The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-12-23
Pork, Poems, and PIety.

from He Ne Z, HOTtU.
A late Independent contains an article which
is the plainest statement we have seen of one
of the most prevalent and most pernicious
misconceptions that are abroad. The burden
of this complaint is that the classes which
minister to the spiritual wants of mankind
are not rewarded, in proportion to the i'm
portanee of their functions, as well as the
classes which minister to its merely material
wants. Especially the Independent instances
poets, editors, lecturers, and the clergy as
scandalously underpaid. The friends of the
editor of that paper call him poet. Ger
tainly he is an editor and lecturer, and
whether professional preacher or not, is at
least an active amateur at tprayer-meetngs and
the like. What private griefs he has we
therefore know, that made him do it. He
puts the question finally in this bald way
1--WE are acquainted with gentleman who
made million dollars in one year by selling
pork. Why then shall not an author make
quarter of a million by reciting his books f''
That is to say:-As the dignity of pork-selling
is to the dignity of art, so are the dollars the
pork-seller gets to the dollars the artist
ought to get. Besides, urges the Independent,
the higher wages we offer the better work
we procure; and the mute ingloriOus Millions
poetry and piety instead, if their labors in
those fields were as adequately compensated.
Had stuff of this sort struck our notice in
secular Journal or had we heard II from
writer or painter, we should have thought
its author had very sorry notion OF his voca-
tion; so sorry as to demonstrate that he had
altogether mistaken that vocation. But what
shall we say when we find in a paper whose
ostensible object is to promote piety, an
appeal, not only that artists shall be aggran-
died in order that art may flourish, but that
preachers may prosper so God may be better
served Certainly it is safe to say, for one
thing, that when a literary man bemoans him.
self that he does not make as much money as
a pork packer literature will be advantaged,
however it may be with pork packing, by his
taking himself out OF the one and into the
other.
The truth is, art cannot be paid with money.
Writing poetry and packing pork may have
some similarity in the eyes of the editor of
the Independent but in fact they are as diff
ferent as the appetite which poetry appeases
is from the appetite which pork appeases.
They are inoommensurable quantities. The
value of the one cannot be reckOned in the coin
of the other. The rewards OF material in
dustrv are money. In art, "the reward OF
thing we'll done is to have done it." No man
can ever make an artist who does not first OF
all feel this. "Hath this fellow no feeling Of
his business 9' The idea of appraising
shakespeare's plays, for instance, by the
same standard with which we measure the
value of Stewards muslins, is so palpable an
absurdity that it is odd man can be found
dull enough to undertake comparison Of the
merit of the two things. Really how many
dollars does the Independent consider paradise
Lost' to have been worth What John Mil
ton got for it was ''ten pounds paid by install
ments, and a rather close escape from death
on the gallows." Does the Independent sup