encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio." 1 Will the clerk quietly say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task? On your life he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions: Who was he? Which encyclopedia? Where is the encyclopedia? Was I hired for that? Don't you mean Bismarck? What's the matter with Charlie doing it? Is he dead? Is there any hurry? Shan't I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself? What do you want to know for? And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garciaand then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average I will not. Now if you are wise, you will not bother to explain to your "assistant" that Correggio is indexed under the C's, not in the K's, but you will smile sweetly and say, "Never mind," and go look it up yourself. And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift these are the things that put pure Socialism so far 1 A noted Italian painter of the Lombard school, who lived from 1494 to 1534. into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night, holds many a worker to his place. Advertise for a stenographer, apply can neither spell nor and nine out of ten who punctuate and do not think it necessary to. Can such a one write a letter to Garcia ? "You see that bookkeeper," said the foreman to me in a large factory. "Yes, what about him? "Well, he's a fine accountant, but if I'd send him uptown on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street, would forget what he had been sent for.” Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia ? Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude, which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless. Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner pail and worked for day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high handed any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off," nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. He is wanted in every city, town, and village in every office, shop, store, and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly the man who can CARRY A MESSAGE TO GARCIA. AMERICA 1 SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH (1808-1895) My country, 'tis of thee, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, My native country, — thee, I love thy rocks and rills, Let music swell the breeze, Let rocks their silence break, The sound prolong. The author was a Baptist minister of Boston, who, in addition to this patriotic hymn often sung as our national anthem, wrote a number of popular hymns and poems. From facsimile reproduction of "America" in Dr. Smith's handwriting in “ A History of Newton, Massachusetts," by S. F. Smith, D.D. Published, 1880, by The American Logotype Company, Boston. |