The Making of a Man

by James W. Lee

From the beginning nature and human effort have wrought together for universal good will and social organization. Lapses have been frequent and the net gain of fraternity small, but from age to age, without cessation and without intermission, in volume and sweep, it has been increasing.

VIII.

Because of the limited knowledge men had of the uses of power in the past, the growth of universal social organization has been slow. Methods of intercommunication between nations wide apart were meager, hence the people in one division of the globe could know but little of the people who lived in another. Any part of the earth not understood was counted as desert, and any people not known were considered barbarian. But with the new uses and applications of power, all this is changed. The world now lies open to all. The antipodes are neighbors. By hitching the sun’s heat to the flying train, and the canvas to the favoring winds, and the lightning to human thought, all races on the globe stand face to face. The world is being encompassed, and no natural obstacles are now permitted to stand in the way of railway lines, or of submarine cables. All mountain chains are being tunneled, all chasms spanned, all oceans traversed, and all straits bridged. The continents of the earth are now connected by 125,000 miles of submarine electric cable, and countries are crossed by thousands of miles of railroad lines. With an abiding and irrepressible, even if unconscious sense, that on the social side of himself he is related to the whole human race, man has well-nigh subdued the earth, and removed the obstacles that opposed the realization of his larger nature. Already great enterprises are being contemplated, which look to the speedy removal of whatever remaining obstacles there are to world-wide companionship among men. Some of the great enterprises already projected which are to help toward universal brotherhood, have been noted by Mr. Charles Hallock. A railway is to be built from Joppa to Jerusalem in Palestine, and a bridge across the Straits of Dover near Folkestone.

The Mombasa and Nyanza Railway in Africa is to connect the Nile with the interior lakes and with the coast. A railway is to be constructed across Siberia, from St. Petersburg to Behring Strait. Upon this side a railway is to be built across Alaska to Behring Strait, while Behring Strait is to be bridged or ferried. A canal is to be cut across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece, to connect the Ægean Sea with the Gulf of Corinth. There is to be a ship canal around Niagara Falls, and a railroad from Quebec to Belle Isle in Labrador, with connecting ocean steamship lines to Medford in Wales. There is to be an ocean cable from Clew Bay, Ireland, to Greeny Island, Strait of Belle Isle, 1900 miles long. And a railroad from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Hudson Bay, and steamship line thence to Liverpool.

A railway is contemplated from Winnipeg to the Saskatchewan River, across the Northwest Territory. A tunnel is to be cut under the Hudson River at New York, and a tunnel under the St. Clair River, between Sarnia and Port Huron, Mich. That the Panama and Nicaragua canals have been projected and partially completed is known the world over. A tunnel is to be made through the Atlas Mountains in Russia, and the great Northern Railroad Company is to make one through the Rocky Mountains in Montana, and another is to be cut through the Sierras from Truckee River, Nevada, into California. There is to be a canal from Knoxville, Tenn., through Alabama to the Gulf of Mexico, and one from Chicago to the Mississippi River, which is to cost $25,000,000. A ship railway 60 miles long is to be completed from Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario, connecting the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, costing $12,000,000. A canal is contemplated from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico, and also a ship railway around the Dalles of the Columbia River. There is to be a ship canal across New Jersey to the Atlantic Ocean, 60 miles long, and a ship railway to connect the Gulf of St Lawrence with the Bay of Fundy, 12 miles long, to cost $12,000,000. There are to be steam lines from Tampa, Fla., to all parts of the West Indies, a longitudinal railway through the axis of North and South America, from Chicago to the Argentine Republic; steam lines from Vancouver in British Columbia, to Japan and Australia, and steam lines from New York to the Carribbees and the Windward Islands. There are to be steam lines from Scotland to the North Cape and the Antarctic Ocean; stated voyages between Sitka, Alaska, and Point Barrow in the Arctic Ocean, and steamboat navigation of all the great lakes and rivers of Siberia, British America, and Central Africa. Ports of entry are to be established in all countries to furnish terminal facilities for these far reaching lines of transportation.

We are to have federation among the nations, as we now have it among the States of the American Union. The social cohesion, once national, is to be international. All are to think for each, and each is to think for all. All are to work for each, and each is to work for all. All are to plan for the good of each, and each is to plan for the good of all. Thus the inequalities of life are to be reduced, and the littleness of life is to be redressed.

As all the power in the vine and its branches to make grapes is expended in the rounding and sweetening of each grape, so all the power in the social whole to make men will be reproduced in each man. All the justice in the race will regulate each man’s will, all the thought in the race will replenish each man’s mind, and all the love in the race will feed each man’s heart. Nothing less than this social whole, in which are bound together in one organic body the lives, the welfare, and the hopes of all, is the correlate of the social nature of man. Toward such a world-wide organism, each living in the whole and the whole living in each, his social nature reaches out and is never at home until it is found. Such universal brotherhood would be impossible without power in all its manifold forms. This serves the social body as bread serves the individual body. Power, as the servant of the social body, waits on each man through his relations with the social whole. A city builds gas works and finds it possible to let down the price in proportion to the number of those who use it. A railroad company can lower the rate on passengers and freight in proportion to the number of men who travel and the volume of freight transported. The price of a newspaper goes up or down as the number of subscribers increases or diminishes. Mr. Edison expects to get electricity from the disturbed conditions of the air, without the use of fuel. This will make the conditions of life easier by one-half; and then, as the number of people increases who avail themselves of the uses of power, the conditions of living will still be easier. Not only will the unity which comes through social organization lower the rate of insurance and the price of the necessities of life, but this increased force of the social whole will tend to the moral health of the people in the same degree. Health in one part of the body will be brought to bear to correct disease in another part. The conscience of the whole will be turned into the degraded sections of our great cities, and the sympathy and love of all will be called out to reclaim them. Starvation in one part of the globe will be met by the over-supply of bread in another. Oppression and tyranny in one nation will be opposed by the sense of fairness and overcome by the love of freedom in all the rest. As climatic conditions are made friendly to life by the circulation of oceanic and atmospheric currents, so moral health will be preserved by the circulation of the currents of conscience and justice.

IX.

The emphasis is to be kept on the social rather than the individual side of human nature; not that personality may be lost, but that it may be gained.