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Show TEARS NOT VERY NOURISHING. The Associated Press recently told the story of a section hand getting nine dollars a week, who deliberately sacrificed his life to save a train on the Big Four railroad and its two hundred passengers. pas-sengers. The strange point, about this story is the mention of the fact that the man earned only nine dollars a week. It rather implied that such heroic sacrifices were ordinarily made by the men who make ninety dollars a week or nine hundred. The facts are ail the other way, says the Onlooker in The Pilot. The more a man is paid for his services the more likely he is: . to think much of himself and to rate his departure from life as an irreparable loss to the community. The higher a man climbs the more likely he is to acquire class feeling, to survey misery with a cold and meditative eye, and to recoil re-coil with positive horror from the thought of sacrificing sac-rificing even his convenience for other people. If we had to depend on the high-priced men to offer themselves up for the public good and to love men well enough to die for them, we would be in a parlous state immediately. Of course we have hosts of public men who declare their willingness to wear themselves out in public service in well paid positions where their families will be under the spot-light. When we come to weighing declarations dec-larations of this nature, we should remember that they are to be interpreted, not as real, but in the Pickwickian sense. This is oratorical soothing syrup for the public. If you will tote up the railroad casualties for any year in this country, you will find the great majority of fatalities among humble railroad men, nine-dollar men, more or less. Tf you examine the statistics of workers who habitually, take great risks, as firemen, policemen? structural iron men, etc.. ifwill be plain to you that they are in no danger dan-ger of breaking into plutocrat circles. After any great war. you will find most of the graves decorated deco-rated on anniversaries are those of private soldiers. It is the nine dollar man who does most of the sacrificing all along the line. He is expected to do it. But it is rather hard to observe a lifting of eyebrows when the poor fellow does throw his life away for others. Probably there is a latent idea that a nine-dollar man has no right to heroism; that "common people" should be arrested on suspicion sus-picion if discovered in possession of real altruism. "A Tot of rabbit-hearted enthusiasts talk about the "uplift." or ' "betterment," and other terms supposed sup-posed to mark the speakers as "the right sort," but no thought of mixing themselves up with a railroad wreck or sacrificing their own skins, ever entered !heir mud brains. There is a subtle something in successful and highly paid men that begets casuistry rather than action where sacrifice is required. The nine-dollar man is not good at casuistry. He is practical. He determines to save the others, no matter what may be the cost to himself. It is lucky he cannot reason rea-son analytically and comparatively. The passengers passen-gers in the Pullmans are well insured and will leave their families well provided for. The people in the other cars have enough money to travel and so can be considered in comfortable circumstances. Doubtless many are of little use to themselves and others, and would not be deeply regretted. If the nine-dollar man dies, his family will begin battling bat-tling with the wolf the next morning. You cannot buy houses and lay away bonds nowadays on nine dollars a week. The chances are, however, that if the section man happened to be good at reasoning, he would find later on that his family was in the wreck train. Life has a way of making the poor man pay no matter what course he takes. The account of our section man's death states that the two hundred passengers paid tearful tribute trib-ute to his memory. It was pathetic but unsatisfactory. unsatis-factory. Tears are not very nourishing and do not measure up to the pure food law. Meat and milk cost money. It is wonderful how many of us pay a debt of this Kind in tears and adjectives. The chances are that the section man's family is subsisting sub-sisting on the charity of other nine-dollar men and the insurance whose premiums he paid out of his scanty wage. There is matter for solid meditation in this story. It is the nine-dollar man who is doing the hardest and most work in this country, most of the self-sacrificing and practical altruism. The higher you go above the nine-dollar mark the more likely it is your brain will prevent your heart from running run-ning away with you. What would you have done in his place? If you think your life was more valuable val-uable than those two hundred' lives; if you think the section hand did no more than his duty as a hero, is not nine dollars a week a low figure in these days when the cost of living is a condition? Then again, when we consider that these instances in-stances of heroism are common among humble citizens, cit-izens, that in one way or another they enable us to live well, that we are getting the extra dollars a week that ought to to them, it is unworthy to mention the amount in connection with one whq was great enough to lay down his life for strangers. stran-gers. It reminds one of the senile wiseacre who put on a statesman's memorial the word "Upholsterer." |