FRANK TRUMBULL

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Here in America it has yielded to a friendly neighborliness which makes the family from Portland, Maine, soon find itself at home in Portland, Oregon. It is getting hard for us to hate anybody-especially since we have disestablished the devil. We are good-natured and easygoing. Herbert Spencer even denounced this as our immediate danger, maintaining that we were too goodnatured, too easy-going, too tolerant of evil; and he insisted that we needed to strengthen our wills to protest against wrong, to wrestle with it resolutely, and to overcome it before it is firmly rooted.

We are kindly and we are helpful; and we are fixed in the belief that somehow everything will work out all right in the long run. But nothing will work out all right unless we so make it work; and excessive optimism may be as corrupting to the fiber of the people as "the Sabbathless pursuit of fortune," as Bacon termed it. Mr. James Bryce, has recently pointed out that the intelligent native American has-and by experience he is justified in having a firm conviction that the majority of qualified voters are pretty sure to be right.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What was the position of the Greeks under Pericles? Of the Romans under Caesar? Of the English under Elizabeth? 2. Why is our ethical standard higher?

COOPERATION WITH THE MAN LOWER DOWN*

FRANK TRUMBULL

The word Americanism may be a very inclusive term,

*Extract from a speech delivered before the New England Society, in the City of New York, December 22, 1916. Used by permission of the author.

but it involves two or three concrete things which I shall mention. First, free education, but we have so long ago adopted it that we have quit talking about it, except to boast. There are thousands of workmen in this country who cannot understand a command given in English. The learning of English diminishes misunderstandings not only between employers and employees, but in hundreds of other ways. We want them to learn English, not because it is the best language in the world, but because it is our currency of thought.

Second, we should have American standards of living. These people are usually segregated, and unless they are well housed the community and the State inevitably lose greatly in efficiency, and community health is endangered.

Third, we should fit them for becoming real citizens. It is to our interest in every way that having cast in their lot with us, they shall know more about our institutions and what a beneficial thing it is to become a citizen.

Thirteen million of our people are foreign born and ten million are negroes. Shall we be able to compete with the reorganized countries of Europe if we permit these twenty-three million people to be inefficient? The talk of the hour is "Efficiency! Efficiency!" But more than that we want not only forty-eight States under one flag, but we want one hundred million united peopleunited for everything that will make America the best place in the world to live in, as well as the best place to make money in; and a country loved and respected by all who dwell in it. It is a day for releasing great constructive forces-humanics as well as mechanics.

Not long ago I heard this story told in a most appealing way: one day a woman was sitting on the veranda of a hotel in Switzerland. She had a field glass in her hand and was looking upon a group of mountain climbers who

were climbing one of the most difficult peaks. Suddenly she shrieked aloud, dropped the glasses to the floor, and fell in a swoon. A gentleman ran quickly to her side, picked up the glasses, and looked upon the scene. He saw four men making a struggle to climb the mountain. One had driven the axe into the side of the mountain and was safely at the top. Beneath him were three others, one of whom was desperately clinging to the edge of a rock, the other two dangling in the air, when suddenly the rope gave way, parted between the top man and the three below, and the three men in turmoil and confusion fell thousands of feet into the deep ravine to death. That afternoon they brought in the bodies of the dead men. The next morning the man who was at the top came into the hotel, and when they saw him women and children moved away from him. At length he met a gentleman in the smoking-room and said to him, "No one has spoken to me. What is the matter?" The gentleman replied, "Excuse me, but if you want to know, we found that the rope was cut."

My friends, do not cut the rope that holds the man lower down.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Why may every illiterate person become a menace to our government? 2. Should we not assist the immigrant, for our own account if for no worthier motive, to better his condition of life? Why?

WORK OR DIE*

HUGH WILEY

In the complex organization which we call society we have lost sight of the simple business of life. We say that

*Reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post. Copyrighted, 1920, by The Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia.

life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are three inherent rights of the individual. Life is a good thing, but the fact of our being born into this world does not give us the right to life. The world is beautiful. The scheme of life is good, but we enjoy title to life only in so far as we pay the unit installments; only as we meet our obligations from day to day and from year to year until life is done. The one appropriate currency with which to pay for life is work. Man is capable of transforming the fuel of food into energy and work. We can buy the right to live with a proper daily expenditure of useful work. The individual who does not pay the price of life has no right to it.

Brains have respect for muscle and muscle has respect for brains. A man who spends his strength in useful work gets from his work something besides the silver of his daily wage. Work is enjoyable and beautiful, and men who have worked know this. Fatigue that follows effort is the reward that answers the question of the day: "What have I done to earn life?"

The United States is composed of parasites and producers. The people of a nation are all consumers. They must eat. In a community where all men are consumers and one-half of them are producers it follows that each producer is sustaining his own life and the life of one parasite.

Society is made up of men, women and children. Men and women must work. In the United States only a small percentage of men and women do work. When every man and every woman works the high cost of living, political disorder, strikes and all the phenomena of social unrest will be at an end. Work is the cure. It is the only cure.

The final rewards for work performed are delayed by a

hundred foolish afflictions which society suffers to-day. Most of these would disappear if men would work. Most of the ills which now affect the workers of a population would disappear if men who work would learn the real reward of effort. Not many laborers or mechanics or professional men carry with them the realization that their work is something more than a means of obtaining cash with which to buy the things essential to their lives. The man who works is bound by an obligation greater than his contract with his employer. He is bound by his debt for life received. Not many men realize this obligation. Until men discover that they must buy the right to live with the coin of sweat they will continue to side-step the obligation of delivering a day's work in return for their wages.

The first need in the government of the United States is a first-class business man for President and a group of assistants such as any first-class business man would surround himself with. The United States is a good place to live in, but a business administration could improve it a million per cent. The people of the United States have much to learn. Experience is a great teacher, but unfortunately experience dies with the individual. We persist in neglecting to take advantage of the knowledge which can be gained from other men's experiments and other men's mistakes. With our own hands we must pick up a live wire before we can appreciate the kick that can exist in unseen forces.

There is salvation in the fact that the moral instinct

exists in every man. With it is an ambition for the good things of life. Work is the one agency through which these things may be enjoyed. Work will buy life and happiness.

On the day that all men sense the moral obligation