Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1907-08-20
The Pace That Kills.

The Pace Ihat Kills.
The Pittsburg story that people there
are mortaging their dwellings to buy
automobiles is not without parallel else
where. Similar tales come from Massa-
chusetts and New York. Even in Port
land such transactions are not unheard
of Perhaps they are more common all
over the country than it is agreeable to
believe.
What can be said of man who will
sacrifice his home and beggar his family
to pay for an automobile? What of the
wife and mother who will nag at him
until he has consented to the crazy deed?
To call them fools is small comfort. 1t
may be true enough, but it explains moth
ing, besides being forbidden, by the
Scriptures According to Carlyle, most
of US are fools. Our folly runs some
times this way, sometimes that. The
only pertinent question seems to be,
why does it turn to automobiles at this
particular timer
Automobiles are today the most con-
spicuous and convincing sign of wealth.
The ownership of one has become indis-
pensable to a person who aspires to
move in society. Society pays calls in
automobiles, it travels in them, it races
them, it makes love in them. Polite lit
erature has accepted the automobile as
the mark of aristocracy. He who has
one is eligible to gilded functions of all
sorts. He who has none is naught.
They play the same in our exalted
circles that coat of arms did in the
days of chivalry; but they play it better,
for an ambitious vulgarian could make
q coat of arms for himself while he could
not make an automobile. The deceit
of a person who invented coat of arms
might never be found out. He might
flaunt his unholy fraud all his life and
transmit it to his offspring undetected.
But of the man who sports an automo-
bile without substantial fortune to
maintain it the heyday is brief. In the
day when the mortage on his house is
foreclosed he is cut down like grass, he
withers like the flower on the fed.
Like shadow, he passeth and is not.
Hence the unique excellence of the
automobile as mark of exalted social
rank. Hence the rage of social aspi
rants TO possess them. "All that man
hath will he give for his life" said Satan
to the Lord For an automobile and
the social prestige that goes with it he
win give good deal more than his life.
He will give his character, his honor,
and the welfare of his family. For
hearth and home men will fight more
desperately than for any other thing on
earth; but for an automobile he would
sacrifice both.
What does this prove? Ii proves that
many of us have lost the saving sense of
values. We no longer know what is
worth while and what is not. The
glitter ofexternals has so dazzled many
people that they live their lives like june
bugs, humping about hither and yon
with no purpose except to fly and bump.
They exist for nothing but to keep GO
ing faster and faster, and the wilder
their speed the more they think they
are getting out of life. A rifle bullet
gets as much. More, in fact for the bull
let sometimes hits mark, while the
automobile maniac never does Even
his murders lack the spice of purpose.
Aside from great art and music, the
pleasures best worth having cost little
money. The best of all is the love be-
tween man and wife which the good
God gives freely if they are worthy of
the gift. William Allen White would
not go to New York to live. though
great inducements were offered him,
because he could not forsake his lawn
and garden in Emporia. He thought
of himself at nightfall forlorn among
the skyscrapers while the grass withered
and the pinks dropped for water in his
Kansas home. and he put the tempta-
ton away ana stayed where he was.
MIR. White was wise. Few pleasures"
says the editor of Golfers, ARE more
genuine than to water ones own lawn
with forty-foot hose" The real things
of life are the good things, and they
come within the grasp OF most of us
without mortgaging our dwellings. Let
society go its way with as many auto
mobiles as it likes. For the great
majority there is something better. snd
we can get it without going the pace
that kills.-Portland 0regonian.