I believe that individual merit and worth are the only things worth while. The workman who puts his best efforts into his labor, and takes a personal pride in making his productions as nearly perfect as possible, will be recognized, and his individual worth to his employer will raise him above the “common level.” All this rot about a “ruling oligarchy” “grinding down the poorer class” is dangerous. The man who has no ambition above ditch digging, and who endeavors to throw out as little dirt in a day as he possibly can, will always be one of “the submerged.” It lies with each one—outside of unavoidable physical or mental infirmities—whether he shall rise or sink.
Again I must congratulate you on the stand you are taking in The Unpopular Review. I “take” and read twenty to twenty-five magazines and for over forty years have been trying to educate myself to a right way of thinking, and the result is I believe as above briefly outlined.
Especially good is The Greeks on Religion and Morals, also The Soul of Capitalism, Trust-Busting as a National Pastime, and Our Government Subvention to Literature.
[pg 209]Possibly some of you are disappointed at not finding this number as full as the daily papers of wisdom on War and the Mexican situation. In one sense we are disappointed ourselves: for we had made arrangements for at least one article of that general nature from one of our best qualified contributors; but when it came time to write it (speaking by the calendar), he showed the excellence of his qualifications by saying that, considering the situation and the function of this Review, it was not time—that the situation had not yet become mature enough or broad enough for any general conclusions—for any treatment beyond that already well given by the newspapers and other organs of frequent publication, and that they were giving all the details called for. We will wait, then, and try to philosophize when the time comes.
We find, however, that with little deliberate intention on our part, this number has turned out “seasonable” in another sense, and hope you will find it so. Witness the articles on Chautauqua, and Railway Junctions, and Tips (entitled A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism) and several others.
Philosophy in Fly Time
In the old days, before the destruction of the white pines removed the chief source of American inventiveness—the universal habit of whittling—every boy had a jackknife, and also had boxes, sometimes of wood, sometimes of writing paper, in which he kept flies. Now he has neither flies nor jackknife.
Then, when he wanted a fly, nine times out of ten he could catch one with a sweep of the hand. That was before the fly was charged with an amount of bad deeds, if they really were as bad as represented, which would have destroyed the human race long before the plagues of Egypt; or if not before the fly plague, would have caused that plague to leave no Egyptians alive to enjoy the later ones. With these new opinions of the fly, began a crusade against him; and now the boys can’t have any more fun with [pg 210]him—that is, only good boys can—the kind that catch him with illusive traps, for a cent a hundred. The other kind of boys may occasionally be sports enough to hunt him with the swatter; but it’s pretty poor hunting: for the game is so shy that generally before you get within reach of him, he is off: so swatting him is difficult, while catching him by hand, as we boys used to, is virtually impossible.
Now for some questions profound enough to befit our pages. (I) Have only a select group of very alert and quick flies survived? or (II) Have the flies told each other that that big clumsy brute with only two legs to walk on, and two aborted ones which do all sorts of foolish things—the brute with only one lens to an eye (though he sometimes puts a glass one over it) and a pitifully aborted proboscis—the brute that has no wings, and can’t get ahead more than about once his own length in a second—that this clumsy brute had at last got so jealous of the six legs, hundred-lensed eyes, proboscis, wings and speed of the fly, that he had started a new crusade against him, and must be specially avoided?