Part 10

The spirit of malice and distrust was the powder train by which the magazine of the world’s fury was exploded. The hands of both the crafty and the foolish helped to lay it. It has always been so, and will always be so until such work is done no more. While men distrust one another, look for unworthy motives in one another, or talk of and prepare for war with one another, there will be no end of strife. When men of all classes, nations, and races learn to genuinely love one another, the day of strife will cease.

Some wars have been wars of punishment, but when the people of the earth learn to do right, there will be nothing to punish. With the life of the world actuated by unselfish motives, there will be no need for the avenger to march on errands of death, made necessary by some outrage or injustice. Until that time, peace will remain dim in the promise of any plan that we can formulate. Is there any reason why men should not do right? If duty were impossible, all creation would be a mockery and a moral contradiction.

Other wars have been wars of contention, but when men deal justly there will be no longer anything for which to contend. The goods of the world may be very rich and lovely, but they are worth neither the price of life nor the stigma of murder. It is better, even for nations, to have less and have it honestly, to possess less and live in a world safe for each generation and its posterity. When the hearts of men are right, our economic systems will also be right. Every man will get his share and be content with it when he gets it.

When the dream of world brotherhood has become a fact, we shall often think with a bitter surprise of the bickerings and misunderstandings of yesterday. The path to that time is the road of the heart. The only way to realize such an age is to begin to live its spirit. We shall have a world fraternity only when we all begin to be brothers. This will be a happy world when it becomes a kindly-hearted world, and it will never be a wholly happy one until it fulfills this law. The formula is simple and the conditions are plain.

The time has come for selfish men to surrender their selfish ways and purposes. The service of self and the road of malice have been proven failures. They offer nothing which is permanently worth while, and they lead to endless trouble. For ages we have talked love. Our words will remain a mockery until we adopt it as a principle and apply it in life’s affairs.

The time has come to take that forward step. The world is ready for anything that spells deliverance, and nothing will deliver humanity save rightness of heart. We had better make a garden of the world than to turn it into a vast cemetery for the bodies of the slain. Let us have a League of Nations, but let us build it on a safe foundation.

Is It Nothing to You (1929)

There is a type of mind which insists that it cannot understand why it matters to some of us what others eat, and drink, and do. It represents us as troublesome meddlers in the private affairs of our neighbors, and insists that none of the so-called evils of the time need trouble us in the least if we would attend to our own business.

Our motive in seeking legislation to control the various evils that plague society has little to do with the question of the private rights of others. We care because we wish people well and naturally prefer to see them doing credit to themselves, but that alone would never lead us to organize reform associations, agitate reform questions, and seek the enactment of sumptuary laws.

We do these things for three reasons. One is the fact that we too have to live in the world and be affected in many ways by the good or evil of its life. We have to help meet the cost of evildoing, endure the conditions which it creates, and suffer the general defeat of our ideals before its attack. The second reason is the fact that we care into what kind of a world we send our posterity to live. We may not care what a neighbor eats and drinks, but we do care very much what favorable or unfavorable conditions our children will have to meet when we are no longer here to help them. The third reason is the fact that what our neighbor eats, and drinks, and does, affects not only him, and not only us, but all mankind. Each individual transgression writes itself into the world life.

So far as we are concerned, regrettable as it is, the man who insists on poisoning his body might go on getting to the last whatever satisfaction it affords him. But we are concerned because he passes the poison on to his children and to other people’s children. He degrades the life of society, makes his community less desirable, and even lowers property values in his neighborhood. In all these things we also have an interest. By all these things we and ours are profoundly affected. Why should we not care?

What Makes a City? (1929)

There is an old story about a town that had a high cliff from which was visible a particularly beautiful view. The citizens of the town, being enterprising people, decided to capitalize on this natural asset, and so they proceeded at once to make it a talking point in favor of their city as a show place and one desirable for residence.

The advertising was effective. From far and near, people came to get a glimpse of the famous view. Needless to say, they spent their money while they were in town, and the business men around the square were able to note a change for the better in their bank balances.

It turned out, however, that viewing the scenery from this cliff was not without its dangers. The precipice was high, and at its foot, the rocks were hard and rough.

One day a visitor fell from the top of the cliff. His mangled body was picked up from the rocks below. The story went the rounds, and business began falling off. The merchants got together and agreed that they must do something. They decided to organize a campaign and raise money to build a hospital and provide an ambulance to take care of casualties. They did so, and with due advertising, business again picked up.

One day someone suggested that a better thing would be a railing along the top of the cliff to keep people from falling. The railing was built, and there were no more accidents.

But the people of the town shook their heads doubtfully and said that it seemed a great pity, after having gone to so much expense for a hospital and an ambulance and having advertised them so widely, to have no further use for them.

=Greatest Factors Are Not Bank Balances and Buildings=

What is of importance about a city? The most important thing is not its views, its parks and drives, its public buildings, nor its commercial leadership, but its people. And what makes a city? The greatest factor is not its bank clearings, its shipments of live stock, its factories, its stores, nor the extent of its public improvements, but the care it takes of and the safeguards with which it surrounds its people.

A city is not made of streets, but of those who walk on them; not of stores, but of those who trade in them; not of machinery, but of those who drive it; not of houses, but of those who live in them. A city is its people. It is exactly as good or bad, as strong or weak, as desirable or undesirable, as enduring or temporary, as are they. With them it will go forward or backward, be an object of admiration or contempt, stand or fall, live or die.

The most important question before a city is not what its population can be made by 1930, nor what advantages it can obtain from the next session of the state legislature, nor how much money the merchants can take in by organizing a bargain day or giving a street fair. The most important question is how well founded are the homes, how normal is the type of life, how idealistic are the labors of the people, and how safe are the children and youth wherever they may go about the town? How many are being helped? How few are being exploited?

When John Smith of Chicago or Abe Hopkins of Punkin Center considers moving to a town to reside, to accept a position, to go into business, or to put the children in school, the uppermost question in his mind is how good a place is it in which to maintain a home? How safe a place is it in which to rear children? In school, on the street, in their social contacts, will their best interests always be conserved?

Only one thing constitutes a satisfactory answer to these questions, and for it, there is no adequate substitute. It is high grade life lived by high grade human beings. Where that is present, it will reveal itself in every movement and institution. If it is absent, no boulevard mileage, or volume of business, or number of railroads can make up for the lack of it.

=Failure in Homes Breeds Necessity for Substitutes=

Cities often point with pride to the number and costliness of their substitutes for home life, but a far more prideworthy thing would be the prevalence of a home life so beautiful and adequate as to require no substitutes. The substitutes are all very well for those who are homeless or who are too crude and dull to appreciate the blessing of home, but they should not be needed by the mass of normal and average persons.

Practically all the institutions for social amelioration and correction are parts of a widespread and inadequate attempt to make up for the failure of the home. The family is unloading more and more of its responsibilities on the school, church, and community. Moreover, its unwillingness or inability to discharge its duty creates the necessity for and the expense of juvenile courts, reform schools, and crime waves.

Therefore, whenever one truly refers to a city as one of homes, he is making a statement of commanding importance. A real city of homes is one with a minimum of social problems because, as a rule, the highest grade of character and life is developed in the home atmosphere.

A city of homes is one whose people have some concern about the place occupied and the work done in the community both by themselves and their children. They are responsible citizens, and for such citizenship, there is no substitute. Such people constitute a railing at the top of the cliff.

All this may seem to be merely talk about ideals, and it is. Ideals are the most necessary and important things in the world, even for a city. Moreover, they have the highest cash value of anything with which we have to do.

=Lack of Idealism Is Expensive=

The lack of idealism is the most expensive thing the people of any city can have on their hands. The lower the level of idealism, the more bad bills are made at the stores, the greater number of thefts is committed with thievery’s double cost to the community, the greater is the amount of fraud, and the higher is the degree and, therefore, the cost of crime.

Speaking from the financial viewpoint alone, and taking no account of the other and greater values involved, anything that breaks down the idealism of a city costs it heavily in money. The business man who helps to inaugurate an evil with the thought that it will bring him profit will live to realize that, for every dollar of profit it brings him in trade, it will cost him a dollar in taxes and toward the suppression of crime and undesirable conditions. Such is the result of the coming of undesirable persons, practices, and situations to a community. The addition to the population, permanently or temporarily, of a rough and rude element with no ideals of conduct, no standards of sobriety, no regard for the sanctity of the Lord’s Day, and no respect for property rights has never profited a city yet. If you want thieves, hoodlums, and libertines, create a low standard of ideals in the community, and you will get them. Your jails, poorhouses, and insane asylums may serve in the place of a hospital and ambulance to take care of the casualties, but a high level of idealism would be a railing along the top of the cliff to save the people.

The history of the ages is the story of the progress of the human race from the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem, from the status of a perfect garden to that of a perfect city, from a simple but happy primal state to a complex but ideal social order.

The drift of life is to the city. The farm is giving its products, but it is also giving its sons and daughters to the town.

The drift of life is to the city. When the race has reached the climax of its progress, that condition will be a perfect city—a city of justice, righteousness, truth, faith, and brotherhood. It will have beautiful buildings, broad avenues, flowering parks, and prosperous institutions, but its real glory will be the quality of its people.

Destiny is waiting on the city to become all this. What dizzy distances it will have to travel. It will have to fling aside the acknowledged domination of Mammon. It will have to get spiritual ideals and human values back into the first place where they belong.

Each promoter of the interests of a city is advertising a precipice from which people may stumble to their doom, or pointing with pride to the beautiful hospital and ambulance provided by the magnanimous people to take care of the maimed and broken, or building railings along the tops of cliffs to keep people from falling and to make the place safe, even for the young, the weak, and the blind. Which one of these things are you doing for your town?

Capitalizing War for the Tobacco Trade (1919)

The effect of war in the battle zones themselves is hardly less definite than that which it exerts among the home populations of the nations involved. With no uncertain hand it writes its name across the commercial and social life of a country. There is hardly a phase of thought and activity which does not show marked reaction to war conditions.

For one thing, a war always offers a name and a flag under which profiteers and promoters undertake to sail. Some find their boats capsized early in the struggle. Others have a sufficient following to keep their business popular and are able to establish their enterprise in more or less permanent comfort. Vendors of wares both helpful and harmful take occasion to push the sale of their products in the name of patriotism. Riders of hobbies both innocent and perilous take excuse to encourage both their own habits and the weaknesses of their fellow citizens. This is always done in the name of patriotism, even though the effect may be altogether antipatriotic. A certain advantage can be taken at a time when everyone is afraid of being misjudged. Like the undertaker’s bill, such things are often brought forward at a time when everyone feels that he must swallow the dose and ask no questions.

During the recent conflict it became a widespread habit to advertise various products in the name of patriotism. We were told that the person who wanted to be patriotic must wear a certain brand of clothes, drink a prescribed blend of coffee, and shave with a given make of safety razor. If the Government gave an enterprise the slightest encouragement or patronage, it was featured to the limit. The tobacco companies were not long in taking advantage of the opportunity presented. During the war we were continually told that the soldiers in our splendid national army considered tobacco a necessity. Then not only the element possessing double-jointed moral convictions but also many who had stood for high ideals fell victims to the contagion. Even church workers took to sending to sons what their mothers had prayed might never enter their lives and what leading magazines have been refusing to advertise just as they have refused to advertise intoxicating liquors.

Naturally, the members of the national army who had considered tobacco a necessity at home also considered it so abroad. Just as naturally, those who had not used it at home would not have cared for it abroad. The demand was by no means of the one-hundred-percent variety. When I think of the number of men who never knew the taste of tobacco until it was forced upon them by some well-intentioned but misguided war agency, I cannot believe that the demand for it was universal. When I hear parents testify that their sons were untouched with the desire for tobacco until they were influenced to use it in the army, I cannot help feeling that much of the insistence upon it had its origin only in artificially induced public opinion.

The capitalizing of a war to the advantage of a trade depending for its profits on human weakness had an outstanding instance at the time of the Civil War. However wise a provision for the Federal finances the leaders of that day may have thought they were making, the fact is that the internal revenue on intoxicating liquors fastened the business on the country for many years. It so got its fingers upon our throat that we have not yet wholly shaken them loose. It has robbed us of far more money than it ever gave us. It has at the same time ruined what was worth much more to us than all our gold—the life and happiness of our people.

There are those among us who suspect that much of the late demand for tobacco did not come from the army at all but that it was conceived in the minds and fostered under the guiding care of representatives of the tobacco trade. So successful was this effort and so meekly did the country as a whole fall into line with the program that it now looks as if another taint is fastened upon us for at least the lifetime of the present generation.

Though it may be admitted that the evil is less serious than that of Civil War days, it is by no means to be considered negligible. The facts disclosed by the physical examination of millions of our men should have made us more careful instead of less so. The physical unfitness of much of our male population for service overseas had a number of reasons behind it. There is no doubt in many thoughtful minds, however, that among these reasons were the consumption of adulterated soft drinks and the widespread use of tobacco. Instead of discouraging these things in a time of national crisis, we encouraged them more than we ever did before.

No reasonable person is contending that the use of tobacco is a mortal sin. If no worse sins were committed, ours would indeed be a wonderful Nation. This, however, is no excuse for that which is a physical evil and, to some extent at least, a moral and religious evil. The real question is as to why we should encourage it at all. We do not get at the danger of any evil by comparing one evil with another. The question for a vigorous Nation in a trying time is not as to what is the harm in a thing but as to what is the good.

At least three undisputed facts must be recorded about the tobacco habit. We have allowed the war to make each of the three more outstanding than before. The first is that it is unclean. If it were true that neither physical nor moral questions were involved, some very important sanitary ones would still remain to be considered. It is not easy to see why anyone should insist upon making more stained teeth, repulsive breaths, malodorous bodies, and unclean mouths.

The second is that it is expensive. Our tobacco bill for a few years would pay the cost of the war. It would do a much better thing: It would provide agricultural reclamation, commercial development, and philanthropic beneficence on a world scale. The soldier cannot afford to pay this bill. Neither can the free-hearted public afford to assume that it is one of the necessities of war and pay it from benevolent funds. The 1917 tobacco crop of more than one billion pounds brought an average of twenty-five cents a pound. This was two-fifths more than the price during the preceding year and twice the price during the years between 1911 and 1915.

The third is that it is increasing. The 1917 tobacco crop was the largest in our history. Estimated at 1,196,451,000 pounds, it was an increase of 43,181,000 pounds over the crop of the preceding year. The output of cigars was 8,266,770,593, an increase of 876,587,423 over that of 1916. A total of 35,377,751 pounds of snuff were manufactured during 1917, an increase of two million pounds over 1916. Of smoking and chewing tobacco, 445,763,206 pounds were put upon the market, an increase of more than twenty-eight million pounds. Tax was paid on thirty billions of cigarettes, and nobody knows how many were rolled and smoked from prepared tobacco. The sale of cigarettes increased almost fifty per cent during 1917. This serves to show with what success our widespread pro-tobacco propaganda has met.

The internal revenue income on tobacco advanced fifteen million dollars during 1917. The total was $103,201,592.16. Thirty-eight million dollars of this was on cigarettes alone. Great as this income is, it cannot compensate for the lowered personal standards, the physical disintegration, and the unuttered regret that have resulted from it.

Creating a Demand (1919)

There are two ways of attacking the business problem. One is to take advantage of opportunities already brought into existence by the laws of chance or the work of others. The other is to make advantage by the creation of opportunities which would otherwise never have existed.

The first can be done by any person of average intelligence. It calls for no ingenuity. Its only demand is the time and effort necessary to buy goods on the one hand and sell them on the other. The second calls for a really high-grade of business ability. The man who can do it well has his success reasonably assured.

Business is ordinarily assumed to be subject to the law of supply and demand. It happens to be true, however, that the matter of supply and demand is more or less subject to conditions which can be either created or altered by human interference and guidance. The selfish and designing have long ago discovered means of so manipulating market conditions as to make supply and demand a negligible factor. Such, of course, is not the kind of business method which will be allowed to permanently survive.