Arthur Brisbane}
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EDITORIALS from the HEARST NEWSPAPERS {Arthur Brisbane} CONTENTS Why Are All Men Gamblers? No Man Understands Iron We Long for Immortal Imperfection--We Can't Have It. Three Water-Drops Converse Did We Once Live on the Moon? William Henry Channing's Symphony The Existence of God--Parable of the Blind Kittens Have the Animals Souls? Jesus' Attitude Toward Children Study of the Character of God The Fascinating Problem of Immortality Discontent the Motive Power of Progress The Automobile Will Make Us More Human Let Us Be Thankful The Harm That Is Done by Our Friends Shall We Tame and Chain the Invisible Microbe As We Now Chain Niagara? The Elephant That Will Not Move Has Better Excuses Than We Have for Folly Displayed Let Us Be Thankful What Will 999 Years Mean to the Human Race? The Azores--A Small Lost World in a Universe of Water No Napoleonic Chess Player on an Air Cushion A Girl's Face in the Gaslight The "Criminal" Class The Wonderful Magnet Who Is Independent? Nobody When We Begin Using Land Under the Oceans Where Your Body Came From How Marriage Began Man's Willingness to Work The Human Brain Beats the Coal Mines How the Other Planets Will Talk to Us Shall We Do Without Sleep Some Day? The Three Best Things in the World The Value of Solitude There Should Be a Monument to Time A Mother's Work and Her Hopes Your Work Is Your Brain's Gymnasium The Steeple, Moving Like the Hand of a Clock Cultivate Thought-Teach Your Brain to Work Early The Wind Does Not Rule Your Destiny One of the Many Corpses in the Johnstown Mine "Limiting the Amount of a Day's Work" Catching a Red-Hot Bolt The Trusts and the Union--How Do They Differ? France Has Learned Her Lesson Union Men as Slave Owners Again the Limited Day's Work To the Merchants What About the Chinese, Kind Sir? 150 against 150,000--We Favor the 150,000 To-day's World-Struggle White-Rabbit Millionaires and Other Things No Happiness Save in Mental and Physical Activity The Owner of a Golden Mountain The Human Weeds in Prison Crime Is Dying Out The Value of Poverty to the World 600 Teachers Now, 600,000 Good Americans in the Future Education--The First Duty of Government Poverty Is the Father of Vice, Crime and Failure The Importance of Education Proved in Lincoln's Case Knowledge Is Growth A Whiskey Bottle Those Who Laugh at a Drunken Man Law Cannot Stop Drunkenness--Education Can The Drunkard's Side of It Drink a Slow Poison To Those Who Drink Hard--You Have Slipped the Belt Try Whiskey on Your Friend's Eyeball What Are the Ten Best Books? The Marvelous Balance of the Universe--A Lesson in the Texas Flood The Earth Is Only a Front Yard Last Week's Baby Will Surely Talk Some Day The Good That Is Done by the Trusts Trusts and the Senate The Promising Toad's Head Trusts Will Drive Labor Unions Into Politics The Trusts Are National School Teachers A Woman to Be Pitied When Will Woman's Mental Life Begin? The Cow That Kicks Her Weaned Calf Is All Heart Respectable Women Who Listen to "Faust" Why Women Should Vote Astronomy- Woman's Future Work Woman's Vanity Is Useful To Editorial Writers--Adopt Ruskin's Main Idea Imagination Without Dreaming the Secret of Material Success The One Who Needs No Statue The Vast Importance of Sleep Woman Sustains, Guides and Controls the World The Story of the Complaining Diamond Don't Be in a Hurry, Young Gentlemen hen the Baby Changed Into a Fourteen-year-old The Eye That Weighs a Ton What Animal Controls Your Spirit? From Mammoths to Mosquitoes--From Murder to Hypocrisy The Monkey and the Snake Fight Too Little and Too Much Do You Feel Discouraged? Two Kinds of Discontent What the Bartender Sees What Should Be a Man's Object in Life? Cruel Frightening of Children It Is Natural for Children to Be Cruel Two Thin Little Babies Are Left A Baby Can Educate a Man The articles in this book were published originally in the editorial columns of the various Hearst newspapers throughout the country. These articles may have some interest for the student of modern happenings, because of the fact that the newspapers publishing them have an aggregate daily circulation of two millions of copies, and are read each day by no fewer than five millions of men and women. Such wide circulation of identical opinions on current events, in different parts of the country, is a new feature of our national life. The character of such writings, and their probable influence upon the public mind, whatever their lack of intrinsic merit, may be of sufficient importance to justify the publication of this collection of ephemeral writings. WHY ARE ALL MEN GAMBLERS? The annual report of the gambling house at Monte Carlo shows a profit of about $5,000,000. A large collection of human beings travel from all parts of the world to Monte Carlo for the sake of giving $5,000,000 to the gambling concern there. Wherever you look on earth to-day or in the past you find human beings gambling, and you will find the gambling instinct stronger than any other--stronger than the love of drink, infinitely stronger than the love of normal, honest gain. * * * Christopher Columbus's sailors gambled on the way over, and the Indians on this side were gambling while waiting to be discovered. In an office overlooking Trinity graveyard, in New York City, an old man, past eighty, with a fortune of at least $50,000,000, gambles every day with all the excitement of youth. The fluctuations in his game bring to his sallow cheeks the color that no other human emotion could bring there. On his way home this old man passes crowds of children in the streets and looks down, concerned and sorrowful, to find that they, too, are gambling. They are matching pennies or shaking dice. * * * Clergymen are startled and amazed to find that women are gambling heavily. They have gambled heavily ever since civilization has progressed far enough to give them large sums to gamble with. Marie Antoinette staked thousands of louis at a time at Versailles. She was so wrapped up in gambling she could not see that her neck was in danger. When the lava came down from Vesuvius it buried Pompeiians who were gambling. The men who dig up the old monuments in Africa find gambling instruments crumbling away side by side with appliances for taking human life. * * * Nowhere in the lower forms of animal life, so far as we know, is there the slightest indication of the gambling instinct. The monkey, the elephant, love whiskey, and easily become drunkards. The passion for alcohol seems innate in animal life; even the wise ant can be readily induced to disgrace himself if alcohol is put near him. For all the human weaknesses and mainsprings--ambition, affection, vanity, drunkenness, ferocity, greediness, cunning--we can find beginnings among the lower animals. But man appears to have evolved from within himself the gambling instinct for his own especial damnation. Where did the instinct come from? Why was it planted in us? Like every other instinct with which intelligent nature endows us, it must have its good purpose, and it must not be judged merely in the corrupted form in which we study it at Monte Carlo or in Wall Street. Perhaps the spirit of gambling is really only an atrophied, perverted form of the spirit of adventure. Columbus staked his life and gambled, when he started across the water. The leaders of the American Revolution expressly staked their lives, their fortunes and their "sacred honor" in signing the Declaration of Independence. They were noble gamblers, working for the welfare of their fellows. Perhaps gambling is only a perverted form of intelligent ambition--we are all natural gamblers because we have within us the quality which makes us willing to risk our own comfort, security and present happiness for a result that seems better worth while. The universality of the gambling instinct in human beings is certainly worthy of our study. NO MAN UNDERSTANDS IRON HOW CAN WE HOPE TO UNDERSTAND GOD? Is there laughter in heaven--or can nothing move the eternal heavenly calm? If mirth exists among the perpetually blissful, how must the angels laugh when in idle moments they listen to our speculations concerning the Divinity? They peer down at us as we look at ants dragging home a fragment of dead caterpillar. They hear us say things like this: If God exists, why does He not reveal himself to ME? How could God exist before He created the world? Force cannot exist or demonstrate its existence without matter. How could a creator exist except with creation around him? Where did He live before He made heaven? If He is all-powerful, could He in five seconds make a six months' old calf? If He made it in five seconds it would not be six months old. Nonsense more subtle comes from the educated, from those who know enough to be preposterous in a pretentious way. Hear the wise man: God does not exist, because I cannot prove His existence: I can prove everything else. With my law of gravitation I point to a speck in space and say: "You'll find a new planet there," and you find it. If a God existed could I not also point to Him? If I can trace a comet in its flight, could I not trace the comet's maker? Huxley says: "The cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends." That's a philosopher's way of saying something foolish.