I took him to a quiet little place, where we might have a table to ourselves. During the meal I learned more about him. His name was James Shaw, and he was alone in the world. He talked well-used good English. I had always felt that there must be something of intelligence back of his good clean teeth. And he, too, was an old printer. Probably that was why he had drifted naturally to the selling of newspapers. It is hard for a printer to keep away from the smell of printer’s ink.
Well, the upshot of it was that I hired Jimmy Shaw, and took him back with me to New Jersey. And Jimmy has made good. After he was barbered and had put on a new suit of clothes, and had his first lessons in Finding Youth, he was as spry and dudish as anything on Broadway.
Then, the final Big Adventure was brought about by my articles in our weekly newspaper.
I had been running a series of articles on my Finding-Youth revelations. Some of them were copied in other newspapers. Ben Hutchins, out in California, read them in our own paper, which we sent him each week. Afterwards, his daughter told me that he showed them to the different guests in the hotel where they were stopping.
Then I wrote an article on the old-age problem. I headed it, “Why the Dump-Heap?” Among other things, I said that one of the biggest social wastes was the waste of the latter years of the lives of men and women. Instead of being a waste product at eighty, a man should be a Life masterpiece-still creative. But we cling-theoretically, at least-to the savage belief that man possesses no other creative power than the sex-function; and that, after they have passed the age of race-propagation, men and women are of no further social use. Savages, not knowing what else to do with their people of years, kill them. We let them stagnate.
By this time we should have learned that Life here, and always, is a thing creative. We are incidentally parents. We are creators always. For if God made us in His own image, then He made us all creators. As creators, we grow. And growth is the law of life. Stagnation is decay and death. We must have new educational methods. We must have new ideals-a new heaven. And this new heaven will be a place filled with creators, instead of with stagnant resters.
Then I went on to suggest that society might organize Youthland colonies, instead of relegating each year so many thousands of men and women to the fate of dependence and stagnation. These colonies might be made centres of big usefulness, of broad education and creative growth.
I outlined my scheme of a Youthland colony. It should be a place of individual homes, with certain coöperative community buildings-an auditorium and recreation centre, a hotel and laundry, and other things, to make living easier and cheaper. The members of the colony themselves would support all these institutions. For there would be different light industries for the ones who wished to work and earn their own living.
There would be lectures, music, dancing, and classes in science, sociology, politics, psychology, literature, languages, and the arts. Everyone would be given the chance and encouraged to take up any kind of creative work in which he might feel himself capable of qualifying.
Well, Ben Hutchins read this article, and it struck instant fire in him. He didn’t even wait to write. Instead he telegraphed:-