Marriage, brought into the world through the influence of children, should be dissolved only with due regard for the interests of children. ——
An unhappy marriage is earth's worst affliction. Quite true.But it is not affliction wasted.
Examples are needed to warn the young against the matrimonial recklessness which underlies most unhappy marriages.
Unhappy wives and husbands are human light-houses—lonely, but useful.
If a gentle little Alderney calf should marry a sleek young zebra and afterward get kicked to death for her pains, we should all sympathize with her. But we should expect other mild-eyed Alderneys after that to beware of zebras.
As a matter of fact, this present divorce talk, which sets the good to fluttering, really interests a very unimportant class.
The man who spends his life spending what he didn't earn, feeding his physical senses, who goes from rum to the races, from the races to the opera, and from the opera to roulette, wears out his nervous sensations.
He then thinks that he is unhappily married. He has possibly driven his wife to being seven kinds of a fool.
But that is not her fault.
A man who marries a woman undertakes to make her happy and keep her busy. If he keeps his contract, she will keep hers.
If he fails, he has no right to experiment on another unfortunate. The divorce class is a self-indulgent, malformed class, not worth notice. ——
Professor Cope, an earnest man and serious thinker, believed that marriages should be contracted on probation—say for five years, with the right on both sides to refuse a renewal.
Theoretically, this would be beautiful. It would make courtship permanent, abolish curl-papered wives in the morning, and tipsy, bragging husbands at night.
But it wouldn't work. It would be all right for women. They are only too willing to be faithful and permanent.
But men cannot be trusted. The animal in them, so essential long ago, when the race was struggling for a foothold, has not been obliterated. They have got to be MADE responsible and HELD responsible. ——
As a matter of fact, there really is no marriage or divorce problem which sensible beings need consider.
At present men are not good enough to be trusted with liberal marriage or divorce laws. When they are good enough the laws will not be wanted. For the man fully developed and fully moral will know what he is doing when he goes into a marriage contract.
His stability of character will insure permanency. There will be no need of laws.
At one time the English laws regulated the conditions under which a man might beat his wife. "The stick," said the law, "must not be thicker than the husband's thumb."
Some Englishmen have very thick thumbs, and the law was doubtless hard on some thin, worn-out women.
But that law is no longer needed.
Men have outgrown the need of regulations in wife-beating. In time they will outgrow the need of laws regarding infidelity and lack of self-respect.
What a fortunate thing it is that men want to work and like to live! Suppose for a moment that the out-of-work, hungry, unlucky creatures, numbering one hundred thousand in New York City, should suddenly change their character.
It is a harmless supposition, as it implies that a great body of good, though unlucky, men should be suddenly metamorphosed. But suppose, for instance, that one hundred thousand men should have a meeting and say:
"The State provides food, lodging and good care for every thief. It does not provide anything for us. Let us therefore accept the situation like philosophers and become thieves."
Suppose the hundred thousand men thereupon, very quietly, without any show of violence, should each proceed to steal something and then announce the intention to accept the consequence by pleading guilty. It would embarrass the State and the reigning powers, would it not?
What could society do with a hundred thousand self-confessed thieves to take care of? It could not lock them up. It could not let them go. It could not nominally sentence them and have the Governor pardon them, because the hundred thousand would then proceed to steal something else.
What could be done? Nothing. There is no punishment save imprisonment for theft, and the wholesale thieves would ask for and demand imprisonment with the usual rations.
We think society is well balanced and that everything is ingeniously provided for.
So it is; but everything hinges on the extraordinary fact that the hungry, thin, common, shiftless, luckless man at the very bottom is still a MAN. He will not be a thief, and he will die of hunger and cold, as poor fellows do almost every winter day, rather than take the food that society guarantees to the thief.
We attribute much to our own wisdom and the wisdom of our laws. But we owe almost everything to the instinct of self-preservation and to that second, very peculiar, instinct called pride.
For six million years, during the carboniferous period, the tree ferns dropped their pollen dust to the earth forming coal beds which now cook our dinners and incidentally make J. Pierpont Morgan so prosperous.
A good deal of useless anxiety has been devoted to the questions:
What will the human race do when the coal gives out? Shall we freeze, or begin planting huge forests of wood, or what?
In the first place, coal will not give out for a long, long time.
In the second place, its disappearance will not make the slightest difference, for in the few cubic inches of the human brain nature has stored up treasures greater than all those hidden in the depths of the earth. The creation of the human brain took more years than the creation of the coal fields, but the brain's resources are inexhaustible.
A German workman now comes along who has discovered a chemical substitute for coal, better than coal in many ways, and before this German shall have been dead many years some other will find a further substitute far better and cheaper than his.
There is endless heat power in the action of the tides, in the rush of Niagara, in the winds, and in endless chemical combinations. Heat is motion, and the Universe is motion. Men will soon cease lighting tiny bonfires to obtain crude heat in a crude way. Electricity or the sun's own rays, concentrated for heating purposes, will do the work without any digging in mines by men, or delving in ashes and clinkers by women.
The story of antiquity, more or less fictitious, of the burning of a fleet with the aid of a glass and the sunbeams, will be matter-of-fact reality long before the coal shall have been exhausted.
We talk of civilization as though it necessarily implied improvement.
Civilization means the school and the library, but it also means the prison and the poorhouse.
Two short stories illustrate different views of what we call civilization:
Aristippus was a young Greek gentleman of large means, genuine intellectual power, a sense of humor and a reputation as a philosopher.
He was on his way to Corinth with a young lady named Lais, or possibly he was coming from Corinth with her. Anyhow, he was wrecked on the voyage. If you know anything about the reputation of Lais, you know that the philosopher was badly employed, and that the Greek gods doubtless wrecked his vessel to impress upon his mind the importance of morality.
Thrown ashore on a barren stretch of sand, the philosopher was very sad at first. He observed on the sand the remains of certain geometrical drawings, and instantly exclaimed: "There is help near. Here I see signs of thinking men, of civilization." ——
Voltaire tells of wrecked individuals thrown on a lonely coast, and also much distressed and frightened.
They saw no geometrical tracings in the sand. But on a bleak moor in the twilight they saw the black beams of a gibbet, and below the cross-piece, swinging in the wind, they saw a human skeleton with bony wrists and ankles chained together.
Prayerfully the wanderers dropped on their knees and exclaimed with upturned eyes:
"Thank God, we have got back to civilization." ——
Thus, you see, there are varying signs of civilization. There is a great gulf between the signs perceived by Aristippus—signs of the mental activity which engages in geometrical demonstrations—and Voltaire's sign of civilization—the brutal execution of a brutal criminal. ——
Those accustomed to waste time in speculations that cannot bring a financial return may be interested in the following application of the sign of civilization which Aristippus immediately recognized back in the days of two thousand years ago.
We know that some day the inhabitants on Mars or some other planet will want to talk to us. They have doubtless been studying us and consider us still too barbarous and primitive to be worth talking to.
But when we become semi-civilized, in the cosmic sense of the word, the older and wiser planets will get ready to open communication with us.
How will they go about it? They are perhaps absolutely different from us, in shape, in manner of thought, in every conceivable way, including language, customs, and so on.
Will not the wise Martian who wants to speak to us and decides to flash some message down here on our clouds, or on the surface of the water, utilize the universality of geometrical truths in order to make us understand that thinking beings are trying to talk to us?
The sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right angles.
That is true of every triangle, no matter what its shape, no matter whether it be drawn on this earth or on the most distant sun.
Therefore, when the Martian gentleman gets ready to talk to us he need only repeatedly place before us two right angles followed by a triangle, or a triangle followed by two right angles. Instantly, like Aristippus, we can say there is civilization in Mars, or wherever that sign comes from, or at least there is organized thought. The mind that is flashing that sign knows something about geometry.
Of course, we should also recognize "signs of civilization" if the Martians should project upon our atmosphere a skeleton hanging in chains. But it is to be hoped that the Martians have got beyond that particular evidence of civilization.
A half-developed being like man, hanging midway between primitive barbarism and ultimate perfection, should study the insect tribes which appear to have realized the possibilities of development in their line.
The study of the ant and the bee, the spider and the scorpion should fill us with hope. We should say to ourselves:
"If these tiny fragments of life can develop so highly, what may not WE hope for in the way of ultimate possibilities? Our beginning is so much more full of promise than the beginnings of our tiny insect brothers." ——
This writer, taking his own advice, which is most unusual, has been trying to get acquainted with some insects in the hope of cheering himself and getting new ideas.
From the female scorpion we acquire fresh veneration for the possibilities of maternal devotion.
The mother of the Gracchi has been well advertised because she preferred her sons to jewelry. The Russian mother who feeds herself to the wolves, instead of throwing her boy over the back of the sleigh in the usual way, is also highly praised. But their devotion shrinks to nothing when compared with that of any poor mother scorpion of Mexico's sandy tracts.
As soon as her young scorpions arrive, they climb to her back, half a hundred of them or more. She moves about with them, protecting them, avoiding danger, giving them the sunlight. Meanwhile they are feeding on her body. Her movements get gradually slower and slower; finally they cease. The young scorpions depart leaving the mother scorpion simply an empty shell. We should dislike to see any such exhibition of tenderness among human beings, but we can't help admiring the scorpion.
Mr. Scorpion, placed as was Captain Dreyfus, would sting himself to death. They are a determined race. ——
Spiders who construct tiny balloons with little cars all complete are wonderful creatures. They cross chasms in their balloons, throwing out bits of trailing web which seem to act as rudders. In their little way and in a perfectly adequate fashion they have solved aerial navigation, which still puzzles us. We admire spiders and kill only those with yellow stomachs, which are "poison." ——
But up to the present we have found the ant the most interestingly suggestive creature. He has developed and understands stirpiculture—the improvement of the race by careful breeding—which with us is as yet mere theory, and as we look down at the ant, we look up to him because the strangely active creature manages to do without sleep.
We human beings drowse through thirty years of our threescore and ten, but the ant is awake and working all the time.
If the ant has managed to live without sleep, if he has acquired the faculty of lifelong wakefulness, why should we not do as much in time? We take it for granted that sleep is essential, as we take everything else for granted. We used to take it for granted that the earth was flat, but we have stopped that. Sleep was at one time forced upon man and other animals.
The earth in its rollings turned away from the sun once in every twenty-four hours. In the darkness of the beginning man said to himself: "If I go walking around, I shall fall into a hole, so I shall lie down and wait until the sun comes again."
He did as all the animals did before him for millions of years. Since that time, man has conquered darkness. Why should he not ultimately conquer sleep?
We know that thin men, nervous, highly organized, do with far less sleep than others. We know that old age requires less sleep than youth.
Can we not cultivate and develop the characteristics which make sleep less necessary? Higher races of apes have abolished tails.
Can't we abolish sleep? ——
As old age needs less sleep than babyhood, so in our maturity as a human race we shall probably demand less sleep than now in our racial babyhood. Perhaps none at all will be needed.
If that happens our lives will be doubled in value, they will be complete. The hours of sunlight will be devoted to examination and admiration of nature's beauties on this earth.
The hours of darkness, given up to sleep no longer, will be devoted to the study of space, to investigation among other worlds.
That kind of life will be worth while. Bear in mind that we shall only really begin to live on this earth when we shall have settled all the little social and material questions here and shall have begun in earnest the study of the universe in which we are a speck.
The days of the future will be given up to artistic enjoyment of the beautiful. The nights will be devoted to intellectual development and research.
Man will LIVE.
If you had choice of all qualities which man can possess, which three would you declare most important?
This question is submitted as interesting every man. We give our answer; if yours is different, send it here. ——
Those we think the most important elements in the human character. A man fully and evenly equipped with all three would be greater than any the world has known. ——
SELF-CONTROL you must start with.
It makes life worth while. It frees you from the danger of remorse, the wasted time of self- reproach. It sees opportunities as they come; saves you from damaging temptation. It is as important to a brain as is physical equilibrium to a work of masonry.
A man without self-control, a building out of plumb, cannot endure.
It is the foundation of all reputation worth the having. It is to man as necessary as the compass to a ship. It is the compass.
Justice will give reputation for greatness though you create nothing great. It will win affectionate reverence in life and a gratifying gravestone at life's end. ——
Greatest gift to man. It finds him grovelling here a pithecoid littleness.
The rough hair is gone from his body. His thumb has lost its monkey smallness; he walks flat on his feet.
But beyond that he has naught else to thank material nature for.
All the rest comes to him from imagination. Marvellous work she performs. She takes naked man with his low forehead, with his gruntings and whistlings through his teeth, and makes of him what man was meant to be.
Very slowly she works, but ceaselessly. Her task is not nearly ended. At her first glimmerings man's real life begins. He learns from her to add wood to a fire. No monkey ever did it. That stamps him a man.
Soon, with her help, he leaves the earth and travels off ten thousand million miles into space. He counts the suns in the Milky Way; travels in the air, under the water; harnesses lightning, controls nature. By IMAGINATION he is made CAPTAIN of this earthen ship on which he travels through space.
IMAGINATION separates Archimedes, working at his problems in the sunlight, from the vile soldier that slaughtered him.
Shakespeare rattling his ale pot and Johanna, the ape, shaking her bars at the Zoo are alike, save for difference of imagination.
SELF-CONTROL to balance you.
JUSTICE to guide you.
IMAGINATION to lend creative power.
"Equilibrium, Direction, Creation."
The TRINITY ardently to be desired. ——
Long ago Plato announced that apparent differences are deceptive; that all things existing come from one casting—the mind of God—which he names "idea."
Similarly to-day the solemn-thinking German tells you that matter and force are identical, that the interchangeable character of forces—heat light, magnetism, etc.—is part of the a, b, c of proved phenomena.
Haeckel stops digging up old bones and classifying sea microscopic organisms long enough to write "Monism," expressing his belief that God is anything and everything from Orion to a tumble- bug.
It is quite easy to show that the selected three—self-control, justice and imagination—are in reality one. Each exists as part of the others. Each is made up of the other two.
But this column is not devoted to any save simple things.
The question is this, once more:
What are man's three most useful qualities—which three would you possess?
Do not call this question idle or believe that we cannot change ourselves. We CAN.
Napoleon said: "Never believe that a man ever changed his temperament."
But Napoleon often said what was foolish.
It ought to delight you to know that you can change yourself if you want to, as you can change the arrangement of your back parlor.
Try it. It is hard work, but good exercise.
We inflict a piece of advice upon our readers. It is intended especially for the young, who have still to get their growth, whose characters and possibilities are forming.
Full individual growth, special development, rounded mental operations—all these demand room, separation from others, solitude, self-examination and the self-reliance which solitude gives.
The finest tree stands off by itself in the open plain. Its branches spread wide. It is a complete tree, better than the cramped tree in the crowded forest.
The animal to be admired is not that which runs in herds, the gentle browsing deer or foolish sheep thinking only as a fraction of the flock, incapable of personal independent direction. It's the lonely prowling lion or the big black leopard with the whole world for his private field that is worth looking at.
The man who grows up in a herd, deer-like, thinking with the herd, acting with the herd, rarely amounts to anything. ——
Do you want to succeed? Grow in solitude, work, develop in solitude, with books and thoughts and nature for friends. Then, if you want the crowd to see how fine you are, come back to it and boss it if it will let you.
Constant craving for indiscriminate company is a sure sign of mental weakness.
Schopenhauer—a sour genius, BUT a genius—speaks contemptuously of the negroes herded in small rooms unable to get "enough of one another's snub-nose company." ——
If you enter a village or small town and want to find the man or youth of ability, do you look for him leaning over the village pool table, sitting on the grocery store boxes, lounging in the smelly tavern with other vacant minds?
Certainly not. You find him at work, and you find him by himself.
Think how public institutions dwarf the brains and souls of unhappy children condemned to live in them. No chance there for individual, separate development. Millions of children have grown up in such places millions of sad nonentities. ——
Here is what Goethe says:
"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in dem Strome der Welt." (Talent is developed in solitude, character in the rush of the world.)
You wonder why so much ability comes from the country—why a Lincoln comes from the backwoods while you, flourishing in a great city, can barely keep your place as a typewriter.
The countryman has GOT to be by himself much of the time whether he wishes to or not. If he has anything in him it comes out.
Astronomy, man's grandest study, grew up among the shepherds.You of the cities never even see the stars, much less study them.
——
Don't be a sheep or a deer. Don't devote your hours to the company and conversation of those who know as little as you do. Don't think hard only when you are trying to remember a popular song or to decide on the color of your Winter overcoat or necktie.
Remember that you are an individual, not a grain of dust or a blade of grass. Don't be a sheep; be a man. It has taken nature a hundred million years to produce you. Don't make her sorry she took the time.
Get out in the park and walk and think. Get up in your hall bedroom, read, study, write what you think. Talk more to yourself and less to others. Avoid magazines, avoid excessive newspaper reading.
There is not a man of average ability but could make a striking career if he could but WILL to do the best that is in him.
Proofs of growth due to solitude are endless. Milton's greatestwork was done when blindness, old age and the death of thePuritan government forced him into completest seclusion.Beethoven did his best work in the solitude of deafness.
Bacon would never have been the great leader of scientific thought had not his trial and disgrace forced him from the company of a grand retinue and stupid court to the solitude of his own brain.
"Multum insola fuit anima mea." (My spirit hath been much alone.) This he said often, and lucky it was for him. Loneliness of spirit made him.
Get a little of it for yourself.
Drop your club, your street corner, your gossipy boarding-house table. Drop your sheep life and try being a man.
It may improve you.
Time has no real existence. Yet time is man's most precious possession.
Time is defined as a "succession of events." What we call an hour means certain movements in the machinery of a watch. What we call a day means one revolution of the earth upon its axis, the turning of its surface toward the light of the sun. Time is the most mysterious factor in our lives and thoughts. It never had a beginning, it cannot possibly have an end.
Time only exists for us in the actual moment in which we live. Yet our thoughts are in the time of past and future, and hardly ever on the actual reality of the moment.
With the ceasing of our own consciousness, time ceases, so far as we are concerned. If you go to sleep and sleep soundly, you cannot tell when you awake whether you have slept a minute or an hour. Time stops when YOU cease to observe the succession of events. In dying, we duplicate on a big and prolonged scale our little daily sleeps in life.
If a man were told that after death his soul would not regain consciousness for a thousand millions of years, he would worry, and complain of the "long time." But it would make no difference to him whether the time were a thousand millions of years or forty seconds—time would not exist for him; he would not know the difference.
There is little doubt that to the ephemeridae, creatures that live but for a day, that day must seem as long as our century, for in their life of incessant activity and agitation every second is a long space. And there is no doubt that to the giant turtles of the Galapagos Islands, heavy monsters that live ten centuries or longer, a week is a fraction of time far less important than an hour to us. ——
A mysterious thing is time and its divisions. Man manufactures a watch capable of registering a fraction of a second. And in the force called light we have a power that can go seven times around the world in one second.
We estimate our time by years. It takes one year for our little earth to spin round the sun. And during that year it turns three hundred and sixty-five times on its own axis. While the entire body of our earth flies through space, accompanying the sun on its journey, the northern extremity of our planet has a separate circular motion of its own. This circular motion takes twenty-seven thousand years to complete one circle, and as it moves in this inconceivably slow journey our pole selects for us and points out the various suns which in turn we call the North Star.
We have written thus much to fix the attention of readers on the question of time. Now, how does it affect you? Time represents your only chance, your only wealth, your only possibility for achieving anything.
The man who lasts fifty years lives about four hundred and thirty-eight thousand hours. Sleep takes at least one-third, or one hundred and forty-six thousand hours. The processes of eating, washing, dressing, getting up and going to bed take up at least three hours per day, or fifty-four thousand seven hundred and fifty hours.
In addition to all this TIME cut out of our lives there is the time devoted to amusement, the time devoted to idle dreaming—and yet millions of people are wondering how they can "PASS THE TIME."
In every great city and in every small town there should be a monument to time. Young children should be taken to see it, clergymen should preach at the foot of it on the sacred importance of the few hours of activity given to us here. As the sand runs through an hour glass, so you run your short race on this earth. That passing sand means the passing of your chances for making your life worth while. Instead of thinking how you WILL pass the time, cross-examine yourself and ask yourself how you HAVE passed the time thus far.
What did you do last year—what use did you make of the time as it went by? What did you do yesterday? What are you going to do to-day? You possess a mind organized for practically unlimited thinking and studying. How many of your hours do you live as a thinking, studying man? How many do you live on a par with an ox chewing his cud in the field?
The ox does not waste HIS time. It is his business to grow fat and produce beef. He uses every hour. It is your business to use your time in the development of your mind, in dealing with the duties and problems that are put before you.
Every young man can make a success if he will really look upon each hour as an OPPORTUNITY, and cease to look upon the hours as useless things, to be thrown away.
One hour will give you a knowledge of some good book, or wisely spent, with a purpose of improving your health, it will make your brain more efficient and add to the value of all future hours.
If you have a horse, a bicycle, a gun, you feel that because youHAVE it you ought to USE it.
How much more should you feel that you ought to use your TIME, in using which you use your own brain! Surely, your brain is more important and more worthy of conscientious use than a bicycle or a gun.
Talk to children on this question of time. Teach them that respect for time means respect for their own lives and success in life.
This editorial is not written for women. It is written for MEN, and for boys; for the millions who fail to appreciate the work that mothers do, for the millions that ignore the self-sacrifice and devotion upon which society is based.
On a hot night, in the dusty streets of a dirty city, you see hundreds of women sitting in the doorways, TAKING CARE OF BABIES.
In lonesome farm houses, far out on monotonous plains, with the late sun setting on a long day of hard work, you find women, cheerful and persevering, TAKING CARE OF BABIES.
In the middle of the night, in earliest morning, when MEN sleep, all over the world, in ice huts North, in southern tents, in big houses and in dingy tenements, you find women awake, cheerfully and gladly TAKING CARE OF BABIES. ——
We respect and praise the man selfishly working for himself.
If he builds up a great industry and a great personal fortune, we praise him.
If he risks his life for personal glory and for praise, we praise him.
If he shows courage even in saving his own carcass from destruction, we praise him.
There was never a man whose courage, or devotion, could be compared with that of a woman caring for her baby.
The mother's love is unselfish, and it has no limit this side of the grave.
You will find ONE man in a thousand who will risk his life for a cause.
You will find a THOUSAND women in a thousand who will risk their lives for their babies.
Everything that a man has and is he owes to his mother. From her he gets health, brain, encouragement, moral character, and ALL his chances of success.
How poorly the mother's service is repaid by men individually, and by society as a whole!
The individual man feels that he has done much if he gives sufficient money and a LITTLE attention to her who brought him from nothingness into life and sacrificed her sleep and youth and strength for his sake.
Society, the aggregate of human beings, feels that its duty is done when a few hospitals are opened for poor mothers, and a little medicine doled out in cold-hearted fashion to the sick child.
Fortunately, it may truly be said that the great man is almost always appreciative of his greater mother.
Napoleon was cold, jealous of other men, monumentally egotistical when comparing himself with other sons of women. But he reverenced and appreciated the noble woman who bore him, lived for him, and watched over him to the end. He said:
"It is to my mother, to her good principles, that I owe my success and all I have that is worth while. I do not hesitate to say that the future of the child depends on the mother." ——
The future of the individual child depends on the individual mother, and the future of the race depends on the mothers of the race.
Think what has been done for mankind by thousands of millions of perfectly devoted mothers.
Every mother is entirely DEVOTED, entirely HOPEFUL, entirelyCONFIDENT that no future is too great for her baby's deserts.
The little head—often hopelessly ill-shaped—rolls about feebly on the thin neck devoid of muscles. The toothless gums chew whatever comes along. The wondering eyes look feebly, aimlessly about, without focus or concentration. The future human being, to the cold-blooded onlooker, is a useless little atom added to the human sea of nonentity.
But to the mother that baby is the marvel of all time. There is endless meaning in the first mumblings, endless soul in the senile, baby smile, unlimited possibilities in the knobby forehead and round, hairless head. She sees in the future of the baby responsibilities of government, and feels that one so perfectly lovely must eventually be acclaimed ruler by mankind.
As a result of perfect confidence in its future, the mother gives to every baby perfect devotion, perfect and affectionate moral education. Each child begins life inspired by the most beautiful example of altruism and self-sacrifice.
Kindness has gradually taken the place of brutality among human beings, because every baby at its birth has found itself surrounded by absolute kindness.
The mother's kindness forms moral character.
The mother's confidence and encouragement stimulate ambition and inspire courage.
The mother's patient watchfulness gives good health, and fights disease when it comes.
The mother's wrathful protection shields the child from the stern and dwarfing severity of fathers.
Truly, a man may and should be judged by his feeling toward his own mother, and toward the mothers of other men—of ALL men.
In the character of Christ, whose last earthly thought on Golgotha was for His Mother, as in the character of the hard-working, ignorant man whose earnings go to make his mother comfortable, the most beautiful trait is devotion to the mother who suffers and works for her children, from the hours that precede their birth through all the years that they spend on earth together.
Honor thy father and THY MOTHER.
And honor the mothers of other men. Make their task easier through fair payment of the men who support the children, through good public schools for their children, through respectful treatment of ALL women.
The mother is happy. For she knows "the deep joy of loving some one else more than herself."
You honor yourself, and prove yourself worthy of a good mother and of final success, when you do something for the mothers of the world.
For "buyers" in big stores,
For clerks in little stores,
For office boys,
For typewriters, reporters, car conductors, household domestics, for all who are hired to work for others, this article is intended.
There is no greater mistake than skimping your work—BECAUSE YOUARE WORKING FOR ANOTHER, AND FEAR YOU MAY DO TOO MUCH.
For your own sake remember that whatever you do in the way of honest concentrated work you do FIRST OF ALL FOR YOURSELF.
Only one thing in the world can improve you and better your condition, and that thing is your own effort.
You begin life with certain mental faculties, and with certain muscular faculties. Their development or decay depends entirely on yourself.
No work that you do is worthless. It will NEVER pay you to neglect or slur the task that you have undertaken.
You may be idle, in the thought that you are indulging yourself at the expense of your employer. It is a dishonest thought, and it is a stupid thought at the same time.
You may rob your employer of the time that he pays for, but when you shirk your work you rob yourself first of all. ——
You may say that your employer pays you too little. Perhaps he does. But that is no reason for hurting your moral character through dishonesty. It is no excuse for failing to develop yourself.
The store, or factory, or office in which you work is to your mind what a gymnasium is to your muscles.
You enter a gymnasium AND PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF WORKINGTHERE.
You do not say to yourself: "This gymnasium belongs to another man. The profits go to him, and so I'll not work hard."
On the contrary, you realize that the owner of the gymnasium gives you the chance to develop your muscles, and you thank him, although he makes you pay for the privilege. And you do your very best, on the trapeze, rings, parallel bars, or in any other direction.
There is no kind of work that can fail to make you a better and more successful man if you work at it honestly and loyally.
If you sweep an office, sweep it well. And begin punctually each day, remembering that punctuality acquired in sweeping an office may be used later in governing a city.
Train your mind through your work, whatever it is.
Study the lives of those who have succeeded. You will see that they did whatever they did as well as they could.
Edison was an ordinary telegraph operator. But he was not content with merely working as others worked. He worked very hard, devised means to make more valuable the instruments of his employers. Soon he was an employer himself, and what is far better than being an employer, he was a creator of new ideas and a benefactor of the world. ——
Intelligent readers will not misinterpret this advice to mean that they should OVERWORK themselves, or work regardless of their own physical welfare.
The right course is this:
Do as much as you can in the present, without drawing on your future reserves.
Don't work all night and then go on the next day. Such effort impairs permanently your store of vitality, and that vitality is your capital.
But never form the habit of neglecting work, of shamming and lying instead of achieving honestly.
You may deceive one employer, or ten. But 36> you can't deceive nature, and you can't deceive yourself.
You can form good habits only through regular work. You can develop your faculties only through exercising them honestly and systematically. ——
If you want to run a mile fast, you do not merely jog. You try every day to run the mile faster than you did the day before. If you want to learn to jump high, you strain your muscles and try over and over to do what you can't do. Ultimately you achieve it.
Keep that in mind when you work. Remember that you must wind yourself up. The most watchful employer may discharge you. But he cannot wind you up.
Be a self-winding machine, and keep yourself wound up.
Your hardest effort may fail to achieve greatness. But honest work will at least make it impossible for you to be a failure.
Train your brain, nerves and muscles to regular, steady, conscientious effort. Make up your mind that FOR YOUR OWN SAKE you will make every effort your best effort.
You will soon find yourself a more successful, more self-respecting, abler man or woman.
And here is an argument that should be more powerful with you than self-interest:
Remember that the world needs honest, conscientious men and women, able to do good work themselves and to people the earth with children born of honest parents.
Make up your mind to be one of the world's HONEST citizens.
To improve the world begin by improving yourself.
If you live in the suburbs you devote perhaps two hours each day to travel. Two hours per day means practically one-fifth of your active life.
How many readers make any use of those two hours, and feel each day that they have been well spent? ——
Instead of being wasted, those hours should be among your best. Never mind if you are clinging to a strap because companies are licensed to exploit you. Never mind if you are tired and weary when the day is ended. The tired brain often thinks better than the fresh one. And man, so recently descended from the monkey who had to think while hanging head down, ought to have no trouble thinking as he hangs from his strap—head up. ——
Some in the cars play cards as they travel homeward. Others talk gossip, and tens of thousands waste too much time on this and other newspapers.
Try this experiment: Make up your mind to devote your hours of travel to thinking. The brain, like the muscles, needs definite and well-planned exercise. It must be methodical and regular. There is no limit to its possible results. You would be glad to spend your two travelling hours in a gymnasium on wheels. Make of your homeward car a mental gymnasium. Each night or morning, take up some one line of thought and follow it to its end—or as far as your mind can take you. Learn to observe, to study, to reflect. Don't look at your fellow passengers as calves look at each other on the way to the slaughter house.
Look, as a human being, at other human beings. There they sit or stand or hang. Some chatter, others scowl, fret, fume, complain, brag, grin or otherwise express the strange emotions that move us here.
They are all ghosts, as Carlyle tells you, imprisoned for a time in coverings of flesh, and a car packed full of real ghosts passing over the earth on their quick journey to the grave ought to stir you. ——
The giggling shopgirls whose life of misery is still a joke to them—blessed youth!—should interest you deeply. And the negro, too, with a tired black face, resting for the next day's slavery—slavery on a wage basis, but slavery all the same. Possibly you despise his thick lips. But those lips are carved on every sphinx in Egypt's sand, and if you could go back far enough you would find the ancestors of that negro, before the days of the Pharaohs, laying the foundations of your religion and locating the stars in heaven. At that time your forbears were gibbering cave savages, sharpening bones and gnawing raw flesh. When you see the negro on the opposite seat, the ill-starred one who has gone down in the human race while we have gone up, think about him, study him, speculate as to his ultimate end—and your own. Don't merely say to yourself, "That's a plain negro," and go on chewing gum. ——
The pictures that flash by your car windows should help you to think.
The train rumbles over the switches, and in the dusk a swinging lantern tells you that a man is at work, guiding you safely when your work is done. Can't you take an interest in that human atom, representing the Power that swings our tiny sun in space, lighting us on our journey toward the constellation Hercules? ——
A black steeple is outlined against the dark-blue sky of the evening. That is a finger of stone, built by man to point everlastingly toward Infinite Power. It now points "upward." In twelve hours—as the earth slowly turns—it will be pointing "downward." But there is no upward or downward in the carpentry of the universe. In the twenty-four hours, as it turns round with the earth, that steeple points toward all the corners of space, and constantly it points toward Eternal Wisdom and Justice in every corner. ——
This is tiresome? All right, then we'll stop. But whether we tire or interest you, remember:
As a man thinks, so he grows. Think, study, use all the hours that separate your croupy cradle from your gloomy grave. Those hours are few.
Two centuries back a young man of twenty-three sat in the quiet of the evening—THINKING.
His body was quiet; his vitality, his life, all his powers, were centred in his brain.
Above, the moon shone, and around him rustled the branches of the trees in his father's orchard.
From one of the trees an apple fell.
No need to tell you that the young man was Newton; that the fall of the apple started in his READY brain the thought that led to his great discovery, giving him fame to last until this earth shall crumble.
How splendid the achievement born that moment! How fortunate for the world and for the youth Newton, that at twenty-three his brain had cultivated the HABIT OF THOUGHT! ——
Our muscles we share with everything that lives—with the oyster clinging to his rock, the whale ploughing through cold seas, and our monkey kinsman swinging from his tropical branch.
These muscles, useful only to cart us around, help us to do slave work or pound our fellows, we cultivate with care.
We run, fence, ride, walk hard, weary our poor lungs and gather pains in our backs building the muscles that we do not need.
Alone among animals, we possess a potentiality of mind development unlimited.
And for that, with few exceptions, we care nothing. ——
Most of us, sitting in Newton's place and seeing the apple fall, would merely have debated the advisability of getting the apple to eat it—just the process that any monkey mind would pass through.
A Newton, a BRAIN TRAINED TO THINK, sees the apple drop, asks himself why the moon does not drop also. And he discovers the law of gravitation which governs the existence of every material atom in the universe. ——
Young men who read this, start in NOW to use your brains. Take nothing for granted, not even the fact that the moon stays in her appointed place or that the poor starve and freeze amid plenty.
Think of the things which are wrong and of the possibilities of righting them. Study your own weaknesses and imperfections. There is power in your brain to correct them, if you will develop that power.
As surely as you can train your arm to hold fifty pounds out straight, just so surely can you train your brain to deal with problems that now would find you a gaping incompetent.
You may not be a Newton. But if you can condescend to aim at being an inferior Sandow, can't you afford to try even harder to be an inferior Newton?
Don't be a muscular monkey. Be a low-grade philosopher, if you can't be high-grade, and find how much true pleasure there is even in inferior brain gymnastics. ——
Take up some problem and study it:
There goes a woman, poor and old. She carries a heavy burden because she is too sad and weak to fight against fate, too honest to leave a world that treats her harshly.
There struts a youngster, rich and idle.
How many centuries of hell on earth will it take to put that woman's load on that other broad, fat, idle back?
Answer that one question, better still, TRANSFER THE LOAD, and your life will not have been wasted. ——
It is THOUGHT that moves the world. In Napoleon's BRAIN are born the schemes that murder millions and yet push civilization on. The mere soldier, with gold lace and sharp sword, is nothing—a mere tool.
It is the concentrated thought of the English people under Puritan influence that makes Great Britain a sham monarchy and a real republic now.
It is the thought of the men of independent MIND in this country that throws English tea and English rule overboard forever.
Don't wait until you are old. Don't wait until you are ONE DAY older. Begin NOW.
Or, later, with a dull, fuzzy, useless mind, you will realize that an unthinking man might as well have been a monkey, with fur instead of trousers, and consequent freedom from mental responsibility or self-respect.
"There be three things which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not.
"The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; THE WAY OF A SHIP IN THE MIDST OF THE SEA, and the way of a man with a maid."
At sunset a long train of cars waited on a bridge as a sailing ship passed through the draw.
The ship sailed up the river toward the cold Winter sun; another ship sailed past it going in the OPPOSITE direction.
Only ONE wind was blowing. Yet, of those two ships blown by the same wind, moved by the same power, one sailed EAST and one WEST.
It may be of use to you in your career to think for a few minutes about these two ships and the lesson which they teach—especially to young men. ——
The man who has sailed, in his life's journey, toward failure and disaster looks always with envy, sometimes with hatred, and very often with an intense sensation of injustice, at the man who passes him going in exactly the opposite direction.
Yet the FORCES that move men bound toward success are exactly the same as those that move other men to failure, humiliation and defeat.
It is all a question of the way in which you use the forces within you—just as on shipboard it is all a question of the use of the common wind which blows.
Two ships pass, each with its sails filled out by the same wind. The difference in direction is accounted for by the handling of the rudder and the adjustment of the sails.
What the force of the wind is to the ship, our varying emotions, passions, ambitions, appetites and aspirations are to us. All of these constitute the power which may be called HUMAN FORCE.
This power differs in different individuals, as the wind differs on different days. It may blow from the east or the west or the north or the south. However it may blow, it can be forced, by proper steering, to send the ship in any direction desired.
It is harder to beat against the wind, of course, and many men have hard struggles to steer themselves to a good port in the face of an adverse start, a hard beginning, or inclinations difficult to overcome. ——
But in all of us the force exists which can be made to move us in the right direction—the force within us can be MADE to obey our will, if the will be strong and the hand on the rudder steady. This can be proved—for instance:
There is a certain force in human beings called LOVE. This force leads sometimes, and happily it leads usually, to domesticity, morality, care of children and lifelong devotion. Then the force is used properly.
The same human passion leads to murder, suicide, theft, to almost all forms of crime.
There is another human passion called AMBITION.
This human force of ambition, with a Lincoln's conscience to guide it, saves a republic.
The same force guided by Benedict Arnold seeks to betray the nation. ——
Consider yourself a ship launched on the sea of life under certain conditions—but with the essential condition in your own control.
The wind may be feeble, you may drift for a while or move very slowly—move at least in the right direction.
The wind may blow a gale, and you may feel, as so many do, that you cannot control your emotions and your appetites. But if that comes show at least as much interest in yourself as a sailor does in his ship. Take in sail and fight the storm, instead of going willingly to destruction. ——
Four things puzzled and impressed the wise man that wrote the nineteenth verse of the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs.
Think to-day about the third of these things:
"The way of a ship in the midst of the sea"
The way of a human being in the midst of life is like that of a ship on the ocean.
Make up your mind that your own way at least shall be controlled by the rudder of conscience, and learn from the passing ships a lesson of use in your own life.
The widow says to the mine owner: "Here he is, dead—killed working for you. Where were you when he was killed? Driving in your carriage, enjoying the difference between his EARNINGS and his PAY. Was one dollar and thirty cents per day too much to pay him for this risk? Was it too much to let him save something for us—who now have nothing? Is there nothing to arbitrate when the man who risks his life and gets nothing asks arbitration of the man who risks nothing and gets all? ——
There are many men in America—honest and sincere—who believe that strikers are nearly always right, that failure of a strike is a calamity.
Other men, less numerous, but also honest and sincere, consider strikes an evil. They believe that labor unionism threatens "capital," threatens national energy, and our national industrial supremacy. ——
Let us endeavor to take a clear view of the strike question, and to discuss—as free from bias as may be possible—some of the main viewpoints of those interested.
We may, at the start, accept two statements as sound:
First. The employer wants as much money as he can possibly get.
Second. The workman wants as much money as HE can possibly get.
It is impossible for both or for either to win absolutely. The success of one must leave the other penniless.
Let us look at the matter of a coal strike only, for simplicity's sake.
In a coal mine you have three factors:
First. The COAL given to men—presumably for the use of mankind in general—by Divine Providence.
Second. The WORKMEN who dig the coal, haul it, screen it, etc.
Third. The OWNER, who through money, or intelligence, or both, gets control of mines and works them for his profit.
The mine owner resents the suggestion that he and his men are partners.
Ought he to resent that suggestion? We think not.
Miners without any capitalist could certainly get coal out of the ground.
The capitalist without miners could not possibly get coal out of the ground.
The labor is at least as important as the mine. ——
The capitalist who wishes to acquire a mine is willing to grant certain rights and conditions to him who has the MINE for sale. He treats with that person as with an equal.
If a hundred men own the mine, and elect a certain agent to represent them in the sale, the capitalist will willingly treat with that agent EVEN THOUGH HE BE NOT ONE OF THE ACTUAL MINE OWNERS. It becomes simply a question of the agent's AUTHORITY.
Why does the capitalist haughtily refuse to treat with the accredited agent of the men who have the LABOR for sale,
Is it not because he resents the workman's attempt at emancipation and equality? Is it not because the capitalist in his heart demands SUBMISSION from the man who works for a daily wage?
Is it not because the powerful among us fail to admit that workers have passed from slavery to equality?
A man owns vast mining properties. He lives in New York and in Newport. Comfortably, and at a distance, he runs and rules his mines. He is good-natured enough, kind-hearted. He means well. He does not see the corpses brought up from the fire-damp. He does not notice the hollow chests of young children with the pores of their skin and the pores of their lungs full of coal dust.
This owner—who rules and draws his profits from Newport—has one bitter complaint against his striking men. He cannot forgive them BECAUSE THEY CALL IN A LABOR LEADER FROM CHICAGO TO SETTLE A LABOR DISPUTE IN PENNSYLVANIA.
Imagining himself most condescending, he expresses willingness to treat personally and individually with his men. But he will not tolerate interference "with my business" on the part of the workmen's agent, whom he calls "an agitator from Chicago."
WHY should he feel so badly about it?
If the Pennsylvania workman is willing to let a NEWPORT man manage the capitalistic end, should not that Newport man allow a CHICAGO labor leader to manage the labor end?
Is not one explanation the fact that the owner considers his workmen, in every possible respect, financially, morally, legally, ethically and eternally, his inferiors?
If one mine owner disagrees with another, each will treat with the other's chosen agent, whether he be Tom Reed, corporation lawyer from Maine; Joe Choate, corporation lawyer from New York, or Levy, corporation lawyer from Chicago.
Why not accord to the workman the right to choose his accredited representative?
So much for the much-talked-of "interference in MY business by labor agitators."
What about the interests of the country? There are inPennsylvania, let us say, one hundred square miles of coal landsOWNED BY ONE MAN, and WORKED BY TEN THOUSAND MEN.
The working of this mining region develops an annual net profit, perhaps, of five million dollars, AFTER the workmen have been paid as little as they will work for.
The owner lives in a house of a hundred rooms.
The miner's family lives in two rooms. The owner has a yacht, a private car, a fast automobile, fine carriages, many servants.
The miner WALKS. He has a wife who cooks, sews, scrubs, washes, mends while he and his boys work in the mines.
We wish to arouse no "maudlin sympathy" for the miner, no "anarchist loathing" of the owner.
We ask an answer to this question:
Which would be better for America: to let one man have five millions a year, and keep ten thousand men on the edge of want; or to let the one (and, if you choose, SUPERIOR) man have one million a year, and divide the four millions among ten thousand families, adding four hundred dollars to the income of each family? That is a plain, simple question.
Remember, we suggest and advocate no COMPULSION. We state a situation. The STRIKER is trying to get a little more for himself and family. The OWNER is trying to keep the vast sum for himself and his family. Each is convinced of the righteousness of his cause. The striker does not try to TAKE AWAY money or property from the owner. He simply strikes, saying:
"I will not work for less than such a sum, unless you starve me into working."
He calls upon YOU, the public, to give him moral support. He entreats other workmen not to take his place while he strikes.
It is for YOU, the public, and for YOU, the idle, hard-pressed workmen, to answer conscientiously the question:
Is it better for one man to have four extra MILLIONS a year, or for each of ten thousand families to have four extra HUNDREDS a year, that they need sadly and sorely?
If this question were answered as Christ would answer it, there would be no smug respectabilities scoffing at the striker. There would be no heartless scabs taking the places of men struggling to support wives and children.
Leave out sentimentality, if you will, and Christianity, and our hollow pretence of following Him who called every poor man "my brother."
What about the cold utility? Four millions more for an owner mean what?
Some bogus antiquities, and perhaps a bogus title brought toAmerica.
Another palace, with a dissatisfied owner.
A dissipated son; money spent by this son to promote vice, and by the father to corrupt legislation. Four hundred dollars more for a workman's family mean wholesome food for children. And the children go to school and have a chance.
This sum means a self-respecting life for a father, and for the mother it means everything. She can hire some woman to help her when her babies come. She can give her husband and her children good food, rejoice in their comfort, add good, healthy citizens to the nation. ——
The owner in his struggle makes various statements of which only a few must be answered, and very briefly, for the sake of the impatient reader.
"If capital goes on granting the demands of union labor there will be no more capital, no more big manufactures, our prosperity will die as England's prosperity is dying—killed by union labor!"
Thus speaks the indignant, would-be patriotic and unselfish capitalist. Let us see:
What becomes of the established FACT that a nation is prosperous in proportion as the average individual citizen (NOT its few millionaires) is prosperous? There are nowhere on earth stronger labor unions than in the United States. There are no such unions in Mexico, none such in South America, none as powerful in Canada. Why are we not eclipsed industrially by those countries?
You say that labor unions have killed English industry? No. They have kept England alive in the face of fierce competition. Millions upon millions of Englishmen live on a little foggy northern island incapable of supporting them. By their courage, their mental power, their genius, their UNION, they have kept the nation great. It is as though in one corner of New York State we had the greatest industrial power on earth. What the Gulf Stream has been to England's agriculture, labor unionism has been to England's industry.