(1) It plans to establish neighborhood houses in all the rich centers, where those who can stand it can go and live just like the rich. It will thus enable a few of us to mingle with them, day by day, and gradually brighten their outlook and better their standards.(2) It will send trained welfare workers to inspect the most desperate cases and gently reform one by one their conditions of living.(3) It will instruct volunteers in the best methods of rich relief work, especially methods of relieving the rich of their wealth.
(1) It plans to establish neighborhood houses in all the rich centers, where those who can stand it can go and live just like the rich. It will thus enable a few of us to mingle with them, day by day, and gradually brighten their outlook and better their standards.
(2) It will send trained welfare workers to inspect the most desperate cases and gently reform one by one their conditions of living.
(3) It will instruct volunteers in the best methods of rich relief work, especially methods of relieving the rich of their wealth.
The most common type we treat is the man who is making great efforts to keep other people from getting his money away from him. Such a man is always in a nervous, excitable state. In fact our statistics show that many died from this strain. The typical case gets a temperature daily, from what he sees in the papers, about the attacks which radical persons are constantly making on property. Inflammation sets in, and his outbursts grow more noisy and violent. He practicallyracks himself to pieces. It is a most painful end.
Other men try to invest money securely. This is a strain too. It leads to constant worries and losses, no matter what they invest in. Again, every man of means is exposed to innumerable skillful appeals to devote all he has to some new educational uses, or to lend it to friends in great need, or give aid to the sick. These appeals are so pressing that it wears out a man's strength to refuse them; and yet, since they are endless, he must. He can't give to them all. He must practice ways of dodging the determined askers who hunt him and trail him. Rich women, alone with their mail on a bright sunny morning, must learn to throw even the most pathetic circulars in the waste-paper-basket. In other words they must harden their hearts. But that hardens their arteries. It also gives them a disagreeable disposition; and that's quite a load.
It means much to the rich when our League takes these weights off their minds.
But the best way to give an idea of the good we are doing, will be to cite just a few special cases we have helped in the past:
Case 102 was a wealthy and ignorant girl who was found one cold morning exhibiting toy dogsat a show. The dogs had been fed heartily, but the poor girl had had nothing to eat but raw carrots, which she had been told she must live on, to help her complexion. She had a hardened disposition, dull outlook, and deficient physique. Her home was like a furniture warehouse, especially her bedroom, a huge, over-decorated chamber, where she slept all alone. After a friendly study had been made of her case, her money was quietly taken away by degrees, this being accomplished with the aid of an old family lawyer, who was genuinely interested in helping his clients all he could in this way; and when this girl had thus reached a healthfully destitute state, a husband was found for her in the janitor of a Hoboken flat. This man is often kind to her when she does well in her work. She is not yet happy, but she is interested intensely in life. When we last saw this case, she was occupying a dark but cozy sub-basement, where she was sleeping three in a bed and had six children, though only four are now living with her, the others having run off; and her days were filled to the brim with wholesome toil.
Case 176 was an elderly clubman who had for many years terrorized his small family, his outbreaksbeing attributed by him to the coffee. He said and believed that if his coffee were carefully made, he would be content. Investigation showed that it wasn't this but his money which was the root of the trouble. By nature a fighter, what he needed was plenty of personal conflicts, but his money had led to his living a sheltered life which gave him no scope. He had so much wealth that it took two nerve specialists over six months, in fact it took them nearly a year, before the amount of their bills had eaten up all his property. When this was done, however, employment was secured for the old gentleman on the police force, where his peculiar gift of ferocity could find more room for use. The coffee in the station-house, fortunately, was execrable, and this stirred him to a pitch which soon made him the ablest patrolman in his ward. He was then sent to clean up the three toughest districts in town, which he did with the utmost rigor in less than four days, completely overawing, single-handed, their turbulent gangs. At the police parade, recently, he was given a medal, the gift of a citizens' committee which admired his work. At the head of this committee, it may be added, was his former pastor, who had often reproached him in the old days for his profanity and violence. It is these very qualities that are now enabling him to do such good work, and thus winning him a warm placein the community's heart. Meantime a letter of gratitude has been received by the League from his family, who have been removed to a quiet industrial farm in Connecticut, and whose thankfulness is touching for the peace that has come into their lives.
Case 190 was a baffling one in some ways. It was that of a dyspeptic society woman who spent her evenings at functions. She suffered greatly from colds, yet felt obliged to wear large, chilly collars of diamonds, and to sit in an open opera box unprotected from drafts. Although fretful and unhappy, she nevertheless objected most strongly to trying a life without money; so our district visitors had to devise other methods.
They began by removing several disease-breeding pets from the home. They then had the French chef deported, and taught the woman to live on a few simple dishes. These alleviatory arrangements resulted in some slight improvement. Like all half-way measures, however, they left her cure incomplete.
Then, almost by accident, a dealer in investment securities lost most of her fortune. The balance was taken by some cheery university presidents, who made her build infirmaries for themin spite of rebuffs. Soon after she thus had been thrown on her own resources at last, a place was found for her to do ironing in a nice warm steam laundry, one of the high-grade ones where all the corrosives are put in by hand. The light exercise this work gives her has cured her dyspepsia. She now gets through at nine-thirty evenings, instead of sitting up till past midnight; and as she can wear a red-flannel undersuit, she has no more colds.
Other cases must be summarized instead of presented in detail. Anæmic young belles who used to be kept in ill-ventilated rooms every night, are sent for and taken to those open piers on the river, where they can dance with strong, manly grocers, or aldermen even, and where the river breezes soon bring back a glow to their cheeks. Gentlemen suffering from obesity have been carried to an old-fashioned woodyard to work, or, if entirely unskilled, they are given jobs helping plumbers. Hundreds of desperate children have been rescued from nurse girls, who were punishing them for romping and shouting, and shackling them in starched clothing. These children we try to turn loose on the lively East Side, where they can join in the vigorous games of the slums. Most rewarding of all, perhaps, are the young men of means who have been saved from lives ofindescribable folly, and who, through the simple abolition of inherited wealth, have been made into self-supporting, responsible citizens.
I cannot say more of the League's work in this brief report. But I must end by admitting that though we have done all we could, the hidden distress that still exists in rich homes is widespread. Families continue to engage in poisonous quarrels, idleness and chronic unemployment remain unabated, and discontent is gradually darkening the minds of its victims, depriving them of true mental vigor and even of sleep.
On the good side we have the fact that the nation appears to be roused. It is not roused very much, but it takes more interest than it once did, at least. To leave the rich to wrestle with their fortunes, alone and unaided, as was done in our grandfathers' times, seems unnatural in ours.
On the other hand, frankly, there is as yet no cure in sight. The difficulty is to devise legislation which will absorb excess wealth. At first sight this seems easy, and many new laws have been passed which the rich themselves have predicted would immediately reduce them to indigence. But somehow no law has yet done this. So we must just struggle on.
In the days of Father Noah life was sweet—life was sweet.He played the soft majubal every day.And for centuries and centuries he never crossed the street,Much less supposed he'd ever move away.But times grew bad and men grew bad, all up and down the land,And the soft majubal got all out of key;And when the weather changed, besides, 'twas more than he could stand.So Father Noah he packed and put to sea.And "Yo-ho-ho," with a mournful howl, said the poor old boy to Ham;And "Yo-ho-ho," sang Japhet, and a pink but tuneful clam;And "Yo-ho-ho," cried the sheep, and Shem, and a pair of protozoa:"We're a-going to roam till we find a home that will suit old Father Noah."
There used to be rumors of a country that men called Atlantis. It was said to lie far out at sea. A magnificent country. The people there were happier and freer than anywhere else. It was also a land where it was no trouble at all to be rich, and where strangers were treated as equalsand welcomed as friends. Until it disappeared so mysteriously it was like an America, a land to which the people of those ancient times longed to go.
I dreamed once that it had not disappeared, after all, but that it was still to be found if you took a long voyage, and that it was happier and freer and finer than ever. And I wanted to go there. I dreamed that America had got itself in such trouble that thousands of people were leaving to live in Atlantis. This part of my dream was a nightmare, and not at all clear, but my recollection is that we'd elected Amy Lowell as President. And she said her understanding was that she'd been elected for life; and when any one disagreed with her, she sent a porter around to cut off his head. And decade after decade passed by, and she danced with the Senate, and made us sing to her at sunrise on the steps of the White House. And she wrote all the hymns. So we wanted to move to Atlantis.
But it wasn't at all easy to emigrate and give up America. In spite of the way that Amy beheaded us, we were fond of our country. And we knew if we went to another we mightn't come back. You can imagine how it would feel, perhaps, if you yourself were leaving America, and looking for the last time at all the little things in your room, and walking for the last time in thestreets or the fields you knew best. And the day before sailing you would go around seeing your friends, and saying good-by to them, knowing you wouldn't see them again. And then on the last day you'd sit for a while with your mother, and she would talk of your plans and your comforts, and you'd both be quite calm. And the hour to go would come; and you'd kiss her. And she'd suddenly cling to you....
A porter was sent around to cut off his headA porter was sent around to cut off his head
Then the ship, and the steam-whistles calling, and the gray, endless sea. And you up on deck, day by day, staring out at the waters; and seeing not them but your loved ones, or bits of your home: wondering if you'd been courageous to leave it, or cold, and a fool.
But the sunsets and dawns, and the winds—strong and clean—would bring peace. You would think of the new world you were sailing to, and of how good it would be there, and of how you would prosper, and the long, happy life you would lead.... And the voyage would come to an end, and you'd sail up the harbor.
ATLANTIS BANK "Okkabab! See them clothes!"ATLANTIS BANK "Okkabab! See them clothes!"
Then at the dock, men in strange clothing would shout orders at you; "Peely wush, okka Hoogs! Peely wush! Okkabab!" and you would discover that peely wush meant hurry up, and thatokka was a swear word and that when they said Hoog they meant you. It would be a comic nickname, you know: as we say Chinks for Chinamen. And they'd hustle you Hoogs off the ship, and shove you around on the pier, and examine your eyes and your pocket-books, and at last set you free.
And there you would be, in Atlantis, where people were happy.
But you'd find at the start that Atlantis was busy and rough; and parts of the city would be dirty and have a bad smell. And then you would find that the Hoogs mostly lived in those parts, and had to work at pretty nearly anything to pay for their lodging. You'd see Americans that you knew; Senator Smoot, perhaps, sewing shirts; and the Rev. Samuel Drury would be standing in the street peddling shoestrings. The reason for this would be that until they knew what okkabab meant, and could read and write the language of Atlantis, and spell its odd spellings, and pronounce it without too much of an American accent, they couldn't get any but unskilled and underpaid jobs. Meantime they would look to a native like cheap, outlandish peddlers. Even their own fellow-immigrants would try to exploit them. And instead of their finding it easy to get rich, as they'd hoped, they would be so hard up that they'd have to fight like wolves for each nickel.
Your American clothes would be another difficulty, because they'd be laughed at. You'd have to buy and learn to wear the kind of things they wore in Atlantis. And your most polite ways would seem rude in Atlantis, or silly; so you'd have to learntheirrules of politeness, which would strikeyouas silly. And you'd have to learn habits of living which would often amaze you; and if you were slow to adopt them, they'd class you as queer. Their ideas of joking would also be different from yours; and you'd slowly and awkwardly discover what was fun in Atlantis.
You'd have to change yourself in so many ways, your old friends wouldn't know you. Pretty soon you wouldn't be an American at all any longer. And yet you would never feel wholly an Atlantisan either. Your children would look down on you as a greenhorn, and laugh at your slips. They would seem unsympathetic, or different,—not quite your own children.
The natives of Atlantis would help you along, once in a while, by giving you lectures and telling you not to read your home paper. But you, who had felt so adventurous and bold, when you started, would have to get used to their regarding you as a comic inferior. Not even your children would know what you had had to contend with. Not one of the natives would try to put himself in your place.
Yet how could they? How could any one who hadn't gone through the experience? It is a complicated matter to learn to belong to a strange country, when the process includes making yourself over to fit other men's notions.
It was easy for Noah: all he had to get used to was Ararat.
Written during the war-time censorship of our late Postmaster-General.
In the town of Hottentottenville an aged Hottentot,Whose name was Hottentotten-tillypoo,Was slowly hottentottering around a vacant lot,With a vacant look upon his higaboo.Now higaboo is Hottentot, as you may know, for face,And to wear a vacant look upon your face is a disgrace.But poor old Mr. Tillypoo, he had no other place—Though I understand it grieved him through and thru.He was grubbing up potatoes in an aimless sort of way,Which really was the only way he had,And an officer was watching him to see what he would say,And arrest him if the things he said were bad.For it seems this wretched Tillypoo had gone and had the thoughtThat his neighbors didn't always do exactly as they ought;And as this was rank sedition, why, they hoped to see him caught,For it naturally made them pretty mad.So the men of Hottentottenville, they passed a little law,Which they called the Hotta-Shotta-Shootum Act,Which fixed it so the postman was a sort of Grand Bashaw,Who determined what was false and what was fact.And the postman sentenced Tillypoo, and wouldn't hear his wails,But gave him twenty years apiece in all the local jails,And said he couldn't vote no more, and barred him from the mails,And expressed the hope that this would teach him tact.Well, the last I heard of Tilly he was planning not to think,And he'd tied a piece of string around his tongue,And he never went within a mile of either pen or ink,And he always stood whenanysong was sung.And maybe you are thinking that his fate was rather tough,But what I say is, not a bit, they didn't do enough.When anybody differs with you, dammit, treat 'em rough,Why, they ought to be bub-boiled alive and hung!
It is not only every country that has its own language. It is each generation. The books and family letters of our grandfathers are not quite in our dialect. And so of the books of their grandfathers, and the letters they wrote. These dialects are not so different from ours that we can't make them out: they sound a little queer, that is all. Just as our own way of talking and writing (and thinking) will seem so quaint to our descendants that they'll put us away on the shelves.
A few books are written in a tongue that all times understand.
A few of us are linguists and have learned to enjoy the books of all ages.
For the rest, agèd books need translation into the speech of the day.
The poets of each generation seldom sing a new song. They turn to themes men always have loved, and sing them in the mode of their times. Each new tribe of artists perpetually repaints the same pictures. The story-men tell the same stories. They remain fresh and young.
The disguise is new sometimes, but never thestory behind it. A few generations ago, when some one wrote Humpty-Dumpty, he was merely retelling an old story for the men of his era, one of the oldest of stories, the first part of Genesis.
It is a condensed account—it leaves out the serpent and Eve and the apple. Some editor blue-penciled these parts, perhaps, as fanciful little digressions. "Stick to the main theme," said the editor, "don't go wandering off into frills. Your story is about the fall of Adam. Get on. Make him fall."
"I had intended to introduce a love-interest," the author of Humpty-Dumpty explained.
"A love interest!" sneered the editor. "You should have waited to be born in the twentieth century. These are manlier times. Give us men and adventure and fate."
"And what about the garden," the author sighed. "Must that be cut too?"
"By all means. Change the garden. It's a pretty enough idea in romance. But a realist who has worked in one, knows that a garden's no paradise. Genesis got it just wrong. Adam should have been exiled from town as a punishment, and put to slave in a garden."
"But town isn't paradise either. We've got to start him in paradise."
"Dear me," said the editor. "There's only one place left to put the fellow, and that's on the wall. 'Adam sat on a wall.' Begin that way."
CinderellaCinderella
"I'm calling him Humpty-Dumpty," the author said. "It makes it less tragic. It suggests that the fall didn't hurt Man so much after all."
"Which is true," said the editor.
I wish I had known that author. He had a kind heart. He has changed even the unforgiving cherubim in the Genesis story to those King's men who try in such a friendly way to restore Humpty-Dumpty. But the story can't let them. That would leave the hero back on his wall again—like some Greek philosopher. This other way, we think of him as starting out to conquer the world.
Humpty-Dumpty is a story for boys. Cinderella for girls. In Cinderella five able females, two old and three young, contend most resourcefully to capture one stupid young man. It is a terrible story. The beautiful surface barely masksthe hungry wiles underneath. But it's true. It depicts the exact situation a marrying girl has to face; and, even while she's a tot in the nursery, it reminds her to plan.
But these are examples of stories that live, and last for more than one age. The mortality is heavier in other fields. For instance, philosophy. Great philosophical works of past eras are still alive in a sense, but they dwell among us as foreigners do, while Mother Goose has been naturalized.
Modern philosophies are so different. Not many centuries ago, in those eras when few changes took place, men thought of the world as something to study, instead of to mold. It was something to appropriate and possess, to be sure, but not to transform.
Humpty-Dumpty sat on the wall, then. He hadn't begun his new life.
There were few inventors in those old times, and few of those few were honored. Edison among the Greeks would have been as lonely as Plato with us.
Civilization was Thought. It was measured by what men knew and felt of eternal things. It was wisdom.
Civilization to-day is invention: it is measured by our control over nature. If you remind a modern that nature is not wholly ductile, he isprofoundly discouraged! "Weexpectto make over and control our world." We not only assume it is possible, we assume it is best.
What is democracy but a form of this impulse, says Professor George Plimpton Adams, "bidding man not to content himself with any political order thrust upon him, but actively to construct that order so that it does respond to his own nature"?
"Not contemplation ... but creative activity," that is our modern attitude.
Well, it's all very interesting.
Will and Wisdom are both mighty leaders. Our times worship Will.
Will and WisdomWill and Wisdom
The most ordinary steamship agent, talking to peasants in Europe, can describe America in such a way that those peasants will start there at once. But the most gifted preacher can't get men to hurry to heaven.
All sorts of prophets have dreamed of a heaven, and they have imagined all kinds; they have put houris in the Mahometan's paradise, and swords in Valhalla. But in spite of having carte blanche they have never invented a good one.
"I've stood corns and neuritis—""I've stood corns and neuritis—"
A man sits in his pew, hearing about harps and halos and hymns, and when it's all over he goes home and puts on his old wrapper. "I suppose I can stand it," he thinks. "I've stood corns and neuritis. But I just hate the idea of floating around any such region."
Some persons may want to go to heaven so as to keep out of hell, or to get away from misery here—if they are in great enough misery. Others think of it as a place to meet friends in, or as asuitable destination for relatives. But the general idea is it's like being cast away in the tropics: the surroundings are gorgeous, and it's pleasant and warm—but not home.
It seems too bad that heaven should always be somehow repugnant, and unfit as it were for human habitation. Isn't there something we can do about it?
I fear there is not.
"But I just hate the idea of floating""But I just hate the idea of floating"
Assuming that we are immortal, what happens to a man when he dies? It is said by some that at first the surroundings in his new life seem shadowy, but after a bit they grow solid; and then it is the world left behind that seems vague. You lose touch with it and with those whom you knew there—except when they think of you. When they think of you, although you can see them, and feel what they're thinking, it isn't like hearing the words that they say, or their voices; it's not like looking over their shoulders to see what they write; it's more like sensing what is in their thoughts.
But at first you are too bewildered to do this.You are in a new world, and you find yourself surrounded by spirits, telling you that you're dead. The spiritualists say that many new arrivals refuse to believe they are dead, and look around skeptically at heaven, and think they are dreaming. It often takes a long time to convince them. This must be rather awkward. It's as though no one who arrived in Chicago would believe he was there, but went stumbling around, treating citizens as though they weren't real, and saying that he doubted whether there was any such place as Chicago.
But if there is any truth in this picture, it explains a great deal. If the spirits themselves cannot clearly take in their new life at first, how can we on this side of the barrier ever understand what it's like? And, not understanding, what wonder we don't find it attractive?
You can't describe one kind of existence to those in another.
Suppose, for example, we were describing dry land to a fish.
"We have steam-heat and sun-sets," I might tell him—just for a beginning.
And the fish would think: "Heat? Phew! that's murderous! And oh, that sizzling old sun!"
"We have legs," I might add.
"What are legs?"
"Things to walk on. They're like sticks, that grow right on our bodies. We do not use fins."
"What, no fins! Why, with fins, just a flicker will shoot me in any direction. Legs are clumsy and slow: think of tottering around on such stumps! And you can only go on the level with them; you can't rise and dip."
"Yes, we can. We build stairs."
"But how primitive!"
Perhaps he would ask me what drawbacks there were to earthly existence; and how he would moan when I told him about bills and battles.
"And is it true," he might say, "that there really are beings called dentists? Weird creatures, who pull your poor teeth out, and hammer your mouths? Bless my gills! It sounds dreadful! Don't ask me to leave my nice ocean!"
Then, to be fair, he might ask, "What's the other side of the picture, old man? What pleasures have you that would tempt me? What do you do to amuse yourselves?" And I would tell him about Charlie Chaplin, and Geraldine Farrar, and business, and poetry—but how could I describe Charlie Chaplin from the fish point of view? And poetry?—getting ecstasy from little black dots on a page? "You get soulful overthatkind of doings?" he would ask, with a smile. "Well, all right, but it sounds pretty crazy to a sensible fish."
"Business is the main thing here, anyhow," I'd answer.
"And what's 'business'?"
"Well, it's—er—it's like this: Suppose you, for instance, were to go and catch a great many flies—"
He smiled dreamilyHe smiled dreamily
The fish would look pleased and smile dreamily.
"But then not eat them, mind you."
"Noteatthem?"
"No, but put them all out on a bit of flat rock, for a counter, and 'sell' them to other fish: exchange them, I mean—for shells, let us say, if you used shells as money."
The fish would look puzzled. "But whatfor, my dear sir?" he'd inquire. "What would I do with shells?"
And what would I do with shells?And what would I do with shells?
"Exchange them for flies again, see?"
"O my soul! what a life!"
There are any number of difficulties and bumps along the roads of this world, and yet there are plenty of easy-going people who never prepare for them. They take all such things as they come. Some are buoyant, some fearless.
You may die any minute!You may die any minute!
But within the last hundred years, large companies have been organized to go after these people, and catch them alone somewhere and give them a good thorough fright. These companies hire men who are experts at that sort of thing; men who make it their life-work to find fearless persons and scare them.
But no matter how ambitious and active these experts may be, they cannot catch every onepersonally. It would take too much time. So they write gloomy advertisements which are designed to scare people in general.
These advertisements are a characteristic feature of our civilization.
Man goes down-town, whistling, sunny morning. Happens to pick up a magazine. Immediately he gets hit in the eye with a harrowing picture. Sometimes it is one that reminds him he may die any minute, and depicts his widow and children limping around in the streets, hunting crusts. Or it may be a picture of his house burning up, or his motor upsetting. Or an illness, and there he is lying flat and weak on his bed.
Ah!—Her husband didn't insureAh!—Her husband didn't insure
After he has seen a good many of such pictures, he grows quiet. Stops whistling. He learns howto worry, and he worries off and on till it hurts. Then, to get some relief, he makes a contract with one of those companies, which provides him with what we call insurance, for an annual tribute.
I hope no one will think I am disparaging insurance, which is a useful arrangement. It enables many of us to pool our risks and be protected from hardship. And the best companies nowadays handle the thing very well. They scare a person as little as possible. They just gently depress him. They inflict just enough mental torture to get him to put in his money. It is only when he is stubborn about it that they give him the cold chills.
Every century has some such institution. The Inquisition was worse.
Like insurance, it had high ideals, but peculiar methods.
Insurance men, however, are steadily improving their methods. Instead of always reminding you how awful it is not to insure, they sometimes print brighter pictures, which show how happy you will feel if you do. For instance, a picture of a postman bringing a check to your widow. Your widow is thanking the postman, her face full of joy. Sometimes the old president of the company is shown in the upper left corner, writing out the check personally, as soon as he hears of your death. Or maybe they leave out the presidentand put in your infant son, for good measure. He is playing in his innocent way with his dead father's cane, and the widow, with a speculative eye on him, is thoughtfully murmuring, "As soon as he is old enough I must insure my little boy too."
In the days before it was possible to insure, there was even more gloom. Light-hearted people may have worried less, but the rest worried more. They could save enough money for the future if it was sufficiently distant, but not for a serious disaster that might come too soon. This darkened their outlook. They had no one to trust in but God.
There has always been a great deal of talk about trusting in God, but human beings incline to be moderate and cautious in trying it. As a rule no one does it unless he has to.
Not even the clergymen.
A few years ago a fund was formed, in the Episcopal Church, to pay agèd ministers pensions, so they would never be destitute. This brought the greatest happiness to many of them who were approaching decrepitude. Letters came in from ministers who had worried in silence for years, with no one to trust but the Deity, whose plans might be strange. They described how they had wept with relief, when this fund was established. Printed copies of these letters were mailed to allthe good Christians who had contributed, to show them how much true joy and happiness their money had brought, and how thankful the clergy were to have something solid to trust, like a pension.
When a pastor with a pension is in the pulpit, looking around at his flock, suppose he sees that some of them are needy and have no pensions coming? If imaginative enough, he will sympathize with their poor fearful hearts, and advise them as wisely as possible. But there's not much to say. The only course for such folk is to try to trust God, who is mighty, and meantime be frugal and save every cent that they can.
Some day, he prays, we all shall have pensions.
And suppose a man isn't religious, what had he better trust? His money, or his own native mettle?
I should like to trust both.
But they tell me that that is impracticable. Won't work at all. I canhavesome of both, of course. Certainly. But I cannottrustboth.
Like all other men I have my own inner fountain of strength, and it's been a faithful old thing; it has done a lot for me. It has vigor in it yet—but it isn't big and fiery, or strong. I could only have made it work abundantly if I had relied wholly on it. If I had done that, it would haveprobably called out my full powers. But instead I have relied partly on money, for fear my strength might desert me; and that fear has naturally had an effect on my strength. I work hard, but with less fire. Less eagerness. Progressively less. Any man who doesn't trust his spirit will find it will ebb.
And the same's true of money. Unless you are in love with your wealth, it will slip through your fingers. If you want to get a whole lot of money, worship gold all your days.
This isn't a sure recipe, I must add, to get a whole lot of money. I should be sorry to have my readers spring out of their chairs at these words, and rush happily off to make money their god, so as to be millionaires. It doesn't work so quickly or surely as that, I admit. But this much is true, anyhow: if you do not care enough about money you will hardly grow rich. You must be pretty devoted to win a jealous mistress like gold.
They are both jealous mistresses, that's the worst of it.
It is an awkward predicament.
I don't like to face this problem squarely. I don't get it settled. I keep on, like a hopeful old bigamist, in love with both mistresses: my money and my spirit or mettle.
I try to soothe each. I say to my mettle, "Icare much more for you than for money: it's true that I keep money, too; but it's you that I love. You and I are one, aren't we? Very well, then. Come on. Let's be happy."
And I say to my money, "Now be faithful: for God's sake be faithful: don't slip off and desert me and leave me alone in the world." She looks jealously at me. "Alone?" she says; "how about that mettle of yours, you're so fond of?" "Ah, my dear," I say sadly, giving her an affectionate squeeze, "my mettle is no better than she should be. I don't like to talk of it. You are the one that I expect to comfort me in my dark moments; and I hope you and I will be here together long after my mettle has gone."
There you have my ménage. It's been difficult. But I cannot complain. As a bigamist I suppose on the whole I've been fairly successful. Yet I know I'd have more money to-day—I think a great deal more money—if I had been more faithful to Mammon, as they call the poor creature. And similarly I might have led an heroic, ardent life with my mettle, if I had ever trusted it fully.
That's the trouble with bigamy.
Once upon a time all the large corporations were controlled by labor. The whole system was exactly the opposite of what it is now. It was labor that elected the directors, and the officers too. Capital had no representatives at all in the management.
It was a curious period. Think of capital having no say, even about its own rates! When a concern like the United Great Steel Co., was in need of more capital, the labor man who was at the head of it, President Albert H. Hairy, went out and hired what he wanted on the best terms he could. Sometimes these terms seemed cruelly low to the capitalists, but whenever one of them grumbled he was paid off at once, and his place was soon taken by another who wasn't so uppish. This made for discipline and improved the service.
Under this régime—as under most others—there was often mismanagement. Those in control paid themselves too well—as those in control sometimes do. Failures and reorganizations resulted from this, which reduced the usual return to the workers and made them feel gloomy; but as these depressions threw capitalists out of employment,and thus made capital cheaper, they had their bright side.
The capitalists, however, grumbled more and more. Even when they were well paid and well treated they grumbled. No matter how much they got, they felt they weren't getting their dues. They knew that labor elected the management; and they knew human nature. Putting these two premises together, they drew the conclusion that labor was probably getting more than its share, and capital less. President Hairy, of the Steel Co., explained to them this couldn't be true, because the market for capital was a free and open market. He quoted a great many economic laws that proved it, and all the professors of economy said he was right. But the capitalists wouldn't believe in these laws, because they weren't on their side, nor would they read any of the volumes the professors composed. They would read only a book that an old German capitalist wrote—a radical book which turned economics all upside-down and said that capital ought to start a class war and govern the world.
Discontent breeds agitation. Agitation breeds professional agitators. A few unruly loud-voiced capitalists climbed up on soap-boxes and began to harangue their quiet comrades, just to stir up needless trouble. When arrested, they invoked (as they put it) the right of free speech. The labormen replied by invoking things like law and order. Everybody became morally indignant at something. The press invoked the Fathers of the Republic, Magna Charta, and Justice. Excited and bewildered by this crossfire, the police one evening raided a Fifth avenue club, where a capitalist named M. R. Goldman was talking in an incendiary way to his friends. "All honest law-abiding capitalists will applaud this raid," said the papers. But they didn't. They began to feel persecuted. And presently some capitalists formed what they called a union.
It was only a small union, that first one, but it had courage. One afternoon President Hairy looked up from his desk to find four stout, red-faced capitalists pushing each other nervously into his office. He asked them their business. They huskily demanded that every capitalist on that company's books be paid at least a half per cent more for his money. The president refused to treat with them except as individuals. They then called a strike.
The results of this first strike were profoundly discouraging. The leaders were tried for conspiracy, those who walked out at their call were blacklisted, and the victorious labor men soon secured other capitalists in plenty, a private car-load being brought over from Philadelphia at night. The labor leaders became so domineeringin their triumph they refused to engage capitalists who drank or who talked of their wrongs. They began importing cheap foreign capital to supply all new needs. But these measures of oppression only increased the class feeling of capitalists and taught them to stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight for their rights.
The years of warfare that followed were as obstinate as any in history. Little by little, in spite of the labor men's sneers, the enormous power of capital made itself felt. An army of unemployed capitalists marched upon Washington. The Brotherhood of Railway Bondholders, being indicted for not buying enough new bonds to move the mails, locked up every dollar they possessed and defied the Government. The Industrial Shareholders of the World, a still more rabid body, insisted on having an eight per cent law for their money. All great cities were the scenes of wild capitalist riots. Formerly indifferent citizens were alarmed and angered by seeing their quiet streets turned into Bedlam at night, with reckless old capitalists roaring through them in taxis, singing Yankee Boodle or shouting "Down with labor!" For that finally became the cry: labor must go. They still meant to use labor, somehow, they confusedly admitted, but capital and not labor must have absolute control of all industries.
As the irrepressible conflict forced its way into politics, Congress made statesmanlike efforts to settle the problem. After earnest and thoughtful debate they enacted a measure which made the first Monday in September a holiday, called Capital Day. As this hoped-for cure did not accomplish much they attempted another, by adding a Secretary of Capital to the President's cabinet. Conservative people were horrified. But Congress was pushed even further. It was persuaded to prohibit employing the capital of women and children, and it ordered all Japanese capital out of the country. On one point, however, Congress was obstinate and would not budge an inch. They wouldn't give capital full control of the railroads and mills.
The capitalists themselves were obliged to realize, gradually, that this could be at best but a beautiful dream. It seemed there was one great argument against it: labor men were a unit in believing the scheme wouldn't work. How could scattered investors, who had not worked at an industry, elect—with any intelligence—the managers of it? Even liberal labor men said that the idea was preposterous.
At this moment a citizen of East Braintree, Mass., stepped forward, and advocated a compromise. He said in effect:
"The cause of our present industrial turmoil is this: The rulers that govern our industries are not rightly elected. Our boards of directors may be called our industrial legislatures; they manage a most important part of our national life; but they are chosen by only one group of persons. No others can vote. If Congress were elected by a class, as our boards of directors are, this country would be constantly in a state of revolution politically, just as it is now industrially." That was his argument.
"Both those who do the work and those who put in the money should rightfully be represented in these governing bodies." That was his cure. If corporations would adopt this democratic organization, he said, two-sided discussions would take place at their meetings. "These discussions would tend to prevent the adoption of policies that now create endless antagonism between labor and capital." And he went on to point out the many other natural advantages.
This compromise was tried. At first it naturally made labor angry, labor having been in exclusive control for so long. Many laborers declined to have anything to do with concerns that were run by "low ignorant speculators," as they called them, "men who knew nothing of any concern's real needs." Ultimately, however, they yielded to the trend of the times.Democratic instead of autocratic control brought about team-play. Men learned to work together for their common good.
Of course capitalists and laborers did not get on any too well together. Self-respecting men on each side hated the other side's ways—even their ways of dressing and talking, and amusing themselves. The workers talked of the dignity of labor and called capital selfish. On the other hand, ardent young capitalists who loved lofty ideals, complained that the dignity of capital was not respected by labor. These young men despised all non-capitalists on high moral grounds. They argued that every such man who went through life without laying aside any wealth for those to come, must be selfish by nature and utterly unsocial at heart. There always are plenty of high moral grounds for both sides.
But this mere surface friction was hardly heard of, except in the pages of the radical capitalist press. There were no more strikes,—that was the main thing. The public was happy.
At least, they were happy until the next problem came along to be solved.