The Call of the Twentieth Century, an Address to Young Men

by David Starr Jordan

There is no limit to the demands of engineering. A million waterfalls dash down the slopes of the Sierras. The patient sun has hauled the water up from the sea and spread it in snow over the mountains. The same sun will melt the snow, and as the water falls back to the sea it will yield again the force it cost to bring it to its heights. Thus sunshine and falling water can be transmuted into power. This power already lights the cities of California, and some day it may be changed into the heat which moves a thousand factories. All these are the problems of the Electrical Engineer. Equally rich are the opportunities in other forms of engineering. There is no need to be in haste, perhaps, but the Twentieth Century is eager in its quest for gold. The mother lode runs along the foothills from Bering Straits to Cape Horn. From end to end of the continent the Twentieth Century will bring this gold to light, and carry it all away. The Mining Engineer who knows the mountains best finds his fortune ready to his hand. Civil Engineers, Steam Engineers, Naval Engineers, whoever knows how to manage things or men, even Social Engineers, Labor Engineers, all find an eager welcome. There are never too many of those who know how; but the day of the rule of thumb has long since past. The Engineer of to-day must create, not imitate. And to him who can create, this last century we call the Twentieth is yet part of the first day of Creation.

In commerce the field is always open for young men. The world's trade is barely yet begun. We hear people whining over the spread of the commercial spirit, but what they mean is not the spirit of commerce. It is persistence of provincial selfishness, a spirit which has been with us since the fall of Adam, and which the centuries of whitening sails has as yet not eradicated. The spirit of fair commerce is a noble spirit. Through commerce the world is unified. Through commerce grows tolerance, and through tolerance, peace and solidarity. Commerce is world-wide barter, each nation giving what it can best produce for what is best among others. Freedom breeds commerce as commerce demands freedom. Only free men can buy and sell; for without selling no man nor nation has means to buy. When China is a nation, her people will be no longer a "yellow peril." It is poverty, slavery, misery, which makes men dangerous. In the words of "Joss Chinchingoss," the Kipling of Singapore, we have only to give the Chinaman

"The chance at home that he makes for himself elsewhere,
And the star of the Jelly-fish nation mid others shall shine as fair."

Since the day, twenty-three years ago, on which I first passed through the Golden Gate of California, I have seen the steady increase of the shipping which enters that channel. There are ten vessels to-day passing in and out to one in 1880. Another twenty-five years will see a hundred times as many. We have discovered the Orient, and even more, the Orient has discovered us. We may not rule it by force of arms; for that counts nothing in trade or civilization. Commerce follows the flag only when the flag flies on merchant ships. It has no interest in following the flag to see a fight. Commerce follows fair play and mutual service. Through the centuries of war men have only played at commerce. The Twentieth Century will take it seriously, and it will call for men to do its work. It will call more loudly than war has ever done, but it will ask its men not to die bravely, but to live wisely, and above all truthfully to watch their accounts.

The Twentieth Century will find room for pure science as well as for applied science and ingenious invention. Each Helmholtz of the future will give rise to a thousand Edisons. Exact knowledge must precede any form of applications. The reward of pure science will be, in the future as in the past, of its own kind, not fame nor money, but the joy of finding truth. To this joy no favor of fortune can add. The student of nature in all the ages has taken the vow of poverty. To him money, his own or others, means only the power to do more or better work.

The Twentieth Century will have its share in literature and art. Most of the books it will print will not be literature, for idle books are written for idle people, and many idle people are left over from less insistent times. The books sold by the hundred thousands to men and women not trained to make time count, will be forgotten before the century is half over. The books it saves will be books of its own kind, plain, straightforward, clear-cut, marked by that "fanaticism for veracity" which means everything else that is good in the intellectual and moral development of man. The literature of form is giving way already to the literature of power. We care less and less for the surprises and scintillations of clever fellows; we care more and more for the real thoughts of real men. We find that the deepest thoughts can be expressed in the simplest language. "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points" in literature as well as in mechanics. "In simplicity is strength," as Watt said of machinery, and it is true in art as well as in mechanics.

In medicine, the field of action is growing infinitely broader, now that its training is securely based on science, and the divining rod no longer stands first among its implements of precision. Not long ago, it is said, a young medical student in New York committed suicide, leaving behind this touching sentence: "I die because there is room for no more doctors." And this just now, when for the first time it is worth while to be a doctor. Room for no more doctors, no doubt, of the kind to which he belonged—men who know nothing and care nothing for science and its methods, who choose the medical school which will turn them loose most quickly and cheaply, who have no feeling for their patients, and whose prescriptions are given with no more conscience than goes into the fabrication of an electric belt or the compounding of a patent medicine. Room for no more doctors whose highest conception is to look wise, take his chances, and pocket the fee. Room for no more doctors just now, when the knowledge of human anatomy and physiology has shown the way to a thousand uses of preventive surgery. Room for no more doctors, when the knowledge of the microbes and their germs has given the hope of successful warfare against all contagious diseases; room for no more doctors, when antiseptics and anaesthetics have proved their value in a thousand pain-saving ways. Room for no more doctors now, when the doctor must be an honest man, with a sound knowledge of the human body and a mastery of the methods of the sciences on which this knowledge depends. Room for no more doctors of the incompetent class, because the wiser times demand a better service.

What is true in medicine applies also to the profession of law. The pettifogger must give place to the jurist. The law is not a device for getting around the statutes. It is the science and art of equity. The lawyers of the future will not be mere pleaders before juries. They will save their clients from need of judge or jury. In every civilized nation the lawyers must be the law-givers. The sword has given place to the green bag. The demands of the Twentieth Century will be that the statutes coincide with equity. This condition educated lawyers can bring about. To know equity is to be its defender.

In politics the demand for serious service must grow. As we have to do with wise and clean men, statesmen, instead of vote-manipulators, we shall feel more and more the need for them. We shall demand not only men who can lead in action, but men who can prevent unwise action. Often the policy which seems most attractive to the majority is full of danger for the future. We need men who can face popular opinion, and, if need be, to face it down. The best citizen is one not afraid to cast his vote away by voting with the minority.

As we look at it in the rough, the political outlook of democracy often seems discouraging. A great, rich, busy nation cannot stop to see who grabs its pennies. We are plundered by the rich, we are robbed by the poor, and trusts and unions play the tyrant over both. But all these evils are temporary. The men that have solved greater problems in the past will not be balked by these. Whatever is won for the cause of equity and decency is never lost again. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and in this Twentieth Century there are always plenty who are awake. One by one political reforms take their place on our statute books, and each one comes to stay.