Douglas daily dispatch., 1926-10-03
(ContrihnteIll


Evolution is hard, revolution ac-
I compEshes it." This peculiarly pert
statement appears in an old note
used by the writer during his college
days. The note book was supposed to
be a digest Of various tedious lee
lures on economics. The student
meant something about political or
social evolution and not about re
ligious evolution which made monkeys
out of so many men a few years
ago.
The idea is that things keep grow
ing and developing and, according to
mans ideas of reckoning, they keep
growing better as time goes on and
history is written. This applies to
growth of nations and also to a
movement of wealth, power, civiliza-
tion and culture. The professor who
was the cause of the sclIbbling in
the note book explained, or we be-
lieve he did, that the study of econ
omics was so mixed up with history
and some other things that even the
economic sharks themselves differ as
big it is. Anyway, it will serve to
illustrate point and is no doubt
a very interesting study.
''The professor stated that it was
the study of the wealth getting and
the wealth spending powers or
activities of man." The big point
to that with me was always that
had little trouble in spending
wealth. In other words was en-
dowed with great economic powers
in one direction, but my abilities as
a wealth getter up to the present
time, have been woefully undeveloped.
What / started out to say was that
history and everything else has
brought evolution home to Douglas
and Cochisee county and that up to
right now the poor thing has been
kicked about and neglected. In other
words, the time is ripe for Cochise
county and Douglas to evolve and
there seems to be no individual nor
organization big enough or hard
enough nor desperate enough to shake
off the shackles of habit anc climb
cut of the rut of tradition and start
the revolution that the note book
states is likely to be necessary to
accomplish the evolution.
The world of thinking working men
has taken up everything east, west
and north of Cochise county, Arizona
and played it for all that 1t is worth
It is producing wealth, culture
civilization, rich homes, powerful in
dustrial combines, railroads, great
farming communities. money with
which to purchase everything in the
world that money can buy, but Cochise
county generally and Douglas and
its great rich valley in particular
have not been more than scratched
by the hand of progress and the
enlightening uplifting hand of evo-
luton, and yet in all the world since
Noah stepped out of the Ark there
has not been such a plentiful supply
of material for building and rurnfsh-
ing a new empire as lies here in
the last outpost of civilization, the
last stand of the frontier existence.
Douglas is guilty of almost criminal
negligence lin a greater degree than
any engineer who ever ran a pas
senger train over a block signal or
any banker who ever invested his
investors money in rotten oil stock.
This town imports from outside
Cochise county every year g1,000,00O
worth of things that could be raised
within 20 miles of the o,ty. These
items are eggs, to the tune of $3OO,OOO
a year, chicken feed to the same
amount and butter and dairy COW hay
to make up the million.
These things are imported fror.
desert countries that do not have half
as rich a soil nor half as adequate
a water supply as we have here in
the Sulphur Springs valley. In other