Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers Part 29

The most desperate man, hara.s.sed by cares of all kinds, would seem blissfully happy in Bresci's eyes, for he has at least full play for his sentiments, for his activities. ----

To punish Ravaillac's attack on the life of the French King, long ago, they tried ingenious devices. They broke him on the wheel.

They tortured him slowly. Finally they poured melted lead into his stomach through his navel. It was a hard death.

But they did not punish Ravaillac as severely as Bresci is to be punished.

The minutes, the hours, the weeks, months and years will drag along.

Idleness, idleness, idleness. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

No human smile or voice to measure time.

Sleep, bread and water; sleep, bread and water.

Gradually madness will come and bring relief.

Be glad that you are active, you who work willingly.

And you young man who rebel against labor and long for the chance to do nothing, study Bresci's case and take up your load gladly.

The decree condemning us to earn our bread in the sweat of our brow was merciful, not stern. For that same power which sentences all to work also causes happiness to be found in work alone.

THE OWNER OF A GOLDEN MOUNTAIN

An old man sits at the end of his life, with money piled up on all sides of him. Years ago he was working hard. All his ability was strained to the utmost pushing back those who strove to pa.s.s him on the road up the golden mountain.

He enjoyed the conflict, he enjoyed the sight of beaten rivals.

His delight was in work, in ACQUISITION. His growing surplus added new zest to his life. He pitied "the poor fool" who wasted time at anything save money-making.

But he is at the top of the heap of money now. He looks about, and none compete with him. A few strugglers--too far away to be heard--strive for a little of his useless acc.u.mulation. Legal sharpers struggle and get a little, and in return keep away those who try to climb up near him.

The interest has gone out of life. Where he used to see compet.i.tors, he now sees only old memories. The old a.s.sociates have gone--it is even too late to help them--and he will soon go, too.

He looks out over the land, and sees, when it is too late, all that he has missed while he thought he was doing the thing most important.

He has made a hundred millions of dollars, but not one human friend.

He can hire almost any man to do anything. But there is not enough money in the world to hire any one to miss him sincerely when he is gone.

Such a man as this--an actual individual, with wealth far exceeding one hundred millions--has insured his life for half a million. To those who asked "why" he replied: "I want some insurance company to be sorry when I die. No one else will be sorry." Possibly he thought he was joking. But there was truth in what he said.

The man who piles up money builds a solid wall that shuts out the world from him. Sycophants climb over the wall--but their flattery and fawning grow tiresome. Old age and cessation of strong feeling cause the mind to see clearly--and hypocrisy no longer deceives in the old, pleasant way.

The most depressing fact in the old man's life is the hopelessness of trying to change. His mind has worked so long in one direction that it can no longer work in any other. He would like, perhaps, to begin now and live as others live, but he cannot do it.

There are men whose great wealth is earned WITH PART OF THEIR ABILITY, leaving them force and strength for other things. Such a man was Peter Cooper.

But the man most frequently seen in America is the man who acc.u.mulates money for money's sake. His is a sad heart when he looks over the past and ahead into the short future.

If he has children, he has hardly known them--and HIS MONEY has separated them from each other.

When his son was a little child the rich man made himself think that he was piling up the money for that boy. What became of that boy?

Ask the Keeley Cure, the public gambling houses, Monte Carlo, the divorce court--and the other "resources" of the sons of the very rich.

Thousands envy him, and he knows it. But there is little in being envied when old age makes a lonely life unbearable, and when the next striking event in his career will be a funeral.

There are hundreds of thousands of men with their thoughts fixed absolutely on money making. They hate what threatens money.

They love those who sympathize with money. They live, work, vote, talk, marry and cheat their friends for money.

If they fail--as most of them do--they die unhappy. If they succeed, money cheats THEM, and for all their devotion gives them nothing.

"For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

The man wastes his soul who devotes its forces only to acc.u.mulating wealth.

THE HUMAN WEEDS IN PRISON

How shall we approach a prison to see it fairly and to study it intelligently?

Let us imagine ourselves visitors from a world outside of this.

Far off in infinite s.p.a.ce there is a small whirling planet--our earth.

Little creatures move about this planet, chained to it by the force of gravity. But they MOVE as they choose, and they call themselves FREE.

There are millions of free square miles, and hundreds of millions of free human beings.

But there just below us is the prison at Auburn. There the human beings are not free. There suffer those who for any reason have violated the established rules of the little globe that supports them.

They have not even the freedom of the little patch of soil fenced in for them. They cannot walk, speak, sit down, lie down, or stand up as they please.

They have broken some of the rules established for the protection of all. They have misused their freedom, and in punishment their freedom is taken away from them.

They live in small cells, in a very big prison.

Gray stone, iron bars, striped suits, enforced silence, enforced work, enforced regularity of life--all these punish most keenly those whose first crime was lack of self-control and lack of regularity. ----

In every prison and in every prisoner there are lessons for each of us. You will not waste time to-day if you walk through this great Auburn prison and think of the men there think why they came there, think how they could have been saved, think what will gradually empty prisons and make them unnecessary.

A man with one arm opens the first iron gate--his mutilated body foreshadows the mutilated minds and souls within.

Before the door of the prison there are bright flowers--the name of the prison itself stands out in brightly colored blossoms to prove the gardener's ability and strange sense of the appropriate. Many of the causes that bring men there are written out in just such bright colors--when first seen--and many a prisoner must have thought of that as he pa.s.sed through the iron door.