Los Angeles herald., 1906-04-07
WE GOING CRAZY?
ROGERS SAYS YES
PURSUIT OF THE DOLLAR Is
GOOD EVIDENCE
Well Known Attorney Says the Quest
for the Extraordinary Will
Yet Cause Americas
Fall


are all going crazy% but 1 will state
tnat L believe that the major number
OF US are going insane or crazy, if
you like the word better, as fast as
possible"
Such was the statement made by
Earl Rogers in his lecture on Are We
All Going Crazy?" at the Plymouth
congregational church last evening.
His audience shuddered little and
then Mr.. Rogers explained.
Mr.. Rogers said in part:
IF had one hundred suits of clothes
and one hundred neckties, and you
should meet me rushing down Spring
street to buy new neCktie, you would
snake your head and feel sorry for
me, who in that instance would be the
striver for that which L could not pos
sibly use.
Then when I tell you that $4,000 is
more than sufficient for a man to live
and enjoy his life with, and point out
to you men who have ten times that
amount who are on the stock exchange
In Chicago and New York, talking to
themselves, working fourteen hours a
day, and all for something which can
never be of any use to them, some
thing which they can never use. will
you say that they are sane or insane?
There is a man at Highland who
is trying to pick up thousand pins.
His insanity is unquestioned, but there
are the thousands out of the asylum
who ought to be in the asylum, who
are on more fruitless, more ridiculous
pursuit.
He Who Wants
81 do not mean, however, that a man
should not acquire a necessary amount
of money to place him beyond the
ordinary wants of life, but the time
Will come when he who possesses more
than he can use will be considered as
the most depraved of crminality, most
crazy and pitiful.
"These are the results what is the
cause? Did you ever stop to think that
we are just three generations from the
soil; did you ever stop to think that
we are physical and moral degenerates?
We were born amid circumstance
ripe for degenerency and we have bet
tered the instruction.
I'VE were born one day, sent to the
kindergarten before we ought to have
gone, in college before we were mature,
and in the whirl of commercialism and
graft before we We're men.
Driven by the circumstance of the
republic we have lived only to die; we
have striven for the un-
natural, the unusual and the extra
ordinary and then died in vain.
at is this attempt for the eXtraordi-
nary that has been the cause of our
fall; it has done, possibly, something
for us, but what will it do for our
children and their children?
why is it that the 400 of New York
invite a monkey to their dinner? 1t is
because they do not want the ordinary;
they want the unusual and they are
crazy in their craze
"It is so in the professions. The
doctors are striving for the unusual
and that which is out of the ordinary.
That is the reason that they will am
putate anything that you have. And it
breeds the charlatan and the quack.
$50 with the religion. Too much
search for that which is psychic and
beyond the scope of the mind of man;
too much that is immaterial and too
much that brings no results. Take us
back to the religion of our grand
mothers; to the simple truth, with do
unto others as you would have them
do unto you as our motto and we will
rear better men.
The Yellow Press
$50 also with literature.
TOO much for the reader, too much
that ought not to be in the homes of
respected people; too much stuff that
is written in colored ink to express the
different emotions. We lay the classics
aside Shakespeare rests on our
shelves and we read the Sunday mag
azine of that man, whose sanity has
been questioned, w. r. Hearst. In this
whirl of commercialism we have not
the time for poetry; it has lived in
vain for the major part of the present
race.
And yet the people applaud those
who do the extraordinary.
"Why don't we stop noticing the &C.
centricty of the man of Death valley?
If it was not for the notice of the pub
lie he would cease to torture us with
his publicity.
However, L am not pessmist; [ be-
lieve in the future. l believe in the
sense of the American public, but this
striving for the unusual must cease.
"And even now there is a desire to
return to the simplicity from which we
have wandered. 1t is time; this tur-
moil of ceaseless toll must give place
to placidity of life or the history of the
worlds nations will repeat itself with
the United States, and nation will
rise in the north, or somewhere. and
our republic will be an example for
pOsterity. A few years will end it
either by revolution or by evolution.
1t must surely come"
-e$S--