CAN THE CRISIS BE AVERTED?
Our troubles have all resulted from false teachings which are
leading us farther and farther afield. The very rich will spend
nothing to correct the public mind and legislation seems
powerless to afford a remedy.
All this might have been prevented and possibly even now can be
avoided. It has been brought upon us in part by false education but
largely through evolution in our form of government, in our purpose of
government, and in industrial conditions. It could have been prevented
by correct education both inside and outside the schoolroom. It may
possibly be avoided by a speedy return to fundamental Americanism. But
whatever happens, no citizen can boast of patriotism until he has
sought a remedy; and no one is a patriot who will not sacrifice
everything to save the situation.
In this connection let me warn you not to expect any considerable
portion of the necessary work to be done by the very rich. They have so
long believed, and their experience has justified the conviction that
money will buy anything, that many of them seem to think their wealth
will enable them to buy liberty of a mob. A mob is always venal but it
can never be bribed by what it has the power to take. Did the wealthy
of France escape? They were the first to die. Have the rich of Russia
been spared? They have been the first to suffer. Possibly the rich may
be able to buy their choice of being mutilated before or after death.
The history of all revolutions of the kind that seems impending
justifies the prediction that the more money a man has the greater
certainty of his torture and ultimate death. Quite recently a very rich
man was asked to contribute to a campaign of education against
bolshevism. He wrote a patronizing letter acknowledging the importance
of the work, but expressed the opinion that it should be financed, not
by the rich, but by men worth thirty or forty thousand dollars.
“Accursed be the gold that gilds the narrow forehead of the fool.”
LEGISLATION OFFERS NO REMEDY
It is recorded that the children of Israel once upon a time got into
serious difficulty through worshipping a golden calf while Moses was on
the mountain getting the Moral Law. If American civilization is
idolatrous—and it seems not to be free from that sin—the object of
its worship is statute law, to the neglect of underlying principles
which make most laws unnecessary. In the last ten years over sixty-five
thousand statutes have been enacted by Congress and the state
legislatures and approved by executives. Meanwhile the evil we are now
considering, in common with most others recognized a decade ago, has in
the main increased. Neither the laws of nature, nor the laws of
economics, nor the laws of society, can be reversed by statute. We have
proceeded upon the theory that a republic can accomplish anything by
popular edict, but the tides come in whether prohibited by sovereign
king or by sovereign people.
A DIAGNOSIS
Before a disease can be treated with any hope of success, its cause, no
less than its manifestations, must be studied. American industries and
internal improvements were begun with American labor. I can remember
when girls in northern New England spent their winters in the factories
at Lowell and Manchester and returned to teach school during the
summer. When our industries outgrew the supply of American labor,
agents were sent abroad and immigrants were brought over under
contract. When Congress forbade the admission of contract labor, and
wages still advanced, the world heard of it and a polyglot mass of all
kindreds and tribes and complexions came flocking to our shores,
because, as we have seen elsewhere in this volume, labor was better
rewarded here than elsewhere, and relatively better rewarded than
capital. Naturally, American-bred boys and girls did not fancy working
side by side with foreigners who did not speak the English language,
who had not imbibed American ideas and were strangers to American
standards of living. So they ceased to accept work, and commenced
looking for situations.
I visited a mill in Passaic, New Jersey, where the rules were posted in
five languages, and a teacher in one of the schools told me there were
nineteen languages spoken in her room. In thousands of establishments,
laborers, many of whose names are unpronounceable, are known by
numbers. Think of an American citizen, outside of a penitentiary, being
identified and known by number. Will any wage satisfy that man? What
wage or salary will you accept and be known to your boss only by
number, and stand in line and accept a pay envelope at the end of the
week as “437”? An increased wage may temporarily satisfy the intellect
of a man thus environed but it will not satisfy his heart hunger.
There are only two demands that a laborer knows how to make: He can ask
shorter hours, and he can demand more wages, but neither will satisfy,
for neither is the thing he needs. Would you like to know what it
is for which the very soul of every man—laborer no less than
capitalist—cries and without which he will not be appeased? You do not
need to be told. You have only to hark back to the days of your youth.
You have only to study mental philosophy, using your own inner
consciousness as a text book, and you will find the answer. What the
American laborer demands, what the American citizen, regardless of his
surroundings, needs, is recognition. He wants a voice. His very being
demands some measure of responsibility. He needs to feel that in some
way he has contributed to results and that someone besides himself
knows it. God save America from a generation in whom these divinely
implanted aspirations have been stifled.
Being unable to formulate these longings, the laborer limits his
demands to the two things which the walking delegate tells him are the
only things necessary—shorter hours and more pay. When he gets them
the real need of his being remains untouched and he repeats his demand.
When his employer seeks to do something for him, instead of _doing
something together with him_, he resents both his charity and his
sympathy, and spurns his advice.
Men who are required to deal with men ought to give primary study to
human nature, and omit the study of angelic nature until they join the
angels. Suppose we continue this analysis of human nature for therein
we may find the seed of truth that shall, if nurtured, fructify in
blessing to us all.
A few years ago the Chamber of Commerce of one of our very large cities
gave a Lincoln Day Banquet at which the speaker of the House of
Representatives of Congress was the guest of honor. Among other wise
philosophies that fell from his lips was this: “I do not know your
personal genesis but I will guess that less than fifty years ago nine
out of ten of the intelligent, virile leaders of production, who own
and represent capital, as well as the high officials of your state, and
of the nation, who sit at this table, were bright-faced schoolboys in
the common schools, ‘building castles in Spain.’ If this Chamber shall
repeat this banquet a half century hence, you can find your successors
in the public schools of today ‘building castles in Spain.’” The
thought I gather is not the trite expression that “The youth of today
is the adult of tomorrow,” nor that the public school is the nursery of
greatness. The thought I get is that he who is destined to achieve
prominence in any walk of life is the youth who “builds castles in
Spain,” who imagines, who hopes, and who goes out to fight for the
fulfillment of his dreams.
What is the probability of a man who cannot speak the English language,
and who receives nothing more tangible than a pay envelope and its
contents, handed to him by number, sitting by the cot of his son and
inspiring the imagination of the coming American? If he says anything,
is he not likely to say—are there not a million homes where this is
the only appropriate thing that can be said: “My boy, I am sorry that I
brought you into the world. I see nothing in life for you. The future
is not only dumb but awful dark.”
The kind of men who made this country were told a different story at
their trundle beds. They were inspired with hope, for their parents
were full of hope. They were filled with expectation, for they knew
their parents were expectant. If we revive contented, hopeful
Americanism we must inspire “castle building.” We must fill the youth
with hope and whet his imagination to keenest edge until he will
intuitively seek literature instead of twaddle with which to express
his aspiration.
“I stand at the end of the past, where the future begins I stand,
Emperors lie in the dust, others shall rise to command;
But greater than rulers unborn, greater than kings who have reigned
Am I that have hope in my heart and victories still to be gained.
Under my feet the world, over my head the sky,
Here at the center of things, in the living presence am I.”