Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1925-05-20

any and all of them have value pri-
marily if not solely because they
conserve the life of man. And in
like manner the conservation of
man himself we find vast and
manysided subject, and one which
will repay the most earnest study
and the most far-seeing and de
voted effort. There is the very pre-
servation of human life itself,
through changed conditions of liv-
ing, better hygiene, and the mas
terry Of disease. Prof. +. S. Harris,
in his new book, Scientific Re
search and Human Welfare" states
that five years has been added to
the average human life within the
last ten years. In Geneva, in the
10th century the average length Of
life was PIP years Now the av-
erage length of life in the United
States is approaching three times
that figure; it is 55 years. Edison,
with customary enthusiasm, is be-
ginning to predict that the hu-
man being will eventually live
more than two centuries" | notice
that a railway official declared the
other day that it is safer now to
ride on trains than to cross our
streets in any other way. This is a
testimony to the conservation that
is effected by the improvement in
the operation of our railroads, and
a strong hint of the need of i'm
provement in the regulation Of mo-
tor traffic. We shall some day
learn to cooperate to suppress the
booze business, as the only way to
make motoring safe for the Ameri-
can public. Business, in self-de-
fence, wrote the eighteenth amend
ment into the Constitution; the
long suffering public will at last,
in self-defence, rise up and enforce
it.
1t is hard to refrain from dwell
ing at length upon the marvellous
conservation Of human life effected
by the conquest of disease chiefly
through preventive medicine. 1t
is a thrilling and triumphant story.
But understanding all these inter-
ests as far as human conservation
outstrips the value of the conser-
walton Of inanimate nature is the
problem of the conservation of hui
man character. Listen to the
words which Vice President Dawes
uttered the other day in addressing
a thousand of Boston leading
business men:
"And so today in the United
States above all matters of bust
ness and material advancement,
the one thought which should be
uppermost in the minds of us all
is: What of our character? 1t is
this alone which counts in the long
run. What man, no matter how
great has been his power and sue
cess, does not realize it in those
last days of his life when, before
his failing sight, appears the dark
ness of the shadows of the valley?
The ebbing away Of blood in the
human body has no more marked
relation to its welfare than the
disintegration of character has up
on a people. In the coming cen
fury, American civilization must
meet its highest tesla test of
whether or not it has followed
those beacon lights of personal
character which our New England
forebears lifted on high for the
guidance Of our people"
A similar warning is sounded by
George w. Alger in the Atlantic
Monthly: History tells us of the
softening and disintegrating in
fuence upon civilizations having
their work done by slaves, leaving
their masters to vice and the lux
uries of a degenerating idleness.
The iron men who work for us, the
slaves mustered in increasing num-
bers to do our work, are no longer
flesh and blood" There is no way
out he declares, but by proving
that we can live in a slave world
without succumbing to those in
sidiously enervating influences
which have destroyed all the slave
made states of the past. The great
problem before us is to create a
civilization that does not degen-
crate under leisure. This can be
done only by setting in operation
forces making for culture that
recognizes, as no civilization since
the fall of Rome has been required
to do, that leisure must be a means
and not an end; that its true value
is measured by what we do with it
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