Someone Hit.
All progress injures someone.
That is because the roots of bad institutions twine around good as well as evil, and when they are pulled up both good and evil suffer.
To stop a fire it is often necessary to dynamite buildings as yet unreached by the flames.
To cure a disease the whole body must go to bed, and not merely the diseased portion.
Take such a reform as the single tax, granting that it is a reform, which many doubt. It aims to obliterate private ownership of land, thus placing taxation for the first time on a wise and just basis. It cannot be enforced without seriously injuring all whose property is in land.
Take the lower tariff, granting also that that is a wise reform. It works serious injury to those whose business has become established on the basis of the high tariff.
Whenever a change is suggested, there is a call for self-denial, for unselfishness. Each of us may be hit. Each of us may be called upon to suffer for the good of the whole. Each of us, that is, may be required to illustrate the fundamental principle of Christianity.
In the Gaillard Cut.
The great slide in the Gaillard Cut of the Panama Canal involved 5,500 feet of the waterway. The first week after the slide 209,000 cubic yards of material were taken out, but the slide continued so as to block the channel as much as before. Scores of ships were sent around Cape Horn, the Canal was declared closed, and General Goethals had to remain at the Canal for at least six months longer than he had intended.
This was disappointing, but it was to have been expected. Slides will continue until the hills bordering the Canal have reached a state of equilibrium. As they push in the Canal must be scooped out. To slice off their tops or to build retaining walls would be enormously expensive.
The whole experience is much like what happens whenever any change or improvement is made in life. Slides are to be expected. The change must fit into the order of things. It will make much trouble at first. But if it is a real and permanent improvement, is not the trouble worthwhile?
Follow the Steel!
Do you know what "following the steel" is? This is the meaning.
In putting up one of our immense modern office buildings, the first task, of course, and generally the most difficult and long-drawn-out task, is to make a good foundation. After this the steel framework of the structure is erected. As it is swung into place, great piece after piece, the riveters follow fast, and bind all parts firmly together. Up goes the big skeleton, story after story, till it towers in the air as high as Bunker Hill monument, to adopt a Bostonian superlative.
But as fast as the steel rises, the fire-proof tiling may be laid, and the brick or stone may be built up to fill the sides of the monster cube and shut in from the world its scores of compartments. That is "following the steel," when tile-workers and bricklayers and stone-masons keep close on the heels of the steel-men, and rise into the clouds only a little behind them. And nowadays a twenty-five-story building can be erected in three months.
Well, that would seem to be enough, but I am not satisfied to stop there. I would have men "follow the steel," not only in literal building, but in that even more substantial building we call life.
For the framework of our life is supplied us. It is the circumstances in which we are set, our friends, our fortune, our opportunities, and our powers. It is put together by unseen workmen, piece after piece rising rapidly before us. Every day new tasks. Every hour fresh powers. At every turn some opening opportunity.
Follow the steel!
Follow it closely, not letting yourself fall a day behind. A day behind is a yawning gulf, almost impossible to fill.
Follow it blithely, a light in your eye, a song on your lips, good cheer in your heart.
Follow it with your best, and all of your best. Build in the material laid ready to your hand. Build it fair and firm. Build it straight and true. Build it so that it will stand inspection.
And so follow that when at last, the steel all up, you are ready to "bring forth the top-stone with shoutings," you may receive and deserve the applauding cry, "Grace, grace unto it!"
The Watch-Key.
The Watch-key: So, there you are, you supplanter!
The Stem-winder: What do you mean?
The Watch-key: You know well enough, taking work out of one's hands.
The Stem-winder: But if I do the same work in a better way?
The Watch-key: No one can wind a watch better than I can!
The Stem-winder: Now, possibly; but how about the time when your hollow square is worn quite smooth and round?
The Watch-key: Well, anyway, you have no right to make me useless, a mere bit of junk!
The Stem-winder: Did your master never lose you?
The Watch-key: Ye-e-es, once in a while.
The Stem-winder: Very often, I fancy, and lost much time and temper as well; now it is impossible to lose me; I am always at hand.
The Watch-key: I don't care. I think I'll organize a protest of Watch-keys against these so-called "new conveniences."
The Stem-winder: Protest as much as you please. So long as we are really convenient you will have no influence at all against us.
The Skyscraper Nautilus.
When the steel-frame skyscraper was a new thing, fears were entertained for its safety. Rust will eat the steel frame, it was said. Electrolysis will dissolve the steel, it was declared. Vibration from machinery and from the wind will destroy the building, it was confidently asserted. But now skyscrapers ten years old are being torn down, and their protected steel framework is found to be as strong as when it was first erected.
And yet the skyscrapers are being torn down; and why? To build higher skyscrapers, skyscrapers more convenient, skyscrapers better adapted to the demands of present-day business. As someone has said, the chief enemy of the modem skyscraper is the more modern skyscraper. Ground is so expensive that the best use must be made of it. Taxes are increasing and must be earned. The best of the old is not good enough for the new.
This is as it should be. "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!" The chambered nautilus is the only fit tenement for a growing man, or city, or nation.
"Stuck!"
I was talking with an artist about, other artists. The one with whom I was speaking had been making marked progress. Every illustration she handed in to my paper was better than the last. The work of another artist came under discussion. "Oh, he?" she exclaimed. "Why, he is just exactly where he was ten years ago." And that was the precise truth.
I was talking with a lawyer. "The most discouraging thing about stenographers," he said, "is that they stand still. Now a stenographer in a lawyer's office, why, she has unlimited opportunities. If she is ambitious, and will work and observe and study, she can make herself absolutely indispensable. She can know all about the lawyer's business, and just about as much law as he does; and she can command almost any salary. But most stenographers stay just where they were when they were first hired."
Those conversations, coming the same day, set me to thinking. "Are you getting stuck in a groove?" I asked of myself. And I answered myself, "If you are, you must get out of it, if it takes a charge of dynamite!"
The Rights of Old Fogies
Wellesley, Mass., once had a little altercation with a street railway company. What Wellesley objected to was the fierce searchlights used on the street-cars. They were great arc lights, so exceedingly bright and dazzling as they swung into sight that they frightened the horses, confused pedestrians, and made bicyclers uncertain whither to turn. The sudden glare had caused some bad accidents, and the citizens thought themselves justified in protesting.
In reply the railway urged very properly that they had gone to the trouble and expense of fitting up the cars with the arc lights in response to a public demand. The public requires very fast going, and when a car is going rapidly, the track must be lighted up far in advance, or an obstacle cannot be seen soon enough to permit a stop.
The result has been a compromise. The cars may employ the powerful lights along the country stretches where they can make the most speed and where the roads are dark; but when they enter a town, where the streets are already well lighted, and where there are many people who are using less modern modes of progress, the searchlights must be turned off or obscured.
When I heard of the dispute, I could not help thinking of some search-light men I know. They are brilliant fellows. They know how to let their lights shine, and they are arc lights. They keep right up with the times; indeed, a little ahead of the times.
They go fast, very fast. Toot, toot, to-o-o-ot! Get out of their way!
And sometimes it is quite confusing. Sometimes it is fairly blinding. Even those with a bicycle up-to-dateness are dazzled, while as to old-fashioned pedestrians and buggies, they are nonplused, and often upset.
"Go slowly!" I feel like insisting, when these mental arc lights come my way. "Remember, other folks are in the world as well as you. They too pay taxes for the use of the streets. They too have a right to their legs,—legs in fair condition and in appropriate numbers. When you are off by yourselves, sirs, out in the country, you may speed as you please, and turn on your most brilliant lights; but when you are near other folks, heed the rights of the old fogy!"
It is well to go fast, on occasion, in philosophy, in theology, in reform, in politics; it is well to go fast, out in the fields. But not along Broadway.
Progress and Applause.
One of the delights of traveling in a railway train, especially through country districts, is the sight of children waving at the cars. No wonder they do it, and no wonder that many of us wave back at them. All motion is exhilarating, both to the mover and to the spectator. The swift bicycle, the graceful automobile, a galloping horse, a darting bird, a sailboat dashing through the waves—these fill the heart with gladness, and our hats are instinctively in the air.
If you want folks to applaud you, then, in the terse language of the day, "get a move on!" Progress is the sure promoter of praise. Run in the way of God's commandments, as the Bible bids. Speed on the pathway of duty. Set sail to the wind of destiny. Put on full steam and forge ahead! You have only to see to your progress, and all around you will take care of the applause.
Toot! Toot!
Why are they cutting down that fine elm?
It is in the way of the autos.
Why are they tearing down that picturesque old house?
It hid the autos coming around the corner.
Why are they tearing up that beautiful row of flowering shrubs?
It prevented the autos from getting a clear view at the bend of the road.
Why are they straightening out that street? It used to have a lovely curve.
A lot of auto accidents happened there.
Why are they cutting down that hill, and spoiling the fine view from the top?
The grade was too steep for autos.
Must shade give way to glare, and the line of beauty be straightened out with a ruler?
It seems so, for the auto is king. Will natural loveliness ever come back to our highways?
Certainly, for you can't keep nature down, even with automobile tires. Just wait a few years.
Big Blueberries.
It is said that a man in New Jersey has succeeded in raising blueberries as large as Concord grapes, and of a flavor superior to that of the famous New England berry. A Rhode Island newspaper scoffs at this horticultural triumph as "only serving to add bewilderment to a world that is already filled with complications and confusion." He would like to have standard sizes and qualities of each fruit established, with penalties for all who by cultivation transgressed the lines thus laid down.
How absurd this idea is may be realized when we remember that, logically carried out, it would deprive us of all strawberries but the tiny wild ones, all plums but the little and gnarly variety of the woods, the Concord grape, the Bartlett pear, most apples that surpass the crab apple, navel oranges,-indeed of practically all our fruits and vegetables. Yes, and the dog would have to go backward into the wolf, and all other domesticated animals must degenerate into their untamed ancestors.
No; I for one exult in the big blueberries. May they soon appear in all fruit stalls and adorn all our tables. The world is given us to subdue and have dominion over. It is like the talents, which we are to increase and not bury in the earth. Better fruits and bigger and more delicious; better dogs, more sagacious, swifter; better flowers, more fragrant and lovely; better grasses, longer, thicker, stouter to stand the drought; better men, with stronger teeth, thicker hair, clearer skin, firmer nerves, more powerful muscles, keener minds, and cleaner souls! I want no standardizing in creation, no fixed goal in the world's progress.
A Boston mayor once took for his motto, "A better, bigger, and busier Boston." That's the way to talk!
Crœsuses of Character.
Moralists are fond of telling their readers and hearers how surely and rapidly money grows if only a little is saved every week and put at interest. It is not long before the dimes become dollars and the dollars eagles. Compound interest has a wealthy magic, and many a man has become rich by trusting to it.
There is a pleasure in watching money accumulate and increase. The fascination takes hold upon some so powerfully that they grow to be misers, There is also a fascination, and one which is always healthful and happy, in watching the accumulation and increase of character. Only a little wiser each day, and what admirable wisdom comes to one in time! Only a little stronger each day, and soon others lean confidently upon our strength. Only a little better, a little more lovable each day, and the circle of our devoted friends widens with beautiful rapidity.
It is not within the reach of many of us to become millionaires, still less billionaires; but every one of us may, by processes quite analogous, become a Crœsus of character.