Newspaper Page Text
Keep dropping dimes in
the little savings bank and
waich a soldier pop out!
“It Can’t Be Done” Is a Traitor Cry
By HERBERT KAUFMAN -
Give fewer opinions and more judgment. We know you for a half-cockedman by your cock-sure talk.
You decide too soon to be a sound thinker. The dig-and-test quality isn’t in you. There are no
prospectors’ picks or chemists’ retorts in your arbitrary brain.
Your pet word is ““impossible’’ and ‘it can’t be done,’”’ your tongue’s trademark.
Before opportunity can explain her case you reject the proposition. Your mind holds prejudices,
not trials. Progress is black and blue from bouts with such bigotry. *
Half the clocks on earth are behind schedule because you drag at their hands.
Every radical idea and yeasting ideal which since succeeded, had first to halt at your barriers and
pay outrageous toll to prevailing stupidity.
Your grandsires ate Gallileo’s heart; they were for a long while advisors at the Court of Ferdinand
and Isabella and a branch of the family convinced even Napoleorg that Robert Fulton was an addle-pate.
What you can’t conceive, you won’t credit. When you behold a new light you rush to find a
hiding bushel. ‘
God alone knows how much originality has withered under your sneers—how much enthusiasm
was drenched by your derision. 7
But you didn’t down them all. A few inspired notions fought you to a standstill.
Century by century your repentant laughs come home to roost. Among other things, you declared
against the practicability of arbalest and gun powder, movable types and water wheels, balloon and
power loom, dynamo and telegraph, air brake and incandescent lamp, talking machine and steam
heat, sky scrapers and catalogue merchandising, subways and submarines, aeroplanes and automobiles,
elevators and wireless, safety razors and penny journalism, Burbanking and store teeth, cotton seed
oil and tin stoppers, the discovery of America and motion pictures, the McAdoo tunnels and
vulcanized rubber. ‘ |
- Now in the name of all our hopes and dreams, try believing that “it might be possible.” |
Unique contraptions, efficient methods, short cuts, simpler machines, bigger guns and more rapid
ones, cheaper containers, fresh food-and-fuel sources, economies of any kind are so priceless to a
universe eating and beating itself off the map, that we owe investigation and encouragement to the
most fantastic of proposals. ‘ .
Thinking it couldn’t be done, almost delivered incredulous civilization to Hun control; the invincible
“Tank” and the mercies of nikalgin were all but lost to us through superficial, assinine, inexcusable
estimation.
Optimism and patriotism are one today—“impossible” is a traitor cry.
- 20\
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\ -3 R Tes e
e Victory
‘NLY an-honest past stays
dead. %
OTime never wipes the page
in red,
But day by day re-posts each
debt
You sneaks and liars have not
met.
Turn back and pay the mounting
. score—
Whate'er the sum, it will be
more
When Justice hammers at your
door.
Beggar or banker or great or
mean:
‘Every trick that you played was
‘ seen,
!Every ‘trust you betrayed—and
friend—
r very wrong that you didn’t
. mend,
its for accounting beyond the
bend.
° .
“Easy Money”---With a String to It!
I came into money—a fixed income. Having no call to exert him-
H self, his mind settled into a few favorite ruts. Initiative, for lack
of an urge, died in sleep.
He pottered here and there, at this and that, but unable to touch
his principle, could make no considerable investments. With free capital
he might haye bought into a husiness but as an employee, he found the
exactions of service too irritating. Comparative independence made an
indolent, impertinent clerk and tne small wage befitting his utility, wasn’t
worth the being bossed.
- Before long he abandened the pretense of activity, moved to a club,
dawdled until middle age and married.
His wife’s social pride would not permit him to accept such jobs as in
experience could expect.
The constantly rising cost of living imposed continual refrenchments,
forced them to stint table and household, to drive hard bargains with every
penny. -
Then, when the boy was about to enter college, and the eldest daughter
in her first year at finishing school, a sudden shift in trade centres depre
ciated the earning power of the property which was their sole source of
reventie. ‘ A
~ They've just moved into a shabby little flat on an off street—the son is
hunting a sitnation and the two girls are respectivelv i a hroker’s office
and back of a glove-counter.
They’ll probably stand a_chance.
Copyright, 1918, by Herbert Kaufman. Great Britain and All Other Rights Reserved.
| A Big Job
PRIVATE secretary is the eye and ear
A of his chief. He largely determines what
individuals and communications shall have
an audience. Busy executives can’t worry
with trifles or waste time on “small potatoes.” Their
energy is all for vital considerations—lieutenants are
expected to deal with lesser issues.
An opinionated or arrogant proxy can create very
embarrassing situations and mislead his principal to
lamentable ends. y
At this erisis the country wishes to see particu
larly discreet and “expert men aiding all officials
charged with th€ conduct of the war. Washington
must contain the ripest experience, the best intelli
gence in the United States. ‘
We may not stand on petty dignities and demand
the recognition of peace values until the Krupps are
silenced.
Corporation or University Presidents are not too
august to play right hand for a Cabinet minister
through this perilous emergency. There’s work to do
in the ante room_that quite deserves their eminence.
Confidence in the Administration might be much
strengthened did we know that adjutants nearer the
measure of department heads, were exercising their
seasoned diserimination at posts which suddenly call
for immeasurably greater ability.
The “big guns” at the Capitol would do well to
find mouthpieces of corresponding calibre.
O’ Adam an’ Eve
ZHEN de Lawd made Adam, he made him of clay;
W Stuck him by de roadside fo’ to dry all day,
Stuck him by de roadside fo’ de folks to see,
"Til he turned hisses into a man like you or me.
Den Adam got lonely an’ he say, “dis ain’t no life;
A hangin’ roun’ a garden patch widout no wife.
Dis garden might be Paradise but don’ seem so to me,
So de Lawd he cut ol’ Adam’s rib beneaf Temptation
Tree. .
Dende Lawd got busy with his knife an’ carve dat bone,
In de image of a woman, "twas de fust one ever known.
An’ de image of dat woman he done cut from Adam’s
side;
He done call her Eve and fotch her to de church to be
his bride.
Miss Eve made trouble—dat’s how trouble come to
- start; !
A pizen snake he spoke to her and put sin in her heart.
De pizen snake he pinted to some apples on de tree,
An’ he says to Missus Adam, “Hep yousef, dis fruit is
free.” :
Den de Lawd git angry and he say, “Good day;
“You needn’t stop to visit me when roun’ dis way.
You needn’t stop to visit me cause I won't be to home;
You et de fryit of Paradise, so jes pack up and roam.
When de Lawd made Adam, he made him of clay;
Settled him in Paradise, de garden fair to stay,
Settled him in Paradise where wimmins never were;
An’ dat’s where we’d be Yivin’ now if hadn’t been for
ey
Some Infant Industries
ANTA CLAUS, be it noted, has lost his accent.
S Those of us who met him last month were
pleasantly surprised at his decided Yankee
twang. We're at last making our own toys
and very nice ones they are, considering the dispatch
with which we had to turn the trick. The very tree
ornaments were of local manufacture. No gay colors
were missing—which reminds us that the dye famine
has likewise been met by domestie plants.
The closing of the North Sea was an eye opener. We
snooped about and found potash where it could have been dis
covered long ago. We’ve never been so independent of out
siders.
As the struggle continues, further shortages in foreign
goods will stimulate the production of all sorts of commodities
which we previously imported. -
Uncle Sam will soon be selling macaroni broadecast; he is
packing sardines and his smokehouses are turning eut a re
markable imitation of Westphalian ham. There is no dearth
of Swiss and Camembert cheeses, despite the fact that none
are coming across. !
The Republic is nursing a lusty set of infant-industries,
the profits of which will go far toward underwriting the ex
pense of the war. What part did you play in establishing
them? Or did opportunity, as usual, catch you napping?
By reducing waste piles
and waist lines we will
eventually win thic war.