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Ohio University Libraries, E.W. Scripps Papers, MSS 117, Series 4, http://media.library.ohiou.edu/scripps
May 23, 1909.
WHAT'S THE USE?
---------------------
I may have some richeS a sometimes I doubt this, but I cer-tainly
have a liver. My oonvictions---if Buch---vary with the
condition of my liver.
For the past two or three weeks I have been sufferi:n.g with /3,
diseased liver» and during this time I have been reading some and think-ing
a great deal. Few of my thoughts have been cheerful. I have
been rwTjnating in the most pessimistic fashion. I have been feeling
capable of sayifl..g some ver~· wise and disagreeable thiIl..gS, and determin-
,~ . " ' .
ir~ that I would write a masterpiece so soon as I felt well enough to
do so. • My Ii ver has got into workiJrl.g shape again and I feel able
enough physically to write some of these wonderful essays, but, unfortunately,
as my liver has chf.tnged its condition I find that the position
J
of nfj point of view has al so changed.
However, I wn going to try to make a record of some of the
things that I have been thinking about.
About a year a.go I wrote an essay to compare man with a microbe.
I regarded the earth as a livln.g organism similar to that of
the human body and the race of man as a diseased microbe that had inva-ded
this earth organism and had proceeded to feed upon its host. I
showed how this microbe---the instrument of its own blind instinct---v:s,s
proceeding to multiply and devour the austenance furnished by the earth
with such voracity and rapidity as to make it perfectly evident that a
brief period of time would only be required for it to utterly consume
all that the earth contained that was fit for its (man's) sustenance.
It has been during the past year t~~t most of the thought and
energetic discussion has been given to the matter of the conservation
of natural resources in this country. A great national conference was .... ".
16~*"
Object Description
| Rating | |
| Title | Disquisition by Scripps, E.W., What's the use ?, May 23, 1909 |
| Collection | E. W. Scripps Papers, 1868-1926 |
| Creator/Author | Scripps, E. W. (Edward Willis), 1854-1926 |
| Date Original | 1909-05-23 |
| Subject-Place |
England United States |
| Subject-LCSH |
Human beings Humanity Human behavior Social evolution Population |
| Is Part Of |
E. W. Scripps Papers, Series 4, Box 01, Vol 02 E. W. Scripps' Writings 1909, Book 2 |
| Collection finding aid | http://www.library.ohiou.edu/archives/mss/mss117.html |
| Call Number | mss117/ser4/box01/book02/164-174 |
| Original Format-AAT | Essays |
| Publisher | Ohio University Libraries. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections |
| Type | Text |
| Format [IMT] | Application/pdf |
| Physical dimensions | 11 p.; 11 x 8.5 |
| Identifier | ser4_box01_vol02_164-174_whats_use.pdf |
| Donor | Scripps, Charles E. (Charles Edward), 1920- |
| Rights Information | In the public domain. Unpublished works are under copyright for the life of the author + 70 years |
| Citation | E.W. Scripps Papers, Mahn Center for Archives & Special Collections, Ohio University Libraries |
| Transcript | Ohio University Libraries, E.W. Scripps Papers, MSS 117, Series 4, http://media.library.ohiou.edu/scripps May 23, 1909. WHAT'S THE USE? --------------------- I may have some richeS a sometimes I doubt this, but I cer-tainly have a liver. My oonvictions---if Buch---vary with the condition of my liver. For the past two or three weeks I have been sufferi:n.g with /3, diseased liver» and during this time I have been reading some and think-ing a great deal. Few of my thoughts have been cheerful. I have been rwTjnating in the most pessimistic fashion. I have been feeling capable of sayifl..g some ver~· wise and disagreeable thiIl..gS, and determin- ,~ . " ' . ir~ that I would write a masterpiece so soon as I felt well enough to do so. • My Ii ver has got into workiJrl.g shape again and I feel able enough physically to write some of these wonderful essays, but, unfortunately, as my liver has chf.tnged its condition I find that the position J of nfj point of view has al so changed. However, I wn going to try to make a record of some of the things that I have been thinking about. About a year a.go I wrote an essay to compare man with a microbe. I regarded the earth as a livln.g organism similar to that of the human body and the race of man as a diseased microbe that had inva-ded this earth organism and had proceeded to feed upon its host. I showed how this microbe---the instrument of its own blind instinct---v:s,s proceeding to multiply and devour the austenance furnished by the earth with such voracity and rapidity as to make it perfectly evident that a brief period of time would only be required for it to utterly consume all that the earth contained that was fit for its (man's) sustenance. It has been during the past year t~~t most of the thought and energetic discussion has been given to the matter of the conservation of natural resources in this country. A great national conference was .... ". 16~*" Wha.t· s The Use?--2. held, at the request of President Roosevelt, at Washington, in the early part of last year. Since then the amo~t of literature, ephemeral and otherwise J that has been put forth on the subject of the rapid consumption of all kinds of natural resources ha.s been enormous. All our big wild game has been destroyed; in fact the Whole country produces food-stuffs, in the way of slaughtered wild animals, so infinitely small as not to be considered. Our rivers and lakes have, many of them, been completely de-popula. ted of food producing inhabitants. Even the salt seas have been attacked to such an extent that there has been a vel1r apprecia.ble decline in the returns of the fishing industry on them. Our forests are well-nigh depleted. While the market prices of none of the minerals have been increased on account of the depletion of nature's stores as yet, still such inventories of left-over supplies have been made as to make it possible for even men of ordinary intelligence to figure out about when the end of these supplies will be reached. But J latterly, a. very great deal of attention has been given to the subject of soil waste, or rather soil loss. Man may be able to Ii ve without iron or wood, or coal, copper or gold, and without wild fowl and animals, but he cannot live without soil products13. The fertility of the soil--the best of soil--has been proven to not long endure constant cropping without being re-enriched by ferti1izers,--- the nitrogenous deposita of previous ages and animal manures of present day crea.tion. There is only a very limited supply indeed of concentra.ted manure fertilizers of ancient deposit; however, it has been found that the market price of manure fertilizers has to be ii' raised only one or two-fold in order to make it profitable to extract ~ from the unlimited supply of granite the be~t quality of fertilizer. 165 What' s the Use?--3. For ages men have been wasting, or rather failing to make use of more than an infinitessimal portion of the earth I s aggregate animal excrement for fertilizi~~ purposes; men are a little less wasteful today than they have been. Victor Hugo; in his story of "The Miserablss,M many years ago pointed out the fact that the waste of fertilizing material) through the sewers of Paris alone J amounted to many millions of francs a year. Allover the world are large oi ties nearly all of 'Whose peoplea continue to waste the entire output of their sewage and garbage heaps. In old China it is said that the people have learned better prnctioes. It stands to reason that thoughtless, habit-bound humanity, barring only a slight fraction of its number, will continue to waste the substance of their children and deeper descendents by throwing away their most valu-able product---their excretions. Beyond a question of doubt this wasteful habit will continue, even long after popUlations will b~ve been enormously depleted as a reaul t of a lack of supply of food-stuffs .. The intellectual effort that will be required of man to eave himself from death and starvation vrill be greater than mankind, ae a whole} can endure. But beyond this unnecessary waste of soil fertilizer there is going on and has to go on inevitably a soil-wastage that can at best be but slightly retarded; this soil-wast~e is caused by erosion, the reaul t of cul ti vatioD and rainfall. Not anI; is the soil of the vlOrld t s surface being constantly leached out and depleted of those salts that are necessary for plant food, but in the natural process of world growth or development the soil itself is being constantly carried,not only from the hillside but from the plain,into the rivers and carried by thenl and deposited at the bottom of the seas and great lakes, where it is entirely out of the sphere of plant life. 1 hF What's the Use?- .. 4. This waste by erosion is J to a certain extent, necessarily increased by the cultivation of the land for agricultural purposes, but it is further greatly accelerated by methods of cUltivation practised by the ignorant, the heedless and even the careless agriculturalist. Ie7lorance, carelessness and ahort-sighted greed will continue, in spite of all efforts at education, to do their deadly work to the end or al-most to the end of human existence. vation is inevitable. The death of the race by star- In tha.t same article on the human microbe I also touched upon the fact that the race, in its detennination to commit suicide, was unwilling to wait upon the slow method of starvation, but was seeking more hasty means to the end--.. i ts extinction. It herds itself together in great cities, where life for more than three or four generations is more ~ than next to impossible; it poisons itself with drugs and drink; it deliberately destroys) by whol~esale its progeny before even the little ones begin life in the womb. It is estimated that if the people of the United States were extending the same cordial welcome to new lives that they did three-quarters of a century ago there would today be being born in the United States each year a million and a quarter babes more than is at present the case; in fact our increase of populati on by this natural method would be double the increase at present obtained by net immigration from foreign countries. But J if we are all to starve to death a:nyway wha.t· s the use of repining at the absence of this great army of men and women with mouths to feed? There ha.ve existed in the past in other lands,and in this, great nations of people greatly advanced in the arts of . ci viIi zation that have completely disappeared,---partly, perhaps, as a. result of starva.tion, but more largely as a result of wilful suicide through . vices that are inherent to a highly developed civilization. When will the time come when this country will no longer contain even any of the degenerate descendants of its present inhabitants? Is it not a fact that human intelligence is rather the enemy of human life than anything else? lsi t not true that the more men know of themssl yes , and the world at large; the more difficult it is for them to exist? The Greeks had reached their highest intellectual development at about the same time that they destroyed themselves by their vioes. It was in the days when Rome was greatest that the greatest of the Romans had to depend upon the practice of adoption of children to get heirs to their names, their offices and their estates. In our own time and amongst our own peoples it is not only great men who have the greatest proportion of childless homes; it is amongst that class of men and women who have been in schools and colleges and who have been most highly trained intellectually that fertility is the least. Man for man and woman for woman. they do not even reproduce themselves. Perhaps not one child to every two such people is born into the world; and even these few children, it would appear, a,re less fertile than their infertile parente. Wh.at, then" is the use of this tremendous present day struggle for the acquirement of a high degree of intellectual training? Gold has all/aye been considered the root of all evil. The acquirement of wealth, the most interesting and absorbing pursuit of mankind, has but one reau! t; the so-celled fortunate, the successful ~ can and do find no other use to make of their possessions than the destruction of their own health and happiness and lives, and the poisoning of the life of the community. So what's the use of philosophizing on this subject? Why advocate the simple life? Man is a creature of instinct, and by bio-logical process of reasoning it can be proved that life itself is not 16H What· 8 the Use? ... -6. only a struggle but that it depends on a struggle for its existence. The human beirlg can no more resist its natural propensity to struggle for the attainment of wealth than it can resist the propensity to breathe and devour food; mankind not only enj oys battle, but battling for existence is as necessary as breathing. It is the non-intellectual races that progress most swiftly in the rate of numerical increase. To the extent that the negro race is not only less intellectually developed tJ:"l...an the white race, but is less capable of such develop'" ment J so must that race increase more rapidly by breeding. The least intellectually developed of all the white races--the Slavs--ia the very race that is today startling the scientific statistician by its tremen-dous increase in numbers. The several nations that today stand, or are supposed to standj in the ve~ forefront ranks of c~vilization--among them the French and English-... -have the l~ast growth of populationo There are exceptions to every rule: The German people are highly developed and they are multiplying by natural processes rapidly. (The suggestion here occurs: I have read that the proportion of illegi timate children---that is to say children born out of wedlock--is enormously large among the Germans; amongst some sections of them, it is said, that the percentage of illegitimate children to the whole number born runs from forty to sixty percent. Does not this indicate that, in one respect at least» the Gennan people are not so highly 01 vilized, that is to say not so much subject to religious restraint, or social law and convention~ as aome of the western nations? There is no doubt a.t all but that strict obedience to the laws and rules of Christia.'rl churches reduces the birth rate. There is many a childless woman whose lonely and unnatural condition is a result of the laws of churches and of society; in or out of wedlock she would be a mother were the penal ty not so great. There a.re few men who would not grea.tly increase Whats the Use?--? the number of their progeny were it not for the prohibition of social convention, statute law and religious conventions.) But what·s the use of lanlenting over this condition of affairs? Are we not eating up the world fast enough as it is? What is the coudi tion of mind of a bachelor who remains a bachelor, or the maid young or old who must perforce remain a virgin? And of all these millions of men and women in this cotmtry who willingly and wilfully refuse to propagate? They must realize that they are perfonaing a species of sulcide-..... t.hey are wholly, or in part~ cutting off their future existence--that existence which d08S not terr...ainate with one individual's death, but which may go on through generations of descendents. There are those who willingly 8..11d vdlfully terminate their own Ii ves violently by their own acts in an instant. There are an in-finite number of other individuals who willingly, knowingly and wilfully practice those vices which shorten their lives. Is it not that all of these, by their acts, give erpression to "What's the Use?" What' s the use of marrying? V~(lat' s the use of being marri ad and having children? There was a time when the mere thoug..~t of it frightened me, when a trifling illness or a more serious one brought to my mind that that illness might result in death, and caused me to have a feeling of absolute horror and of so great a fear that I was asha.med to let anyone know lID! condition of mind---I feared being reproached for cowardice; I would at such times sometimes make a free confession of my condition to my medical advisers, and they ill their turn would try to cornfort me and re-assure me by infonning me that I was only sufferil15 from hypochondria. There may be such a thing as hypochondria but from all I know of the ,meaning of tl:l.B.t word I was never a hypochondriac-····r was simply a robust) natural animal with a tremendous vitality and a tremendous desire for ife) and all my suffering was a result of my lack of ignore.nce---I knew 1'70 What's the Use?--a. enough to know the danger. But the time of my so-called hypochondria. is past-.. -that is 17,0 say my youth is past and my vigor has waned, while at the same time I have grown in knowledge and experience and ha.ve learned to feel tha.t continued life is not such a desirable thing as it once was, and that rest and death are not to be dreaded. Is not my present condition of mdnd something like that of the wilful bachelor or wilful childless woman? Do they not feel, prematurely, that weariness of life, that discontent with existence, which makes them willing to terminate in themselves the thread of life that extends from them and their being back to the beginning? Do not whole peoples highly civil ized and greatly developed intellectually arri va at this condition, which is a long step toward that which permits direct and absolute self-destruction? England, the English nation's "weary Titan" seems to be approaching the mental condi tion that could be best expressed by "what f s the use?" Ther~ there are forty-four millions of people---therel there are eleven times as many people as there were when, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, this nation set out to run over and conquer one quarter of the world. There.; there are enoug.1J. people possessed of sufficient know! edge of arts and science to make them, if they would be so, an in- Tlunerable and unconquerable nation. The Englis..i1 natlon is decadent; it knows that it is falling and falling rapidly and has fallen from a short time ~o preemdnence. It listlessly muddles along. Like ,8, sickly patient this people is irritable and petulant, refusing to take the medicine and suhnit to the discipline necessary to rejuvenate it and make it heal thy. It is like a drunken sot, staggering and stumbling open grave; who sees what is coming and who perhaps need only to reform his habits, to throwaway the fiery drink, to athe fresh air, to labor and exercise his muscles, to eat wholesome food and sleep in sobriety in order to again become a vigorous and heal-thy man. The sot will not do this- ... -the intellectual and physical ef-fort and moral strength is lacking. England refuses to reform her habits and live. She lI18kes treaties of eJ.liance with the pagans of the East; she dipl 8 over Europe; she refuses to make her people a,bstain from drink; she reft.lse s to depa S6 a monarchy bred of generations of vice; holds e"s a priceless heri t'age the degenerate institution of her nobility; she refuses J even in these fateful times, to make herself a. soldiere' na.- tion--a nation of conscripts--physically able to defend he;.~ she refuse a to eliminate her over-grovv'!l swarm of mental and cal 6S; inefficients; she refuses to cure herself of her mocki sentimental and instead of cleansing the body politic of the poison of paupers and pauperism she bends all her last remaining energies to sustaining this element and assisting it to breed and multiply. She to read and understand the signs of the times; but, like the ostrich, her head in the sand and refuses to see the destroying enemy buries 18 approaching. Thi s nation is no longer compottsed of individual s of great vitality and force; it will no longer consent to be 1 by great men---for there are in England still, great men. In our 01;/ffi country are we not hastening rapidly to the same condition in which England is? Have we not inherited al oi viI ization of our mother country the age and decrepitude of t}1..a.t mother country? We have great areas of sick spots in the land now i ---we the negroes) -- -we have the old institution cI"IJstall i zed our tion; we have a fully developed aristocracy; and we have a system of distribution of wealth that is inconsistent with a healthy and vigorous growth. These evils :'are recognized and knovm to be evils great majority of our people; but, supinely and weakly~ we refuse to What's the Use?--IOs cure ourselves. We temporize and postpone .. Must nations grow old and die? If BO J do we know how long a time ~ according to natural laws 1 a race or nation can exist? It is the common idea of the physiologist that the nonnal life of a human individual, barring all accidents and barring the vices of ignorance and vdlfulness, is approximately between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and forty years; we know that the average longevity is not much over one-third of this time; we know that a man or woman who has lived one-half of this period is reckoned old, and that he or she is generally tottering toward the grave .. There ha. ve been exceptions, but few of them; of men and women who have lived to over a hundred years of age. In most of these cases i if not all of them, where an individual has arrived at a great age, the individual s themselves have been con~~lled to live lives of comparative poverty, and most of them have been ignorant. But how long is the nor~ life of a race or nation? The Greeks did not come into existence as a nation till long after the ~inese, and perhaps long after governments had been estab-lished in Japan. The Romans came still later. And now, nearly two thousa."Yld years after the Roman Empire has disappeared in world affairs I the Chinese nation iawaking up! and ethnologists are agreed that that people have an equal chance with any other people on earth to exist and to even become the Illost formidable and powerful people on earth. Japan today; as a nation, has a popUlation about equal to that of England) but while England is decadent Japan gives evidence of having all the youth a.l1d vigor and promise for a future that Engla.l1d had three or four hundred years ago; yet 3 the J apa."16ae had a national govenl,nent and had a civilization while the British Isles were i~~abited by untu-tored barbarians. From Japan I learn then that nations and races may "bB long- 1nlat's the Use?--11. lived, and that Babylon and Persia, and Greece and Rome may have only tenninated their existence by their own wilfulness or supineness. My liver is in good order today and perhaps that, more than my contemplation of ancient China and Japan, is the cause of my feeling that there is some use for myself and for my fellow-countrymen and my Jlnglo-Saxon kindred to wake up and go to work and remake outselves by discontinuing our old bad practices, our old absolutely worthless and rather injurious beliefs and conventions and begin life over again, just as I did ten years ago when I walked up to the edge of the grave with a bottle in my hand and buried the bottie instead of myself; I was crippled, it is true, by my past excesses but still vigorous enough to at[complish muoh and to live to see my first grandchild, and even then to have hopes of seeing many more grand children. \ ;,.'. D;ctated Cb~,~. W •. Scripps Miramar, cu.lfomla, May 23, 1909. -, ,.. .. 4. . - I |
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