The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1914-02-22
Highly Paid Men Of The Wesll.
By JAMES cREELMAN.

eyes he insisted that the few really
great men whose activities have been
so valuable to the world were always
SO busy doing the work that they had
no time to collect the money.
And those who have piled up the
mightiest cash fortunes?
How. eager they are to give the
money away to secure what only un-
selfish service can win, the loving re-
spect of mankindl
Mr.. Carnegie, for instance, made hun
dreds of millions of dollars working
for his own interests as a steel maker.
Yet in his: old age he realized that
money was a small end for a life and
already he has given back more than
SI75.ooo,ooo to the public in the pursuit
of such imperishable honor as poor
and humble-spirited man like Abraham
Lincoln wore like a shining garment.
Outside of material progress, it is
given to few men to add much to the
sum total of the possessions of the hui
man race
The onward movement of civilization
is a series of slow alterations run
ming through many generations, and,
although few great names blaze out
Of the pages of history, as matter
of fact the great decisive events have
been the combined result of the
thoughts, impulses, experiences, and eff
forts of millions of individuals. I
Whenever / hear of some great re-
former who is to pull society up by
the roots and plant it again, | am re-
minded of white-haired John Alfred
Brashear, the famous Pennsylvania as
tronomer and scientific instrument
maker, who perfected the great lens for
the Lick Observatory.
This wonderful man, who, at the age
of twenty-one, was a mechanic in the
Carnegie works and could neither read
nor write, is now recognized as one
of the foremost scientific men of the
world.
When the mighty lens, through which
stars hundreds OF millions of miles
away were to be examined, had been
ground as nearly perfect as possible,
Mr.. Brashear personally assumed the
work of correcting it.
He took the immense glass, then the
largest and most precious thing of its
kind in existence, down into an under
ground work hall, so that the varying
heat of the sun might not affect it.
So delicate was his task that he even
wore special clothes TO prevent the heat
of his body from disturbing the re-
fractions of the glass.
Then, day after day. year after year.
he rubbed the particularly hard, dense
glass with his naked finger, until finally
the rays of light passing through it
concentrated exactly on one spot on the
distant wall.
He used no powdered emery or other
substance. The polished surface of the
great mass was worn away simply by
the friction of his soft skin.
The mind cannot conceive of matter
so minute as that which was removed
every time Mr.. Brashear's finger rubbed
the lens.
Yet each rub brought the marvellous
instrument of astronomy nearer to per-
lection, and it needed all those years
OF patient correction by intellectually
fine friction to enable science to sweep
the heavens with new power and bring
countless hosts of unknown stars within
the sight of man.
So the great lenses of the moral
world have been perfected by the wear
ing friction of millions OF human bodies
and souls from age to age, and, now
and then, generations apart, Wash
ington or a Lincoln has been able to
see little farther into Gods plan for
the race.
1t is slow work, this unfolding of the
possibilities of the world, and it would
be hard to say just what the service
of any single individual has been worth,
honestly compared with the rest.
But this, at least, is certain, that the
men who have taken their reward in
terms of money only have been the
most poorly paid of all.
Still, money is power in cold storage,
as it were, and in the spending Of it
some men have shown a sort of great
ness.
l remember sitting in the laboratory
of Thomas A. Edison and hearing him
say:
my food, clothes, and pleasures cost
me so little that l could live easily on
a day laborer's wages. The only use
I have personally for money is to ac-
quire knowledge and apply it for some
useful purpose"
And who can forget what the immor-
tai Goethe said to DR.. Eckerman:
Each bon mot of mine has cost a
price of gold. Half million of my
own money, the fortune inherited, my
catar,, ard the ta-oe inror,,e derived