Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

in August of your decision to run the 'Education' and 'International Politics' articles ahead of the 'War.' Otherwise, I am sure I should not have failed, at the outset, to acknowledge gratefully my indebtedness to an unusual man for valuable material.

Mutual friends, knowing my absorption in industrial problems, brought me into touch a year ago with Ernest F. Lloyd of Ann Arbor, Michigan. After some thirty years as a manufacturer of gas-making machinery, and as a public-utility operator supplying gas to several towns, Mr. Lloyd had acquired, as he says philosophically, 'sufficient worldly credit to forego business with decency untainted by affluence.' He took up his residence at, Ann Arbor, entering the University of Michigan as a special student in economics. Thereby he reversed the usual educational process, and was able to check theory by practice, and vice versa. Starting from the firm base of experience, he studied acutely the problems of capital and labor, especially those underlying economic principles affecting the organization of employers and wage-workers, their bargaining powers and limitations of reward, the historical development of these relations, the influences of modern machinery thereon, and the status of the corporation as the modern industrial employer. These researches ultimately may be published for textbook use in colleges; some have already appeared in academic journals.

Meanwhile Mr. Lloyd kindly gave me free use of his manuscripts, and I have based the economic aspects of 'The Iron Man' largely upon them. On the political, psychological, biological, and educational aspects of the case, my friend will admit no more than a friendly interest, though his keen criticism has been invaluable even there. However, in his special field our articles are really collaborations, in which my observations in the field have been tested in the Lloyd crucible before being passed on to the public via the Atlantic. Sincerely yours,

ARTHUR POUND.

Mrs. Cannon's frank expression of misgiving regarding the organization of present-day charity has been seriously debated all over the United States. The Associated Charities of several cities have made it the subject of discussion at stated meetings; and letters from charitable workers, both in support and in attack, have poured in on us. We are sorry to find room for only a few.

DEAR ATLANTIC,

Mrs. Cannon's article contains many wise and helpful suggestions, but contains also a pretty serious indictment against the philanthrophy of the past thirty years. The author characterizes it as short-sighted and unintelligent, reluctant to coöperate, and apt to be too superficial and selfish to seek the real good of the community, when that implies self-effacement.

He would be a bold man who should affirm

that there are no so-called philanthropists whose work is open to these charges, but are they the representative men and women of this calling? If you have charges to make against the medical profession, for instance, you would not select the tyros, the quacks, or the practitioners before the time of Lister, to illustrate your point. A profession has a right to be judged by its best — its great men and the humble but earnest followers who are striving to live up to their ideals.

The philanthrophy of the last thirty years means Jane Addams, Josephine Shaw Lowell, and the thousands of men and women who are spending their lives, like them, in the struggle to bring scientific methods and the profoundest teachings of modern philosophy into the study of human betterment. To private philanthropy we owe to-day most of the public work in that direction. Evening schools, vacation schools, supervised play, the fight against tuberculosis — all these movements and many others were tried out in philanthropic laboratories, and handed over to the city or state after their value and practicability had been proved. Surely 'tenderness and pity' are not incompatible with 'reasoning intelligence'! Sincerely yours,

DEAR ATLANTIC,

HELEN CABOT ALMY.

Please permit one of your readers to pay his respects to Philanthropic Doubts,' the leading article in your September number. Naturally, as the work of an accomplished thinker and writer, it is delightful reading; probably no less delightful that one finds, instead of doubts,' a confident argument in support of quite definite views. This, perhaps, opens the way to an expression of some doubts touching those views. For example: 1. How will this strike the philanthropists? 2. Are reformed philanthropists the key to improved government and the ideal social condition? 3. Assuming that, when shown the error of their ways, they will refrain from further contributions and aid to charitable undertakings, will the philanthropists pour their charity funds into the coffers of the State, and devote to the State their energies hitherto given to philanthropic undertakings?

4. How does it stand with sound principles of government to attempt to make of the Statethe community in its corporate, governmental capacity a universal providence? N.B. Russia under Bolshevism.

5. Can there be an ideal social condition without ideal human beings?

6. Does democratic government seem to be in a fair way to become the perfect, final form of government, and a hopeful agency for bringing the millennium? RUTHERFORD H. PLATT.

DEAR ATLANTIC,

Social workers have no quarrel with the person who wishes to lift himself by his boot-straps and who refuses a friendly boost by the philanthropist. Such people rarely sit in a Charity office, and if they do, their visit is only an occasional one. Social workers merely supply the knowledge and incentive for self-fulfillment to those people who, through poverty, have grown stolid, hopeless,

and indifferent. Rarely is pressure brought to bear upon a man in order to make him docile to the wishes or caprice of the philanthropist. Health decisions are practically the only ones ever forced, and these, for the most part, only when the welfare of a child is at stake. As to the philanthropist's influence upon the people with whom he deals, that is impossible to measure. Perhaps, as Mrs. Cannon says, the majority of our clients act upon our advice if they must, they disregard it if they can, but they preserve untouched the inner citadel of their personality." This, however, is no indictment against the philanthropist, but against human nature. God forbid that any of us should fling wide to all comers the inner gates of our personality! Yours sincerely,

DEAR ATLANTIC,

FLORENCE SYTZ.

Perhaps I may be permitted to speak a word for the Settlements, which are included in the alleged 'perfect orgy of charitable activity in which philanthropists are said to have indulged for the past thirty years. The Settlements have consistently endeavored to avoid the dangers of philanthropic work against which the author rightly inveighs. From the very first they have tried to become an integral part of their neighborhood. An attitude of condescension is as abhorrent to them as to Mrs. Cannon. A cardinal principle of settlement work has been to seek the cooperation of their neighbors in improving local conditions. Their aim, as it was put long ago, I believe by Jane Addams, has been to work with and not for people. I think it can safely be said that they are not hampered by the 'philanthropists' first handicap' - that of making their 'human contacts on the basis of infirmities, poverty, ignorance, sin, never on the basis of any mutual interest or responsibility.' It is precisely on the basis of mutual interest and responsibility that they seek to make their contacts with their neighbors. Again, the Settlements have all along been trying to pass over to the tax-payers such of their experiments in the promotion of social welfare as have proved of permanent value. Mrs. Cannon concedes that certain 'social pioneers' have done essential work, and that, 'in so far as charitable societies catch the spirit of these adventures and hold the ideal of their own labor as pioneering, they do a vital work, and in the future as in the past, will be essential to social progress.' Without, I trust, assuming too much, Settlement residents may take heart from this admission, for they have thought (modestly, I hope) that such pioneering was an important part of their work, and they believe that the time is not yet come for them to shut up shop. As a matter of fact, modern social workers, like the members of the medical profession, are really intent upon putting themselves out of business, but, like the doctors again, they have not yet achieved this desirable end. Let us not neglect the extension and improvement of publicwelfare agencies, while, for the present at least, we maintain such private philanthropies as are serving the community. Very truly yours,

GAYLORD S. WHITE.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Your story 'The Jury' intrigues me. It recalls by its unannounced verdict The Lady or the Tiger?

It is not easy to determine the exact nature of the plea. There is no prosecution and there is not a suggestion of a defense. It is not quite a petition for pardon with restoration of civil rights. The guilty person I beg her pardon, the heroine is not a petitioner of any sort; only, as always, a recipient of unrequited favors. The question seems to be: shall other benefactors rush in to fill a temporary vacancy, her late 'protector' having been removed by death?

The principal speaker's status is not quite clear. Is it that of the amicus curia of the civil, or of the advocatus diaboli of the ecclesiastical court, or just 'your orator' of the old court of equity? She herself is, however, sufficiently convincing. And how admirable are her accessories! The first cigarette that she lights seems to dispel all illusions as to old-fashioned social conventions. The second seems to symbolize the weakened willpower that over-indulgence produces. And then the bridge table! It seems symbolic of the ennui of the unoccupied time of the 'idle rich.'

Surely there can be no question as to the verdict. One seems to hear the unanimous cry: 'Tell Violet Osborne to return. The seventh commandment is out of date. No one can expect a rich woman to care for her children. We take no stock in this talk about "much being required from those to whom much has been given.'

But might not the whole company be persuaded to join Violet Osborne abroad,' and make room here for a few more who want to vindicate for America a moral supremacy in meeting the needs of a world wrecked by selfishness and selfindulgence? Very truly yours,

ETHELBERT D. WARFIELD.

[blocks in formation]

Practical, too; for each manuscript bears my name and address; you can appreciate the importance of that. One, which I had left by mistake in a strange pulpit, I had returned to me the other day by mail. Sincerely yours,

A. D. SWIVELY.

In the September number of the Atlantic, Mr. Newton, discussing his delightful Old Lady, London, made something of a whipping-post of old Thomas Carlyle. The editor, who has loved the cantankerousness of Teufelsdröch for forty years, gladly prints this letter from an indignant disciple.

DEAR ATLANTIC,

In the September Atlantic the author of the Amenities of Book-Collecting slipped from amenities in interrupting his tale of love for 'My Old Lady, London' to express some misinformation about Carlyle.

Our amenitor was treading in Carlyle's footsteps in searching out the Gough Square house: and if he proceeds, he may find other points of agreement. His specific charge is this: Carlyle! who never had a good or kindly word to say of any man or thing.' Carlyle has lain in his grave for forty years. When Johnson had lain in his grave for forty-seven years, Carlyle wrote of him: Johnson does not whine over his existence, but manfully makes the most and best of it. . . . He is animated by the spirit of the true workman, resolute to do his work well; and he does his work well; all his work, that of writing, that of living. ... Loving friends are there! Listeners, even Answerers: the fruit of his long labors lies round him in fair legible writings, of Philosophy, Eloquence, Morality, Philology: some excellent, all worthy and genuine Works: for which too, a deep, earnest murmur of thanks reaches him from all ends of his Fatherland. Nay, there are works of Goodness, of undying Mercy, which even he has possessed the power to do: "What I gave I have; what I spent I had!” How to

hold firm to the last the fragments of old Belief, and with earnest eye still discern some glimpses of a true path, and go forward thereon, "in a world where there is much to be done and little to be known"! This is what Samuel Johnson, by act and word, taught his Nation; what his Nation received and learned of him, more than of any other. . . . If England has escaped the blood-bath of a French Revolution, and may yet, in virtue of this delay and of the experience it has given, work out her deliverance calmly into a new Era, let Samuel Johnson, beyond all contemporary or succeeding men, have the praise of it. . . . Since the time of John Milton, no braver heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel Johnson now bore.'

Better or kindlier words concerning Sam Johnson it will tax the Amenities of Book-Collecting to discover.

But enough. Good and kindly words; great, affectionate thoughts Carlyle had for Scott, for Sterling, for Irving, for Elliott, the Corn-Law

Rhymer, for Allan Cunningham, for Dickens, for Tennyson, for Emerson, and had their sincere and lasting love contemporaries all; and the list might be extended indefinitely. MERRITT STARR.

Into each life some rain must fall. The poems penned in wet weather have not infrequently a certain melancholy appeal.

DEAR ATLANTIC,

I submit herewith an 'Il Penseroso' for that 'L'Allegro' entitled 'Joy' in the October number of your revered publication. Shall we call it

SADNESS

When I am sad
There seems to be

A big Dreadnaught
Inside of me.

It sags, and drags
Down to my feet;
And yet I lose
No chance to eat.

From my sub-con-
Scious mind doth come
(Down in my ep-
I-gas-tri-um)

A 'What care I,
Though there should be
A fleet of woe
Inside of me?

For may I not
Of such a toy
At once disarm,
And so find joy?

Very truly yours,

KATE E. PARKER.

We always did like a pessimist. He has a way of looking the world right in the eye. But the editor's family is too considerable to admit of his accepting the following proposal. DEAR ATLANTIC, —

Am wondering whether you will be interested in a 3000-word article on ‘Must Human Propagation Continue?' In a thorough discussion of the subject I suggest the thought that the numerous troubles in the world will cease, and its great problems be solved, only by a cessation of multiplication, sorrow and death be at an end, and the earth itself be better off without human beings. Very truly yours,

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][graphic]
« AnkstesnisTęsti »