Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-02-18
"On Board the
Good Ship Earth :
n. La~hort O11ick
The Perils Which Lie in the Simple Life
By Herbert Quick

sparrow hawk. The tapir is a slow
breeder, while the peccary swarrns.
But no merely brute life compares
in Its capacity for becoming complex
with human life. The Bushman lives
simple life for a man, but the
gorilla reduces existence to still lower
terms.
Let us contrast the simple life OF
the Chinese peasant with that of
struggling American family. The
American boy goes to school, the
Chinese boy works bowed down to
serve the rice. The American boy
goes to High School; the Chinese boy
at the same age takes a wife and
becomes a father. He is repeatedly
becoming a father, while the Ameri-
can boy goes to college, or spends
years becoming liable to marry" Out
of 1000 American boys a great many
will take up studies or apprentice
ships or other complexities of life
which will defer their marriages.
and if they do not, their sweethearts
will Nothing of the sort in China in
one case in hundred thousand.
The difference beteen Gladys and
TIL is even greater. Tzi has her feet
bound and suffers the tortures of hell
for years, and this is the only COM
plexity entering into her life. At
last 1t only makes life simpler and
confines her more closely to her sole
business of motherhood as it keeps
her negotiating in the hovel she calls
home At 13 she is given in marriage,
and lille Gladys is orking through
the grades. Til is having babies. IL
her husband is able he hires a wet
nurse for the babies. so that Til may
become q mother oftener.
Til and Ching marry in their early
teens; willie and Gladys wRit-and
in waiting maybe change theif minds.
Tzi and Ching. living the simple life,
| couch in a hovel with their parents
and relatives: Willie and Gladys have
home of their own. Gladys mother
insists that her daughter shall have
few years of just being gfIl;
the mother of TIL hands her over
to the father of TIL to give away to
a husband who has never seen THIS
face.
And when Willie and Gladys marry.
they have their social work, their
church work, and their clubs and
| societies to take care of; but TIL
and Ching have babies only-babies
and awful grinding work. Willie and
Gladys must have a piano; Til and
Ching have babies. Willie and Gladys
must have rugs and bathrooms and
bungalow at some lake. Til and
Ching know nothing but work and
| babies. Willie and Gladys want to
~. kI..-
universe of ours. they reach out
/ after the stars, they delve into the
mysteries of knowledge; but as Tor
TIL and Ching,
| Slaves of the wheel of labor, what to
them
/ Are Pinto and the swing of Pleiades?
! What the long reaches of the peaks of
song,
The rift of dawn the reddening of the
rose?
Ross says of Tzi and Ching's coun-
Try, stripped to the bare machinery
of production as it is: 1.-THE founts of
inspirati ton and poetry dry up and
life sinks to a dull sordid round of
| food-getting and begetting."
Jesus came to earth that we might
have life, and that more abundanfly.
This must mean more complex life,
more needs, more qualifications, more
| desires. Like the daughters OF The
horse leech we cry give, give" to
nature and to life. And this is right.
1 Give us more complex life, not a
simpler one; better children, even
though they be fewer; and women
I with unbound feet, unbound minds
| and the freedom to develop in OTHER
ways which will make their children
great, whether they be many or not.
Thus will the ship be saved from
overpeopling.