Revisiting the Earth Part 6

K. Warren observed, "to rouse all the inhabitants of a large city to give to such a cause," but every man, woman and child in Three Oaks would give a dime or a dollar on condition that he himself gave a thousand times the amount. The people owe a debt of grat.i.tude to such a man, a marked individual specimen of human worth, with a character of his own, who plays the part of fountain to their reservoir. There is a fine reflex influence in being what the New Testament calls "a lover of good men." There is nothing better that can enter the human soul than admiration and reverence for high character. They are the crown of our moral nature. One element in them is appreciation. It was a fine training for boys to show and feel deference. This is one thing that a boy does not bring into the world with him. It is not natural to look up.

_Sounds a Characteristic Note_

We live in an age of interrogation when all things are questioned, not only as to their right to exist, but particularly as to their right in any degree to rule. Every age has its own lesson and adds its own peculiar gift to those preceding it. Are we better or worse? This only I know that these men were beacon lights to the young, illuminating their path and beckoning them on, and deserve to be enshrined in a perpetual and revered remembrance. From all this there has come a reaction.

Congressmen and legislators have not lowered in grade, far from that, as the elimination of the bar from the capital would be one of many evidences, but the public intelligence has risen so that they, relatively, seem to have descended. Instead of a century plant the usual attraction now is a garden. A great social revival has been abroad; the people are getting together. There is now more concerted action. In the business world individuals are forming alliances. Interests are being confederated. As the community spirit comes to consciousness the individuality of men diminishes. Society forms into clubs, chambers of commerce, and into boards of directors in which men are less marked individually and much, even of their personality, is concealed by the extravagant multiplication of societies and inst.i.tutions and meetings of every kind. The churches have pretty nearly lost the individual, since the introduction of team work, itself a blessing, but the individual has withered. He is leveled down and smoothed out by the necessity of acting only in conjunction with groups.

_Some Incongruities of Character_

The Arabian Nights would make queer history, yet they would prove a wet fuse and fail to kindle the mind if they did not suggest actual experience. Who is your "old man" that sticks to your shoulders putting you in Sinbad's cla.s.s? Each village carries its unconventional character. He gives a touch of color to the place. Rip Van Winkle, an old drunkard, who slept for twenty years in the Catskills was a great favorite with the children. They would shout for joy whenever he approached. He a.s.sisted at their sports, made their playthings, and taught them to fly kites. He was surrounded by a troop of them. He had a distinct individuality. He was a hero, with all his characteristics well marked. A person on revisiting the earth misses such a striking familiar figure in the neighborhood. We saw Mrs. Van Winkle beat up old Rip with a broom-stick, but although she was a clean, tidy, thrifty person who kept her house swept and garnished in spite of her improvident husband, in the estimation of the boys she was not to her well-known husband a companion character.

"Jack Sprat could eat no fat His wife could eat no lean."

Young eyes are sharply drawn to persons so dissimilar in their tastes.

Children are quick to see that this very difference in taste produced a peculiar situation. Our early life is peopled with distinctive and marked characters and they have gone along with us through life. It is the peculiar outstanding people that, like a burr, stick to the memory.

CHAPTER X

TO SEE AND FEEL THE PAST

It is a matter of common knowledge that Was.h.i.+ngton at the time of his death was the richest man in the country. All are familiar with the fact that he acquired property through his brother Lawrence, and the widow Custis whom he married, but less attention is given to the suggestive fact that he invested widely in land in what was then the West. We have letters to his agents. Judson destroyed all his own letters and papers touching private matters, but there they are, in Was.h.i.+ngton's case, and he who runs may read. He had been a surveyor. He knew a good thing when he saw it. His invariable rule was to buy quality. Showing the same wisdom he did in his campaigns and his farewell address, which has never lost its influence, he turned to the West to do his buying. Entirely aside from the Revolution, if Was.h.i.+ngton had not been a great general, he was well started on lines that would have made him a very substantial citizen. The confidence he expressed in the West is believed to be, and has been stated to be, a higher monument to his fame than the metal-tipped, slender, tapering sky-pointing and heaven-reaching obelisk reared in his honor near the banks of the Potomac. He was invited to visit France but could not, he said, bring his affairs into a state of order, during the remainder of his life, and the matters that most needed his care were his large purchases of land in the West which now, with some little contiguous territory are worth Twenty Million Dollars.

Was.h.i.+ngton remains our richest president not only relatively but absolutely.

_People Looked, People Wondered, People Praised_

We find him making a sixth journey to see his lands which were located on the right and left banks of the river, and bounded thereby, forty-eight miles and a half. This portrayal makes very obvious what is implied when it is said of an individual that he is not a good business man. He simply lacks what Was.h.i.+ngton had, intensity of interest in his affairs, energy of mind, promptness. We do not say foresight, there is no such thing as foresight, we mean insight, good judgment, and a fine knowledge of the trend of things, a perception of the direction taken by popular movements. Was.h.i.+ngton was accused of being close-fisted, but some one takes the ground that a man must close his fist if there is something in it that others were seeking by illegitimate means to get.

At his death he was worth a half million dollars, and four hundred thousand dollars of it lay in western lands. "Would G.o.d we may have wisdom to improve the opportunity," a prayer in which many persons who have had much better chances than ever came to him, pressed as he was with patriotic service, wished they had joined, but who allowed opportunity to knock at the door and turn away, unwelcomed. What a sight to Was.h.i.+ngton, now revisiting the earth, would a night view of Pittsburgh be with her deep fires and the lid off. Was.h.i.+ngton's insight was apparent by locating his purchases near the possibilities of a city whose tonnage exceeds that of any other city of the Union, whose vast manufacturing interests send up volumes of smoke that become a pillar of cloud by day and whose furnaces are pillars of fire by night, to lead the people on to prosperity and success. The mind has less influence on the will than many persons suppose. A man may know a fact and then do nothing about it. A lazy man may know the advantage of wealth and yet be without the motive to attain it. It is often a poor boy who has felt poverty and has some feeling about it that makes success with him a pa.s.sion. He who hesitates is lost. It was the plunge of Curtius that saved Rome.

_Making Hay While the Sun s.h.i.+nes_

That great orator of nature to whom school-boys are so much indebted for energetic, pa.s.sionate, effective declamations, Patrick Henry, father of fifteen children, made his widow and eleven surviving children rich by his early judicious purchases, like Was.h.i.+ngton, of lands. This much needs to be said, lest fortune be thought of as a blind G.o.ddess. A man that once was cutting gra.s.s and herding cattle earning his bread by the sweat of his brow is now Prince Fortunatus. No chance luck about it, for the opportunity that beckoned him called to others but their ears were dull of hearing. All of us, who are interested in vital reforms, must have been attracted to the career of Gerrit Smith, who gave thirty thousand dollars to dest.i.tute old maids and widows in the state of New York. No public subscription lacked his name, and he always gave away $50,000.00 and not seldom $100,000.00 each year. In his business life of fifty-six years he gave away $8,000,000.00 and left an estate of more than a million dollars. Such a recital, as in the case of Was.h.i.+ngton, makes us curious to find the sources of such philanthropy. We find that with rare ac.u.men he developed the business of his father, who when a poor youth, kept a small store and traded for furs at first hands with the Indians. When his partner Mr. Astor bought real estate in New York city, the elder Smith purchased sixty thousand acres of land in the central part of the state of New York, of which enough was sold at auction to repay the purchase price and still leave enough to make him the largest landholder in the state. Subsequent additions made him the owner of more acres than any other man in the Union. Such a preparative study as this gave me intensest interest, when revisiting the earth, in treading the beautiful field, my birthplace, that my father bought in Iowa at the Government price of a dollar and a quarter an acre, that has since been sold at $205.00 an acre and the price paid for it at the last sale of it was $300.00 an acre and the buyer was offered $3,000.00 for his bargain. It is the percentage of gain that tells the story. It seems like the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

_The Death of the Mortgage_

Besides learning these items and handling the papers that confirmed them, out came a fact that took my breath away. Once men profited by nature's bounty. To him that hath is given. That is the common way. Now comes the uncommon thing. From him that hath not is (not) taken away even that he hath. The sun and stars now look down upon a changed condition. The wildest dream has come true, a by-product of the war. It is one of the many things begun under circ.u.mstances which the German treaty-breakers, the disturbers of the peace, thrust upon us, a thing designed to aid agriculturists to feed our armies and allies, which, with the war over, will never be abated. We raise our eyes, and see a moneyed millennium coming down a common country road. It is in the form of an original system of rural credits. The Treasury Department of the United States has inaugurated a Federal Farm-Loan Bureau. Its outstanding feature is, if a borrower of a large amount pays his interest, he never hears again of the debt. Interest at six and a half per cent not only takes care of that item, but it pays it off, in less than a generation, also the money borrowed. A farmer at the start requires money for buildings, machinery, and herds. The aching heart of many a widow bereft of her home by the foreclosure of a mortgage on her property will see the deep significance in the sacrament that I am seeking to describe. The process is called amortization. The syllable "mort" as in "mortal," means death of the debt. From the first the mortgage is struck with death.

_A Heaven-sent Device_

So happy to all concerned is this method, resembling a co-operative bank, of obtaining a greatly needed working capital that we may well rejoice with a large cla.s.s of deserving people, who for the first time have the means of doing a larger, more profitable business, with the sting and hazard graciously removed. With what bitterness we have all heard the children of the poor recite the anguish that came into the home when the mortgage, like the naked sword suspended by a hair over the head of Damocles, came to do its dreaded office! "But the children began to be sorely weary," says Bunyan, "and they cried out unto Him that loveth pilgrims to make their way more comfortable." We have come to see the Government make the way of the children who inherit a mortgage more comfortable. All's well! You have no trouble with the interest. Only go on as you have been going. The farm, the home, are all yours. The mortgage is dead.

_They Were a Family Again_

A day on a real farm did not have a dull moment in it. It was not only full of incident and instruction but as compared with a generation ago it was different. Immediately a very young calf was noticed that, to use the farmer's unexpected phrase, his mother does not "claim." I supposed he would say that his mother would not "own." The cow was put in a stall, in a barn, the calf being nourished and thus openly adopted by the mother they became effusively chummy. At first the cow "did not care" for the calf. When care began a noticeable regard commenced.

_How Much Like Folks_

More curious still it seemed to find that in breaking out of a pasture the cattle were led by one member of the herd. The community of cattle would be quiet and contented except for one breaching individual. Here again I went to school to a farmer in the use of words. In his reference to this creature he designated the trouble maker as an "outlaw." I had not thought of applying that word to cattle.

_Absence of the Big Stick_

I stood still and wondered at the constant and varied use of the voice by a farmer as he moves about among the creatures that he owns. Armed with a whip, like an Irishman with his s.h.i.+llalah at a fair, I supposed he would keep it flouris.h.i.+ng about his head and that he would be accompanied by a dog. An owner will not trust his cattle to the care of a man that employs a shepherd dog. Cattle must be kept quiet. A dog wakes them all up and sets back the gain that they would make for the day. Farmers and drovers are whistling, singing, calling, shouting, talking, all the time to their creatures and they like it.

_An Outlaw in the Herd_

It is everywhere, I suppose, well known that the western spirit has always been less tolerant of an outlaw than the people of the East are.

I asked the ranch man what course he took with an outlaw among cattle.

"As soon as I detect him I get rid of him, not stopping at anything to do it." On the fourth of July I went out upon the piazza of the hotel, and looking up the street I saw a man, hung in effigy, upon a telephone pole in front of his own store, with his name placarded upon the suspended figure, that it should not be a case of mistaken ident.i.ty. He had offended the decencies of life. The townspeople waited for a day or two to see if the authorities took it up. There was nothing doing. Then the citizens made public what they thought of the outlaw.

_Testing Mighty Principles by Small Experiments_

It seems that Schopenhauer had a gold piece which he used to put beside his plate at the table where he ate, surrounded by the young officers of the German army, and which was to be given to the poor, the first time he heard any conversation that was not about promotion or women. If this experiment were tried one's contribution to charity would not be large, provided the subjects were changed in the various well known localities. In the time of the great inflation in Chicago when any one could make his fortune by simply buying building sites and selling out before the ink had dried with which the first transfer was recorded, the subject discussed in hotels and offices would be Corner Lots.

These locations were sold and resold, each time at a large advance on the former price, and became the inexhaustible topic of conversation.

Everybody was growing rich on paper and The City of the Lakes was the Mecca of speculators, a genuine Eldorado, where affluence was made easy, and first lessons in finance were given. The original gold coin was staked amid specific well understood surroundings. When environment changes topics change. In one town all the talk is money, money. At a public table in some localities where once it was all horse talk, in one corner of the dining room, the interchange of mind is on the speed of automobiles, the improvement made in cars since two years ago, the amount of gasoline to the mile, and the comparative excellence of the different manufactures.

In revisiting the earth on coming into close relations with each town, I found it had its distinctive atmosphere. The value of land did not depend upon the soil nor upon the climatic conditions so much as upon the human equation. Two communities upon the same railway with like physical conditions will find themselves growing apart. One place might have slightly inferior outward conditions. These are speedily overcome.

Watch it grow.

_The Home of the Angels_

In this garden of the earth one quickly loses his heart to Los Angeles.

Her hotels are the last word in luxury. Thousands of citizens having become rich in Iowa spend their money in this Land of the Afternoon.

While they have found California about as nature made it, besides the elements of the air and soil, Los Angeles has an atmosphere that is purely social. It is an attractive place to live, choice people have a.s.sembled there, and so, under pleasant conditions, others are drawn.

The money in Pasadena never came out of the soil contiguous to the place. A man buying land saw how things were tending and the neighborhood in which he was going and said to the driver that he need not go any farther. The lay of the land and quality would make no difference. The atmosphere was alien and he was through. In the same state you find towns that are as unlike as if they stood on different continents. In San Francisco, all unannounced, you, on crossing a street, pa.s.s an equatorial, invisible line into the Chinese quarter which, in atmosphere, is five thousand miles away. There is in Paris an activity, a rapidity of movement that you do not find in Holland or in England. The people walk faster, talk faster, eat faster, ride faster, and live faster in all respects than do their neighbors. The English love the past and protest against the removal of the ancient land-marks, while the French love innovation. The atmosphere of the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, not being like most national capitals, a center of trade, is world-wide from that of Chicago. So much is it out of the popular drift that while a state was voting over-whelmingly for const.i.tutional prohibition the measure was discountenanced by both of its senators. One atmosphere has in it a kind of vitalizing life, a perpetual marvel and a perpetual delight, reviving every faculty and affection, while in another the doctors administer quinine to the saffron-colored sojourners in its fever-haunted marshes.

_New Forms of Matter, New Crystallizations_

Every region has its peculiar fitness for some particular kind of growth, Missouri apples, Michigan peaches, California oranges, Kentucky blue-gra.s.s, Wisconsin clover. To the south and west is the corn belt.

Specific well-known places are best adapted to the varied form of animal life. The three northern continents are temperate; the three southern continents are tropical. In these warmest regions nature displays its fullest energy, its greatest diversity, its richest colors, and development. The animal kingdom grows in strength and perfection in this privileged zone, yet man presents his purest and most perfect type at the center of the temperate continents. At the base of the Himalayas vegetation is of a tropical character; at an elevation of five thousand feet European plants succeed. Wheat grows at an elevation of thirteen thousand feet, barley at fifteen thousand. We do not look for the best trees on the bleak mountain top but in the genial valley. As we go up the struggle for existence increases until even the st.u.r.diest fail to thrive above the "timber line." Number one wheat can be produced only in localities where the summers are short and the winters long and cold.

Corn is capable of the widest cultivation, but even that has its northern and southern limits. Climate is nature's smile and goes with the land. No man can farm against the climate and no medication can do for an invalid what the half-tropical suns.h.i.+ne will do in an oasis city.

There is no more fascinating study than that of the sustaining, producing, and modifying effects of atmosphere.