Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1903-08-06

PIE lle. HOW long uOeS fdul Mclean
want to live anyway?
$OUTSIDE POINT OF WE'VE
Put 1t down as fact that American
parents do not teach their children
mat what is worth doing Is worth do
ing Well Go farther, and the claim
can not be successfully disproved, that
all OF us men. women and children
Slight our work. 1t matters but little
whether the work consists OF preaching
on Sunday or blowing corn on Monday,
in either case the preacher or the farm
er does not finish his Job. Life is too
short for the minister 70 fit himself for
his work. and the farmer has too many
acres to cultivate. We are all after re-
suits regardless Of the incomplete
methods of getting them. We build
railroads In Iowa, operate them with
with both freight and passenger traffic
dangerously handled, and finish the
road next season" We make BARRIERS in
a Chicago barber school in six weeks,
and then they really learn the trade
by pracucing on their customers for
the year following AS rule, one is
not sure of a good job in any line of
profession or trade. this when one is
disposed to pay first-class price to a
supposed tirst-class workman. These
statements refer especially to our young
men and women. occasi onal exceptions
necessarily being made as they get
older in years or experience.
Many reasons can be given for this
bad state of affairs. First the tenden-
cy of the young American Is to IAN all
round man." He seldom sticks to the
trade or profession he starts out with.
1t doesn't pay and so he tries something
else Failing in that, he tries another
trade or profession. then again goes
back to the work he originally started
out In life with. Thus we have doctors
who have been carpenters, and carpen-
tiers who have been blacksmiths, black
smiths who once were farmers, farm
ers who once taught school, teachers
who were students. and students who
went thru college in three months Our
newspaper men, not to say Journalists,
not one in a thousand but what started
in life with some other trade Or pro-
and now kicks himself that he
didn't stick to his first love. 1t is not
to the discredit of any Of us that we are
doing the work so utterly opposite from
the aimed at goal of boyhood days.
We're simply born to have instructive
ideas; we can rum hotel, even If we
never served time at a luncn counter.
1t is a notorious fact that the average
man can and does tell the
farmer how to raise better crops and
the farmer that can not tell the editor
how to improve his paper lives outside
of Iowa.
Here's another factor in making the
work Of the American SO incomplete, so
inexact and so lacking in finished de-
tail: it's the almost universal use of
the machine. The writer was told on
Connecticut farm how to hoe corn. The
boy on an Iowa farm hardly knows how
tc take hold of the handle to the hoe.
A Swiss matchmaker can Fix your
watch" because he can make a whole
watch. An American can successfully
run jewelers. store, can repair and do
ordinary work WE'LL but not one jeweler
in ten thousand can make a watch.
of lmen in the Waltham, Ell
gin and other watch factories spend
their whole lives in attending to ma
chimes that make Just one part of
watch. There was time when shoe
maker could make shoe. That's gone
by. Now men work ten hours day
and six days in week directing ma
chine that makes heels and nothing
could go into the woods. cut the trees
and make a whole wagon. Today in
our wagon factories men make good
wages, working at piece work, just
making hubs. There was a day when
a newspaper man could get out the
whole paper Today the editor die
Lates his editorials. buys his insides,
sets his advertisements with machines
and the work is so divided into depart
ments that the local editor frequently
does not know by sight the man who
writes the heavy leaders.
It's the day of specialism. Neces-
sarily when the parts come together
they must fit. but the unanimity of the
whole, the completeness of the finished
is machine made. The time
has come when even all OF our profess
sions are divided into speciality men.
The law has the best attorneys devoted
to one line. Our doctors, to
become noted and proficient must take
only one part of our bodies for their
particular practice. We are indignant
because the plumber sends mile away
for a carpenter to saw mole thru the
ioor. but the dentist calls in the phyNi-
clan to administer chloroform. There
was a time when a tailor could make
whole suit of clothes Now we have
,oatmakers and vest1nakers. who can
not cut out and make pair of trou-
ssrs. The consequence is the whole
suit may At or may not. No one man
IS responsible for the whole. And SO
we can sum up the whole situation. We
may have the parts as better finished
products OF themselves. May have a
house with good doors. but poor WIN
dow frames and sash. ALI this Is no