Chapter IV: Part 4

Many good women do not care to vote, and they give this as a reason why equal suffrage should not be allowed. The logic is so faulty that it really serves as a reason for the antis. A woman’s reason is often the work of the genus male ❦ An Englishman, recently arrived in New York City, stopped at the Hotel Majestic. After two days he notified the proprietor that no more circulars which came by mail should be sent to his room. “Because,” said this son of ’Appy Halbion, “I find it a task too great for my strength to acknowledge receipt of all of them, and have, therefore, decided not to accept any more.” When asked, “What’s the matter with the wastebasket?” he carefully examined that useful article and said that, so far as he could see, it was all right. “Give decisions, but never reasons,” said the wise old judge to the young judge ❦ “Your decisions will usually be right, but your reasons seldom.” Women who do not want to vote should not stand in the way of women who do. Voting is not compulsory, upon either male or female ❦ Voting is a privilege. Voting is simply the expression of your political preferences. Every one should have preferences, because they have opinions. We grow through the expression of opinions and through making decisions. Voting is deciding between this candidate and that, this policy or the other ❦ Hence, it tends to definite, logical thinking. One of the old arguments made against Woman Suffrage was that, if women were allowed to vote, they would be compelled to do jury duty, because the jurors are selected from the poll-list. This is one of the piffling reasons—“woman’s reasons.” Everything in Nature tends to adjust itself ❦ It is quite natural for women to express themselves. In fact, they always have, if history and experience are worth anything. But why they should be forbidden this particular form of political expression, only the male knows, and, in fact, to use a Hibernicism, he doesn’t. ¶ In the State of Washington, a woman can accept the subpoena to do jury duty, or she can decline it. The law, which is only crystallized custom, defers to her wishes ❦ If she simply tells the deputy sheriff, “Nothing doing!” he marks her name off the list. She is not obliged to give any reason why she does not wish to serve as a juror, any more than she is obliged to give a reason why she does not vote ❦ This seems eminently consistent, right, proper, and well within human rights. Suffrage simply is a recognition by the State that woman is a human being. Where women have served on juries, they have been found to be eminently attentive and anxious to view the question involved from every standpoint, and to reach a sane and just conclusion. ¶ Judge W. W. Black, of Everett, Washington, has recently said from the bench: “My experience with the ladies in the jury-box has been that the trial of the case has been expedited, and the whole proceedings marked with a dignity and decency which did not before exist ❦ And the verdicts, for the most part, were well within the legal limits, eminently just and proper ❦ I do not find that woman’s mental ability to grasp a point in law is inferior to that of man’s.”

Just Boys

Be patient with the boys. You are dealing with soul-stuff. Destiny awaits just around the corner. Boys evolve into men, and men sometimes change the boundary-lines of States. They make political parties; they crown kings, and they put them to flight. They bring contention or they make peace. They may build or they may destroy. But boys misused, abused, betrayed, never forget and seldom forgive. It is a terrible thing to plant the germs of suspicion and hate in the mind of a child ❦ Tyranny visited on a boy may implant in his heart dragons’ teeth that spring up and grow into armed men. The breath of hate consumes, and its voice affrights. Gluttony and greed sometimes leave the boy out of the equation ❦ Gluttony and greed fatten and forsake. They invite and they alienate. They welcome and they repel. Grasping greed sometimes forgets. It is the thing that brings mental and moral diseases and disorders of the state that can not be cured. ¶ Boys can not be deceived. Naturally, they are truthful. They are elemental. They do not know how they judge or why. The words of your lips count for little. They know the things that are hidden in your heart. To arrest boys and fasten upon them the strong hand of the law is a tragic thing. A slight, a boy will forgive; but injustice, never. Boys can be led: they can’t be driven. They respond to love, but tyranny may set their hearts aflame. My heart goes out to the boys. ¶ In Kansas City I know one newsboy who supports a widowed mother and several brothers and sisters younger than he. I know two newsboys, brothers, whose scanty savings are sending an elder sister to the State Normal School, that she may be fitted to become a teacher. ¶ Thomas A. Edison was a newsboy. He sold papers on the streets of Detroit, and on the Grand Trunk trains. While selling papers on the rail-road platform at Mount Clemens, he saw a little youngster toddle out on the track, in front of an approaching train. At the risk of his own life, Tom Edison, the newsboy, grabbed the youngster, sprang upon the footboard of the engine and saved the life of the baby. For this deed the station-agent rewarded Edison by teaching him the telegraph-key. We know the rest. ¶ Paginini was a street musician when a boy, playing his violin and holding up his hat for pennies ❦ Martin Luther was an outcast and a street singer when a youngster ❦ Occasionally the proud and the strong would push him out of the way into the gutter. Such treatment made scars on his soul that time did not efface. It is a terrible thing to kill animation and joy and enthusiasm in the heart of a child. Boys should be encouraged, and not ground down to a starvation-point in all of their worthy and useful little industries. ¶ Give the boys a chance to grow, to enjoy, to work, to save their pennies and become men ❦ I used to know a newsboy who cried his wares up and down in front of the hotel where I stopped. The years went by, as the years do. Twenty-five years passed, and I stood in a court of appeal to present a motion which was of vital importance to me. The judge who sat on the bench looked to me strangely familiar. All at once it came over me with a flash that this judge was once the newsboy from whom I had bought newspapers in front of the hotel. He now held for me the ability to wither or to bless, to destroy or to protect. Fortunately, for me, his heart and brain were right. ¶ Be patient with the boys. Bad boys are good boys who misdirect their energies. The hope of the race lies with the boys. In a year or two we will be going to hear them preach from pulpits; we may go to them to borrow money; they may operate on us for appendicitis—aye, they may preach our funeral sermons. Nobody can prophesy the success to which a boy will attain. Difficulty, trial, hardship, work—these are the things that evolve boys into men. Boys can be led. They can not be driven. ¶ Be patient with the boys ❦ You are dealing with soul-stuff. Destiny awaits around the corner.

The Sea

The Sea knows all things, for at night when the winds are asleep the stars confide to him their secrets. In his breast are stored away all the elements that go to make up the round world. Beneath his depths lie buried the sunken kingdoms of fable and legend, whose monarchs have long been lost in oblivion ❦ He appropriates and makes his own all that is—dissolving the rocks that seek to stop his passage—forming, transforming, rearranging, never ceasing, tireless. Tireless ever, for he gets his rest in motion. With acute ear he listens along every coast and lies in wait for the spirit of the offshore wind ❦ All rivers run to meet him, carrying tidings from afar, and ever the phosphorescent dust from other spheres glimmers on his surface. ¶ It is not to be wondered that men have worshiped the ocean, for in his depths they have seen mirrored the image of Eternity—of Infinity ❦ Here they have seen the symbol of God’s great plan of oneness with His creatures, for the sea is the union of all infinite particles, and it takes the whole to make the one. ¶ Men have fallen on their faces to worship the sea. Women have thrown him their children to appease his wrath. Savagely yet tenderly has he received the priceless treasure and hidden it away where none could recall ❦ He has heard the dying groans of untold thousands, and drowned their cries for help with his own ceaseless roar; but still his ear has not failed to catch the whispers of confession that have come from souls about to appear before their Maker. And yet how beautiful and kind is he in his apparent relentless cruelty, for he keeps only the transient part, and gently separates the immortal and wafts the spirit back to God who gave it. ¶ And what does the sea do with all these secrets, mysteries and treasures? Go shrive thyself, and with soul all in tune to the harmonies of the Universe listen to the waves and they shall tell thee the secrets of life!

Epigrams

How much finer it is to go out into the woods and lift up your voice in song, and be a child again, than to fight inclination and waste good God-given energy endeavoring to be proper!

I am not sure what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe it is a disposition to evade the payment of small bills ❦

Labor is the only prayer that is ever answered ❦ ❦

If men could only know each other, they would never either idolize or hate.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate ❦

Vivisection is blood-lust, screened behind the sacred name of Science ❦

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble ❦ ❦

Friends and credit pursue the man who does not need them.

Hell is a separation, and Heaven is only a going home to our friends.

Success is the realization of the estimate which you place upon yourself.

We are all children in the kindergarten of God ❦ ❦

Missionaries are sincere, self-deceived persons suffering from meddler’s itch.

Give us this day our daily work.

A criminal: One who does by illegal means what all the rest of us do legally.

How beautiful that most of our troubles never happen!

We are not punished for our sins, but by them ❦ ❦

One great, strong, unselfish soul in every community would actually redeem the world ❦ ❦

Do not take life too seriously—you will never get out of it alive.

You are what you think, and not what you think you are.

Who is my brother? I’ll tell you—he is the one who recognizes the good in me.

Do your work with a whole heart and you will succeed—there is so little competition!

When a woman works, she gets a woman’s wage; but when she sins, she gets a man’s pay—and then some ❦

Life without absorbing occupation is hell—joy consists in forgetting life ❦

Respectability is the dickey on the bosom of civilization.

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

If you want work well done, select a busy man—the other kind has no time.

Mind your own business, and thus give other folks an opportunity to mind theirs ❦ ❦

The outcome of the battle is of no importance—but, how did you fight? ❦

Do not keep your kindness in water-tight compartments. If it runs over a bit ’twill do no harm.

Genius is fine, but if it comes to a show-down, gumption is better.

In a world where death is, there is no time for hate.

An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.

If we are ever damned it will not be because we have loved too much, but because we have loved too little ❦

Man’s greatest blunder has been in trying to make peace with the skies instead of making peace with his neighbor.

So here, then, endeth that goodly book

THE PHILOSOPHY OF
ELBERT HUBBARD

Being the gospel of the union of head, heart and hand as preached and lived by that good man and great, who has, and truly, said, “The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is in love, laughter and work.”

Gathered together by John T. Hoyle and made into a book by Charles J. Rosen and Charles Youngers, craftsmen at the Roycroft Shops, which are in East Aurora, Erie County, New York State, Month of November, MCMXVI.

¶ I will not pray that each day be a perfect day, but I will
pray to lapse not into indifference. I will not pray that each
time I shall build both strong and true; but imperfect, I will
pray for impulse that I may build anew.