Chapter C: F. Birdseye Believes They Bring Undergraduates More Under Influence (1)

of Alumni.

The American college fraternity has become a farce, educational and social, intellectual and moral, so great that even but few fraternity leaders appreciate it. At more than one college, chapter-houses have done away with the need of dormitories. As colleges have grown larger and more unwieldy, and the members of the faculties have been less frequently in personal touch with their students, the fraternities have in no slight degree taken the place of the old small-college units, alumni now influencing the undergraduates through their fraternities, much as the professors used to.

Writing in the _Outlook_, Clarence F. Birdseye points out that our college fraternities are to-day great educational influences:

The pick of our alumni in wealth and influence are fraternity men. If
a tithe of this power can be turned back into the lives of the
undergraduates to supplement the efforts of the faculties, we can do
much to restore individualism.

Neither college nor fraternity conditions are at present ideal. They
are often bad, and there is real foundation for all complaints. Unless
promptly checked, the evils will grow far worse and more difficult to
root out. This question must be studied by its friends, and the reform
must come from the fraternity alumni; for the fraternities can be
awakened and developed, but not driven, nor driven out.

Like every other historical, educational, or social question, this
must be studied carefully and with open minds by many alumni and from
different standpoints, so as to cover widely divergent conditions in
institutions that may be universities or colleges, rich or poor, large
or small, old and conservative or recent and radical, public or
private, at the North, South, East, or West, and therefore governed by
widely different religious, social, educational, and political
influences.

Wide Distribution of Chapters.

The wide distribution of its various chapters adds greatly to the
perspective and corrective power of every fraternity, and makes it an
ideal instrument for wisely investigating and righting undergraduate
conditions at the same time in widely scattered institutions.

The true fraternity alumnus can mold the lives and motives of his
younger brothers. In most colleges the fraternities are so strong that
if we can change the atmosphere of the fraternity houses, which for
four years are the undergraduates’ homes, we can change the whole
undergraduate situation.

The fraternity alumni have contributed hundreds of thousands of
dollars for housing and otherwise helping the undergraduates. Every
fraternity has many loyal and devoted graduates who willingly give
time or money or both to the true interests of their younger brothers,
and whose word is law to them.

The character of the influence of each chapter depends largely on the
local alumni, strengthened, guided, and impelled by a strong central
organization. Why not apply modern business principles and systematic
organization to this all-important problem?

Atmosphere of Chapter-House.

We have one thousand seven hundred fraternity chapters in three
hundred and sixty-three of our institutions of higher learning as
_foci_ from which the good influences might constantly and powerfully
radiate. There has been too much tendency to make the fraternity the
end and not the means.

The alumni have not realized that the atmosphere of the chapter-house
determines the character of the chapter’s influence on its individual
members, and that the ultimate responsibility for this atmosphere is
on the alumni. If we would make this atmosphere permanently good, we
must appreciate that the alumni are the permanent and the
undergraduates the transient body—completely changing every three
years; and the seniors, the governing body, every year.

We, as the permanent body, have no right to furnish our undergraduates
with fine and exclusive homes, and then shirk responsibility for the
future conduct and influence of those homes.

The proper government of a chapter is a strict one, with the power in
the hands of the upper classmen, especially the seniors, who are in
turn held strictly accountable to alumni who are in constant touch
with the situation and personally acquainted with every undergraduate
and his work and needs.

Where such conditions are continuous, the chapter’s success is
assured, and the effect on the undergraduates is highly beneficial.
The fraternities, through strong central organizations, must make
these conditions prevalent and continuous in every chapter. This has
long been the theory, but the practise has been poor.

Correction of Waste.

The fraternities, with their numerous chapters in different
institutions, have the best possible opportunities for the
investigation and correction of the wastes and for the enforcement of
economies in college life.

No one can measure the waste and lack of economy, to the college, the
fraternity, the community, the family, or the individual, of a failure
in college life, from whatever cause it comes.

It is criminal that we have not studied these wastes in our colleges
as we have in our factories, railroads, and other great industries,
and that we have allowed the pendulum to swing so far to the other
side, and have not long ago returned it to its mean, and found
educational influences to replace the small units of the earlier
colleges.

Mr. Birdseye maintains, in conclusion, that it is for the fraternities to devote their wealth and influence to improve undergraduate conditions, incite their men to the best work, and prevent the wastes which result from a failure in college lives.

THE LATEST IDEA OF A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

Professor Borgerhoff Points Out Some of the Merits of the Latest
Invention, Esperanto.

In the preface to his famous dictionary Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote: “Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.” If that be true, it is not strange that man should so constantly seek to improve the instrument. We have the selective process by which worn-out words and idioms are dropped into the limbo of archaism and new coinages come into use. Then we have the attempts to supply new languages, ready-made. There was Volapük; and now comes Esperanto.

Professor J. L. Borgerhoff, of the Western Reserve University, sets forth in the Atlanta _Constitution_ the claims of Esperanto as a world-language. After brief reference to former candidate languages, he says:

The latest attempt, and the one which bids fair to be final, is
Esperanto, so called by its author, Dr. Zamenhof, a Russian physician,
who under this pseudonym published scientific articles before he
became famous as the inventor of an artificial language.

Zamenhof, like his predecessors in the same field, was struck by the
useless wealth of idioms that divide the inhabitants of the earth and
make international relations so difficult, while at the same time they
are a prolific source of misunderstanding and enmity among the
nations.

He was also convinced that the reason why the existing universal
languages had failed in their purpose was that they were too
difficult—almost as difficult as the natural ones. The cause of their
difficulty lay in the grammar, which was too intricate, and in the
vocabulary, which was far too varied. He forthwith composed a grammar
which was simplicity itself; this he did by setting aside all rules
not strictly needed for the construction of a logical sentence and by
eliminating all exceptions. The few remaining grammatical principles
may be learned in half an hour.

His next concern was the vocabulary. What makes the acquisition of a
foreign vocabulary so hard to students is the variety of roots, the
great number of different words. To take an instance from English, to
express the various ideas suggested by the one conception of death, we
have: dead, to die, deadly, and deathly, mortal, to kill, to murder,
to assassinate, to suicide, to commit homicide, etc. What a cumbersome
luxury of roots, and how discouraging to the foreigner who wishes to
learn this language!

Number of Roots Reduced.

And yet English is one of the easiest of all European tongues. How to
reduce this number of roots was the great problem before Zamenhof. He
therefore took one out of a number, and by means of a system of
suffixes and prefixes he made this one root do duty for all the
others.

In this manner the Esperanto dictionary contains only about two
thousand roots, yet they are sufficient to form, by means of
derivation, a vocabulary large enough for all purposes.

But what makes matters simpler still, he chose his two thousand roots
in such a manner that they appear familiar to all educated persons of
European civilization, by selecting first those terms which are
already in universal usage, like sport, toilet, train; then by taking
words common to two or three leading languages, and finally by adding
to these a small number of roots not international, but picked out
judiciously from various idioms, so that any one, be he Slav, Teuton,
or Latin, finds that Esperanto has a familiar appearance.

The suffixes number about thirty and the prefixes half a dozen; they
have well defined meanings, and once they are known any person
provided with a list of the simple roots can compose his own
vocabulary almost _ad libitum_, so that the finest shades of meaning
may be expressed to a nicety.

I should say that the most remarkable feature about Esperanto, and one
which no natural idiom possesses to such a degree, is this power of
forming new words once the key-word is given, and it should be
remembered that in the majority of instances this key-word is already
known.

Simplicity a Striking Feature.

The second striking feature is the simplicity and regularity of the
whole grammatical scheme; thus are placed within easy reach two
essential parts of a language—the vocabulary, and the very simple
device whereby this vocabulary may be made to express all ideas
clearly.

To take again the word “death” as an example: the key-word is “mort”
(which we have in the English mortal). Remembering that in Esperanto
all nouns end in “o,” all adjectives in “a,” adverbs in “e,”
infinitives in “i”; that contraries are formed by prefixing “mal”;
that the prefix “sen” means without; that the suffix “ant” marks the
agent (corresponding to the English “ing”), and that the suffix “ig”
means to cause, we get from the above root: morto, death; morta,
mortal; morti, to die; morte, mortally; mortano, the dying man;
mortanta, dying; mortigi, to cause death, or kill; mortigo, murder;
mortiganto, murderer; mortiga, death-dealing; malmorta, living;
senmorta, Immortal; senmorto, immortality, etc.

The conjugation of verbs, which is the great stumbling-block in the
study of all natural languages, presents no difficulty whatever in
Esperanto. In the first place, there are no irregular verbs; secondly,
there is only one ending for each tense; thirdly, the number of tenses
is reduced to a strict minimum, mainly past, present, future, and
conditionally.

The infinitive of all verbs ends in “t”; the present always in “as”;
the past always in “is”; the conditional always in “us”; these endings
are the same in the singular and the plural.

To sum up, Esperanto is the easiest of all languages; all that is
needed to read and write it is a familiarity with the few grammatical
principles, most of which have been explained above, a knowledge of
the thirty-odd suffixes and the half-dozen prefixes alluded to, and a
dictionary giving the two thousand roots, many of which most of us
know already.

Any one with the merest smattering of Latin and German and a knowledge
of English can write a letter in Esperanto practically from the start;
in fact, a person with a knack for languages can do so without this
previous knowledge if provided with a dictionary.

As for speaking it, that is, of course, a matter of practise. It is
easy enough, yet practise for a couple of months is indispensable to
become fluent. Those interested should form a club and meet for the
purpose of conversing. The pronunciation is as easy as the rest of the
language.

Is this artificial language to come into real use? Professor Borgerhoff shows us that it is at least spreading rapidly. In June, 1905, there was only a handful of Esperantists in America. One year later there were fifty clubs, mostly in colleges. Paris offers about twenty free public courses. All over Europe the language has hundreds of thousands of adherents. Three thousand Esperantists, representing fifteen different countries, attended the congress at Boulogne-sur-Mer, in August, 1905.

THE CASH COST OF CONVERTING A SOUL.

Mormons Figure That It Amounts to $1,500, While Volunteers of America
Find That $5 Will Do.

The Mormons appear to spend more money to secure a single convert than any other sect. Elder Ellsworth, of the Chicago Mormon Mission, told the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ that his church expended probably fifteen hundred dollars for each convert. The statement came out in connection with the _Inter-Ocean’s_ inquiry into the cash cost of saving souls in Chicago. The Mormon figures were highest; the figures of the Volunteers of America—five dollars a convert—were lowest. It is patent that the average cost of conversion is much higher to-day than it used to be.

The Rev. George Soltau, a well-known evangelist, at work in Chicago, said to the _Inter-Ocean’s_ representative:

Twenty-two years ago the cost of soul-saving was infinitesimal. A
picture of heaven, a few passages from the Scripture, a prayer, and a
request were sufficient—a few cents, in fact, and our task was
accomplished. To-day people have no leisure. They have no time to
listen to what preachers have to say. They read cheap literature,
which, as a rule, is antagonistic to evangelization.

Present Facts in a Commercial Way.

Religious phraseology doesn’t work. We have to present our facts in a
commercial way. We don’t relish it, but we have to move with the
times. We content ourselves with the fact that, after all, true
religion is transacting business with God and with heaven.

General education has made it much more difficult to convert the
people and to conduct a campaign of evangelization. The people are
provided with so many methods of occupying their time and thought that
there is no longer any possibility of getting individuals to come to a
church to fill in a spare hour as they used to do so readily.

This fact has been demonstrated to me again and again, and forced home
when I find myself in places where I used to hold meetings with five
or six hundred people in attendance and where now I find difficulty in
getting together an audience of twenty or thirty people.

A minister of to-day is also familiar with the fact that the Bible no
longer occupies the place of authority in the minds of the people that
it used to. And when a preacher has to prove the truth of his only
authority it is a bad tendency on the part of the people.

It is the same as if a lawyer, when he appeared in court to plead his
case, were obliged to prove the truth of the Constitution, which is
the fundamental law. On the other hand, the evangelist himself hasn’t
the slightest doubt of the authority of his message, while he knows
his hearers have.

Education and Evangelism.

Asked whether, in his opinion, the education which had proved detrimental to evangelism was a bad thing for the people themselves, Mr. Soltau replied:

It is both good and bad. It is good in that it develops the minds and
gives the people something to think about, and it is bad in that it
diminishes their fear and reverence for the Scriptures.

Culture has undermined faith largely. It has destroyed the foundations
on which faith used to rest; not that the foundations are one whit
injured, but the building of character has been shifted to other
foundations, namely, those of human opinion, research, discovery, and
creed untested by what was supposed to be divine revelation.

Modern thought has infected universally the people with doubt upon all
that was supposed to be established fact. And it has given nothing in
its place except speculation and private opinion, so that every man is
practically his own God to do and think as he chooses.

The production of literature—scientific, historical, and fictional—is
so enormous as to demand the spare time of every one to read it. The
pulpit and the pew, the magazine reader and the newspaper reader, have
been infected with the German rationalism and philosophy, which has
dared to assert itself as of higher authority than the Scriptures.

Authority has been destroyed, there is no court of appeal above human
reason. That being so, there is nothing to correct human reason and
bring it back to its old bearings. We have to evangelize people who
have little or no substratum of Bible knowledge, and have no
cultivated faith in any one but themselves.

The enormous wealth and rapid development of the material resources of
the country have opened up innumerable outlets for the energies of
mind and body, and the possibilities of getting rich have absorbed
every one almost, so that the dollar has first and last place in the
people’s minds. It is almost impossible to dislodge it. The altered
conditions of civilization have destroyed simplicity of living and of
thinking, hence there is no room or time for spiritual things.

The Average Churchgoer.

The low level of spirituality attained by the average church member
disgusts the man of the world, who sees no distinct advantage in
religion beyond possibly a social one. The average Christian thinks
only of his personal safety and has no concern for his neighbor. His
is mainly a selfish religion, and such poor samples are abroad of what
God is supposed to do that the successful business man, who knows how
he feels about results, discounts such enormously, and looks upon the
whole thing as beneath his notice.

Democracy has produced lawlessness enormously. It begins in the
family, where parental control is at a big discount. The grown boy
gets his way at any cost to others’ business.

He has learned to ignore law and authority from the beginning. The
laws of the community are evaded, then the laws of the State, then of
the Federal government. He believes he is a law unto himself. There is
no law of God to need his attention. There is no God to trouble about.
The book of God is never read. The day of God is utterly ignored. The
future life does not concern him, so he needs no Gospel, no mission,
no Saviour, no prayer, and the whole thing is gone.

The dollar values everything. How much happiness, how much pleasure,
how much for himself.

Mr. Soltau, however, does not think that the Bible has lost its power. None of the modern intellectual and worldly developments satisfy the secret cravings of the soul.

EDUCATION PRESCRIBED AS ANTIDOTE FOR WAR.

President Faunce Believes the Spirit of Perpetual Peace Is Lurking in
Public Schools.

Since the majority of evils spring from ignorance, education is the surest safeguard of virtue. It is a strong perversity that continues against a real understanding of the truth.

If war is an evil—moral, economic—as both economists and moralists generally admit, the hope of universal peace rests upon education. For that reason the suggestions made by President H. P. Faunce, of Brown University, in a speech at New Haven, carry the greater weight. He said:

No great movement is permanent until placed on an educational basis.
Whatever enters the public mind through the schools enters as sunshine
and rain into the fiber of the oak. A world-wide movement is now in
progress, having as its object not the reformation of human nature,
not the disbanding of all armies and navies, but simply the
establishment of a better means than war for the settling of the
disputes that must occur as long as the nations endure.

Already great results have been accomplished. Arbitration has been
substituted for war in the majority of the cases. War is now the
exception, not the rule, in case of international quarrel. It is not
true that “in time of peace we must prepare for war,” but rather that
in time of peace, we must prepare to make war impossible.

There is a growing appreciation throughout the world of the
irrationality and futility of war. We have come to realize that the
simultaneous discharge of pistols at fifty paces is no more likely to
establish justice than the tossing of pennies or the throwing of the
dice.

When the duelist became absurd, dueling was dead. The time is surely
coming when the international duel will seem, in the face of
international opinion, an utterly stupid way of settling differences.

What can we do in the public schools? We can inculcate the broad
principle that rational men, when they differ, should appeal to reason
and not to force. Already our schoolboys do this in athletics. They
are accustomed to accept the decisions of umpires and referees without
whining or complaint. The athletic field is a direct training for
arbitration on a large scale.

We can teach in our schools that peace hath her victories no less
renowned than war. We are learning to exalt a new type of heroism—the
heroism of the social settlement of the city missionary, of the men
and women who are devoting their lives to the uplifting of social
conditions in the heart of our great cities. This newer heroism must
be taught in our public schools.

We can inculcate the brotherhood of man in every class in our schools,
and in every study that is taught. We can show that racial antagonisms
are baseless and brutal. Each of the various races makes its own
contribution to modern civilization. The last address of John Hay was
an appeal for this point of view; for earnest endeavor on the part of
all men and women in responsible positions to inculcate the method of
arbitration as a substitute for the utilities of war.

GERMANY’S FIGHT FOR COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY.

Study of Other Nations’ Needs and Mastery of Their Languages Give Her
Advantages.

If the rise of the United States to a position of first importance has been the great phenomenon of the last decade, the tremendous strides made by Germany in commerce and industry should be placed only second in importance. The reasons in the one case cannot be the reasons in the second; whence the value of a descriptive analysis of the German advance, such as the article by Dr. Louis Elkino, which appeared in a recent number of the _Fortnightly Review_. He writes:

If I were asked to say what has contributed most to Germany’s
progress, I should unhesitatingly mention the development of
patriotism in its best sense in the individual, and, though this
historic fact cannot be proved by the usual methods of the
statisticians, we know beyond doubt that the nation has come to work
together as a firm and united organization.

His conclusions on the importance of education were:

There can no longer be any doubt that Germany’s industrial advance is
mainly due to the extent and thoroughness with which technical
education is being conducted. Briefly stated, the secret of the
pronounced success of the technical colleges in the Fatherland lies in
the fact that they have kept pace with the ever-increasing scope of
all branches of science in general, and, to the same extent, with the
ever-increasing demands of the present-day industrial enterprises upon
scientific investigation and research.

And, in addition, the number of subjects and sciences taught is
constantly being added to, while, on the other hand, the harmonious
blending of the practical with the theoretical has greatly furthered
the development of the scientific spirit in all its essential details.

Another important cause is the great pains taken to master foreign languages.

German firms are competing strongly with British firms in markets
which, at one time, were almost entirely in the hands of British
merchants, and this is not surprising, for the British representative,
as a rule, has little or no knowledge of the language of the country
in which he travels for orders, while the German is able to speak it
fluently. It is extraordinary that British firms should continue to
send abroad representatives who can speak no other language but their
own.

Efficiency of method is not the least of the main contributory factors.

It is thoroughness which, perhaps more than anything else, Germans
have to thank for their present happy state of abounding prosperity.
It has enabled Germany to overcome one crisis after another in
commerce and finance, inasmuch as it helps to the discovery of where
the weakness lies. Economists teach that small concerns cannot exist
side by side with large ones when they are in competition, but this is
disproved in the world of German enterprise. The small firms flourish
almost equally with the large ones; like the great trusts, they are
able, when they wish, to sell cheaply in foreign markets. Both employ
the same methods. This partly explains how it is that, though there
has been a concentration of wealth and of enterprise into the hands of
a limited number of people, a vast amount of money has been
distributed more or less evenly into the hands of the population of
the country as a whole.

“AMERICANS PERFECT CHILDREN IN BUSINESS.”

Bernard Shaw Says Our Stratum of Romanticism Prevents Us from Knowing
the Real Thing.

George Bernard Shaw is never afraid to express an opinion on any subject, and apparently he is never at a loss for the opinion. The other day he expressed his views on business, saying:

The most striking peculiarity about business men is that I have never
met one who understands the slightest thing about business.

Business men have certain set, conventional methods. Propose to them a
way of doing business that departs from their usual method, and
although the new way may mean more profit, they will not accept it
unless forced to, and even then they believe they are being swindled.

My own way of doing business is perhaps novel, but it is neither harsh
nor unfair. But it is novel, and therefore the men I deal with object
to it, although they themselves are the gainers by doing things my way
and not the way in which they are used. Yet they regard me with
suspicion. It is very much as if you offered a man five dollars for
doing something for which he had previously been in the habit of
receiving a dollar, and having him denounce you as a swindler.

Not content with generalities, Mr. Shaw went on to discuss Englishmen and Americans as business men.

In making an agreement with an Englishman, you may be sure of one
thing: if it is not entirely to his advantage he will not keep it.

An Englishman, when he wants a house, or money, or anything else,
knows that in order to get what he wants he has to sign something. He
does not care what he signs as long as he gets what he wants. After he
obtains the money or the house, or whatever else he stood in need of,
if he finds the agreement he signed disagreeable, he will denounce the
man who holds it as a knave or a scoundrel and as one who is trying to
take unfair advantage of him.

In my own experience with Englishmen, the terms of my agreements,
satisfactory at the time of signing, have afterward proved irksome.
They would then come to me and say: “Surely, Mr. Shaw, you cannot
expect to hold us to such outrageous terms”; and when I would point to
the agreements bearing their signature, they would retort: “Surely,
Mr. Shaw, you are a gentleman!”

After all, the Jew is the only man who knows what he is signing, and
will keep absolutely to his agreement.

Americans are perfect children In business. They have a stratum of
romanticism that prevents them from knowing what business really is.
This childish, romantic spirit impels them to be doing things, to cut
somebody out, to do something that nobody else has done, or to do a
greater thing than anybody else has ever done. Accidents, of course,
will happen, and sometimes they make money. But the percentage of
failures in America is something terrible. We never hear of these.
Every attention is centered on the conspicuous few who have made
success.

Shall we apply to Mr. Shaw the words of Horace,

Aliena negotia curo
Excussus propriis,

which, being interpreted, is: “I attend to the business of other people, having lost my own?” It were fairer, perhaps, to say that, in his rôle of witty playwright, everybody’s business is Mr. Shaw’s.

QUEEN MARGHERITA ON THE SPHERE OF WOMAN.

She Abhors “Race Suicide,” and Condemns the So-Called “Emancipation” of
Her Sex.

The Dowager Queen Margherita of Italy has been expressing her disapproval of “race suicide” with no less frankness than President Roosevelt. Not often is a queen interviewed; less often is a royal interview more than a collection of perfunctory phrases, polite, but insignificant. Yet Queen Margherita has been saying:

A childless family is incomplete. There is a poetry and a pathos about
childhood which appeal to every right-hearted woman. Most women,
though they may not be able to put this idea into words, feel it. They
have the maternal instinct. Hence the remoteness of race suicide.

Women show their intellectuality by rearing healthy and great
children, just as much as they do by writing books or painting
pictures. The wife who deliberately refuses to bring children into the
world must have something wrong with her moral make-up.

I am very pleased to know that there is a movement in the United
States in favor of large families, and that President Roosevelt has
put himself upon record as favoring them. European women have begun to
look for light to their sisters of the United States.

On the subject of woman’s “emancipation” Queen Margherita is equally outspoken:

I am absolutely opposed to any extravagant theories of what is called
the emancipation of women. In whatever condition of life a woman may
be placed, her first duty is the negative one of not giving up the
qualities that distinguish her sex. Above all, she should guard
against developing the trait of men. A blending of ancient reserve
with modern independence would give us the ideal woman.

BIG BURDEN OF DEBT CARRIED BY BOSTONIANS.

Statistics Show That Ten Per Cent of Them Owe for Food, Rent, Clothing,
and Funeral Expenses.

Charles F. Pidgin, chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, has been inquiring into the question of debt. Statistics issued by the Bureau show that at least ten per cent of the residents of Boston are in debt for their food, rent, clothing, furniture, and for funeral and other expenses. These people are thus partly supported by others. Mr. Pidgin says:

Debt has gained such a hold upon the people of to-day that the only
sure way to decrease the number of people who owe money, not only for
extravagances but for sustenance, seems to be to begin with the
children, and devise some scheme by which thrift may be taught in the
public schools. The generation which is growing up should be taught to
have a horror of indebtedness, and how to earn money, how to save it,
and how to spend it wisely.

The effect of intemperance is taught in the public schools. Why should
there not be some sort of course of study that will show the effect of
indebtedness on a person’s life and character?

The children nowadays do not, as a rule, know the value of money. When
they want spending money they go to their parents and ask for it. When
it is gone they ask for more. Neither the parents nor the children in
most cases know how much money goes in this way, and the youngsters
are not called upon to exercise judgment in spending the money.

The little newsboys on the street work hard for their money. They know
the value of every cent, and that they must save for a rainy day.

If other children were taught to earn a little, instead of having it
always given to them, they would make better citizens and would know
how far a dollar should go.

If parents who give their children money when they ask for it would,
instead, give them a stated sum each week or month for spending money,
and make it an object for them to save it, it would go a long way
toward prejudicing them against debt.

I believe in allowances for children, and for wives, too, for that
matter. It makes them responsible for a certain sum, and nearly always
they will take a certain pride in making it go as far as possible.

Chief Watts, of the Boston police, does not think that debt is a cause of crime. He says:

I never heard of any one stealing to pay their debts, and although
being in debt may have an influence on a certain class of
criminals—such as shoplifters and embezzlers—I do not think that it
has any influence on the general run of crime.

So far as suicide and murders are concerned, I can’t recall a case of
suicide where the person had been worrying about debt, neither can I
recall a murder that debt had anything to do with.

It’s girls, not debt, that cause murders and suicides—not that I blame
the women; I should not want to be understood that way—but
love-affairs are generally the cause of police records along those
lines. Men seldom get desperate from debt. I believe that the general
tendency of every one is to pay his debts if he has half a chance.

It was a Massachusetts sage—Emerson—who wrote:

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill!

WANTS RIFLE-SHOOTING MADE NATIONAL SPORT.

Lord Roberts Believes Patriotism Should Cause It to Take Its Place With
Golf and Cricket.

Lord Roberts has been pleading for the instruction of all able-bodied citizens of England in rifle-shooting. He says, in the London _Express_:

The rifle is our national weapon of to-day, but unhappily neither law
nor custom enjoins that the manhood of our country should learn its
use. Cricket and football are our national pastimes; why should we not
make rifle-shooting another?

Rifle-shooting is a sport—a game attractive enough in itself; and
every marksman should bear in mind that in learning how to shoot he is
fitting himself as a member of a great empire to take up arms for the
defense of his country. Rifle-shooting should be at once a national
pastime and a patriotic duty.

The reasons for this suggestion are not few. “Bobs” proceeds to make the most of his case, for he goes on to say:

The American authorities, in the recently published rules for the
“promotion of rifle practise,” gave it as their opinion that, “in
estimating the military efficiency of a soldier, if we consider ten
points as a standard of perfection, at least eight of these points are
skill in rifle shooting,” and with that opinion I quite agree.

If, then, the scheme which I have been strenuously advocating for some
time past is carried to a successful conclusion, we shall be a nation
whose manhood will be for practical purposes all efficient soldiers—an
efficiency, moreover, that can be obtained without the least
interference with industrial or professional pursuits.

But for the whole scheme to be successful, it is desirable that boys,
youths, and men should be given a certain amount of military training
and instruction in the use of the rifle.

It is, I am aware, urged against my proposals that they are little
short of conscription. I have frequently asserted before that I am
altogether opposed to conscription as being totally inapplicable to an
army the greater part of which must always be serving abroad.

Surely there is all the difference in the world between a nation,
every man of which is obliged to serve in the ranks of the regular
army and perform while in those ranks all the onerous duties of a
regular soldier during times of peace and for small wars, as is the
case on the Continent, and a nation which, while maintaining a regular
army for foreign service, asks every man to undergo such a training as
will fit him to take a useful part in a great national emergency when
every true Briton would be, in point of fact, certain to volunteer,
and only the shirkers, the unpatriotic, and the disloyal would be
content to remain passive.

The people of this country should identify themselves with the army
and take an intelligent interest in what the army has to do, and not
regard it as something quite outside the national life; and this they
would certainly do if military training became universal and rifle
shooting a national pursuit.

We need not be afraid that such training and a generally acquired
efficiency with the rifle would result in a spirit of militarism that
would make us anxious for war. I believe, and would I could persuade
haters of militarism to believe, that there is no surer guarantee of
peace than to be prepared for war; and if every able-bodied man is
prepared to play the part of the strong man armed, his own and his
country’s goods will remain at peace.

Those who cry out for greater military efficiency and those who argue that less attention should be given to the things of war are seeking by opposite means the same result—the abolishment for all time of “that mad game the world so loves to play.”

What the Big Newspaper Writers Are Saying

Napoleonic Theory of the Relations of Man’s Stature and
Genius—Iconoclasts vs. American Traditions—Time is Ripe for a
Substitute for the Saloon—The Cash Value Placed by Law on the Life
of a Man—Manual Labor Makes New Converts—Girard a Shining Model
for Philanthropists—Advantages Resulting From Wealth’s Marriage
Into “the Working Classes”—Does a Stepmother Make a Good
Mother?—American Stomachs Are Not Deteriorating—Influence of Hate
on the Efficiency of Armies—Early Risers on the Defensive.

_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

RELATIONS OF A MAN’S STATURE AND GENIUS.

Evidence Produced to Disprove Napoleon’s Theory That Short Men Are the
More Intellectual.

What is the height of genius? How do its physical inches correspond with its altitude of mind and soul? These questions are a subject of curious inquiry with the Boston _Herald_.

Napoleon the Great, a short man, surrounded himself with a staff of short men. He did not care to look like a pygmy among his subordinates. Doubtless vanity contributed to his preference for few inches. He said of General Kléber: “He has all the qualities and defects of a tall man.”

Napoleon would not only have agreed with Lombroso that great men are
short men, but he went further than that; he altered the stature of
Frederick the great, of Alexander, of Cæsar, to suit himself. He
always insisted that they were short men, but the chroniclers of their
times tell us otherwise.

The chroniclers of Napoleon’s time seem to have been struck by his own
fancy, for they made him as short as they conveniently could. His old
friend Bourrienne wrote Napoleon’s height as five feet two inches.
Constant put it at five feet one inch. But, after all, these were old
French measures.

Captain Maitland’s testimony is more to the point. It was to Captain
Maitland that Napoleon surrendered on board the Bellerophon. Maitland
measured him and recorded the fallen conqueror’s height as five feet
seven inches, English. That, by the way, is half an inch more than the
stature of Lord Roberts.

The Test of Figures.

But the Napoleonic theory does not bear the test of figures.
Intellectual power in its varied manifestations is not found at its
utmost strength in small men only. It takes men as it finds them—tall
and short, thin and plump—and it seems to rather like height.

Thackeray was six feet four inches. So was Fielding. Scott, Walt
Whitman, and Tennyson were six-footers. Goethe, the elder Dumas,
Robert Burns, and Longfellow were five feet ten inches. J. M. Barrie
is only five feet five inches, and Kipling only five feet six inches.
Edwin A. Abbey has the same height as Barrie; so has Alma-Tadema.

Lord Curzon is six feet one inch, George Westinghouse is over six feet
two inches, Andrew Carnegie is five feet four and a half inches,
President Roosevelt is five feet nine inches. Mr. Gladstone was five
feet nine inches. Sir Henry Irving was an inch taller.

Edmund Burke and Oliver Cromwell were five feet ten and a half inches,
which, by the way, is the height of the present Prime Minister of
England, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Wellington was half an inch
taller than Napoleon.

That trio of great admirals—Nelson, Blake, and Sydney Smith—were a
little under five feet six inches. Bismarck was a tall man, but not so
tall as George Washington, who was six feet three inches. Sargent, the
great painter, is six feet; Carlyle, Darwin, Huxley, and Ruskin were
six-footers.

Disraeli and Dickens were five feet nine inches, which is also the
stature of Sir William Crookes. Sir Oliver Lodge is six feet three
inches, Marconi five feet ten and a half inches.

Emerson, Hans Andersen, Wordsworth, Bunyan, Audubon, Corot, Moltke,
Millet, Gounod, Lord Clive, and Lord Brougham were tall men. So were
Humboldt and Helmholtz. Lord Kelvin is five feet seven inches, Lord
Reay six feet two inches. Conan Doyle is six feet one inch, Anthony
Hope three inches shorter. All these figures give the stature of the
men in their boots.

King Edward is five feet eight and a half inches, the Kaiser just an
inch shorter. The Mikado is five feet six inches, the King of Italy
five feet two inches. The Czar’s height is the same as the Kaiser’s.
Leopold, King of the Belgians, is six feet five inches.

Americans Taller Than Englishmen.

Peter the Great was six feet eight and a half Inches. Abraham Lincoln
was just under six feet two inches, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Richard
Burton six feet. Alfred de Musset, Froude, Puvis de Chavannes,
Poussin, Lessing. Schiller, Lamartine, and Sterne were tall men. W. S.
Gilbert is over six feet.

It would be possible to lengthen this list to the point of
tediousness. But the more the subject is examined, the farther away we
get from the Napoleonic theory. Nature has a pretty wide range in
these matters, and she makes the most of it.

When it comes to averages, figures prepared by the anthropometric
committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
indicate that the average stature of the male adults of England is
five feet seven inches and seven-eighths, although the professional
and commercial classes show “a mean height of from two to three inches
above this, and the laboring classes an inch or two below.” The Scotch
and Irish are a little taller, and the Welsh a little shorter than the
English.

The average for the United States is said to be taller than the English—a fact which implies neither genius nor the lack of it.

AMERICAN TRADITIONS AND THE ICONOCLASTS.

Persons Who Hew Too Close to the Line of History Get Little Thanks for
Their Pains.

Iconoclasts have been busy with American history for a good many years. They have cut the props from under more than one valued tradition. In the interest of literal fact they have destroyed much that is imaginatively valuable. Too often the one can be gained only by loss of the other, and it is not easy to decide which vantages most. At least there is some ground for nourishing tradition.

H. J. Haskell praised the “researchers” in a recent article in the _Independent_. The Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ makes reply, saying:

Mr. Haskell cites as a correction of “important errors in the
viewpoint” “the proof that the Revolution was not the result of
conscious tyranny and oppression on the part of the British
Government.”

Well, who now cares whether it was or was not? What difference does it
make either way in the relations of the American and British peoples
and their governments? Those relations are determined by present
interests and future hopes.

We know our forefathers were right, and we do not care whether their
opponents were right from their own viewpoint or not. Englishmen who
count know that their forefathers blundered egregiously, and do not
care whether they were conscientious or not in their folly.

It may be true—it probably is—that Weems fabricated outright the
cherry-tree story about George Washington. But what difference does
that make? The story simply imputed to Washington the boy the known
character of Washington the man. It hurt no one, and it has inspired
millions of American boys, by setting before them the example of a man
whose greatness and goodness none could question, to be true rather
than false, even when it was hard to tell the truth.

The “Rehabilitation” of Burr.

A great deal is said about the “rehabilitation” of Aaron Burr. But
what is the effect of it all? To show that Burr was not technically a
traitor? The courts said so long ago, and, despite personal opinions,
the verdict was accepted as the law in practise. In trying doubly to
prove Burr no traitor, the rehabilitators have proved him a
blackmailing filibusterer—a man who lacked the courage to conquer a
State, but sought to steal one—a man whose ambition and effort it was
to play the part of

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole.
And put it in his pocket!

A great deal is also said of the evidence from his own diary of the
“hollowness” and the “double dealing” of President Polk in his conduct
toward Mexico. What is really proved by this evidence is that James K.
Polk was not a cheap opportunist, waiting to be forced to act by
situations created by others, but foresaw those situations and was
ready to take advantage of them for the expansion of his country and
the increase of its power.

To discover that James K. Polk was never taken by surprise, and that
all his great political acts were purposed and planned for long in
advance, does not degrade him, but exalts his character by proving its
conscious strength. It lifts James K. Polk out of the Gladstone class
and puts him at least on the borders of the Bismarck class of
statesmanship.

Game Not Worth the Candle.

And of what earthly or heavenly importance is it to any human soul to
know that the Pilgrims did not actually land in a body on Plymouth
Rock on a certain day? Or that the old stone tower at Newport is not
what Longfellow suggested, a relic of the Northmen, but merely
Governor Arnold’s windmill?

Or that the Spanish settlers in America treated the Indians, on the
whole, more humanely than did the English? Or that, if the Americans’
powder had not run out and they had been able to hold Bunker Hill,
they would probably have been captured the next day?

With all their labor and kicking up of dust, and the personal
notoriety they get by it, the “researchers” whom Mr. Haskell praises
have not changed the main and abiding conceptions of our history at
all. Their game seems hardly worth the candles consumed at it.

Truth is the first aim of the historian. History has been characterized as a pack of lies, generally agreed to by its makers.

“Anything but history,” said Horace Walpole, “for history must be false.”

The business of the scientific historian is to examine all witnesses, hear all the evidences, and get at the exact facts, even though they make ancient reputations tumble.

And yet we cannot but ask with Wordsworth:

Those old credulities, to nature dear,
Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock
Of History?

TIME IS RIPE FOR SALOON’S SUBSTITUTE.

After Three Months’ Abstinence, San Francisco Finds That It Has Lost Its
Old-Time Thirst.

San Francisco, after its terrific shake-up, dropped the liquor business temporarily. The man in control foresaw the dangers of alcohol to a homeless community.

After three months saloons were permitted to open. What was the effect? A simultaneous rush for the swinging doors? Not at all. People seemed to have got out of the way of drinking; and this was true in spite of the fact that, during the period of “enforced abstinence,” they could always get liquor from outside the city limits, if they wanted it.

The San Francisco _Chronicle_ says:

Liquor drinking is with most people not the gratification of an
appetite, but a mere habit. There is no liquor and few wines which
taste good. Even the toper who takes his whisky straight washes the
taste out of his mouth with water as quickly as he can.

With a comparatively few there is a real craving for liquor, or at
least for its stimulating effects, but the vast majority of those who
drink in saloons do so merely because in the poverty of their
intellects they know no other way of manifesting good fellowship
toward friends whom they meet. So the drink habit is formed, which, in
some cases, degenerates into dissipation and the drunkard’s craving.

But even the classes which contain most of our hard drinkers seem
really to care little for whisky, for they are not resorting to the
saloons in any such number as was expected. Some seem to have formed
the buttermilk or some similar habit, and have no inclination to
return to the saloon—doubtless greatly to the happiness of their wives
and the comfort of their children.

Habit, Not Appetite.

Whether this will last we do not know. Probably not. Mankind is
gregarious, and the only public roof under which men may gather for
the free enjoyment of a pipe and a friendly chat is the roof of the
saloon. Therefore they will go to the saloon, and keep going until
society tempts them away with something at least equally attractive.

They can go to the Young Men’s Christian Association, but they don’t
want to. They will not be allowed to light their pipes, put their feet
on the table, lean back in their chairs and blow smoke-rings to the
ceiling.

Not even the public libraries do anything to draw men from the
saloons. They must be “decorous,” take off their hats, and be silent.
They don’t want to. Every public library should have a smoking-room
where ordinary conversation is allowed. It will not disturb those who
are reading. If it does they can go to other rooms.

The fact that it is habit and not appetite that is to be dealt with is
the psychological basis of the so-called Gothenberg plan. On that plan
all the saloons of a city are conducted by a corporation, whose
members receive as dividends only a fixed, moderate interest on the
investment, all profits above that going, in some form, to the public.
There is no “bar.”

The Gothenberg Plan.

Customers sit at a table and their liquor is served to them. All
saloons must keep “soft drinks” and give them at least as much
prominence as is given to strong drinks. Under no circumstances is any
attendant to have any interest in the sales of liquor, although in
some cases he is allowed a commission on soft drinks and other
refreshments.

No one is permitted to get intoxicated on the premises. There is no
attempt to compel men to abstain. There is a continual temptation to
do so. The army canteen was based on this theory, and was a most
useful institution until some misguided women abolished it and drove
the soldiers to debauchery. Nothing else was to be expected, or was
expected, by the experienced.

The experience of this city proves that the drink habit is not
difficult to overcome—not, however, by coercion, but by temptation.
And men cannot be tempted to any extent by any efforts which have the
missionary or altruistic flavor. Men wish to assemble in public places
where there is entire freedom as to dress and appearance, and where
there is no danger that anybody will solicit them to become better
men. They are not only willing, but desire, to spend something for the
“good of the house” and their own entertainment.

If society will provide them with such a place a good many will go
there in preference to a saloon. If, at the same time, all saloons are
abolished, they will speedily content themselves with such substitutes
as we have suggested.

All of which would seem to support the theory that the saloon is “the poor man’s club.”

HOW LAW APPRAISES THE LIFE OF A MAN.

Legal Decisions Indicate That His Cash Value Begins to Deteriorate When
He Is Twenty-Five.

What is the value of a man? What is his average physical value, measured in dollars and cents? We hear it said that in partly civilized countries human life is cheap. We are told that the great movements typified by the American and French revolutions have raised the value of the individual. Can we get these comparisons into an arithmetical table?

Summarizing the statements of another journal, the Saint Louis _Globe-Democrat_ says: