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The True Spirit of Service Can Redeem World
By
Paul P. Harris
If
civilization falls, it will be over the stumbling block of
selfishness. A true spirit of service is capable of working a
world's redemption.
The changing attitude of the British and American nations
towards each other is one of the very gratifying developments of
the times.
It
must be the aim to work together in unity, and in tolerance,
patient with each other's errors, giving more heed to the good
we know than to evil we might permit ourselves to suspect.
There was a day when the American boy's education was considered
incomplete until his mind had become inflamed with a full
measure of very one-sided histories of Concord, Bunker Hill,
Valley Forge, and Yorktown.
He
who is familiar with American history, in fact with current
events, knows that we have been and are far from perfect. If we
start out in the spirit of this acknowledgment our prospects
will be greatly be improved. Fourth of July oratory has paid its
debt to American civilization.
Provincialism Hinders Progress
Provincialism tremendously interferes with progress. Let us
dispense with some of our
superlatives. An occasional positive will be as serviceable as
either comparative or superlative and afford a gratifying relief
from the monotony of always claiming first place in all things.
Deutschland ueber alles may sound good to the boches, but it
makes no sweet music in our ears.
The British press is saying some wonderfully things about
America during these times. Let us take these things as they
were intended, as a friendly stimulus to energetic action and
not as means of magnifying our national conceit. We, of the
United States, have a great problem
before us. We have not only the difficulties which other nations
have had to encounter but also others. We have a large foreign
element to assimilate. If we are as successful, with the
conditions we have to deal with, as others, it will be a grand
tribute to the ideals which we represent.
We
are emerging today from our purely nationalistic view point and
making entry into large affairs. Our law makers must henceforth
be broad visioned and liberally educated men - not necessarily
university graduates for there is such a thing as self
education. They will have to be familiar with international as
well as national affairs. If our representatives in Washington
are men of education and refinement, we shall be respected
abroad and if they are not respected, we shall not be respected.
Statesmen Wanted, Not Politicians
We
are in no further need of politicians; we need some statesmen
now. We can dispense with Democrats and we can dispense with
Republicans in this time of national crisis. We need real
patriots now.
All eyes are turned on the United States of America. The old
world is torn in dissension.
To
help defend the cause of liberty is the New world's
responsibility and privilege, and the New World will do its
duty. The pathway may seem a bit dim at times, but we must not
forget that it is always darkest just before dawn.
It
is undoubtedly true that the view points of the two English
speaking nations are much the same. Wilson is intelligible to
the British, Lloyd George to us, while the doctrines of
Nietzsche and Treitschke and Bernhardi, as exprest in the works
of submarine and Zeppelin, awaken but horrified response in the
hearts of either people.
Had Earl Reading, Viscount Northcliffe, and Mr. Balfour been
born within the limits of the United States they would have been
with us very much what they have been at home leaders of men.
One Great Task Today
Britain has demonstrated itself to be the fairest and,
therefore, the wisest of all colonizers. The solidarity of the
British empire and the loyalty of the colonies needs no
demonstration other than that being made on the soil of France.
Such a navy as that of Great Britain in other hands might have
seemed a menace to peace rather than a protection against
aggression. It has not been viewed as a menace by the American
people. If it had not been for that same navy, this would have
been a German world. Our unfortified frontier extending across
the continent is the best possible evidence of our ability to
live in peace with our British neighbors.
Our one great undertaking the present day is to win this war,
and the task is worthy our best and most united efforts. Germany
must be met, not by a score of enemies, but by one, tho that one
bear a score of flags.
We
shall not, however, be impairing our efficiency in present need
if we look to the goal we are struggling toward. The mind is
impressionable in times of crisis. We must avail ourselves of
the opportunity presented, to marshall the forces necessary to
the maintenance of our national equilibrium when peace is
eventually restored.
Unsought Results Sometimes Good
At
times, unsought results are more beneficial than those sought.
Loss of life, yes, and suffering almost unspeakable, growing
pains, are a terrible price to pay for progress. Civilization
must live if only to find saner ways of advancement. I had far
rather see a son of mine "Go over the Top" than into a gutter,
into a battle plane than on a joy ride. I had rather that he
learn discipline than that he learn loafing. The stress of the
times demands a sturdy manhood.
What an asset is good health. Ours has been a thoughtless age.
We have gone a terrific pace, self sufficient, arrogant at times
and oblivious of the warning "Lest" we forget."
If
the indirect result of the legislation against the use of grain
in the manufacture of distilled spirits proves eventually to be
the ridding of the country of drunkenness, there will certainly
be room for the contention that the indirect benefits will be
greater than the direct.
If
the American railroads prove unable to take care of war supply
movements, they will have to be vastly improved and their
operations coordinated to the efficiency of a single system.
Our highways will have to be improved and it is not improbable
that America's wonderful natural system of waterways will be
developt and used. If once put into use, it is not at all
probable that, in the light of past experience. they will ever
be abandoned again.
Strikes and Justice
If
it becomes necessary in the course of events to deal summarily
with strike situations which interfere with the transportation
of supplies to our army or the armies of our allies; if it
should transpire that our boys, the sons of American fathers and
mothers, were to be slaughtered in the trenches like rats in
their holes just because some railroad employes have concluded
that they cannot support their families on one hundred and fifty
dollars per month, it might be possible that the result would be
better means than we have ever enjoyed before of adjusting
differences between capital and labor.
In
the controversies to date, justice has not been taken into
consideration. All questions have been decided either by threat
of, or application of force. In other affairs, justice is the
end sought, tho of course it is not always obtained. In labor
controversies, as in other things, eventually the rule of right
must prevail, and the best minds of the nation must soon be
focused on this question. In Britain today the penalty for
either strike or lock‑out is a term in the penitentiary.
Arbitration is compulsory.
Taxes Preferable to Strikes
The government today is conscripting and properly so, more than
50% of the income of our richest men in the course of this
so‑called rich man's war; if it will continue to do so for a
period of five years after the war is over, there will need be
no such thing as poverty thruout the length and breadth of the
land, and I am for it heart and soul. I doubt whether
capitalists upon whom the heaviest burden must necessarily fall
are really seriously opposed to the imposition of any reasonable
tax burden within their power to bear, provided that all of
their class are compelled to stand their share.
Cripples and blind men and women begging on our streets are
reproaches to American civilization and should not be tolerated.
The certainty of taxes is preferable to the probability of
strikes. One can be counted on and allowances made. The other
comes at most inopportune times and completely demoralizes
business.
I
do not believe that capital can afford to permit the existence
of hunger, squalor or disease. Let us banish the city miserable
before we build our city beautiful. Slums are political malaria
breeders, and we must not have them in our midst. It has been
said that there will be no slums in London after the war. Russia
is an example of what a nation ought not to be, and of what may
be expected of an unenlightened and opprest people. They may
have their Bolskeviki; we do not need them.
We
can dispense with ignorance, degradation and filth; we must have
education, enlightenment, morality, and cleanliness, and more
and more of it, if our civilization is to be made secure.
The United States is a very wealthy nation. No nation may be
permitted again to surpass ours with respect to its care of its
people. We must thank Germany for Me example it has given us.
Our people must be as well fed, as well housed, as clothed, as
healthy and moral as any people or we shall have fallen short of
our heritage.
Moral Help; Immoral Surrender
We
must treat the really unfortunate so magnanimously that there
will be little public sympathy with men who seek to force
capital to pay them more than they rightfully earn. To help the
destitute is moral, to surrender to hold up is immoral. Will the
American people go at this thing as they go at war?
Mr. Gompers has said that capital and labor must undergo a
readjustment after the war. There has been nothing but
readjustment during the course of the last ten years, and yet we
are painfully aware of the fact that conditions are far from
satisfactory. No family of this day can be certain of its daily
supply of the necessities of life unless it raises them from the
soil itself. More satisfactory results must be obtained or we
shall be forced to revert to the status of primitive man.
The experience of our British Allies will aid us in finding the
solution of many sociological and labor problems, tho their own
hands are certainly very full of the same kind of troubles at
the present time.
Lord Leverhulme, recently Sir William Lever, and formerly plain
William Lever, the Sunlight soap manufacturer, speaking before
the Rotary Club of Manchester, made the statement that the
employers of labor will get better results with two or three six
hour shifts than by working employes eight hours. That must mean
six hours of real labor, no time killing.
Probably no man lives today who is capable of dealing more
successfully with labor than Lord Leverhulme. His rise from the
position of traveling salesman to a peerage is a testimonial to
the opportunities afforded every man in Great Britain.
And the Consumer Wonders
When Mr. Gompers says that labor conditions must be adjusted
after the war, I suppose that he means that capital must make
further concessions to labor. Mr. Wilson says that labor is
nearer right than capital and the great question , is "Can we
convert ourselves. to the viewpoint?"
The consumer, who necessarily constitutes the great majority,
finds it difficult to understand why capital and labor should
fuss so, in view of the fact that he, the consumer, will have to
pay the freight in any event. Under the present system,
organized labor gets practically everything it asks for; but the
system is a bad one and is not an unalloyed blessing even for
labor itself, as he who benefits by a strike today suffers by
the other fellow's strike tomorrow.
The plan is a wasteful resort to brute force and augurs no good.
The working man labors under the hallucination that capital
works very short shifts and is very happy. As a matter of fact,
capital works very long shifts, and is very miserable. If
happiness is really the great desideratum, I predict that both
labor and capital will find a short cut to it, if each will try
to do a little more for the other.
False Pursuit of Happiness
There would be less occasion for controversy, were it not for
the fact that both classes have lost their bearings in their
pursuit of happiness. Labor and capital apparently agree in one
thing only, and that is in the belief that the possession of
money is the equivalent of the possession of happiness.
Cultivation of the faculty of finding enjoyment in simple things
would relieve both classes of the necessity of making slaves of
themselves in the chase after that which is bound to prove a
disappointment. I had rather know how to enjoy one of God's
sketches out in the open than how to enjoy the works of men. To
enjoy nature is to enjoy an inexpensive luxury. Nature is right
three hundred and sixty‑five days of the year. Get into the mood
of it, and it will never be able to frown you out of
countenance.
For my part I had rather be a storm petrel than a fair weather
bird. The weather sometimes gets nasty in the city but such a
thing never has been known in the country, not since the
beginning of the world.
Capital needs more physical exercise than it has been getting,
labor more mental exercise.
Labor organizations are, of course, much more excusable than are
combinations of capital to obtain increast prices. One is the
herding of the weak, the other is the herding of the strong; one
is using its only means of fighting while the other is using one
of many. Capital is frequently not only ferocious but also
cunning. Sheep and deer may be permitted to herd; not wolves.
Sheep and deer herd as a means of defense, not as a means of
offense.
It
ought not be necessary for human beings to herd like sheep.
There is too much work to be done and there is neither time nor
energy to waste. Who then is to remedy conditions? It looks to
me that it is most likely to be he who pays the freight, he of
the great majority class, the consumer. He has suffered to the
point where he has a right to be heard. Capital has the brains
necessary to thinking its way out of the difficulties; will it
do so?
Labor Commission the Remedy?
The consumer will view a labor commission composed of strong and
patriotic men as a very gratifying prospect of relief; a
commission whose province it will be to deal not only with
organized but also with unorganized labor, a commission to which
capital and labor not only may come but must come.
We
must concede that self preservation is the first instinct of man
and that it is not unreasonable for men to strike to gain the
necessities of life even tho their doing so threatens you and me
with the same fate which the strikers might have endured had
they not struck.
Conductors and locomotive engineers state that it is impossible
for them to live and support their families on less than one
hundred and sixty-two dollars per month, and demand that they be
paid not less than that in any instance, and in many instances
much more.
This statement is either not true or else it is also true that
no other class can live and support their families on less than
one hundred and sixty-two dollars per month.
Nearly everyone is striking these days, every one except the
consumer, and he will strike too if some suitable remedy is not
found. He will get so disgusted with the extortions of labor on
one side and capital on the other that he will just naturally
remove his poor old bones outside of the pale of all of it; and
there will be nothing for labor or capital to pick.
Must Fix a Living Wage
If
it is really justice which we are after and not pure expediency,
we must first determinate what constitutes a minimum living
wage, and for this purpose, it matters not whether the employee
be a coal miner, teamster, an office employee or a locomotive
engineer.
Having once decided what constitutes a living wage, it should be
the policy of this government to see that no laborer be paid
less than that, whether organized or unorganized, and on other
hand it should be the policy of this government not to permit
organized labor to tie up and demoralize the industries of the
land, invoke the supreme power of strike in order force capital
to a higher wage.
Combinations of capital to effect prices are wrong per se, and
not to be permitted under any conceivable circumstances;
combinations of labor are not wrong per se but become so when
used as a means of aggression instead of a means of defense.
The Need of a True Spirit of Service
Even more nauseating than the striker who holds up work
necessary to the prosecution of the war is the man who avails
himself of the emergency created by the unsettled conditions to
raise the prices of commodities of every day use. It is strange
how furious is the patriotism of some of these men. There was a
day when religion was considered the most available cloak for
misdemeanor; patriotism is taking rank today. Fortunately our
legislators have been far sighted enough to foresee some of
these things. The excess profits tax will absorb some of the
slack.
As
a matter of public policy, both underpay and overwork are
objectionable and demoralizing as the idleness which results
from strikes. If civilization falls, it will be over the
stumbling block of selfishness, but a true spirit of service is
capable of working a world's redemption.
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