Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1918-04-25
VI DEPEND on EACH OTmER.

Can you picture an average Ameri-
can family seated at a table in the
average American home about to par
take OF the average American meal?
Il is familiar enough sight There
is the table covered with its white
cloth. the utensils made from porce-
lain, steel, glass and silver, and there
is the food-bread and butter. milk,
tea or coffee, salt and pepper. sugar,
meat, vegetables, fruit. etc But
scarcely anything there is the direct
result Of the labor Of any person who
sits about that table!
When you sit down to a meal do you
ever think who provided it? DO you
even know. in most cases. where the
different components OF that meal
came from? Did the salt and the pep
per drop as mamma from heaven? Did
the flax or the cotton which forms the
tablecloth grow upon the home place?
Were the fbers spun into yarn by your
housekeeper, and was the cloth woven
on the household loom? Did you rear
the animal which supplied the meat
for the repast? Did the fruit come
from your orchard? Are the milk and
the butter the products Of your COW?
Who delved into the earth for the sill
yer, the steel, the lead, the clay which
have been used to make up the uten-
sils necessary for your most simple
M ghannaI f-.,t
products into the knives and forks
and dishes you use?
No thoughtful man can consider
such questions without being tremen-
dously impressed with the utter de-
pendence of even the most independ
ent man in our present civilization
upon the cooperation of hundreds of
thousands of his fellow men whom he
has never met and probably never
heard of, largely engaged in some oc-
cupation different from his own and
scattered about. not only all over his
own country, but many of them locat-
ed in far distant parts of the earth!
- II makes no difference what voca-
ton a man follows. He may be a
farmer and cause two blades of grass |
to grow where only one grew before. |
He may be manufacturer, a retail |
a mechanic or a baker
no matter what he is, he depends for |
his very existence. not only upon |
those who till the soil and deal in its |
81 IN |
tent upon the great organizations of |
transportation, com |
and finance which are |
about all over the earth.
1t has taken the combined efforts. |
the cooperation of thousands of peo-
pie and organizations concerning |
which the average individual may |
know nothing, TO bring about the de- |
velopment of what we call our mod |
crn civilization. The economic value |
of your efforts and those of your en- |
ployee or of your employer. as the |
case may be. both depend upon the |
value of the efforts of millions of |
other men, and the economic value OF |
one cannot be damaged without inn
pairing the economic value of all.
Let us not become so thoroughly |
specialists that we forget the other |
fellow. If our work narrows down |
at least let our knowledge and sympa-
thies broaden. If we do not know |
something of the problems of each
Ctbnr aud have Soma SVODo thetiC in i
terest in those problems we cannot |
hope to attain. either individually or |
the very great benefits |
which are known to be the direct re-
suits of helpful cooperation.