Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-08-16
THE HIGH COST OF HUMAN NATURE
The Most Expensive Commodity Earth Is Responsible for
High Taxes for Yearly Loss of $2500OO0OO in Fires
and for Inverted Reforms
BY B. K. LITTLE

saloon to exist. If you are after temper
ance you must go deeper than to knock out
the saloon; you must get after the propensity
to drink But again ii is human nature in
us that makes us want things done in
hurry, and so we go for the saloon rather
than for the slow process of education that
Is necessary before we can eradicate the
propensity to drink That process is too
slow to suit human nature
Every now and then some high-minded
philanthropist knocks down a row of dingy
tenements, and in their place builds a model
row of houses, fit for anybody to live in, with
plenty of bathrooms and with geraniums in
the windows. 1t is fine. We can't have too
many model tenements. And yet If the peo-
pie who occupy those tenements are not keyed
up ~ geraniums and cleanliness they will
eitheNhee your tenements or let the gerani-
ums die. It's human nature. The place where
you've got to begin building your model
tenements is in the minds and hearts of the
poor. If you don't begin there they won't
he able to live up to your fine buildings
There is another slow process of education
asking to be started. And, alas, 1t is human
nature to want things, especially reforms,
done in hurry!
The economists have all kinds of explana-
tions for the high cost of living. Professor
Irving Fisher, of Yale, has written books to
prove that 1t is due to the shrinking pur-
chasing power of the dollar. He probably
knows all about the subject But there is
one very deep quantity that he has left out
of his nice calculations And that quantity
is-human nature.
How to Make Living Cheaper
1t may we'll be that there is too much gold
dollars that each dollar is not SO valuable
as II dollars were fewer and farther between.
Most of us have to take on faith the theory
that there is too much money in the world.
We don't see enough of 1t to believe what
the economists say But there are other
things we can see that are partly responsible
Tor the high cost of living. Our grand
mothers were not ashamed to carry home nm
der their arms a bag Of crackers or a dozen
bananas Our wives go downtown and order
a paper of pins sent home in a gilded motor
denVery van. The paper of pins IL II is 10
eaten their eye, must be done up in a little
more houney fashion than any other paper
OF pins We want highly paid inspectors 10
insure us that every article of food we buy
70 sate ana pure We demand that It be
packed IN sanitary wrappages Those wrap
p'ses must as every merchant knows, be at
tractive to the eye The merchant must |
nave clever people to make those wrappers |
attractive.
Well all this is expensive. We call 1t civil
llzation. But civilization costs money. In
reality the high cost of living is simply the
high cost OF human nature
You see what human nature is. Some NJ Il
is very good. some of it is very, very bad
The thing TO do is to make 1t all good. Don't
mink It can't be done We have got the |
laea that society is some huge impersonal
sisht, TOO big to reform. Nothing Of the sort.
socle'y Is composed Of you and Smith and
hiown ana Black. 1t win become better the
lnolheht that every smith in the lot sets to
work and makes himself better.