Thoughts of a fool
and the sentence was “Where will you be one hundred years from now,
where will you be one thousand years from now, where will you be ten
thousand years from now?” And I wondered how many souls he could save
if he would ask his audience where they were one hundred years ago,
where they were one thousand years ago and where they were ten thousand
years ago? That would be more convincing, as there is a larger class of
people who can tell what transpired yesterday than who can tell what
is going to happen to-morrow. The soul-savers always appear eager to
go where the well-fed souls require saving. They discern a “call” to a
more populous field with much less difficulty than if the call chance
to be to a smaller town. The fact that the larger the town the larger
the salary has, of course, nothing whatever to do with the case. The
“call” from one pastorate to another is not the only kind of pastoral
call. There is another kind, and the envious say invidious things of
the pastoral calls that are made while the man of the house is away
for a day or on a journey. A Kentucky preacher received a call to a
religious conference; so did a Chicago woman. He moved to Chicago and
has been calling ever since.
One of the triumphs of Democracy which Mr. Carnegie may interweave
into some future edition of his edifying book on that topic, is the
discovery of the law of compensation within the realm of triumphant
democracy. Our heavenly guide has shown us that the more spiritual
the work the more material commodities should be exchanged as fair
compensation.
He has located heaven away off toward the zenith, and bids you to look
up--and while you are looking up he looks down. Should he discover that
you are burdened with possessions that are calculated to imperil your
attainment of the goal toward which you are looking, he deems it no
less a duty than a privilege to effect a change of owners. For all the
world like the game I used to play on my baby brother--telling him,
in my artful little way, to look up at the bird, while I possessed
myself of his goodies. The essential difference between my cute little
game and the preacher’s is, that I filched the dainties for the fun of
teasing Buster, while his reverence “plays for keeps.”
Little brother fooled me once by refusing to be fooled. When I bade him
look at the bird he only laughed and reached for his goodies. Funny
what a queer child he was. If big folks were not wiser than babies it
would make a substantial difference in the bank account of His Holiness.
While the pedagogue is teaching the young idea to overreach, and the
parson is busy saving souls, let it not be thought that our material
welfare is being overlooked. Our lawmakers and judges are giving
their serious attention to such matters. Fortunately for our country
there are always many patriotic and generous souls ready to sacrifice
themselves to serve their country in legislative and judicial
capacities. There is a legend that once there was a lawyer who declined
to immolate himself on the altar of patriotism. It is further stated
that he would have had to surrender a practice worth $1,200 per annum
for a judgeship at that time paying but $900 a year. Later he was
sufficiently patriotic to accept a job as senator at $8,000 a year.
The duties of the lawmaker are to provide protection for society. To
carry out his purpose in the line of his duty, he must see to it that
the humble poor are protected against the predatory rich. Of course,
the rich as a class have some rights, too, which cannot be overlooked.
It is truly refreshing to observe with what a wealth of patriotic zeal
they engage upon their task. To look at them in session you would
esteem them as mere, ordinary, plain men. This is because of the
democratic spirit of our age. Our greatest, wisest, noblest, and best
take a pardonable pride in masquerading as humble citizens. But their
work shows how sapient and pure they are. Elected by the enlightened
masses, they are truly representatives of the source from whence they
spring. The ballot is a very wizard in selecting for us our choicest
and finest and most sagacious.
I have known a disreputable tavern-keeper who pandered to the most
depraved people in his district; whose word was not accepted by even
the most credulous, who, when he became a “grave and reverend seignor”
in our state senate, immediately became the paragon of statesmen,
the model of virtue, and the pattern of the boys in the high school
of his district. This shows the wisdom of the ballot. That statesman
associated himself with the vile and disreputable in order to discover
their real needs so that he might understand and supply those needs
after his election. He really was a great man in disguise.
There is a dignity about public service which private service somehow
does not grant. Our legislators are public servants. When we consider
the difficulty inherent in serving some one person, we can understand
the sacrifice that our public servants make in the multiplied duty of
serving the many.
I once told my cook that she ought to be very proud to be a servant.
“All our great men are servants,” I assured her. Thereupon she called
me a fool, and took other service. She served me at last by giving me
some occupation for my alleged thoughts. The burden of my cogitations
is to discover how she found me out.
The public servant is he who protects us from all evil. He saves us
from the vicious elements in society.
His work is hard on the brain, and therefore he must have an abundance
of material things to compensate the great drain on his system. He
loves to serve the public. So much so indeed, that he is inclined to
be jealous of the like service being rendered by any other person than
himself. He often spends more than one-half of the emoluments of his
job in order to keep from being supplanted by some other servant who
would dearly love to serve the public.
The public servant is often a glittering and conspicuous success as a
financier. Without any special training in finance, before assuming
the duties and responsibilities of being a public servant, he early
discovers methods whereby it is possible for him to save, during his
incumbency, anywhere from 97 per cent to 2,463 per cent of his salary.
These mathematics are not taught by the laborers who teach young
children, but the results of that system of financiering are held up to
the tender and plastic mind of childhood as worthy of all emulation,
and indicative of great merit.
The labor of being a public servant may be summed up as being good
business and scintillant patriotism. A fool might be pardoned for
considering it as patriotic business.
There be other laborers, too, who sit astride the necks of the lower
classes. All of them have no greater desire than to benefit the worker
who works, but they are not willing to dismount. And the worker who
works and carries his additional burden seems disposed to feel a vague
sort of pride in being a part of the system whereby he can sustain the
entire load of society. The merit, however, is not so much his as that
of the masterly trainers who keep him contented with his lot. When
we see a particularly well-trained dog we give our admiration to the
trainer--not to the dog.
Great is Democracy! Under its palladium even the humblest of us has a
voice. We are permitted to vote. We elect our public servants. Then we
permit our good masters to select a committee to watch our appointees.
Then we have a voters’ league to keep an eye on the committee. Then we
have a society to watch the voters’ league. And so ad infinitum.
An English writer would not even deprive his poultry of the franchise.
He tells us that when he kills a hen for his dinner he always consults
the fowl as to her preference in the matter of her cooking. If she is
too stolid (as so many of our voters are) to signify her preference, of
course he goes ahead in his own way. She has had her day at the polls,
and having failed to exercise her privilege, has practically abandoned
her rights. Should the chicken protest against being plucked, that
would be anarchy, and she would then suffer death as a penalty.
Our public servants manipulate the taxing power very much as my English
friend wields his cleaver on chicken-killing day. Plucking is good for
chickens, and taxing is good for the producers of commodities.
A fire insurance company protects us from loss by fire; an accident
insurance company from loss by accident; a life insurance company from
monetary loss by death.
But government is a combine. All rights are taken under its wings and
protected. The charge is small, and is collected whether you agree or
not. You pay it when you buy the things you need. They are getting the
trading-stamps instead of you, and for that you get so much protection
that it is almost incomprehensible.
For the payment of a certain sum, an accident, life, and burglar
insurance company will pay you the amount insured on your furnishing
the evidence that you sustained the loss against which they insured you.
How different it is with government. The government charges you so much
for being protected from all aggressions, and when they have failed to
protect, and you have been aggressed, there are more fees which you
pay, by way of expense of trying the aggressor, and if the aggressor
has been proven guilty (which means that the government has not kept
its contract to protect you) there is another cost to you to defray the
expense of feeding and clothing the aggressor.
If a person would run an insurance company on that basis, how insured
would the insured ones be?
Altogether we should be very proud of our Democracy.
PRESSING HIS TROUSERS
It is a great privilege to be civilized. Uncivilized people have too
little regard for what their neighbors think; although there is just
the possibility that uncivilized neighbors are not disposed to be
censorious.
Two people, in civilization, who become enamoured of each other
and have the prompting to rear a family, must first consult the
neighborhood and secure the sanction of some authority under proper and
altogether necessary forms or incantations.
Should they discover that they were mistaken in the strength of the
attachment which brought them together, they can again go to the
neighborhood with their grievances, and by subjecting their differences
to other formula, they may be relieved of the burden of continuing an
untenable relation.
Uncivilized people would regard so intimate a relation as concerning
only the contracting parties themselves. Their point of view is
warranted by their state of uncivilizedness.
The ethics of civilization demand that we be thoroughly unselfish in
such matters. If we find that our marriage contracts have involved us
in misery, we should bear up under the affliction. It is but little
to suffer for the good of civilization. The Tolstoian doctrine of
non-resistance should serve well in a divorce court. If I can convince
a court that I am dead in love with my husband I can get a decree
within an hour. If it becomes known that I am miserably unhappy with my
spouse, the court will deny me relief. If you analyze it critically you
will see the wisdom of that. Why should people separate merely because
they cannot agree? Disagreement is a good reason for them to keep on
living together. Uncivilized people would separate when harmony ceases,
but the ethics of civilized people is to be unselfish, and the more
misery you have the larger the duty implied.
A Chicago man applied for a divorce, and his petition set forth the
specification that “tootsie wootsie” failed to perform her wifely
functions, and refused to do her bounden duty in not pressing “hubby’s
trousers.”