TO GEORGE W. LANE
Washington, September 11, 1919
DEAR GEORGE,—You do not know how much of sympathy I send out to you and how many words of prayer I send up for you. You need them all, I expect. … What a long siege you have had!
I suppose you will not be able to hear the President speak when he is there. You will miss much. He is not impassioned nor a great orator, such as Chatham or Fox, or Webster or Dolliver, or even Bryan—but he has a keen, quick, cutting mind, the mind of a really great critic, and his manner is that of the gentleman scholar. He is first among all men to-day, which is much for America.
My Nancy has been having a splendid time, even if she only saw your ranch for a week—but she is the gayest thing alive—God grant she may continue so always. …
For the first time in twenty-five years we are living in an apartment, large and in a nice place, but somehow my sense of the fitness of things will not let me call the place "home"—altho' it is the most comfortable habitation I have ever lived in, elevator, whole floor to ourselves. … and they let me keep my dog. I wouldn't have come if they hadn't. We turned down a fine place with a more expansive view because Jack was not wanted. But surely in these days of doubt and disloyalty one must have some rock to cling to, why not a trusting-eyed dog? … But all this does not recompense me for the absence of a "home"—which is a house, anywhere. Yet we may have to do our own work. … The cooks are all too proud to work—I wish you would tell me just how this economic problem should be settled. How much do you believe in socialism or socialization? … Do you think there can be a partnership in business? I am inclined to think this can be worked out, along lines of cooperative ownership, but not until an enterprise is well standardized.
I expect bad times soon with labor. We are only postponing the evil day. The President seems less radical than he was. He is sobered by conditions, I suspect. The negro is a danger that you do not have. Turn him loose and he is a wild man. Every Southerner fears him.
… I am trying hard to believe something that might be called the shadow of a religion—a God that has a good purpose, and another life in which there is a chance for further growth, if not for glory. But when I bump up against a series of afflictions such as you have been subjected to, I fall back upon Fred's philosophy of a purposeless or else a cruel God. … I simply have a sinking of the heart, a goneness, a hopelessness—not even the pleasure of a resignation. Old Sid's cold mind has worked itself through to a decision that there is no purpose and no future, and finds solace in the ultimate; having reached the cellar he finds the satisfaction of rest. I can't get there for my buoyancy, the hold- over of early teachings or perhaps my naturally sanguine nature will not permit me to hit bottom, but forever I must be floating, floating—nowhere. Happy the man who strikes the certainty of a rock-bottom hell, rather than one who is kept floating midway— that is a purgatory worse than hell. I don't seem to have any capacity for anger, as against God or man, for anything that befalls me, but I get morbid over the injustices done to others. Now I shall stop philosophizing on this matter for it is three in the morning, and too hot to sleep, and such a time is made for wickedness and not for righteousness.
I am sorry you will not see the President. He is worth hearing, better than reading, and he always talks well. He can not pass his treaty without some kind of reservations and he should have seen this a month ago. The Republicans will not struggle to pass it in his absence and think that they have done a smart thing, but in the end Wilson and not Lodge would win by such a trick. The one greatest of vices is smart-aleckism. Sometime I shall write an essay on that subject. The burglar and the confidence operator and the profiteer and the profligate and the defaulting bank cashier are all victims of that disease—smart-aleckism. They will do a trick, to prove how clever they are. I believe that is the way ninety per cent of the boys and girls go wrong, and instead of teaching them the Bible, why not try reducing the size of their conceit and their disposition to boast. I just wonder how far wrong I am on this?
… Don't let the family worry you. Call for the police if they don't let you have your own way. … What a plague of women! But how did monks manage to live anyhow? Maybe they chose a hard death—perhaps that was the secret of the whole monkery game! Women let us down into the grave with much unction to our ego, I mean sweet oil of adoration … poured out upon the way down to Avernus. … Don't feel discouraged because you lie there. I feel much more discontented than you do, right here at the heart of the world. … Love to Maude and Frances, and mention me with proper respect and dignity to Miss Nancy Lane.
F. K.
TO VAN H. MANNING DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF MINES
Washington, September 24, 1919
MY DEAR MR. MANNING,—I have been intending for several days to write you a letter regarding the Petroleum Institute, but the opportunity has been denied me. Perhaps you will be good enough to say to the gentlemen, whom I understand you are to meet tomorrow, that I regard their work, if taken hold of whole-heartedly, as of the greatest national importance. It is quite manifest now that private enterprise must stand in the forefront in the development of this industry, and that what the government can do will be supplemental and suggestive. It is not an exaggeration to say that millions of dollars must be spent in experiment before we know the many services to which a barrel of oil can be put. There is almost an indefinite opportunity for research work along this line.
Petroleum is a challenge to the chemists of the world. And now the world is dependent upon it, as it is upon nothing else excepting coal and iron, and the foodstuffs and textiles. It has jumped to this place of eminence within twenty years, and the world is concerned in knowing how large a supply there is and how every drop of it can best be used. Practically, I think you should urge that there be cooperative effort to protect against waste. The oil men themselves should see the value of this and spend their money freely to keep their wells from being flooded, to keep their pipe lines from leaking, and to save their gas.
We are behind the rest of the world in the use of our oil for fuel purposes. We are spendthrifts in this as in other of our national resources. We can get three times as much energy as we do out of our oil through the use of the Diesel engine, yet we are doing little to promote development of a satisfactory type of stationary Diesel, or marine design. Instead of seeing how many hundred millions of barrels of oil we can produce and use, our effort should be to see how few millions of barrels will satisfy our needs. I say this although I am not a pessimist as to the available supply, which I believe has been underestimated rather than overestimated. I am satisfied that the man who has a barrel of oil has something which, if he can save, is better than a government bond. Throughout the Nation we must make a drive to increase production—that is the slogan of this time—but that does not mean that we should make a drive to exhaust resources which God alone can duplicate.
Then too, I think that Congress can be largely helped by the sane presentation of wise policies touching this industry. I have the belief that whatever the body of oil men would agree upon would be something that would make for the best use of petroleum, and for the protection over a long period of this fundamental resource in our industry. Congress has difficulty often in getting the large view of practical men who speak without personal interest, and such an Institute could speak not for the individual but for the industry and show how it may best be developed in the interest of the country.
To do these things, and to do them adequately, will require the men in the industry to take the attitude of statesmen and not of selfish exploiters. It means they must tax themselves liberally, generously. It means that they must think of themselves as trustees for a Public as wide as the world.
Please give my regards to the members of the Institute. Cordially yours,