The Russellville Democrat., 1890-07-24
BOLD INNovAToRs.
They Have Hard Work to ss6et the stupis
 rnhlir hY the Eara.n

2oE1 ttNtNCN f4 V n9s
 They Have Hard Work to ssGet the stupid
 Public by the Ears"
 When the bold innovator comes, who IS there to determine whether he is a profound thinker and true prophet. or a half-crazed enthusiast? His zeal and sincerity are no evidence, for the de- luded are jealous and sincere. Society is incompetent to determine. Only men of the same capacity for profound thought can appreciate the original philosopher, as Liszt appreciated and sustained the despairing Wagner; as Hunt appreciated the gifted but obscure Millet. whose smallest picture now com mands more than hundred thousand dollars, though he worked once, with all his genius, on the borders of starvation And as the original philosopher seldom meets his peer, as Wagner and Millet did, he must be content to struggle and to wait the slow progress of the race. wait for the applauding voice of pro found thought and generous sympathy, or the slow process Of scientific experi- ments that ono by one verify his con clusions as they did for Dr. Thomas Young. The German scientist. Mar graaf, made the discoveries whsSSbh De came the foundation of She oeet-sugar industry, worth hundred millions a year to Europe; but alas, he met with the usual blindness and stupidity tas did John Fitch in endeavoring to intro duce steam navigation) and the coffin had long closed upon his remains, when another chemist, Archard, by the order of Napoleon, took up the subject and introduced the process which now em- ploys seven millions. Even then the truth might have been crushed again, if Archard had yielded to the large bribe offered him in behalf of the cane-sugar interests, to report against Margraafs discovery. Transcendent genius always fails of popular recogni- ton. The distance is too vast between it and what Douglas Jerrold calls ''the average stupidity of mankind" Wag- ner, in 1S4o, said at Paris: ssTo sell my wares in this market is impossible to me" He would have been glad to sell his services for Sa25 a year, and might have ended his life in despair had not Liszt lifted him out of obscurity and penniless poverty. Washington Irving, after he had given the public some of his best writings, could only hope that in the future he might, as he expressed it. ''get this great stupid public by the ears Carlyle and Hugo could find no booksellers to publish their first works. Milton, Brougham, Macaulay, Jeffrey ond ,oa,r o+ hare cn,,1d tacfifv q . +o tho difficulty of procuring any recognition of great authors first works diff culty still greater among great scient- ists. Calico, Kepler, Harvey, Galvani, Columbus, Sweden borg, Gall, Fourier. Priestley and Fulton could give some strong testimony as to the stupidity of the educated classes. to whom they ap- pealed, and Hawthorne once said that he had enjoyed for twenty years the distinction of being the most obscure literary man in America, The pro- founder and more original the thinker, the greater is the barrier between him self and the learned and unlearned multitude, whom he would approach. Every advanced thinker must meet his obstacles. One might suppose that simple mechanical inventions would escape the hostility of fools; but they don't. So simple an invention as the percussion lock. which has superseded the old flint lock, was invented in 1907, but it was thirty years before it could bo introduced into the English army. How difficult was it to introduce coal or even to introduce gas; the candle still survives in England. When the first oil-well was sunk in Pennsylvania by Colonel Drake, it was considered so crazy an affair that he had great difficulty in getting men to do the work. When anthracite was discovered ill Pennsyl- vania, near Pottstown, he tried to sell a load but got discouraged, dumped it in the river, and emigrated westward. When Robert Morris and others secured large tract of coal lands expecting to make fortune, they failed to introduce it and gave up their scheme. When coal was first introduced in London (early, 1 believe, in the fourteenth cent ury) it produced a great outcry, and . law was passed against it mak- ing the burning of coal capital offense. It is said that one man was executed, but this is hard to believe Some persons were so hostile to coal that they refused to eat any food cooked by a coal fire The opposition was not quite as great to the introduc tion of gas. The first cargo of ice sent to New Orleans was driven away by the mob. It was imported something like seventy years ago, by Judah Touro, and being put into an ice-house in Congo Square, before 1t was completed, a mob rushed in, drove of the worlSmen, de- molished the building, and ordered the captain to leave the port Tho ice was sent to the West Indies, and the news papers next day were fierce against tho importation of ice-Arena.