CHAPTER II.--WHICH TEACHES THAT ONE SHOULD NEVER HITCH HIS CONSCIENCE TO

A POST AS IF IT WERE A NANNY-GOAT AND GO OFF AND LEAVE IT

Truth is a great teacher but she often quarrels with the cook,” said Mr. Potter, while looking at his watch.

He went to the telephone and called his home and presently began to address his wife as follows:

“Hello, Betsy! Say, don't expect me 'till I come. I'm in trouble. A feller came in here and started the war all over again and there's no tellin' when it'll end. I do not want an inconclusive peace.”

As he hung up the telephone his stenographer came in to say good night. Mr. Potter took his old rifle off the wall, dusted It with a desk cloth and said:

“My great grandfather used that in the battle of Lexington.”

He squinted down its long barrel while he gave these instructions to his helper.

“Joe, send down to The Sign of the Flapjack, née Child's, and order corned beef hash and poached eggs and apple pie and coffee for two.”

He turned to me and asked:

“Any amendments to propose to that ticket?”

“None,” I answered.

“Then we will consider it elected. Have the table spread here by the fire, if you please.”

He filled and lighted his pipe, settled down in an easy chair and began again, with his gun resting across his knees: “The superors try to square themselves by giving to the poor. It doesn't work. Often we do more harm than good by giving to the poor. Kindness, sympathy, loving counsel and the brotherly hand can accomplish much. But the charily of cold cash is a questionable thing. The girl who knits a pair of socks accomplishes a larger net result to the good than the one that gives ten pairs to charity. The girl who did the knitting really produced something. She had made the world better off by one pair of socks. There is no doubt about that. The girl who has bought and given away ten pairs has produced nothing. She has made the world in general no better off. She is a slacker. She is trying to make her money do her work for her.

“The time has come when the world in general has to be considered by each of us. Civilized humanity has been compacted into a unit. It is threatened by famine and tyranny. All the money there is can not save us from these perils unless a lot of people get busy who are now doing nothing but eat and play. Money has become a very cheap and vulgar thing--almost every one has money these days.

“The time of the great assessment has come and the Lord God is taking His inventory. Everything is being measured and valued; even your usefulness, my friend. What are you producing? Is it enough to feed and clothe yourself and family, even? Corn and potatoes and wheat and wool are more than money these days. If you don't help to produce them, you are, more or less, a dead weight.

“The idle lands in America ought to get busy. How? The rich men should begin to cultivate them. I know one such man who is growing two hundred and fifty acres of potatoes in Florida where nothing has grown before, and it is estimated his yield will be at least fifty thousand bushels. Now, that man is doing a real service to Democracy.

“When the monster of war is devouring the fruitfulness of the earth and stopping the labor of those who produce it, there is only one remedy. We must increase that fruitfulness so that there shall be enough to feed the monster and the people at home. If this is to be done, every one must work. In such a situation, the idleness of the able-bodied becomes a disgrace, and his dinner the food of remorse.

“Get busy. I do not mean that we should never play. I do mean that every day we should do a fair day's work with our hands and brain for the good of the world at large.

“The war has established two brotherhoods, my friend--that's the big thing about it. A brotherhood of democracy and a brotherhood of slaves.

“This brotherhood of slaves has been created by the leprous soul of Bill Hohenzollern. He has broken down the will of the average man in Germany and established his own in place of it. He has yoked his people with the slaves of Turkey and Bulgaria, and with them has overawed the will of the Austro-Hungarians, mostly a decent people. The will of the Kaiser has spread over middle Europe like a plague. The name of the plague is Williamism. We have caught it in America.”

“In America!” I exclaimed.

“In America,” Mr. Potter went on. “The quarantine officer has been bribed. He has left the door open and the plague has come in. The name of that officer is Human Conscience. Williamism can make no progress save through the carelessness or neglect of the human conscience.

“Long ago the German people turned over their consciences to the Kaiser and the Bundesrath with a license to use them as they thought best. The people said to themselves: 'The Kaiser enjoys the special protection and favor of the Lord. He is an intimate friend with a pull. He ought to be able to make a more expert use of our consciences than we could ourselves. Therefore, we will appoint him our representative and proxy at the Court of Heaven. If he and his friends decide, after due consultation with God, that we had better violate good faith and break our treaties and seize the property of other races and indulge in murder, rape, arson and piracy, we will do it. To be sure such action would seem to be wrong, but that is only because we are common cattle. We are the best herd of common cattle there is, but we are not supermen. The Bundesrath, the Kaiser and God ought to know what is right.

“Now that, in effect, is exactly what they said to themselves. A people may prosper and come to no violent trouble under such a plan. But the fact is, they are living around the crater of a moral Vesuvius.

“For two generations all seemed to be going well with the Germans. William I was a fairly decent-minded man. Bismarck was unscrupulous but careful. He stepped softly after he had bitten a chunk out of France. He held the throne in restraint until William, the Godful, jumped upon it with a wild yell of heavenly inspiration that startled the world. He was going to take no advice from Mr. Bismarck--not a bit! Right away he appointed himself secretary of war and attorney general of the Almighty. No such astonishing familiarity with omnipotence had been seen since the time of Moses.

“There is an ancient legend which says that, when Cæsar invaded Gaul, an old bowman of the north, having been captured and brought to the headquarters of the great Consul, said:

“'Hello, Julius! I am with you.'

“It was like Bill Hohenzollern, only Bill didn't say 'Hello, Julius!' The whole world stood aghast.

“Bismarck stepped down and out. He must have seen what was coming.

“Now this young lunatic should have been examined and condemned and sent to an asylum as a paranoiac. Instead of that, he was given full power and allowed to endow and develop a school of bribed historians and lunatic philosophers to justify his plans---Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, backed by the throne and all the supermaniacs that surrounded it. They created the new morality of Williamism in which all human decency was disemboweled and God and the devil exchanged crowns. Gosh almighty! It seems incredible now that we look back upon it.

“From the beginning there has been a flavor of the little tin god about these Hohenzollern fellers. Frederick the Great had a menacing rattle of self-assertion, like that of a Ford car going to a country picnic. His favorite dissipation was kicking soldiers. It was a way he had of advertising his superiority.

“Macaulay tells us that he needed proximity and not provocation to kick a soldier. What a brave Captain he was! Funny, isn't it, how the great Captains have managed to take care of themselves. Died on hair mattresses, every one of them except two, Gustavus Adolphus and Stonewall Jackson.

“The only man who ever insulted me by just shaking my hand was a mule-eared Hohenzollern chap known as Prince Heinrich of Prussia. I can never forget that you-to-hell air of his as he took my hand as if it was a clod of dirt, without even a look at me. I have always been sorry that I didn't invite him to the sidewalk.

“William II began to strut in the military and hot-air game as soon as he ascended the throne, and lost no opportunity to tighten his hold upon the consciences of his people.

“Let me tell you the story of

THE MISLAID CONSCIENCE.

“I used to know a feller here of the name of Sam Hopkins. He worked for a client of mine who ran a lock factory. Sam had been a poor lad--sold newspapers on the street night and morning. My client liked him and took him over to the big shop and taught him the trade of making locks and paid his board until he was able to earn it. Sam became an expert mechanic and shoved money into his coffers every Saturday night. By and by he had a wife and three children and a comfortable home and a goodly amount of spondoolix earning interest. Now for the chance to accomplish all that he was indebted to my friend and client.

“By and by Sam joined the Trade Union. Nobody could find any fault with Sam for uniting with his fellow workers to accomplish any fair and reasonable purpose. But Sam had given to the Trade Union exactly what the Germans had given to the Kaiser and the Bundesrath. He had, in effect, turned his conscience over to the Union, which had full authority to do as it thought best with this sacred piece of property. Sam didn't realize what he had done until the Union ordered him to strike.

“To be sure it was a limited proprietorship over his conscience which Sam had given to the Union. He could keep and use it until the Union called for it. He had given a kind of note payable in the use of his conscience _on demand_.

“Sam had no quarrel with the works--no more quarrel than the Germans had with the Belgians--not a bit. He was more than satisfied with his wages and his hours and his general treatment His conscience told him that his duty was to keep at work. But he discovered suddenly that he had no right to the use of his own conscience. He had deeded it, on demand, to the Union--lock, stock and barrel. Sam had become a kind of German soldier.

“War was declared. Some of the faithful servants of the big shop were slain. Others were injured; a part of the properly was wrecked. Sam tried to do the right thing, but couldn't. He went with the German army.

“Now, a man's conscience is given to him for his own use--exclusively for his own use. There's nothing truer than this: A man's conscience is like his tooth-brush--it should have but one proprietor. You can not leave it lying around like an old pair of shoes. Your umbrella is not as easily lost. It is like your right hand. You can not lay it away--you can not lend it, and the more you use it the better it is and the less you use it the weaker it is. Either disuse or misuse will injure it and possibly deprive you of its service.

“Now, Sam's conscience got mislaid in the shuffle. He suddenly discovered that he hadn't any. I guess it was rather small at best. It was through this loss that I came to know about him. He was out of work for seven months and got to drinking. Idleness and regret and the loss of friends turned him toward the downward path of women, wine and song. He is now in a Federal prison for counterfeiting--the victim of Williamism.

“Now just what had happened to Sam had happened to every man in the German army. In that deal with the Kaiser his conscience had got mislaid. He was ready to cut off the hands of a child or torture a wounded man or shoot an inoffensive civilian. His officers encouraged him to do it and his conscience was not on duty. It had been turned over to the Kaiser and the Bundesrath. It had got lost in the shuffle.

“I have told you that William had made the ideal of Germany that of the insect. Let me be sure that you get my meaning.

“Have you watched a hive of bees in bright summer weather? Well, you will find that the workers wear out their wings in two weeks and die. The hive has only two purposes--storage and race perpetuation.

These purposes are carried out with ruthless and perfect efficiency.

The drones are stung to death as soon as they are discovered. The worker will starve and die for the queen. The welfare of the hive is the main thing--that of the individual of no account whatever. The ants live and die on the same general plan.

“So I say that the ideal of Williamism is that of the insect. The hive is the empire. Its main purposes are storage and race perpetuation. Its chief aim is efficiency. The nation is everything; the individual nothing. The individual is to work and store and is not even to take the time to cry if he feels like it.

“The hive has only two purposes--storage and race perpetuation. These purposes are carried out with ruthless and perfect efficiency. The drones are stung to death as soon as they are discovered.

“In Berlin fifty-three per cent, of the workers live with their families in two rooms.

“Now I deny that the main purposes of human life are storage and race perpetuation and efficiency. If that were true, the man that had the most cash and wives and children would be the greatest man in the world.

“A few years ago a man died in England. He had only a few books and about five hundred dollars in money. Yet he was called one of the greatest men in the world. Every one took off his hat to that man because he had _Character_, He was Cardinal Newman.

“Lincoln died poor and he was about the homeliest, awkwardest man in America, and yet the whole world mourned for him because he had accumulated _Character._

“That is the great thing, and the main purpose of life is to develop character in _individuals_. That development comes mostly through failure. Success is the worst of teachers.

“If one were to estimate the greatness of a people he would disregard its armies and navies and the splendor of its cities and the deposits in its banks, and go out to that people and appraise the character of its _average man_,--his respect for honor and decency and especially his respect for that great, world embracing unit known as human rights.

“Right here I must tell you the story of

THE LEATHERHEAD MONARCH.

“There was once a man who was born successful. He inherited success and for many years kept it coming his way. Did you ever hear of a man of the name of Shote? Of course not. Neither did I. That's one reason why I am going to call him Shote--John Shote, if you please. My story is strictly true, but I would ask no one to believe the name of its leading character.

“John was a great success. Some people called him a great man. Indeed, everybody took off his hat and said: 'How do you do, Mr. Shote?' or words to that effect when he came along.

“I suppose you will think that Mr. Shote only nodded and passed on, but he was not so bad as that. No, he answered: 'Very well, thank you,' and went about his business. He failed to return your solicitude but did not wonder at it.

“He lived in a neighboring town--let us call it Shoteville--and was soon, indeed, the principal Shote of Shoteville. The business was there. It had always prospered. When his father died, John took the crown and became a swearing, rantankerous tyrant.

“He inaugurated a system of efficiency. He trusted nobody. There was an indicator at the entrance of the big building and every worker great and small had to touch a button on this indicator when he left or entered the place. He had a kind of guillotine in the office and every day heads fell into the basket. But when a man left Mr. Shote it was a point to his credit in Shoteville. It showed that he was above being sworn at. It was a kind of recommendation--a thing to boast of. Every one in the shop was sooner or later called by Mr. Shote “a damn leather head.” It was a kind of initiation. If he accepted the classification and remained Mr. Shote decided that he was amenable to discipline and thought him a promising man. Outsiders looked down upon him. The men who stayed year after year and endured the insults of Mr. Shote were known in that community as 'the damn leatherheads.'

“Every worker was a wheel or a shaft or a lever in the big machine. When, worn or broken, he was cast aside.

“It will be seen that Mr. Shote was one of the followers of William. In his office were busts of Julius and Augustus Caesar and portraits of Napoleon and Frederick the Great. He worshiped power and kicked the common soldier.

“While he was in America, I am glad to say he was not an American--not really. To be sure he was born here and voted here, but he was really a Prussian and his shop was a little kingdom in the midst of a democracy.

“Mr. Shote really thought himself one of the noblest men that ever lived. He was a great success even as a thinker. A man can think himself into anything he pleases from a lobster to a saint. Just where he got off I leave the reader to judge.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Shote believed his own thoughts--all of them. It is a dangerous habit to acquire--that of believing oneself--believe me. If there's any one that requires careful corroboration it's yourself. Mr. Shote could not help believing his own thoughts--they were so commanding and imperious.

“Whatever else we may say of him he was honest, as men go. He paid his debts promptly and kept his credit high and even gave large sums to charity.

“His great lack was common sense; his great failing an uncontrolled temper. When you become the pivot around which the whole world revolves you are apt to get hot and noisy. The world bears down rather hard. So Mr. Shote squeaked and roared with anger every day of his life.

“His great vice was too much efficiency. No man in the plant had any power of initiative, due to the fact that Mr. Shote had no faith in any one but himself. The plant proceeded on an iron plan.

“Now, every big thing that was ever accomplished has been the work of some individual who at a critical moment has broken away from plans and made his own orders and acted on them--the kind of thing that Grant did at Appomattox; the kind of thing that Lincoln did in his great proclamation. Bill Hohenzollern would have called it inefficiency.

“Just that kind of thing would have saved Mr. Shote in the critical moment of his career. That moment fell upon him like a thunderbolt out of a dear sky one day.

“If you sow Williamism you are bound to reap it Mr. Shote's lavish crop ripened suddenly.

“The 'Leatherheads' decided one day to meet efficiency with _efficiency_. They were right Mr. Shote had been running a little kingdom in America and the 'Leatherheads' founded one of their own. They had started a union and appointed an emperor and told him to go ahead and outkaiser the king. They struck for higher wages and fewer hours. Mr. Shote was away at one of his palaces in the South.

“Now all the trouble might have ended in a decent compromise that day if the boss of the 'Leatherheads' on duty at the time had had the power and courage to act on his own judgment and do a really big thing for once in his life. He didn't have it. The wheels stopped.

“The king returned. His irritation was heard in distant places. He would never yield. His men were no longer 'Leatherheads.' They were inversely promoted. It was a critical time in the business. The plant went into default on its contracts. The king stood firm; so did the workers.

“The plant was idle for months. It was the beginning of the end of Mr. Shote's prosperity. His rivals captured his best men and his customers and most of the good will he had enjoyed. The business went down like a house of cards.

“We often say that business is business here in America. It isn't so. Business is more, much more than mere business here in America. It is friendship, it is personality, it is credit--the credit for good sense and square dealing and high character--a character that is shared in some measure by every servant of the enterprise, be he manager or errand boy.

“That cohesive power that flows out of a great personality into the whole structure of a business was not in the warp and woof of Mr. Shote's commercial ramifications. They came to grief. So did Mr. Shote.

“Then we discovered suddenly that Mr. Shote had two wives and two families. As a husband and a father he had enjoyed a success at once unusual and unsuspected. A superman is generally super married. He had acquired imperial morals. The second wife appealed to the courts in a wild yell for her stopped allowance and the result was that, in a short time, Mr. Shote stood alone and universally despised between two family fires. His efficiency had gone too far.

“Again I say, success is the worst of teachers--save to those who sit in the grand stand while it is working out its failure. Unfortunately, it gave the laboring men of this country a lesson in Williamism which has spread over America. I wish the workers all success in getting their just share of the fruits of commerce, but let it be done by fair, democratic methods and not through Williamism.

“Above all no man should hitch his conscience to a post as if it were a mule or a nanny-goat and go off and leave it.

“It is to be hoped that the patriotic Samuel Gompers will not abandon his pursuit of Williamism even after the war ends.

“The big point of the whole thing is this: One day the Leatherhead Monarch, came into this office, closed the door behind him, sat down beside me and said:

“'Mr. Potter, I see that I have the intellect of an idiot. What shall I do to be saved?'

“At last he had learned something--a really serviceable and important fact--and he had learned it not by success but by failure.”

As he approached his climax, Mr. Potter had shown a little annoyance at the arrival of the waiter and the hash and the eggs and the pie. Mr. Potter rose, stood his rifle in a corner and said:

“I regret that my climax and this wandering Ganymede with his load of hash should have arrived at the same moment.”

The waiter spread the table in front of the fireplace. Mr. Potter put a coin in his hand and pointing at the door said:

“Go hence and come not back until to-morrow.”

He placed chairs by the table and we sat down.

“Is this pie, apple, that I see before me the handle toward my hand?” he playfully remarked, as he lifted a firm built piece of pie in his hand and began to eat it in the old fashion. “Bread may be the staff of life, but pie is the light in its windows. I don't want to be hurried by its invitation, so I guess I'll get it out of the way.”