Omaha daily bee., 1919-01-19
VirtuouS
Wives,

wives,
toontinusd from Page Onsl
waves, washing its precursor further
up the island and further up the
social scale. founding, in the tenacity
of the national instinct, Little
Italy, and the great Yiddish ghetto.
Other waves have rolled in. The
first colonies Of Italians and He
brews, always driven upward, have
seized possession of the outskirts
of the Bronx and overlooked across
rapidly multiplying bridges into
Williamsburg and into Queens,
while below, on the lower East
Side, the swarming immigrants still
land by the hundreds of thousands,
their fortunes on their backs, oc-
cupying the lately relinquished tene-
ments in that great cellar to oppor-
tunity which lies below Grand
street. This stupendous march of
four nations completes the investi-
ture of old New York by piercing its
left flank, cutting it off from the
river, and crowding it more and
more against the eastern boundaries
of the park.
What has happened? Just as the
discovery of gun-powder destroyed
| the social state Of feudalism, and
the invention Of the printing press,
BY the democratic dissemination OF
knowledge, made possible Crom-
we'll and the French revolution, so
the confguration of New York,
which has, made. the skyscraper a
necessity, has determined an un-
relenting conflict between the past
and the present, war visualized TO
the minutest military comparison
which goes on day by day before our
eyes. Below this material destruc-
ton and reconstruction, profound
change has been wrought in the soul
of the society in fight. In 1890,
New York was a city of homes; to-
day, it is a wilderness of transient
hotels.
When man had achieved the right
to live and had conquered political
liberty, there still remained ahead
that ultimate human goal toward
which all his efforts throughout his
tory have tended, in search of
which he has tried every form of
government and attempted every
code of morality-the pursuit of hap
piness, the final realization of which
lies in ethical and spiritual domains.
It is the final judgment on society,
by which it stands or falls, for
which it has created its forms and
established its traditions. Man does
not seek to live under a republic, a
liberal kingdom, or benehcent des-
potism. Instinctively he seeks his
individual happiness, but as his soul
is not the soul of an OK, to acquire
complete happiness he must have
the consciousness of freedom to
think, to speak, and to act. The
conquests of these rights (Which we
call history are visible and material.
There remains the future of human
speculation, that pursuit of happiness
which is the inner life. of the man
himself, in quest of which he has
created the symbol of the home and
attempted 10 perfect the convention
Of marriage.
The most terrifying emotion
which he can feel is the sense # de-
tachment which Expresses him when
he finds himself unrelated TO the
progress of the multitude, either by
marriage, by the ties OLA home or
by intimate association with his
| fellows. Man is,not solitary crea-
ture. His instinct is TO associate
himself with others in the partner
ship of his joys and his sorrows. His
sanity and morality depend on some
responsibility toward others. To
him, home is not merely four walls
and a roof. 1t is a symbol. To
supply the need of his imagination,
it must have the permanence Of con-
tinuing tradition. The two profound
est instincts OF which he is capable,
which direct him in all his course
through life, are the instincts of &C
QUESTION and possession. To ac-
quire, to add, is to progress. To
possess a home is to give perman-
ence to this progress which extends
its consoling significance to its pos
SCISSOR. But to have that sentiment
of permanence which is attached to
the symbol Of the home, he must
have his feet planted in the soil.
Man does not possess one hundred
cubic feet of air sixty feet above
the ground.
Three additional developments in
New York have been insidiously
corrupting the old institution of the
home-the telephone, which has lew
4 eled its walls; the apartment hotel.
which has torn it from the soil, and
the automobile, which has finally
transferred it to breathless wheels.
The modern wife finds the privacy
OF her bedroom invaded by swarm
Of acquaintances who call her up at
all moments of the day and night,
interrupt her conversation, disturb
lher sleep, summon her from her
table. Her automobile rushes her
forty miles away for dinner in a pop
ular restaurant, and she changes her
apartment every three years without
a memory or a regret.
A new and restless cosmopolitan
society has formed, always in mo-
ton, without relation to the past or
attachment to the present, without
| definite object ahead except the ex-