ancient perils of navigation still confront the
+largest vessel, when the crew loses its discipline or the officers neglect
+their duty; and the analogy is not without its warning.
+
+Only a year after the sinking of the _Titanic_ I was crossing the ocean,
+and it befell by chance that on the anniversary of that disaster we passed
+not very far from the spot where the proud ship lay buried beneath the
+waves. The evening was calm, and on the lee deck a dance had been hastily
+organized to take advantage of the benign weather. Almost alone I stood
+for hours at the railing on the windward side, looking out over the
+rippling water where the moon had laid upon it a broad street of gold.
+Nothing could have been more peaceful; it was as if Nature were smiling
+upon earth in sympathy with the strains of music and the sound of laughter
+that reached me at intervals from the revelling on the other deck. Yet I
+could not put out of my heart an apprehension of some luring treachery in
+this scene of beauty--and certainly the world can offer nothing more
+wonderfully beautiful than the moon shining from the far East over a
+smooth expanse of water. Was it not in such a calm as this that the
+unsuspecting vessel, with its gay freight of human lives, had shuddered,
+and gone down, forever? I seemed to behold a symbol; and there came into
+my mind the words we used to repeat at school, but are, I do not know just
+why, a little ashamed of to-day:
+
+  Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
+  Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
+  Humanity with all its fears,
+  With all its hopes of future years,
+  Is hanging breathless on thy fate!...
+
+Something like this, perhaps, is the feeling of many men--men by no means
+given to morbid gusts of panic--amid a society that laughs overmuch in its
+amusement and exults in the very lust of change. Nor is their anxiety
+quite the same as that which has always disturbed the reflecting
+spectator. At other times the apprehension has been lest the combined
+forces of order might not be strong enough to withstand the
+ever-threatening inroads of those who envy barbarously and desire
+recklessly; whereas today the doubt is whether the natural champions of
+order themselves shall be found loyal to their trust, for they seem no
+longer to remember clearly the word of command that should unite them in
+leadership. Until they can rediscover some common ground of strength and
+purpose in the first principles of education and law and property and
+religion, we are in danger of falling a prey to the disorganizing and
+vulgarizing domination of ambitions which should be the servants and not
+the masters of society.
+
+Certainly, in the sphere of education there is a growing belief that some
+radical reform is needed; and this dissatisfaction is in itself wholesome.
+Boys come into college with no reading and with minds unused to the very
+practice of study; and they leave college, too often, in the same state of
+nature. There are even those, inside and outside of academic halls, who
+protest that our higher institutions of learning simply fail to educate at
+all. That is slander; but in sober earnest, you will find few experienced
+college professors, apart from those engaged in teaching purely
+utilitarian or practical subjects, who are not convinced that the general
+relaxation is greater now than it was twenty years ago. It is of
+considerable significance that the two student essays which took the
+prizes offered by the Harvard _Advocate_ in 1913 were both on this theme.
+The first of them posed the question: "How can the leadership of the
+intellectual rather than the athletic student be fostered?" and was
+virtually a sermon on a text of President Lowell's: "No one in close touch
+with American education has failed to notice the lack among the mass of
+undergraduates of keen interest in their studies, and the small regard for
+scholarly attainment."
+
+Now, the _Advocate_ prizeman has his specific remedy, and President Lowell
+has his, and other men propose other systems and restrictions; but the
+evil is too deep-seated to be reached by any superficial scheme of honors
+or to be charmed away by insinuating appeals. The other day Mr. William F.
+McCombs, chairman of the National Committee which engineered a college
+president into the White House, gave this advice to our academic youth:
+"The college man must forget--or never let it creep into his head--that
+he's a highbrow. If it does creep in, he's out of politics." To which one
+might reply in Mr. McCombs's own dialect, that unless a man can make
+himself a force in politics (or at least in the larger life of the State)
+precisely by virtue of being a "highbrow," he had better spend his four
+golden years otherwhere than in college. There it is: the destiny of
+education is intimately bound up with the question of social leadership,
+and unless the college, as it used to be in the days when the religious
+hierarchy it created was a real power, can be made once more a breeding
+place for a natural aristocracy, it will inevitably degenerate into a
+school for mechanical apprentices or into a pleasure resort for the
+_jeunesse doree_ (_sc._ the "gold coasters"). We must get back to a common
+understanding of the office of education in the construction of society,
+and must discriminate among the subjects that may enter into the
+curriculum, by their relative value towards this end.
+
+A manifest condition is that education should embrace the means of
+discipline, for without discipline the mind will remain inefficient, just
+as surely as the muscles of the body, without exercise, will be left
+flaccid. That should seem to be a self-evident truth. Now it may be
+possible to derive a certain amount of discipline out of any study, but it
+is a fact, nevertheless, which cannot be gainsaid, that some studies lend
+themselves to this use more readily and effectively than others. You may,
+for instance, if by extraordinary luck you get the perfect teacher, make
+English literature disciplinary by the hard manipulation of ideas; but in
+practice it almost inevitably happens that a course in English literature
+either degenerates into the dull memorizing of dates and names or, rising
+into the O Altitudo, evaporates in romantic gush over beautiful passages.
+This does not mean, of course, that no benefit may be obtained from such a
+study, but it does preclude English literature generally from being made
+the backbone, so to speak, of a sound curriculum. The same may be said of
+French and German. The difficulties of these tongues in themselves, and
+the effort required of us to enter into their spirit, imply some degree of
+intellectual gymnastics, but scarcely enough for our purpose. Of the
+sciences it behooves one to speak circumspectly, and undoubtedly
+mathematics and physics, at least, demand such close attention and such
+firm reasoning as to render them an essential part of any disciplinary
+education. But there are good grounds for being sceptical of the effect of
+the non-mathematical sciences on the immature mind. Any one who has spent
+a considerable portion of his undergraduate time in a chemical laboratory,
+for example, as the present writer has done, and has the means of
+comparing the results of such elementary and pottering experimentation
+with the mental grip required in the humanistic courses, must feel that
+the real training obtained therein was almost negligible. If I may draw
+further from my own observation I must say frankly that, after dealing for
+a number of years with manuscripts prepared for publication by college
+professors of the various faculties, I have been forced to the conclusion
+that science, in itself, is likely to leave the mind in a state of
+relative imbecility. It is not that the writing of men who got their early
+drill too exclusively, or even predominantly, in the sciences lacks the
+graces of rhetoric--that would be comparatively a small matter--but such
+men in the majority of cases, even when treating subjects within their own
+field, show a singular inability to think clearly and consecutively, so
+soon as they are freed from the restraint of merely describing the process
+of an experiment. On the contrary, the manuscript of a classical scholar,
+despite the present dry-rot of philology, almost invariably gives signs of
+a habit of orderly and well-governed cerebration.
+
+Here, whatever else may be lacking, is discipline. The sheer difficulty of
+Latin and Greek, the highly organized structure of these languages, the
+need of scrupulous search to find the nearest equivalents for words that
+differ widely in their scope of meaning from their derivatives in any
+modern vocabulary, the effort of lifting one's self out of the familiar
+rut of ideas into so foreign a world, all these things act as a tonic
+exercise to the brain. And it is a demonstrable fact that students of the
+classics do actually surpass their unclassical rivals in any field where a
+fair test can be made. At Princeton, for instance, Professor West has
+shown this superiority by tables of achievements and grades, which he
+published in the _Educational Review_ for March, 1913; and a number of
+letters from various parts of the country, printed in the _Nation_, tell
+the same story in striking fashion. Thus, a letter from Wesleyan
+(September 7, 1911) gives statistics to prove that the classical students
+in that university outstrip the others in obtaining all sorts of honors,
+commonly even honors in the sciences. Another letter (May 8, 1913) shows
+that in the first semester in English at the University of Nebraska the
+percentage of delinquents among those who entered with four years of Latin
+was below 7; among those who had three years of Latin and one or two of a
+modern language the percentage rose to 15; two years of Latin and two
+years of a modern language, 30 per cent.; one year or less of Latin and
+from two to four years of a modern language, 35 per cent. And in the
+_Nation_ of April 23, 1914, Prof. Arthur Gordon Webster, the eminent
+physicist of Clark University, after speaking of the late B.O. Peirce's
+early drill and life-long interest in Greek and Latin, adds these
+significant words: "Many of us still believe that such a training makes
+the best possible foundation for a scientist." There is reason to think
+that this opinion is daily gaining ground among those who are zealous that
+the prestige of science should be maintained by men of the best calibre.
+
+The disagreement in this matter would no doubt be less, were it not for an
+ambiguity in the meaning of the word "efficient" itself. There is a kind
+of efficiency in managing men, and there also is an intellectual
+efficiency, properly speaking, which is quite a different faculty. The
+former is more likely to be found in the successful engineer or business
+man than in the scholar of secluded habits, and because often such men of
+affairs received no discipline at college in the classics, the argument
+runs that utilitarian studies are as disciplinary as the humanistic. But
+efficiency of this kind is not an academic product at all, and is commonly
+developed, and should be developed, in the school of the world. It comes
+from dealing with men in matters of large physical moment, and may exist
+with a mind utterly undisciplined in the stricter sense of the word. We
+have had more than one illustrious example in recent years of men capable
+of dominating their fellows, let us say in financial transactions, who
+yet, in the grasp of first principles and in the analysis of consequences,
+have shown themselves to be as inefficient as children.
+
+Probably, however, few men who have had experience in education will deny
+the value of discipline to the classics, even though they hold that other
+studies, less costly from the utilitarian point of view, are equally
+educative in this respect. But it is further of prime importance, even if
+such an equality, or approach to equality, were granted, that we should
+select one group of studies, and unite in making it the core of the
+curriculum for the great mass of undergraduates. It is true in education
+as in other matters that strength comes from union, and weakness from
+division, and if educated men are to work together for a common end, they
+must have a common range of ideas, with a certain solidarity in their way
+of looking at things. As matters actually are, the educated man feels
+terribly his isolation under the scattering of intellectual pursuits, yet
+too often lacks the courage to deny the strange popular fallacy that there
+is virtue in sheer variety, and that somehow well-being is to be struck
+out from the clashing of miscellaneous interests rather than from
+concentration. In one of his annual reports some years ago President
+Eliot, of Harvard, observed from the figures of registration that the
+majority of students still at that time believed the best form of
+education for them was in the old humanistic courses, and _therefore_, he
+argued, the other courses should be fostered. There was never perhaps a
+more extraordinary syllogism since the _argal_ of Shakespeare's
+gravedigger. I quote from memory, and may slightly misrepresent the actual
+statement of the influential "educationalist," but the spirit of his
+words, as indeed of his practice, is surely as I give it. And the working
+of this spirit is one of the main causes of the curious fact that scarcely
+any other class of men in social intercourse feel themselves, in their
+deeper concerns, more severed one from another than those very college
+professors who ought to be united in the battle for educational
+leadership. This estrangement is sometimes carried to an extreme almost
+ludicrous. I remember once, in a small but advanced college, the
+consternation that was awakened when an instructor in philosophy went to a
+colleague--both of them now associates in a large university--for
+information in a question of biology. "What business has he with such
+matters," said the irate biologist; "let him stick to his last, and teach
+philosophy--if he can!" That was a polite jest, you will say. Perhaps; but
+not entirely. Philosophy is indeed taught in one lecture hall, and biology
+in another, but of conscious effort to make of education an harmonious
+driving force there is next to nothing. And as the teachers, so are the
+taught.
+
+Such criticism does not imply that advanced work in any of the branches of
+human knowledge should be curtailed; but it does demand that, as a
+background to the professional pursuits, there should be a common
+intellectual training through which all students should pass, acquiring
+thus a single body of ideas and images in which they could always meet as
+brother initiates.
+
+We shall, then, make a long step forward when we determine that in the
+college, as distinguished from the university, it is better to have the
+great mass of men, whatever may be the waste in a few unmalleable minds,
+go through the discipline of a single group of studies--with, of course, a
+considerable freedom of choice in the outlying field. And it will probably
+appear in experience that the only practicable group to select is the
+classics, with the accompaniment of philosophy and the mathematical
+sciences. Latin and Greek are, at least, as disciplinary as any other
+subjects; and if it can be further shown that they possess a specific
+power of correction for the more disintegrating tendencies of the age, it
+ought to be clear that their value as instruments of education outweighs
+the service of certain other studies which may seem to be more immediately
+utilitarian.
+
+For it will be pretty generally agreed that efficiency of the individual
+scholar and unity of the scholarly class are, properly, only the means to
+obtain the real end of education, which is social efficiency. The only
+way, in fact, to make the discipline demanded by a severe curriculum and
+the sacrifice of particular tastes required for unity seem worth the cost,
+is to persuade men that the resulting form of education both meets a
+present and serious need of society and promises to serve those
+individuals who desire to obtain society's fairer honors. As for the
+specific need of society at the present day, it is not my purpose to open
+this matter now, for the good reason that the editor of THE UNPOPULAR
+REVIEW has already permitted me to argue it at length in my article on
+_Natural Aristocracy_. Mr. McCombs, speaking for the "practical" man,
+declares that there is no place in politics for the intellectual
+aristocrat. A good many of us believe that unless the very reverse of this
+is true, unless the educated man can somehow, by virtue of his education,
+make of himself a governor of the people in the larger sense, and even to
+some extent in the narrow political sense, unless the college can produce
+a hierarchy of character and intelligence which shall in due measure
+perform the office of the discredited oligarchy of birth, we had better
+make haste to divert our enormous collegiate endowments into more useful
+channels.
+
+And here I am glad to find confirmation of my belief in the stalwart old
+_Boke Named the Governour_, published by Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531, the
+first treatise on education in the English tongue, and still, after all
+these years, one of the wisest. It is no waste of time to take account of
+the theory held by the humanists when study at Oxford and Cambridge was
+shaping itself for its long service in giving to the oligarchic government
+of Great Britain whatever elements it possessed of true aristocracy.
+Elyot's book is equally a treatise on the education of a gentleman, and on
+the ordinance of government; for, as he says elsewhere, he wrote "to
+instruct men in such virtues as shall be expedient for them which shall
+have authority in a weal public." I quote from various parts of his work
+with some abridgment, retaining the quaint spelling of the original, and I
+beg the reader not to skip, however long the citation may appear:
+
+    Beholde also the ordre that god hath put generally in al his
+    creatures, begynning at the moste inferiour or base, and
+    assendynge upwarde; so that in euery thyng is ordre, and without
+    ordre may be nothing stable or permanent; and it may nat be called
+    ordre, excepte it do contayne in it degrees, high and base,
+    accordynge to the merite or estimation of the thyng that is
+    ordred. And therfore hit appereth that god gyueth nat to euery man
+    like gyftes of grace, or of nature, but to some more, some lesse,
+    as it liketh his diuine maiestie. For as moche as understandyng is
+    the most excellent gyfte that man can receiue in his creation, it
+    is therfore congruent, and accordynge that as one excelleth an
+    other in that influence, as therby beinge next to the similitude
+    of his maker, so shulde the astate of his persone be auanced in
+    degree or place where understandynge may profite. Suche oughte to
+    be set in a more highe place than the residue where they may se
+    and also be sene; that by the beames of theyr excellent witte,
+    shewed throughe the glasse of auctorite, other of inferiour
+    understandynge may be directed to the way of vertue and commodious
+    liuynge....
+
+    Thus I conclude that nobilitie is nat after the vulgare opinion of
+    men, but is only the prayse and surname of vertue; whiche the
+    lenger it continueth in a name or lignage, the more is nobilitie
+    extolled and meruailed at....
+
+    If thou be a gouernour, or haste ouer other soueraygntie, knowe
+    thy selfe. Knowe that the name of a soueraigne or ruler without
+    actuall gouernaunce is but a shadowe, that gouernaunce standeth
+    nat by wordes onely, but principally by acte and example; that by
+    example of gouernours men do rise or falle in vertue or vice. Ye
+    shall knowe all way your selfe, if for affection or motion ye do
+    speke or do nothing unworthy the immortalitie and moste precious
+    nature of your soule....
+
+    In semblable maner the inferiour persone or subiecte aught to
+    consider, that all be it he in the substaunce of soule and body be
+    equall with his superior, yet for als moche as the powars and
+    qualities of the soule and body, with the disposition of reason,
+    be nat in euery man equall, therfore god ordayned a diuersitie or
+    pre-eminence in degrees to be amonge men for the necessary
+    derection and preseruation of them in conformitie of lyuinge....
+
+    Where all thynge is commune, there lacketh ordre; and where ordre
+    lacketh, there all thynge is odiouse and uncomly.
+
+Such is the goal which the grave Sir Thomas pointed out to the noble youth
+of his land at the beginning of England's greatness, and such, within the
+bounds of human frailty, has been the ideal even until now which the two
+universities have held before them. Naturally the method of training
+prescribed in the sixteenth century for the attainment of this goal is
+antiquated in some of its details, but it is no exaggeration,
+nevertheless, to speak of the _Boke Named the Governour_ as the very Magna
+Charta of our education. The scheme of the humanist might be described in
+a word as a disciplining of the higher faculty of the imagination to the
+end that the student may behold, as it were in one sublime vision, the
+whole scale of being in its range from the lowest to the highest under the
+divine decree of order and subordination, without losing sight of the
+immutable veracity at the heart of all variation, which "is only the
+praise and surname of virtue." This was no new vision, nor has it ever
+been quite forgotten. It was the whole meaning of religion to Hooker, from
+whom it passed into all that is best and least ephemeral in the Anglican
+Church. It was the basis, more modestly expressed, of Blackstone's
+conception of the British Constitution and of liberty under law. It was
+the kernel of Burke's theory of statecraft. It is the inspiration of the
+sublimer science, which accepts the hypothesis of evolution as taught by
+Darwin and Spencer, yet bows in reverence before the unnamed and
+incommensurable force lodged as a mystical purpose within the unfolding
+universe. It was the wisdom of that child of Stratford who, building
+better than he knew, gave to our literature its deepest and most
+persistent note. If anywhere Shakespeare seems to speak from his heart and
+to utter his own philosophy, it is in the person of Ulysses in that
+strange satire of life as "still wars and lechery" which forms the theme
+of _Troilus and Cressida_. Twice in the course of the play Ulysses
+moralizes on the causes of human evil. Once it is in an outburst against
+the devastations of disorder:
+
+  Take but degree away, untune that string,
+  And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
+  In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
+  Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
+  And make a sop of all this solid globe:
+  Strength should be lord of imbecility,
+  And the rude son should strike his father dead:
+  Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
+  Between whose endless jar justice resides,
+  Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
+  Then every thing includes itself in power,
+  Power into will, will into appetite.
+
+And, in the same spirit, the second tirade of Ulysses is charged with
+mockery at the vanity of the present and at man's usurpation of time as
+the destroyer instead of the preserver of continuity:
+
+  For time is like a fashionable host
+  That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
+  And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
+  Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
+  And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
+  Remuneration for the thing it was;
+  For beauty, wit,
+  High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
+  Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
+  To envious and calumniating time.
+
+To have made this vision of the higher imagination a true part of our
+self-knowledge, in such fashion that the soul is purged of envy for what
+is distinguished, and we feel ourselves fellows with the preserving,
+rather than the destroying, forces of time, is to be raised into the
+nobility of the intellect. To hold this knowledge in a mind trained to
+fine efficiency and confirmed by faithful comradeship, is to take one's
+place with the rightful governors of the people. Nor is there any narrow
+or invidious exclusiveness in such an aristocracy, which differs in its
+free hospitality from an oligarchy of artificial prescription. The more
+its membership is enlarged, the greater is its power, and the more secure
+are the privileges of each individual. Yet, if not exclusive, an academic
+aristocracy must by its very nature be exceedingly jealous of any
+levelling process which would shape education to the needs of the
+intellectual proletariat, and so diminish its own ranks. It cannot admit
+that, if education is once levelled downwards, the whole body of men will
+of themselves gradually raise the level to the higher range; for its creed
+declares that elevation must come from leadership rather than from
+self-motion of the mass. It will therefore be opposed to any scheme of
+studies which relaxes discipline or destroys intellectual solidarity. It
+will look with suspicion on any system which turns out half-educated men
+with the same diplomas as the fully educated, thinking that such methods
+of slurring over differences are likely to do more harm by discouraging
+the ambition to attain what is distinguished than good by spreading wide a
+thin veneer of culture. In particular it will distrust the present huge
+overgrowth of courses in government and sociology, which send men into the
+world skilled in the machinery of statecraft and with minds sharpened to
+the immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine training of
+the imagination and no understanding of the longer problems of humanity,
+with no hold on the past, "amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and
+opinions, to concentre their thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to
+preserve them from being blown about by every wind of fashionable
+doctrine." It will set itself against any regular subjection of the
+"fierce spirit of liberty," which is the breath of distinction and the
+very charter of aristocracy, to the sullen spirit of equality, which
+proceeds from envy in the baser sort of democracy. It will regard the
+character of education and the disposition of the curriculum as a question
+of supreme importance; for its motto is always, _abeunt studia in mores_.
+
+Now this aristocratic principle has, so to speak, its everlasting
+embodiment in Greek literature, from whence it was taken over into Latin
+and transmitted, with much mingling of foreign and even contradictory
+ideas, to the modern world. From Homer to the last runnings of the
+Hellenic spirit you will find it taught by every kind of precept and
+enforced by every kind of example; nor was Shakespeare writing at hazard,
+but under the instinctive guidance of genius, when he put his aristocratic
+creed into the mouth of the hero who to the end remained for the Greeks
+the personification of their peculiar wisdom. In no other poetry of the
+world is the law of distinction, as springing from a man's perception of
+his place in the great hierarchy of privilege and obligation, from the
+lowest human being up to the Olympian gods, so copiously and magnificently
+set forth as in Pindar's _Odes of Victory_. And AEschylus was the first
+dramatist to see with clear vision the primacy of the intellect in the law
+of orderly development, seemingly at variance with the divine immutable
+will of Fate, yet finally in mysterious accord with it. When the
+philosophers of the later period came to the creation of systematic
+ethics, they had only the task of formulating what was already latent in
+the poets and historians of their land; and it was the recollection of the
+fulness of such instruction in the _Nicomachean Ethics_ and the Platonic
+Dialogues, with their echo in the _Officia_ of Cicero, as if in them were
+stored up all the treasures of antiquity, that raised our Sir Thomas into
+wondering admiration:
+
+    Lorde god, what incomparable swetnesse of wordes and mater shall
+    he finde in the saide warkes of Plato and Cicero; wherin is ioyned
+    grauitie with dilectation, excellent wysedome with diuine
+    eloquence, absolute vertue with pleasure incredible, and euery
+    place is so infarced [crowded] with profitable counsaile, ioyned
+    with honestie, that those thre bokes be almoste sufficient to make
+    a perfecte and excellent gouernour.
+
+There is no need to dwell on this aspect of the classics. He who cares to
+follow their full working in this direction, as did our English humanist,
+may find it exhibited in Plato's political and ethical scheme of
+self-development, or in Aristotle's ideal of the Golden Mean which
+combines magnanimity with moderation, and elevation with self-knowledge.
+If a single word were used to describe the character and state of life
+upheld by Plato and Aristotle, as spokesmen of their people, it would be
+_eleutheria_, _liberty_: the freedom to cultivate the higher part of a
+man's nature--his intellectual prerogative, his desire of truth, his
+refinements of taste--and to hold the baser part of himself in subjection;
+the freedom, also, for its own perfection, and indeed for its very
+existence, to impose an outer conformity to, or at least respect for, the
+laws of this inner government on others who are of themselves ungoverned.
+Such liberty is the ground of true distinction; it implies the opposite of
+an equalitarianism which reserves its honors and rewards for those who
+attain a bastard kind of distinction by the cunning of leadership, without
+departing from common standards--the demagogues who rise by flattery. But
+it is, on the other hand, by no means dependent on the artificial
+distinctions of privilege, and is peculiarly adapted to an age whose
+appointed task must be to create a natural aristocracy as a _via media_
+between an equalitarian democracy and a prescriptive oligarchy or
+plutocracy. It is a notable fact that, as the real hostility to the
+classics in the present day arises from an instinctive suspicion of them
+as standing in the way of a downward-levelling mediocrity, so, at other
+times, they have fallen under displeasure for their veto on a contrary
+excess. Thus, in his savage attack on the Commonwealth, to which he gave
+the significant title _Behemoth_, Hobbes lists the reading of classical
+history among the chief causes of the rebellion. "There were," he says,
+"an exceeding great number of men of the better sort, that had been so
+educated as that in their youth, having read the books written by famous
+men of the ancient Grecian and Roman commonwealths concerning their polity
+and great actions, in which books the popular government was extolled by
+that glorious name of liberty, and monarchy disgraced by the name of
+tyranny, they became thereby in love with their forms of government; and
+out of these men were chosen the greatest part of the House of Commons; or
+if they were not the greatest part, yet by advantage of their eloquence
+were always able to sway the rest." To this charge Hobbes returns again
+and again, even declaring that "the universities have been to this nation
+as the Wooden Horse was to the Trojans." And the uncompromising monarchist
+of the _Leviathan_, himself a classicist of no mean attainments, as may be
+known by his translation of Thucydides, was not deceived in his
+accusation. The tyrannicides of Athens and Rome, the Aristogeitons and
+Brutuses and others, were the heroes by whose example the leaders of the
+French Revolution (rightly, so far as they did not fall into the opposite,
+equalitarian extreme) were continually justifying their acts:
+
+  There Brutus starts and stares by midnight taper,
+  Who all the day enacts--a woollen-draper.
+
+And again, in the years of the Risorgimento, more than one of the
+champions of Italian liberty went to death with those great names on their
+lips.
+
+So runs the law of order and right subordination. But if the classics
+offer the best service to education by inculcating an aristocracy of
+intellectual distinction, they are equally effective in enforcing the
+similar lesson of time. It is a true saying of our ancient humanist that
+"the longer it continueth in a name or lineage, the more is nobility
+extolled and marvelled at." It is true because in this way our imagination
+is working with the great conservative law of growth. Whatever may be in
+theory our democratic distaste for the insignia of birth, we cannot get
+away from the fact that there is a certain honor of inheritance, and that
+we instinctively pay homage to one who represents a noble name. There is
+nothing really illogical in this: for, as an English statesman has put it,
+"the past is one of the elements of our power." He is the wise democrat
+who, with no opposition to such a decree of Nature, endeavors to control
+its operation by expecting noble service where the memory of nobility
+abides. When last year Oxford bestowed its highest honor on an American,
+distinguished not only for his own public acts but for the great tradition
+embodied in his name, the Orator of the University did not omit this
+legitimate appeal to the imagination, singularly appropriate in its
+academic Latin:
+
+    ... Statim succurrit animo antiqua illa Romae condicio, cum non
+    tam propter singulos cives quam propter singulas gentes nomen
+    Romanum floreret. Cum enim civis alicujus et avum et proavum
+    principes civitatis esse creatos, cum patrem legationis munus apud
+    aulam Britannicam summa cum laude esse exsecutum cognovimus; cum
+    denique ipsum per totum bellum stipendia equo meritum, summa
+    pericula "Pulcra pro Libertate" ausum,... Romanae alicujus
+    gentis--Brutorum vel Deciorum--annales evolvere videmur, qui
+    testimonium adhibent "fortes creari fortibus," et majorum exemplis
+    et imaginibus nepotes ad virtutem accendi.
+
+Is there any man so dull of soul as not to be stirred by that enumeration
+of civic services zealously inherited; or is there any one so envious of
+the past as not to believe that such memories should be honored in the
+present as an incentive to noble emulation?
+
+Well, we cannot all of us count Presidents and Ambassadors among our
+ancestors, but we can, if we will, in the genealogy of the inner life
+enroll ourselves among the adopted sons of a family in comparison with
+which the Bruti and Decii of old and the Adamses of to-day are veritable
+_new men_. We can see what defence against the meaner depredations of the
+world may be drawn from the pride of birth, when, as it sometimes happens,
+the obligation of a great past is kept as a contract with the present;
+shall we forget to measure the enlargement and elevation of mind which
+ought to come to a man who has made himself the heir of the ancient Lords
+of Wisdom? "To one small people," as Sir Henry Maine has said, in words
+often quoted, "it was given to create the principle of Progress. That
+people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in
+this world which is not Greek in its origin." That is a hard saying, but
+scarcely exaggerated. Examine the records of our art and our science, our
+philosophy and the enduring element of our faith, our statecraft and our
+notion of liberty, and you will find that they all go back for their
+inspiration to that one small people, and strike their roots into the soil
+of Greece. What we have added, it is well to know; but he is the
+aristocrat of the mind who can display a diploma from the schools of the
+Academy and the Lyceum, and from the Theatre of Dionysus. What tradition
+of ancestral achievement in the Senate or on the field of battle shall
+broaden a man's outlook and elevate his will equally with the
+consciousness that his way of thinking and feeling has come down to him by
+so long and honorable a descent, or shall so confirm him in his better
+judgment against the ephemeral and vulgarizing solicitations of the hour?
+Other men are creatures of the visible moment; he is a citizen of the past
+and of the future. And such a charter of citizenship it is the first duty
+of the college to provide.
+
+I have limited myself in these pages to a discussion of what may be called
+the public side of education, considering the classics in their power to
+mould character and foster sound leadership in a society much given to
+drifting. Of the inexhaustible joy and consolation they afford to the
+individual, only he can have full knowledge who has made the writers of
+Greece and Rome his friends and counsellors through many vicissitudes of
+life. It is related of Sainte-Beuve, who, according to Renan, read
+everything and remembered everything, that one could observe a peculiar
+serenity on his face whenever he came down from his study after reading a
+book of Homer. The cost of learning the language of Homer is not small;
+but so are all fair things difficult, as the Greek proverb runs, and the
+reward in this case is precious beyond estimation.
+
+Nor need we forget another proverb from Greece, with its spirit of
+"accommodation"--that the half is sometimes greater than the whole. Even a
+moderate acquaintance with the language, helped out by good translations
+(especially in such form as the Loeb Classics are now offering, with the
+original and the English on opposite pages), will go a surprising length
+towards keeping a man, amid the exactions of a professional or otherwise
+busy life, in possession of the heritage to which our age has grown so
+perilously indifferent.
+
+
+
+
+HYPNOTISM, TELEPATHY, AND DREAMS
+
+
+A good many good judges find the world more out of joint, and moving with
+a more threatening rattling, than at any previous time since the French
+Revolution, and think that this is largely because the machine has lost
+too much of that regulation it used to get from the religions. Much of the
+regulation came from an interest in things wider than those directly
+revealed by sense.
+
+Possibly a revival of such an interest may be promised by the recent
+indications of a range of our forces, both physical and psychic, far wider
+than previous experience has indicated. This leads us to invite attention
+to some unusual psychic phenomena evinced by persons of exceptional
+sensibilities not yet as well understood, or even as carefully
+investigated, as perhaps they deserve to be. The physical phenomena are
+outside of our present purpose.
+
+There are hundreds of well authenticated reports of super-usual visions.
+The vast majority of them, however, were experienced when the percipients
+were in bed, but believed themselves awake. But almost everybody has often
+believed himself awake in bed, when he was only dreaming. Hence the
+probability is overwhelming that most of these super-usual experiences
+were had in dreams.
+
+But it is certain that not all were, at least in dreams as ordinarily
+understood; but there seems to be a waking dream state. Foster's visions
+virtually all came while he was awake, and they were generally at once
+described by him as if he were describing a landscape or a play. At times
+he very closely identified himself with some personality of his visions,
+and acted out the personality, just as Mrs. Piper has habitually done. The
+following is an approximate instance, quoted by Bartlett (_The Salem
+Seer_, p. 51 f.):
+
+    Says a writer in the New York _World_, Dec. 27, 1885:
+
+    ... While we were talking one night, Foster and I, there came a
+    knock at the door. Bartlett arose and opened it, disclosing as he
+    did so two young men plainly dressed, of marked provincial
+    aspect.... I saw at once that they were clients, and arose to go.
+    Foster restrained me.
+
+    "Sit down," he said. "I'll try and get rid of them, for I'm not in
+    the humor to be disturbed...."
+
+    Foster hinted that he had no particular inclination to gratify
+    them then and there, but they protested that they had come some
+    distance, and, with a characteristically good-natured smile, he
+    gave in....
+
+    Then follows an account of a fairly good seance--taps on the
+    marble table, reading pellets, describing persons, etc., until I
+    thought Foster was tired of the interview and was feigning sleep
+    to end it. All of a sudden he sprang to his feet with such an
+    expression of horror and consternation as an actor playing Macbeth
+    would have given a good deal to imitate. His eyes glared, his
+    breast heaved, his hands clenched....
+
+    "Why did you come here?" cried Foster, in a wail that seemed to
+    come from the bottom of his soul. "Why do you come here to torment
+    me with such a sight? Oh, God! It's horrible! It's horrible!... It
+    is your father I see!... He died fearfully! He died fearfully! He
+    was in Texas--on a horse--with cattle. He was alone. It is the
+    prairies! Alone! The horse fell! He was under it! His thigh was
+    broken--horribly broken! The horse ran away and left him! He lay
+    there stunned! Then he came to his senses! Oh! his thigh was
+    dreadful! Such agony! My God! Such agony!"
+
+    Foster fairly screamed at this. The younger of the men ... broke
+    into violent sobs. His companion wept, too, and the pair of them
+    clasped hands. Bartlett looked on concerned. As for me, I was
+    astounded.
+
+    "He was four days dying--four days dying--of starvation and
+    thirst," Foster went on, as if deciphering some terrible
+    hieroglyphs written on the air. "His thigh swelled to the size of
+    his body. Clouds of flies settled on him--flies and vermin--and he
+    chewed his own arm and drank his own blood. He died mad. And my
+    God! he crawled three miles in those four days! Man! Man! that's
+    how your father died!"
+
+    So saying, with a great sob, Foster dropped into his chair, his
+    cheeks purple, and tears running down them in rivers. The younger
+    man ... burst into a wild cry of grief and sank upon the neck of
+    his friend. He, too, was sobbing as if his own heart would break.
+    Bartlett stood over Foster wiping his forehead with a
+    handkerchief....
+
+    "It's true," said the younger man's friend; "his father was a
+    stock-raiser in Texas, and after he had been missing from his
+    drove for over a week, they found him dead and swollen with his
+    leg broken. They tracked him a good distance from where he must
+    have fallen. But nobody ever heard till now how he died." ...
+
+Now it is hardly to be supposed that the young visitor could ever have had
+this scene in his mind as vividly as Foster had. In that case where and
+how did Foster get the vividness and emotion? How do we get them in
+dreams? He dreamed while he was awake.
+
+As Bartlett quotes this, and as it declares him to have been present, he
+of course attests it by quoting it. So in each of Bartlett's quoted cases,
+the original witness is the reporter in the newspaper, and Bartlett, who
+was present (he was Foster's traveling companion and business agent) thus
+confirms it. We know Mr. Bartlett personally, and have thorough confidence
+in his sanity and sincerity. We have also been at the pains to learn that
+he commands the confidence and respect of his fellow townsmen in Tolland,
+Connecticut, where he is passing a green old age. Moreover, he does not
+interpret these phenomena by "spiritism."
+
+We also had a sitting with Foster, in which he undoubtedly showed abundant
+telepathy, and satisfied us that he was fundamentally honest, though not
+always discriminating between his involuntary impressions, and his natural
+impulses to help out their coherence and interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those who explain these things by denying their existence, were at least
+excusable thirty, or even twenty, years ago, but since the carefully
+sifted and authenticated and recorded evidence of recent years, especially
+that gathered by the Society for Psychical Research, the makers of such
+explanations simply put themselves in the category of those who, in
+Schopenhauer's day, denied the telopsis which is now quite generally
+recognized. He said their attitude should not be called skeptical, but
+merely ignorant. This brings to mind an excellent very practical friend
+who read the first number of this REVIEW, and praised it, but said: "Don't
+fool any more with Psychical Research and Simplified Spelling." We
+refrained from saying that we had not known that he had ever studied
+either, and we would not say it here if we were not confident that his
+aversion from the subject will prevent his reading this.
+
+To return to the manifestations: here are some other cases where Foster
+identified himself with a personality of his vision. (Bartlett, _op.
+cit._, 93.)
+
+    From Sacramento _Record_, December 8, 1873:
+
+    Foster at one time seized A.'s hand, explaining, "God bless you,
+    my dear boy, my son. I am thankful I at last may speak to you. I
+    want you to know I am your father, who loved you in life and loves
+    you still. I am near to you; a thin veil alone separates us.
+    Good-by. I am your father, Abijah A----"
+
+    "Good heavens!" exclaimed A----, "that was my father's name, his
+    tone, his manner, his action."
+
+    "And," said Foster, "it was a good influence; he was a man of
+    large veneration."
+
+The above indicates what we will provisionally call Possession. But it is
+not possession to the extent of complete expulsion of the original
+consciousness, as in the trances of Home, Moses, and Mrs. Piper.
+
+And which is the following? (Bartlett, _op. cit._, 103):
+
+    [Letter to editor, written Nov. 30, 1874]
+
+    New York _Daily Graphic_: ... He told me he saw the spirit of an
+    old woman close to me, describing most perfectly my grandmother,
+    and repeating: "Resodeda, Resodeda is here; she kisses her
+    grandson." Arising from his chair, Foster embraced and kissed me
+    in the same peculiar way as my grandmother did when alive.
+
+But here the Possession seems complete (Bartlett, _op. cit._, 140). From
+the Melbourne _Daily Age_:
+
+    Mr. Foster ... in answer to the question, What he died of?
+    suddenly interrupted, "Stay, this spirit will enter and possess
+    me," and instantaneously his whole body was seized with quivering
+    convulsions, the eyes were introverted, the face swelled, and the
+    mouth and hands were spasmodically agitated. Another change, and
+    there sat before me the counterpart of the figure of my departed
+    friend, stricken down with complete paralysis, just as he was on
+    his death-bed. The transformation was so life-like, if I may use
+    the expression, that I fancied I could detect the very features
+    and physiognomical changes that passed across the visage of my
+    dying friend. The kind of paralysis was exactly represented, with
+    the palsied hand extended to me to shake, as in the case of the
+    original. Mr. Foster recovered himself when I touched it, and he
+    said in reply to one of my companions that he had completely lost
+    his own identity during the fit, and felt like waves of water
+    flowing all over his body, from the crown downwards.
+
+Now for some tentative explanation of these rather unusual proceedings. It
+is generally known that a hypnotized person will imagine things and do
+things willed by the hypnotizer, that the sensibility of persons to
+hypnotism varies, and that persons frequently hypnotized become
+increasingly susceptible to the influence.
+
+Now what is ordinarily called thought transference has all these symptoms,
+and the combined indications seem to be that persons who readily
+experience thought-transference are specially susceptible to hypnotic
+influence, and get the transferred thought from almost anybody, just as
+the recognized hypnotic subject gets it from his hypnotizer; and that
+persons of excessive sensibility, like Foster, Home, Mrs. Holland, Mrs.
+Piper and mediums generally--the genuine ones,--simply get their
+impressions hypnotically from their sitters.
+
+But this explanation (?) by no means covers the whole situation. In the
+first place, it does not cover the vividness and the emotional content
+often displayed by the sensitive. The sitter is very seldom conscious of
+anything approaching it. It comes nearer to, in fact almost seems
+identical with, the frequent vividness and intensity of dreams. But where
+do dreams come from, whether in sleep, or in a waking "dream state" like
+that of Foster and many other sensitives? They don't come from any
+assignable "sitter." This present scribe dreams architecture and
+bric-a-brac finer than any he ever saw, or than any ever made. Yet he is
+no architect, or artist of any kind. Where does it all come from?
+
+Dreams, moreover, are filled with memories of forgotten things. Where do
+they come from? Dreams, too, are by no means devoid of truths not
+previously known to the dreamer, or, it would sometimes seem, to anybody
+else. Where do they come from?
+
+Du Prel and his school say they come from a "subliminal self," and Myers
+picks up the term and spreads it through Anglo-Saxondom. But those queer
+dreams frequently include persons who oppose the self--argue with it, and
+even down it, sometimes very much for its information, regeneration and
+increased stability. That does not seem like a house divided against
+itself; such an one, we have on very high authority, is apt to fall.
+James, cornered by his studies in Psychical Research, was inclined to
+posit a "cosmic reservoir" of all thoughts and feelings that ever existed,
+and of potentialities of all the thoughts and feelings that are ever going
+to exist; and under various designations, this cosmic reservoir or,--it
+seems a better metaphor--the cosmic soul filling it, and dribbling into
+our little souls,--is a guess of virtually all the philosophers from James
+back to Plato, and farther still--into the mists.
+
+Moreover this guess is powerfully backed up by another guess: men's
+speculations have been reaching back for the beginning of mind, until they
+recognize that a consistent doctrine of evolution finds no beginning, and
+demands mind as a constituent of the star-dust, and, when it really comes
+down to the scratch, is unable to imagine matter unassociated with mind.
+This is admirably expressed by James (Psychology I, 140):
+
+    If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape must
+    have been present at the very origin of things. Accordingly we
+    find that the more clear-sighted evolutionary philosophers are
+    beginning to posit it there. Each atom of the nebula, they
+    suppose, must have had an aboriginal atom of consciousness linked
+    with it; and, just as the material atoms have formed bodies and
+    brains by massing themselves together, so the mental atoms, by an
+    analogous process of aggregation, have fused into those larger
+    consciousnesses which we know in ourselves and suppose to exist in
+    our fellow-animals.
+
+That mind is not limited to this connection with matter, we see proved _a
+posteriori_ every day by the appearance from _some_ source, it may be only
+from the memories of survivors, of minds whose accompanying matter is long
+since dissipated.
+
+Moreover, in life, the matter is changing constantly and
+entirely--"renewed once in seven years." Yet not only does the "plan," the
+"idea," of the material man remain the same, but his mind grows for forty,
+sixty, sometimes eighty years, while the body begins to go down hill at
+twenty-eight.
+
+Moreover, we never see the sum of matter in the universe increasing, and
+we do see the sum of mind increasing every time two old thoughts coalesce
+into a new one, or even every time matter assumes a new form before a
+perceiving intelligence, not to speak of every time Mr. Bryan or Mr.
+Roosevelt opens his mouth. We cite these last as the extreme examples of
+increase--in quantity. We see another sort of increase every time Lord
+Bryce takes up his pen--the mental treasures of the world are added
+to--the contents of the cosmic reservoir worthily increased--the cosmic
+soul greater and more significant than before.
+
+Parts of it farther and farther removed in time and space seem to be
+manifesting themselves through the sensitives every day: so the evidence
+is increasing that none of it has ever been extinguished. The evidence
+that any part has been, is merely the evidence that it has stopped flowing
+through each man when he dies. But there are pretty strong indications
+that it has welled up occasionally through another man, and yet with the
+original individuality apparently even stronger than it was in the first
+man--strong enough to make an alien body--Foster's, in the instances
+quoted, look and act like the original twin body.
+
+Yet while the cosmic soul idea seems very illuminating, and even
+stimulating, as far as it goes, it soon lands us in the swamp of paradox
+surrounding all our knowledge. How reconcile it with our
+individuality--the individuality as dear as life itself--virtually
+identical with life itself? Well, we can't reconcile them, at least just
+yet. But we can pull our feet up from the swamp, and make a step that may
+be towards a reconciliation. Each of our brains is a network of channels
+through which the cosmic soul flows; and there are no two brains
+alike--hence our individuality.
+
+But those brains perish. Must individuality be conceded at the cost of our
+mental continuity? Perhaps not. Grant even the original mind-atom to be a
+constituent, or inseparable companion, of an original matter-atom
+(wouldn't it be more up to date to say vibration in each case?), mind, as
+we have already tried to demonstrate, is not limited, as matter seems to
+be, to those primitive atoms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The vague but almost unescapable notion of the cosmic soul also opens up
+some hint of an explanation of hypnotism, including, of course, thought
+transference. These vague hints or gleams on the borderland of our
+knowledge are of course something like what must be such hints of what we
+know as color, as go through the pigment spots on the surface of one of
+the lower creatures. Such as our limits are, we can express them only in
+metaphors. But for that matter all of our language beyond a few material
+conceptions, is metaphor from them. Well, on the hypothesis (or facing the
+fact, if you prefer) of the cosmic soul, telepathy, hypnotism and all that
+sort of thing at once affiliates itself with all our easy conceptions of
+interflow--in fluids, gases, sounds, colors, magnetism, electricity, etc.
+It's all a vague groping, but there seems something there which, as we
+evolve farther, we may get clearer impressions of.
+
+Well, to return to our sheep. Foster didn't get the clearness and
+intensity of his visions from the comparatively indistinct and placid
+impressions in his sitters' minds. There must be something more than
+hypnotism from the sitter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now here is a tougher case which opens a new element of the problem. It is
+from _The Autobiography of a Journalist_, by W.J. Stillman, Boston, 1901,
+Vol. I, pp. 192-4: Not many of our older readers will require any
+introduction of Stillman. For the younger ones, we may say that he was a
+very eminent art-critic; spent most of the latter half of his life abroad,
+being part of the time our consul at Crete; wrote a history of the Cretan
+Rebellion, and other books; and was a regular correspondent of _The
+Nation_, and of _The London Times_. We never knew his veracity questioned.
+
+Here is the story:
+
+A "spiritual medium," Miss A. was "under the control" of Stillman's dead
+cousin "Harvey." The "possession" seems to have been throughout free from
+trance. Stillman says:
+
+    I asked Harvey if he had seen old Turner, the landscape painter,
+    since his death, which had taken place not very long before. The
+    reply was "Yes," and I then asked what he was doing, the reply
+    being a pantomime of painting. I then asked if Harvey could bring
+    Turner there, to which the reply was, "I do not know; I will go
+    and see," upon which Miss A. said, "This influence [Harvey's.
+    Editor] is going away--it is gone"; and after a short pause added,
+    "There is another influence coming, in that direction," pointing
+    over her left shoulder. "I don't like it," and she shuddered
+    slightly, but presently sat up in her chair with a most
+    extraordinary personation of the old painter in manner, in the
+    look out from under the brow, and the pose of the head. It was as
+    if the ghost of Turner, as I had seen him at Griffiths's, sat in
+    the chair, and it made my flesh creep to the very tips of my
+    fingers, as if a spirit sat before me. Miss A. exclaimed, "This
+    influence has taken complete possession of me, as none of the
+    others did. I am obliged to do what it wants me to." I asked if
+    Turner would write his name for me, to which she replied by a
+    sharp, decided negative sign. I then asked if he would give me
+    some advice about my painting, remembering Turner's kindly
+    invitation and manner when I saw him. This proposition was met by
+    the same decided negative, accompanied by the fixed and sardonic
+    stare which the girl had put on at the coming of the new
+    influence. This disconcerted me, and I then explained to my
+    brother what had been going on, as, the questions being mental, he
+    had no clue to the pantomime. I said that as an influence which
+    purported to be Turner was present, and refused to answer any
+    questions, I supposed there was nothing more to be done.
+
+    But Miss A. still sat unmoved and helpless, so we waited.
+    Presently she remarked that the influence wanted her to do
+    something she knew not what, only that she had to get up and go
+    across the room, which she did with the feeble step of an old man.
+    She crossed the room and took down from the wall a colored French
+    lithograph, and, coming to me, laid it on the table before me, and
+    by gesture called my attention to it. She then went through the
+    pantomime of stretching a sheet of paper on a drawing-board, then
+    that of sharpening a lead pencil, following it up by tracing the
+    outlines of the subject in the lithograph. Then followed in
+    similar pantomime the choosing of a water-color pencil, noting
+    carefully the necessary fineness of the point, and then the
+    washing-in of a drawing, broadly. Miss A. seemed much amused by
+    all this, but as she knew nothing of drawing she understood
+    nothing of it. Then with the pencil and her pocket handkerchief
+    she began taking out the lights, "rubbing-out," as the technical
+    term is. This seemed to me so contrary to what I conceived to be
+    the execution of Turner that I interrupted with the question, "Do
+    you mean to say that Turner rubbed out his lights?" to which she
+    gave the affirmative sign. I asked further if in a drawing which I
+    then had in my mind, the well-known "Llanthony Abbey," the central
+    passage of sunlight and shadow through rain was done in that way,
+    and she again gave the affirmative reply, emphatically. I was so
+    firmly convinced to the contrary that I was now persuaded that
+    there was a simulation of personality, such as was generally the
+    case with the public mediums, and I said to my brother, who had
+    not heard any of my questions [He says above that they were
+    mental. Ed.] that this was another humbug, and then repeated what
+    had passed, saying that Turner could not have worked in that way.
+
+    Six weeks later I sailed for England, and, on arriving in London,
+    I went at once to see Ruskin, and told him the whole story. He
+    declared the contrariness manifested by the medium to be entirely
+    characteristic of Turner, and had the drawing in question down for
+    examination. We scrutinized it closely, and both recognized beyond
+    dispute that the drawing had been executed in the way that Miss A.
+    indicated. Ruskin advised me to send an account of the affair to
+    the _Cornhill_, which I did; but it was rejected, as might have
+    been expected in the state of public opinion at that time, and I
+    can easily imagine Thackeray putting it into the basket in a rage.
+
+    I offer no interpretation of the facts which I have here recorded,
+    but I have no hesitation in saying that they completed and fixed
+    my conviction of the existence of invisible and independent
+    intelligences to which the phenomena were due.
+
+To me they seem perhaps the nearest I have come to a communication of
+something not known to any earthly intelligence, and yet it _may_ have
+been so known.
+
+When manifestations of this general nature first attracted systematic
+study, they were attributed, as already stated, to telepathy from the
+sitter. Stillman knew Turner, and as Stillman had an artist's vividness of
+impression, the sensitive could have got from him a pretty good idea of
+Turner, and have acted it out. But how about the innumerable cases not
+unlike the Foster cases quoted, where sensitives get impressions much more
+vivid than the sitter appears capable of holding, and act them out with
+dramatic verisimilitude of which the sitter is absolutely incapable; and
+how about the innumerable cases where the sensitive gets impressions and
+memories which the sitter never had?
+
+These have been accounted for as being picked up from absent persons, by a
+kind of wireless telegraphy, for which we have ventured, with the
+assistance of a couple of Grecian friends, to suggest the name
+teloteropathy.
+
+Well! In this Turner case, _somebody_ somewhere, _may_ have known what
+neither the sensitive nor Stillman knew of Turner's method of work, and
+the sensitive's wireless _may_ have picked up all those detailed
+impressions and dramatic impressions of them from that unknown _somebody_.
+But is that any easier to swallow than that old Turner himself was the
+somebody--that his share of the cosmic soul, or a sufficient portion of
+his share, flowed into or hypnotized the sensitive, and made her act as
+she did?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now let us go on to some of the developments of these phenomena
+manifested by Mrs. Piper. Unlike the manifestations already given, hers
+are not from waking dreams, but from dreams in trance. Moreover, so far
+the sensitives have manifested impressions of but one personality at a
+time, but Mrs. Piper has manifested one by speech and, at the same time,
+another by writing, the expressions of the two apparent personalities
+progressing independently, with full coherence and consistency. Moreover,
+in many of her trances she seemed as if surrounded by a crowd of persons
+endeavoring, with different degrees of success, to express themselves
+through her, or she endeavoring to express them. All this of course, is
+counter to the impression prevailing during the early years of her career,
+that her soul had left her body, and the body was "possessed" by a
+postcarnate soul expressing itself through her. The present aspect of the
+facts is more as if she had impressions such as we all have in dreams, of
+any number of personalities around her. Some of her typical manifestations
+may give still further indications of interflowing of mental impressions.
+
+The George "Pelham" famous in the annals of Psychical Research was a
+friend of the present writer, and his alleged postcarnate self appeared
+through Mrs. Piper to the following effect. There could not have been
+anything cooked up about it; it was my first and only sitting with Mrs.
+Piper, who knew nothing about me or my friends. In fact, the old theories
+of some form of fraud, now, in the light of the vast accumulation of later
+knowledge, seem ridiculous. However the phenomena have to be explained,
+that explanation is out of date.
+
+    G.P. speaks.--"A" [assumed initial. Ed.] "is in a critical state.
+    He's not himself now. He's terribly depressed." Sitter--"Can you
+    tell anything [more] about A?" G.P.--"Friend of yours in body."
+    S.--"Of Hodgson?" [Who was present. This question and the
+    following were mild "tests": I knew the man well. Ed.]
+    G.P.--"Yes." S.--"Did I ever know him?" G.P.--"Yes, you knew him
+    very well. You're connected with him." S.--"Through whom?"
+    G.P.--"Do you know any B----?" [assumed initial. Ed.] S.--"Are A.
+    and I connected through B?" G.P.--"Write to B. and he'll tell you
+    all about it."
+
+It turned out later that A. actually was low in his mind, and that B.,
+whom nobody present knew, _was_ trying to get him occupation. I knew
+nothing whatever about any such circumstances, nor did Hodgson. To suppose
+that Mrs. Piper did, would be absurd. _But_ they were known to other minds
+"in the body," and hence the medium's utterance of them is open to the
+interpretation of teloteropathy. Similar instances are not rare, but the
+interpretation of teloteropathy seems to be rapidly losing probability.
+
+In this instance, I _was_ "connected with" B., but only so far as he had
+become a professor at Yale long after my graduation: I did not know him
+personally. But my intimate connection with A. was not only direct, but
+through several persons intimate with us both, including G.P. when living.
+Mere telepathy, certainly mere telepathy from my mind, would have
+"spotted" some one of these connections much more readily than the alleged
+one with B., which was hardly a connection at all.
+
+The _simplest_ solution for the whole business, though perhaps not the
+most "scientific," or even probable, is that the spirit of G.P. was
+troubled about A. and habitually thinking of me at the University Club as
+a Yale man, on my turning up at the seance, was reminded of the solution
+of A.'s troubles proposed through B., and wanted me to help.
+
+And now to this rather commonplace manifestation comes an interesting
+sequel illustrating the reach of mind spoken of at the outset. Out of a
+perfectly clear sky came to me in New York on April 8, 1894, the message
+from G.P., to look out for A., who was low in his mind, and that B. was
+trying to get a place for him. On May 29th, Hodgson writes me as follows,
+showing that the same thing had come up _through the heteromatic writing
+of A.'s wife at Granada in Spain_, and meant nothing to her or to A.
+
+    --You may be interested in the inclosed. Keep private. [This
+    injunction is of course outlawed by time, but I still conceal the
+    names of the parties. Ed.] and please return. I am writing from my
+    den, and haven't copy of your sitting at hand. But I remember that
+    something was said at your sitting _re_ B. and A.
+
+    (_Copy of Enclosure._)
+
+    "GRANADA, May 6, 1894.
+
+    "Dear H.[odgson]:
+
+    "Those suggestions from Geo. that I write to B. prove interesting
+    in the light of what I first learned here: that he had been
+    lamenting my silence and had been urging me to a place as ----
+    [at] Yale where he is. I had no notion of this move on his part
+    till four days ago when I received a letter telling me. Of course
+    nothing came of it, but anything less known than that cannot be
+    imagined. The message came once earlier thro' [his wife. Ed.] to
+    whom George wrote it [heteromatically. Ed.]. George [in life. Ed.]
+    never heard of B. nor saw him, nor did we ever speak of B. to Geo.
+    or Phinuit.... Of course I don't want mention made of the effort
+    of B. to get me the Yale place. What Geo. said was to write to B.;
+    he is a good friend of yours [_i.e._, of A. Ed.]
+
+    "All send kind messages. Yrs. ever.
+
+    "A----."
+
+Being intensely busy, and not as much interested in the matter as later
+experiences have made me, I did not at the moment catch the full purport
+of Hodgson's letter, or write him till June 5th, and did not keep any copy
+that I can find of my letter. He wrote me on the 8th:
+
+    "Thanks for yours of June 5th, with return of A.'s letter. I knew
+    nothing whatever of the circumstances connected with B., neither,
+    so far as I can tell by cross-questioning, did Mrs. Piper."
+
+And I, the present scribe, certainly did not. A. did not. B. alone did,
+with whatever persons he may have approached on the matter, and Mrs. Piper
+had presumably never seen one of the group. So where did Mrs. Piper and
+Mrs. A. get it? The only answers that seem possible are that she and Mrs.
+A. either got it teloteropathically from one of those absent, or that the
+postcarnate George Pelham himself wrote her about it, and also told me of
+it through Mrs. Piper's organism in New York, and four days later was
+working it into a cross-correspondence through Mrs. A. in Spain. At first
+blush the latter seems easier; and I am not sure but that it does on
+reflection.
+
+Hodgson's letter continues:
+
+    "I never knew of any B. connected with Yale. When B. was first
+    mentioned at the sitting, I had a vague notion that some B. or
+    other had gone to England or France as United States consul. I
+    also knew the name of ---- ---- B. [a celebrated author. Ed.], and
+    met her after she became Mrs. C. two or three years ago.
+
+    "On questioning Mrs. Piper, which I did by referring to books
+    first, I found that she remembered the name of ---- ---- B. when I
+    mentioned it, and connected it in some way with [a certain book.
+    Ed.], which was widely circulated some years ago. This was the
+    only B. that she seemed to know anything about....
+
+    "Yours sincerely,
+
+    "R. HODGSON."
+
+Now does not all this give a strong impression of an interflow among minds
+all over--in New York (the place of the sitting), Granada (Mrs. A.'s place
+of sojourn), Boston (A.'s home), New Haven (B.'s home), and the universe
+in general (G.P.'s apparent home)--of an interflow free from the
+limitations of time and space, and independent of all means of
+communication known to us?
+
+This impression tends to grow deeper with farther study. We have had a
+cross-correspondence between two incarnate intelligences and one apparently
+postcarnate. Mr. Piddington has unearthed a cross-correspondence between
+one apparently postcarnate intelligence and seven "living" ones.
+
+Perhaps the significance of cross-correspondences justifies a little more
+specific treatment, and even the repetition of a paragraph from the first
+number of this REVIEW. The topic has lately attracted more attention from
+the S.P.R. than any other.
+
+If Mrs. Verrall in London and Mrs. Holland in India both, at about the
+same time, write heteromatically about a subject that they both
+understand, that is probably coincidence; but if both write about it when
+but one of them understands it, that is probably teloteropathy; and if
+both write about it when neither understands it, and each of their
+respective writings is apparently nonsense, but both make sense when put
+together, the only obvious hypothesis is that both were inspired by a
+third mind.
+
+There are many instances of strict cross-correspondence of this type. The
+one we have given was perhaps more impressive than a stricter one would be
+apt to be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Accounts of sittings generally suggest apparent intercommunication
+independent of time and space between postcarnate intelligences: often the
+controls say that they will go and find other controls, and, generally,
+after a short interval, the new control manifests. It is impossible to
+read many of the accounts, whether one regards them as fictitious or not,
+without getting an impression--like that given by a good story-teller, if
+you please, of a life outside this one, among a host of personalities who
+communicate freely with each other and, through difficulties, with us. The
+nature of the communication we have already tried to express by
+"interflow." But all metaphors are weak beside the impression of the
+Cosmic Soul that has been brought to most of those who have persistently
+studied the phenomena, as to nearly all those who have speculated _a
+priori_ on the nature of mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Judged by the foregoing specimens, the literature of what we are
+provisionally considering as hypnotic telepathy would not be regarded as
+very cheerful. As a whole, however, the pictures it presents from an
+alleged postcarnate life, are cheerful, and some of them very attractive.
+
+Below are some from an alleged George Eliot. They are from notes of Piper
+sittings kindly placed at our disposal by Professor Newbold.
+
+To my taste the matter savors _very_ little of the reputed author. And yet
+assuming for the moment that our great authors survive in a fuller life,
+presumably they would have to communicate under very embarrassing
+conditions: for not only would they have to cramp themselves to produce
+work comprehensible here, but the System of Things would have to limit
+them, lest their competition should upset the whole system of our literary
+development, or rather would have involved a different one from the
+beginning.
+
+My first reading of the alleged George Eliot matter inclined me to scout
+it entirely. It is certainly not in all particulars what that great soul
+would have sent from a better world if she had been permitted to
+communicate anything more profound than we have been left to find out for
+ourselves, or even if she had had the commonplace chance to revise her
+manuscript. But on reflection I realized that, although the matter came
+through Mrs. Piper, it could not have come _from_ her, wherever it came
+from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings naturally within
+our comprehension, and merely descriptive of superficial experience as
+distinct from reflection, and were communicating, through a poor
+telephone, words to be recorded by an indifferent scribe, this material
+would not seem absolutely incongruous with its alleged source, and to a
+reader knowing that the stuff claimed to be hers, might possibly suggest
+the weakest possible dilution or reflection of her. Yet in ways which I
+have no space for, it abounds in the sort of anthropomorphism that might
+be expected from the average medium or average sitter, but not from George
+Eliot.
+
+And now, since writing the last paragraph and going through the material
+half a dozen times more, I have about concluded, or perhaps worked myself
+up to the conclusion, that if a judicious blue pencil were to take from it
+what could be attributed to imperfect means of communication, and what
+could be considered as having slopped over from the medium, there would be
+a pretty substantial and not unbeautiful residuum which might, without
+straining anything, be taken for a description by George Eliot, of the
+heaven she would find if, as begins to seem possible, she and the rest of
+us, have or are to have heavens to suit our respective tastes. But what
+would have to be taken out is often ludicrously incongruous with George
+Eliot, and taking it out would certainly be open to serious question.
+
+Yet whatever may be the qualities, merits, or demerits of this "George
+Eliot" matter, what character it has is its own, and different materially
+from any I have seen recorded from any other control. What is vastly more
+important, despite the lapses in knowledge, taste, and style, which
+negative its being the unmodified production of George Eliot, it
+nevertheless presents, _me judice_, the most reasonable, suggestive, and
+attractive pictures of a life beyond bodily death that I know of: it is
+not a reflection of previous mythologies, it is congruous with the tastes
+of what we now consider rational beings, and might well fill their
+desires; and it _tallies with our experiences_--in dreams. Yet it is not a
+great feat of imagination; but in recent times no great genius has
+attacked the subject, and George Eliot would not have been expected to
+devote her imagination to it, which raises a slight presumption that what
+is told is really told by her from experience.
+
+If I had to venture a guess as to how it came into existence, I should
+guess that somebody within range, hardly Mrs. Piper herself, had been
+reading George Eliot, or about George Eliot, and the musk-melon pollen had
+affected the cucumbers. Professor Newbold, for instance, was entirely able
+involuntarily to create and telepath the stories, and better shaped ones.
+Some real George Eliot influence may have flowed in too, but on that my
+judgment is in suspense.
+
+"George Eliot" comes in abruptly to Hodgson, on February 26, 1897. After a
+few preliminaries, in response to a remark of Hodgson's on her dislike of
+and disbelief in spiritism, she says:
+
+    "... You may have noted the anxiety of such as I to return and
+    enlighten your fellow men. It is more especially confined to
+    unbelievers before their departure to this life."
+
+This remark and the persistent efforts of the alleged G.P. who, living,
+was a thorough skeptic, would seem strongly "evidential."
+
+    _March 5, 1897._
+
+    _Hodgson sitting._
+
+    [G.E. writes:] "Do you remember me well?... I had a sad life in
+    many ways, yet in others I was happy, yet I have never known what
+    real happiness was until I came here.... I was an unbeliever, in
+    fact almost an agnostic when I left my body, but when I awoke and
+    found myself alive in another form superior in quality, that is,
+    my body less gross and heavy, with no pangs of remorse, no
+    struggling to hold on to the material body, I found it had all
+    been a dream...." R.H.: "That was your first experience?" G.E.:
+    "... The moment I had been removed from my body I found at once I
+    had been thoroughly mistaken in my conjectures. I looked back upon
+    my whole life in one instant. Every thought, word, or action which
+    I had ever experienced passed through my mind like a wonderful
+    panorama as it were before my vision. You cannot begin to imagine
+    anything so real and extraordinary as this first awakening.... I
+    awoke in a realm of golden light. I heard the voices of friends
+    who had gone before calling to me to follow them. At the moment
+    the thrill of joy was so intense I was like one standing
+    spellbound before a beautiful panorama. The music which filled my
+    soul was like a tremendous symphony. I had never heard nor dreamed
+    of anything half so beautiful....
+
+    "Another thing which seemed to me beautiful was the tranquillity
+    of everyone. You will perhaps remember that I had left a state
+    where no one ever knew what tranquillity meant."
+
+    _March 13, 1807:_ "I was speaking about the songs of our birds.
+    Then the birds seemed to pass beyond my vision, and I longed for
+    music of other kinds.... When, to my surprise, my desires were
+    filled.... Just before me sat the most beautiful bevy of young
+    girls that eyes ever rested upon. Some playing stringed
+    instruments, others that sounded and looked like silver bugles,
+    but they were all in harmony, and I must truly confess that I
+    never heard such strains of music before. No mortal mind can
+    possibly realize anything like it. It was not only in this one
+    thing that my desires were filled, but in all things accordingly.
+    I had not one desire, but that it was filled without any apparent
+    act of myself.
+
+    "I longed to see gardens and trees, flowers, etc. I no sooner had
+    the desire than they appeared.... Such beautiful flowers no human
+    eye ever gazed upon. It was simply indescribable, yet everything
+    was real.... I walked and moved along as easily as a fly would
+    pass through a ray of sunlight in your world. I had no weight,
+    nothing cumbersome, nothing.... I passed along through this
+    garden, meeting millions of friends. As they were all friendly to
+    me, each and every one seemed to be my friend.... I then thought
+    of different friends I had once known, and my desire was to meet
+    some one of them, when like every other thought or desire that I
+    had expressed, the friend of whom I thought instantly appeared."
+
+How much all this is like dreams!
+
+    _March 27, 1897._ (A good deal of confusion, out of which appears)
+    "He will insist upon calling me Miss, but let him if he wishes. I
+    am very much Mrs. Never mind so long as it suits him....
+
+    "I have a desire for reading, when instantly my whole surrounding
+    is literally filled with books of all kinds and by many different
+    authors.... When I touched a book and desired to meet its author,
+    if he or she were in our world, he or she would instantly appear.
+    [Is this purely incidental reiterated claim for female authors, by
+    one of them, 'evidential,' or was Mrs. Piper ingenious enough to
+    invent it? Ed.]...."
+
+The change of the instrument below is a specially dreamlike touch.
+
+    _March 30, 1897._ "I wished to see and realize that some of the
+    mortal world's great musicians really existed, and asked to be
+    visited by some one or more of them. When this was expressed,
+    instantly several appeared before me, and Rubinstein stood before
+    me playing upon an instrument like a harp at first. Then the
+    instrument was changed and a piano appeared and he played upon it
+    with the most delightful ease and grace of manner. While he was
+    playing the whole atmosphere was filled with his strains of
+    music."
+
+She wanted to see Rembrandt, and he came, with a quantity of pictures. She
+wanted a symphony, and an orchestra "of some thirty musicians" at once
+appeared and gave her several, which she enjoyed to the full.
+
+Now George Eliot was a remarkably good musician. If she wanted an
+orchestra, she would have wanted at least sixty, and probably more than a
+hundred. Perhaps they do these things with more limited resources in
+Heaven? Such an incongruity as this, and the inane dilution of the writing
+(which of course does not appear at its worst in the selected passages)
+make a genuine George Eliot control hard to predicate, and yet this
+control, like virtually every other one, is an individuality, and is less
+unlike George Eliot than is any other control I know. Will difficulties of
+communication or any other _tertium quid_, make up the difference? I first
+read the record with repulsion, and now find in it some elements of
+attraction.
+
+Do you care for a little more? She wanted to see "angels," and gives a
+very pretty picture of an experience with a bevy of children. Telepathy
+from the sitter will hardly account for the following, especially the
+strange turn at the end, which is signally dreamlike.
+
+    "I being fond, very fond of writers of ancient history, etc., felt
+    a strong desire to see Dante, Aristotle and several others.
+    Shakespeare if such a spirit existed. [An odd bunch of 'writers of
+    ancient history'! Ed.] As I stood thinking of him a spirit
+    instantly appeared who speaking said 'I am Bacon.' ... As Bacon
+    neared me he began to speak and quoted to me the following words
+    'You have questioned my reality. Question it no more. I am
+    Shakespeare.'"
+
+    _June 4, 1897._ "... Speak to me for a moment and if you have
+    anything to say in the nature of poetry or prose would you kindly
+    recite a line or two to me. It will give me strength to remain
+    longer than I could otherwise do. [R.H. recites a poem of Dowden's
+    beginning,
+
+      'I said I will find God and forth I went
+       To seek him in the clearness of the sky,' etc. Excitement.]
+
+    G.E.: 'I will go and see G. and return presently (R.H.: Who says
+    that?) I do. (R.H.: I do not understand what you mean by G.) I do.
+    My husband. Do you not know I had a husband? (R.H.: Do you mean by
+    G. Mr. George Henry Lewes?) [Hand is writing Lewes while I am
+    saying George Henry] Lewes. Yes I do. Oh I am so happy. And when I
+    did not mistake altogether my deeds I am more _happy than tongue
+    can utter_."
+
+As bearing on her feeling for Lewes not many months after his death, the
+foregoing does not correspond with some widely credited but unpublished
+allegations.
+
+Now does not all this read as if Mrs. Piper were dreaming of George Eliot,
+just as any of us might dream? Its quality seems as if it might be a
+transcript of one of my own dreams, with the important exceptions that the
+dreamer wrote it all out, and that it is made up from a series of dreams,
+coming up at intervals for about six months, and apparently only when
+Hodgson was present, though there are records of George Eliot appearing to
+other sitters at other seances.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have, then, groped our way to a vague notion of a dream-life on the
+part of certain sensitives, which seems to participate in another life, in
+some ways similar, that is led by intelligences who have passed beyond the
+body.
+
+We are not saying that this interpretation of the phenomena is the correct
+one: on the contrary we are constantly haunted by a suspicion that any day
+it may be exploded by some new discovery. But we do say, with considerable
+confidence, that of all the interpretations yet offered--even including
+the pervasive one that "the little boy lied," it surpasses all the others
+in the portion of the facts that it fits, and in the weight attached to it
+by the most capable students--even by James, who, however, did not accept
+it as established, though he gave many indications that he felt himself
+likely to. Myers definitely accepted it, not from the impressions of the
+sensitives, but from having them capped by a veridical impression of his
+own. Through the church service one Sunday morning, he felt an inner voice
+assuring him: "Your friend is still with you." Later he found that Gurney,
+with whom he had a manifestation-pact, had died the night before. We are
+not aware that Myers ever published this, but he told it to the present
+writer and presumably to others. The convictions of Hodgson and Sir Oliver
+Lodge were interpretations of the phenomena of the sensitives, though
+Hodgson, it is now known, was probably mainly influenced by communications
+from the alleged postcarnate soul of all possible ones most dear to him.
+
+But to return to the sensitives. They seem to be somnambulists who talk
+out and write out what they see and hear in their dreams. What they see,
+and consequently what they say, is a good deal of a jumble. They see and
+hear persons they never saw before. Sometimes they identify themselves
+more or less with these personalities. Mrs. Piper nearly always does.
+Those others say many things, and very often correct things, unknown to
+sensitives, to anybody present, or to anybody else that can be found.
+Rather unusual among ordinary dreamers, but by no means unprecedented. But
+from here on the experiences of the sensitives are more and more unusual.
+
+Some of the people Mrs. Piper (I speak of her as the representative of a
+class) never saw before, and of whom she never saw portraits, she
+identifies from photographs. Very few people have done that: perhaps very
+few have had the chance. There have been many times when I am sure I
+could, if photographs had been presented.
+
+Her personalities and those of many sensitives are nearly always "dead"
+friends, not of the sensitives, but of the sitters, and abound in
+indications of genuineness in scope and accuracy of memory, in
+distinctness of individual recollections and characteristics, and in all
+the dramatic indications that go to demonstrate personalities. She sees
+and hears these personalities again and again, and _keeps them distinct_
+in feature and character.
+
+Now what do we mean by personalities? Is one, after all, anything more or
+less than an individualized aggregate of cosmic vibrations, physical and
+psychical, with the power of producing on us certain impressions. You and
+I know our friends as such aggregates, and nothing more.
+
+And what do we mean by discarnate personalities? In most minds, the first
+answer will probably bear a pretty close resemblance to Fra Angelico's
+angels, and very nice angels they are! But to some of the more prosy minds
+that have thought on the subject in the light of the best and fullest
+information, or misinformation, probably the answer will be more like
+this: A personality, incarnate or postcarnate, in the last analysis, is a
+manifestation of the Cosmic Soul. From that the raw material is supplied
+with the star dust, and later, through our senses, from the earliest
+reactions of our protozoic ancestors, up to our dreams; and the material
+is worked up into each personality through reactions with the environment.
+Thus it becomes an aggregate of capacities to impress another personality
+with certain sensations, ideas, emotions. As already said, the incarnate
+personality impresses us thru certain vibrations. But after that portion
+of the vibrations constituting "the body" disappears, there still abides
+somewhere the capacity of impressing us, at least in the dream life.
+Perhaps it abides only in the memory of survivors, and gets into our
+dreams telepathically, though that is losing probability every day; and,
+with our anthropomorphic habits, we want to know "where" this capacity to
+impress us abides. The thinkers generally say: In the Cosmic reservoir,
+which I would rather express as the psychic ocean, boundless, fathomless,
+throbbing eternally. It seems to be made up of the original mind-potential
+plus all thoughts and feelings that have ever been. And into this ocean
+seem to be constantly passing those currents that we know as
+individualities, that can each influence, and even intermingle with, other
+individualities, here as well as there: for here really is there. While
+each does this, it still retains its own individuality. This is, of
+course, a vague string of guesses venturing outward from the borderland of
+our knowledge. It may be a little clearer, the more we bear in mind that
+the apparent influencings and interminglings seem to be telepathic.
+
+Now apparently among the accomplishments of a personality, does not
+_necessarily_ inhere that of depressing a scale x pounds: for when that
+capacity is entirely absent, from the apparent personalities who visit us
+in the dream state, they can impress us in every other way, even to all
+the reciprocities of sex. But for some reasons not yet understood, with
+ordinary dreamers these impressions are not as congruous, persistent,
+recurrent, or regulable in the dream life as in the waking life. But with
+Mrs. Piper, Hodgson after his death, and especially G.P. and others, were
+about as persistent and consistent associates as anybody living, barring
+the fact that they could not show themselves over an hour or two at a
+time, which was the limit of the medium's psychokinetic power, on which
+their manifestations depended. But that these personalities are not in
+time to be evolved so that they will be more permanent and consistent with
+dreamers generally, would be a contradiction to at least some of the
+implications of evolution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Accepting provisionally the identity of a postcarnate life with the life
+indicated in dreams, are there any further indications of its nature?
+There are some, which may lend some slight confirmation to the theory of
+identity.
+
+It seems to show itself not only in the visions of the sensitives, but in
+the dream life of all of us. If Mrs. Piper's dream state (I name her only
+as a type) is really one of communication with souls who have passed into
+a new life, dream states generally may not extravagantly be supposed to be
+foretastes of that life. And so far as concerns their desirability, why
+should they not be? Our ordinary dreams are, like the dreams of the
+sensitives, superior to time, space, matter and force--to all the trammels
+of our waking environment and powers. In dreams we experience unlimited
+histories, and pass over unlimited spaces, in an instant; see, hear, feel,
+touch, taste, smell, enjoy unlimited things; walk, swim, fly, change
+things, with unlimited ease; do things with unlimited power; make what we
+will--music, poetry, objects of art, situations, dramas, with unlimited
+faculty, and enjoy unlimited society. Unless we have eaten too much, or
+otherwise got ourselves out of order in the waking life, in the dream life
+we seldom if ever know what it is to be too late for anything, or too far
+from anything; we freely fall from chimneys or precipices, and I suppose
+it will soon be aeroplanes, with no worse consequences than comfortably
+waking up into the everyday world; we sometimes solve the problems which
+baffle us here; we see more beautiful things than we see here; and, far
+above all, we resume the ties that are broken here.
+
+The indications seem to be that if we ever get the hang of that life, we
+can have pretty much what we like, and eliminate what we don't
+like--continue what we enjoy, and stop what we suffer--find no bars to
+congeniality, or compulsion to boredom. To good dreamers it is unnecessary
+to offer proof of any of these assertions, and to prove them to others is
+impossible.
+
+The dream life contains so much more beauty, so much fuller emotion, and
+such wider reaches than the waking life, that one is tempted to regard it
+as the real life, to which the waking life is somehow a necessary
+preliminary. So orthodox believers regard the life after death as the real
+life: yet most of their hopes regarding that life--even the strongest hope
+of rejoining lost loved ones--are realized here during the brief throbs of
+the dream life.
+
+There seems to be no happiness from association in our ordinary life which
+is not obtainable, by some people at least, from association in the dream
+life. And as this appears to exist between incarnate A and postcarnate B,
+there is at least a suggestion that it may exist between postcarnate A and
+postcarnate B, and to a degree vastly more clear and abiding than during
+the present discrepancy between the incarnate and postcarnate conditions?
+This of course assumes, that B's appearance in A's dream life, just as he
+appeared on earth (though, as I know to be the case, sometimes wiser,
+healthier, jollier, and more lovable generally), is something more than a
+mild attack of dyspepsia on the part of A.
+
+Dreams do not seem to abound in work, and are often said not to abound in
+morality, but I know that they sometimes do--in morality higher than any
+attainable in our waking life. Certainly the scant vague indications from
+the dream suggestions of a future life do not necessarily preclude
+abundant work and morality, any more than work and sundry self-denials are
+precluded on a holiday because one does not happen to perform them.
+Moreover, the hoped-for future conditions may not contain the necessities
+for either labor or self-restraint that present conditions do: they may
+not be the same dangers there as here in the _dolce far niente_, or in
+Platonic friendships.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Men are not consistent in their attitude regarding dreams. They admit the
+dream state to be ideal--constantly use such expressions as "A dream of
+loveliness," "Happier than I could even dream," "Surpasses my fondest
+dreams," and yet on the other hand they call its experience "but the
+baseless vision of a dream." What do they mean by "baseless"? Certainly it
+is not lack of vividness or emotional intensity. It is probably the lack
+of duration in the happy experiences, and of the possibility of
+remembering them, and, still more, of enjoying similar ones at will. Yet
+the sensitives do both in recurrent instalments of the dream life, and
+like the rest of us, through the intervening waking periods, after the
+first hour or so, generally know nothing of the dreams. It is not
+vividness of the dream life itself that is lacking, but vividness in our
+memories of it. James defines our waking personality as the stream of
+consciousness: the dream life gives no such stream. To-night does not
+continue last night as to-day continues yesterday. The dream life is not
+like a stream, but more like a series, though hardly integral enough to be
+a series, of disconnected pools, many of them perhaps more enchanting than
+any parts of the waking stream, but not, like that stream, an organic
+whole with motion toward definite results, and power to attain them. But
+suppose the dream life continues after the body's death, and under
+direction toward definite ends, at least so far as the waking life is, and
+still free from the trammels of the waking life--suppose us to have at
+least as much power to secure its joys and avoid its terrors as we have
+regarding those of the waking life; and with all the old intimacies which
+it spasmodically restores, restored permanently, and with the discipline
+of separation to make them nearer perfect. What more can we manage to
+want?
+
+The suggestion has come to more than one student, that when we enter into
+life--as spermatozoa, or star dust if you please--we enter into the
+eternal life, but that the physical conditions essential to our
+development into appreciating it, are a sort of veil between it and our
+consciousness. In our waking life we know it only through the veil; but
+when in sleep or trance, the material environment is removed from
+consciousness, the veil becomes that much thinner, and we get better
+glimpses of the transcendent reality.
+
+Does it not seem then as if, in dreams, we enter upon our closer relation
+with the hyper-phenomenal mind? All sorts of things seem to be in it, from
+the veriest trifles and absurdities up to the highest things our minds can
+receive, and presumably an infinity of things higher still. They appear to
+flow into us in all sorts of ways, presumably depending upon the condition
+of the nerve apparatus through which they flow. If that is out of gear
+from any disorder or injury, what it receives is not only trifling, but
+often grotesque and painful; while if it is in good estate, it often
+receives things far surpassing in beauty and wisdom those of our waking
+phenomenal world.
+
+Apparently every dreamer is a medium for this flow, but dreamers vary
+immensely in their capacity to receive it--from Hodge, who dreams only
+when he has eaten too much, or Professor Gradgrind who never dreams at
+all, up to Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Piper.
+
+As oft remarked, dreams generally are nonsense, but some dreams, or parts
+of some dreams, are perhaps the most significant things we know. Each
+vision, waking or sleeping, must have a cause, and as an expression of
+that cause, must be veridical. On the one hand, the cause of a trivial
+dream is generally too trivial to be ascertained: it may be too much
+lobster, or impaired circulation or respiration; while on the other hand
+(and here the paradox seems to be explained), the cause of an important
+dream must, _ex vi termini_, be some important event. But important events
+are rare, and therefore significant dreams are rare; while trivial events
+are frequent, and therefore trivial dreams are frequent.
+
+The important and rare event _may_ be such a conjunction of circumstances
+and temperaments as makes it possible for a postcarnate intelligence,
+assuming the existence of such, to communicate with an incarnate one. That
+such apparent communications are rare tends to indicate their genuineness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now to develop a little farther the time-honored hypothesis of a cosmic
+soul as explaining dreams, and supported by them.
+
+Admit, provisionally at least, that the medium is merely an extraordinary
+dreamer. Does a man do his own dreaming, or is it done for him? Does a man
+do his own digesting, circulating, assimilating, or is it done for him? If
+he does not do these things himself, who does? About the physical
+functions through the sympathetic nerve, we answer unhesitatingly: the
+cosmic force. How, then, about the psychic functions? Are they done by the
+cosmic psyche?
+
+Like respiration, they are partly under our control, but that does not
+affect the problem. Who runs them when we do not run them, even when we
+try to stop them that we may get to sleep? Even when, after they have
+yielded to our entreaties to stop, and we are asleep, they begin going
+again--without our will. The only probability I can make out is that our
+thinking is run by a power not ourselves, as much as our other partly
+involuntary functions.
+
+To hold that a man does his own dreaming--that it is done by a secondary
+layer of his own consciousness--is to hold that we are made up of layers
+of consciousness, of which the poorest layer is that of what we call our
+waking life, and the better layers are at our service only in our
+dreams--that when a man is asleep or mad he can solve problems, compose
+music, create pictures, to which, when awake and in his sober senses, and
+in a condition to profit by his work, and give profit from it, he is
+inadequate.
+
+Nay more, the theory claims that a man's working consciousness--his
+self--the only self known to him or the world, will hold and shape his
+life by a set of convictions which, in sleep, he will _himself_ prove
+wrong, and thereby revolutionize his philosophy and his entire life.
+Wouldn't it be more reasonable to attribute all such results--the
+solutions of the problems, the music, the pictures, the corrections of the
+errors--to a power outside himself?
+
+I cannot believe that there's anything in my individual consciousness
+which my experience or that of my ancestors has not placed there--in raw
+material at least; or that in working up that raw material _I_ can exert
+any genius in my sometimes chaotic dreams that I cannot exert in my
+systematized waking hours. All the people I meet and talk with in my
+dreams _may_ have been met and talked with by me or my forebears, though I
+don't believe it; but the works of art I see have not been known to me or
+my ancestors or any other mortal; nor have I any sign of the genius to
+combine whatever elements of them I may have seen, into any such designs.
+And when in dreams _other_ persons tell me things contrary to my firmest
+convictions, in which things I later discover germs of most important
+workable truth, the persons who tell me that, and who are different from
+me as far as fairly decent persons can differ from each other, are
+certainly not, as the good Du Prel would have us believe, myself. All
+these things are not figments of _my_ mind--if they are figments of a
+mind, it's a mind bigger than mine. The biggest claim I can make, or
+assent to anybody else making, is that my mind is telepathically receptive
+of the product of that greater mind.
+
+Here are some farther evidences of the greater mind, given by Lombroso
+(_After Death, What?_, 320 f.):
+
+    It is well known that in his dreams Goethe solved many weighty
+    scientific problems and put into words many most beautiful verses.
+    So also La Fontaine (_The Fable of Pleasures_) and Coleridge and
+    Voltaire. Bernard Palissy had in a dream the inspiration for one
+    of his most beautiful ceramic pieces....
+
+    Holde composed while in a dream _La Phantasie_, which reflects in
+    its harmony its origin; and Nodier created _Lydia_, and at the
+    same time a whole theory on the future of dreaming. Condillac in
+    dream finished a lecture interrupted the evening before. Kruger,
+    Corda, and Maignan solved in dreams mathematical problems and
+    theorems. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his _Chapters on Dreams_,
+    confesses that portions of his most original novels were composed
+    in the dreaming state. Tartini had while dreaming one of his most
+    portentous musical inspirations. He saw a spectral form
+    approaching him. It is Beelzebub in person. He holds a magic
+    violin in his hands, and the sonata begins. It is a divine adagio,
+    melancholy-sweet, a lament, a dizzy succession of rapid and
+    intense notes. Tartini rouses himself, leaps out of bed, seizes
+    his violin, and reproduces all that he had heard played in his
+    sleep. He names it the _Sonata del Diavolo_,...
+
+    Giovanni Dupre got in a dream the conception of his very beautiful
+    _Pieta_. One sultry summer day Dupre was lying on a divan thinking
+    hard on what kind of pose he should choose for the Christ. He fell
+    asleep, and in dream he saw the entire group at last complete,
+    with Christ in the very pose he had been aspiring to conceive, but
+    which his mind had not succeeded in completely realizing.
+
+It is a quite frequent experience that a person perplexed by a problem at
+night finds it solved on waking in the morning. Efforts to remember, which
+are unsuccessful before going to sleep, on waking are often found
+accomplished.
+
+A dream is a work of genius, and in many respects, perhaps most,
+especially in vividness of imagination, the best example we have. It is
+the most spontaneous, constructed with the least effort from fewest
+materials, the least restrained, and often immeasurably surpassing all
+works of waking genius in the same department. A genius gets a trifling
+hint, and being inspired by the gods (anthropomorphic for: flowed in upon
+by the cosmic soul?) builds out of the hint a poem or a drama or a
+symphony. You and I build dreams surpassing the poem or the drama or the
+symphony, but our friends Dryasdust and Myopia inquire into our
+experiences, and sometimes find a little hint on which a dream was built,
+and then all dreams are demonstrated things unworthy of serious
+consideration. Is it not a more rational view that the fact that the soul
+can in the dream state elaborate so much from so little, indicates it to
+be then already in a life which has no limits?
+
+Havelock Ellis, in his _World of Dreams_, says (p. 229):
+
+    Our eyes close, our muscles grow slack, the reins fall from our
+    hands. But it sometimes happens that the horse knows the road home
+    even better than we know it ourselves.
+
+He puts "the horse" outside of the dreamer plainly enough here. He further
+says (p. 280).
+
+    If we take into account the complete psychic life of dreaming,
+    subconscious as well as conscious, it is waking, not sleeping,
+    life which may be said to be limited.... Sleep, Vaschide has said,
+    is not, as Homer thought, the brother of Death, but of Life, and,
+    it may be added, the elder brother....
+
+He quotes from Bergson (_Revue Philosophique_, December, 1908, p. 574):
+
+    This dream state is the substratum of our normal state. Nothing is
+    added in waking life; on the contrary, waking life is obtained by
+    the limitation, concentration, and tension of that diffuse
+    psychological life which is the life of dreaming.... To be awake
+    is to will; cease to will, detach yourself from life, become
+    disinterested: in so doing you pass from the waking ego to the
+    dreaming ego, which is less _tense_, but more _extended_ than the
+    other.
+
+Ellis continues (p. 281):
+
+    I have cultivated, so far as I care to, my garden of dreams, and
+    it scarcely seems to me that it is a large garden. Yet every path
+    of it, I sometimes think, might lead at last to the heart of the
+    universe.
+
+But with the exception of a few spasmodic inspirations, the records of
+dreams, ordinary or from the sensitives, contain nothing new--nothing to
+relieve man from the blessed necessity of eating his bread, intellectual
+as well as material, in the sweat of his brow; and, perhaps more important
+still, little to make the interests or responsibilities of this life
+weaker because of any realized inferiority to those of a possible later
+life.
+
+It would apparently be inconsistent in Nature, or God, if you prefer, to
+start our evolution under earthly conditions, educating us in knowledge
+and character through labor and suffering, but at the same time throwing
+open to our perceptions, from another life, a wider range of knowledge and
+character attainable without labor or suffering.
+
+I have no time or space or inclination to argue with those who deny a plan
+in Nature. He who does, probably lives away from Nature. It appears to
+have been a part of that plan that for a long time past most of us should
+"believe in" immortality, and that, at least until very lately, none of us
+should know anything about it. Confidence in immortality has been a
+dangerous thing. So far we haven't all made a very good use of it. Many of
+the people who have had most of it and busied themselves most with it, so
+to speak, have largely transferred their interests to the other life, and
+neglected and abused this one. "Other-worldliness" is a well-named vice,
+and positive evidence of immortality might be more dangerous than mere
+confidence in it.
+
+All this, I think, supports the notion that whatever, if anything, is in
+store for us beyond this life, it would be a self-destructive scheme of
+things (or Scheme of Things, if you prefer) that would throw the future
+life into farther competition with our interests here, at least before we
+are farther evolved here. Looking at history by and large, we children
+have not generally been trusted with edge tools until we had grown to some
+sort of capacity to handle them. If the Mesopotamians or Egyptians or
+Greeks or Romans had had gunpowder, it looks as if they would have blown
+most of themselves and each other out of existence, and the rest back into
+primitive savagery, and stayed there until the use of gunpowder became one
+of the lost arts. But the new knowledge of evolution has given the modern
+world a new intellectual interest; and the new altruism, a new moral one.
+The reasons for doing one's best in this life, and doing it actively, are
+so much stronger and clearer than they were when so many good people could
+fall into asceticism and other-worldliness, that perhaps we are now fit to
+be trusted with proofs of an after life. It is very suggestive that these
+apparent proofs came contemporaneously with the new knowledge tending to
+make them safe; and equally suggestive that it is when we have begun to
+suffer from certain breakdowns in religion, that we have been provided
+with new material for bracing it up.
+
+At the opposite extreme, it also is suggestive that these new indications
+that our present life is a petty thing beside a future one, have come just
+when modern science has so increased our control over material nature that
+we are in peculiar danger of having our interest in higher things buried
+beneath material interests, and enervated by over-indulgence in material
+delights.
+
+If it be true that, roughly speaking, we are not entrusted with dangerous
+things before we are evolved to the point where we can keep their danger
+within bounds, the fact that we have not until very lately, if yet, been
+entrusted with any verification of the dream of the survival of bodily
+death, would seem to confer upon the spiritistic interpretation of the
+recent apparent verifications, a pragmatic sanction--an accidental embryo
+pun over which the historic student is welcome to a smile, and which,
+since the preceding clause was written, I have seen used in all
+seriousness by Professor Giddings. Conclusive or not, that "sanction" is
+certainly an addition to the arguments that existed before, including the
+general argument from evolution. And, so far as the phenomena go to
+establish the spiritistic hypothesis, surely they are not to be lightly
+regarded because as yet they do not establish it more conclusively.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When during the last century science bowled down the old supports of the
+belief in immortality, there grew up a tendency to regard that belief as
+an evidence of ignorance, narrowness, and incapacity to face the music.
+May not disregard of the possible new supports be rapidly becoming an
+evidence of the same characteristics?
+
+When the majority of those who have really studied the phenomena of the
+sensitives, starting with absolute skepticism, have come to a new form of
+the old belief; and when, of the remaining minority, the weight of
+respectable opinion goes so far as suspense of judgment, how does the
+argument look? Isn't it at least one of those cases of new phenomena where
+it is well to be on guard against old mental habits, not to say
+prejudices?
+
+Is it not now vastly more _reasonable_ to believe in a future life than it
+was a century ago, or half a century, or quarter of a century? Is it not
+already more reasonable to believe in it than not to believe in it? Is it
+not already appreciably harder _not_ to believe in it than it was a
+generation ago?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So far as I can see, the dream life, from mine up to Mrs. Piper's, vague
+as it is, is an argument for immortality _based on evidence_.
+
+The sensitives are not among the world's leading thinkers or
+moralists--are not more aristocratic founders for a new faith than were a
+certain carpenter's son and certain fishermen; and only by implication do
+the sensitives suggest any moral truths, but they do offer more facts to
+the modern demand for facts.
+
+Spiritism has a bad name, and it has been in company where it richly
+deserved one; but it has been coming into court lately with some very
+important-looking testimony from very distinguished witnesses; and some
+rather comprehensive minds consider its issues supreme--the principal
+issues now upon the horizon, between the gross, luxurious, unthinking,
+unaspiring, uncreating life of today, and everything that has, in happier
+ages, given us the heritage of the soul--the issues between increasing
+comforts and withering ideals--between water-power and Niagara.
+
+The doubt of immortality is not over the innate reasonableness of it: the
+universe is immeasurably more reasonable with it than without it; but over
+its practicability after the body is gone. We, in our immeasurable wisdom,
+don't see how it can work--we don't see how a universe that we don't begin
+to know, which already has given us genius and beauty and love, and which
+seems to like to give us all it can--birds, flowers, sunsets, stars,
+Vermont, the Himalayas, and the Grand Canyon; which, most of all, has
+given us the insatiable soul, can manage to give us immortality. Well!
+Perhaps we ought not to be grasping--ought to call all we know and have,
+enough, and be thankful--thankful above all, perhaps, that as far as we
+can see, the hope of immortality cannot be disappointed--that the worst
+answer to it must be oblivion. But on whatever grounds we despair of more
+(if we are weak enough to despair), surely the least reasonable ground is
+that we cannot see more: the mole might as well swear that there is no
+Orion.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUSES ON THE HEARTH
+
+
+"How to be efficient though incompetent" is the title suggested by a
+distinguished psychologist for the vocational appeals of the moment. Among
+these raucous calls none is more annoying to the ear of experience than
+the one which summons the college girl away from the bounty of the
+sciences and the humanities to the grudging concreteness of a domestic
+science, a household economy, from which stars and sonnets must perforce
+be excluded. We have, indeed, no quarrel with the conspicuous place now
+given to the word "home" in all discussions of women's vocations.
+Suffragists and anti-suffragists, feminists and anti-feminists have united
+to clear a noble term from the mists of sentimentality and to reinstate it
+in the vocabulary of sincere and candid speakers. More frankly than a
+quarter of a century ago, educated women may now glory in the work
+allotted to their sex. The most radical feminist writer of the day has
+given perfect expression to the home's demand. Husband and children, she
+says, have been able to count on a woman "as they could count on the fire
+on the hearth, the cool shade under the tree, the water in the well, the
+bread in the sacrament." We may go farther and say that our high emprise
+does not depend upon husband and children. Married or unmarried, fruitful
+or barren, with a vocation or without, we must make of the world a home
+for the race. So far from quarrelling with the hypothesis of the domestic
+scientists, we turn it into a confession of faith. It is their conclusions
+that will not bear the test of experience. Because women students can
+anticipate no more important career than home-making, it is argued that
+within their four undergraduate years training should be given in the
+practical details of house-keeping. Any woman who has been both a student
+and a housekeeper knows that this argument is fallacious.
+
+Before examining it, however, we must clear away possible
+misunderstandings. Our discussion concerns colleges and not elementary
+schools. Those who are loudest in denouncing the aristocratic theory of a
+college education must admit that colleges contain, even today, incredible
+as it sometimes seems, a selected group of young women. It is also true
+that the High Schools contain selected groups. Below them are the people's
+schools. The girls who do not go beyond these are to be the wives of
+working men, in many cases can learn nothing from their mothers, and
+before marriage may themselves be caught in the treadmill of daily labor.
+It is probable that to these children of impoverished future we should
+give the chance to learn in school facts which may make directly for
+national health and well-being. But the girls in the most democratic state
+university in this country are selected by their own ambition, if by
+nothing else, for a higher level of life. Their power and their
+opportunities to learn do not end on Commencement Day. The higher we go in
+the scale of education, until we reach the graduate professional schools,
+the less are we able and the less need we be concerned to anticipate the
+specific activities of the future.
+
+Furthermore, we are discussing colleges of "liberal" studies, not
+technical schools. Into the former have strayed many students who belong
+in the latter. The tragic thing about their errantry is that presidents
+and faculties, instead of setting them in the right path, try to make the
+college over to suit them. The rightful heirs to the knowledge of the ages
+are despoiled. The most down-trodden students are those who cherish a
+passion for the intellectual life. Among these are as many women as men.
+If domestic science were confined to separate schools, as all applied
+sciences ought to be, we should have nothing but praise for a subject
+admirably conceived, and often admirably taught. In these schools it may
+be studied by such High School graduates as prefer to deal with practical
+rather than with pure science, and, in a larger way, by such college
+graduates as wish to supplement theory with practice for professional
+purposes. But in liberal colleges domestic science is but dross handed out
+to seekers after gold. Against its intrusion into the curriculum no
+protest can be too stern.
+
+Faith in this study seems to rest upon the belief that the actual
+experiences of life can be anticipated. This is a fallacy. There is no
+dress rehearsal for the role of "wife and mother." It is a question of
+experience piled on experience, life piled on life. The only way to
+perform the tasks, understand the duties, accept the joys and sorrows of
+any given stage of existence is to have performed the tasks, learned the
+duties, fought out the joys and sorrows of earlier stages. In so far as
+"housekeeping" means the application of principles of nutrition and
+sanitation, these principles can be acquired at the proper time by an
+active, well-trained mind. The preparation needed is not to have learned
+facts three or five or ten years in advance, when theories and appliances
+may have been very different, but to have taken up one subject after
+another, finding how to master principles and details. This new subject is
+not recondite nor are we unconquerably stupid. To learn as we go--_discere
+ambulando_--need not turn the home into an experiment station.
+
+But "every woman knows" that housekeeping, when it is a labor of love and
+not a paid profession, goes far deeper than ordering meals or keeping
+refrigerators clean, or making an invalid's bed with hospital precision.
+We are more than cooks. We furnish power for the day's work of men, and
+for the growth of children's souls. We are more than parlor maids. We are
+artists, informing material objects with a living spirit. We are more even
+than trained nurses. We are companions along the roads of pain, comrades,
+it may be, at the gates of death. Back of our willingness to do our full
+work must lie something profounder than lectures on bacteria, or interior
+decoration, or an invalid's diet or a baby's bath. Specific knowledge can
+be obtained in a hurry by a trained student. What cannot be obtained by
+any sudden action of the mind is _the habit_ of projecting a task against
+the background of human experience as that experience has been revealed in
+history and literature, and of throwing into details the enthusiasm born
+of this larger vision. She is fortunate who comes to the task of making a
+home with this habit already formed. Her student life may have cast no
+shadow of the future. When she was reading AEschylus or Berkeley, or
+writing reports on the Italian despots, or counting the segments of a
+beetle's antennae, she may not have foreseen the hours when the manner of
+life and the manner of death of human beings would depend upon her. She
+was merely sanely absorbed in the tasks of her present. But in later life
+she comes to see that in performing them, she learned to disentangle the
+momentary from the permanent, to prefer courage to cowardice, to pay the
+price of hard work for values received. Age may bring what youth
+withholds, a sense of humor, a mellow sympathy. But only youth can begin
+that habitual discipline of mind and will which is the root, if not of all
+success, at least of that which blooms in the comfort of other people.
+Carry the logic of the vocation-mongers to its extreme. Grant that every
+girl in college ought someday to marry, and that we must train her, while
+we have her, for this profession. Then let the college insist on honest
+work, clear thinking and bright imagination in those great fields in which
+successive generations reap their intellectual harvest. Captain Rostron of
+the Carpathia once spoke to a body of college students who were on fire
+with enthusiasm for the rescuer of the Titanic's survivors. He ended with
+some such words as these: "Go back to your classes and work hard. I
+scarcely knew that night what orders were coming out when I opened my
+mouth to speak, but I can tell you that I had been preparing to give those
+orders ever since I was a boy in school." Many a home may be saved from
+shipwreck in the future because today girls are doing their duty in their
+Greek class rooms and Physics laboratories.
+
+But this fallacy of domesticity probes deeper than we have yet indicated.
+It is, in the last analysis, superficial to ticket ourselves off as
+house-keepers or even as women. What are these unplumbed wastes between
+housekeepers and teachers, mothers and scholars, civil engineers and
+professors of Greek, senators and journalists, bankers and poets, men and
+women? A philosopher has pointed out that what we share is vastly greater
+than what separates us. We walk upon and must know the same earth. We live
+under the same sun and stars. In our bodies we are subject to the same
+laws of physics, biology and chemistry. We speak the same language, and
+must shape it to our use. We are products of the same past, and must
+understand it in order to understand the present. We are vexed by the same
+questions about Good and Evil, Will and Destiny. We all bury our dead. We
+shall all die ourselves. Back of our vocations lies human life. Back of
+the streams in which we dabble is that immortal sea which brought us
+hither. To sport upon its shore and hear the roll of its mighty waters is
+the divine privilege of youth.
+
+If any difference is to be made in the education of boys and girls, it
+must be with the purpose of giving to future women more that is
+"unvocational," "unapplied," "unpractical." As it happens, such studies as
+these are the ones which the mother of a family, as well as a teacher or
+writer, is most sure to apply practically in her vocation. The last word
+on this aspect of the subject was said by a woman in a small Maine town.
+Her father had been a day laborer, her husband was a mechanic. She had
+five children, and, of course, did all the house-work. She also belonged
+to a club which studied French history. To a foolish expression of
+surprise that with all her little children she could find time to write a
+paper on Louis XVI she retorted angrily: "With all my children! It is for
+my children that I do it. I do not mean that they shall have to go out of
+their home, as I have had to, for everything interesting." But the larger
+truth is that the value of a woman as a mother depends precisely upon her
+value as a human being. And it is for that reason that in her youth we
+must lead one who is truly thirsty only to fountains pouring from the
+heaven's brink. It might seem cruel if it did not merely illustrate the
+law of risk involved in any creative process, that the more generously
+women fulfil the "function of their sex" the more they are in danger of
+losing their souls to furnish a mess of pottage. The risk of life for life
+at a child's birth is more dramatic but no truer than the risk of soul for
+body as the child grows. In the midst of petty household cares the nervous
+system may become a master instead of a servant, a breeder of distempers
+rather than a feeder of the imagination. The unhappiness of homes, the
+failure of marriage, are due as often to the poverty-stricken minds, the
+narrowed vision of women as to the vice of men.
+
+  Their sense is with their senses all mix'd in,
+  Destroyed by subtleties these women are.
+
+George Meredith's prayer for us, "more brain, O Lord, more brain!" we
+shall still need when "votes for women" has become an outworn slogan.
+
+No one claims that character is produced only by college training or any
+other form of education. There are illiterate women whose wills are so
+steady, whose hearts are so generous, and whose spirits seem to be so
+continuously refreshed that we look up to them with reverence. They have
+their own fountains. It would be a mistake to suppose that because they
+are "open at the outlet" they are "closed at the reservoir." But there is
+a class of women who are impelled toward knowledge (as still others are
+impelled toward music or art) and whose success in anything they do will
+depend upon their state of mind. We ought to assume that the girls who go
+to college belong to this class, however far from the springs of Helicon
+they mean to march in the future. It is a terrible thing that we should
+think of taking one hour of their time while they are in college for any
+course that does not enrich the intellect and add to the treasury of
+thoughts and ideas upon which the woman with a mind will always be
+drawing. Spirit is greater than intellect, and may survive it in the
+course of a long life. But in the active years, for this kind of woman,
+the mental life becomes one with the spiritual. A lusty serviceableness
+will issue from their union. If mental interests seem sterile, the cure,
+as far as the college is concerned with it, is to deepen, not to lessen
+the love of learning. The renewal of sincerity, humility and enthusiasm in
+the age-old search for truth is more necessary than the introduction of
+new courses, which must be applied to be of value, and which at this time
+in a girl's experience, and under these conditions, can give only partial
+and superficial data.
+
+Our lives are subject to a thousand changes. In the home as well as out of
+it, we shall meet, face to face, fruition and disappointment, rapture and
+pain, hope and despair. In these tests of the soul's health what good will
+_domestic_ science do us? Not by sanitation is sanity brought forth. Women
+do not gather courage from calories, nor faith from refrigerators. But
+every added milestone along the road from youth to age shows us the truth
+of Cicero's claim, made after he had borne public care and known private
+grief, for the faithful, homely companionship of intellectual studies:
+"For other things belong neither to all times and ages nor all places; but
+these pursuits feed our growing years, bring charm to ripened age, adorn
+prosperity, offer a refuge and solace to adversity, delight us at home, do
+not handicap us abroad, abide with us through the watches of the night, go
+with us on our travels, make holiday with us in the country."
+
+Upon women, in crucial hours, may depend the peace of the old, the fortune
+of the middle-aged, the hopefulness of the young. In such an hour we do
+not wish to be dismissed as were the women of Socrates's family, who had
+had no part in the bright life of the Athens of which he was taking leave.
+Shall we become the bread in the sacrament of life, ourselves unfed? the
+fire on the hearth, ourselves unkindled?
+
+
+
+
+THE LAND OF THE SLEEPLESS WATCHDOG
+
+
+If from almost any given point in the United States you start out towards
+the Southwest, you will reach in time the Land of the Sleepless Watchdog.
+On each of the scattered farms, defending it against all intruders, you
+will find a band of eager and vociferous dogs--dogs who magnify their
+calling because they have no other, and who, by the same token lose all
+sense of proportion in life. It is "theirs not to reason why," but to put
+up warnings and threats, and to be ready for the fight that never comes.
+
+If you enter a domain without previous understanding with them, you are
+powerless for mischief, for you are in the center of a publicity beside
+which any other publicity is that of a hermit's cell. The whole farm knows
+where you are, and all are suspicious of your predatory intentions. You
+can have none under these conditions. Meanwhile the whole pack voices its
+opinion of you and your unworthiness.
+
+This is supposing that you are actually there. If you are not, it amounts
+to the same thing. Every dog knows that you meant to be there, or at any
+rate, that to be there was the scheme of someone equally bad. The
+slightest rustle of the wind, the call of a bird, the ejaculation
+responsive to a flea--any of these, anything to set the pack going.
+
+And one pack starts the next. And the cries of the two start the third and
+the fourth, and each of these reacts on the first. The cry passes along
+the line, "We have him at last, the mad invader." There being no other
+enemy, they cry out against each other. And of late years, since the
+barbed wire choked the cattle ranges, and gave pause to the coyote, there
+has been no enemy. But the dogs are there, though their function has
+passed away. It is but a tradition--a remembrance. Only to the dogs
+themselves does any reality exist.
+
+Yet, such is the nature of dogs and men, the watchdog was never more
+numerous nor more alert than today. He was never in better voice, and
+having nothing whatever to do, he does it to the highest artistic
+perfection. At least one justification remains. Civilization has not done
+away with the moon. In the stillness of night, its great white face peeps
+over the hills at intervals no dog has yet determined. Under this weird
+light, strange shadowy forms trip across the fields. The watchdogs of each
+farm have given warning, and the whole countryside is eager with
+vociferation.
+
+Men say the Sleepless Watchdog's bark is worse than his bite. This may be,
+but it is certain that his feed is worse than both bark and bite together.
+In the language of economics, the Sleepless Watchdog is an unremunerative
+investment. He has "eaten his master out of house and home," and by the
+same token, he imagines that he himself is now the master.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By this time, the gentle but astute reader has observed that this is no
+common "Dog Story," but a parable of the times we live in; and that the
+real name of the Land of the Sleepless (but unremunerative) Watchdog is
+indeed Europe.
+
+And because of the noisy and costly futility of the whole system in his own
+and other countries, Professor Ottfried Nippold of Frankfort-on-the-Main,
+has made a special study of the Watchdogs of Germany.
+
+The good people of the Fatherland some forty years ago were drawn into a
+great struggle with their neighbors beyond the Rhine. To divert his
+subjects' attention from their ills at home, the Emperor of France wagered
+his Rhine provinces against those of Prussia, in the game of War. The
+Emperor lost, and the King of Prussia took the stakes: for in those days
+it was a divine right of Kings to deal in flesh and blood.
+
+The play is finished, the board is cleared, Alsace and Lorraine were added
+to Germany, and the mistake is irretrievable. A fact accomplished cannot
+be blotted out. But hopeless as it all is, there are watchdogs who, on
+moonlight nights, call across the Vosges for revenge--for honor, for War,
+War, War. And the German watchdogs cry War, War, War. The word sounds the
+same in all languages. The watchdogs bark, but the battle will never
+begin.
+
+It is Professor Nippold's purpose, in his little book _Der Deutsche
+Chauvinismus_, to show that the clamor is not all on one side. The
+watchdogs of the Paris Boulevards are noisy enough, but those of Berlin
+are just the same. And as these are not all of Germany, so the others are
+not all of France. A great, thrifty, honest, earnest, cultured nation does
+not find its voice in the noises of the street. On the other hand,
+Germany, industrious, learned, profound and brave, is busy with her own
+affairs. She would harm no one, but mind her own business. But she is
+entangled in mediaeval fashions. She has her own band of watchdogs, as
+noisy, as futile, as unthinkingly clamorous as ever were those of France.
+The "Sleepless Watchdog" in France is known as a Chauvinist, in England as
+a Jingo, in Prussia as a Pangermanist. They all bay at the same moon, are
+excited over the same fancies; they hear nothing, see nothing but one
+another. All alike live in an unreal world, in its essentials a world of
+their own creation. With all of them the bark is worse than the bite, and
+their "Keep" is more disastrous than both together.
+
+And as each nation should look after its own, Dr. Nippold
+lists--blacklists if you choose--the Chauvinists of Germany.
+
+At first glance, they make an imposing showing. A long series of
+newspapers, dozens of pamphlets, categories of bold and impressive
+warnings against the schemes of England and France, a set of appeals in
+the name of patriotism, of religion, of force, of violence. A long-drawn
+call to hate, to hate whatever is not of our own race or class; and above
+all the banding together of the "noblest" profession as against the
+encroachments of mere civilians, of men whose hands are soiled with other
+stains than blood.
+
+We have, first and foremost, General Keim, Keim the invincible, Keim the
+insatiable, Keim of the Army-League, Keim the arch hater of England and of
+Russia and of France, Keim the jewel of the fighting Junker aristocracy of
+Prussia--the band of warriors who despise all common soldiers--"white
+slave" conscripts, and with them all civilians, who at the best are only
+potential common soldiers. "War, war, on both frontiers," is Keim's
+obsessing vision. War being inevitable and salutary, it cannot come too
+soon. The duty of hate, he urges on all the youth of Germany, maidens as
+well as men. It is said that Keim is the only man of the day who can
+maintain before an audience of Christians such a proposition as this: "We
+must learn to hate, and to hate with method. A man counts little who
+cannot hate to a purpose. Bismarck was hate."
+
+From Gaston Choisy's clever character sketch of General Keim, we learn
+that as a soldier or tactician, he was a man of no note. He has no ability
+as a thinker or as a speaker, but this he has: "the courage of his
+vulgarity." "At the age of 68, suffering from Bright's Disease, he
+travelled all Germany, his great head always in ebullition, gathering
+everywhere for the war-fire all the news, all the stories and all the lies
+susceptible of aiding the Cause." "Without Bismarck's authority, he had
+his manner--a mixture of baseness, of atrocious joviality, a studied
+cynicism and a lack of conscience." "How generous are circumstances! The
+spirit of Von Moltke the silent, with the speech of an _enfant terrible_,
+an endless flow of language, an endless course of words."
+
+To the Chauvinists of France, Keim is indeed Germany. As to his own
+country, Von Ferlach sagely remarks: "Keims and Keimlings unfortunately
+are all about us. But they are a vanishing minority." The great culture
+peoples do not hate one another. ("Die grossen Kultur-volker hassen
+einander nicht.")
+
+Next on the black list, comes General Frederick von Bernhardi, with his
+_Germany and the Next War_, the need to obliterate France, while giving
+the needed chastisement to England. A retired officer of cavalry, said to
+be disgruntled through failure of promotion, a tall, spare, serious, prosy
+figure, a writer without inspiration, a speaker without force. Germany has
+never taken him seriously; for he lacks even the clown-charm of his rival
+Keim, but the mediaeval absurdities and serious extravagances in his
+defense of war are well tempered to stir the eager watchdogs in the rival
+lands. In spite of his pleas, "historical, biological and philosophical,"
+for war, he is a man of peace, for which, in the words of General
+Eichhorn, "one's own sword is the best and strongest pledge."
+
+Doubtless other retired officers hold views of the same sort, as do
+doubtless many who could not be retired too soon for the welfare of
+Germany. Into the nature of their patriotism, the Zabern incident has
+thrown a great light. "Other lands may possess an army," a Prussian
+officer is quoted as saying, "the army possesses Germany."
+
+The vanities and follies of Prussian militarism are concentrated in the
+movement called Pangermanism. Behind this, there seem to be two moving
+forces, the Prussian Junker aristocracy, and the financial interests which
+center about the house of Krupp. The purposes of Pangermanism seem to be,
+on the one hand, to prevent parliamentary government in Germany; and on
+the other, to take part in whatever goes on in the world outside. Just
+now, the control of Constantinople is the richest prize in sight, and that
+fateful city is fast replacing Alsace in the passive role of "the
+nightmare of Europe." The journalists called Conservative find that
+"Germany needs a vigorous diplomacy as a supplement to her power on land
+and sea, if she is to exercise the influence she deserves." And a vigorous
+foreign policy is but another name for the use of the War System as a
+means of pushing business. From the daily press of Germany may be culled
+many choice examples of idle Jingo talk, but analysis of the papers
+containing it shows their affiliation with the "extreme right," a small
+minority in German politics, potent only through the indiscretions of the
+Crown Prince, and through the fact that the Constitution of Germany gives
+its people no control over administrative affairs. The journals of this
+sort--the _Taegliche Rundschau_, the _Berliner Post_, the _Deutsche
+Tageszeitung_, and the _Berliner Neueste Nachrichten_ are the property of
+Junker reactionists, or else, like the _Lokal Anzeiger_, the
+_Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung_, the organs merely of the War trade
+House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single
+imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who
+"casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of aesthetics,
+the prophet of a great, strong and saber-rattling nation," whose force
+shall be felt everywhere under the sun.
+
+Bloodthirsty pamphlets in numbers, are listed by Nippold. But the
+anonymous writers ("Divinator," "Rhenanus," "Lookout," "Deutscher,"
+"Politiker," "Activer General" and "Deutscher Officier") count for less
+than nothing in personal influence. They do little more than bay at the
+moon.
+
+Impressive as Nippold's list seems at first, and dangerous to the peace of
+the world, after all one's final thought is this: How few they are, and
+how scant their influence, as compared with the wise, sane, commonsense of
+sixty millions of German people. The two great papers that stand for peace
+and sanity, the _Berliner Tageblatt_ and the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, with
+the _Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten_, are read daily by more Germans than
+all the reactionary sheets combined. The Socialist organ _Vorwaerts_,
+avowedly opposed to monarchy as well as to militarism, carries farther
+than all the organs of Pangermanism of whatever kind.
+
+We may justly conclude that the war spirit is not the spirit of Germany, a
+nation perforce military because the people cannot help themselves. So far
+as it goes, it is the spirit of a narrow clique of "sleepless watchdogs"
+whose influence is waning, and would be non-existent were it not for the
+military organization which holds Germany by the throat, but which has
+pushed the German people just as far as it dares.
+
+A second lesson is that while forms of government, and social traditions,
+may differ, the relation of public opinion towards war is practically the
+same in all the countries of Western Europe. It is in its way the test of
+European civilization. Each nation has its "sleepless watchdogs," and
+those of one nation fire the others, when the proper war scares are set in
+motion by the great unscrupulous group of those who profit by them. The
+war promoters, the apostles of hate, form a brotherhood among themselves,
+and their success in frightening one nation reacts to make it easier to
+scare another.
+
+This the reader may remember, as a final lesson. There is no civilized
+nation which longs for war. There is nowhere a reckless populace clamoring
+for blood. The schools have done away with all that. The spread of
+commerce has brought a new Earth with new sympathies and new relations, in
+which international war has no place.
+
+If you are sure that your own nation has no design to use violence on any
+other, you may be equally sure that no other has evil designs on you. The
+German fleet is not built as a menace to England; whether it be large or
+small should concern England very little. Just as little does the size of
+the British fleet bear any concern to Germany. The German fleet is built
+against the German people. The growth of the British army and navy has in
+part the same motive. Armies and navies hold back the waves of populism
+and democracy. They seem a bulwark against Socialism. But in the great
+manufacturing and commercial nations, they will not be used for war,
+because they cannot be. The sacrifice appalls: the wreck of society would
+be beyond computation.
+
+But still the sleepless watchdogs bark. It is all that they can do, and we
+should get used to them. In our own country, whatever country it may be,
+we have our own share of them, and some of them bear distinguished names.
+No other nation has any more, and no nation takes them really seriously,
+any more than we do. And one and all, their bark is worse than their bite,
+and the cost of feeding them is doubtless worse than either.
+
+
+
+
+EN CASSEROLE
+
+
+_Special to our Readers_
+
+Those of you who have not received your REVIEWS on time will probably now
+find a double interest in the article in the last number, on _Our
+Government Subvention to Literature_. In conveying periodicals so cheaply,
+not only is Uncle Sam engaged in a bad job, but he is doing it cheaply,
+and consequently badly, and he has more of it than he can well handle. _He
+is at length carrying them as freight_, and most of you know what that
+means. We are receiving complaints of delay on all sides, and an
+appreciable part of the unwelcome subvention Uncle Sam is giving us, goes
+in sending duplicates of lost copies. We don't acknowledge any obligation,
+legal or moral, to do this; but we love our subscribers--more or less
+disinterestedly--and try to do them all the kinds of good we can. Partly
+to enable us to do that, as long as the subvention is given, we follow the
+example of the excellent Pooh Bah, and put our pride (and the subvention)
+into our pockets. Even if we did not love our subscribers so, we should
+have to do the pocketing all the same, because our competitors do.
+Competitors are always a very shameless sort of people.
+
+We wish, however, that Uncle Sam would keep his subvention in his own
+pocket, and so lead to a higher plane all competitors in the magazine
+business, including some of those who don't want to rise to a higher
+plane. The best of such a proceeding on his part would be that he would
+also, through the complicated influences described in the article referred
+to encourage up to a higher plane those who write for popular magazines.
+Those who write for THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW are, of course, on the highest
+possible plane already. This remark is made solely for the benefit of
+readers taking up the REVIEW for the first time. To others it is
+superfluous, and if there is anything we try to avoid, it is, as we have
+so many times to tell volunteer contributors, superfluities. Even
+popularity we do not try to avoid, but--!
+
+The foregoing paragraph was written with little thought of what was coming
+to be added to it. You and we have something to be proud of. Our REVIEW
+has been doing its part in saving all Europe from the waste of hundreds of
+millions of money, and the literatures of all Europe from a degradation
+like that through which our own is passing. Read the following letter:
+
+    Dear Mr. [Editor]:
+
+    I have already sent a line through ---- thanking you for the copy
+    of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW, which you were good enough to send me,
+    but I should like to repeat my thanks to you again direct, and at
+    the same time, tell you how the REVIEW has been of service to
+    European publishers.
+
+    The article in the last number entitled _Our Government Subvention
+    to Literature_ naturally interested me very much from a personal
+    point of view, but the statistics you give showing the effect of
+    second class matter rate on book sales was very valuable to me as
+    the representative of the English Publishers on the Executive
+    Committee of the International Publishers Congress.
+
+    At the Congress held at Budapest last June, a resolution was
+    adopted instructing the Congress to press for a reduced rate of
+    postage on periodicals, and an international stamp. The steps to
+    be taken in order to carry out this resolution were discussed at
+    the meeting of the Committee last week held at Leipzig, when I
+    produced the copy of your article, and gave the Committee a
+    summary of the statistics. The result was the unanimous decision
+    to take no further steps in the matter.
+
+    I tremble to think of what might have happened if I had not had
+    your article before me, for the point of view which you have put
+    forward was one that had not occurred to anyone else connected
+    with the Congress, and if the resolution had not been cut out at
+    this last meeting of the Executive Committee, it would have gone
+    before the Postal Conference which is to be held in Madrid this
+    autumn, backed by practically every European country.
+
+    I feel we all owe you a debt of gratitude for bringing out the
+    facts so clearly, and believe that you will like to know what has
+    taken place.
+
+While we are not slow to take all the credit that our supporters and
+ourselves are entitled to in this matter, we should be very slow tacitly
+to accept the lion's share of it, which is due to Colonel C.W. Burrows of
+Cleveland, who supplied all of the facts and nearly all of the expression
+of the article in question, and who has for years, lately as President of
+the One Cent Letter Postage League, been devoting himself with unsparing
+energy and self-sacrifice to stopping the waste of money and capacity that
+the mistaken outbreak of paternalism we are discussing has brought upon
+the country.
+
+Demos is a good fellow--when he behaves himself, and that generally means
+when he is not abused or flattered; but how supremely ridiculous, not to
+say destructive, he is when he gets to masquerading in the robes of the
+scholar or the judge; and how criminal is the demagogue who seeks personal
+aggrandisement by dangling those robes before him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our modesty has been so anesthetized by the preceding letter, that it
+permits us to show you, in strict confidence of course, a paragraph from
+another. A new subscriber, apparently going it blind on the recommendation
+of a friend, writes:
+
+    "I am told it is the best gentleman's magazine in the United
+    States."
+
+Now, somehow, "gentleman" is a word that we are very chary of using. We
+couldn't put that remark on an advertising page, but perhaps there is no
+inconsistency in putting it here, and confessing that we like it--and that
+we even suspect that we have always had a subconscious idea that it was
+just what we were after--that it includes, or ought to include, about
+everything that we are trying to accomplish. In any interpretation, it is
+certainly an encouragement to keep pegging away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Most of our readers probably remember a letter on pp. 432-3 of the
+_Casserole_ of the April-June number, from an individual who thought we
+were trying to humbug the wage-receiving world into a false and dangerous
+contentment with existing conditions. This inference was probably drawn
+from our insistent promulgation of the belief that a man's fortune depends
+more upon himself than upon his conditions.
+
+As a contrast to that remarkable letter, it is a great pleasure to call
+attention to the following still more remarkable one. It is from a
+printer--not one in our employ.
+
+    I wish to congratulate you on the excellence of the REVIEW, both
+    from a literary and mechanical standpoint. As a "worker," "a
+    member of the Union," it might be inferred that I endorse the
+    views of the critics given on page 432 of the second number. Not
+    so. It is such views as his that harm the unthinking--those who
+    think capital is the emblem of wickedness.
+
+    I believe that individual merit and worth are the only things
+    worth while. The workman who puts his best efforts into his labor,
+    and takes a personal pride in making his productions as nearly
+    perfect as possible, will be recognized, and his individual worth
+    to his employer will raise him above the "common level." All this
+    rot about a "ruling oligarchy" "grinding down the poorer class" is
+    dangerous. The man who has no ambition above ditch digging, and
+    who endeavors to throw out as little dirt in a day as he possibly
+    can, will always be one of "the submerged." It lies with each
+    one--outside of unavoidable physical or mental
+    infirmities--whether he shall rise or sink.
+
+    Again I must congratulate you on the stand you are taking in THE
+    UNPOPULAR REVIEW. I "take" and read twenty to twenty-five
+    magazines and for over forty years have been trying to educate
+    myself to a right way of thinking, and the result is I believe as
+    above briefly outlined.
+
+    Especially good is _The Greeks on Religion and Morals_, also _The
+    Soul of Capitalism, Trust-Busting as a National Pastime_, and _Our
+    Government Subvention to Literature_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Possibly some of you are disappointed at not finding this number as full
+as the daily papers of wisdom on War and the Mexican situation. In one
+sense we are disappointed ourselves: for we had made arrangements for at
+least one article of that general nature from one of our best qualified
+contributors; but when it came time to write it (speaking by the
+calendar), he showed the excellence of his qualifications by saying that,
+considering the situation and the function of this REVIEW, it was _not_
+time--that the situation had not yet become mature enough or broad enough
+for any general conclusions--for any treatment beyond that already well
+given by the newspapers and other organs of frequent publication, and that
+they were giving all the details called for. We will wait, then, and try
+to philosophize when the time comes.
+
+We find, however, that with little deliberate intention on our part, this
+number has turned out "seasonable" in another sense, and hope you will
+find it so. Witness the articles on _Chautauqua_, and _Railway Junctions_,
+and _Tips_ (entitled _A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism_) and several others.
+
+
+_Philosophy in Fly Time_
+
+In the old days, before the destruction of the white pines removed the
+chief source of American inventiveness--the universal habit of
+whittling--every boy had a jackknife, and also had boxes, sometimes of
+wood, sometimes of writing paper, in which he kept flies. Now he has
+neither flies nor jackknife.
+
+Then, when he wanted a fly, nine times out of ten he could catch one with
+a sweep of the hand. That was before the fly was charged with an amount of
+bad deeds, if they really were as bad as represented, which would have
+destroyed the human race long before the plagues of Egypt; or if not
+before the fly plague, would have caused that plague to leave no Egyptians
+alive to enjoy the later ones. With these new opinions of the fly, began a
+crusade against him; and now the boys can't have any more fun with
+him--that is, only good boys can--the kind that catch him with illusive
+traps, for a cent a hundred. The other kind of boys may occasionally be
+sports enough to hunt him with the swatter; but it's pretty poor hunting:
+for the game is so shy that generally before you get within reach of him,
+he is off: so swatting him is difficult, while catching him by hand, as we
+boys used to, is virtually impossible.
+
+Now for some questions profound enough to befit our pages. (I) Have only a
+select group of very alert and quick flies survived? or (II) Have the
+flies told each other that that big clumsy brute with only two legs to
+walk on, and two aborted ones which do all sorts of foolish things--the
+brute with only one lens to an eye (though he sometimes puts a glass one
+over it) and a pitifully aborted proboscis--the brute that has no wings,
+and can't get ahead more than about once his own length in a second--that
+this clumsy brute had at last got so jealous of the six legs,
+hundred-lensed eyes, proboscis, wings and speed of the fly, that he had
+started a new crusade against him, and must be specially avoided?
+
+Then, after it is ascertained whether the timidity of the flies is because
+this story has been passed around among them, or only because men have
+already killed off all but the specially quick and timid ones; we hope our
+investigators may find an answer to the farther question: (III) How, if a
+tenth of what some folks say against flies is true, the human race has so
+long survived?
+
+To avoid misapprehension, it should be added that despite the
+availability, in our boyhood, of flies as playmates, we don't like 'em,
+especially when they light on our hands to help us write articles for this
+REVIEW.
+
+
+_Setting Bounds to Laughter_
+
+That there is even a measure of personal liberty on the earth, is one of
+our most pointed proofs that the universe is governed by design. For
+liberty is loved neither by the many nor by the few; its defense has
+always been unpopular in the extreme, and can be manfully undertaken only
+in an age of moral heroism. The present is no heroic age, and hence our
+personal rights fall one by one, without defense, and apparently without
+regret. The losses thus incurred must be left to future historians to
+weigh and to lament. There is, however, one of our natural rights, now
+cruelly beset by its enemies, that is too precious to surrender to the
+threnodies of the future historians. This is the right to laugh.
+
+It is scarcely a quarter of a century since the first appearance of
+organized efforts to curb the spirit of laughter. All good men and women
+were hectored into believing that one should weep, not laugh, over the
+absurdities of men in their cups. Next, we were warned that it is unseemly
+and unChristian to laugh at a fellow-man's discomfiture--an awkward social
+situation, a sermon or a political oration wrecked by stage fright, or a
+poem spoilt by a printer's stupidity. Under shelter of the dogma that to
+laugh at the ridiculous is unlawful, there have recently grown into vigor
+multitudinous anti-laughter alliances, racial, national and professional.
+Not many years ago a censorship of Irish jokes was established, and this
+was soon followed by an index expurgatorious of Teutonic jokes. Our
+colored fellow citizens promptly advanced the claim that jokes at the
+expense of their race are "in bad taste"; and country life enthusiasts
+solemnly affirmed that the rural and suburban jokes are nothing short of
+national disasters. A recent press report informs us that the suffragette
+joke has been excluded from the vaudeville circuits throughout the
+country. And the movement grows apace. Domestic servants, stenographers,
+politicians, college professors, and clergymen are organizing to establish
+the right of being ridiculous without exciting laughter.
+
+But what does it all matter? What is laughter but an old-fashioned aid to
+digestion, more or less discredited by current medical authority? It is
+time we learned that laughter has a social significance: it is the first
+stage in the process of understanding one's fellow man. Professor Bergson
+to the contrary notwithstanding, you can not laugh with your intellect
+alone. An essential element of your laughter is sympathy. You can not
+laugh at an idiot, nor at a superman. You can not laugh at a Hindoo or a
+Korean; you can hardly force a smile to your lips over the conduct of a
+Bulgar, a Serb, or a Slovak. You are beginning to find something comic in
+the Italian, because you are beginning to know him. And all the world
+laughs at the Irishman, because all the world knows him and loves him.
+
+When Benjamin Franklin walked down the streets of Philadelphia, carrying a
+book under his arm, and munching a crust of bread, just one person
+observed him, a rosy maiden, who laughed merrily at him. As our old school
+readers narrated, with naive surprise, this maiden was destined to become
+Franklin's faithful wife. And yet psychology should have led us to expect
+such a result. The stupidest small boy making faces or turning somersaults
+before the eyes of his pig-tailed inamorata, evidences his appreciation of
+the sentimental value of the ridiculous. When did we first grant some
+small corner in our hearts to the Chinese? It was when we were introduced
+to Bret Harte's gambler:
+
+  For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,
+  The heathen Chinee is peculiar.
+
+The natural history of the racial or professional joke is easily written.
+At the outset it is crude and cruel, wholly at the expense of the group
+represented. In time the world wearies of an unequal contest, and we have
+a new order of jokes, in which the intended victim acquits himself well.
+This, too, gives way to a higher order, in which race, nationality or
+profession is employed merely as a cloak for common humanity. The
+successive stages mark the progress in assimilation, induced, in large
+measure, by laughter. There is no other social force so potent in creating
+mutual understanding and practical fraternity of spirit; in establishing
+the essential unity of mankind underneath its phenomenal diversity.
+Setting bounds to laughter: why, this is to indenture the angel of charity
+to the father of lies and the lord of hate.
+
+
+_A Post Graduate School for Academic Donors_
+
+At a recent meeting of an University Montessori Club the case of donors to
+colleges and universities was reported on by a special committee. The
+majority report drew a pretty heavy indictment. It was shown that the
+givers to colleges and universities seldom considered the real needs of
+their beneficiaries. Donors liked to give expensive buildings without
+endowment for upkeep, liked to give vast athletic fields, rejoiced in
+stadiums, affected memorial statuary and stained glass windows, dabbled in
+landscape gardening, but seldom were known either to give anything
+unconditionally or, specifically, to destine a gift for such uninspiring
+needs as more books or professors' pay. The result of giving without first
+considering the needs of the benefited college or university, was that
+every gift made the beneficiary more lopsided. Certain universities were
+almost capsized by their incidental architecture. Others were subsidizing
+graduate students to whom the conditions of successful research were
+denied. Still others were calling great specialists to the teaching force
+without providing the apparatus for the pursuit of these specialties.
+Others preferred to offer financial aid to students who were poor--in
+every sense. Donors apparently without exception had single-track minds.
+They saw plainly enough what they wanted to give, but never took the pains
+to see the donation in its relation to the institution as a whole. The
+majority report, which was drawn by our famous Latinist, Professor
+Claudius Senex, concluded with the despairing note _Timeo Danaos et dona
+ferentes_. The minority report was delivered orally by young Simpson Smith
+of the department of banking and finance. He "allowed" that everything
+alleged by the majority report was true, but saw no use in dwelling on
+such truths, since donors always had done and always would do just as they
+darned pleased.
+
+The Club took a more hopeful view of the case, and it was voted that our
+Club should resolve itself into the trustees and faculty of a Post
+Graduate School for Academic Donors. Our committee recommended that we
+qualify our advanced students by conferring the lower degree of Heedless
+Donor (H.D.) every year upon all givers who can be shown to have given at
+random. No method of instruction seemed more appropriate than the seminar
+plan of practical exercises based on concrete instances. The first
+laboratory experiment was performed in the presence of a Seminar of seven
+H.D.'s. in a specially called meeting of married professors attired only
+in bath gowns borrowed from the crews and base ball teams. Into this
+assembly the class of H.D.'s was suddenly introduced. They naturally
+inquired into the meaning of the spectacle, and were informed that in no
+case did the mere salary of these professors enable them to wear clothes
+at all. "But you do usually wear clothes?" inquired a student of a
+favorite professor. "How do you get them?" "By University extension
+lecturing at ten dollars a lecture" was the quiet answer. Another
+professor explained that he got his clothes by tutoring dull students,
+another by book reviewing. One somewhat shamefacedly said the clothes came
+from his wife's money. One declined to answer, and, as a matter of fact,
+his clothes are habitually first worn by a more fortunate elder brother.
+
+On the whole the results of our first seminary exercise were satisfactory.
+One student immediately drew a considerable check for the salary fund,
+another, who had been planning to give a hockey rink, said he would think
+things over. Still a third deposited forty pairs of slightly worn trousers
+with the university treasurer, "for whom it might concern." Only one
+accepted the demonstration contentedly. He admitted that low pay and extra
+work were hard on the Professors, but he also felt that these outside
+activities advertised the university and were good business. Of course you
+wore out some professors in the process, but you could always get others.
+
+Our second seminary exercise was of a less spectacular sort. The post
+graduate donors were each provided with a bibliography. This in every
+instance contained the titles of books that a particular professor or
+graduate student in the university would need to consult for his studies
+of the ensuing week. It was briefly explained by Professor Senex that
+original research could not be successfully accomplished without reference
+to all the original sources and to the writings of other scholars. The
+bibliographies ran from ten titles or so to nearly a hundred, according to
+the nature of the particular research involved. The exercise consisted in
+going to the university library and matching these titles of desiderata
+with the books actually in the catalogue. After varying intervals, the
+post graduate donors returned with their report. Nobody had found more
+than half the books sought for: many had found less.
+
+The effect of this demonstration was interesting. The donor who had tended
+towards the hockey rink, instead transferred his $100,000 to the book
+purchase fund. He said he guessed the old place needed real books more
+than it needed artificial ice. Others followed his example according to
+their ability.
+
+The student who was satisfied with our bath robe faculty meeting, came
+back from the library equally pleased. He had not compared his
+bibliography with the catalogue, but a brief general inspection had
+convinced him that there were already more books in the library than
+anybody could read. His intention held firm to give his Alma Mater a tower
+higher than any university tower on record and containing a chime of bells
+that periodically played the college song. The tower was naturally to bear
+his name, which was also his dear mother's.
+
+
+_A Suggestion Regarding Vacations_
+
+Why wouldn't it be well for the country colleges to shorten their summer
+vacations, and lengthen their winter ones? Then urban students would not,
+for so long a period in summer, be put to their trumps to find out what to
+do with themselves; and, what is more important, in winter both faculty
+and students would have increased opportunity for metropolitan experience.
+In the summer vacations, the cities are empty of music, drama, and most
+else of what makes them distinctively worth while. Intellectually, the
+country needs the city at least as much as, morally, the city needs the
+country.
+
+
+_Advertisement_
+
+We are disposed to do a little gratuitous advertising for good causes.
+Below is the first essay. It is perfectly genuine. Please send us some
+more.
+
+_Help Wanted._ From a young gentleman of education, leisure and energy,
+who desires to devote a part of his time, in connection with scholars and
+philanthropists, to a reform of world-wide importance. Such a person may
+possibly learn of a congenial opportunity by addressing.
+
+X.T.C.
+
+Care of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW.
+
+
+A few hundred persons of the kind whose help is sought by this
+advertisement would have the salvation of the republic in their hands. But
+somehow those who have the leisure generally lack the desire; and those
+who have the desire generally lack the leisure.
+
+
+_Simplified Spelling_
+
+After receiving, in answer to the invitation in our first number, a few
+bitter objections to simplified spelling, we have felt like apologizing
+each time we approached the subject. Perhaps the best apology we can make
+is that apparently the majority of our readers are interested in it.
+Therefore we hope that the others will tolerate as equably as they can,
+the devotion of a little space to it in the interest of the majority.
+Perhaps the objectors may ultimately be able to settle the difficulty as
+we and our house have settled another unconquerable nuisance--the
+dandelions on our lawns--: we have concluded to like them.
+
+Our recent correspondence regarding Simplified Spelling has developed a
+few points which we submit to those who abominate it, those who favor it,
+and those who, like the eminent school-superintendent we have already
+quoted, and like ourselves for that matter, do both:
+
+To a leading Professor of Greek:
+
+    I am more hopeful than you that the repetition of a consonant
+    beginning the second syllable of a dissyllable, to close the
+    preceding syllable, as in "differ", "fiddle", "gobble", etc.,
+    _wil_ "be generally accepted", especially in view of the fact that
+    it is _alreddy_ "generally accepted", and needs only to be
+    extended to a minority of words.
+
+    "Annutther" is not "a fair illustration". On the contrary, it is
+    an exception that I probably was very injudicious to call any
+    attention to; and the trouble with you scholars, I find all the
+    way thru, is that you permit those little exceptions to influence
+    you too much. If a good simplification is ever effected, it will
+    be by cutting Gordian knots, and you all of you seem absolutely
+    incapable of anything of the kind. I don't expect anyhow to make
+    much out of a man who will spell "peepl" "peopl". Imagine all this
+    said with a grin, not a frown!!
+
+    You wil never get back to "the old sounds" of the vowels, in God's
+    world.
+
+    As to the long sounds, I am going in for all I am worth on the
+    double vowels. I alreddy agree with the English Society on
+    "faather", "feel" and "scuul", and am going to do all I can for
+    _niit_, and for spredding the _oo_ in _floor_ and _door_ into
+    _snore_, _more_, _hole_, _poke_, etc. "Awl", "cow" and "go" are
+    spelt wel, and their spelling shoud be spred. These seem to be the
+    lines of least resistance. I find that they work first-rate in my
+    own riting.
+
+    You make enuf serious objections to diacritical marks, but my
+    serious objection to them is that they ar obstacles to lerners,
+    especially forreners.
+
+From his answer:
+
+    All right; I catch the grin, and cheerfully grin back. The
+    business of a scholar (Emerson's "man thinking", Plato's [Greek:
+    philosophos]) is to take as long views as he can; in this case, to
+    look far beyond the possibilities of my life-time. The more you
+    people with the shorter views, as I venture to think them, agitate
+    for and practise each little partial solution, the more you help
+    on the threshing out which must go on for many years before we can
+    arrive at any general solution. So, more power to your elbow!
+
+    Meantime my own spelling will continue to be--like the
+    conventional spelling of the printers of today--a hodge-podge of
+    inconsistencies, quite indefensible on rational grounds, and
+    varying with circumstances. Of course the rational way to spell
+    _people_ is _piipl_, or _pipl_.
+
+Which we think is an attempt to bolster up a lost cause.
+
+From another reader:
+
+    Your closing sentence in the first number of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW
+    states with a most distressing combination of vowels and
+    outlandish collocation of consonants that you would like to hear
+    from your readers on the subject.... Z is not a pretty letter, and
+    to see it so frequently usurping the place so long held by s is
+    far from gratifying to the eye....
+
+    Suppose you establish to your own satisfaction a method for
+    assigning sound values; how will you reach the differences in
+    vowel sounds that prevail in the United States? The New
+    Englander's mouthing of _a_ differs from that of the Northern New
+    Yorker, and both differ greatly from that of the
+    Southerner--indeed, in the different Southern States there is
+    variation.... At first I was interested in simplified spelling,
+    but the eccentricities developed by its advocates alienated me
+    long since, so I beg of you, drop it.
+
+From our answer:
+
+    I delayed thanking you for your letter of the 29th until there
+    should be time for you to see the April-June number.
+
+    I hope you are feeling better now.
+
+    If you are not, I do not think I can do much to console you,
+    because when a man has been irritated into that position where the
+    alleged beauty of a letter counts in so serious a question, he is
+    probably beyond mortal help.
+
+    I have no desire "to reach the differences in vowel sounds that
+    prevail in the United States". There is not much difference among
+    cultivated people. Probably a fair standard would be the
+    conversation at the Century Club, where there are visitors from
+    Maine to California, and hardly any noticeable difference in
+    pronunciation.
+
+    There seems to be no disagreement among authorities that a
+    simplified spelling would save a great deal of time among
+    children....
+
+    Of course I have not been able to answer most of the letters I
+    have received on the subject. I single yours out because you have
+    had a fall from grace, and I feel guilty of having had something
+    to do with it, by presenting stronger meat than was necessary, in
+    our January number. I have fought on the Executive Committee of
+    the Spelling Board against publishing anything of the English
+    S.S.S.'s proposed improvements, for fear of arousing such
+    prejudice as yours; and yet in our first number, I was insensibly
+    led into, myself, publishing things that looked just as
+    outlandish.
+
+    As I said at the outset, I hope you feel better since seeing the
+    April-June number, and should be glad to know how you do feel.
+
+From his reply:
+
+    Thank you very much for the courtesy of your letter of 9th April.
+    I was surprised to receive it, as I did not suppose that your
+    multifarious duties would permit you to notice my rather feeble
+    protest. I was somewhat amused that you should think my irritation
+    so extreme as to call for an effort to console me. I am sure I
+    appreciate your attempt to do so. But really, I was not so hard
+    hit as you thought, because I do not expect in my day (I am no
+    longer a young man) to see the champions of "simplified spelling"
+    (some of it seems to me the reverse of "simplified") gain such
+    headway as to materially mar my pleasure in the printed page, for
+    I do not believe you will allow the atrocities of the last few
+    pages of your first number to creep into the delightful essays
+    which render THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW such pleasant and profitable
+    reading....
+
+    I do not think any great respect is due the opinion of those who
+    think that a simplified spelling would save a great deal of time
+    among children, for it also seems to have its rules which will
+    present as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of
+    our present system....
+
+    Why _thru_? U does not always have the sound of double _o_--very
+    rarely in fact. Why not _throo_--if the aim is to make the written
+    sign correspond to the sound. Thru suggests _huh_.
+
+From our answer:
+
+    Regarding "thru", you justly say that _u_ does not always have the
+    sound of _oo_. The only sound of _oo_ worthy of respect, with
+    which I have an acquaintance, is in "door" and "floor". The idea
+    of using it to represent a _u_ sound is perhaps the culminating
+    absurdity of our spelling.
+
+    Your statement that simplified spelling "seems to have its rules
+    which will present as much difficulty to memorize as do the
+    peculiarities of our present system" overlooks the advantage that
+    writing with a phonetic alphabet, like those of Europe, has over
+    writing with purely conventional characters, as in China. Now
+    English writing is probably the least phonetic in Europe.
+    Simplifying it in any of the well-known proposed methods would be
+    making it more phonetic, and consequently easier. At present it is
+    a mass of contradictions, and the rules that can be extracted from
+    it are overburdened with exceptions. Simplification will decrease
+    both the exceptions and the rules themselves. There are now
+    several ways of representing each of many sounds, and therefore
+    several "rules" to be learned for each of such sounds.
+    Simplification will tend to reduce those rules to one for each
+    sound, and so far as it succeeds, will _not_ "present as much
+    difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of our present
+    system."
+
+All the degrees of reformed spelling now in use are professedly but
+transitional. They may gradually advance into a respectable degree of
+consistency, but we expect that to be reached quicker by a coherent
+survival among the warring elements proposed by the S.S.S., the S.S.B. and
+the better individual reformers. Probably there is already more agreement
+than disagreement among these elements.
+
+While the others are fighting it out, the various transition styles will
+do something to prepare parents to accept a more nearly perfect style for
+their children, and perhaps take an interest in seeing the various
+counsels of perfection fight each other.
+
+A few words have already found their way into advertisements--_tho_,
+_thru_, _thoro_ (a damnable way of spelling _thurro_), and the shortened
+terminal _gram(me)s_, _og(ue)s_ and _et(te)s_; and these and a few more
+have found their way into correspondence on commonplace subjects; and the
+interest in the topic, especially among educators, is spreading. But most
+of the inconsistencies will probably bother and delay children and
+forreners until they are given something with some approach to
+consistency.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After we fight to something like agreement on a system, how are we to get
+it going?
+
+It does not seem extravagant to expect that as soon as the weight of
+scholarly opinion endorses a vocabulary from our present alphabet
+consistent enough to afford a base for a reasonable spelling book,
+spelling books and readers will be prepared for the schools, and adopted
+by advanced teachers. Many are clamoring for such now. When the youngsters
+have mastered these, which they will do in a small fraction of the time
+wasted on their present books, they will of their own accord pick up
+without troubling their teachers a knowledge of the present forms. This
+they have always done when their teaching has been by the various phonetic
+methods with special letters, and have done both in much less time than
+they have needed for learning in the ordinary way. But they will prefer
+the reasonable forms, and this demand the publishers will probably not be
+slow to supply.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number
+3, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW ***
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #15876 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15876)