The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-05-23

monkey is so justly proud. But if this is true, it still remains matter of mys tery who the first monkey was who made the first campaign speech. Right there is the trouble. Let us therefore proceed a little further.
 The other day a leading film star. who at the end of a more or less perfect day had succeeded in permitting his wife to secure a divorce from him, testified in court that his clothes cost him $bOW a year and he couldn't possibly get along with any less So maybe now we are getting warm, for reduced to dollars and cents the difference between man and a monkey may be S6,O00 a year, as monkeys don't even wear oVeralis Yet I am satisfied that the difference does not lie there, but somewhere else. 1 Now, during the past few weeks, l have been going among all sorts of people gathering opinions about what is the matter with America. The incidents ! have related seem to show that the American man is even worse than monkey-that instead of conserving his
 resources. he scatters them, and that
 he doesn't much care what happens to | him later on Is this true? Well, thls
 is what some of my friends say:
 The war hasn't done us any good The country is full of profiteers, we are more selfish than ever EXtrava-
  day. Everybody wants to be president l. and each one has a personal selfish mo- ltive. Nobody wants to work. Hence the humber of strikes. We are all looking | for something for nothing. We nave evaded our responsibility toward the world at large, and are suffering the i inevitable consequences in loss Of ma tional character If we had been na- | tion of monkeys at least we would nos have gone to these extremes of foliy. | Can it be said therefore that man mas ascended from a monkey~-or has he de- scended?"
 | Maybe, after all. there was secret
 sense of national pride in the reply mape by Eugene Field to an English lady with whom he was dining in London. she was linquiring about the habits of the Amer icans and asking something of thelr origin.
 why. madam" said Field, when was first caught I was up tree,
 Now the truth is this: Man is like a monkey insofar he is an initiative anl- lma1 We are all imitators, individually and collectively. The chap who bought the pearl necklace was only initiating someone that he had in his mind-a Igrand man who slung his money about land bought anything he wanted with it. | The lady of the swell garbage was only Initiating her sister of the upper classes Maybe this sister was only an imaginary being. but to her she was doubtless real and could afford to waste on grand scale. The film star was initiating the glass of fashion and the mould of form of another imaginary being. and yet a being made out of the whole cloth ol reality. For there have always beer Beau Brummels, and a host of smaller l fry to initiate them.
 If you throw a stone at monkey up a cocoanut tree, he will throw co- coanut at you in return. But who starts the throwing?
 This leads us back some hundreds of thousands of years-indeed. we canno' say how far. But the evidence remains
 and from this it is still possible for us
 to reconstruct the picture.
 A certain man in the Arabian Desert had built a fire the night before, and
 had gathered together for the purpose
 some rocks and hard substances to make
 a bed The next morning, when he was
 scraping away the ashes. he made discovery What was it? Bits of melted
 copper And that is where the first cop
 per plant started, that was the orislf
 of the first blasting furnace. Would this have happened had he been monkey No srree.
 The difference then between man ano | a monkey does not lie in any materia s, something that the monkey would no have seen He dipped his hand into tho water to get the oyster or he scrapef away the ashes to get the melted copper or he looked in the clouds and sae Jehovah.
 | And in spite of the foolish fellow wh' bought the pearl necklace and the foolisi second-story lady who threw away l perfectly good piece of roast beef, II spite of the profiteers and the strikers and the loafers and the kalsomlne' | cheeks and the platitudes of orators man. even without tail, is a little highe | Iup in the scale than a monkey. Il l Not that I wish to discredit the mon l Ikey altogether. As a subject for thes he is very useful, showing that man fl in spite of the fact that he Is an irni Il tator, is, over long period of time, pro Il gressng; that his progress may be slow Il tthat he may get discouraged about him Il self; that he may starve and die for | principle and lapse back into an irrespon Il sible being for time and then reassef jhis character, as we Amercans are try | ing to do.