The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-11-14

n
 O St. Reckless.
 Been wot9" asked the house detective
 T said have you been uplifted yet?" repeated the hotel clerk. '1 don't mean riding in an elevator or being Jostled through space by a touring car or plutocrat's progeny, or even taking a little trip with one of those Wright boys. l mean honest-to -to-goodness, from-the- heart-out uplifted. Because if you haven't you want to get in line for the great moral boost right away. It's rapidly becoming the national indoor sport and If you're not either an uplifter or an upliftee, you positively will not do and you'd better take in your sign and draw down the front shades and go out of business.'
 Its just this here old reform move ment under a moo name. ain't it?" in quired the House Detective.
 Not exactly" said the Hotel Clerk. ''The average reform movement by any other name would smell the same, or even worse. Uplift was bred out of Re form Wave by Muckrake as we'll as I'm able to trace it's pedigree. It is based upon that strong and at times overpow ering desire which lies at the base of every human brain, to attend to some body elses business. It's not new and it's not old. It's like the bullet, which is the newest thing in the world, and also like the egg, which is the oldest. But not until here recently did it become epidemic in character and start sweeping over the country as the poet says, like a bassoon of destruction"
 Twas the magazine editors began it. Every once in while some young Loch- invar of uplifter comes charging out of the west, or elsewhere, with an eye in his head that'n fit any keyhole that ever was built and one of those long, slender prehensile noses with three joints in it-a nose that's a combination, Larry, of the snout of the black-banded South American tapir and a slide trom- bone. You may have seen such ornaments before. They generally grow on special investigators and private detectives. and when the female kind of our species has one of them she rarely marries This gifted young man allows his gimlet-eyed glance to flicker over us and our institu- tions for as long as 20 minutes and then he says to himself, This town doesn't suit me. It's not at all like I thought 'twould be. It'll have to be changed right away. In fact he says, it may have to be done over altogether
 And then he gallops off to the nearest magazine office, introduces himself as J. Henry Uplift oldest son of old man Uplift of Liftvile, Mass, while he's talk ing off his coat, explains his aims, mo- lives and purposes while testing his fountain pen on his thumb-nafl, briefly sketches the outline of his opening article while the boy is bringing him some copy paper and in three minutes by the clock he's hard at 1t, turning out ream after
 
 pausing occasionally to ask if Third av- enue crosses Broadway at Forty-second street and whether the East Side runs all the way up to the Battery or stops down in Harlem somewhere. Most of the Up lift lads can turn out wonderfully strong, searching stuff, too, if not hampered by facts. And as a result of their work and their example to other gallant young busybodies over the nation, it's a mighty insignificant, unimportant community these days that hasn't been first crusaded and then uplifted until half the popula- tion don't speak to the other half except when they can think of something un- pleasant to say. A good, brisk church row or a live local option campaign is nothing to what a rightly conducted up lift movement can do in the way of en- couraging pure feuds, libel suits and eyes with purple mourning borders around them. The reason why General Sher- man spoke of war the way he did was be- cause he'd never experienced healthy uplift movement in the act of lifting up.
 "As l was telling you Just now, it's spread everywhere, the Uplift has. All down along the South Atlantic seaboard, in the land of the well-known Diamond back Brothers-Rattler and Terrapin-the ballot has been uplifted until it's entirely out of reach of the colored brothers. In the west the Indian has been uplifted to such an extent that it's now compara- lively easy for the land agent to tunnel in under him and swipe his land To- morrow the Uplifted Red Man comes around finds a town lot where his res ervation was yesterday and is arrested for trespass. The uplifting process for him takes the form of a dispossess notice and the best thing he can do is to strap a pair of roller skates on, head in the general direction of the Pacific ocean and keep right on going until he's far enough out to start swimming. In most of our larger cities the prevalent system of municipal politics has been uplifted until an alderman who makes a habit of selling out more than once on the same proposition is regarded as no gentleman. And here in the great metropolis of the United States and Holy Lands, the busy uplifter is everywhere. Look what the settlement workers do in the haunts of the poor, as they go to and fro, entering every door without stopping even to knock and as welcome everywhere as the Asiat- ic cholera Just look what they do. Is a poor East Side family without a bite to eat7 In comes some kindly, amateur