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diff --git a/15876-h/15876-h.htm b/15876-h/15876-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a452177 --- /dev/null +++ b/15876-h/15876-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8197 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta name="generator" content= +"HTML Tidy for Mac OS X (vers 1st December 2004), see www.w3.org" /> +<meta http-equiv="content-type" content= +"text/html; charset=us-ascii" /> +<title>The Unpopular Review, July-September, 1914.</title> + +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[*/ + <!-- + body {font-family:Georgia,serif;margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%;} + p {text-align: justify;} + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center;padding-top:1em;padding-bottom:1em;font-variant:small-caps;} + pre {font-family:Courier,monospaced;font-size: 0.8em;} + hr {width: 50%;} + hr.full {width: 100%;} + hr.short {width:25%;} + + ul {list-style-type:none;padding-left:1em;text-indent:-1em;margin-left:10%;font-variant:small-caps;} + ol {list-style-type:upper-roman;margin-left:10%;font-variant:small-caps;} + .articleHead {font-variant:small-caps;width:75%;} + .tableOfContents {width:80%;margin:auto;} + .returnTOC {text-align:right;font-size:.7em;} + .author {font-size:90%;} + .pagenr {font-size: 70%; position: absolute; left: 1%; color: gray;} + span.sc {font-variant:small-caps;} + .quote {text-align:justify;text-indent:0em;margin-left:10%;margin-right:10%;font-size:90%;} + .cen {text-align:center;} + .rgt {text-align:right;} + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; margin-bottom: 1em; font-size:90%;text-align: left;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem p {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem p.i2 {margin-left: 1em;} + .poem p.i4 {margin-left: 2em;} + .poem p.i6 {margin-left: 3em;} + a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + --> +/*]]>*/ +</style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +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. + + + + + + +</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: “True +Demand” 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—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</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 “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 <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 “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.</p> +<p>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 <a id="page_2" name= +"page_2"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 2]</span>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 <em>Atlantic</em>) “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.</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—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, <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 “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, <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 +“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.</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’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’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.</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. “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 <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’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, +“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.</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 “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.</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, “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 <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 “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?</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—literally—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 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.</p> +<p>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.</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—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 mediæval vagabondage was +rendered well-nigh incapable of solution by the fact that any +beggar’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 “hole-in-the-<a id= +"page_11" name="page_11"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg +11]</span>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.</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—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—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.</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—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’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?</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’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 +“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.</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—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—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 <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—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’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.</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’ 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—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—namely, +the distinction between ideal ethics and practical ethics.</p> +<p>An illustration or two will help explain that distinction:</p> +<p>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!</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—<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—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—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’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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <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—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 “thank you” 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—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 <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: “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.”</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—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—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 <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’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 “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.</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’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 <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 “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.</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—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.</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—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.</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’ 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 “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.</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 “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, <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’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’ +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.</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’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—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 +<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’ 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’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’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: “True Demand” +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’ 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: “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.</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): “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.” 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.”</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. +“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 +<em>Hugonots</em> 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 <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.”</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: “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.”</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 “new immigration” +from the Mediterranean and South-Eastern Europe. The temporary +migrant laborer, the “bird of passage,” 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 “comforts of +civilization.”</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 “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.”</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: “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.</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’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 <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>.” (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: “… 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.)</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 “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.</p> +<p><a id="page_51" name="page_51"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg +51]</span>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 <a id="page_52" name= +"page_52"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 52]</span>part of +employés, has made unionization of the immigrant almost +impossible.”</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’s railroads or B’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—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.</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 “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.</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’ 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.</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 “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.</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 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 <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’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’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.</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’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>“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.</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—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-<a id="page_60" name= +"page_60"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 60]</span>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.</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 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 <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—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—probably six months ago—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 +“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 <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. +“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.</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 “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 <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 +“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.</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—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 “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:</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—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’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?</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 “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.</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 +“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.</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 +“Life Extension” <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. “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 <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’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 +“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 <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 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?</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—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 <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—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.</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’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 <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—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.</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. +“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.</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 +“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 <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,—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 <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—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 +<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’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’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.”</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. “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.”</p> +<p>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 <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’t because they +can’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’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—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 “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.</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 “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 +<em>volonté générale</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 +“progress” 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 “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.</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’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—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.</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. “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, <em>I cannot see</em>, or the complaint of the dumb +tongue, <em>I cannot utter</em>.” 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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</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,—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.</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’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.—</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>“Nine hours,” he cried, “we’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!”</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>. “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 <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. “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.</p> +<p>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 +<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’s +poem. Imagine a hundred voices singing lustily in unison,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">“I hope in hell</p> +<p class="i4">His soul may dwell</p> +<p>Who first invented Essex Junction,”</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…. 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,—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 <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—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 <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—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 <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,—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 <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. +“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.</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—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 +<em>Ici on parle anglais</em>. “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.</p> +<p>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 <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’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.</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’s +perorations.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>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.</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. “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.</p> +<p>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.”</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, “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.”</p> +<p>One of the loveliest women I have ever known—the late +Alison Cunningham—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, +“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….”</p> +<p>And, in the <em>Christian Morals</em> 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.”</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:—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 <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 +“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 <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,—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,—even at those moments that must, perforce, be +“spent waiting at a railway junction.”</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’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 +“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. <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’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>succès 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’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 <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—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, <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’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.</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: “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 <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;—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.</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’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.</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—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—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—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—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 <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’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,—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.</p> +<p>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.</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, “Front!” 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,—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 “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 <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’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,—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 unæsthetic, +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.—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.</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: “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.”</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’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:—“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—isn’t it?—because +Stevenson and Whitman weren’t at all like each +other,—were they?”</p> +<p>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….”</p> +<p>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 <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’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’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,—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.</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!—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:—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 +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!</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’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 <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 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 <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,—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’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,—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-<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,—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.”</p> +<p>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 +<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 “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 +<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—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.</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—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 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.</p> +<p>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 <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’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.</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’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. <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,—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.</p> +<p>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.</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, “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 <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—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!…</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>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 <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: +“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.”</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: “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 +<em>jeunesse dorée</em> (<em>sc.</em> 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.</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—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, <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’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’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 <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 +“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.</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’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.</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—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’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 “practical” 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’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:</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….</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….</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….</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….</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’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 “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 +<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’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’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’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, “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, <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’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 <em>Odes of Victory</em>. 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 <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’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 <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’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 +<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. “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 <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.” 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 <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—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 “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 +<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>… 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.</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? “To one small people,” as Sir Henry Maine has +said, in words often quoted, “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.” 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.</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 “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.</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’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>… 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.</p> +<p>“Sit down,” he said. “I’ll try and get +rid of them, for I’m not in the humor to be +disturbed….”</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….</p> +<p>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….</p> +<p>“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!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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!”</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 … 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….</p> +<p>“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.” …</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’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.”</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’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: +“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.</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.’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——”</p> +<p>“Good heavens!” exclaimed A——, +“that was my father’s name, his tone, his manner, his +action.”</p> +<p>“And,” said Foster, “it was a good influence; +he was a man of large veneration.”</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>: … 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.</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 … 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.</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—the +genuine ones,—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 “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?</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 “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.</p> +<p>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 <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—“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.</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—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.</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—strong enough to make an alien body—Foster’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—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.</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’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—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.</p> +<p>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.</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 “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:</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 “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, <a id= +"page_161" name="page_161"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg +161]</span>“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.</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, “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 +<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 “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.</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’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’s method of work, and the sensitive’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—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 “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.</p> +<p><a id="page_164" name="page_164"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg +164]</span>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.</p> +<div class="quote"> +<p>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.”</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 “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.</p> +<p>In this instance, I <em>was</em> “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 <a id="page_165" name= +"page_165"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 165]</span>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.</p> +<p>The <em>simplest</em> 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.</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.’s wife +at Granada in Spain</em>, and meant nothing to her or to A.</p> +<div class="quote"> +<p>—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 <em>re</em> B. and +A.</p> +<p class="cen">(<em>Copy of Enclosure.</em>)</p> +<p class="rgt">“<span class="sc">Granada</span>, May 6, +1894.</p> +<p>“Dear H.[odgson]:</p> +<p>“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 +<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">“All send kind messages. Yrs. ever.<br /> +“A——.”</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’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>“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.”</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’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’s letter continues:</p> +<div class="quote"> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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….</p> +<p class="rgt">“Yours sincerely,<br /> +“<span class="sc">R. Hodgson</span>.”</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—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?</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 “living” 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—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 <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 +“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 <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>—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>“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:</p> +<div class="quote"> +<p>“… 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.”</p> +</div> +<p>This remark and the persistent efforts of the alleged G.P. who, +living, was a thorough skeptic, would seem strongly +“evidential.”</p> +<div class="quote"> +<p><em>March 5, 1897.</em><br /> +<em>Hodgson sitting.</em></p> +<p>[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 <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….” 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….</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p><em>March 13, 1807:</em> “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.</p> +<p>“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 <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.”</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) “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….</p> +<p>“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.]….”</p> +</div> +<p>The change of the instrument below is a specially dreamlike +touch.</p> +<div class="quote"> +<p><em>March 30, 1897.</em> “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.”</p> +</div> +<p>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.</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 +“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.</p> +<div class="quote"> +<p>“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.’”</p> +<p><em>June 4, 1897.</em> “… 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,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>‘I said I will find God and forth I went</p> +<p>To seek him in the clearness of the sky,’ etc. +Excitement.]</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>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 <em>happy +than tongue can utter</em>.”</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—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.</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 +“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 <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’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 “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.</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’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’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, <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’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.</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—even the strongest hope of rejoining lost +loved ones—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’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.</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—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—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 <a id="page_180" name= +"page_180"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 180]</span>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?</p> +<p>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.</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—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—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—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.</p> +<p>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 <em>himself</em> 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?</p> +<p>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 <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’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—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.</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….</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>, +…</p> +<p>Giovanni Dupré got in a dream the conception of his very +beautiful <em>Pietà</em>. 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.</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 “the horse” 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…. Sleep, Vaschide has said, +is not, as Homer thought, the brother of Death, but of Life, and, +it may be added, the elder brother….</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…. 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—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 “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.</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’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—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.</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’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’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’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.</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—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.</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’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.</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>“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 <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’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 “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 <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 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—<em>discere +ambulando</em>—need not turn the home into an experiment +station.</p> +<p>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 <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’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 <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 +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 <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.” 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 “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 <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: “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.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Their sense is with their senses all mix’d in,</p> +<p>Destroyed by subtleties these women are.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>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.</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 “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 <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’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’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’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.”</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’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—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.</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’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—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, “We have him at last, the mad +invader.” 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—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’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.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>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.</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’ 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—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’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 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.</p> +<p>And as each nation should look after its own, Dr. Nippold +lists—blacklists if you choose—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 +“noblest” 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—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.”</p> +<p>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 <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.”</p> +<p>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.”)</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 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.”</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. “Other lands may possess +an army,” a Prussian officer is quoted as saying, “the +army possesses Germany.”</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 +“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 +<em>Tägliche 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 “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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <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>Münchener 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 “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.</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 “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.</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’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.</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’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—!</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 —— 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’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—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>“I am told it is the best gentleman’s magazine in +the United States.”</p> +</div> +<p>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 <a id="page_208" name= +"page_208"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg 208]</span>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.</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’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—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 “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.</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 “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.</p> +<p>Again I must congratulate you on the stand you are taking in +<span class="sc">The Unpopular Review</span>. 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.</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—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.</p> +<p>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 <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—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.</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’t have any more fun with <a id= +"page_210" name="page_210"></a><span class="pagenr">[pg +210]</span>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.</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—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?</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’t +like ‘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’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.</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’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 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:</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’ 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 <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 “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.</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.’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.</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, “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.</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’s.</p> +<h3><em>A Suggestion Regarding Vacations</em></h3> +<p>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.</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—the dandelions on +our lawns—: 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 “differ”, +“fiddle”, “gobble”, etc., <em>wil</em> +“be generally accepted”, especially in view of the fact +that it is <em>alreddy</em> “generally accepted”, and +needs only to be extended to a minority of words.</p> +<p>“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!!</p> +<p>You wil never get back to “the old sounds” of the +vowels, in God’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>“faather”, “feel” and +“scuul”, 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. “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.</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’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!</p> +<p>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 +<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…. 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….</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’s +mouthing of <em>a</em> 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.</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 “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.</p> +<p>There seems to be no disagreement among authorities that a +simplified spelling would save a great deal of time among +children….</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.’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 “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 +<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….</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….</p> +<p>Why <em>thru</em>? U does not always have the sound of double +<em>o</em>—very rarely in fact. Why not +<em>throo</em>—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 “thru”, 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 “door” and “floor”. 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 “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 <em>not</em> “present +as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of our +present system.”</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—<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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW *** + +***** This file should be named 15876-h.htm or 15876-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/8/7/15876/ + +Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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