Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-07-03
SUBWAY
PHILOSOPHY
Bv Frederic J. HQSkin
~ W YORK, June 28.-The SUBJ
nj way is a wonderful vehicle
of rapid transit, no doubt, but

| a 49,
! it is also the most terrible
| instrument in the world for impress
ing upon man his own unspeakable
and precarious insigniticance.
Here is a long, greedy gullet swal-
lowing with noisy, ill-mannered speed
an endless string of closely packed
| capsules. These capsules go down
this roaring throat of the city into
it's troubled bowels, where they dis
integrate like quinine capsules in a
human stomach to produce various
changes.
And you, the subway rider, are one
| tiny grain of the medicine of which
| there are hundreds of grains in each
of the thousands of capsules, that
endlessly course down this hard, dry
Unsuitable throat. If you were lost
on the way, it would not make the
slightest perceptible difference to this
huge organism which is the city. IT
the whole capsule of which you are
such tiny part were to go astray,
it would not make much difference
except that the way of other capsules
might be temporarily blocked.
And when your capsule disinte-
CRATES and sets you free in the Ter
menting insides of the city, you are
You are as one of the bacilli among
the millions that swarm in the hu-.
man colon. A drop in a bucket OF
water, or one grain of salt in a
| QOunQ, is a InlIS OIL elhO
Importance by comparison with you.
| Much has been written about how
little a man feels when he is alone
in a wilderness such as the Rocky
Mountains or the Painted Desert.
This is because the writer's have usu-
ally gone from the city to the wilds,
and therefore have been acutely cpn--
scious of their new environment, but
not aware of its ultimate effect. AS
a matter of fact, if you stay in the
wilds you grow to feel bigger and
bigger. stand on a hilltop and you
seem to be the very center of the
universe. You are. for the momens,
the entire human race, and every
thing else falls away from your feet
and cringes before you in the, per
spective Of distancef. Your individ-
uality expands here just as inev
itably as it contracts in a city. That
is why the visitor to a far corner of
the country finds so many Quaint
saying that in country where there
is plenty of room, men are not all
alike. Each has developed in his
own way. Each has his own point of
battles, however vicious, and dares
to wear rie own kind of hat.
William Bonney was born on the
East Side of New York, and if he
had stayed there he would have been
a common thug and .pickpocket, with
no fame outside of police records.
But he went to the Far West and
became BILLY the Kid one of the
most famous killers in the history OF
American banditrv. Staying twenty
one men by the time he was twenty
one years old. Books and plays have
been written, about him. He is ia
NOUS. He was nothing but an East
Side gunman turned loose in will
! derness where he had room to ex-
ipand and to develop his marvellous
| talent for homicide.
Personalities Are Scarce
In New York personalities run
around one to the hundred thousand
of population, and those few are
mostly importations. AS you go up
ward in what is commonly called the
higher social scale you think you
are finding real people, but you soon
find that you are mistaken. You find
a millionaire with house on Fifth
avenue, place on Lond Island, and
yacht. You say here is a man, VINO
had his way of the city But ne IS
only one Of hundreds or thousands
that have exactly the same things and
use them in the same ways. He
shows no more individuality or mag
| nation in the way he spends his
the way he blows in a dollar at
Coney Island on Saturday night. Each
of them is only one of class, oper--
ated according to strict rules and
regulations.
enormous, but the number of ind1-
vidualities incredibly small. One
East Side Jewess is SO like another
that you can hardly tell them apart.
So of all the lother types After
| little experience, you can spot them
all on sight.
| This disease of uniformity infects
deeply even the arts where ind1vfd-
uality is supposed to be OF the es7 7
| comedy on Broadway is similar to
another, and the plays are almost
all of uniform and similar badness.
| The movies grind out endless films
same ideas with minor variations.
The song writer's write songs which
are nearly all echoes of each other.
!, The artists paint pretty girls who
eyes, but not in the incredible vacuity
of their expressions. The magazines
manufactured here are of several
classes, but those of the same class
! contain always in effect the same
| stories. The same hero and the same
| heroine eternally caper and osculate
| through their pages. They are as
like as the couples that spoon on the
benches along Riverside drive. 1t. is
| the city of inevitable similarity. If
you don't fit into ready-made class,
there is no place for you here, and
| if you do, your movements are as
easy and inevitable as those of
! ten-pin ball coming back to balk
| line.
There are a few who resist this
| incessant friction tending to reduce
them all to the same shape and size
as pebbles are ground and rounded
| in a stream. There are few real
| writer's, a few real artists and few
real personalities in all lines. But
| most of them got their growth be-
fore they arrived here, and most OF
| them periodically depart for other
regions where there is more room,
more of the oxygen of human in
| dividuality
The Protest of the Few
Quite number there is, too, of
those who madly react against this
| demand for meaningless uniformity.
! Here, for emaple, is man who re-
! fuses to wear hat or coat. A
poor way to assert his personality.
| but way none the less. Every one
makes fun of him. The newspapers
sneer at him. The human pack turns
on him as wolves turn on a bob
tailed wolf: But he defies them and
walks bareheaded and coatless down
Broadway. And there are other men
who wear their hair long, and some
who effect strange CARDS. There are
all sorts of freaks. They represent
desperate, almost insane, rebellions
against the grinding of the mighty
machine that seeks to turn out all
men according to one pattern.
You can diagnose the whole dis
ease sitting in the subway. These
folk, you say, are all different. Each
OF them has his own hopes and fears
i and purposes. But as a matter of
fact, each has only the hopes and
fears and purposes that are proper
! to his class. Here is a man contem-
plating murder. but he is one of a
large class of criminals and not at
all lonely or unique. He has his
friends, who are fellow criminals.
Look at these faces in repose.
There are two types. There are
perfectly blank, vacant faces-the
| faces of, men and women who move