I had gone about a quarter of a mile when I saw two more horseshoes right together in the road. "It seems as if some one is working me," I said. I looked around and could see no one. "And anyway, I accept the bluff," I said to myself, as I picked up the two horseshoes. Then I had two horseshoes in each hand, but I wasn't four times as happy as when I had one.
I had gone about a quarter of a mile when I saw a pile of horseshoes in the road. "I've got 'em, I fear!" I said to myself. But I braced up and walking up to the pile of horseshoes I kicked into them. They were horseshoes all right.
And just then I saw a man coming down the street picking up horseshoes in a bag. I watched him with dazed eyes and swallowed hard as I tried to comprehend the meaning of this strange combination. Just then I saw the man's horse and wagon ahead.
He was a junk gentleman and had lost the tailboard out of his wagon and been strewing horseshoes all along the way. He called to me and said, "Hey, ol' man, dem's my horseshoes!" "I know," said I; "I've been picking them up for you." And the moral is: While it is true that one horseshoe brings you good luck, a load of horseshoes is junk.
In way of personal endowments, Mr. Carnegie has favored two individuals: Booker T. Washington and Luther Burbank. And so far as I know, these are the only men in America who should be endowed. Even the closest search, as well as a careful scrutiny in the mirror, fails to find any one else whom it would be wise or safe to make immune from the struggle.
To make a man secure against the exigencies of life is to kill his ambition and destroy his incentive. To transform a man into a jellyfish, give him a fixed allowance, regardless of what he does. This truth also applies to women. Women will never be free until they are economically free.
The fifteen million dollars which Mr. Carnegie has given for a pension-fund for superannuated college professors is quite another thing from pensioning a man so he will be free to work out his ideal. The only people who have ideals are those in the fight.
But even this beneficent pension-fund for teachers turned out to grass requires the most delicate and skilful handling. Several instances have already arisen where colleges have retired men well able to work, in order that these men might secure the pensions and the college could put in younger men at half-price. There has even been a suspicion that the pensioner "divvied" with the college.
To supply an incentive or temptation for a man in middle life to quit work in order that he may secure a pension is a danger which the donor mildly anticipated, but which he finds it very hard to guard against. What is "middle life"? Ah, it depends upon the man. Some men are young at seventy, and Professor Mommsen at eighty was at the very height of his power. Some teachers want to "retire," others don't. Nature knows nothing of pensions. Let each man be paid for his labor and let him understand that economy of expenditure is the true and only insurance against want in old age.