The Emmett index. [volume] (Emmett, Idaho) 1893-1925, 1920-01-01
IS MERELY CIGARETTE
MONEY
Incompetents Scorn Pre-War
Pay and Wait for
Jobs.

The following is a part Of an edi
torial in recent number Of the Sat
urday Evening Post and is herewith
submitted because of its illuminating
treatment of the problem Of recon
struction
During the war and right after, the
world was of the opinion that with the
signing of an armistice everyone
would Immediately begin reconstruc-
ton, though almost everyone used the
word in a different sense. Some Eu-
ropean countries thought that it
meant making big touch on America;
some Americans thought that it
meant making big loans to Europe
that would finance undertakings from
which they would derive large profits,
and lot of women thought that it
meant rebuilding the houses of the
peasants and distributing charity pic
turesquely The reds, of course, have
all along interpreted reconstruction in
terms of destruction.
In its present state of mind the
world will believe anything except
facts, do anything except work. The
three wise men of the ages, Solomon,
Franklin and Lincoln, speak half
forgotten language. But they said
everything that there is to say about
reconstruction. The world needs not
only their homely common sense but
taste of Solomon's rod. Children
are spoiled and lot of their elders
are spoiling-and dispoiling.
Reconstruction is problem of indi-
viduals before it is one of nations; of
character before it one of credits.
Crooked thinking begets crooked ethics
and crooked business, until finally we
have a nation on the loose.
Destruction is impersonal. States
men destroy country and stand
from under. Mobs destroy a city and
melt away. Reconstruction is person
al Not statesmen, nor mobs, will
reconstruct the world, but the indi-
vidual. When enough men think right
as individuals, cities, states and coun-
tries will begin to think right. In
the very act of preparing for it re
construction will be accomplished.
The world was not made in a day
and it will not be made over in zone,
except for the worse. Reconstruction
is long, hard, personal job. Sooner
or later it must be taken in hand
and the later the harder.
The basic proposition on which all
theories of reconstruction must rest
can be summed up in sentence: If
it takes eight, nine or ten hours of
steady work to make the food and the
goods necessary to the support of an
average family the time is coming
when those who are working six and
seven hours, or not at all, must work
ten, twelve and fourteen hours or
starve. For beyond the day-to-day re-
quirements of the world there must be
a certain dependable surplus, and the
loafers on the job, and those who will
not take job, have already consumed
that surplus in many countries and
have gnawed it down to the danger
point in others.
The real problems of reconstruction
are in your factory, your office, your
block, your home, and probably in
your wife, your children and yourself.
If you do not find them there you are
a very unusual man with an almost
too perfect family. The statesmen
cannot tell you half so much about
these problems in their speeches as
you can find out in first-hand sur
vey of your neighborhood.
In our own survey we talked, among