[Sidenote: Source of All Wealth]
And now, comes a scrap of evidence that is valuable because it is
furnished by a man whose experience is wide among the people who make
the wealth which we all enjoy; to whom we are directly indebted for the
comforts and luxuries of life; and whose endorsement of an idea or
reform is necessary to make it become a feature of our system or
government. He went west many years ago from New York, a mechanic by
trade, and found employment in the shops of one of the great railroads.
In time he was advanced to the position of foreman. In private life he
is now a Baron Bountiful in the service of everybody within his reach.
As Masterworkman of Labor Organizations, he has urged the just cause of
his confreres with the success that follows earnest conviction. In the
intimate confidence of his employers, he has presented their side of a
controversy to the men without any of the misrepresentation of a
demagogue.
[Sidenote: Brings Sunniest Comfort]
He is the President of a sound Building and Loan Association, without
salary, not to make money for himself, but for the purpose of helping
his men to build and own homes; and those who have felt his assistance
in that direction, and owe him debts of gratitude for various
benefactions, are numbered by the hundreds. Whenever there is sickness,
he brings solid help and the sunniest of comfort; and when there is
death, he knows just how best to serve the afflicted family with those
delicate attentions which relieve them from repulsively material
details, his presence always bringing comfort even under circumstances
in which people want most to be alone. His sympathy is universal, and
reflects itself into the hearts of all with whom he comes in contact.
[Sidenote: Emancipation Appreciated]
To such a man, one would naturally think the depressing passions were
strangers, and that he must have been born without them; but he assures
me that he was a slave to them for many years, and that he was
frightened out of harboring them by a physician, and that whatever good
he has accomplished in his humble sphere (as he calls it) he attributes
to the partial Emancipation which his doctor's warning led him to
enforce upon himself. The story that follows was elicited on hearing an
outline of the theory of possible Emancipation as presented in these
pages.
[Sidenote: "The Old Gentleman Needs it"]
"Stop right there: don't go any farther till I have talked with you
about that part of it. It is as true as gospel, but I never knew what
it was. I have had an experience which makes me know that it is true,
but I didn't know the reason for it. When the doctors told me that I
must quit worrying and take it easy, or medicine would do me no good,
and I would die, why didn't they tell me that anger and worry were not
necessary, and that it was they that I was suffering from? I would have
understood it better, and I wouldn't have had so much trouble about
fearing I would have them back some time in spite of myself. Why didn't
the preachers tell me this when I was a boy, and let me begin to live
then, instead of waiting till I got to be an old man or pretty near to
it? You can bet that my boys will know this thing right away, and live
it too, and I want my men to know it. It is the only thing they need to
complete their happiness. The old gentleman needs it, and Mr.----, and
Mr---- (mentioning a number of well known men who are their own worst
enemies, who harm no one but themselves, but whose abuse of self,
through worry, is as merciless as the tortures of the Inquisition); and
what a blessing it would be for the women! See here, I want a hundred
of those books as soon as they are published, and I know where they
will do a heap of good. They will be better than the medicine of all
the doctors, and do a lot of good besides. I'm going to commit what you
have told me to memory, so as to tell people about it if I haven't got
a book by me. You see that I know all about this, for I have had an
experience. When I was a youngster, I was naturally ambitious, and
pretty smart with the tools, and 'took' with my employers, and finally
got to be superintendent. Then I got to be more ambitious, especially
after I was married and the children came. I wanted them to have a good
education and be fitted to be gentlemen, which I knew their mother's,
and I might remark incidentally, my own blood entitled them to be. I
was pretty sensitive, and was always standing up for my rights. I was
too apt to worry. I had not heard what you have told me and thought
worry necessary. If I had not worried I would not have got angry.
[Sidenote: "Got to be Superintendent"]
[Sidenote: It Became a Habit]
[Sidenote: "Frightened out of my Wits"]
[Sidenote: Anger and Worry Caused Sickness]
[Sidenote: Emancipation Makes Good Neighbors]
[Sidenote: "Looking Backward" from Emancipation]
"When I got to be superintendent I thought that one of the things that
I had to do was to be sure and maintain my dignity, and show it by
occasionally making believe mad at something. At first I did not feel
it half as much as I showed it; but I thought it was part of the
business of a boss to get mad, until finally it got to be a habit, and
grew on me till I was in a state of anger most of the time. I also
thought that I had to worry about things, or I would not show the
proper respect for my responsibilities. It was the way I had of letting
myself feel that I was carrying a terrible burden and earning my
salary. The trouble was that, while it was partly play-acting at first,
it came to be habit, and worked on my health in the end. The doctors
dosed me with all sorts of medicine. I was a regular pigeon, and gave
up many a hard-earned dollar to them for no good at all. One day Dr.
L----, to whom I went as a last resort, for I was beginning to have
dizzy spells and twitching in the face that was serious, asked me a lot
of questions about myself and my habits and duties. I told him frankly,
and when I had done so he said: 'There is no use giving you any
medicine, you have got to quit worrying and take it easy; that is the
only trouble with you. If you keep on with your worry I will have to
give your family a certificate of death; so, if you don't want me to do
that, you just quit your worrying and take life easy. Whatever you do,
don't get into fits of anger, for that is more wearing to a man in your
condition than anything else.' Well, to 'fess up and tell you the
truth, I got frightened out of my wits. I hadn't got near enough to
eighty (my limit) to think about dying, and I didn't want to do it
right then, especially as I hadn't got Mary and the boys well enough
fixed to leave. The other doctors had made a monkey of me, and took my
money, and told me that I would be all right in a few days; but this
honest German told me the truth and set me to thinking. I didn't say a
word to anyone, but made up my mind I would take his advice. At first I
thought that I was shirking some of the duties of a superintendent,
when I quit getting mad and worrying; but I squared it with myself by
saying to myself, 'Better be a tame donkey for the company than a dead
one.' Well, I didn't know it at the time; that is, I didn't know the
cause of it, but from that time I have just had luck under my wing all
the time. I have pleased my employers, and I have pleased the men, and
things have been coming my way in great shape, and they are still
a-coming. Why, I see it all as plain as the nose on your face. Those
little devils that keep a man back, and keep him from being happy, have
no business there by rights; and all you have got to know is that they
are poachers, and all you have got to do is to tell them to 'git.' And
just see how it would work if everybody knew this as I see it. If you
knew that your neighbor knew that Emancipation was possible, you would
know at the same time that he was no fool, and that, knowing it, he had
become Emancipated, of course, and there would be a trustful sympathy
established at once, and you would pull together and never apart after
that. If his fence accidentally encroached an inch on your land, you
would be glad of it; or, if your fence had been set on his side of the
legal line, he would not object; and so it would go on between you, and
you would be happy and good neighbors to each other. Why, I would
rather my men would have that secret and day's wages, than a million of
dollars without it; and my boys, if I don't leave them a cent, I will
leave them full of this secret, and won't worry about their future
happiness. I was much interested in that book you gave me several years
ago called 'Looking Backward.' What the author said about co-operation,
and all that, was all right and very beautiful; but I didn't take much
stock in it because I had such a poor opinion of human nature, that I
didn't think people could quit grabbing and get down to brass tacks in
a co-operative way. But if you can spread the idea of Mental
Emancipation as you have told it to me (and I don't see what can help
its spreading like wildfire as soon as it gets out), the social
paradise pictured in 'Looking Backward' will come as a matter of
course; and I see it a-coming. If you take off a brake I can see how a
car can run down a hill, but with the brake on I couldn't see how you
could push it down.
[Sidenote: Free-Masonry of Emancipation]
"The more I think of this thing the bigger it gets, and it is a sure
winner. Now suppose my family, and the B. family on the corner, and the
N. family next door had found out the secret, anybody that couldn't
grasp it couldn't live in the street, he would feel so uncomfortable.
In fact, if there were such an one, we could put him down for a crazy
man or an idiot, and treat him with the same consideration we treat
such weak people.
[Sidenote: Lawyer's Brains Prostituted]
[Sidenote: Emancipation Prevents Robbery]
"Or suppose the men over in the shops were the joint possessors of the
secret; why, the first thing you would know they would all be at work
on some co-operative plan for themselves. Not that any of us have
anything against the employers we work for, for there are no better in
the land; but it is the blamed stupidity of the system that makes men
work hard for small wages to feed the flames of ruinous rivalry. Look
at the brains locked up in the pates of lawyers which have nothing
better to do than to mix things up so that they will get the job of
unmixing them. Think what would happen if all that education and all
that ingenuity were turned towards invention! Most of the tangles they
are employed to unravel should never have existed, and would not have
existed in a community where the secret of Emancipation had been told.
In all of the clumsiness of competition, and the expense of pullback
methods, labor, the source of all we have, pays the whole freight in
one way or another; and the reason it does so is because of the little
parasite devils that are sawing wood and hatching eggs in the minds of
each individual worker and producer. With these little devils at work
in him he is suspicious, selfish, jealous, and what not else, because
he thinks his neighbor and fellow workman are similarly possessed, and
he must be so too to get along. Under this condition cohesion is
impossible, and schemers prey upon the separateness of the producing
community to rob it of as much of the product of its labor as possible.
Suppose that the secret of possible Emancipation should become general
(and for the life of me I cannot see how it can fail to do so), there
would be confidence, trustfulness, cohesion, ambition to be useful, and
the energy of the healthy child for play-work would return to the
rejuvenated man, and he would play work under those conditions and not
feel that it was a mark of servitude and necessity, and the land would
sing with the sound of willing industry."
[Sidenote: Emancipation Breeds Eloquence]
My friend had become eloquent under the inspiration of the possible
establishment of a Heaven on earth to which he could invite his
friends. Do not think that this is not a true report of a conversation
in real life. My friend is a real character; is well read and educated
by observation and experience, and could succeed in almost any position
in life except in such as did not give "value received" for the service
rendered. He is one of those "Noblemen by Nature" to whom the world
owes so much, but pays so little; but he is happy in doing good, and
the field he works in is one of the richest for that harvest, and the
compensation he prizes most highly, is the happiness he is able to give
others. He had the secret of True Living forced on him, in spite of the
example of the world, without knowing the true cause or value of his
good fortune; but his happiness was increased many fold when he learned
that it was his birthright; was a possession of which no one could rob
him; and would remain his as long as he lived. And as he has faith in
the Eternal Evolution of everything, he feels that, freed from the
depressing passions, there will be no end to his growth; that, at the
so-called middle age of human tenure, he is but in the beginning of
life; or, if not that, that each day is a wealth of joy unto itself in
spite of any external conditions; for he has found that "the kingdom of
Heaven is at hand" and that a branch of it has been established in his
own heart.
[Sidenote: Heaven is at Hand]
[Sidenote: Key-stones and Cornerstones]
[Sidenote: Cripple can be greater than a king]
All men are not constituted alike. In the economy of Nature it is her
purpose that no two things are made alike. In a million years a million
men could not count the spears of grass in the fields, or the hairs of
the heads of men; yet no patient investigator has been able to find any
two of them that did not differ from every other one when put under the
lens of the microscope. One thousand millions of humans inhabit this
earth. Each has essentially the same form, the same two eyes, the same
mouth, the same ears and hands and arms; and yet even in the case of
twins, where the nearest approach to similarity comes, the mother never
can mistake the one for the other. If you are unlike others, it is
because nature chose to cast you in a different mould to serve some
wise purpose; and with that form, comes the God-given essence of the
Divine, whose presence and growth are evidenced by an innate yearning
for spirituality. Much spirituality lifts a man above his less
spiritual fellows and makes of him a cornerstone, or a keystone, or
some other important segment of the social structure; and lack of it
condemns him to be a bit of rubble, or an atom of filling. The
cornerstones and the keystones help and support each other in the
stately arch, while the rubble and the atoms fall apart and become
dirt, when allowed to find their level. Which shall we choose to
become: the keystone of the arch, or some of the dirt of the earth
beneath it? Which shall we choose: happiness, health, growth,
usefulness, rest, and a fitting relationship to the Divine, or the
reverse? Each is what God made him plus what he can attain by growth.
Through eradication of the cankerous passions; through the extirpation
of the mental weeds; the dwarf may grow to be greater than the king;
and all can freely and fully enjoy life and growth, when they have
learned the A-B-C of True Living. The grammar, and the rhetoric, and
the poetry, and perhaps a higher intelligence than we know of now may
follow, and are sure to follow; but they will be but brighter phases of
happiness already attained.