Evening star., 1929-06-30

world will rebel against prosperity.
The hunger that Macauiay prophesied
has not come: the prosperity that M.
Caillaux so much fears has begun to
appear and 1t promises to wax greater
and to embrace the mass of mankind.
Will humanity eventually rebel against
it?
OF course, there is no telling what
humanity will do when 1t finds itself
in condition that it has never known
in the past. Men have often rebelled
against injustice. So it may be that
humanity will eventually rebel against
prosperity, as M. Caillaux prophesies
that it will
Rebel Against Adversely.
There is, however, no instance in
history where men have rebelled
against the gains of prosperity. All
the rebellions of the past have been
against the evils of adversely. M. Call
laux may claim, If he will, that the
spiritual teachings Of Asia have been
uniformity directed against the kind
of prosperity that has been coming
slowly to the entire world since the
advent of the machine.
It is true enough that all the spirit
ual seers of Asia have called upon men
to renounce the world. But few appear
citation preached in India, China and
elsewhere in Asia was based upon the
poverty of the people. The seers called
upon the people to renounce life for the
simple reason that, so far as they
could see, life had nothing to offer
them. Almost everybody In Asia was
poor. No matter how hard the people
worked, they remained poor. They had
not only never conquered nature; they
never SO much as dreamed that nature
could be conquered. They starved by
they perished like flies whenever an
epidemic appeared.
"Renounce the world. There is
nothing here for you. Desire for what
you cannot have only makes you mis-
erable, and is eyil!' That is what the
spiritual teachers of Asia taught the
people. There were no men of science,
and, for lack of scientists, Asia has been
poverty stricken for thousands OF years.
The religious teachers Of Asia to man
regarded the world and the life Of
man as evil, and they thought that the
sooner man was able to escape the
world the better.
But with the advent of science-the
thing that distresses M. Caillaux SO
much, and is the cause of his anxiety
for the future of the world-the gospel
of remuneration began to lose its ef-
feet; and here in America it has lost
it altogether. It was not an unpopu-
lar gospel in America at one time.
Days Of Privation.
Prof. Fite of Princeton. says that
atae good old days, especially our own
pioneering days, were mainly days OF
spr5Vation. OF unremitting toll for the
+sz..<t - Aaeyn fSf
spiritual leisure, but of abject slavery
to the needs of the body"
And Prof. McMaster, IN his History
of the People of the United States"
says of a typical American laborer at
the close of the American Revolution:
sand sprinkled on the floor did duty
as carpet. There was no glass on his
table, there was no china in his cup
board, there were no prints on his wall;
what a stove was he did not know, coal
he had never seen, matches he had
never heard Of. =. He rarely tasted
fresh meat as often as once week,
and paid for it a much higher price
than his posterity. -. If the food OF
an artisan would now be thought
coarse, his clothes would be thought
abominable."
M. Caillaux complains that those
whom he calls the Realists and Uto-
plans, chanting hymns, the one in
glorification of production, the other IN
favor of a better distribution of wealth,
ascribing all progress of civilization to
the betterment of material well-belng,
they have bowed man down to the
earth instead Of directing his eyes
heayenward."
Ideas Of Heaven.
I would rob no man of his heavenly
peace. Like most other persons, be-
lieve that when we depart from this
life we shall find kindly heaven to re-
ceive and shelter u.s. But find moth
ing spiritually elevating in a thought OF
heaven that can inspire men only when
their stomachs ache from hunger and
their backs from unremitting toll,
while their souls yearn for a hundred
things possessed by others, but TO them
denied through three score and ten
weary and dreary years.
We ought to rejoice that science was
born for the conquest of nature, and
that by means of its application to In
dustry the end of poverty begins to
come into view. There have always
been a happy few SO situated as to be
able to enjoy the earth. We flnd them
in ancient Greece and Rome, even IN
the Orient; but so far as the great
masses of mankind are concerned. no
star of hope ever shone for them in
their earthward pilgrimage before the
coming of the labor-saving machine.
And it is only in America that the
worker has SO far realized the nature
of his potential manhood as to become
vital economic factor in his country.
have no doubt that there have been
other ages which may inspire M. Call
laux more than the one in which we
both live. There may have been ages
| fairer in some respects than ours.
There is today no Sophocles, or Plato
| or Aristotle or Dante or Shakespeare; !;
sounding now, such as have sounded
| in days that are now far OF and, ex-
cept for readers, quite forgotten. Un-
questionably it is true that in all gain
there is some loss, as Emerson showed
| in his essay on Compensation" as
he also showed that in all loss there
Is some gain. What we have to do,
in considering gains and losses, Is TO
estimate which Is the greater. Only
a few athletes in our time could have
made that dashing charge Of the
thon. running at full speed for not less
than a mile; our mode of living has
robbed us Of some soundneSs OF wind;
but would any one-would M. Cailaux
! himself-advise us to abandon that
method for one of more than 1000
years ago?
Ratio 10000 TO I.
If there has been some leveling
down, there has also been an immense
amount Of leveling up. For every per-
son who was able to read Shakespeare
in his own day, there are 10000 who
are capable Of reading him now.
M. Caillaux complains of the ma
terialistic character of our contempor-
ary civilization--has 1t never occurred
to him that this civilization, Of which
he complains so bitterly, is the first
in the history of the world In which