TO SEE AND FEEL THE PAST
It is a matter of common knowledge that Washington at the time of his
death was the richest man in the country. All are familiar with the fact
that he acquired property through his brother Lawrence, and the widow
Custis whom he married, but less attention is given to the suggestive
fact that he invested widely in land in what was then the West. We have
letters to his agents. Judson destroyed all his own letters and papers
touching private matters, but there they are, in Washington's case, and
he who runs may read. He had been a surveyor. He knew a good thing when
he saw it. His invariable rule was to buy quality. Showing the same
wisdom he did in his campaigns and his farewell address, which has never
lost its influence, he turned to the West to do his buying. Entirely
aside from the Revolution, if Washington had not been a great general,
he was well started on lines that would have made him a very substantial
citizen. The confidence he expressed in the West is believed to be, and
has been stated to be, a higher monument to his fame than the
metal-tipped, slender, tapering sky-pointing and heaven-reaching obelisk
reared in his honor near the banks of the Potomac. He was invited to
visit France but could not, he said, bring his affairs into a state of
order, during the remainder of his life, and the matters that most
needed his care were his large purchases of land in the West which now,
with some little contiguous territory are worth Twenty Million Dollars.
Washington remains our richest president not only relatively but
absolutely.
_People Looked, People Wondered, People Praised_
We find him making a sixth journey to see his lands which were located
on the right and left banks of the river, and bounded thereby,
forty-eight miles and a half. This portrayal makes very obvious what is
implied when it is said of an individual that he is not a good business
man. He simply lacks what Washington had, intensity of interest in his
affairs, energy of mind, promptness. We do not say foresight, there is
no such thing as foresight, we mean insight, good judgment, and a fine
knowledge of the trend of things, a perception of the direction taken by
popular movements. Washington was accused of being close-fisted, but
some one takes the ground that a man must close his fist if there is
something in it that others were seeking by illegitimate means to get.
At his death he was worth a half million dollars, and four hundred
thousand dollars of it lay in western lands. "Would God we may have
wisdom to improve the opportunity," a prayer in which many persons who
have had much better chances than ever came to him, pressed as he was
with patriotic service, wished they had joined, but who allowed
opportunity to knock at the door and turn away, unwelcomed. What a sight
to Washington, now revisiting the earth, would a night view of
Pittsburgh be with her deep fires and the lid off. Washington's insight
was apparent by locating his purchases near the possibilities of a city
whose tonnage exceeds that of any other city of the Union, whose vast
manufacturing interests send up volumes of smoke that become a pillar of
cloud by day and whose furnaces are pillars of fire by night, to lead
the people on to prosperity and success. The mind has less influence on
the will than many persons suppose. A man may know a fact and then do
nothing about it. A lazy man may know the advantage of wealth and yet be
without the motive to attain it. It is often a poor boy who has felt
poverty and has some feeling about it that makes success with him a
passion. He who hesitates is lost. It was the plunge of Curtius that
saved Rome.
_Making Hay While the Sun Shines_
That great orator of nature to whom school-boys are so much indebted for
energetic, passionate, effective declamations, Patrick Henry, father of
fifteen children, made his widow and eleven surviving children rich by
his early judicious purchases, like Washington, of lands. This much
needs to be said, lest fortune be thought of as a blind goddess. A man
that once was cutting grass and herding cattle earning his bread by the
sweat of his brow is now Prince Fortunatus. No chance luck about it, for
the opportunity that beckoned him called to others but their ears were
dull of hearing. All of us, who are interested in vital reforms, must
have been attracted to the career of Gerrit Smith, who gave thirty
thousand dollars to destitute old maids and widows in the state of New
York. No public subscription lacked his name, and he always gave away
$50,000.00 and not seldom $100,000.00 each year. In his business life of
fifty-six years he gave away $8,000,000.00 and left an estate of more
than a million dollars. Such a recital, as in the case of Washington,
makes us curious to find the sources of such philanthropy. We find that
with rare acumen he developed the business of his father, who when a
poor youth, kept a small store and traded for furs at first hands with
the Indians. When his partner Mr. Astor bought real estate in New York
city, the elder Smith purchased sixty thousand acres of land in the
central part of the state of New York, of which enough was sold at
auction to repay the purchase price and still leave enough to make him
the largest landholder in the state. Subsequent additions made him the
owner of more acres than any other man in the Union. Such a preparative
study as this gave me intensest interest, when revisiting the earth, in
treading the beautiful field, my birthplace, that my father bought in
Iowa at the Government price of a dollar and a quarter an acre, that has
since been sold at $205.00 an acre and the price paid for it at the last
sale of it was $300.00 an acre and the buyer was offered $3,000.00 for
his bargain. It is the percentage of gain that tells the story. It seems
like the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
_The Death of the Mortgage_
Besides learning these items and handling the papers that confirmed
them, out came a fact that took my breath away. Once men profited by
nature's bounty. To him that hath is given. That is the common way. Now
comes the uncommon thing. From him that hath not is (not) taken away
even that he hath. The sun and stars now look down upon a changed
condition. The wildest dream has come true, a by-product of the war. It
is one of the many things begun under circumstances which the German
treaty-breakers, the disturbers of the peace, thrust upon us, a thing
designed to aid agriculturists to feed our armies and allies, which,
with the war over, will never be abated. We raise our eyes, and see a
moneyed millennium coming down a common country road. It is in the form
of an original system of rural credits. The Treasury Department of the
United States has inaugurated a Federal Farm-Loan Bureau. Its
outstanding feature is, if a borrower of a large amount pays his
interest, he never hears again of the debt. Interest at six and a half
per cent not only takes care of that item, but it pays it off, in less
than a generation, also the money borrowed. A farmer at the start
requires money for buildings, machinery, and herds. The aching heart of
many a widow bereft of her home by the foreclosure of a mortgage on her
property will see the deep significance in the sacrament that I am
seeking to describe. The process is called amortization. The syllable
"mort" as in "mortal," means death of the debt. From the first the
mortgage is struck with death.
_A Heaven-sent Device_
So happy to all concerned is this method, resembling a co-operative
bank, of obtaining a greatly needed working capital that we may well
rejoice with a large class of deserving people, who for the first time
have the means of doing a larger, more profitable business, with the
sting and hazard graciously removed. With what bitterness we have all
heard the children of the poor recite the anguish that came into the
home when the mortgage, like the naked sword suspended by a hair over
the head of Damocles, came to do its dreaded office! "But the children
began to be sorely weary," says Bunyan, "and they cried out unto Him
that loveth pilgrims to make their way more comfortable." We have come
to see the Government make the way of the children who inherit a
mortgage more comfortable. All's well! You have no trouble with the
interest. Only go on as you have been going. The farm, the home, are all
yours. The mortgage is dead.
_They Were a Family Again_
A day on a real farm did not have a dull moment in it. It was not only
full of incident and instruction but as compared with a generation ago
it was different. Immediately a very young calf was noticed that, to use
the farmer's unexpected phrase, his mother does not "claim." I supposed
he would say that his mother would not "own." The cow was put in a
stall, in a barn, the calf being nourished and thus openly adopted by
the mother they became effusively chummy. At first the cow "did not
care" for the calf. When care began a noticeable regard commenced.
_How Much Like Folks_
More curious still it seemed to find that in breaking out of a pasture
the cattle were led by one member of the herd. The community of cattle
would be quiet and contented except for one breaching individual. Here
again I went to school to a farmer in the use of words. In his reference
to this creature he designated the trouble maker as an "outlaw." I had
not thought of applying that word to cattle.
_Absence of the Big Stick_
I stood still and wondered at the constant and varied use of the voice
by a farmer as he moves about among the creatures that he owns. Armed
with a whip, like an Irishman with his shillalah at a fair, I supposed
he would keep it flourishing about his head and that he would be
accompanied by a dog. An owner will not trust his cattle to the care of
a man that employs a shepherd dog. Cattle must be kept quiet. A dog
wakes them all up and sets back the gain that they would make for the
day. Farmers and drovers are whistling, singing, calling, shouting,
talking, all the time to their creatures and they like it.
_An Outlaw in the Herd_
It is everywhere, I suppose, well known that the western spirit has
always been less tolerant of an outlaw than the people of the East are.
I asked the ranch man what course he took with an outlaw among cattle.
"As soon as I detect him I get rid of him, not stopping at anything to
do it." On the fourth of July I went out upon the piazza of the hotel,
and looking up the street I saw a man, hung in effigy, upon a telephone
pole in front of his own store, with his name placarded upon the
suspended figure, that it should not be a case of mistaken identity. He
had offended the decencies of life. The townspeople waited for a day or
two to see if the authorities took it up. There was nothing doing. Then
the citizens made public what they thought of the outlaw.
_Testing Mighty Principles by Small Experiments_
It seems that Schopenhauer had a gold piece which he used to put beside
his plate at the table where he ate, surrounded by the young officers of
the German army, and which was to be given to the poor, the first time
he heard any conversation that was not about promotion or women. If
this experiment were tried one's contribution to charity would not be
large, provided the subjects were changed in the various well known
localities. In the time of the great inflation in Chicago when any one
could make his fortune by simply buying building sites and selling out
before the ink had dried with which the first transfer was recorded, the
subject discussed in hotels and offices would be Corner Lots.
These locations were sold and resold, each time at a large advance on
the former price, and became the inexhaustible topic of conversation.
Everybody was growing rich on paper and The City of the Lakes was the
Mecca of speculators, a genuine Eldorado, where affluence was made easy,
and first lessons in finance were given. The original gold coin was
staked amid specific well understood surroundings. When environment
changes topics change. In one town all the talk is money, money. At a
public table in some localities where once it was all horse talk, in one
corner of the dining room, the interchange of mind is on the speed of
automobiles, the improvement made in cars since two years ago, the
amount of gasoline to the mile, and the comparative excellence of the
different manufactures.
In revisiting the earth on coming into close relations with each town, I
found it had its distinctive atmosphere. The value of land did not
depend upon the soil nor upon the climatic conditions so much as upon
the human equation. Two communities upon the same railway with like
physical conditions will find themselves growing apart. One place might
have slightly inferior outward conditions. These are speedily overcome.
Watch it grow.
_The Home of the Angels_
In this garden of the earth one quickly loses his heart to Los Angeles.
Her hotels are the last word in luxury. Thousands of citizens having
become rich in Iowa spend their money in this Land of the Afternoon.
While they have found California about as nature made it, besides the
elements of the air and soil, Los Angeles has an atmosphere that is
purely social. It is an attractive place to live, choice people have
assembled there, and so, under pleasant conditions, others are drawn.
The money in Pasadena never came out of the soil contiguous to the
place. A man buying land saw how things were tending and the
neighborhood in which he was going and said to the driver that he need
not go any farther. The lay of the land and quality would make no
difference. The atmosphere was alien and he was through. In the same
state you find towns that are as unlike as if they stood on different
continents. In San Francisco, all unannounced, you, on crossing a
street, pass an equatorial, invisible line into the Chinese quarter
which, in atmosphere, is five thousand miles away. There is in Paris an
activity, a rapidity of movement that you do not find in Holland or in
England. The people walk faster, talk faster, eat faster, ride faster,
and live faster in all respects than do their neighbors. The English
love the past and protest against the removal of the ancient land-marks,
while the French love innovation. The atmosphere of the city of
Washington, not being like most national capitals, a center of trade, is
world-wide from that of Chicago. So much is it out of the popular drift
that while a state was voting over-whelmingly for constitutional
prohibition the measure was discountenanced by both of its senators. One
atmosphere has in it a kind of vitalizing life, a perpetual marvel and a
perpetual delight, reviving every faculty and affection, while in
another the doctors administer quinine to the saffron-colored sojourners
in its fever-haunted marshes.
_New Forms of Matter, New Crystallizations_
Every region has its peculiar fitness for some particular kind of
growth, Missouri apples, Michigan peaches, California oranges, Kentucky
blue-grass, Wisconsin clover. To the south and west is the corn belt.
Specific well-known places are best adapted to the varied form of animal
life. The three northern continents are temperate; the three southern
continents are tropical. In these warmest regions nature displays its
fullest energy, its greatest diversity, its richest colors, and
development. The animal kingdom grows in strength and perfection in this
privileged zone, yet man presents his purest and most perfect type at
the center of the temperate continents. At the base of the Himalayas
vegetation is of a tropical character; at an elevation of five thousand
feet European plants succeed. Wheat grows at an elevation of thirteen
thousand feet, barley at fifteen thousand. We do not look for the best
trees on the bleak mountain top but in the genial valley. As we go up
the struggle for existence increases until even the sturdiest fail to
thrive above the "timber line." Number one wheat can be produced only in
localities where the summers are short and the winters long and cold.
Corn is capable of the widest cultivation, but even that has its
northern and southern limits. Climate is nature's smile and goes with
the land. No man can farm against the climate and no medication can do
for an invalid what the half-tropical sunshine will do in an oasis city.
There is no more fascinating study than that of the sustaining,
producing, and modifying effects of atmosphere.
_A Lesson that Will Last a Lifetime_
It enhances our interest as we return to breathe again the air that made
us ourselves as distinguished from others. We have known well our own
standards, our ideals, our resolves, but how came we with what we find
ourselves possessed. It adds interest to the old temples to visit the
quarries which furnish them forth. In revisiting the earth it thrills us
to look at the rock whence we were hewn. Our temptations were those
peculiar to that locality. What I know about temptation is entirely
different from what a remote stranger would guess. Our struggles were
such as that environment occasioned and are not appreciated by persons
in a different zone. Each soul has its own climate. Even man's sight
responds to his environment. On watch, day in, day out, on a sailing
vessel, scanning the distant horizon, the eye, becoming adapted to it,
is far-sighted. It can hardly read fine print held close to the person.
Even children brought up at the seaside and accustomed to far sights
have to patiently await a readjustment of their vision. I can now trace,
in my being, some reflex effect of each set of surroundings, in which
for a term of years, I was placed. My experience in a new environment
amounted to a re-birth. One educator considers the proximity of a
mountain, worth at least to the student, one endowed professorship. "Let
no one say he has written my life," said Walpole. "He has not the
needful information. He never knew the crowd of little things which went
to make my individual being and career. No one knows them but myself."
One's interruptions and trials and crises and providences come with
such surroundings as he then has and it is a striking experience, when
revisiting the earth, to discover for one's self the agencies and
influences by which he was moulded.