The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-10-26
No Expedient to Which
 Man Will Not Rsort <, To Avoid Thinking
l(Confinued from Page One.)


 CT began to notice this many years ago when a legislature out west passed a law giving a bounty for the killing of coyotes. only to discover of coyotes. jack-Tabbits were multi tplying rapidly that the law had to tehe killing of rabbits And, 40 years fago, Herbert Spencer wrote some Wonderfully Illuminating chapters on the complexity of cfviliza tion in his 1 day. Spencer took up 34 laws en- tacted by the British Parliament for fthe relief of the poor and demon {stra,ted that 32 of these laws actually was a great man. He had the finest brain that England ever produced. l ''But the compleNty of civilization comparison with what it is now. The hcurve of compleXity is as nothing in fcomparison with what it is now The :. curve of compIexity is rising rapidly whereas our ability to cope with the sproblerns of compleity is increasing only very slowly
 | Then Edison uttered the sentence ktnat shows the fear that shadowed A-''I don't know what will happen to us in fifty years he said, If this thing keeps on-"
 would pull our way out If we would but he seems not optimistic over the prospect s that we % tei1s care fhe story Sn nf his doubts It is a sentence from the writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds, reading:
 man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking"
 "Reynolds was right said Edison. i tsThfSking is the hardest thing in the ! world for those to do who have not formed the habit. After one has formed the habit it is not so hard. ! But everywhere in the world we see z H,1 their minds.
 Tn business affairs the tendency Is |, to escape thinking. In the board ol directors of a great corporation the { man with the eylibbest tongue is likely to swing the rest simply because they fdo not want to take the trouble to ! think out problems for themselves.
 It is a strange thing that really 1 great men never seem to think that the things they do are great. Edi- ! son says it is not so hard to think when one has formed the habit. Hem Erv Ford honestly believes that every Sthtng he has done Is simplicity It. self and feels that he is just at the i s,beginning of his career, during which Inc may vet do something worth sk while Edison told me today of a problem brought to him +o{,on ey a e94s He . . saw the cause of the difficulty thai
 T saw it as plain as day he said ! "and tried my best to make them see | tt but I don't believe they saw it
 called Edison's attention to Fora t railway achievements; how he haC Etaken a broken down road that wal SIosine money and made ia pay; how other American railway men hat t tried to belittle his performance b, EdecIaring that he had made his roa' nav only by diverting to it his -oNi k,rreat automobile traffic; how fhe lac Twas and is, as the reports on file Wltl kthe Interstate Commerce Comm1sslol ? at Washington show, that the presen Efrafhc on Fords road, with his auto mobile traffic added, Is less now cnal wac the traffic two years ago Whe1 \ the road was losing money; and eN nIained that this decrease in presen E traffic was due to the fact that wha Ford had added was not as much a < the road had lost by reason or Tn | general business depression.
 Edison's eyes twinkled.
 s.Ford can do a lot of things tha | o.her men cannot do, replied Edl ! son, Ford is autocrat. He doe not have to ask anybody's consent | do anything. And he knows what I { do. He is a. genius. An autocrat
 fine best kind of a man to run an In
 duztry or a. overnment-provided is good autocrat. But there is tus ! about as much chance that hEhtn1n 1 will strike you when you are out i ! inc rain. That is why our form s government, slow as f. is. is me bes good autocrat would give us bette ; government but it would probably | a long vvhiie between good autocraos