Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers

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But he is at the top of the heap of money now. He looks about,
and none compete with him. A few strugglers--too far away to be
heard--strive for a little of his useless accumulation. Legal
sharpers struggle and get a little, and in return keep away those
who try to climb up near him.

The interest has gone out of life. Where he used to see
competitors, he now sees only old memories. The old associates
have gone--it is even too late to help them--and he will soon go,
too.

He looks out over the land, and sees, when it is too late, all
that he has missed while he thought he was doing the thing most
important.

He has made a hundred millions of dollars, but not one human
friend.

He can hire almost any man to do anything. But there is not
enough money in the world to hire any one to miss him sincerely
when he is gone.

Such a man as this--an actual individual, with wealth far
exceeding one hundred millions--has insured his life for half a
million. To those who asked "why" he replied: "I want some
insurance company to be sorry when I die. No one else will be
sorry." Possibly he thought he was joking. But there was truth
in what he said.

The man who piles up money builds a solid wall that shuts out the
world from him. Sycophants climb over the wall--but their
flattery and fawning grow tiresome. Old age and cessation of
strong feeling cause the mind to see clearly--and hypocrisy no
longer deceives in the old, pleasant way.

The most depressing fact in the old man's life is the
hopelessness of trying to change. His mind has worked so long in
one direction that it can no longer work in any other. He would
like, perhaps, to begin now and live as others live, but he
cannot do it.

There are men whose great wealth is earned WITH PART OF THEIR
ABILITY, leaving them force and strength for other things. Such
a man was Peter Cooper.

But the man most frequently seen in America is the man who
accumulates money for money's sake. His is a sad heart when he
looks over the past and ahead into the short future.

If he has children, he has hardly known them--and HIS MONEY
has separated them from each other.

When his son was a little child the rich man made himself think
that he was piling up the money for that boy. What became of
that boy?

Ask the Keeley Cure, the public gambling houses, Monte Carlo, the
divorce court--and the other "resources" of the sons of the very
rich.

Thousands envy him, and he knows it. But there is little in
being envied when old age makes a lonely life unbearable, and
when the next striking event in his career will be a funeral.

There are hundreds of thousands of men with their thoughts fixed
absolutely on money making. They hate what threatens money.
They love those who sympathize with money. They live, work,
vote, talk, marry and cheat their friends for money.

If they fail--as most of them do--they die unhappy. If they
succeed, money cheats THEM, and for all their devotion gives
them nothing.

"For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul?"

The man wastes his soul who devotes its forces only to
accumulating wealth.

THE HUMAN WEEDS IN PRISON

How shall we approach a prison to see it fairly and to study it
intelligently?

Let us imagine ourselves visitors from a world outside of this.

Far off in infinite space there is a small whirling planet--our
earth.

Little creatures move about this planet, chained to it by the
force of gravity. But they MOVE as they choose, and they call
themselves FREE.

There are millions of free square miles, and hundreds of millions
of free human beings.

But there just below us is the prison at Auburn. There the human
beings are not free. There suffer those who for any reason have
violated the established rules of the little globe that supports
them.

They have not even the freedom of the little patch of soil fenced
in for them. They cannot walk, speak, sit down, lie down, or
stand up as they please.

They have broken some of the rules established for the protection
of all. They have misused their freedom, and in punishment their
freedom is taken away from them.

They live in small cells, in a very big prison.

Gray stone, iron bars, striped suits, enforced silence, enforced
work, enforced regularity of life--all these punish most keenly
those whose first crime was lack of self-control and lack of
regularity. ----

In every prison and in every prisoner there are lessons for each
of us. You will not waste time to-day if you walk through this
great Auburn prison and think of the men there think why they
came there, think how they could have been saved, think what will
gradually empty prisons and make them unnecessary.

A man with one arm opens the first iron gate--his mutilated body
foreshadows the mutilated minds and souls within.

Before the door of the prison there are bright flowers--the name
of the prison itself stands out in brightly colored blossoms to
prove the gardener's ability and strange sense of the
appropriate. Many of the causes that bring men there are written
out in just such bright colors--when first seen--and many a
prisoner must have thought of that as he passed through the iron
door.

A party of six or seven go through the prison with you.

There is a woman of middle age, stout and cheerful, in a bright
purple dress. There are two children, a moon-faced man, a
tall, thin man, and others whom you do not notice.

Carelessly they look at a nervous woman sitting in the reception
room talking to a convict. They take no interest in her, no
interest in the convict. To you the prison guide says:

"She comes here to see him as often as the rules allow. She's
his wife. She's been coming for seven years. I tell you,
women get the hard end of it in this world."

Women do indeed get the hard end of it. There are twelve hundred
men in that prison--and every one of them has caused some woman
to suffer. And every one has broken the heart of one other
woman--his mother.

Through a narrow door you travel with your fellow-visitors.

At every step you marvel at the curious indifference of average
humanity to the one interesting thing--their fellow-man.

There are shown to you piles upon piles of loaves of bread--fresh
and brown. The guide says: "We bake every day. Nine hundred
loaves a day."

The stout woman in purple sighs with amazement, the children
gape, the man with the round face has an anxious look--he seems
to be a taxpayer.

But not one looks at or thinks of the convict who turns quickly
away to hide a thin, white face. To you the guide says: "He's a
forger. You can see he's sensitive about being here. Some of
them never seem to get used to it." ----

The stout woman in purple is delighted with the enormous copper
vats for making the convicts' coffee. She is charmed with the
great iron pots for boiling soup.

But you will be more interested in these facts:

There is a great chapel--BUT NO CONVICT IS COMPELLED TO ATTEND.

There is a huge wash room--fitted with showers for the hardy,
with porcelain tubs for the old and crippled--AND EVERY MAN IS
COMPELLED TO TAKE HIS BATH.

How much of progress, how much that is hopeful for humanity, is
told in those words!

Religious services are optional--no more compulsion of man's soul
or of his belief.

Bathing IS COMPULSORY. Truly, we progress, and the prison rules
prove it.

There were showers in every prison and in every insane asylum one
hundred years ago--but those showers were used only to torture
the criminal or the lunatic. He was doused with cold water until
senseless.

There were chapels in the old-time prisons, and all were forced
to accept and profess such views as the majority or the ruler
chose to profess.

That prison at Auburn is a monument to humanity's sorrows and
weaknesses. But it tells in every department of human decency
and of a constant striving by those who are fortunate to help
others.

In the prison yard a squad of convicts are marching. The
lock-step is there no longer. Prison reform has ended that. The
convict is no longer forced into a gait which stamps him ever
after.

There are electric lights in the hundreds of cells--and there is
absolute cleanliness throughout the vast structure. No hotel is
cleaner, if any be as clean.

The convicts get their letters twice a week. They have pictures
in their cells--and they may have musical instruments if they
wish; and many a man, beside his narrow plank bed, has a strip of
rag carpet made at home. Their lives are horrible--for
confinement kills men's souls; and one has said who knew prison
life:

"It is only what is GOOD in man
That wastes and withers there;
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair." ----

While you go through the prison you see the things
mentioned--electric lights, clean halls, bathing apparatus, and
the rest. But you STUDY the human beings working at their
fixed tasks, or moving about in their dismal, heavy suits of
stripes.

Just as many kinds of faces as you see in a city street you see
in that prison--but there you see more than elsewhere the
failures, the human weeds.

But at least there is a striving to make things better. Society
no longer willingly tortures its failures. It controls,
punishes, but does not hate them. There are no beatings, no
tortures, no close-cropped heads, even, for the convict may grow
his hair as he chooses.

Every man who knows no trade is taught one. There is a feeling
of moral responsibility to the criminal, and a desire at least to
make him NO WORSE.

The prisoners are divided into two classes: those whose faces
and skulls tell of evil birth and predestined failure, and those
who are simply like others--average men, victims of chance, of
temptation, of ability ill-balanced, of ignorance, of drink, or
even of accident.

In one great room the convicts are weaving--working at hand
looms. The work is desperately hard. Both hands and both feet
are going constantly. Human power is used, that the greatest
amount of labor and least competition with the outside working
world may be simultaneously achieved.

At one loom sits a poor creature, a dismal human failure. His
forehead is half an inch high and a bony ridge-telling of
unfortunate prenatal influence--runs high along the top of his
head. His small eyes are close together. His exaggerated
chin protrudes; only a cunning look directed now and then toward
the watchful warden tells that any thinking goes on in that
miserable being. His best place, perhaps, is there. He is
protected against himself, and society has no other way of taking
care of him.

Near him sits a young boy in his teens. His face is intelligent;
he is not a born criminal. He is above the average in
intelligence, and in him there are all possibilities of success
and usefulness.

A boyish piece of criminal foolishness brought him there--and he
must now spend years degenerating into real criminality under the
influences around him.

There are the two extreme samples of humanity in that cage which
we build to protect ourselves against ourselves.

It is a dismal garden set apart for human weeds and in it many a
good plant is hopelessly driven into the weed class.

Of the men in that prison may truly be said what a great student
of plant life--Luther Burbank-- says of the poor weeds that we
despise among plants:

There is not one weed or flower, wild or domesticated, which
will not, sooner or later, respond liberally to good cultivation
and persistent selection. * * * Weeds are weeds because they are
jostled, crowded, cropped and trampled upon, scorched by fierce
heat, starved, or, perhaps, suffering with cold, wet feet,
tormented by insect pests or lack of nourishing food and
sunshine.

Most of them have no opportunity for blossoming out in luxurious
beauty and abundance. * * * When a plant once wakes up to the
new influences brought to bear upon it the road is opened for
endless improvement in all directions.

More pitiable than any weeds in a garden and more worthy of
sympathy are those poor human weeds in the great prison.

Crowded and kept ignorant in youth, tempted, ill-fed, cold and
worried in after years, their lot was hard--and their fall almost
inevitable. They must be confined, they must be protected
against themselves, they must suffer for the poor start given to
them.

But the duty of those who are FREE and fortunate is to treat
kindly those who fall, and especially to deal in such fashion
with the young as shall minimize the crop of weeds later.

Fortunately, it may truly be said that humanity begins to realize
its responsibilities in both lines of effort.

Kindness reaches the convict in his prison.

And Education, the thrice blessed AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL, does
steadily the work that makes useful plants of growing youth,
diminishing year by year the crop of weeds.

Kindness and EDUCATION--go to Auburn prison and you will
realize how much work they have still to do in our country.

CRIME IS DYING OUT

Many of us feel that crime is the striking feature of modern
life, that this century sits among the skulls of crime's victims,
and that Father Time, after all his ages of travel, sees no
improvement.

But those discouraged by modern crime misunderstand the meaning
of events and fail to make a just comparison between the past and
the present.

It is true that crime to-day is shocking in its frequency. Each
day we see spread out before us murders.

But first of all remember this:

We often mistake widespread NEWS of crime for increase in crime
itself. The newspapers are multiplied in number by tens of
thousands, and they all tell what happens. It seems as though
crime had increased, whereas in reality we have simply increased
facilities for letting all the people know what goes on among us.
----

We are shocked occasionally by crimes of poisoning. Go back a
few centuries and you find men and women making a regular
business of selling poison to those who want to commit murder.
The crimes that fill us with horror would not have been noticed
in those days.

We hear of a father killing his own child, and we declare that
humanity is going to destruction. Yet but a few centuries back
and THE LAW RECOGNIZED EVERY FATHER'S RIGHT TO KILL HIS CHILD IF
HE CHOSE.

We shudder when we hear that a mother has exposed a new-born
child on a doorstep or thrown it into an ash barrel. That is a
horrid and unbelievable crime.

But in Rome, before the days of Christianity, there were
appointed places where mothers might legally expose their
children to destruction. The wild beasts or dogs ate the
children thus exposed, and no one was shocked. Whoever might
care to take such an exposed child could keep that child for a
slave forever. That kind of crime we have outgrown certainly.

The Presbyterian teaching of infant damnation seems to us
horrible. We shudder at the statement that God would condemn a
helpless baby to eternal punishment simply because it had not
been baptized. The idea seems cruel now. But it was invented by
the well-meaning early Christians in order to make women give up
the legal practice of infanticide. The mother was made to
believe that her unbaptized child went to hell, and that she must
follow later on for not having had it baptized. Thus women were
afraid to expose their children secretly, and infanticide was
stamped out by a Christian doctrine which now seems so brutal.
----

And note one thing above all: Crime still lingers among us. But
it is now LABELED AS CRIME. We no longer have horrible crimes
sanctioned by law.

We read that a criminal has tortured some old man or woman for
money--and then murdered the victim. We can scarcely believe in
such atrocity. But only a little while ago--barely two
centuries-- IT WAS THE REGULAR LEGAL CUSTOM TO TORTURE OLD
PEOPLE AND YOUNG.

Poor old women, falsely accused of witchcraft, were burned alive
and ducked in this country, while clergymen and magistrates
looked on and applauded.

All over Europe innocent witnesses could be tortured to make them
give testimony at a trial.

Men accused of no crime whatever were tortured to make them give
testimony against others--often when they had no testimony to
give. They were hung up by the thumbs, the bones of their legs
were crushed in a boot of steel, the soles of the feet were
roasted over a brazier of red-hot coals--to make them help
convict another.

The noble leaders of the French Revolution abolished such torture
of witnesses in France, and they were criticised for doing so by
the respectabilities.

"How are you going to convict criminals if you do not torture
witnesses?" the respectable element asked. We have got beyond
that state of affairs. We hear of murders based on jealousy--
perverted affection. We hear of crimes based on envy--perverted
ambition. All of the best elements in man, when perverted and
thwarted, lead to crime.

And these perverted passions will continue to breed crime until
men shall have learned to regulate society on a basis that will
give full and natural play to the forces within us. But
organized murder on a really vast scale is practically done away
with.

Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon and others like them had great
ambition. To gratify their ambitions they forced millions of men
to die for them.

Human beings have protected themselves against the murderous
ambitions of their great leaders.

The Napoleon of to-day must get a Congress to give him his
soldiers.

Public opinion, the ballot and financial science have pulled the
teeth of the greatest instrument of crime--the conquering army of
ambition.

It is horrible to witness the assassination of a national leader.

The murder of McKinley or Carnot makes republican hopes seem
chimerical.

But it must be remembered that not so long ago the head of a
government who ESCAPED assassination was the exception. A few
centuries back, and murder was the natural end of the average
ruler. ----

Murder results first from control of the brain by animal
passions. Almost every animal is a murderer, and at stated times
murders its own kind. Primitive man is always murderous. Murder
results, in the second place, from misdirected forces within us.

Crime will diminish through education, as the mind takes control
of us, and through society better organized, which shall give men
a chance to develop normally. Thanks to education and to
improving social conditions, crime is disappearing, NOT
increasing. Even our despondency is comforting. It proves that
we have progressed so far as to be horrified at that which we
should have taken for granted a few centuries back.

THE VALUE OF POVERTY TO THE WORLD
ASK YOUR FRIEND WHAT HE WOULD DO IF HE HAD A MILLION

A majority of men long for a great deal of money.

Each man will tell you that he is struggling along in uncongenial
employment; that if he had his way his life would be arranged
very differently.

Put to any friend this question:

"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"

You will learn that, first of all, he would get rid of the useful
daily plodding that occupies him. Instead of living to work he
would live to enjoy himself.

A majority of men are usefully employed because they must work to
live.

If we all had our way we should do as we chose, and there would
be no progress. Fortunately, the wisdom of Providence keeps the
great majority of men poor and usefully busy. ----

This writer asked an able business man, who manages the material
success of a great newspaper, what he would do if he had a
million dollars. He replied without hesitation: "I would go
abroad and spend the rest of my life collecting artistic things
and enjoying them."

By his newspaper work, which helps to disseminate truth and to
fight privilege, this man renders the greatest possible service
to the world. He is head of the commissariat department of an
army of righteousness. How fortunate that he cannot abandon his
useful work to collect artistic trash that would only make him
useless and enrich a few unscrupulous dealers! ----

Joseph Jefferson as an actor has done great good for the world.
He has filled hundreds of thousands of young and old hearts with
kindly sympathy. He has set a good example to all the actors of
the world. He is truly a public benefactor.

If Joseph Jefferson had had a great fortune he would have spent
his life painting pictures, for he believes that he was meant to
be a painter.

He was not meant to be a painter; if his life had been devoted to
painting it would have been wasted.

How lucky that he was not rich enough to be able to waste his
life! ----

Often the world marvels that the sons of great and successful men
accomplish so little.

The world is foolish. It should marvel that the sons of the rich
accomplish anything at all.

For genius has truly been called the capacity to take infinite
pains. It is the splendid fruit that grows on the tree of HARD
WORK.

Infinite pains and hard work are distasteful to human beings.
They are avoided by those who can avoid them. It is lucky for
the world that the number of those who can shirk is limited.
----

Dryden tells you in four lines what the actual man would amount
to if he had his way.

"My next desire is, void of care and strife,
To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life.
A country cottage near a crystal flood,
A winding valley and a lofty wood."

Every man who could afford it would live for himself, to indulge
some useless little tenth-rate part of his brain activity. ----

The world progresses because the wisdom of the universe compels
every man to work directly or indirectly for every other man.

If we had our way, if hard necessity did not compel us to do the
disagreeable work for which we are fitted, we should all live for
ourselves; we should all be mere human sponges, absorbing
personal gratification--the progress of the human race would
stop.

Let this fact console you when you contemplate with bitterness
the few who accumulate great fortunes.

You are a disappointed drop in a great ocean of useful human
beings. The interest of the whole ocean demands that you and the
vast majority of all other drops should fail to get what you
crave--

THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE USELESS.

600 TEACHERS NOW, 600,000 GOOD AMERICANS IN THE FUTURE

On one single day 600 teachers, representing and devoted to the
American public school system, sailed for the Philippine Islands.

These 600 teachers, men and women, will do more than 6,000 or
6,000,000 soldiers could do with cannon and Gatling guns to
civilize and Americanize the new possessions.

They will teach the inhabitants FACTS. They will give them
solid knowledge in place of degrading ignorance and superstition.

They will teach them that the world is round and that every man
on it has the same chance, if he will use his brain; that if he
himself cannot seize the opportunity it can he seized by the
children whose success is as dear to him as his own.

Like all wars, the conquest of the Philippines has had many
discouraging and some disgraceful features. The killing of
ignorant men and women, the burning of houses, the unnecessary
severity, will all be forgotten when the school teachers of
America shall have done their work. ----

A great many thoughtless people imagine that the world is
retrograding, that times are not as good as they used to be.

We are still far from perfect. But as a matter of fact we are
angels compared to the men of olden times. A few years ago the
usual course was as follows:

First, soldiers were sent to subdue the people.

Then tax collectors followed with the public executioner, the
noose and various ingenious instruments of torture to extract
cash payments.

We still send soldiers, but with them we send physicians to cure
the wounded; and when the soldiers' work is done we do not send
tax collectors or other civil vampires.

We send school teachers, publishers of newspapers, organizers of
labor unions. We send those agencies which shall enable the
people conquered to make themselves equal or superior to their
conquerors.

EDUCATION--THE FIRST DUTY OF GOVERNMENT

We wish to discuss with our readers in this and in later editions
of this newspaper the great and serious question of education.

It is a question as broad as the ocean, and as deep. It is a
question so vast that organized discussion of it seems hopeless.

The greatest minds of the world have devoted their powers to the
intricate question of developing the human brain, and the problem
has been scarcely touched.

The greatest works on education in the history of the world are
undoubtedly Plato's "Republic," Spencer's "Education" and
Rousseau's "Emile." The last is the greatest of all. It should
be read by every father and mother and by every earnest citizen.

Other works that may be earnestly recommended are Aristotle's
"Politics," Pestalozzi's "How Gertrude Teaches Her Children" and
Froebel's "Education of Man."

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