The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1914-01-08
Civilized People Losing Power
To, Think, Says North Dakotan;
Men Become Mere AutOmatOnS
Isaventitiveness : A
ses':!z 9. hg Of the Past
Uneducated Granduate Not Myth
Says Writes-Lacking In Ad.
ministrative Ability.

Chicago. Jan. s.-Are civilized peo-
pie, especially residents Of cities, los
ing the power to think?
Professor Arland D. Weeks Of tho
North Dakota agricultural college at
Fargo, who writes In the current issue
of the American Journal Of Sociolo-
gy, issued by the University of Chi
cago Press. says they are, and pre-
to stimulate the reasoning faculties.
"there will enaue dearth OF tnven-
tiveness and decline Of civiliza-
tion."
Professor Weeks ascribes the de-
creasing power to think to the in
vention Of mechanisms OF all sorts
that require gull minimum Of dn intel
watches, engines. typewriters. adding
machines. and to the "centralizing Of
intelligence in managerial offices and
q corresponding removal Of problems
from employees and agents."
Says Men Become Automatons.
He says len are becoming autom-
atoms, arising in the morning, going
over the same route to work, adhering
to the rules of their employers, and
returning at night without variation.
forget that an easy environment, with
few conditions of surprise. throws the
individual down to the lower reactions
and swings the beam toward devolu-
tion and degeneracy. 1t Is common
to refer to modern life as highly COM
plex, but this should not be taken to
mean that the complexity Is necessar-
lily thought compelling. Ones rela-
tions to this complex life may be so
simple as to preclude those conditions
OF surprise required for intellectual
advancement
1T is no longer necessary to UNDER
stand principles and constructions to
be able to use machinery.
Unnecessary to Know Principles.
market 'foolproof.' Even the carton
of breakfast food tells US where to
open the box-.cut along this line.'
A dead level Of almost automatic per-
formance Is forced upon factory em-
ployes department workers, and quite
generally upon salaried classes, not
excluding large percentage of those
Contrast the rudiment lives of the
city workers and the persons whose
activities are directed from central
offices with the frontiersman's life or
with q single day camping out. The
improvising Of utensils, meeting of
emergencies. and reactions to the un-
expected give an exhilarating taste Of
q life which appears OF q a,dinerent
wprld. The lie Of the frontier has
,13yaes. the world nnanX Of its MOST
valuable a1gsts from Lincoln To Mark
Twain TO tho yorrsns title resistration
INV, aid xltf Australian ba1lbt. :
Unednnated Graduate Not Myth.
THAT the new situations Of the day
In civic affairs have found the public
unprepared for their rational solution
and that even leaders who might
otherwise be statesmen are found
lacking in administrative ability Of
the highest grade Is evidenced BY
failures Of government"
Professor Weeks says the uneducat-
ed university graduate is not q myth.
and that the greatest economic and
social menace is the tendency to dis
courage individual thought and create
labor and thought-saving devices
without substituting education of the
reasoning processes. M