undersized and fell into the hen character. After centuries of
domestication or slavery the average hen loses the independence of the
wild bird. Now and then a nobler specimen will feel some dormant brain
cell thrill within her, remember the freedom of centuries ago and fly
into the trees, but for the most part the modern hen is a selfish,
fawning, tricky creature. She drives her family away as soon as the
children become tiresome, and there is little or no real community
life among hens. When their usual food is not forthcoming all but a few
adventurous spirits stand slouching about waiting for help. Thus the
goslings were taught to fawn upon man for their food and reject their
brothers and sisters in the other brood. It was an unnatural life for a
goose, and these little ones could not thrive under such training. On
the other hand, Mr. Gander’s pupils were taught by an expert on goose
training. They were taught to swim, to bathe in the wet grass, to eat
grass or hay, to get out and find their own breakfast if man did not do
his duty. As a result they grew up with strong independence of character.
While the others might fawn and beg for food, the gander’s class were
taught to scorn such subservient behavior. And they were taught family
life and co-operation. While the hens separate and lead their selfish,
separate lives, the geese live in a group. There they go now in a solid
bunch across the lawn. Throw a stick into a flock of hens or let a dog
run at them, and they will scatter in all directions. Try the same with a
flock of young geese, and they will line up in solid array “all for each
and each for all.” I do not know of anything finer in the education of
geese or children than this thorough idea of co-operation. In the future
those groups which are taught like the geese will rule the nation. Those
which are taught to fear strange things or live the selfish life of a hen
will always serve. In other words, the future of this country depends on
its teachers and their wisdom? You are right!
But the real, final test of a goose’s education is made with the
carving-knife. Judging from the empty plates I think this one will
pass a good examination. If I am not mistaken this was one of the hen’s
goslings. When we saw that their teacher was a failure we put them into
Mr. Gander’s class. He looked them over and knocked them down with his
wing a few times. Then he put his wise head to one side as if to say:
“I’ll do my best with them. They have been spoiled, and I must take
some of the conceit out of them first. If the law forbidding corporal
punishment holds in New Jersey I will resign the task, because no
goose can ever live a successful life unless those foolish hen ideas
are whipped out of him. And another thing: I won’t have that Red hen
bothering around me. The influence of a foolish mother is the worst thing
a teacher has to contend with. I’ll try to make geese out of them, but
keep that hen away!”
The Red hen put up a great cry for a time. She ran out and called for her
“darling children” to leave those low companions. The goose took those
“darling children” right by the tail feathers and pulled them back. The
gander waddled up to the hen and took one nip which sent her squawking to
the barnyard, where the big rooster was challenging the world.
“I’ve been insulted!” she screamed, “and my dear children have been
stolen from me. If you have the courage of a mouse you will defend your
wife!”
“Where is he?” roared the rooster, and he started on a run for the
orchard. There was the goose with all her children at school, and right
in front was the gander with his great beak open and that right wing all
unslung for a blow. The rooster got within about six feet of him and
then halted. He didn’t like the looks of that sharp beak.
“Good-morning, Mr. Gander! I saw you over in the next field, and I came
to ask how the worms are running over there!”
As he went back the rooster, after the manner of husbands generally,
sought to pacify his wife.
“After all, your children are in a good school, and you will now have
more time for your neglected household duties. Nursing those children has
been a hard strain on you. Now for a little recreation!”
From my own experience I can testify that Professor Gander is right.
No one can train a child properly if the mother is foolish naturally,
and seeks to interfere with the child’s education. Those who undertake
to “take a child” into their family may well take heed from Professor
Gander. It were far better that such a child never saw his mother again.
She may easily ruin the life which she brought into the world.
But at any rate, this bird on the table was well educated to live the
perfect life of a goose. Have another slice! I know you can eat another
helping of this dressing. Pass back your plate. Of course I know Mother
would like to hold that other goose back for a later meal, but that is
not the true Thanksgiving spirit. Pass back for another slice and I will
use my influence with the housekeeper to carve the second goose. Its
education has been finished.
COLONEL O’BRIEN AND SERGEANT HILL
I imagine that most of us, at one time or another, expect to set the
world on fire. So we start what we consider a nice little blaze and stand
back to see it spread. For we think the world is as dry as a stack of hay
in a drought—only needing our little flare of flame to start it going. We
find the world more like a soggy swamp. It does not flare up—our little
blaze strikes the wet spots, and not having heat enough to dry out the
water it comes to an end. Missionaries who have been among the savage
tribes of Africa say that the most wonderful thing to the average savage
is the simple act of striking a match. These men and their ancestors
have for centuries obtained fire only after long and patient rubbing of
two sticks together. Often many hours of this laborious friction were
needed before they could obtain even a glow at the end of a stick, and
then nurse it into flame. Here at one scratch this “magic stick” produced
the effect of hours of hard toil! One savage stole a box of matches and
undertook to “show off” before his friends. He could start the little
flame of the match well enough, but he tried to make a fire out of big
logs or damp sticks, direct from the match. Of course, the little match
flame could only spread _to things of its own size_. You cannot jump
flame from a glimmer to a giant log unless the latter is full of oil or
gunpowder.
Two things have brought that to mind recently. My young friend, Henry
Barkman, came the other day with an oration which he was to deliver
before some political society. When a man is well satisfied with his
own literary production, he goes about shedding the evidence of his
admiration. When you come to be as old as I am, you will recognize the
signs. I knew Henry felt that he had produced a world-beater—one of those
great bursts of mental flame which every now and then set the world
on fire. Yet no honest person, except perhaps his mother or sister or
sweetheart, would imagine that society would stumble or even pause for
an instant at its delivery. Henry would deliver it with a loud voice and
many gestures, and then wait for the world to blaze up. When there was no
blaze he would feel that he had been casting pearls before swine, when in
truth he had thrown his match into a soggy pile of large sticks, where it
sputtered for a moment and then flickered out. Youth cannot understand
how long years of drudgery are required to split and splinter those big
sticks and dry them out with the fire of faith before the match can start
the blaze, and then in after years the man who throws in the match gets
the credit which belongs to the patient workers, who have been silently
splitting and drying the wood. I tried to tell Henry that when Lincoln
delivered his speech at Gettysburg few people realized that it was to
become a classic. A new generation with the power to look back through
the mellowing haze of the years was needed to give it a full place in
the American mind. Henry could not see it. When did youth ever know the
back-looking vision of age? It is a wise thing that youth must ever look
ahead.
I had all these things in mind as we came to the last lap of our journey
to Starkville, Miss. That pleasant town lies west of the Mobile & Ohio
Railroad—on a side road of its own. When I went there 37 years ago the
track wound on through what seemed like a wilderness, with here and there
a negro cabin. Now it seemed like one continuous stretch of farm villages
or blue grass pastures. In former years the streets of Starkville were
just ribbons of mud or dust, as the seasons determined. I knew a man who
came to town in November and bought an empty wagon. He could not haul it
home until the following April, so deep was the mud. Now the main street
was as smooth and solid as Broadway, and firm stone roads branched out
into the country in all directions. The streets were thickly lined with
cars. Here, as in Kentucky, I saw men riding on genuine saddle horses,
which shuffled quickly along like a rocking-chair on four animated legs.
It seemed like a moving-picture show taken from some old fairy tale, and
it is no wonder that the years fell away and I went back in memory to
those old days.
It was in 1883 that I was graduated at an agricultural college and went
down to “reform and uplift the South.” Since then I have heard the motive
or spirit of such a wildcat enterprise variously called “cheek,” “gall,”
“nerve,” “assurance” or “foolishness,” with various strong adjectives
pinned to the latter! Yet, looking back upon it now, I feel that while
perhaps all these terms were appropriate, they do not cover the essential
thing. I had a smattering of such science as could be taught in those
days. I had a great abiding faith in the power of education to lift
men up and set them free. A few years before I had given up the thought
of ever being anything except an ordinary workman, because I had had no
training which fitted me to do anything well. It seemed to me that the
agricultural college had given me almost the miraculous help which came
to the man with the darkened mind. Who could blame youth for feeling that
the great joy and power of education could actually remove mountains
of depression and trouble? I had been told that the chief assets of
Mississippi were “soil, climate, character and the determination of a
proud and well-bred race to train their hands to labor!” That was surely
in line with my stock of material assets, and so I came to set the South
on fire with ambition and vision.
Well do I remember the day I walked into the little brick building where
_The Southern Live Stock Journal_ was printed. Colonel O’Brien and
Sergeant Hill looked me over. Colonel O’Brien was tall and straight—every
inch a soldier. Sergeant Hill was short and fat. You would not think it,
but he was with Forrest when they captured Fort Pillow. Sergeant Hill’s
remark was:
“Another one of them literary cranks, I’ll bet.”
Colonel O’Brien was more practical.
“Come out and feed the press and then fold these papers.”
And almost before I knew it my job of uplifting the South was on. I
suppose you might call me a “useful citizen.” I fed the press, set type,
swept the office, did the mailing, acted as fighting editor, tried to
sing in the church choir, taught “elocution,” pitched baseball on the
town nine and filled columns of the paper with soul-stirring editorials.
At least, they stirred me if they had no effect upon any other reader.
Those were the days when living was a joy. Some days there would be a
little run of subscriptions and perhaps a big advertisement would come.
Now and then some ball club would come to town and our boys would send
them home in defeat and disgrace. These occasions were bright spots on
the calendar, but they were as nothing in the bright lexicon of youth to
the great editorials I ground out at that battered and shaky table in the
corner. Among other things I broke a labor strike in that town, alone and
unassisted. It was the talk of the town, but to me it seemed a very poor
thing beside the great editorial on “The South’s Future,” which I wrote
on that stormy day in Christmas week.
It comes back to me now as I write this. In those days everybody “knocked
off” during Christmas week and we printed no paper. Yet we all seemed to
come to the shop a few hours each day as part of our “holiday.” It was
cold and wet, with mud nearly to your hips. Colonel O’Brien had started a
fire in the fireplace, and he and Sergeant Hill stood before it smoking
their pipes and telling war stories. Colonel O’Brien was telling how he
heard the soldiers around their fires at night saying it was “a rich
man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Sergeant Hill told about the Indian
who went after the molasses and glue to make into printer’s rollers, and
how in consequence the Yankees captured the printing outfit. I must tell
you that story some day. And while these two old vets kept down on the
ground in thought I was up on the heights developing a glorious future
for the “Sunny South.” And at the last flourish of the pen I cleared
my throat and read it to these old soldiers. And, honestly, I did not
get the humor of it. These two men had given all they had of youth,
ambition, money and hope to their section. They must walk softly all
their remaining days amid the ruins and the melancholy of defeat. And
here was I without the least conception of what life must have meant to
the Southern people, with the enthusiasm of a boy, pouring out dreams of
a future which seemed even beyond the vision of an Isaiah. Great is youth
and glorious are its prophetic visions. At any rate, the old soldiers let
their pipes go out as they listened.
“Fine,” said Sergeant Hill. “Splendid. I reckon you’ll have us all in
Heaven 40 years hence?”
“Fine,” said Colonel O’Brien. “Fine. I hope I’ll be here to see it; but
today I saw that paper collector from New Orleans in town. We can’t pay
his bill. He’ll have to leave on the night train. Better shut up the
office.” And they tramped out into the mud, and I knew that as they
plowed up the street they were looking at each other as men do when
they feel a pity for some weak-minded lunatic who has stepped out in
front of the crowd with a thought or an act that is called unorthodox.
And I locked the door and sat before the fire polishing that editorial.
Collectors might pound on the door, paper and ink might run short—what
were these poor material things to one whose winged thoughts were to save
the country? Surely, I had it all planned out that night, and went home,
rising far up above the fog and rain, and bumping my head against the
stars! Do I not know just how Henry Barkman felt about his great oration?
Heaven give him the philosophy to endure with patience the day which
finally came to me when I had to realize that I was not an uplifter,
after all! And yet cursed be he who would, with a sneer, deny to youth
the glorious foolishness with which he
“Longs to clutch the golden keys;
To mold the mighty state’s decrees
And shape the whisper of the throne!”
And now, 37 years after, there is nothing left of all these dreams.
Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill have answered the last call.
“They know at last whose cause was right
In God the Father’s sight!”
Old Sol, the black man who turned the press, has passed on with them.
Years ago _The Southern Live Stock Journal_ was absorbed by a stronger
publication. It is doubtful if in all the town or country you could find
an old copy of the paper. Those great editorials which I climbed into the
clouds to write were evidently too thin and light for this world. They
have all sailed away far from the mind of man. The little building where
we started the candle flame which was to burn up all the prejudice and
depression in the South seems to be occupied as a negro hotel or boarding
house. The little shop where (with Sol on the crank of the press and I
feeding in the papers) we turned out what we felt to be a mental feast,
is now a kitchen where cow peas, bacon and greens and corn bread form a
more substantial food than we ever served up in printer’s ink. It was no
longer a molder of public opinion.
“_To what base uses we may return, Horatio._”
And yet the sky was blue, the day was fair—the vision had come true. I
wished that Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill might stand in front of the
old building and look about them. No longer a sea of mud, but smooth,
firm pavements. The sidewalks were lined with cars. Beautiful trees
shaded the streets, until the town seemed like a New England Village with
six generations behind it. Outside, stretching away in every direction,
was the thick, beautiful carpet of blue grass and clover. Here and there
was a young man in the uniform of the American Union. In the vaults of
the banks were great bundles of Liberty bonds. And a gray-haired man on
the street corner told me this:
“_You will find that the very States which sixty years ago tried to break
up the Union will, in the future, prove to be the very ones which must
hold it together._”
Yet let me tell Henry Barkman and the millions who felt as he did about
his oration, that no one in all that town remembered my former editorials
or the great work of the _Journal_. My literary work has been blown away
as completely as the clouds among which it was composed. At the end of
the great college commencement exercises a man came on the stage with a
great bunch of flowers and bowed in my direction. I am not much in the
habit of having verbal bouquets fired at me, but I will confess that I
thought: “Here is where my soul-inspiring editorial work is appreciated.
All things come round to him who will but wait.”
But this orator, like the rest of them, never dreamed that I ever tried
to “uplift the South.” He said I entered into the young life of the town
and was remembered with affection because I played baseball with skill
and taught that community how to pitch a curved ball!
And let me say to the Henry Barkmans who read this that the lesson of all
this is the truest thing I know. Many a man has gone out into life like
a knight on a crusade, armed with what he thinks are glorious weapons.
In after years people cannot remember what his weapons were, but he got
into their hearts with some simple, common thing which seemed foolish
beside his great deeds. Nobody remembered my brain children, though they
were embalmed in ink and cradled in a printing press. But I put a twist
on a baseball, overcame the force of gravity and made the ball dodge
around a corner, and my memory remains green for 40 years! Not one of my
old subscribers spoke of the paper, but seven of the old baseball club,
gray or bald, near-sighted or rheumatic, yet still with the old flame of
youth, got together.
I think you older people will get my point. For the benefit of Henry
Barkman and his friends perhaps I can do no better than to quote the
following:
“_God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;
and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things
that are mighty._”
HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES
“_Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said, that
the one-half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth._”
That was written by François Rabelais over 500 years ago. It is so true
that it has entered the language as a proverb, or “old saying.” We hear
it again and again in all classes of society. It is true that the great
majority of us has no idea of the life or the life ambitions of the great
world outside of our own little valley of thought. I suppose this failure
to understand the “other half” is one of the things which do most to keep
people apart and prevent anything like fair co-operation. It is the basis
of most of the bitter intolerance which has ever been used by the “ruling
classes” to keep the great mass of the people in subjection. Years ago
some old lord or baron would build a strong castle on a hill and make the
farmers for miles around believe that he “protected” them. Therefore,
they built his castle free, gave their sons for his soldiers, and toiled
on the land that he might live in idleness. And what did he “protect”
them from? Why, from another group of farmers a few miles away, who, in
like manner, were supporting another idle gang of cutthroats in another
strong castle. These two groups of farmers did not need to be “protected”
from each other. They had the same needs, the same wrongs and the same
desires. Left to understand each other and to work together, they would
have had no trouble, but would have led happier and far more prosperous
lives. As it was they did not understand “how the other half liveth,” and
thus they fought when they should have fraternized.
I find much of the same feeling between city people and farmers—consumers
and producers. They do not understand how “the other half liveth,”
and they find fault when they should from every point of economy work
together. Your city man thinks the farmer has a soft job, and that with
present high prices he is making a barrel of money. Either that or he
is a slow-thinking drudge—a sort of inferior being, who doesn’t know
any better than to carry the load which others strap on his back. He is
“the backbone of the country” all right in a political campaign—but the
backbone is merely a mechanical contrivance if you detach it from the
brain. And the average farmer regards the city worker or commuter as a
grafter—getting far more than he earns, and putting in short, easy days.
It isn’t all graft and ease by a long way. Many of these city workers
must travel miles to their jobs, and some of them put in longer hours
than the average farmer. Many of them save little or nothing, and the
wolf is always prowling around the door. Between these two classes it is
a case of not knowing “how the other half liveth,” and this failure to
understand has created a form of intolerance which separates two classes
about as the old barons separated the groups of farmers years ago.
And something of the same lack of tolerant understanding has separated
classes of farmers. The grain farmers, live-stock men, dairymen,
gardeners and fruit growers all think at times that they have the hardest
lot. The labor question, the markets or the weather all seem to turn
against them. For instance, the dairymen usually think their lot is
harder than that of others. They must work day after day in all sorts of
weather and under hard conditions. I know about this, for I have worked
on a dairy farm where conditions were very hard. Yet I also know that at
this season the average dairyman has a good job compared with the life of
the market gardener or fruit grower. On our own farm it has rained each
day and night for many days. Get into a sweet corn or tomato field and
pick the crop in a pouring rain, or pick early apples while the foliage
is like a great sponge. Then sort out and pack, load the truck and travel
through the rain to market, stand out in the rain and sell the load out
to peddlers and dealers, and then hurry back home for another round of
the same work. The fruit and vegetables are nearly as perishable as milk,
and must be rushed promptly away. The dairyman knows beforehand what
his milk will bring. The price may not be what he thinks is right, but
he knows for weeks or months in advance what he can surely expect. We
never know when we start what our stuff will bring. We must take what we
can get for perishable fruit. We know what we have already spent, and
what each load must bring in order to get our money back. Thus far corn
is about equal in price to last year, tomatoes are lower, apples are at
least 30 per cent lower, and so on. The dairyman has his troubles, but
let him follow this job for a month and he would realize that “there are
others.” In much the same way I can show that the potato men, the hay and
grain farmers, the sheep men and all the rest, have their troubles—and
hard ones at that. If farmers could only understand these things better,
and realize that there are thorns and tacks in every so-called “soft
job,” there would be greater tolerance in the world, and that is the only
thing that can ever lead to true co-operation and fair treatment.