OCR Text |
Show Howe About: Welfare Workers Baseball Fundamental Truths . 1933. Bell Syndicate. WNU Service. IT''1 By ED HOWE WELFARE workers have always al-ways robbed the poor as cruelly as the politicians have robbed the people. The earliest book and public speaker began with a plea for the poor, and the clamor has grown ever since, but the poor have not been relieved. Welfare workers seem to prefer to keep the poor as exhibits when they inaugurate inaugu-rate a new drive, as teachers exhibit ex-hibit children when school directors are being appealed to for another appropriation. The present world wide poverty is disgraceful ; had we handled ourselves with the intelli gence and vigor we are capable of. have actually shown in other ways, poverty would not exist. O. O. Mclntyre says baseball Is slowly passing out, and must inevitably in-evitably disappear. I hope so; baseball has become one of the greatest American bores. The first ambition of an American youth should be to become a good provider pro-vider for a family, a safe and respectable re-spectable man in his community ; to occupy a good job so capably he is more apt to be promoted than dis charged. It is bad for a young man when his greatest ambition Is to become a sandlot rowdy called Spec Hitemhard or Red Bringemin. There are millions of thinkers at present, and millions in the past have left records of their thoughts, yet few have ever recognized fundamental fun-damental truths that should occur to almost anyone. One of such truths generally missed Is that all men have equal rights In the world. You may say this right has been abundantly granted. It hasn't: no one grants rights except to the poor. Have the rich not been de nied their rights from the beginning? begin-ning? And are we not lately agreed in denying the rights of the middle mid-dle class? You say again I am mis taken, but in this case I am not ; no one is freely and generally granted grant-ed human rights except the poor man, who will not take advantage of them. In the few cases where writers have sound sense, they will not be understood unless extremely careful in expressing it. There Is so much going on people will not bother long with paragraph or page not simply written and easily understood. Among the small number of men whose names attract my attention on encountering them In print is Benjamin DeCasseres. I do not know who he is; only that he seems to be struggling to make a living as a writer, has a good deal of real genius, and writes too much about the old days of heavy drinking drink-ing and bartenders. Lately he had two pages of par- Lately he had two pages of paragraphs par-agraphs in a magazine, and I was able to understand only four of them : 1. The honest man is one whom the world both respects and plunders plun-ders ; 2. Belief of any kind Is impossible impos-sible without some degree of Intolerance; Intol-erance; 3. Whatever exists aspires to tell a petty lie about Itself; 4, There Is a kind of sweetness of character that Is extremely disagreeable. dis-agreeable. (I have changed the last paragraph .somewhat, as DeCasseres DeCas-seres uses many objectionable words In his writings, mistakenly bcliev Ing they add strength). Some years after the Civil "war an investigator claimed to have discovered dis-covered thousands of old soldiers who did nothing except play In G. A. R. Drum corps, fire salutes over the graves of former comrades, take part In patriotic parades, work for more liberal pension laws, or run for office on patriotic Issues. There Is much more of this now than from 1805 on. but people have been so thoroughly drilled in devotion devo-tion to patriotism that nothing has been done about It. In spite of the widespread love of children, occasionally a child Is corrected cor-rected for Its own good, and for the good of the rare In general, but admiration for old soldiers Is so great we cannot hear to offend them. One of the most general complaints com-plaints of the humiin race Is that there are too many of us; Some sny wars are thus justifl nl,le (in spite of the great expense nnd annoyance of pensions) ; Still, it must be admitted that a most every one somewhat realizes the gravity of the sltnntion, and helps In killing himself r,(T; I know of no one who does not shorten his life n little by too much devotion to some of the various follies offering. offer-ing. I am eighty years old, yet a committee com-mittee of T'.oy Scouts lately rang my hell, and I went laboriously downstairs to be lectured by Impudent Impu-dent children on my duty as n clti-T(,n clti-T(,n . My natural burdens are heavy, and I try to meet them gracefully, grace-fully, but sometimes believe I am often annoyed unnecessarily and foolishly. |