This world would be a delightful place to live in—if it were not for
the people. They really cause all the trouble. Man's worst enemy is
always man. He began to throw the responsibility of his transgressions
on some one else in the Garden of Eden, and he has been doing so ever
since.
The greater part of the pain, sorrow and misery in life is purely a
human invention, yet man, with cowardly irreverence, dares to throw the
responsibility on God. It comes through breaking laws, laws natural,
physical, civic, mental or moral. These are laws which man knows, but
he disregards; he takes chances; he thinks he can dodge results in some
way. But Nature says, "He who breaks, pays." There are no dead-letter
laws on the divine statute-books of life. When a man permits a
torchlight procession to parade through a powder magazine, it is not
courteous for him to refer to the subsequent explosion as "one of the
mysterious workings of Providence."
Nine tenths of the world's sorrow, misfortune and unhappiness is
preventable. The daily newspapers are the great chroniclers of the
dominance of the unnecessary. Paragraph after paragraph, column after
column, and page after page of the dark story—accidents, disasters,
crime, scandal, human weakness and sin—might be checked off with the
word "preventable." In each instance were our information full enough,
our analysis keen enough, we could trace each back to its cause, to
the weakness or the wrong from which it emanated. Sometimes it is
carelessness, inattention, neglect of duty, avarice, anger, jealousy,
dissipation, betrayal of trust, selfishness, hypocrisy, revenge,
dishonesty,—any of a hundred phases of the preventable.
That which _can_ be prevented, _should_ be prevented. It all rests
with the individual. The "preventable" exists in three degrees: First,
that which is due to the individual solely and directly; second, that
which he suffers through the wrong-doing of those around him, other
individuals; third, those instances wherein he is the unnecessary
victim of the wrongs of society, the innocent legatee of the folly of
humanity—and society is but the massing of thousands of individuals
with the heritage of manners, customs and laws they have received from
the past.
We sometimes feel heart-sick and weary in facing failure, when the
fortune that seemed almost in our fingers slips away because of the
envy, malice or treachery of some one else. We bow under the weight
of a sorrow that makes all life grow dark and the star of hope fade
from our vision; or we meet some unnecessary misfortune with a
dumb, helpless despair. "It is all wrong," we say, "it is cruel, it
is unjust. Why is it permitted?" And, in the very intensity of our
feeling, we half-unconsciously repeat the words over and over again,
in monotonous iteration, as if in some way the very repetition might
bring relief, might somehow soothe us. Yet, in most instances, it could
be prevented. No suffering is caused in the world by right. Whatever
sorrow there is that is preventable, comes from inharmony or wrong of
some kind.
In the divine economy of the universe most of the evil, pain and
suffering are unnecessary, even when overruled for good, and perhaps,
if our knowledge were perfect, it would be seen that none is necessary,
that all is preventable. The fault is mine, or yours, or the fault
of the world. It is always individual. The world itself is but the
cohesive united force of the thoughts, words and deeds of millions
who have lived or who are living, like you and me. By individuals has
the great wrong that causes our preventable sorrow been built up, by
individuals must it be weakened and transformed to right. And in this,
too, it is to a great degree our fault; we care so little about rousing
public sentiment, of lashing it into activity unless it concerns us
individually.
The old Greek fable of Atlas, the African king, who supported the world
on his shoulders, has a modern application. The _individual_ is the
Atlas upon whom the fate of the world rests to-day. Let each individual
do his best,—and the result is foreordained; it is but a matter of
the unconquerable massing of the units. Let each individual bear his
part as faithfully as though all the responsibility rested on him, yet
as calmly, as gently and as unworried as though all the responsibility
rested on others.
Most accidents are preventable—as at Balaclava, "someone has
blundered." One of the great disasters of the nineteenth century was
the Johnstown flood, where the bursting of a dam caused the loss of
more than six thousand lives. The flood was not a mere accident, it was
a crime. A leaking dam, for more than a year known to be unsafe, known
to be unable to withstand any increased pressure, stood at the head of
the valley. Below it lay a chain of villages containing over forty-five
thousand persons in the direct line of the flood. When the heavy rains
came the weakened dam gave way. Had there been _one_ individual, one
member of the South Fork Fishing Club brave enough to have done merely
his duty, _one_ member with the courage to so move his fellows and
to stir up public action to make the barrier safe, over six thousand
murders could have been prevented.
When a tired engineer, sleepy from overwork, can no longer cheat
nature of her needed rest, and, drowsing for a moment in his cab,
fails to see the red signal light of danger, or to heed the exploding
of the warning torpedo, the wreck that follows is not chargeable to
the Almighty. It is but an awful memorial of a railroad corporation's
struggle to save two dollars. One ounce of prevention is worth six
pounds of coroner's inquest. It is a crime to balance the safety and
sacredness of human life in the scales with the petty saving that comes
from transforming a man into a mechanism and forgetting he has either
a soul or a body. True, just and wise labor laws are part of society's
weapon for fighting the preventable.
When a terrible fire makes a city desolate and a nation mourn, the
investigation that follows usually shows that a little human foresight
could have prevented it, or at least, lessened the horror of it all.
If chemicals or dynamite are stored in any building in excess of
what wise legislation declares is safe, some one has been cruelly
careless. Perhaps it is some inspector who has been disloyal to his
trust, by permitting bribes to chloroform his sense of duty. If the
lack of fire-escapes adds its quota to the list of deaths, or if the
avarice of the owner has made his building a fire-trap, public feeling
becomes intense, the newspapers are justly loud in their protests,
and in demands that the guilty ones be punished. "If the laws already
on the statute books do not cover the situation," we hear from day
to day, "new laws will be framed to make a repetition of the tragedy
impossible"; we are promised all kinds of reforms; the air seems filled
with a spirit of regeneration; the mercury of public indignation rises
to the point where "fever-heat" seems a mild, inadequate term.
Then, as the horror begins to fade in the perspective of the past,
men go quietly back to their own personal cares and duties, and the
mighty wave of righteous protest that threatened so much, dies in
gentle lapping on the shore. What has been all men's concern seems
soon to concern no one. The tremendous energy of the authorities seems
like the gesture of a drunken man, that starts from his shoulder with
a force that would almost fell an ox but when it reaches the hand it
has expended itself, and the hand drops listlessly in the air with
hardly power enough to disturb the serenity of a butterfly. There is
always a little progress, a slight advance, and it is only the constant
accumulation of these steps that is giving to the world greater
dominion over the preventable.
Constant vigilance is the price of the conquest of the preventable. We
have no right to admit any wrong or evil in the world as necessary,
until we have exhausted every precaution that human wisdom can suggest
to prevent it. When a man with a pistol in his right hand, clumsily
covered with a suspicious-looking handkerchief, moved along in a line
of people, and presenting his left hand to President McKinley, pressed
his weapon to the breast of the Chief Executive of the American people,
some one of the secret service men, paid by the nation to guard their
ruler, should have watched so zealously that the tragedy would have
been impossible. Two Presidents had already been sacrificed, but twenty
years of immunity had brought a dreamy sense of security that lessened
the vigilance. We should emulate the example of the insurance companies
who decline certain risks that are "extra hazardous."
Poverty has no necessary place in life. It is a disease that results
from the weakness, sin, and selfishness of humanity. Nature is
boundless in her generosity; the world produces sufficient to
give food, clothing, and comfort to every individual. Poverty is
preventable. Poverty may result from the shiftlessness, idleness,
intemperance, improvidence, lack of purpose or evil-doing of the
individual himself.
If the causes do not exist in the individual, they may be found in the
second class, in the wrong-doing of those around him, in the oppression
of labor by capital, in the grinding process by which corporations seek
to crush the individual. The individual may be the victim of any of a
thousand phases of the wrong of others. The poverty caused by the third
class, the weakness and injustice of human laws and human institutions,
is also preventable, but to reach the cause requires time and united
heroic effort of all individuals.
In the battle against poverty, those writers who seek to inflame the
poor against the rich, to foment discontent between labor and capital,
do grievous wrong to both. What the world needs is to have the two
brought closer together in the bonds of human brotherhood. The poor
should learn more of the cares, responsibilities, unrecorded charities,
and absorbing worries of the rich; the rich should learn more
intimately the sorrows, privations, struggles, and despair of poverty.
The world is learning the great truth, that the best way to prevent
crime is to study the sociologic conditions in which it flourishes,
to seek to give each man a better chance of living his real life by
removing, if possible, the elements that make wrong easy, and to him,
almost necessary, and by inspiring him to fight life's battle bravely
with all the help others can give him. Science is coöperating with
religion in striving to conquer the evil at the root instead of the
evil manifest as crime in the fruit of the branches. It is so much
wiser to prevent than to cure; to keep some one from being burned is so
much better than inventing new poultices for unnecessary hurts.
It is ever the little things that make up the sum of human misery. All
the wild animals of the world combined do but trifling damage, when
compared with the ravages of insect pests. The crimes of humanity, the
sins that make us start back affrighted, do not cause as much sorrow
and unhappiness in life as the multitude of little sins, of omission
and commission, that the individual, and millions like him, must
meet every day. They are not the evil deeds that the law can reach
or punish, they are but the infinity of petty wrongs for which man
can never be tried until he stands with bowed head before the bar of
justice of his own conscience.
The bitter words of anger and reproach that rise so easily to our
lips and give us a moment's fleeting satisfaction in thus venting our
feelings, may change the current of the whole life of some one near to
us. The thoughtless speech, revealing our lack of tact and sympathy,
cannot be recalled and made nothing by the plea, "I didn't think." To
sensitive souls this is no justification; they feel that our hearts
should be so filled with the instinct of love that our lips would need
no tutor or guardian.
Our unfulfilled duty may bring unhappiness and misery to hundreds. The
dressmaker's bill that a rich woman may toss lightly aside, as being an
affair of no moment, to be settled at her serene pleasure, may bring
sorrow, privation or even failure to her debtor, and through her to a
long chain of others. The result, if seen in all its stern reality,
seems out of all proportion to the cause. There are places in the Alps,
where great masses of snow are so lightly poised that even the report
of a gun might start a vibration that would dislodge an avalanche, and
send it on its death-mission into the valley.
The individual who would live his life to the best that is within him
must make each moment one of influence for good. He must set before
him as one of his ideals, to be progressively realized in each day of
his living: "If I cannot accomplish great deeds in the world, I will
do all the good I can by the faithful performance of the duties that
come to my hand and being ever ready for all opportunities. And I will
consecrate myself to the conquest of the preventable."
Let the individual say each day, as he rises new-created to face a new
life: "To-day no one in the world shall suffer because I live. I will
be kind, considerate, careful in thought and speech and act. I will
seek to discover the element that weakens me as a power in the world,
and that keeps me from living up to the fullness of my possibility.
That weakness I will master to-day. I will conquer it, at any cost."
When any failure or sorrow comes to the individual, he should be glad
if he can prove to himself that it was his fault,—for then he has the
remedy in his own hands. Lying, intrigue, jealousy are never remedies
that can _prevent_ an evil. They postpone it, merely to augment it.
They are merely deferring payment of a debt which has to be met
later,—with compound interest. It is like trying to put out a fire by
pouring kerosene on the flames.
Jealousy in the beginning is but a thought,—in the end it may mean the
gallows. Selfishness often assumes seemingly harmless guises, yet it is
the foundation of the world's unhappiness. Disloyalty may seem to be
a rare quality, but society is saturated with it. Judas acquired his
reputation because of his proficiency in it. Sympathy which should be
the atmosphere of every individual life is as rare as human charity.
The world is suffering from an over-supply of unnecessary evils,
created by man. They should be made luxuries, then man could dispense
with them.
The world needs societies formed of members pledged to the individual
conquest of preventable pain and sorrow. The individual has no right
that runs counter to the right of any one else. There are no solo parts
in the eternal music of life. Each must pour out his life in duo with
every other. Every moment must be one of choice, of good or of evil.
Which will the individual choose? His life will be his answer. Let him
dedicate his life to making the world around him brighter, sweeter and
better, and by his conquest of preventable pain and sorrow he will
day by day get fuller revelation of the glory of the possibilities of
individual living, and come nearer and nearer to the realization of his
ideals.