The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-12-17

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 &}SS The old-fasn- 1 w.,su.,1 toned man who l read Apostle
 Paurs diatribes against marriage no
 doubt was impressed with the logic l of the apostles argument upon thls
 much veXed social relation, until and
 unless he happened to see the one 1 fair woman beneath the sun, where upon most likely he straightway cast
 the humped- backed Paul into the dis card. notwithstanding the canon of | holy Scripture was rent in twain. It l Is lucky that all men are not com
 pelled to face the question of mar
 riage from the standpoint of whether l they can offord a wife and children. 1 The new gospel limits the inhipi- ton solely to the unskilled wage earner. It is difficult to understand
 this limitation. One wonders wheth-
 CT II is based upon the welfare of the
 present or the welfare of the future.
 Any man who is happily married will igive the subject only similing glance. He who is unhappily mar
 ried may give his assent as did the Englishman to the formula that mar
 riages would be happier it they were
 all made by the lord chancellor. But
 this new pronouncement in the social
 and economic life of the public de-
 serves more than a smile or a sheer. If there ever was a time when need
 of plain men to do plain work existed this is the day. Unskilled labor.
 conscientiously performed. is at premium. Many men who claim to
 be skilled workmen In fact are not.
 To deny this would be toying with
 the truth. The improvement in ma I chinery has made the so-called
 skilled workman literally speaking, l half skilled and half machine. l Whether we have been educating the people or not do not say. but from
 lnnumerable plugs we have been turning upon them the nozzles Of education and at least wetting them
 down with information.
 I often have wondered whether
 much is to be gained by training
 man with natural bent toward chicken stealing for the more re-
 munerative profession of forgery. It
 may be that in the development of
 Americas wonderful inventive genius
 discoveries will yet be made as will
 enable us to do all the worlds work 1 by machinery. In that happy day, 1 it is to be hoped that men who op-
 crate the machinery will be suffi- cientiy skilled as to justify their re-
 ceiving wages sufficient to justify
 marriage and the rearing of families
 But as yet there are things left in l life that must be done by the hand
 of man untrained to follow any spe- cific vocation This fact ought tC be complete Justification for this kind lof a man. Are we to have social and economic arrangement that will l forbid in a democracy the existence l of such a man? Is 1t the hope that when the present unskilled workman l dies childless civilization will have 1 advanced so far as not to need his l successor?
 This may be a new Utopia, but 1t | would be unsafe to await its arr l rival. We might find ourself bank | rupt and starving. The theory l might do for monarchy, but 1t l is not consistent with a democracy
 where we prate about the rights of
 man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Indeed, it might with 1 equal propriety be suggested that l anybody that does not meet the re- l quirements of life In any particular 1 shall be deprived of wife and chill | dren. I take 1t that if we were to take a vote, which is good way to l settle things in democracy, on | whether the unskilled workman or | the wild oats-sowing rich son should | he denied the right of marriage and family. the good hard common sense of the country would render verdict in favor of the honest hard | working laborer. Not what man does but how he does it, whether his la bor be skilled or unskilled, should be the measure of his glory in re- | public.
 rLa tee, ,f nd mil remain very much as they now are l regardless of the schemes and | theories of those who would | change them. We may lay impious 1 hands upon the Ark of the Cove nant if we will, but we shall never be able to break it open, much less take out and destroy the Book of Law. Man and woman have been joined together as husband and wife by either God or marrying justice since time began. It has been of no moment whether parents or preachers or political economists ad- vised the step. In the future. as in the past, youth will be served.
 The quarrel goes on whether en-
 vironment or heredity makes the men. One can successfully uphold either side of the controversy. Much as we think we know about it, we know little about it. There IS a saying in the middle west that it is
 just three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves. The express sion epitomizes that an unskilled workman may by perseverance, thrift foresight, make fortune, that his son may regard his sole business in
 life to be to spend the fortune, and
 that his grandson may be back to the
 and Americ- fin, nciers are said to
 have reached conclu sions that tho